Building a Successful Social Media Strategy

Social Media: Why should I care?

The Challenge  Drought left one million children aged below five in danger of server malnutrition in the Sahel  Crisis affecting an estimated 10 million people  Media apathy and donor fatigue – challenge was to get people talking about Sahel, but also drive donations > how to get the Sahel crisi into the news agenda and sound the alarm on the crisis  Social media!

The Approach: Creating ‘Brilliant’ Basics  To elevate the underreported issue of one million children of being at risk of dying as a result of the Sahel nutrition crisis, UNICEF launched #SahelNOW in February  A Joint effort of country offices, fundraising department, social media and communication departments based in HQ and external creative partners  Main goal: raising funds and awareness  Main approach: roll out a social media package (English, Spanish, French) coinciding with Anthony Lake’s visit to Chad

The Approach: Sustaining the Momentum  Keep the buzz alive: web-based timeline, continue to create social media materials (call to action animation, stumulating infographics, #SahelNOW t- shirts), identify relevant content from partners, produced “Memories of Sahel”

Approach: Sustaining the Momentum blog Additional social media packages prepared and pushed out each week to maintain the buzz Two Facebook applications

The Results: Impact “It costs around $ 100 to save a child from chronic #malnutrition. Want to learn about ways to help? Supportunicef.org/sahel” Shakira, via Facebook Between 29 March 2012 and 03 May 2012 : From the day of the #SahelNOW campaign launch, the hashtag dominated the online conversations about the Sahel nutrition crisis >>> tweeted 95k times and 79k times retweeted by 46k contributors. The hashtag received 446k impressions

The Results: Reach Biggest communication moment was 3 April Nearly 10% of all mentions occurred on that day. Second biggest communication momentum: 19 April due to a picture posted by Selena Gomez with a call to action.

The Results: Share of voice The #SahelNOW hashtag was picked up by a large group of peer organisations, such as WFP, Oxfam, UNDP and others and quickly became the most used hashtag related to the Sahel crisis.

The Results: Demographics #SahelNOW campaign mentioned in 185 countries

The Results: Role of UNICEF Celebrities “#SahelNOW needs our help. Sahel is in a food crisis. Visit unicefusa.org to learn more. Let’s make #SahelNOW a trending topic” Selena Gomez, via Facebook Shakira, Mia Farrow, Selena Gomez provided support since the beginning Actors, musicians, models, athletes, artist from all over the world joined in Gomez drove most conversations and cosistely used the #SahelNOW hashtag in her conversations Goodwill ambassadors triggered active conversations on Facebook

Creative Partners Creative partners triggered action in more than 100 countries.

Social media strategy Background Current social media landscape Objectives Target audience Platforms and content Team structure Workflow for content Managing risks