I've been reading a lot about the famine in East Africa, and below is an interesting article highlighting the "full court press" of online efforts to mobilize awareness and, subsequently, action. This highlights questions I have about reach and results of online campaigns. On the topic of reach, I can't help but wonder if the only people that read the messages are those that are already drinking the proverbial kool-aid. Clearly online media is great for deepening relationships with existing supporters, but what about acquiring new customers. I'd love to know more about growing your online audience in a meaningful way - I've certainly seen gimmicks in the nonprofit community where we do "$1 for each like" and then I just force my friends to like our pages; but are they a meaningful audience or just people that hide our posts as soon as they subscribe to them. Additionally, I would love to see statistics regarding how "calls to action" online indeed motivate action. Last week I saw a quick stat that said that asking your friends to 'retweet' something will cause that message to be 'retweeted' 4x more than posts that don't make that ask. So that's something, but I wonder more about the results of actions that encourage people to make a purchase or a donation -- something that calls for real action rather than a virtual cut and paste. In "direct mail" we look at cost per dollar raised. What are the statistics that measure success of an online campaign? Some formula that measures revenue against audience? Clearly measuring friends/followers accounts for something...but certainly that isn't enough. I welcome any suggestions for resources on benchmarking.
http://mashable.com/2011/07/29/africa-famine/
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