20 Nov American Red Cross – Non-profit Social Media Marketing Example #4
For our next post in the social media nonprofit series, I wanted to highlight one of the ways that the American Red Cross has been successful with their social media strategies. I recently stumbled across their website and discovered their “Holiday Mail for Heroes” campaign. I love the holidays, so it’s no surprise that I wanted to find out more. This great program allows people to send holiday cards to service members, veterans, and their families. Amy Grant is partnering with the Red Cross and Pitney Bowes to make the program a success and was at the special kick-off event on November 11th (Veteran’s Day). How is the Red Cross spreading the word out about such a great opportunity to thank our heroes? Why through social media of course!
Buttons and Banners
The “Holiday Mail for Heroes” campaign makes it really easy to spread the word to friends and family. You can grab buttons and web banners and place them on your own Facebook page, blog, website or other social networking site.
“Holiday Mail for Heroes” has a Twitter account, which tweets regular updates and reminders about the campaign. There are already over 100 followers spreading the word and using the hashtag #holidaymail. Many people have been re-tweeting the information, generating conversation around the campaign.
The American Red Cross is also doing an excellent job of cross-promoting the “Holiday Mail for Heroes” campaign on their fan page. They have over 92,000 fans and each post about the campaign prompts excellent interaction amongst the fans. The majority of fans “like” the posts but there are some great comments/ conversations as well. This interaction causes the posts to show up in fans’ Facebook Newsfeeds more frequently and gives the campaign even more exposure. You can also see that they have added the “Holiday Mail for Heroes” button to their fan page to further increase awareness.
YouTube and Flickr
The American Red Cross is also utilizing other social media outlets, such as YouTube and Flickr, to cross-promote the “Holiday Mail for Heroes” campaign. In fact, there is a whole YouTube slideshow of awesome card samples and a great promotional video for the campaign, among other videos encouraging people to send cards to soldiers and veterans.
The YouTube channel is very successful in that it has over 40,000 views and numerous comments on their videos and the channel itself. On Flickr there are many photos of cards that have been made from across the country, as well as images of Red Cross workers sorting and delivering the mail. Like the YouTube page, there have been numerous views and comments about the campaign.
Overall, I think this campaign is going to be a great success as long as the American Red Cross keeps utilizing these social media techniques. What a great way to spread some holiday cheer to some of our heroes! Do you think the “Holiday Mail for Heroes” campaign is using social media to its fullest potential? Should the American Red Cross incorporate any other techniques? Leave your comments below and let me know what you think of the campaign.
