Social Media Management: Max Control
Over 12 weeks at the end of 2009, Red Rocket, an Exeter based design and marketing agency, asked us to work with them on creating and managing Social Media for a campaign they were running for their client Somerset Road Saftey Partnership.
‘Max Control‘ is a year long campaign to encourage young drivers to drive safer and more aware by enrolling them in a competition that allows the entrants to accumulate credits by taking various driving courses. The courses ranged from skid cars, simulations, intermediate driving techniques, etc, all with the aim of encouraging safer driving through awareness and education. The competition climaxes in the summer of 2010 where those with the most credits enter the grand final in order to win a Renault Clio.
Our job was to implement a Social Media strategy and manage it with the goal of increasing signups to the competition.
What We Did
We provided our Campaign 360° program, which is designed to implement the four precepts of Social Communication programming (Development, Integration, Management and Measurement) over a 12 week campaign. This gives a low level buy in at lower cost, without the need to carry out a organisation wide integration of Social Comms, as the campaign is usually self contained – providing a safe zone to test and prove Social Media for the organisation to encourage further use and more budget.
We started by developing a simple strategy to consolidate the existing 73 entrants that they already had on Facebook, which is the network of choice for 18-25 year olds. 40 of these 73 were already using the social network, meaning we had a strong base to build upon.
Having providing our bespoke Social Media Blueprint, we had drawn up the guidelines and methods of engagement, which Red Rocket heartily signed off. We began managing the account on the basis of 30 minutes per day, split up over blocks throughout the day at key usage times.
Management – which is the day-to-day operation of the program, consisted of these core areas:
- Monitoring. We tracked keywords across Facebook, Twitter and blogs.
- Responding. There are 6 types of first move Social Media interaction that can be responded to, the protocol for each having been drawn up in the Blueprint.
- Initiating. This is where we initiated conversation with the users, with regards to support, service, sales.
- Reporting. This is the internal communications that upholds the external communication, i.e. information sharing, protocol as per the 6 interactions, etc.
We quickly began content marketing through the Facebook profile and Fan Page – posting links to helpful websites, events, bits of news, and of course, Max Control information. Although there was little interaction between the entrants and the Facebook profile, the click throughs on these links was very high. This is typical for 18-25 year olds, who will have conversation about the brand rather than conversation with the brand.
As the content that we had been marketing was shared, we saw a steady rise in sign ups from Social Media sites in Google Analyitics. However the spike in signups really came when we began to post photos and videos of the entrants on the Facebook page. This Showcase Strategy, whereby sharing is encouraged because the users have themselves been ‘showcased’ is a powerful technique, and boasted signups from 21% over the first 4 weeks to 69% in a week.
Why Good Integration Mattered
We only had one complaint about Max Control, over an event that had been cancelled at the last minute. It was an unfortunate circumstance, and one participant turned up the event as we they did not get the numerous messages that Red Rocket left with them. When they complained directly to us on Facebook (A direct negative mention), it was late night Friday.
Because of our split time management system and Blueprint guidelines, this was flagged immediately, a Facebook message sent to apologise, the Red Rocket team notified, and a phone call made the next day. The result was that this participant, although initially upset, was so pleased was the fast service, that they became an advocate and one of the strongest competitors in the Max Control challenge.
The Result
Measurement reports were providing biweekly, which showed a strong and consistent curve of signups and traffic week on week. By the end of the 12 weeks that we managed the campaign, sign ups from Social Media accounted for more than a doubling of the original signups, taking Red Rocket to 75% of their target for the whole year campaign within 3 short months.