Embarking on its third year, the University of Oregon Dance Marathon has established itself as a group with lasting power at the university. The challenge now is helping the organization continue to grow in the university community and retaining those who have experienced the benefits of Dance Marathon. Interest has been generated in its first two years, but this interest has not fully been capitalized on. This is partially due to the lack of good communication and some confusion about the organization’s purpose and logistics.
Dance Marathon’s main audience is college students. It is because of this particular audience’s preferences that a social media strategy is the most effective means of reaching its desired audience. College students are familiar with most types of social media and already use many of them. If they are not already using them, they are more likely to pick up new types and understand how to use them.
Dance Marathon’s main focus is its one-day, 15-hour dance marathon; however, the organization is a year-round group that is working to be able to have the same year-round following as Dance Marathons on other college campuses. To obtain this, Dance Marathon needs to build deep relationships with its publics and audiences. Instead of being a once-a-year thought in people’s minds, Dance Marathon needs to cultivate relationships to get people engaged all year. Social media is one of the best ways to develop relationships, and it is cost-effective, which is also important for a nonprofit organization.
Dance Marathon needs a better way to open up communication between its dancers and organizers. Social media is the perfect opportunity for this. Social media allows for two-way conversations unlike most other types of media. It also allows for direct, fast feedback. Because things are being posted in real time, there is no delay. The other major benefit in this form of conversation is that Dance Marathon will be able to quickly respond to questions or comments. Starting a real-time dialogue with dancers will help communication trouble and clear up confusing items. Having a dialogue with them will also bring them closer to the organization and make them feel more involved.
Most social media have a low-cost barrier of entry and rely on time commitment. This is beneficial to Dance Marathon because one of its goals is to keep operating costs down, but it has a good pool of human resources to draw from to help update the different social media.
Dance Marathon’s other challenge is that as an organization operated through the Holden Leadership Center (HLC), it is at the disposal of the HLC’s resources. Currently, the HLC does not have a webmaster, which means it is hard for Dance Marathon to create an engaging Web site. Social media will help solve this challenge. Social media is easy to use, can give similar information as a Web site, and is more engaging than a Web site. Using social media will help Dance Marathon take control of its Internet presence and expand it.
Our target audience is University of Oregon students who have participated in or signed up for the first time for Dance Marathon. The first time sign-ups have a high drop-out rate before the event. Our audience is between the ages of 18 and 22 and are students at the University of Oregon. They are typically involved in some other campus organization, such as Greek Life, dorm government, or the Associated Students of the University of Oregon. They want to be involved in something and enjoy philanthropic work. They also enjoy dancing or music. They are money conscious because they are on a tight college budget. They are an active audience. They know about Dance Marathon through friends, announcements, or participants who have chosen to be involved. They have high problem recognition because they see the benefit of doing Dance Marathon and supporting Children’s Miracle Network. By signing up, they have high involvement. However, they are not highly active because if they have participated once, they did not decide to be part of organizing the event, or if it is the first time they have a high chance of dropping out.
To strengthen communication and develop relationships between University of Oregon students and Dance Marathon.
To achieve our objective, we should use three main strategies.
1. Update and improve Facebook presence.
The first would be to increase communication and outreach with the one current social medium that Dance Marathon uses: Facebook. Although Dance Marathon has a group on Facebook, most people choose to join but do not engage with the group much after. Currently, there are 402 members. This is an area that can be improved, considering that more than 400 potential dancers signed up for the second annual event. All dancers would be targeted to join the group. Because most college students have Facebook accounts, it should be easy to immediately use it to strengthen communication. Executive Council members would also use the group wall to disperse information and updates. This would include fun videos and photos to show people why dancing for 15 hours is an amazing, not intimidating, experience.
Encouraging group members to use Facebook’s many applications would also help keep them engaged and connected to Dance Marathon. Members in the Dance Marathon organization would add applications, such as event invitations, causes, and countdown calendars. By doing this, they will show their support of Dance Marathon every time someone clicks on their personal page. This will help keep Dance Marathon in people’s minds year-round and help them feel connected to the organization.
2. Connect through the blogosphere.
The second strategy would be to create a blog, along with team-specific blogs. A blog is a personal Web page that is used to provide commentary or opinions on a particular subject. Blogs would be the best way of developing a deep relationship with the target audience. Blogs by nature are a form of personal expression. The best ones are written by people who are passionate and wanting to engage other people in their passion. People become loyal followers of their favorite blogs. We should use our audiences’ already high involvement to develop our relationship and strengthen our communication with blogs.
Engagement
The focus of the main Dance Marathon blog will be on giving information to dancers on matters that are pertinent to them. Examples of this information include updates on events, stories about Children’s Miracle Network families and rumors. It should be the dancer headquarters for their news about University of Oregon’s Dance Marathon. It will be written and maintained by the Executive Council, but specifically by the co-directors of morale, who are responsible for communicating with dancers and morale captains.
Although one main dancer blog is essential, it is also important to continue to personalize the experience for dancers. We want to make them want to continue to check the blog and interact with it. To do this, it is important to make them part of the conversation. This is why each team’s morale captain will also have a blog that each captain will write about things that interest that team or pertain to the team. As morale captains can often find it difficult to connect with their teams, the blog gives them the opportunity to show off their personality and excitement for Dance Marathon in a more engaging way than mass e-mailing. It will also be important for the Morale Captains to answer rumors they hear among their teams and help show that giving up one Saturday is well worth it.
Active Listening
Other critical pieces to making the blogs successful are understanding how to monitor blogs, how to join the blogging community and how to deal with negative buzz. It is important to monitor different blogs, so we know what is being said about our organization, other Dance Marathon organizations or trends in the nonprofit community. They can be a source of ideas and pull interest to our event by following what is being said. The best way to monitor them is by using a feed reader, such as Google Reader. This Reader would allow us to choose blogs to follow, and each time they are updated, it will collect these updates in one spot for us to review whenever we want, as opposed to having to click through all the different Web sites. It will also be helpful to set up a vanity alert with Google to track and see what is being said about our organization. Vanity alerts will tell us every time the University of Oregon Dance Marathon is mentioned online and link us to the story.
Joining the blogging community is something that takes some work in how we would reach those interested in our topic. Engaging the blogging community would attract attention to our own blogs. There are already several schools that use blogs for their Dance Marathons, and many blogs are devoted to how nonprofits and philanthropies can benefit from using social media. Instead of immediately commenting on these blogs about how they should be interested in ours, we would follow them to get to know what they and their readers are interested in. Once we feel we have an understanding and something of value to add to the conversation, we will make comments on these Web sites and hope to develop a relationship before we pitch ourselves to them.
Outreach
Due to the openness of blogging, it is easy to hear negative feedback and for others to see that negative feedback. It is important for us to develop our strategy of how to deal with negative buzz. Ignoring the situation will only make it worse. If it is a mistake on our part, we will use crisis management steps. We will start by apologizing, then explaining why we did what we did or what happened, then empathizing with those who we offended, and lastly telling them how we are going to fix it. If it is a rumor, we will give out the correct information, so it can be known that what was said is untrue. The most important issue will be being transparent about what we are doing and admitting to mistakes when they happen.
3. Create an account with Change.org.
The third strategy would be to help students become highly active members by increasing their relationship with Dance Marathon through membership with Change.org. Other than not feeling connected to Dance Marathon other than the day of the event, many dancers struggle with the idea that they are responsible for raising $150. They don’t like the idea of a letter-writing campaign and so decide not to participate. Giving them fundraising ideas using the other two strategies would help and also letting them personalize their approach through a social medium would be beneficial.
Change.org is a social network for hundreds of social causes and over 1 million nonprofits. Dancers could set up a Change.org site for free and then choose causes or nonprofits that they support. The site connects people who care about certain causes with one another and also allows nonprofits to set up a site similar to a Facebook group. However, the benefit is once the site is set up, members can directly donate money or get others to donate money through the site to the nonprofit. Northwestern University Dance Marathon has already raised over $3,000 using the site in the past year. Dancers can also create videos of themselves about why they support Dance Marathon and why someone should donate. Then they can post and send out these videos to friends, family and acquaintances. They say a picture is worth a thousand words; imagine the impact of a video.
Change.org is geared toward those who want to be involved. It is important to move people into the option of being as involved as they want to be.
To accomplish our strategies, here is a step-by-step guide to each strategy.
1. Update and improve Facebook presence.
Update the logo and information on the Dance Marathon group page.
Use the dancer database to invite all dancers to the group on a regular basis throughout the year.
Have Executive Council members write on the wall about updates of what they are doing or direct members to a longer blog post.
Post best pictures from second annual Dance Marathon.
Post videos from second annual Dance Marathon.
Have Dance Marathon organization members add the Causes application to their personal accounts.
Message group about how they can use the Causes application on Facebook to support Children’s Miracle Network.
Have Dance Marathon organization members add the Countdown application to their personal accounts to track how many days left until the next Dance Marathon.
For each event planned during the year, create Facebook events and send to all group members. Examples of events that should have Facebook events are family events, dancer meetings, and hospital tours.
Once teams are formed, make sure morale captains have “friended” every team member and sent them a welcome message.
Use group messages to distribute basic information. For long messages use the mass e-mails, but try to use these very infrequently. Instead try to have Morale Captains’ write about it on their blogs.
2. Connect through the blogosphere.
Create a main blog on Wordpress.com.
Have morale captains create their personal blogs on Wordpress.com.
Link the morale captains’ blogs on a blogroll on the main blog.
Post Code of Ethics to blogs.
Set up links to main blog from Web site and Facebook group.
Have morale captains’ message team members to notify them of their individual blogs.
Set up a Technorati account to track the blogs.
Find and select blogs to follow and begin making comments on these blogs.
Set up a Google Reader to follow morale captains’ blogs as well as other example blogs.
Set up a Google vanity alert to track coverage of University of Oregon’s Dance Marathon.
Continue tracking other blogs and making comments to engage the blogging community.
Have co-directors of morale make sure that the main blog is being updated at least once a week, whether by them or by other Executive Council members who have good information to share.
Have co-directors of morale also make sure that morale captains’ are updating their blogs every other week with information for their teams.
Increase blog updates before and after events, especially leading up to the marathon.
Respond to comments made to blogs.
3. Create an account with Change.org.
Set up account with Change.org to create University of Oregon’s Dance Marathon nonprofit page.
Ask all members of the Dance Marathon organization to join the site and become supporters.
Have director of marketing and fundraising create a video about how to use videos to fundraise.
Invite and inform all Facebook members and other registered dancers members to become members of Change.org.
Post links to site on Web site, Facebook groups and blogs.
Have main blog and team blogs write about Change.org.
As with any plan, it will be important to evaluate our results. We would evaluate during the course of the plan, but the main evaluation would be done after a year has passed since the implementation of the plan. We would use a general evaluation for all of the strategies, as well as have benchmarks for each strategy. We will give a survey to our database of dancers before implementing the plan. The survey will focus on the perception of Dance Marathon in students’ minds and what their level of involvement is. Examples of questions include the following:
Do you know where the proceeds raised by Dance Marathon go?
Are you aware of other events put on by Dance Marathon besides the 15-hour dance?
Where do you get information about Dance Marathon?
We would take these results and compile them. Then we will give this same survey out after the plan finished to compare how much effect the plan had in engaging dancers with Dance Marathon. We will also monitor the content of our vanity alert to see what effect we had.
For our first strategy, Facebook, we will look for an increased number of group members, completion of the different tactics and how involved dancers got in posting on the wall or sharing personal photos.
For our second strategy, the blogs, we would look at whether they created a dialogue with comments from dancers. We would also track our blog stats with Technorati, which is a site that tracks blogs and lets you know how many people have linked to your blog. We will also track blog stats using Wordpress to see how many people visited the blogs and track our exposure.
For our third strategy, Change.org, we would see how many supporters the nonprofit site attracts, as well as how much interactivity the supporters create. We would also look to see how much money is raised through the site. The goal would be $2,000, which would be a 1,000 percent return on our investment.
Appendices
To help us in blogging, here are some blogs that are either good examples of what we are trying to do, or advice on organizations like ours.
1. Northwestern University Dance Marathon Blog: http://www.nudm.org/blog/
The blog is focused on the experiences and events of the Northwestern University Dance Marathon. It is authored by Executive Council members, dancers and others in the Dance Marathon community. It provides a good example of a Dance Marathon blog at a different university.
2. Dance Marathon at UCLA 2008: http://ucladmdancer.blogspot.com/
The blog is focused on communicating information to dancers at UCLA. It is authored by the Executive Council, but has links to each morale captain’s blog. It shows how to use a blog to connect to dancers.
3. Mercer University Dance Marathon: http://mercerdancemarathon.blogspot.com/
The blog is focused on giving information about its Dance Marathon, along with explaining who they are benefiting. An Executive Council member authors it. It provides a good example of how to use pictures and stories to help dancers realize why they are giving their time.
4. Atlas Thon: http://www.atlasthon.org/index.php
The blog is an independent team’s blog at Pennsylvania State University. They are the largest donating team, raising $86,000 last year. Their captain authors it. It is a good example of what teams care about and how to communicate with dancers.
5. Mizzou Dance Marathon: http://mizzoudancemarathon.blogspot.com/
The blog is created for Mizzou’s Dance Marathon and its focus is on updating followers about events. It also asks for questions or comments to get feedback. It is authored by the Steering Committee. It is a good example of how to use the blog to interact with your audience.
6. Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/
The blog is about finding ways for nonprofits to use social media to their benefit. Beth Kanter, who is a consultant to nonprofits and specializes in social media, authors it. It is a good example of trends to follow to stay up to date as a non-profit using social media.
7. Philanthropy 2173: http://philanthropy.blogspot.com/
The blog is about tracking trends in philanthropies. It keeps an eye on future possibilities. Lucy Bernholz, the president of Blueprint Research & Design Inc; authors it. It is a good example of what trends are occurring in terms of philanthropies.
8. Stacy’s Dancers: http://stacysdancers.blogspot.com/
The blog is a morale captain for UCLA’s Dance Marathon, and it is about keeping her dancers up-to-date with information. Stacy Chang authors it. It is a good example of what a morale captain’s blog should look like and focus on.
9. Dance Marathon: We’re Doing it for the Kids- http://dancercaptainlaurenp.blogspot.com/
The blog is by a morale captain for UCLA’s Dance Marathon and is also about keeping her dancers informed. Lauren Poblete authors it. It is a different example of a morale captain’s blog. Using the two examples shows how the captains can show their personality through their blog.
10. Experiencology: http://experienceology.blogspot.com/
The blog is focused on how to create great experiences for non-profit or other businesses so that people will keep coming back. Stephanie Weaver, who is an experience consultant in California, authors it. It is a great resource for ideas of how to make Dance Marathon into a better event and keep dancers engaged.
(adopted from Tim O’Reilly’s Code of Conduct)
Social media is a new form of communicating and there are few rules about proper use. Here is a possible code of ethics for our bogs, so that we can communicate what type of comments we will censor.
We recognize the benefits of being a part of the blogosphere and appreciate the openness and free flow of information within it. We also believe that it is possible to maintain a level of ethical behavior in our discourse. Because of this, we have created this Code of Ethics to encourage constructive discussion and a good environment to express personal opinions.
We take responsibility for what we say on our blog, as well as the comments posted on it
We are committed to the “civility enforced” standard, and we will delete any comments that go against it. We define unacceptable comments as any that
Are used to harass, threaten, stalk, or abuse an individual
Are false, libelous or misrepresent a person
Infringe on copyright or trademark
Violate the privacy of the organization or individuals
Are related to drugs, sex, alcohol or other inappropriate matters that go against the values of the organization
Do not relate to the blog’s purpose or comments
We evaluate each comment individually.
We do not say anything we would not be willing to say in person
We do not allow anonymous comments
We connect privately in the event of an issue before doing things publicly
We believe in developing positive relationships rather than outwardly confronting, unless it is taken to that point