The first ever World Elephant Day (WED) will be this Sunday, August 12th. For the past several months I have been working as the Social Media Coordinator to raise awareness for the campaign and gain international support. We have steadily been building a following however it was evident that in order to gain significant traction, we had to go beyond our own social networks. I’ve tried multiple tactics and found the following 3 proved to be the most effective:
Guest Post about your Campaign on Relevant Blogs
To increase awareness of World Elephant Day I started targeting external websites that paralleled our interests and had a target audience that complemented our initiative. The popular website Life as a Human agreed to have us guest post and the impact was significant. The article we wrote, Returning Elephants to the Forest was shared 46 times on Twitter and inspired one reader to create an elephant painting in celebration of World Elephant Day. She posted the painting on Life as a Human, which received another 11 shares on Twitter as well as her own blog (another 19 shares on Twitter) thus further expanding our reach.
Contact People Through Multiple Channels
Prior to the lead up for World Elephant Day I started emailing organizations directly to gain their support on the project. Majority of the emails did not receive a response so I started following up using social media channels. I found the organizations’ Facebook and Twitter accounts and sent an informal version of the same email. Following up through Facebook email was a HUGE success. Many of the organizations had a designated person that responded through social and when asked to support the initiative, checked with their superior (who had most likely already been emailed about it). This generated a quick response.
Make it EASY for People to Share about your Campaign
Create a Pressroom on your website for people who are interested in sharing about your campaign. For the World Elephant Day website I created a Pressroom that included:
The 5 W’s
A quick who, what, when, where, why of the campaign so that visitors could easily communicate about it
Downloadable logos
These images visitors have used for their personal blogs when sharing about the campaign
Prewritten blog posts
Blogs that are interested in sharing about World Elephant Day that don’t have time to craft their own blog post can choose on of several blog posts that discuss the project from different angles
Downloadable World Elephant Day Facebook covers
This is an easy way for fans to share about WED
Prewritten Tweets
The tweets were done with a website called Clicktotweet.com which allows you to write a custom tweet, then output a custom url. To add to your website you write the tweet and hyperlink the whole thing with the custom url. See the example below. When the person clicks on the tweet it auto fills it in their Twitter. Again, making it as easy as possible
(Click to see example: Support #WorldElephantDay and pledge to raise awareness about the plight of #elephants across the world http://t.co/uPEOiDab)
The day of World Elephant Day we are releasing a documentary about returning elephants back in to the forest. We have a lot more campaign tactics in the works for the big day and I’ll be sure to share our successes.
To learn more about World Elephant Day join them on Facebook and Twitter or visit their website at www.worldelephantday.org. And if you would like more social media tips that make using social networks easier I recommend www.SocialMediaTips.com