Social media's monumental impact on PR campaigns

Picture via Partnersinpreservation

Social media has taken the PR world by storm, but is still rather foreign to many business people. When going over the results of a campaign, many professionals will cite "social media impressions". However, are impressions enough to gauge the success of a campaign? Many people say no. Executives want exact numbers and to see the true impact social media has on consumers' feelings and behaviors.  In response to this, Bulldog Reporter conducted an investigation on the best way to prove social media's worth in a PR campaign.

M Booth, a global communications agency, was approached by Partners in Preservation to increase consumer advocacy for old buildings. In essence, M Booth's main task was to grasp people's attention via social media and traditional outlets to come and see the historic buildings. The company succeeded in bringing thousands of new advocates to the cause through the use of blogs, hashtags, and live grassroot gatherings.

In order to get people's attention, M Booth knew that photos would not be enough and instead, set out to encourage people to actually come and visit the sites. Additionally, M Booth yearned to reach a younger crowd and concluded that they could not be reached via traditional media. Therefore, they set out to find a hipper, alternative outlet. 

In the end, bloggers were the saving grace of the campaign and allowed it to be the huge success that it was. M Booth sorted through one hundred candidates and decided on twenty influential bloggers that they wanted to get behind their campaign. The bloggers were encouraged to visit a few of the sites and post various blurbs and pictures featuring them. For example, Swagger New York, a fashion, music and pop culture blog, shot a fashion video editorial at one of the sites. Because the bloggers were able to put their own creative spin on the campaign, it appealed to their fan base and encouraged their subscribers to rally behind the cause. This would prove to be M Booth's biggest success.

In addition to the blog outreach, a traditional press event was held and a "Preservation Station" was created that traveled and encouraged support. Foursquare was also utilized in the campaign. Ultimately, M Booth attempted to create the most efficient combination of social media and face-to-face encounters. 

Here are the results of the campaign:

• 107 posts
• 289 tweets
• 130 Facebook posts
• 740 placements (NY Times, The Wall Street Journal, Today)
• Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers voted for preservation
• 40 NYC historic sites received grants
• 3 historic preservation projects were fully funded
• Won bronze in "Best Use of Social Media Tools" at the 2013 Bulldog Awards for Excellence in Media Relations & Publicity

To read the full Bulldog article, click here.