I’m a huge fan of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Besides being an avid fan, I used to work there as a national host and producer for its CBC Radio One network. So it came sort of naturally that I started a fan page on Facebook for it. Not even two years later, and the Page now has 48,000 very engaged fans — far more than any other CBC page (official or not). Sometimes it’s so busy that within 15 minutes of posting something on the page, more than a hundred people have commented on it.
If you’d like to grow your page zero to 48,000 fans, here are some tips I recommend:
Set Up an Auto-Publishing Twitter Account
Facebook lets you automatically tweet out page updates onto a Twitter account, so I established @aboutcbc on Twitter and it serves as a promotional channel — whenever I post something on the Page, this account tweets out the post with a direct link to the post. This reminds people to check the Page and, if they’re not already following the page, to Like it.
Follow Lots of Obscure Content Sources
In my feed reader, I have a tonne of sources that publish content about the CBC — sources like the CBC’s official news web site and some program web sites. But I find the links that generate the most engagement come from sort of obscure sources. For instance, I follow this great (but horribly designed) blog about the Canadian radio industry, this blog for a band calledPeter Mansbridge and the CBCs (totally unrelated to the CBC), and follow an RSS search for CBC on eBay. I find the more random and offbeat the content, the more engagement happens.
Here’s an example of a recent eBay find:
I wish eBay had an affiliate program — usually things I post from eBay on the Page sell within minutes. Here’s another example: Note the last comment of someone telling everyone they’d bought it:
Actively Engage
A few hours after I post something on the page, I usually try to go back and engage in a little conversation with some of the commenters. This, of course, drives more comments and the engagement loop remains solid. Putting a little bit of you in the page goes a long way to humanizing the content.
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For more of this article, visit http://www.todmaffin.com/growfans
(image source: Seruds)
As your humble servant and intrepid case study discoverer, I invite you to join me on my ongoing trip around the world as I move from Ireland to India, two countries very close to my heart. What do they have in common? Easy. Generous people with warm hearts living in two fascinatingly complex and rapidly evolving societies.
Enter “Give India”. This online donation platform harnesses the power of the Internet to facilitate grassroots support for non-profits in the country. Visitors to the site can choose to support a variety of initiatives like:
A one day Human Rights Awareness Workshop for 50 poor women
Sponsor the honorarium of a paralegal counselor for a year to fight against domestic violence
1 month nutrition and health care for a child living with HIV
Contribute to a fund to build a shelter for 50 neglected aged
Construct a Rain Water Harvesting Unit or Recharge Pit for a drought prone village.
Having worked with and having sat on the board of more than one non-profit, I can certainly attest to the constant scramble for funding. Hopefully, no stone goes unturned, which is likely why Give India chose to participate in the challenge set forth by the Chase Foundation. The task? Leverage your network in a bid to gain votes supporting your race towards a 1 million dollar prize.
Today’s featured case study could certainly been about the Chase Foundation’s visibility program. The $1M campaign was unfortunately not without controversy…
But back to Give India:
Objectives:
- Get 40 000 votes
- Increase traffic to Give India on Facebook and Twitter
- Win $1M from the Chase Foundation
- Educate 40 000 children
The Campaign: 1 vote = 1 child’s education for a year. A vote for India.
Results:
- Key influencers, including Bollywood stars Purab Kohli, Shekhar Kapur and Farah Khan shared this campaign with their Twitter networks
- Number of Twitter followers rose from 200 to over 350 in 8 days
- Number of Facebook fans increased from 150 to over 500 in 8 days
- Raised awareness for Give India among more than 4000 people
How did they do it? By mobilizing influencers and their network through Twitter, Facebook and email. While they didn’t walk away with $1M from the Chase Foundation, the Give India case study is generously rich with key learnings, so check it out. It’s posted on India Social, India’s largest social media community. Rajesh Lalwani, founder of social media consulting firm Blogworks, who I had the great pleasure of meeting in Delhi, is one of the driving forces behind the India Social initiative.
Anand uthaayein!
Michelle
(NOTE: During this beta period, this is the only case study using the Regions category. Case studies will be categorized by region by the end of February.)
The Great Bear Rainforest is one of the few truly wild places remaining in B.C. until a few years ago, there were no concrete, long-term plans in place to preserve it.
To try to pressure the provincial government to ratify a protection agreement, Greenpeace Canada, ForestEthics, and the Sierra Club of B.C. launched the “Keep the Promise: Save the Great Bear Rainforest” campaign in fall 2008. Capulet Communications was brought onboard to run the social media components, which included a Facebook group that attracted more than 4,000 members and became the hub for online activities. Other tactics used included a “Bear Your Soul” Flickr Contest, local blogger outreach, and both Twitter and YouTube presences.
In the end, the government promise to protect one third of the globally significant rainforest was fulfilled. Full Case Study
The Rose Project, a Dublin based charity that helps HIV/ AIDS patients in East Africa, collaborated with Brightspark Consulting to launch a social media campaign to spread awareness about this noble cause. The campaign involved a brand new web site, a blog, Facebook page and Twitter profile. The results have been phenomenal – donations received from as far as Alaska and Adare. Amazon collaborated with The Rose Project through its Twitter feed and started distributing gift wraps for the project. Case Study
Novartis decided to adopt social media to generate awareness on CML Disease and launched a community site known as CML Earth. The site targets CML patients, health-care professionals, and patient groups. The site lets members connect with others near them. The results: More than 2,000 members, an unmatched resource for information on CML and a very active community willing to help CML patients anywhere in the world. Case Study
Paul Young, a member of Charity:Water non-profit organization used social media on his birthday to raise charity money for the cause of providing clean water in Ethiopia. Paul used Bit.ly to track the hits on his charity page and used Facebook to spread the word amongst his friends. He also used Twitter and tweeted about this noble chairable cause. Paul raised $1,240 through this campaign. This social media experiment not only helped charity but it’s also a great showcase for the wide reach of social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook Case Study
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