Social Media Marketing

Sisters of Providence ofSaint Mary-of-the-Woods, Ind.

What social media is to us

• Anything online that encourages conversation

• Something that helps us build relationships with our audiences

• A really cheap and effective way to share the SP story, while inviting feedback

Our social media history• E-mail marketing (2004)• Small successes (1999-2009)

– Blog during canonization– Attempts at discussion

groups/bulletin boards– Facebook fan pages

• Dabbled in newer social media (2007 & 2008)

Our social media history• Sidetracked by site redesign (January

2008-May 2009)

Our social media history• Studied social media marketing. Influences:

– Seth Godin– Blue Fuego– Founders of ExactTarget– Heather Mansfield– PRSA, PRWeek, American Marketing

Association– PRSA (refrigerator journalism)– Kivi Leroux Miller– Marketing Profs– Generational research– Mainstream interest and friends who had blogs,

FB, Twitter.• Wanted to do more.• After site launch, turned our attention to social

media marketing

From May(ish) 2009 to now• Staff commitment grew.• Interest and involvement from

others grew.• Financial commitment grew.• Shared responsibility.• Great website! Great e-mail!• Benefits encouraged our daily

use, which encouraged growth.

What we did: Facebook

• Updated Facebook more.

• Created a closed group.

• Added blog feed.• Encouraged others to

participate.

• Increased frequency.• Created consistent

look.• Went from 30,000

to 160,000.

What we did: E-newsletters

What we did: Blogs

• Created a blog, then another.

• Invited others to blog. • Even blog “as” others. • Near-daily posts.

What we did: Twitter

• Created Twitter accounts for our children’s site and a main account.

• Discovered lots of media people using Twitter.

What we did: Flickr

• Created a Flickr account, which has blown us away in its statistics.

• 29,000 in six months!• New contacts

What we did: Wikipedia

• Started paying a lot of attention to Wikipedia

• Fixed wrong information where we found it

What we did: Goodreads

• Continued to add to a Goodreads “author” account to highlight our many SP books.

What else we did

• Added lots more: – YouTube– Etsy– LinkedIn– Ravelry– LibraryThing

What we did

• Didn’t put rules on ourselves to create the same accounts for every ministry’s needschildren’s site has different

accounts from SP site, which has different accounts from White Violet Center for Eco-Justice

What we did

• Standardized icon set to represent sites we are on

• Used certain icons, headers and usernames to make our work consistent

What we did: Social media page

• Cross-promotion & integration

• Links to all the different sites

What we did

Added new bits as we had time:• ShareThis• Facebook tabs • Subscribe to blog• Sharing from e-commerce site

Try not to pressure ourselves to do it all!

Costs

Social media is free, but we pay for:

• Flickr

• ExactTarget

• Blackbaud data

• PayPal

• Employee time!

Challenges

• Technology was a challenge, until we stopped worrying and just started using free stuff.– Blogger– Facebook Groups– Google Groups– Google Analytics– Feedburner

Challenges

• IT Manager banned Facebook.

Challenges

• Time.

• Lack of involvement by sisters.

Benefits

• Facebook: 499 “likes”• Flickr: 29,000 views• Twitter: 40 followers• Blog: 660+ pageviews a

month• E-mail: Sends: 30K to 160K.

Database: 3K to 10K.• Website: Direct statistical

relationships.

Just one story…

Future

• Create a social media center

• Social media news releases

• More sister involvement

• More social media driven fundraising

For more information

ncnwr.sistersofprovidence.org