Rick’s New Glasses Social Media Project: What We Learned

Bill — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:00:12 +0000

In November, we used a seemingly routine occurrence as the keystone to a social media project. Rick Simmons, one of our illustrious leaders, needed new glasses and we felt compelled to help Rick out. After all, he needs it ;) So we concocted a quick experiment to see what would happen, figuring that it would be fun and we could share the results with our readers.

Our goal in our experiment was to engage our community and measure the response. We used HootSuite / Twitter, Facebook (both Dinkum Interactive & Rick’s personal page), LinkedIn groups, and LinkedIn profile, along with an Email blast and online survey provider Survey Gizmo ; the survey was intended to last for one week.

The Background of the Social Media Project

The experiment started on Wednesday November 4th with the creation of a basic online survey using Survey Gizmo. Using a simple single-selection survey we uploaded photos of the three eyeglass frames and asked users to vote for their favorite.

Option # 1	Option # 2
Option # 3

On November 6th, a post announcing the experiment was published on Dinkum’s blog which was accompanied by an email to those subscribers. Furthermore, a series of tweets was scheduled to be made via Twitter (200+ followers) throughout the weekend using HooteSuite’s “Send Later” utility. Finally, while Dinkum tweets were fed to the MyDinkum Facebook page, an event inviting friends to take part in the poll was created on Saturday. In addition Rick posted the survey to his LinkedIn profile and a few of the many groups he belongs to on LinkedIn.

The Results of Our Social Media Project Were:

170 Completed Surveys
279 Abandoned Surveys
449 Total Visits to the Survey Page
61% Survey Completion Rate
114 Click-Throughs Via MyDinkum Hootsuite/Twitter Accounts
31 Click-Throughs Via Personal Hootsuite/Twitter Accounts
51% Email Open Rate
18% Email Click Through Rate
Geography: Concentration in the Northeastern US

And the Winner Is…

The Handsome & Newly Bespectacled Rick Simmons

What We Learned

After quickly assembling the experiment and reviewing the results, here are a few observations:

Our community has a great sense of humor, as evidenced by the four suggestions that Rick try contacts (if he could, he would) and one suggestion for a new face (once again, he would if he could). Interestingly, a few people thought that we should have shown more of Rick’s face – obviously, gluttons for punishment.

Having a Fun Subject with a Small Time Investment is Helpful- Our overall aim was to explore this new avenue of communications in an attempt to actively engage users and find Rick some snappy new glasses; we accomplished both goals – Thanks!

Advance Testing Would Have Helped – We rolled the experiment out fairly quickly and didn’t have a chance to review the survey software in advance. SurveyGizmo.com did fairly well, but it was a bit light on stats. There were also a few broken links that were distributed; again not allowing enough time to test was to blame. Finally a high abandonment rate makes us think that usability may have been poor, so testing would have helped here too.

Finally, Several Other Observations Include:

The Rollout Should Be Carefully Timed to Achieve Maximum Impact
A Focused Call to Action is Helpful
A Unique, Trackable URL Should be Used to Evaluate Each Platform
Take advantage of as many available channels as possible. Some may surprise you

In conclusion, we were excited about the response our experiment received. It was fun, Rick found a new set of glasses and the everywhere Rick has gone in the past several weeks, the “Help Rick Pick His Next Set of Glasses” has been the main topic of conversation.

Thanks to all who participated

What are your thoughts? What could we have done better?

Bill Rowland

Social Media Project: Help Rick Pick His New Glasses

Bill — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:52:43 +0000

Social media is all about engaging people, but that’s often lost in the constant stream of new, shiny social media “objects.” Finding new and different ways to interact with clients and prospects can be a difficult challenge; that’s why we were stoked to find a new application that should help social media users more effectively engage with their communities: Social Media Polls. We want to ask for your help in a little experiment…

We Need Your Help: Help Rick Simmons Pick His New Glasses

We’re running an experiment to better understand the potential of using Social Media Polls and we need your help! We’re asking users to visit a webpage and vote for one of three frame choices for Rick.

Please help us by distributing our invitation to friends and acquaintances using the following message:

“Help Rick Simmons Pick His New Glasses http://ow.ly/zTxv Please Share & ReTweet”

Please don’t alter the copy or link, however you’re welcome to add any comment you’d like. Sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Delicious, StumbleUpon and similar sites would be helpful.

We plan on gathering information and present a case study on our findings.

Thanks in advance for your help.

The Dinkum Interactive Team

Dinkum Interactive » Survey Gizmo