17 Sep National Wildlife Federation – Non-profit Social Media Marketing Example #7
Wow, it’s been a long time since we’ve posted on our non-profit social media marketing examples series, so here we go. To continue, I have decided to highlight a campaign developed for the National Wildlife Federation. A wonderful organization, with a hefty social media campaign.
School may be back in session, but in most parts of the U.S., it’s still warm enough for kids to be outside and enjoying the great outdoors. When I was younger, you couldn’t get me inside. This time of the year was the best. We were outside as soon as we woke up, building forts, playing in the swamp, riding our bikes to get ice cream or swinging on the tire swing at recess. But apparently times are different. Kids are not necessarily outside. You may be more likely to find them inside, watching TV, playing video games, or talking on their cell phones.
For this reason, the National Wildlife Federation launched, “Green Hour,” which is a social campaign designed to give inspiration to parents on how to get kids back outside for at least an hour each day.
The campaign is pretty extensive. It includes a website, a Facebook fan page, a badge, a Twitter page and a Flickr site; all complete with tons of fun and unique outdoor activities, a link to help find parks, trails and nature centers that are close to home, tips, and other outdoor ideas.
- The Green Hour Facebook fan page has over 1,500 fans (when I started my research less than 2 weeks ago they only had 1,300). Like their site, the page has pictures, tips, stats, but it also has a very engaged audience, largely in part to the content that they are including on the page. Parents are interested and getting involved and sharing their personal advice on how they get their own kids outside. For example, a more recent question posed to fans, asked what outdoor adventures parents took their kids on over Labor Day weekend – which got over 14 responses and over 25 interactions.
- The Green Hour Twitter page has nearly 7,000 followers and has similar content to that of their Facebook page. One interesting item they incorporated were contests to gain participation. The one going on right now is a larger partnership with TWF that asks people to write a summer haiku. One thing I noticed here is that their audience isn’t participating on the page. While they have over 1,500 tweets, it’s hard to find a single interaction. Perhaps they should shift focus from Twitter and move more of the efforts to Facebook.
- Their Green Hour flickr page has over 170 members and over 1,000 photos. Their goal here is to encourage and maintain the largest online library of photos of kids enjoying the outdoors. While I couldn’t find any photo library that was larger, I would recommend they try to encourage more participation (most of the photos were posted by admins). One way to do this is possibly promote their flickr page in more obvious places, like their homepage. Right now the only call-out is buried deep in the site and is pretty hard to find.
- Another item they have tried to leverage is a badge (below) for fans to share on their own sites. While I give them credit for attempting to use this, it sort of falls flat. I personally don’t have any reason to download it, as the badge doesn’t offer any type of benefit to me. Perhaps they could update it to include an RSS feed that constantly updates with outdoor activities.
The National Wildlife Federation jumped in full force with their Green Hour social campaign. And just like many organizations, it seems like they felt the need to be on every social outlet. This campaign is a great example of the fact that it isn’t always the case. I would recommend that they continue their efforts on Facebook and spend more of their resources in that area. Focusing in will help them to continue to spread their message and definitely encourage kids to get outside again. Anyone in for some hula-hoop?
