online community building

2014 Olympics: Winning Marketing for Team USA’s Athletes

April 21, 2014 by Mitch Arnowitz

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi Russia have come and gone. Tuvel Communications was pleased to lend its support to the USA Bobsled & Skeleton team’s marketing efforts. Olympic athletes rely on many forms of sponsorships to fund their dreams, from individual and corporate donations to sponsorships to crowd funding. Prior to the Winter Games, Tuvel worked with the USA Bobsled & Skeleton and Washington, DC-based ad agency ds+f to bolster the team’s online community building efforts, resulting in record sponsorship revenue.

Many lessons were learned on our Olympic marketing journey. Please keep in mind that individual athletic performance has a huge impact on any type of marketing effort, including everything social. The following list includes some of the lessons learned – and reminders that we picked up along the way.

Content <still> rules

As you can see from the following examples, content rules! Reach, engagement and followers are only some of the metrics used to track success. Bobsled athlete Jazmine Fenlator and skeleton athlete John Daly’s Twitter reach was high when compared to the other athletes on the team. (Twitter ‘Star’ Lolo Jones was not included in our study due to her massive – nearly 400,000 – number of followers.)

Example: Jazmine Fenlator and John Daly’s Twitter reach:

Jazmine’s updates during the Olympics include mentions of Hurricane Irene relief efforts and her mom’s health issues. She is also known for her crowdsourcing or Internet fundraising efforts to raise money for training, transportation, and Sochi-related equipment expenses.

John’s updates include lots of humor and pics from the teammate Johnny Quinn’s famous Sochi bathroom door incident. Mr. Daly also gained notoriety when Cosmo asked readers if they thought he was the Ryan Lochte of the Sochi Olympics.

How Nonprofits can Raise More Money Without Asking for More Money

July 23, 2012 by Kari Rippetoe

What does a struggling economy do to struggling nonprofits? According to a new study from Giving USA, charitable giving only grew by 0.9% in 2011. And guess what? Little growth is expected in 2012.

Depressed yet? Never fear. In this excellent post on Frogloop, Allyson Kapin outlines some ways nonprofits can boost donations in 2012. One tip that stood out to me:

Don’t always ask for money. Many nonprofits are so focused on raising money and meeting their budgets, they often don’t treat their donors as important stakeholders in the organization. Your donors are a critical part of your community and want to be a part of your organization fighting for social change. Show them how they can help you meet your mission through actions, volunteer opportunities, social events, etc. Give them several paths to engage with your organization and make them feel like they are a valuable part of your mission. And of course you can ask them for money along the way.

To many nonprofits, this may seem counterintuitive; but Allyson makes an excellent point that ultimately comes down to your relationships with your donors.

If you take the time to identify your key advocates and build relationships with them, the return will be worth the time investment. Offer value and make them an important part of your efforts and organization, and you will see them giving more of their time and money in return.

Here are some ways nonprofits can build relationships with donors:

Identifying key advocates and influencers: Conduct research to compile a list of those who are your strongest advocates or can influence others to do so. Check out this handy infographic from SmallAct and BlackBaud on identifying your influencers and scoring them for fundraising efforts.
Developing opportunities of value: Think about all the different ways these key advocates can help your nonprofit – such as, like Allyson mentioned, volunteer opportunities and social events. Other ways might be through online word-of-mouth – spreading the word through their social networks through a blog post, tweet, donation widget, etc.
Reach out: This is where you engage your advocates without asking for money. Ask them where they want to be involved and develop those opportunities for them. Focus on those who respond to your outreach and concentrate your community-building efforts on them.
Keep building those relationships: Keep key advocates and influencers updated with new information and opportunities, ask for their input on a continual basis, and use their feedback. Through ongoing relationship and community-building, you can develop broader fundraising programs that engage not only them, but their communities.

Online Community Building: Rules of the Road

May 1, 2012 by Mitch Arnowitz

Building a community — Photo credit: niallkennedy

Online community building skills come in handy whether you’re using social networks, email lists or web forums to build relationships. Traction, or getting people engaged, is becoming the holy grail of social media marketing. We’ve compiled the following Rules of the Road, culled from our experience with clients. We hope that some of these rules help your online community building efforts.

Facilitate rather than moderate: Managing an online community is art more than science. Facilitation allows you to work through members rather than broadcast to them, or even try and to control the conversation. Facilitation means that you, as the leader, take a back seat and encourage members to lead the conversation. This strategy helps foster a self-sustaining group with members helping members, instead of waiting for the group leader to respond.

Establish the ground rules and netiquette early on: How will the group be moderated? Is there a certain format you’d like members to use? Will you discourage cross-posting from similar groups? It makes sense to post community rules early on so that members can familiarize themselves, and you can point to them if necessary.

Be responsive: A good online community leader helps members and responds to issues in a timely manner. If a participant posts a question that goes unanswered, the leader might solicit input from other individuals both inside and outside of the group. If off-topic conversation becomes an issue, the leader might send through a friendly reminder. A leader might also have to act as a parent, occasionally mediating discussions that get out of hand and pulling members out of the “sandbox” for a “timeout.”

Choose your battles: Silence is sometimes golden. Taking a deep breath before hitting the Send or Post button can work well. It also makes sense to take a long view when dealing with situations that come up. At the sake of repeating myself, managing an online community is an art more than science. Over time, intuition should offer clues on conversations that merit a response. At the same time, don’t be afraid to exert authority when it’s warranted.

Set the tone and find your voice early on: Initially, members will follow the leader. It’s important to define the culture of the online community so members understand ground rules and expectations, but are not deterred from participating. Creating a community “voice” is also a big part of that culture. Will your group be casual or more buttoned up? Create discussions and ask questions in a non-controlling way that encourages participation and sets the tone.

Invite the right people to your party: Doing a bit of research and outreach to cultivate a core group of participants is smart. Who are the leaders in your space and what other groups do they participate in? Who are your competitor and “coopitor” groups? Reach out to leaders or participants and make friends! Invite those with similar interests into your online community and build your membership base early on.

Consider content curation: Community discussions will undoubtedly create solid content. Consider curating and posting this content somewhere in your group or, on your website or blog. Member-generated content offers value and can also be used to market your group. Here’s an example of community-generated content that was mined from the Netpreneur AdMarketing Community.

Use an organic growth strategy: A bottom-up, grassroots approach to community-building ensures your chance for success. In our experience, the alternative “build it and they will come” strategy isn’t as effective. It makes sense to start with a core group of participants, gain traction and then build from there. Better to have a smaller engaged group than a large community of lurkers!

Learn from the pros: There is much to be learned from the early pioneers of online community building! Here, I’m talking about the likes of Howard Reingold, Nancy White and Amy Jo Kim. For additional brainpower, check out this short post by Craig Newmark , Richard Millington‘s blog, or how Cisco’s online community for Networking Professionals got started.

Have fun and remember, its never about the technology but always about the people: They say people can tell when you’re smiling even when they can’t see your face, and I believe that’s true. If you’re going to make the commitment to manage a group, choose a topic or area that you love and one that will help your personal branding. These days, we hear much talk of social media platforms, SaaS solutions and automated communities. At the end of the day, it’s never about the technology but it is always about the people.

Is there anything I missed? Please let me know in the comments if you have anything to add!