Ideas and experiences on the topic of reaching new/ different target audiences, reaching out to new demographics and recruiting supporters from beyond your usual crowd. We also discussed general tips for attracting more web traffic.
Convenor: Lisa Vickers (Thanks to Lisa for the notes!)
- Getting supporters to share with their peers was a key way to branch out but this is obviously difficult unless you can build some esteem and value into it. Tapping into people’s pride. Giving people something to brag about (on facebook etc.)
- Using a send to a friend tool that lets people select everyone/ or as many as they like from their entire e.mail contact list is very valuable.
- Getting celebrities involved reaches out to their fan base but those with experience said this kind of work usually attracts a low quality audience unless the celeb is deeply involved over a long period – and can take their fans on a journey with the organisation/ campaign.
- Some people have had good results from using an agency that does research for new target/ niche audiences and targets them for you.
- Reaching out to bloggers who could be interested in blogging about your issue should be done on a very personal level. Contact bloggers individually and build honest relationships with them. Some have done this with positive results including Boing Boing.
- Likewise reaching out to highly influential people on twitter and building relationships with these people can help. Getting RTs from people with over 100,000 followers – drives traffic. But this traffic in all likelihood will be low quality.
- Make sure press releases are sent to interest groups (not just media) and submit relevant comments referencing your organisation on their sites.
- Wikipedia: Add links to your organisation on existing pages that are relevant to your work. But it it was advised that you put in some work on Wikipedia first – helping to build up some other pages – and then add links to your own organisation – so that the folks on Wikipedia let you keep them there. Creating and keeping up to date your own Wikipedia page for your organisation can often be a major driver of traffic.
- Optimising web pages that bring randomly high traffic (Greenpeace had a static info page on the ‘trash vortex’ for example and when this was in the news a lot we had thousands landing on this page – with not a lot to do once they got there – until we optimised the page for conversions).
- Getting people offline to supporting you online by signing them up at events such as festivals. A mobile group of recruitment volunteers that can move to where people are (the queue for toilets or food) works well. One organisation found that people prefer to sign up on paper rather than on touch screens. Someone else said that giving away toilet paper at events with your orgnaisation’s webiste (or text message sign up/appeal number) and other info on it was successful.
- There were mixed reviews about the use of bluetooth technology – but someone felt strongly that it was very low value and not worthwhile.
- Setting up wireless networks with a name that refers to your campaign/ organisation (could be with your URL) was one trick that was suggested. We wondered what kind of impact you might have if all your supporters renamed their wireless networks with your campaign slogan and URL. Or having an open wireless network at events – that people could only access if they went through your start page first – and were perhaps encouraged/ or required to sign up before using the internet.
- Generally competitions bring an audience with a quality that is proportional to the relevance of the prize you offer.
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