Raise Your Voice online campaign video

A case study

by Paul Darwynn Garilao

3 Introduction 5 Pinoy online community 7 Methodology 8 Online stakeholder engagement 24 Video analytics 29 Final word content

Introduction
Social media is a good platform to advance advocacies that will yield to positive impacts for the community. My friend Alfonso Orioste, Jr. and I recently won in the CNN/YouTube Debates, an online voting contest, to raise awareness about climate change for the UN Climate Change Conference. We submitted our entry called Raise your voice by Filipino environmental advocates. Filipinos are good in rallying good causes online. According to a 2008 study by Universal McCann, 83 percent of Filipinos surveyed are members of a social network, making the Philippines the social networking capital of the world. With this, we used strategies to garner more votes to win the online campaign. This case study presents the strategies we applied and how we capitalized social media platforms. We share this to PR and social media experts as for them to learn from our online experience. Enjoy reading. Godspeed!

If you are online, you are in social media (Universal McCann).

PINOY PRIDE

Raise Your Voice campaign for CNN/YouTube Debates on climate change.

Marc Torres was a China expat who obtained second most number of online votes. As a reward, he joined other 7 expats to carry the torch during the Beijing Olympics 2008.

The Pinoy online community in good times

Google-Guggenheim finalist Jun Raymundo had second most number of votes for his bamboo architecture . This was held last October 2009.

CNN Hero Efren Penaflorida garnered the most number of votes out of 2.75 million.

There was a time when Maguindanao trended on Twitter. The Filipino online community condemned the brutal killings and shared their condolences to the bereaved families.

The Pinoy online community in bad times

With the strong and dynamic presence of Filipinos in the cyberspace, they can rally the government and private sectors to share relief goods to the victims of Ondoy typhoon, as well as generate thousands of votes to win a Pinoy contender in a global tilt.

Source: Google maps

During the Ondoy tragedy, online users tracked down areas that need assistance via Google Earth.

Methodology:

How we did it?

Between November 6 and 30, 2009, we tracked down social media platforms to determine articles and blog posts about the video campaign. Searching online is our method to catch online news reports. To get a precise number of bloggers who discussed our campaign, we searched via the Google Blog Search as this application limits searches on the blogosphere.

From time to time during the campaign period, we search related topics on Twitter to determine real-time conversations about our video campaign. Most of the tweets are connected to online sites and blogs. To estimate the number of Facebook users who campaigned for the video, we tallied the number of online users. But this is just a quick and unscientific way of determining conversations.

For the video analytics, we obtained the data from the YouTube channel that has a scientific way of tracking viewership. It yields the breakdown of number of viewers across the world, video engagement (how they find the video), and the ups and downs of viewership.

OFFLINE PULL EMAIL BLAST OTHER ONLINE MEANS

BLOGS

ONLINE STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

MICROBLOG

SOCIAL NETWORKS ONLINE MEDIA

BLOGS

Blogs are as powerful as online news sites and a number of professional bloggers attract thousands of viewers. According to Universal McCann Wave 3 study published in 2008, the Philippines has 90.3% blog readership, second to South Korea with 92.1%. Realizing the impact of blog readership, we penetrated the blogosphere to campaign for this advocacy. Based on Google Blog Search, at least 14 bloggers (professional and amateur) discussed and campaigned for the video Raise Your Voice.

Source: Universal McCann Wave 3 study

BLOGS

Our campaign video first appeared on blogosphere. Anton Diaz of Our AwesomePlanet.com blogged this during the first week of online voting. From his online influence alone, Anton has 5,624 subscribers in his Typepad blog, 3,024 Facebook friends, and 1,559 Twitter followers in which a significant portion participated in online voting. On the other hand, Pinoy Green Academy blogged about the video twice for first and last week.

BLOGS
Learning key points:

1. Give bloggers press releases that are tweaked for online posts. Include catchy keywords and specify the hyperlink of these certain keywords. 2. Pitch to bloggers who share the same advocacy with your campaign or brand. We shared this to Pinoy Green Academy, a blog that advocates for environmental protection. 3. Like in media relations, establish relationship with bloggers. We personally know four bloggers who featured the video campaign.

SOCIAL NETWORKS
As majority of cyberspace consumers moved to Facebook so did the Filipino online users. Janette Toral of Digital Filipino shared, Checking out AllFacebook of Philippine-based users yields around 611,000 to 612,000 log-on everyday since March 1, 2009. No doubt, Facebook served as a good site for this online campaign. Based on our estimate, there are at least 600 online users who linked the campaign on their Facebook pages. Conversations about climate change have been raised by Facebook users. They shared the simples steps that they are doing to combat the effects of climate change.

SOCIAL NETWORKS

Organizations that have Facebook accounts campaigned for the video. They include Tiktok Pilipinas, Homesick Pinoy, Tourism Philippines, Greenpeace Philippines, Definitely Pinoy, and EON Inc.

SOCIAL NETWORKS
Learning key points:

1. Use the various features of Facebook. For the marathon voting, we applied the schedule feature and invited online users to participate in last-minute voting. Upload photos that highlight the campaign 2. Creating a fan-page is helpful as it determines the number of followers. 3. Always update the status message as to keep the campaign rolling. Share links and updates about the advocacy and/or campaign if there are blogs or online news reports published.

ONLINE MEDIA

Pitching press releases to online mainstream media creates buzz about the campaign as they have wide number of audience share. During the online voting, there are 12 news reports and features about the Raise Your Voice campaign. GoodNewsPilipinas.com featured the article twice - during the first and last week of voting.

ONLINE MEDIA
Learning key points: 1. Like in the traditional PR campaigns, send press releases to online media as to attract a big portion of audience share. 2. Make sure that the link on the online news sites will direct the readers to your campaign platform. 3. Link the online news reports to social networking sites and share them via e-mail to activate more online participants.

MICROBLOG

Twitter serves as a platform to link blogs and news articles about the video. We connected our Twitter to our Facebook sites for fast uploading of information. When the GMANews.tv published an article about the campaign, this has been tweeted and re-tweeted by others 8 times after a few minutes. There are at least 40 tweets about the Raise Your voice campaign in a span of two weeks.

MICROBLOG
Learning key points: 1. Connect to Twitter users who have significant number of followers. Manolo, for instance, has 4,548 followers. 2. Make sure to publish creative tweets as to catch the attention of followers. 3. Always update the status message as to keep the campaign rolling. Share links and updates about the advocacy and/or campaign if there are blogs or online news reports.

E-MAIL BLAST
According to Gail Goodman of enterpreneur.com, social networks are a great way to make casual connections with potential new customers. But these networks lack the direct communication of e-mail. So we included e-mail in our strategy. Based on our experience in campaigning, email blasting is immediate to reach the older generation. At least two people who replied in our e-mail campaign have ages ranging from 35 and above. But this doesnt suggest that the Generation Y is not reading e-mails. In our approximation, more than 15,000 online users received the e-mail that we blasted since the start of the campaign.

E-MAIL BLAST
Learning key points: 1. Since inboxes are usually filled with spams, be sure that the e-mail messages do not appear as such. 2. Limit e-mail messages to 200 words, highlight important phrases, and include hyperlinks (as shown at the left). 3. E-mail blasting to egroups captures a wide number of audience. 4. Send e-mails about online news reports to heighten their interest on the campaign.

OTHER ONLINE MEANS

Use the YM status message for campaign. Send messages via instant messaging.

Share the campaign on message boards like the Pinoy exchange forum. Ask a message board frequent user to publish it as he/she is already popular in the forum.

The video campaign may not only be uploaded on YouTube but also on other user-generated video sites like MetaCafe. Our video was uploaded on video.liveearth.tv.

OFFLINE PULL
The video was shown in some occasions: University of Sto. Thomas College of Nursing during an environmental awareness seminar and youth anniversary of a Christian church. At least three news reports were published on print. The campaign was aired on ABSCBN Balitang America. We asked for the support of schools like De La Salle University- Manila. DWIZ 882 aired a report about the campaign. Philippine Star (front page) November 16

OFFLINE PULL
Learning key points: 1. Offline pull must be converted to online push. For instance, inform the audience that the print reports have online versions that you may inform the audience. 2. For events and press conferences, always highlight the purpose of the online campaign. If it is to gather online votes, share the process to the audience aside from showing to them the campaign material. 3. Tap companies, organizations, or agencies which can promote the online campaign. Approach such organizations that has the same advocacy with your campaign.

Offline to online. After airing the ABSCBN Balitang America feature on November 12, 2009, we immediately recorded it and uploaded on YouTube. Somehow, the video served as a campaign material as it highlights the process of voting.

VIDEO ANALYTICS

Source: www.youtube.com/cop15 The video reached 3,802 views at the end of the voting. It is important to understand the viewership or audience share to track down its connection to social media platforms where we campaigned for this video. In theory, there are online users who voted on the site and after which clicked on the Youtube link to watch the video on widescreen. On the other way around, there are users who found the video first before logging in to COP15 site to vote.

VIDEO ANALYTICS
This is the breakdown of viewers for our video between November 6 and 30, 2009 when the period of voting occurred. As expected, majority of viewers are from Philippines (68%) followed by US (21%). While the YouTube cannot provide information on breakdown of voters, the 68% audience share from Philippines is an indication that a significant portion voted from Philippines. The 21% audience share in US is partly from the help of World-wide Filipino Organization that is affiliated with FilAm organizations. The community advocate from California who campaigned for Efren Penaflorida also campaigned for our video. Source: YouTube video analytics

VIDEO ANALYTICS
Hear is a breakdown on how our viewers found this video. 62% is credited for external links and 16% for embedded player - an indication that our viewers found this from different social media platforms where we massively campaigned the climate change video.

Source: YouTube video analytics

VIDEO ANALYTICS

Viewing one of the discoveries in analytics, we observe that the video is embedded on online media like ABSCBN and GMAnews.tv and blog platforms like OurAwesomePlanet.net.

Source: YouTube video analytics

VIDEO ANALYTICS
YouTube: The ups-and-downs of viewership at each moment in your video, compared to videos of similar length. The higher the graph, the hotter your video: fewer views are leaving your video and they may also be rewinding to watch that point in the video again. Audience attention is an overall measure of your videos ability to retain its audience.

Source: YouTube video analytics This analytics indicated the introduction of our video is not much catchy but it ended with a thought provoking statement as the line peaked. We recommend to producers of user-generated videos to shorten and tailor-fit their videos to short attention span audience.

Final word
It is not about the social media platforms but the number of relationships you have in those platforms. The social oriented internet is a massive opportunity for advocacies, brands, advertisers, and marketers if embraced properly. Use platforms that will suit your campaigns.

Connect
Use social media platforms to create dialogue with viewers/ consumers. Track opinions in blogosphere and micro-blogs. Establish rapport with influential bloggers and Twitter users. Allow viewers to interact with your campaign or brand. Offline activities Offline must be integrated with online community.

Participate
Develop widgets, applications, and platforms where consumers can participate and share their views. Be innovative in connecting with consumers and make sure to create interactive campaigns.

for questions, send them to paulgarilao@gmail.com