United Way Marketing Team Received Global Awards, Speaks at Conference

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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.