Many organizations, both for profit and non-profit, struggle with finding ways to get their prospective customers, donors, or volunteers engaged in their brand. Since engagement with the audience is one of the key metrics for social media success, organizations are now finding that it is important to combine traditional tactics with social media campaigns in order to attract an audience so that engagement can begin.
At Clear Verve, we believe that combining marketing strategies is almost always a good idea. Using multiple communications channels allows your business to use different types of messages. As an example, you can use one tactic to get people’s attention, and another to say what you want them to know. However, it is important to remain true to your organization’s main goals when planning any promotion.
Yesterday, April 22, was the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. The Sierra Club, America’s oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization (their words, not mine) launched an Earth Day sweepstakes in which people would pledge to do something good for the Earth in exchange for a trip. At first glance, this sounds like a great idea. People get excited about contests, the registration form gives the Sierra Club the chance to harvest your contact information (unless you uncheck the box), and it was a great opportunity to increase the size of their twitter followers, Facebook fans, and email list.
The problem, at least in our eyes, with the contest was the prize. A trip for two to Hawaii. Not that we have anything against Hawaii. We’ve heard it’s beautiful, amazing, and a bunch of other really nice adjectives. The problem is how you get there. Here is an environmental organization putting two people on an airplane in order to build their social media fan base. Even if nobody is exactly sure how much air travel adds to our carbon footprint, we can all agree it probably doesn’t help. It’s kind of like PETA giving away leather furniture or a fur coat to people who pledge to become vegetarians.
We hope the Sierra Club’s Earth Day promotion was successful and that they attracted many new fans. It would be interesting to know if they heard any backlash about the plane trip. We think taking advantage of Earth Day, and holding a sweepstakes was brilliant. We’re not so sure if they kept their organization’s overall mission in mind when they planned the promotion though. What do you think?
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