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October is National Pit Bull Awareness Month, a period of time specifically dedicated to raising awareness around pit bulls and their need for advocacy. During this past month, Rescue Pit executed an educational campaign. We brought myths, definitions, awareness, and facts to our followers, and we encouraged other to get involved in #pitbullawareness.  Posts  such as:

 

 

The campaign reached thousands of people, we learned a lot, and we want to share some of the insights with you. We also would like to thank our followers, because it was their involvement that was key to the success of this campaign. We encouraged everyone to share, and ultimately it was this sharing of our posts that led to success. All in all, our followers shared our posts 842 times.

 

To help increase the likelihood of success in our campaign, we made a few up-front decisions:

• We would follow the same theme for every post (including template, hashtags, and language)
• We would use high quality and/or impactful photos
• We would not post every day as to not flood our followers
• We would align with the facts, even if this meant being provocative
• We would vary the day of the week, and the time of day.

 

At the end of the campaign, we saw amazing results:

• Increased Engagement (Sept to Oct): 618%
• Increased Reach (Sept to Oct): 514%
• Total Campaign Reach: 82,730
• Total Impressions: 142,334
• Total Engaged Users: 4,855

 

To put this another way, our #pitbullawareness posts were shown 142,334 times on Facebook, reached 82,730 people, and were liked, commented on, or shared 4,855  times.

 

Points of Interest

 

• Rescue Pit went across the country
  • Multiple organizations and people across the US engaged with our page. Specifically, we saw high engagement in OH, VT, and Las Vegas. While we as an organization will continue to focus on Rochester, NY, the potential for new network partners is amazing.
• Weekend posts thrived
  • Typically we see weekend posts perform about half as well as weekday posts. The exact reasons for this are unknown, but it’s something that we have seen. During this campaign however, our weekend posts performed at or above the weekday posts average.
• Massive increase in reach
  • Reach is the number of people who see a post. They can see it on your page, their newsfeed, from a friend sharing it, or simply by visiting your page.

 

Our best performing post was:

 

 

This post saw an amazing reach of 16,527. That is over sixteen thousand unique people who saw this one post. Beyond that it saw 184 share and a total of 625  likes (likes from page, and shares).

 

What did we learn and what would we recommend?

 

Planning a social campaign is similar to planning an event. It requires upfront effort, a purpose, planning, execution, and review. You should treat it as such if you want your campaign to be successful.

 

So, what can we share?

• Decide on a theme and stick with it
  • A common theme unifies your campaign and makes it instantly recognizable. Only change for very intentional reasons (our Halloween post for example).
• Use high quality photos
  • Chances are your cell phone photo, from the dark room, probably won’t cut it. Reach out to local photographers to see if they would be willing to dedicate their time and expertise to your cause.
• Schedule your posts in advance
  • We scheduled 75% of our posts on October 1st. This meant that the program executed on its own and the posts went out at their desired times.
• Cross post to other social channels where appropriate
  • This does not mean link your accounts so your exact Facebook posts go to Twitter automatically. It means log into Twitter, post your photo, and use relevant aspects of each platform.
• Keep it short
  • Your Facebook posts should never require the “See More” link to show. If it does, it’s probably too long.

 

Social media is not defined and is rarely consistent. There is no, “If you do this, that exact thing will happen.” There are best practices and generally recommended steps to take for higher engagement, but social media must also be personal. It should reflect your brand’s personality. Play with it, have fun, and most importantly, spread the word.

 

– Stephen

 

Stephen DeVay is the co-founder and president of Rescue Pit, Inc., Rochester, NY’s newest 501c3 pit bull rescue. During the day, he is a Client Delivery Manager at Brand Networks Inc, the leading social marketing platform provider in the industry. He currently resides in downtown Rochester with his partner John. Together they have 2 dogs (Monty and Misha) and space for 1-2 foster dogs.