Creating and Planning Some of SKF's Social Marketing Strategies

The 2^nd to last assignment for my Social Media for Business class, is to decide which of the Social Media tools we will use over the next six months; and how we plan to experiment for business or social growth with our online marketing strategies. As well as how we will plan out our social media content and integrate our social posts over our chosen social media websites.   

Considering our status as a small nonprofit organization, The Sabrina Keller Foundation does not have much of a budget – frankly we have no budget at all (except for our own personal donations) for any kind of extensive marketing activities on a regular basis. Everyone involved with managing SKF are volunteers, with their time and energy limited by regular work lives and/or family and home needs. 

Organic or free social media is the best way for our SKF staff to get our Brand and the foundation’s messages out to our potential supporters without spending a lot of money, or which will require a lot of time demands; especially when we can use free content and post scheduling tools on many social media websites.  

But with that said we can still see from my past semester class-work (My Blogs), that social media marketing management can take a lot of time and personnel efforts, with the required research needed to analyze your SEO, Consumer Reach, Content/Engagement, and Return on Investments (ROI), etc.  

Most of the SKF staff isn’t very sophisticated to run these types of research and marketing campaigns, so the majority of the social marketing will be done only through Facebook and Twitter and on a more limited basis perhaps with Pinterest. 

I will try to teach our Foundation’s president how to use some of the Facebook Insight Analysis tools, to better understand how our target market is responding. And as I said in an earlier blog she is already quite experienced with using Facebook, and sharing her own social media content on her personal Facebook Page. So I think if she and I could devote about 1 to 2 hours a week each on running our SKF Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest content management, we could try to set and meet some SMART Goals to improve our social reach and engagement; as well as try to gain more followers for our Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest pages.  

Mail Chimp will be our designated email program (because it is a free service for our Foundation’s size/ needs) and we will use it to send out event announcements and perhaps an occasional newsletter. The newsletter is a topic we need to discuss at an SKF board meeting, as well as maybe publishing an occasional SKF Foundation Blog, to complement our social media efforts in the future.  All these would take some extra content and planning efforts, and I am not sure we will have neither the time nor the manpower to create a regular blog anytime soon. 

Facebook will be our chief social media marketing tool along with Twitter in tandem with most of our posting of our social content. I will propose a six (6) month social marketing strategy to increase our followers on Facebook through the use of more Twitter engagement (Tweets).

Our goals will be to increase engagement and Fans on Facebook through increased engagement with Twitter - I think we need to research where our potential social followers might be (as I had explained in a previous blog), and develop a strategy to engage them in conversation or tweets - with our Facebook or website URL posted as a Call to Action to come and see our page and “like us” on Facebook.  The same can be done for sending out calls to action to also visit our Pinterest page and pin boards.  

Twitter will also be used for announcing events to come volunteer or attend our local fundraisers.  Or once in a while we can just plain ask them (Business) to donate some money for our Scholarships or to sponsor an event.  

I think our test marketing strategy would be to make some ongoing Tweets on Twitter (perhaps paid at first to increase our reach) designed to invite new people to see our Facebook page – and the real test will be to find out what works (research), and what to use for our social content, that will keep them there and increase our Fan Engagement.   

We also have a big bowling family fund raising event coming up in February – I think integrating this Bowling theme as well as our SADS Foundation fund raising efforts into our marketing campaign on Twitter would be a good way to attract new followers. 

We will schedule the next four (4) weeks for our social media marketing calendar as follows – with the Upcoming Bowling Event and the marketing goals stated above in mind to increase our Fans and their Engagement:

Week 1: 

Mail Chimp could be used on a Monthly or Bi monthly basis to remind our followers of the upcoming Bowling event or other news – 

Our scheduling of these and other types of email blasts need to be discussed with the SKF staff and our Foundation President before I can make any future plans on how Mail Chimp might be utilized throughout the coming months. 

Tuesday December 10 - Facebook/Twitter (every Tuesday and ongoing Tuesdays)
- Post a SADS article or any related Heart Arrhythmia Stories (To do some SADS article research it will take about 30 min to an hour of our time each week)

Facebook/Twitter December 12 – *** Post/tweet Daily (or link) Advent Calendar – (Ongoing thru the month of December) Each Day until Christmas there will be a new Holiday message on it  
(This is an idea I am still researching the details http://www.adventcalendaronline.co.uk/  ) 

(***If the calendar does not work out we will start a daily or every few days/semi-weekly -  Xmas themed posting involving Family Holiday Events/Hobby - Cooking - Projects for Xmas time)

(The research and development of our Christmas Content will take some time approx. 3-4 hours will probably be needed to accomplish this task this week or we can spread out the work throughout the rest of the weeks/month if we are not making a calendar)

Friday December the 13^th – schedule Facebook (and a Tweet) to post at 6 am – to make a “spooky” Friday the 13^th post sharing an Online Game: “Nightmare before Christmas” (http://games.disney.com/the-nightmare-before-christmas-jacks-sleigh-ride )

December 13 Early Morning - Post a Disney Image /link to Nightmare Xmas Game/with CTA and a Link to SKF/URL on the Pinterest Family Fun Board.

 

Sunday December 15^th – Re-post Advertisement for Midnight Bowling Event (Schedule to Do this every Sunday and schedule intermittent weekdays (Dec/Jan/Feb) until the event is held in late February. 

Twitter December 12 and Ongoing till December 25 – Tweet about the Advent Calendar /or Tweet about Family Xmas Event/Projects – create calls to action to come and like our Facebook page.

Twitter/Facebook – Monday December 16^th - Make a Call to Action to get sponsors to donate time or food/catering etc. - for Bowling Event in February.  (Be sure to schedule the same sponsor posts each week until the event but on different weekdays/times).

-Daily Times for postings will be scheduled during the day or night, and we will vary them to increase the reach to our Followers Timelines/schedules – This is a good metric to study in Facebook Insights analysis over time to see which times of day (and days) we get the most Engagement/Reach.     

Weeks 2/ 3 /4:

Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest -  Repeat the ongoing Advent Calendar Christmas Campaign as described above for week 1 /or use some Christmas Events/Hobbies (articles as researched) as well as publicize the Bowling Event by postings/ads as indicated at the times/days listed above. 

*** Ongoing we will Post any Shareable Social Content that may arise during the coming weeks – Girl Scout Posts / other Followers Content or any other amusing and family friendly/Appropriate content we may find online to share. 

We hope our social strategy, aside from the obvious reason to promote our upcoming Bowling Fundraiser over the coming weeks through December, January, and February, is also going to gain some more awareness for The SabrinaKeller Foundation. 

The Facebook and Twitter posts we will publish with the Advent Calendar, or some other Christmas themed content, will hopefully help achieve more social engagement with our page. 

We want to increase the size of our Facebook/Twitter communities. I think the real test of our content strategies will be trying to get more Facebook Fans raised through our Twitter presence, and by using some of the market research (listening to Twitter conversations) in order to locate and reach out to them; which will take some time and experimentation - So please post a comment. Link to and “like” our social web pages and wish us some luck!