Estimated read time: 2 minutes
As you know the United Way Marketing Team here in Cedar Rapids usually works behind the scenes, but some work has recently been recognized more publicly.
The 810,000-member Internet Marketing Association held its annual meeting in Las Vegas Sept. 25-27, 2013, had invited us to speak about how to strive in the social media jungle through storytelling – an important strategy that has been implemented by the team here.
In addition, the IMA honored the team for launching the first volunteer app and for a successful strategic email campaign that helped the Young Leaders Society grow membership. Both projects received Impact 13 Awards, which are global marketing awards . Other recent highlights:
• Our Website won the Content Management System Expo’s WordPress site of the year award for our implementation of temporary micro sites.
• Designer Justin Fletcher won an American Graphic Design award for his Day of Caring T-Shirts.
• Communications VP Christoph Trappe was named one of the Creative Corridor’s Forty under 40 last year and helped participants at the American Marketing Association Nonprofit Annual Meeting with social media.
• The Creative Corridor Project has called the team “one of the nation’s most forward thinking nonprofits.”
• The team was one of the first in the area to use augmented reality in print pieces.
• The team also launched the first United Way volunteer app for Apple devices.
Related: Internet convention to bring together top minds in technology
Leaders in Volunteerism
We gave a similar presentation to Leaders in Volunteerism on Oct. 8, 2013. It focused more on volunteering, however, and how volunteer content can connect and engage communities.
Attendees who filled out a survey afterward on average ranked the session a 4.3 on a 5-point scale, with 5 being the best. All attendees said that Christoph knows this topic well.
Attendees mentioned these point as their key takeaways:
- Create a plan for how to use social media
- Use authentic stories
- Where to look for good stories
- Although we think we know how to use social media there’s a lot more to know/learn
- Don’t just set up social media accounts. Set up to engage and tell/share organization’s story
- Authentic stories! How to cultivate this in an organization
- Need to get our stories out there as they are happening
- Stories and sharing
- Prioritize authenticity
- Document and distribute information
- Strategies and tools available to help manage social media
- Handout for story development
- Authentic voice when writing
- Stories should be shared on a regular basis
- Make sure social media is current
- A framework for thinking about social media
The slides are below.
Note: This was first published on the United Way of East Central Iowa Marketing Blog and is published here under Creative Commons.