The Evidence For Social Media

by

Stephen Ryan

Head of Marketing, Fota Wildlife Park

@MarketinginCork & @Fotawildlife

Facebook.com/Fotawildlife

• Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others. (Kotler)

Marketing Quiz• Branding

• Public Relations

• Advertising

• Signage

• Website

• Sponsorship

• Direct Mail

What are the benefits of Marketing?

• Awareness

• Drives traffic

• Service Experience

• Word of Mouth

Word of Mouth

• Surveys for Fota Wildlife Park will always ask "how did you find out about the park"

• The majority of people will say "word of mouth"

• Therefore one might say "is there need for Marketing?"

Yes

How do you nurture "Word of Mouth"?

•Social Media

What is Social Media?• "a group of Internet-

based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”

Kaplan, Andreas M.; Michael Haenlein (2010).

Fota Wildlife ParkSocial Media Objective

• In 2009 we started by creating a website with the user in mind

• Build a stronger relationship with our existing and potential customers.

• Capture customer details

• Reach people with news and events on a weekly basis.

• Nurture Word of Mouth

Fota Wildlife Park A Social Media Success

• Twitter – 6173 followers

• Youtube – 23,215 people have viewed the FotaWildlife Channel

• FlickR –Fota Fan Group which has 102 members and 873 pictures taken in the park

• Facebook – The jewel in the crown with 30,926 fans

• Since we went social in July 09 580,601 individuals have visited our site

HOW?

We Create Stories•In September 2010 we announced the birth of a Red Panda

•It made RTE 6 O’Clock News

•Asked people to name it via online competition

•Public went for Rua

•Most viewed story on our blog/news section with 6,500 views

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

•We announce that our baby Gibbon is named “Shay Gibbon” on Monday before Euro 2012

•Bank Holiday Monday

•Celebrity Endorsement

•88 hits per second on Website

•Live interviews on Today FM, BBC and Local Radio

•Makes Guardian, Mirror sites in UK

•Viral Story across Europe

•Daire O’Brian gives celebrity endorsement

News as it Happens

• On the 10th August Something Amazing happened at the park a Giraffe gave birth in front of a crowd of over 1,000 people

• The result was the creation of a news story by our community

• Pictures, Videos, Posts emerged on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

• This in turn spread to traditional media

• We Shared and Replied to everything posted

• Our Facebook page had a reach of 173000 for that week

It’s about creating a community•We set out to create an online community and in July we knew we had done it

•We lost our colleague Paraic Casey and we wanted to let people know what he meant to us, so we told our fans on Facebook

•2625 Likes

•252 comments

•262 shares

•52,324 viewed the post

•It touched our hearts but also Paraics family and friends told us it meant a lot to them

FOTABOOK• Takes the art of creating conversations

online to a whole new level.

• The Park has moved on from customised guestbook's and a Members Login area

• Fotabook allows it gather the very best tweets, photographs and videos posted about the Park on the web.

• All this content is visitor-generated

• Creates a wealth of information for visitors to come back and browse through time and time again.

The Value of Facebook • Facebook Insights -You know who likes your

business, what age, sex, where they live, how old..........

• Instant updates – In control of your own Story

• There has been over 102.625 pictures tagged at the park

• 173,000 people saw our page over one week at the end of July

• Over 41,000 hits directed to our website alone from Facebook since 2009 (21,000 in 2012 alone)

• 9% of all hits to Fotawildlife.ie have come from Facebook alone in 2012

• Over 31,000 fans is bigger than the readership of local newspapers

Summary• Social Media is mainly free to use

• You don't need to be a web developer, just a communicator

• Its Measurable

• Growing by the second

• Replacing traditional media as the way to communicate with people interested in our product/service

• If the words LIKE, TWEET, POST or SHARE are not part of your communications strategy then your business will be in trouble in the near future

Where is the Evidence?

• The Park went from 331,000 visitors in 2008 to 390,000 visitors in 2011

•Won Grand Prix Award for Best Website in Ireland in 2010 solely on interaction with customers

• Social Media now creates news on our new Website with FOTABOOK

• http://www.fotawildlife.ie/fotabook