Raising Awareness Through Social Media

Global relief agency Oxfam brings us an interesting case study on social media relations' ability to raise awareness. It's raising $35 million to help East Africa deal with a drought-inflicted crisis. Like many non-profits, Oxfam did not have the budget to launch a traditional multinational awareness campaign. Instead the eBay auction of the famous dress to highlight the Oxfam campaign. Vera Wang also displayed the dress in her Madison Avenue flagship store. Jeff Greene answered a few questions from Strategic Public Relations about the project. SPR: How did you decide your online targets? Greene: Gold Group identified major online hubs for entertainment and celebrity gossip and information. Working closely with bloggers and webmasters, we engaged with these online communities. Gold Group also built a Greene: Absolutely. On the social side, when bloggers came back asking for something we tried to accommodate them as much as possible - more details, extra photos. A conversation thread in one of the fan forums helped influence a messaging point that went out in a follow-up release. These are small examples, but taught us to see social media not just as a "target" but a potential collaborator in the conversation. SPR: How did you track results and mentions social vs. offline? Greene: By doing a lot of Google searches! Seriously, it was a challenge. We tracked certain direct phrases that were used in the official release, for example, but wouldn't appear in most social mentions (unless they were quoting the whole release verbatim). For a while, we were able to track the hits differential between our landing page and the eBay auction page, until the set a record for Oxfam according to the UK's Independent. The landing page received more than 30,000 visits and the effort over 150+ online content was clearly branded by Oxfam. There were also plenty of hooks into the Oxfam site to engage new visitors beyond the auction. It's inspiring to see how non-profits can benefit from social media relations. The Oxfam story is one of a growing number of social media relations Shel Holtz Cross-posted to Del.icio.us | Yahoo! My Web | Strategic Public Relations blog. Kevin is Director of Marketing Communications for Strategic Public Relations