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OneBuffalo: A Strategic Social Media Marketing

Campaign Analysis

Caroline Zybala
Strategic Communications and English
Elon University
Contact Information
czybala@elon.edu
704-293-6828

Submitted on 11/20/2015 to Dr. Byung Lee

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Table of Contents

Abstract3
I. Introduction..4
II. Literature Review....6
III. Research Methods......8
IV. Results....9
V. Conclusions...19
References......16
Appendix I.............20
Appendix II. ..............45
Appendix III. ............46

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Abstract
With content being produced at an obscene rate in todays society, it is essential for
organizations to publish meaningful content to reach the targeted audience. This study
completed a case study of the OneBuffalo Facebook campaign, using content analysis to
determine how a social media campaign successfully tailors content based on audience
interactions and responses. Based on content analysis of Facebook posts, the researcher
concluded the campaign increased posts related to community members and sports teams,
but received the largest increase in activity surrounding campaign specific content.

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I. Introduction
The OneBuffalo strategic marketing campaign began on October of 2014, when Terry
Pegula, owner of the Buffalo Sabres, a NHL team located in the city of Buffalo, New
York, purchased the Buffalo Bills, an NFL team also centered in Buffalo. The goal of this
campaign was to bring together the two different teams, now with the same owner, and
the entire Buffalo population into one united community. The campaign involved a strong
social media presence, including a Facebook page.

Facebook has become an extremely prevalent outlet for promotional campaigns. It has
become increasingly more popular with companies looking to create a brand or enhance
their current brand, according to Bissell and Shen (2013, p. 630). These companies are
turning to Facebook to reach their respective audiences to prompt them to take certain
actions. Mount and Martinz (2014) said, in todays world, social media platforms
support multimodal means of communication that can include text, pictures and
audiovisual tools, as well as the integration of additional platforms (p. 15), they also said
these tools allow a business/organization to increase the reach of their message in a way
that may help further develop and refine the market insights the company gains.

In regard to lasting power, traditional outlets, like Facebook and Twitter, are still clear
favorites when trying to have meaningful engagement with the audience, said Claridge
(n.d, para. 42). According to Sloanne (2015), brands, agencies and marketers are using
Facebook in ways that can switch up content depending on audience, tailoring the
promotion based on a consumers interests, background and geography (para. 13).

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Understanding how to create tailored content is essential for the success of a social media
campaign.

The rise of social media has forced corporate communications to shift to a dialogue in
which the stakeholders, and not just the companies, have power over the message,
according to Matthews (2012, p. 18). She highlighted this prevalence of social media,
which forces companies and organizations to view it as an integral part of the corporate
communications Since this is an evolving media, they have to be ready to adapt to
breaking news or changes in audience. Public relations campaigns in the social media
age have to adapt and become much more flexible in order to continue to be successful,
said Matthews (2012, p. 22). Completing some analysis of a social media campaign will
allow organizations to locate all the influencers relevant to their campaign and design
ways to encourage those influencers to talk about the companys products or services,
according to Deepa and Deshmukh (2013, p. 5).

Within the study on the One Buffalo Facebook campaign, there are two categories of
terms, which are used for quantitative and qualitative content analysis. For the
quantitative analysis, the researcher was looking at Likes, Shares, and Comments on
content posted by the OneBuffalo Facebook page. These are ranked in order of
engagement level, with a Like being the lowest level, and a Comment being the highest
level of engagement. For the qualitative analysis, the comments made on the posts were
examined and classified for the tone positive, negative, or neutral.

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This study determined if the OneBuffalo Facebook page altered the content posted on the
page based on the feedback and interaction from the audience. By reviewing the literature
on social media campaigns and specific audience targeting, the researcher will complete
quantitative and qualitative analysis of the beginning of the campaign and the recent
months of the campaign.

II. Literature Review

The author reviewed literature relating to academic studies on social media campaigns,
tailoring social media content for specific audiences, and analyzing social media content
to determine success.

There are previous studies in the field of social media campaigns that help guide new
campaigns. Scholars have observed information flow in social networks. For example,
Kumar (2012) investigated the geographic locations of a social network host and its
receivers, along with their comments and conversations. By combining these data with
financial metrics, Kumar could understand how consumers' purchasing decisions can be
influenced by the role and impact of these social media activities. The study was
conducted to drive and increase sales for the specific product.

According to Hoffman and Fodor (2010), there are four key motivations that drive
consumer use of social media: connections, creation, consumption and control. Highly
engaging social media campaigns involving user-created content likely trigger
commitment on the part of the audience, reinforcing loyalty to the brand and making the

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customer more likely to commit additional effort to support the brand in the future
(Hoffman & Fodor, 2010, p. 46). Returns from social media investments will not always
be measured in dollars, but also in customer behaviors tied to certain social media
applications.

To have a successful campaign, one must tailor social media content to reach the target
audience. According to LePage (2015, para. 8), audiences are targeted on different
demographics such as interests, age bracket, and region. It is essential that campaign
assets cater to their profile and preferences and have the right voice and tone in order to
properly influence the target audience. In a study conducted by Noort (2012, p. 48),
social network members who receive a marketing campaign from a strong social
connection hold more positive attitudes toward the brand and the campaign, and are more
inclined to forward the campaign to their connected others. Randolph and Viswanath
(2004, p. 427) found that some researchers feel that community mobilization by itself
may be a sufficient strategy for changing behavior, and several interventions compared
community mobilization interventions to media campaigns.

When a campaign is put into action, its important to analyze social media content to
determine the level of success of the campaign. According to Bissell and Shen (2013, p.
636), constantly delivering personality testimonials and catching the attention of the
target customers can increase the extent to which their fans feel identified with them.
Yang (2012) discussed how messages have a greater impact on consumers with low
involvement, and different message content generates different consumer involvement.

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One can tailor the content for a targeted audience based on the feedback received from
the initial responses. LePage (2015) said successful campaigns need to make the most of
its actions. Sharing positive messages from the social accounts can help boost the
positive sentiment around the campaign. The more people see you engaging, the more
likely they are to participate(LePage, 2015, para. 18).

Research Questions
For this research, the researcher developed three research questions that would be
answered over the course of data collection and analysis.
RQ1: What content on the OneBuffalo Facebook page generate the most
conversation from users in 2014 and 2015?
RQ2: How has the OneBuffalo Facebook campaign tailored content over time
based on the target audience?
RQ3: How has the community sentiment towards the OneBuffalo campaign
changed over time?

III. Research Methods

To answer the research questions, the author did content analysis on Facebook postings
on the campaign Facebook page, titled OneBuffalo. This was chosen for the author to
determine the type of content that is the most successful for the campaign, and what
changes are being made over two time periods to better reach the community. The author
collected the first 30 posts starting in the fall of 2014, when the OneBuffalo campaign
first launched on all platforms, including Facebook, and the latest thirty posts ending

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October 24th, 2015. The first set covered the period of October 13th, 2014- November 6th,
2014, and the second set, October 7th, 2015-October 24th, 2015.

A total of 60 postings were collected to gather its date, content, type, likes, comments,
and shares. Content of each post was classified into one of the seven emerging
categories; and its type was identified as text, picture and/or link. The text content was
copied word for word, but any pictures or links were not recorded into the data set in
Appendix I. The exception to this was if the link was typed out in the post instead of just
an attachment for the audience to click upon. If hashtags were included in the posting,
those were recorded along with the other text.

IV. Results
Data collection was completed by manually recording data from the sixty Facebook posts
into a Microsoft Excel document. Then the Tabelau program was used to visualize the
data to find trends.

Processing Data
The collected data was collected into the charts below based on the type of post, as
defined in Figure One. The total number of likes, comments, and shares were added for
all posts in the category for each year, along with the tone of the randomly chosen
comments.

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Analysis of posts content resulted in seven categories: 1) City Events 2) Sports Team
Updates 3) State Events 4) Campaign Specific Promotion 5) Outside Information
Promotion 6) City Stories/Updates 7) Community Spotlight, as shown below in Table 1.

Table 1. Categories of Posts

Category
1) City Events
2) Sports
Team Updates

3) State
Events
4) Campaign
Specific
Promotion
5) Outside
Information
Promotion

Description
Describes events that are
happening in the city of Buffalo
Information/updates/information
about the Buffalo Bills, Buffalo
Sabres, or other Buffalo
professional/college sports teams
Describes events that are
happening in the state of New
York
Information/promotion of the
OneBuffalo campaign

Examples
One Direction headlines 2015
concert at Ralph Wilson Stadium!
The Buffalo Bills will play the
Jacksonville Jaguars in London on
October 25, 2015!
It's an exciting time as Buffalo and
New York City form a partnership
to increase tourism in both cities!
Buffalo, a city of rebirth and
revitalization!

Articles/links/information coming Young people still long to move to

from an outside source, not
New York. They're just going to
directly affiliated with the
Buffalo now!
Facebook page

6) City Stories Buffalo specific news and updates The resurgence of Buffalo is
/Updates
on happenings within the
contagious! Here is an update on
community
six development projects
throughout the city of Buffalo!
7) Community Specific stories/members of the
Junior (or "JR") of WGR Sports
Spotlight
community
Radio 550 fame and his family at
the Bills vs. Patriots game! (Photo
courtesy of La X Latina Radio)
Once the data was gathered, the researcher was able to compare the number of posts in
each type of posting defined in the above matrix for each of the data sets. The researcher
was as able to see the most popular posts in regards to Likes, Comments, and Shares, and

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how these posts were classified. For the Likes, Comments, and Shares, these were
gathered as numbers, with no comment content gathered for this section. This data was
used to see which types of posts generated the most conversation around the campaign.

For the qualitative aspect of the methodology, the content of the comments was classified
into positive, negative, and neutral, based on Figure Two. The researcher was able to
develop a matrix to define what each of these qualities meant for the scope of the
research.

Figure Two: Comment Tone

Tone of Comment

Definition

Example

Positive

Supports the posted

content

Neutral

Offers no position on the

presented content; may
include just a picture with
no text
Questions, argues, or
degrades the posted
content

"Love that they did this

instead of having the
players!!"
"@Calla Marris is that you
at 2:49??"

Negative

"Please don't call them

kits"

For each of the 60 posts, the researcher used www.random.org to select a random
comment for each post. If there were no comments, there was no data collected and the
post was marked in a separate category: none. If there was only one comment, this
comment was chosen. Based on this generated number, the content of the post was
recorded, and then classified based on the above matrix. The comment content was the

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only data recorded for this section. Excluded was the user name, time of comment, and
any likes or replies to the comment itself.

The data collected from the 60 posts (Appendix I) was compiled into a chart (Appendix
II). This data was then put into Tableau to display the data and to find trends (Appendix
III).

Findings

Regarding the research question of what content generate the most conversation from
users, the study found the following.

The volume of conversation was measured by summing up comments, likes and shares.
Over the period, the conversation has increased in the areas of Likes and Shares, as
shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1. Comparison of conversations between 2014 and 2015

Analysis by category reveals a more detailed picture of where conversation has grown,
as shown in Figure 2. 4) Campaign Specific Posts and 7) Community Spotlight posts
have a significantly larger share of the conversation on the Facebook page. The
Community Spotlight posts (3 out of 20 collected posts) had the most overall likes in
2014, roughly double the number of the next closest category, Campaign Specific
Promotion. On the other hand, Campaign Specific Promotion posts had the most likes
in 2015 with a total of 3,760 likes. In 2015, 7) Community Spotlight posts also saw a
tremendous increase in its conversation.

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Figure 2. Comparison of two years by seven content categories

The study also found that the OneBuffalo Facebook page tailored content based on the
target audience. There was a big increase in the areas of 2) Sports Team Updates (from 1
to 7 posts) and Community Spotlight (from 3 to 8 posts) at the sacrifice of State Events,
which dropped to zero posts, along with City Events (from 2 to 1) and City
Stories/Updates (dropped from 11 to 4). Both 4) Campaign Specific Promotion and 5)
Outside Information Promotion held roughly the same share of the posts content over the
two years.

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Figure 3. The number of posts by category

How has the community sentiment towards the OneBuffalo campaign changed over time?
The number of Campaign Specific posts actually decreased by one post from 2014 to
2015, but the likes increased more than five times, from 690 to 3,760. The category of 2)
Sports Team Updates and 7) Community Spotlight increased the number of Likes, mainly
because of more posts in the gathered data set. To look at the average Likes per post,
Figure 5 was created. In every post category, the average number of likes increased,
expect for State Events, which registered no post in 2015.

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Figure 4. The number of likes by content category and year

On the other hand, the average number of comments decreased in all categories except
for 5) Outside Information Promotion and 6) City Events/Update postings. Average
number of shares increased for all categories except for State Events and City Event
posts.

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Figure 5. Average Likes per post by category and year

In regards to the tone, the direction of comments was similar over the two years,
expect for one thing: In 2014, there were many neutral comments, as shown in Table 1
below.

Table 1. Direction of comments by year

Direction of
Comments

2014

2015

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1) Positive

12

12

2) Neutral

3) Negative

4) None

Discussion
The OneBuffalo Campaign has built a strong following on Facebook by gaining over
12,000 likes on the page, since it was created with the start of the campaign in the Fall of
2014. In regard to the post types, the campaign has been responsive to the audience and
their interactions with the content. Using the same number of posts from the two time
frames, the number of overall likes on the tracked posts increased from 3,711 to 10,346.
This large increase is due to the campaign strategy increasing the number of sports and
community related posts. 2014 saw high levels of interactions in these types of posts, so
this experience was capitalized upon in the following year. Even though likes are
important, they are the lowest level of interaction on Facebook. With comments being the
middle option in levels of engagement, the number of comments actually decreased
between the two sets of data. This may be a result of the shorter attention span of a social

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media audience member who doesnt feel the need to spend the time typing out a
comment, when the option to like or share can be completed with one click. Shares also
increased to a much higher number, from 689 to 2,358. This increase helped to expand
the reach of the campaign, since a share puts the content onto the sharers profile for
his/her friends to view. The higher levels of interaction in the like and share categories
indicates the audience interacted more with the content, showing they found it relevant to
them and their interests.

Limitations
For this data collection, there are limitations. For this data collection, the amount of data
had to be narrowed in order to make the process more feasible in the allotted time frame.
Completed within a semester, only thirty Facebook posts from the beginning and current
stages of the campaign were collected. Also, these posts were collected from roughly the
same time frame from two different years. This could have limited the type of content
that was produced to relevant events during the fall months.

V. Conclusions
The OneBuffalo Facebook campaign was able to tailor the content based on the feedback
and interaction levels of the targeted audience. Within the Buffalo community, the more
popular posts types involved specific references to members within the community and
sports, which brings the city together for a common cause. The true indication of the
success of the campaign was the increased interaction and approval of the campaign
specific content published on the Facebook page. Community members went out of their

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way to interact with the content when it is simply about the campaign and the concept it
represents. It is clear the campaign has reached a level that permits the message to
infiltrate the community as a recognizable concept and shared sentiment. Other
campaigns can look to this strategy and model their content strategy to reach a target
audience.

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