Social media on a budget, powerful visuals, and user-generated content were common themes across the 2014 Social Media Showcase presentations this month.

Leading off the evening were Kimberly Jones and Emma Miller from Speakeasy speaking on the Dallas Arboretum case study, which exhibited all 3 characteristics. As a non-profit, the social media ad buy is limited to $200 a month. So efforts are targeted toward tactical goals, which can shift quickly based on gate receipts and weather. Speakeasy focuses on lots of smaller scale promotions, A/B testing, and attempts to drive last minute traffic.

Promoting the newer children’s garden was a larger project, since outlying markets lagged in awareness. Another interesting effort was cultivation of VP of Gardens Dave Forehand as a spokesperson, with a periodic feature story on what’s in bloom. Ensuring use of fresh photos was critical, as Arboretum fans are quick to call out if they see even a slightly out of season photograph, no matter how lovely, according to Speakeasy.

Speakeasy used listening tools like Mutual Mind to find and engage in relevant on-line conversations, and to track the Aboretum’s mindshare vs. competitors during the peak spring blooming season. Hootsuite and Tweetdeck were used for content management. The overall measure of success was demonstrated by the Arboretum’s Facebook fan growth, which increased by 104% during the 10 months of the campaigns.

Switching gears, Diane Feffer spoke about The National Alliance on Mental Illness, describing NAMI’s educational and community resources as “the best kept secret” in Dallas. Feffer’s objective was to promote #NAMIWALKSDALLAS, its major annual fundraising effort.

Although NAMI-related images might seem less compelling than colorful flowers, visual videos figured prominently in marketing efforts, as five videos were created to build empathy and emphasize the recovery aspect of mental illness, vs. the more common media focus on celebrity fatalities. Presentations of mental health related documentaries helped to bring audiences together before the big walk.

Feffer found that Guidelive and BubbleLife helped target the campaign to neighborhoods that were most receptive to the NAMI message. She also emphasized the importance of finding complementary partners, such as pet-related organizations, to help spread the message.

The bottom line? NAMI Dallas doubled its social media fans, had a walker increase from 1000 to 1400, and surpassed its $125k fundraising goal.

What can you do on a $470 budget? Quite a bit, as evidenced by the results the FC Dallas marketing team showed with their single game soccer ticket sales campaign. Daniel Robertson and Robert Rardin leveraged area sports interest in another sport, football, to drive interest in an FC Dallas promotion.

They developed an on-line promotion designed to give fans a ticket discount based on the combined score of the Super Bowl. To promote it, they developed a couple of humorous YouTube videos that played on the competitiveness of FCDallas team favorites George John and Stephen Keel, who just happened to be from the Super Bowl cities of Seattle and Denver.

The result? 1300 tickets sold, resulting in $18k in revenues. The takeaways? Know when your target audience is online and leverage those moments, and don’t be afraid to make fun of yourself.

Rick Perry tweets #TexasToDo

The Showcase concluded with a review of Slingshot’s campaign for Texas tourism, featuring user generated content accumulated from Vine, Instagram and Twitter, using the hashtag #TexasToDo. The objective was to give Texas experts or “Texperts” a chance to show the broad diversity of the state in order to attract visitors from other states to the state’s tourism site TravelTex.com. Olapic software was used to aggregate user submitted content. According to presenter Whitney Redman, key lessons learned related to the importance of technical talent to modify the off the shelf software, and the need to develop a streamlined process to review content for good taste and legal standards.

With more than 10 million impressions and a 52% increase in fan time on the state website, Slingshot considers the campaign a success. But their proudest moment was when Governor Perry tweeted #TexasToDo from the Xgames in Austin.

Many thanks to our food sponsor iFratelli and their delicious pizza and Moments by Marya for the photography services. Next month’s program features Ekaterina Walter, global evangelist for Sprinklr, top-rated social media expert by Forbes and Fortune, and author of “Think Like Zuck” and co-author of “The Power of Visual Storytelling.”

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Join us for the 4th Annual Caron Cares Educational Symposium

Theme: Making the Connection

Caron Cares is an informative and inspirational symposium offering an opportunity for parents, families and professionals to learn about addiction and its impact on our community. 

Continuing education credits will be offered.

Date:
Friday, October 3, 2014

Location:
Lover's Lane United Methodist Church
9200 Inwood Road
Dallas, TX 75220

Honorary Chairperson:

James Olan Hutcheson, President and Managing Partner, ReGENERATION Partners and Founding Chair, Caron Texas Board of Directors 

Honoring:

Submit the Documentary

Learn How To Prevent & Respond to Cyberbullying

            Submit the Documentary exposes the most epic struggle in the digital, Internet age: cyberbullying.  What exactly does cyberbullying mean?  Cyberbullying is bullying by means of electronic technology committed through email, instant messaging, mobile applications, social media, chat rooms, and blogs or through messages and images sent through a cell phone.  Because of the anonymity, kids who never thought of being a bully are becoming harassers.  Online, a cyberbully can publish degrading messages about the victim, spread altered photos, impersonate their victim and assume the victim’s identity online and affect their relationship with others.

By exploring the complicated dynamics behind cyberbullying, Submit the Documentary, a 45 minute film, describes the impact and outcomes of advanced technology and human nature in a lawless, new, social frontier.

In the worst cases, kids and teens take their own lives as the families in Submit the Documentary know all too well.  Their narratives describe their close encounters with cyberbullying in heart wrenching detail compared to the lighthearted innocence of kids blithely describing their experience with sexting.

Submit the Documentary demystifies the problem by including numerous experts who enlighten parents and viewers to the subculture of social media that children are participating in every day.  The experts explain the extent of the problem, roadblocks to solutions, and offer potential, unconventional solutions.

See Submit the Documentary  this Thursday evening, August 28th as it's free and open to the public.  Contact Diane Feffer for complimentary tickets at Diane@DianeMarketing.com  or call 972-670-7078.

Click here for link to Dallas event :  http://tinyurl.com/ParentEducationAug-28

Thurs. Aug. 28th at 6:30 pm – Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church - Dallas 

My first love is sharing content on the big screen–I’m talking 30 x 70 ft. movie theater size screens. “Hi, my name is Diane and I enjoy documentaries, “… that is how I’ve introduced myself over 50 times to audiences in dimly lit theatres and a few mega-churches. Using social media for marketing, I create events that promote a product or service by associating it with a documentary film on screen.

Documentaries (or ‘docs’ as we call them) are by nature ‘themed’ which makes them ideal as content rich tools to reach niche audiences.  Even with tightly focused target markets, it’s possible to find a documentary that will speak directly to that particular need.

For instance, I recently helped Kewl Innovations get in front of parents of teenagers that have Type 1 diabetes.  Kewl’s product, ClimaPak maintains the temperature of insulin for 3 to 5 days in a portable compact container which is rechargeable using a USB adapter or car charger.  Their target market: Type 1 teens (and their parents) with busy schedules who have a critical need to keep injectable insulin at the proper temperature.   With the help of diabetic advocacy groups, we attracted a target audience of 150 parents to see “Sweet 16: A Journey into Teen Diabetes” on screen at a local movie theatre.

Constant Contact is my favorite tool to communicate doc events.  I can upload a movie poster, embed a YouTube trailer, provide a link to RSVP and include social sharing links.  You can do this easily through the regular Constant Contact or through their Event Spot product.  Highlighting and hyperlinking sponsors on the email flyers give extra value to those who help promote and fund the event.

LinkedIn is my go-to site for finding subject experts and then contacting them with a request to talk-back to the audience after the film. A documentary event provides the opportunity to showcase the client’s product before and after the movie and weave it into the panel discussion.

I love the challenge of finding just the right film to highlight a firm’s product or service.  When Right Step, a treatment center owned by California-based Elements, wanted to raise awareness in Texas about their recovery program for prescription drug abuse, we dovetailed a screening of the documentary, “Behind the Orange Curtain” with Dallas area schools during Red Ribbon Week.  This particular week each October is when schools traditionally focus on communicating drug prevention to both students and parents. Documentaries like this one have longevity because problems like prescription drug abuse, continues to surface in the news.

Prescription drug abuse has reached epidemic proportions in certain parts of the United States.  In 2012 I flew to Bismarck, North Dakota and coordinated a doc event at a local movie theatre surrounding “Behind the Orange Curtain” for Heartview Foundation, an alcohol/drug treatment and education center.   North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem was the lead panelist after the film.

A few months ago Caron Texas, a treatment center located in Princeton, just east of McKinney asked me to coordinate two screenings of “Behind the Orange Curtain,” one in Arlington and the following night in Dallas.  Filmmaker, Brent Huff flew in and conducted a talk-back with both audiences.  Executive Producer, Natalie Costa maintains an active Facebook account for the film and she is also a speaker about prescription drug abuse.

Again, communication through Constant Contact paired with social media, engaging cross promotional partners and moderating the panel discussion with subject experts are all crucial elements in organizing and executing a successful event.

Most of the time I will find documentaries through a Google search or I’ll follow new films-in-the-making on Kickstarter.  Occasionally people will send me links to documentaries.  In the case of “Behind the Orange Curtain,” a counselor who had been a panelist at a previous documentary sent me an email one day with a link to a trailer on a prescription drug doc.  He asked me to take a look and see if it was something we could play in Dallas. Because any doc could provide a great opportunity, I look at them all.

I find this work fascinating as I match clients with documentaries ranging from keeping our planet green to algorithms on stock exchanges.  This isn’t work: it’s a way for me to continue to learn about so many different subjects.

I’m currently working on bringing a documentary about the subject of cyberbullying to Dallas.  In late August I’ll help one of my clients use it as a kick off at back-to-school events, and that will help arm parents with important information.

Diane Feffer is owner/manager of Diane Feffer Marketing Consulting, LLC.  She is a Marketing /PR / Event Management specialist with an emphasis on documentary events, author book launches and new store openings.

Keep up with Diane by following her @dfeffer and connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Parents and teens, join us at Palace Arts Center on Monday evening, April 28th for a free documentary screening , BEHIND THE ORANGE CURTAIN. 

This film delves into the growing epidemic of teenage abuse of prescription drugs. 

Running 50 minutes in length, this powerful film will inform you of the accessibility of prescription drugs, addictive nature and health consequences. 

Afterwards we'll offer a panel discussion to answer any questions. 

A big thanks to Right Step and Grapevine-based 'Love Cassidy' and to the filmmaker and producer of BEHIND THE ORANGE CURTAIN for offering this film complimentary to the public. 

Doors Open at 6:30 pm  and documentary starts at 7:00 pm , Palace Arts Center, 300 S. Main Street in Grapevine .  

RSVP to Diane@DianeMarketing.com  or call 972-670-7078 with any questions.