Cats
Publicity Volunteer Chris Ayers explains how Chiltern Branch carried out a successful Twitter campaign…
Twitter is one of the most powerful tools of our time. It has contributed to the downfall of regimes in Egypt and Libya, taken some credit for the cause of the London riots – then proceeded to be vital for the cleanup operations – and has been responsible for heavily degrading the integrity of the ‘Super Injunction’. Opinion is split, but I am fanatical about social networking and believe that it holds the key to untapped volumes of publicity. Luckily, Cats Protection at both a national and local level is making excellent use of Twitter and, at the time of writing, around 50 branches hold accounts.
On 13 August, I had the idea of holding a ‘tweetathon’ – where a Twitter user repeatedly Tweets all day about either a specific subject or range of subjects in a pre-organised fashion, generally for the purpose of gaining rapid publicity – which includes building up as many ‘followers’ as possible. This idea steadily developed, although was downsized as I didn’t want to promise something which I couldn’t deliver – the idea of tweeting every few minutes seemed excessive! Finally, I settled on a ‘flash-neutering campaign’ as a bit of a play on the terms flash mob and flash crowd which captures the sheer essence of social networking.
I settled on a neutering campaign – for Monday 15 August as it is something which needs maximum publicity to try and humanely reduce the cat population – and which is geographically applicable everywhere. Somebody could be looking at our Twitter from another branch area or abroad and this means that anybody can participate. From the morning until the evening, I had set up various scheduled tweets with Tweetdeck software highlighting key neutering points, as well as writing others ad-hoc and replying to/retweeting other people’s tweets on the subject. To break this down further I gave details on providing information about the Cats Protection ‘free neutering’ vouchers – within our branch area as well as giving the national CP email address – various ‘bullet point’ facts such as ‘One unneutered cat could be responsible for thousands of descendents in just five years’ as well as links to the Early Neutering Register and Neutering FAQ.
Ultimately this was very successful and there are various ways to measure this – we had 40-50 retweets – where one of our tweets is reposted on another’s account because they think it’s useful or interesting, meaning all of their followers can see it too. If the average Twitter user has anything between 50-500 followers and a tweet is retweeted 10 times, a minimum of 500 people will see that tweet – or maybe even thousands upon thousands if a celebrity or well-followed organisation/company retweets, as well as the 300 already following us. You can see why information travels so quickly online! It is relatively safe to assume that at least 2,500 people will have seen at least one of our neutering campaign tweets over the course of the day.
In addition, we gained 12 new followers in a day. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but surges of new followers such as this are always good news, especially to relatively light Twitter users like us. To put it into perspective, our Twitter account has been running since 2010 and, in a year or so, has gained 280 followers – an average gain of roughly one follower every two to three days. I would most certainly implore any branch to register a Twitter account, use the guides available and help from the National Cat Centre to get established. It’s ultimately free publicity with a potentially huge audience. 18 per cent of the British public use Twitter, so if you can potentially broadcast to them directly, easily and for free – why wouldn’t you?
Related links:
www.tweetdeck.com The ultimate Twitter application. Great for scheduled tweeting and viewing Twitter in a far more user-friendly way
www.socialmediacharity.com/2011/08/charity-social-media-plunge/ ‘Taking the social media plunge’ – Compulsory reading for any charity/branch on Twitter!
www.klout.com Klout: Provides social media analytics measuring the size of people's ‘networks’ and influence – giving comprehensive details as well as issuing you with a score. Chiltern branch scores 50 – as of 24/08/2011
www.twitter.com/CPChiltern
Did you enjoy reading our latest post? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below!
- Is Your Kitten Smitten?
Yesterday on the blog we looked at how to recognise the signs of your cat showing you ‘love’ or affection; and how cats in the same social group can show affection to each other (if you missed the post, read it here). But what happens when your kitten...
- Giving Tuesday: How You Can Help Us
After its arrival in the UK last year, #GivingTuesday is back, providing a chance for us all to take a break from the stresses and strains of Christmas preparations and offer our time, money and voices to help those less fortunate than ourselves. We’re...
- Never Miss A Post Again!
Image courtesy of Jonas Löwgren via flickrEnsure you never miss the latest success stories, information and advice from Cats Protection by signing up as a subscriber to the official Meow! blog. Whether it’s an inspiring tale of an unwanted cat...
- The History Of National Black Cat Day
Thursday 30 October 2014 marks our fourth National Black Cat Day, Cats Protection’s annual campaign to celebrate black and black-and-white cats. Black cats are often overlooked by potential adopters and take on average a week longer to home. We’re...
- Coming Soon: Black Cat Awareness Day
We've been working on an exciting new project... You’ve probably noticed that it’s been more than a little bit on the quiet side on here lately. This is because we have been working hard behind the scenes on something. Something big, in...
Cats
Chiltern's Twitter success
Publicity Volunteer Chris Ayers explains how Chiltern Branch carried out a successful Twitter campaign…
Twitter is one of the most powerful tools of our time. It has contributed to the downfall of regimes in Egypt and Libya, taken some credit for the cause of the London riots – then proceeded to be vital for the cleanup operations – and has been responsible for heavily degrading the integrity of the ‘Super Injunction’. Opinion is split, but I am fanatical about social networking and believe that it holds the key to untapped volumes of publicity. Luckily, Cats Protection at both a national and local level is making excellent use of Twitter and, at the time of writing, around 50 branches hold accounts.On 13 August, I had the idea of holding a ‘tweetathon’ – where a Twitter user repeatedly Tweets all day about either a specific subject or range of subjects in a pre-organised fashion, generally for the purpose of gaining rapid publicity – which includes building up as many ‘followers’ as possible. This idea steadily developed, although was downsized as I didn’t want to promise something which I couldn’t deliver – the idea of tweeting every few minutes seemed excessive! Finally, I settled on a ‘flash-neutering campaign’ as a bit of a play on the terms flash mob and flash crowd which captures the sheer essence of social networking.
I settled on a neutering campaign – for Monday 15 August as it is something which needs maximum publicity to try and humanely reduce the cat population – and which is geographically applicable everywhere. Somebody could be looking at our Twitter from another branch area or abroad and this means that anybody can participate. From the morning until the evening, I had set up various scheduled tweets with Tweetdeck software highlighting key neutering points, as well as writing others ad-hoc and replying to/retweeting other people’s tweets on the subject. To break this down further I gave details on providing information about the Cats Protection ‘free neutering’ vouchers – within our branch area as well as giving the national CP email address – various ‘bullet point’ facts such as ‘One unneutered cat could be responsible for thousands of descendents in just five years’ as well as links to the Early Neutering Register and Neutering FAQ.
Ultimately this was very successful and there are various ways to measure this – we had 40-50 retweets – where one of our tweets is reposted on another’s account because they think it’s useful or interesting, meaning all of their followers can see it too. If the average Twitter user has anything between 50-500 followers and a tweet is retweeted 10 times, a minimum of 500 people will see that tweet – or maybe even thousands upon thousands if a celebrity or well-followed organisation/company retweets, as well as the 300 already following us. You can see why information travels so quickly online! It is relatively safe to assume that at least 2,500 people will have seen at least one of our neutering campaign tweets over the course of the day.
In addition, we gained 12 new followers in a day. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but surges of new followers such as this are always good news, especially to relatively light Twitter users like us. To put it into perspective, our Twitter account has been running since 2010 and, in a year or so, has gained 280 followers – an average gain of roughly one follower every two to three days. I would most certainly implore any branch to register a Twitter account, use the guides available and help from the National Cat Centre to get established. It’s ultimately free publicity with a potentially huge audience. 18 per cent of the British public use Twitter, so if you can potentially broadcast to them directly, easily and for free – why wouldn’t you?
Related links:
www.tweetdeck.com The ultimate Twitter application. Great for scheduled tweeting and viewing Twitter in a far more user-friendly way
www.socialmediacharity.com/2011/08/charity-social-media-plunge/ ‘Taking the social media plunge’ – Compulsory reading for any charity/branch on Twitter!
www.klout.com Klout: Provides social media analytics measuring the size of people's ‘networks’ and influence – giving comprehensive details as well as issuing you with a score. Chiltern branch scores 50 – as of 24/08/2011
www.twitter.com/CPChiltern
Did you enjoy reading our latest post? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below!
- Is Your Kitten Smitten?
Yesterday on the blog we looked at how to recognise the signs of your cat showing you ‘love’ or affection; and how cats in the same social group can show affection to each other (if you missed the post, read it here). But what happens when your kitten...
- Giving Tuesday: How You Can Help Us
After its arrival in the UK last year, #GivingTuesday is back, providing a chance for us all to take a break from the stresses and strains of Christmas preparations and offer our time, money and voices to help those less fortunate than ourselves. We’re...
- Never Miss A Post Again!
Image courtesy of Jonas Löwgren via flickrEnsure you never miss the latest success stories, information and advice from Cats Protection by signing up as a subscriber to the official Meow! blog. Whether it’s an inspiring tale of an unwanted cat...
- The History Of National Black Cat Day
Thursday 30 October 2014 marks our fourth National Black Cat Day, Cats Protection’s annual campaign to celebrate black and black-and-white cats. Black cats are often overlooked by potential adopters and take on average a week longer to home. We’re...
- Coming Soon: Black Cat Awareness Day
We've been working on an exciting new project... You’ve probably noticed that it’s been more than a little bit on the quiet side on here lately. This is because we have been working hard behind the scenes on something. Something big, in...