Virilion helps UNICEF amass 30,000 supporters on MySpace.
Recently MarketingSherpa.com profiled one of our clients, UNICEF, in their efforts to gain more attention for their videos and podcasts. Since Virilion worked closely with UNICEF on this effort, I thought it would be a particularly useful case study for people who always ask me to tell them a bit more about the work we do. You can also read the original case study we wrote here.
Any organization that needs to amass an audience of support, either to activate an elected official or to raise funds, knows about the numbers game. When you need your supporters to write a letter to Congress or give you a donation, only 1 in 10 or even 1 in 20 people comply. Therefore the more people who are familiar with your mission, the better your results will be. It becomes paramount to get your message out to more people in advance of actually needing to activate them.
UNICEF produces amazing videos and audio podcasts that highlight their work and the demand for their work around the world. These had traditionally always been posted on the UNICEF website, but UNICEF staff and Virilion strategists shared the insight that it didn't matter where people saw the videos, on their website or elsewhere.
They turned to MySpace as a sizable audience aggregator. Though social networking websites go in and out of fashion, there's no denying MySpace's 110 million plus users are an excellent place to go looking for supporters.
UNICEF
asked Virilion to review their production and distribution to increase
their audience without disrupting their successful video "assembly
line." Virilion created a process to upload UNICEF's videos to their
MySpace page (and other online video sites) to begin aggregating an
audience. The page was in need of a lot of cosmetic improvements, and
after it passed the 10,000 friend mark, UNICEF made an investment in
having us redesign the page.
Today
UNICEF has almost 30,000 people they can reach out to on MySpace alone,
and the number keeps growing. What's more they are exposing their
message to people who might not otherwise visit the UNICEF website as
often, if at all. That is a key insight to remember: even
your own supporters aren't visiting your website as often as you'd
wish. Why not bring the content to where they spend their time?
One of my business partners is fond of saying, "The era of big honkin' websites is over." It's so true. Today you should worry less about picking a server and content management system for your new website and worry more about producing the content you'll use to recruit supporters and donors where they hang out: on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and in their e-mail box. Once you have content, everything else is easier.
Other Virilion UNICEF case studies:
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