CTHF Mudd Volleyball Tournament 2018

Summary:

Siarza Social Digital (SiarzaSD) began to support Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation (CTHF) with its social media efforts for the annual Albuquerque Mudd Volleyball tournament.

As a team, SiarzaSD felt that working on the account at a discounted rate was important as it met our core value of our commitment to the community. Each member of the team was impressed with the work done by the Foundation for children and families around the state. SiarzaSD’s contract with CTHF was discounted in trade for a sponsorship for their annual Mudd Volleyball tournament.
SiarzaSD’s strategy goals were to drive traffic to CTHF’s Mudd Volleyball website to help create sales leads, increase awareness of the annual Mudd Volleyball event and create a FOMO effect leading up to, during and after the event.

The results of the campaign increased the visibility of the event while providing creative challenges for our social media team. Percentages of improvement ranged from 2% to 75%.

Research:

Prior to working with SiarzaSD, CTHF saw that Mudd Volleyball was facing a decrease in attendance year-over-year. The Siarza team was tasked with reaching both past and new audiences in order to increase brand awareness for Mudd Volleyball.

PRIMARY RESEARCH:

SiarzaSD researched ideas from both popular charity event and big-name festivals that used heavy imagery and messaging to generate buzz around the event and a sense of F.O.M.O. (Fear of Missing Out) for audiences.

To capture the social sporters and festival-goers, SiarzaSD looked at national annual trending events, including national sports leagues and their large events and gatherings. SiarzaSD analyzed how leagues and organizers interacted with and inspired excitement in their players.

The SiarzaSD team was able to generate campaign ideas that might promote the fun and unique position that Mudd Volleyball occupies. Looking at the many different creative ways that major events such as Coachella, Outsidelands and the New Orleans Jazz Festival delivered pertinent information to their audiences about their events helped SiarzaSD to establish a more prominent brand identity surrounding Mudd Volleyball.

SiarzaSD also analyzed 2013, 2016 and 2017’s social media content, day-of coverage and social media advertising to see what garnered the most engagement and performed the best. Analytics were heavily relied upon for maximizing audience reach and engagement. The Siarza SD team relied upon social media analytics in order to determine the best times to post and the best performing posts by type (text, link, photo, video, graphics, etc.) throughout the campaign in addition to before it began.

Primary research concluded with the team looking at its own past work for ideas on how to improve the Mudd Volleyball campaign and maximize ROI for the client.

SECONDARY RESEARCH:

Data was compiled from published best practices by Sprout Social, HeyOrca, HubSpot, and other reputable social media analyzers.

EFFECT:

The research compiled by the Siarza team influenced the Mudd Volleyball campaign to reach for new heights in order to further the Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation’s mission.

SiarzaSD made extensive use of NAVCO’s MAR throughout all stages of the campaign. It was useful for contacting relevant parties leading up to Navy Week in addition to understanding why Albuquerque was one of the 15 cities nationally selected as a Navy Week host, which in turn affected how Navy Week was framed to an Albuquerque audience by SiarzaSD in its public relations efforts.

Planning:

TARGET AUDIENCES: The following target audiences are the core customers we’re interested in reaching for CTHF:

• PRIMARY: Social Sports players like local kickballers, volleyballers, past players, local businesses and sponsors, in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area
• SECONDARY: Festival/event lovers, Las Cruces, Farmington, El Paso
• TERTIARY: College students, Denver

PROJECT GOAL AND MISSION: CTHF tasked SiarzaSD with informing audiences about what Mudd is and why they should play. The campaign was developed to engage both new and existing players and to establish a dialogue about CTHF’s mission to make a positive impact in the lives of children with special needs.

OBJECTIVES: SiarzaSD and Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation established the following objectives:

1. Increase awareness of Mudd Volleyball’s mission in the Albuquerque community by increasing attendees by 450-500 YoY through the project date
   1. STRATEGIES: Create a Facebook event and promote through social posts, Create media kits with pre-written posts for sponsors, Communicate with existing audiences, Reach old and new players through social media advertising
2. Increase social media following of CTHF Mudd Volleyball accounts by 2.0-5.0% YoY through the project date.
   1. STRATEGIES: Develop informative visuals for the organization, Leverage social to make it easy for players to understand/get to registration, Highlight/hare any published articles talking about this year’s events, Use social platform features/variety of visuals to keep content fresh, Interviews/testimonials from families and kids that benefit from Mudd
3. Increase social media engagement on CTHF Mudd Volleyball accounts by 20% YoY through project date.
   1. STRATEGIES: : Encourage people to share their photos from past events using Facebook camera features, Create buzz on Snapchat/Instagram stories, Leverage sponsors and loyal organizations and teams, Build excitement among teams, Promote event as the ultimate team building experience, Utilize existing audience to increase reach and garner excitement, Keep momentum going after event

Implementation:

TIMEFRAME: Siarza Social Digital began to meet with Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation to discuss Mudd Volleyball on January 1, 2018 through August 17, 2018.

TACTICS:

1. Monthly Social Media Content Calendars: The SiarzaSD team was responsible for creating a social media calendar that included written content and ideas for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Full calendars were sent to the CTHF team for review and approval prior to scheduling. Facebook and Instagram stories were used to run polls and to add variety to the types of content CTHF and Mudd followers were subjected to. Live features were utilized for key Mudd moments.
2. Monthly Social Media Advertising: SiarzaSD ran targeted social media advertisements on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to reach both past and potential players about registration. Video, still images and slideshows were used in order to gauge the attractiveness and effectiveness of certain types of advertisements. Target audiences varied by location, interests, and behaviors.
3. Community Engagement Through Social: The SiarzaSD team attended events to establish photo opportunities at different venues. Sponsors of Mudd Volleyball 2018 were encouraged to share content posted by SiarzaSD on Mudd accounts. Supporters were supplied with social media kits. SiarzaSD managed a Mudd Volleyball 2018 Facebook group that evolved into a community of volleyball players.
4. Utilizing Social Media as a Customer Service Hub: SiarzaSD crafted appropriate responses to questions, comments and mentions involving CTHF, Mudd Volleyball sponsorship, team registration, and day-of inquiries. The Facebook group helped rengage the past player base.
5. Introducing New Social Media Channels: SiarzaSD created a SnapChat account for Mudd Volleyball. Snaps were taken the day of packet pick-up and on the day of the event and geofilters were placed across the field.

The Siarza team made full use of contacts in order to promote the event to a wide audience, while utilizing advertising to collect data.
BUDGET: The budget for the campaign was $10,000 for labor, $4,000 for advertising and social media resources.

CHALLENGES OVERCOME: SiarzaSD had little direction on the voice, visuals and information needed to create robust social campaigns. Pulling in b-roll video and photos from the organizations’ old Flickr account, SiarzaSD was able to complete compelling visual campaigns.

There was a limited ad budget to reach a large target audience, so budgeting appropriately over five months presented a challenge.
The team faced challenges on event day in making sure all key pieces of the event were thoroughly shown as the tournament was held in an area the size of four football fields.

Evaluation:

OBJECTIVE 1 WAS MET: Year-over-year, more people attended Mudd Volleyball 2018 in comparison to 2017, with 60 more registered teams, up from 450 in 2017 to 510 in 2018. Engagement increased on social media channels between 2018 and 2017, additionally, with Facebook seeing an increase of 2.02%.YoY. Twitter saw a growth of 9.05%, Instagram a significant growth of 12.82%, and the day-of Snapchat geofilter an increase in total views up to 162,500.

OBJECTIVE 2 WAS MET: As previously stated, Facebook saw a total follower increase of 2.02%, Twitter of 9.05%, and Instagram a significant growth of 12.82%. These amounts were found by calculating the increases between numbers gathered from 2017s to 2018.

OBJECTIVE 3 WAS MET: Overall, the Mudd Volleyball pages saw an increase over the 2018 campaign, with Facebook seeing an increase of 61.34% between the highest months for engagement between 2017 and 2018, Twitter an average increase of 29.64%, and Instagram an increase of 73.44% between the highest months. These amounts were found by calculating the increases between numbers gathered from 2017 to 2018.