Monday 16 November 2009
Recent work undertaken
This section aims to provide you with a detailed overview of some of the work I have recently carried out. If you require further information on how Totally Outsourced can help your company, please do not hesitate to contact me for an informal chat at: stepheny.mayers@totallyoutsourced.co.uk
Turn2us
Background:
Part of the Eizabeth Finn Care Trust, Turn2Us is a national charity that exists to help individuals and families through times of financial hardship.
Demand for the services have grown during this recent economic downturn, extending the charities reach to service individuals who have been made redundant, as well as anyone seeking help identifying their correct benefit entitlement.
More on Turn2Us
The brief:
In order to support this growth in demand, Turn2Us realised the benefits and necessity of social media and consulted with us at Totally Outsourced to develop and implement the groundwork for a sustainable social media strategy.
Think
Being faced with quite an open brief, work immediately began auditing what had already been done within the organisation, and under the parent company Elizabeth Finn Care, by way of social media. This ground level audit revealed that a Google grant had already been applied for (although not yet received) and also 'not for profit' status on You tube had been given, which enables NfP organisations free access to certain levels of premium services and page customisation.
Plan
Faced with the realisation of uncertain levels of ongoing support and limited budget, a pragmatic approach had to be taken – one that balanced a longer-term strategic view with delivering immediate impact. As such, a balance was struck and following an evaluation of the primary target audience and ongoing commitment to PR activity, it was advised that the two primary tactical activities should focus on leveraging the PR with an aggressive SEO campaign, encompassing both PPC and organic – one supporting and harnessing the other and also a targeted facebook campaign that would identify target users and supply them with relevant content.
Evaluate
By using Google analytics to measure activities, within 4 weeks a clear impact was evident. On the back of online PR and linking, visits were up by over 90%. Facebook seeding had driven traffic to the site - up significantly, with around 50% of page fans having visited the site. Finally, the implementation of the Google grant (Google’s Adwords programme for NfP organisations) had a huge impact on ‘level one’ key words, appearing in first position amongst the sponsored links. This too had a positive impact on organic search, with Turn2us appearing on the first page for many related service searches.
As part of this evaluation and forward planning, we also conducted an evaluation into content optimisation and provide some advice on best practice in optimising content for organic listings. This comprised of improving content and page structure, correct and consistent population of page meta data and perhaps most importantly, a structured reciprocal linking programme with high profiled third parties.
One of the key principles however in applying this effort was the need for consistency. This would impede the peaks and trough effect and enable the brand to establish a meaningful presence – and not just across the digital space.
Looking ahead
For many organisations, social media is still exploratory. Not many organisations are able to invest focussed time to testing and learning what works in this space or even embarking under a ‘controlled’ programme of social marketing. Turn2us recognised this capacity issue and decided to outsource this much needed requirement; by engaging with a marketing professional with expertise in this area, they were able to keep their eye focussed on day to day delivery and in parallel learn more about what social media activities they should continue to invest in and which ones to let go, or visit at a later date.
In addition to the tactical activities that were implemented for Turn2us, a simple and digestible strategy roadmap was also delivered that could be used to help the organisation manage and leverage this grass roots activity and implement further activities over time. This consisted of further tactical initiatives to be implemented including unleashing the potential of Linked In to reach intermediaries, other organisations and professionals within the charity, grants, benefits and welfare support sphere. It was felt that this would provide numerable benefits to the organisations channel strategy from leveraging support, advising of the work of the charity, sharing ideas and best practice and promoting the organisations services.
Secondly, the organisation was advised to get engaged in ‘conversations’ via twitter as well as beginning their own Turn2us blog to help shape the discussion and stay abreast of what is being said in relevant areas.
Part of the Eizabeth Finn Care Trust, Turn2Us is a national charity that exists to help individuals and families through times of financial hardship.
Demand for the services have grown during this recent economic downturn, extending the charities reach to service individuals who have been made redundant, as well as anyone seeking help identifying their correct benefit entitlement.
More on Turn2Us
The brief:
In order to support this growth in demand, Turn2Us realised the benefits and necessity of social media and consulted with us at Totally Outsourced to develop and implement the groundwork for a sustainable social media strategy.
Think
Being faced with quite an open brief, work immediately began auditing what had already been done within the organisation, and under the parent company Elizabeth Finn Care, by way of social media. This ground level audit revealed that a Google grant had already been applied for (although not yet received) and also 'not for profit' status on You tube had been given, which enables NfP organisations free access to certain levels of premium services and page customisation.
Plan
Faced with the realisation of uncertain levels of ongoing support and limited budget, a pragmatic approach had to be taken – one that balanced a longer-term strategic view with delivering immediate impact. As such, a balance was struck and following an evaluation of the primary target audience and ongoing commitment to PR activity, it was advised that the two primary tactical activities should focus on leveraging the PR with an aggressive SEO campaign, encompassing both PPC and organic – one supporting and harnessing the other and also a targeted facebook campaign that would identify target users and supply them with relevant content.
Evaluate
By using Google analytics to measure activities, within 4 weeks a clear impact was evident. On the back of online PR and linking, visits were up by over 90%. Facebook seeding had driven traffic to the site - up significantly, with around 50% of page fans having visited the site. Finally, the implementation of the Google grant (Google’s Adwords programme for NfP organisations) had a huge impact on ‘level one’ key words, appearing in first position amongst the sponsored links. This too had a positive impact on organic search, with Turn2us appearing on the first page for many related service searches.
As part of this evaluation and forward planning, we also conducted an evaluation into content optimisation and provide some advice on best practice in optimising content for organic listings. This comprised of improving content and page structure, correct and consistent population of page meta data and perhaps most importantly, a structured reciprocal linking programme with high profiled third parties.
One of the key principles however in applying this effort was the need for consistency. This would impede the peaks and trough effect and enable the brand to establish a meaningful presence – and not just across the digital space.
Looking ahead
For many organisations, social media is still exploratory. Not many organisations are able to invest focussed time to testing and learning what works in this space or even embarking under a ‘controlled’ programme of social marketing. Turn2us recognised this capacity issue and decided to outsource this much needed requirement; by engaging with a marketing professional with expertise in this area, they were able to keep their eye focussed on day to day delivery and in parallel learn more about what social media activities they should continue to invest in and which ones to let go, or visit at a later date.
In addition to the tactical activities that were implemented for Turn2us, a simple and digestible strategy roadmap was also delivered that could be used to help the organisation manage and leverage this grass roots activity and implement further activities over time. This consisted of further tactical initiatives to be implemented including unleashing the potential of Linked In to reach intermediaries, other organisations and professionals within the charity, grants, benefits and welfare support sphere. It was felt that this would provide numerable benefits to the organisations channel strategy from leveraging support, advising of the work of the charity, sharing ideas and best practice and promoting the organisations services.
Secondly, the organisation was advised to get engaged in ‘conversations’ via twitter as well as beginning their own Turn2us blog to help shape the discussion and stay abreast of what is being said in relevant areas.
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