Social Media Review – Tour de Cure 2014

Overview

For my internship I had wanted to improve the ADA-Denver’s social media presence, specifically on Facebok. In connection with Tour de Cure 2014, I chose to focus the majority of my time and efforts on increasing engagement and reach in preparation of the event. I established three KPIs that directly related to Facebook and the communications goal of the ADA.

1. Drive overall Tour de Cure – Colorado engagement to an average of 250 by August 15

2. Increase total reach to 2,000 by August 15

3. Increase total page likes to 1,200 by August 30

Strategy and Tactics

Crafting content that appealed to the Tour de Cure demographic (35-44 year olds) was challenging. It was a demographic that I knew very little about, and this was not factoring in the unique traits of the cyclist community. To compliment my content creation and planning, I researched cycling blogs, online communities, and visited local cycling shops. I also researched previous Tour de Cure social marketing and the various types of content posted. I found out the cycling community has a strong appreciation for the outdoors, is fairly educated, and is affluent. But as this was a diabetes charity ride, the demographic was even more unique that I had thought. The TdC online community was a close-knit group of participants and volunteers, all who appeared to know each other fairly well. And they were deeply committed to stopping diabetes. Keeping in consideration what I learned during my research I set out to create content that was:

1. Visual and community-driven: I wanted to find photos, graphics that featured Red Riders, Youth Ambassadors, and other Tour participants.

a. I wanted to attempt to provide a variety of content, video, graphics, and photos.

2. Fun and light-hearted: Tour is after all a cycling ride, and should be marketed as a fun event.

Below are a few examples of posts:

Outcomes and Analysis

KPI 1: Drive overall Tour de Cure – Colorado engagement to an average of 250 by August 15

Business Goal

Key Performance Indicators

Measurement Tool

Metric

Drive Tour de Cure – Colorado engagement on Facebook

Shares, likes, comments

Facebook Insights

Drive engagement to an average of 250

Likes, TdC 2013 v Tdc 2014

As seen here the community responded very positively with the content posted leading/day of the event. The growth indicates a 136% increase in likes from last year.

Comments, TdC 2013 v TdC 2014

The comments are double what they were last year.

Page and Tab Visits, TdC 2013 v TdC 2014

This graph implies that users are engaging with our page components much more frequently, specifically our timeline. Users are exploring our timeline 73% more than in 2013.

Engagement summary 08/12/2014-08/18/2014

While this snapshot does not accurately represent the entire campaign, it indicates that engagement is significant up from previous weeks.

KPI 2: Drive total reach to 2,000 by August 15

Business Goal

Key Performance Indicators

Measurement Tool

Metric

Increase total reach

Post/Total reach

Facebook Insights

Drive total reach to 2,000

Total Reach TdC 2013 v TdC 2014: July – August

Total Reach TdC 2013 v TdC 2014: August

Looking at just the month of August it can be seen that total reach has dramatically increased. This indicates that our final push during August was far better this year than in 2013- in fact it was 208% better.

KPI 3: Increase total page likes to 1,200 by August 30

Business Goal

Key Performance Indicators

Measurement Tool

Metric

Drive page likes

New page likes

Facebook Insights

Increase total page likes to 1,200

Total Page likes TdC 2013 TdC 2014

We were successfully able to hit 1,200 likes around August 13, well before our goal. As our contests and email marketing continues it can be expected that total likes will increase even further.

Summary and Conclusion

Overall we succeeded in everyone one of our goals this campaign. Unfortunately, the majority of our efforts were focused on Facebook and therefore we weren’t able to capitalize on other platforms, specifically Twitter. However, the one-track approached to our social marketing meant that we were able to create fantastic content for our Facebook. The result was all around improved reach and engagement. Some important takeaways are:

1. Average post likes are up 136% from 2013. Indicating that the community it responding very positively to our content.

2. Users are exploring our timeline 73% more than in 2013. This indicates that the users are spending more time on our page, engaging with other users and our content.

3. Total reach is up 203% for the month of August than in 2013. What is fascinating is that “post reach” has changed very little from 2013-2014 (353 in 2013 and 366 in 2014), but “total reach” has dramatically increased. This indicates that our users are sharing our content much more, and that other pages are sharing our content to their communities. Both very positive implications.

Recommendations

1. Plan Tour countdown for week of event. (We are 6 days away from Tour… etc)

2. Implement reoccurring themed posts: #tbts #tourtuesdays

3. Drive page likes through contests, special events, etc.

4. Create posts with clear call-to-action, specifically to SHARE the content