Rick’s New Glasses Social Media Project: What We Learned
Posted on | December 11, 2009 | 6 Comments
In November, we used a seemingly routine occurrence as the keystone to a social media project. Rick Simmons, one of our illustrious leaders, needed new glasses and we felt compelled to help Rick out. After all, he needs it 
So we concocted a quick experiment to see what would happen, figuring that it would be fun and we could share the results with our readers.
Our goal in our experiment was to engage our community and measure the response. We used HootSuite / Twitter, Facebook (both Dinkum Interactive & Rick’s personal page), LinkedIn groups, and LinkedIn profile, along with an Email blast and online survey provider Survey Gizmo ; the survey was intended to last for one week.
The Background of the Social Media Project
The experiment started on Wednesday November 4th with the creation of a basic online survey using Survey Gizmo. Using a simple single-selection survey we uploaded photos of the three eyeglass frames and asked users to vote for their favorite.
 Option # 1 |
 Option # 2 |
 Option # 3 |
On November 6th, a post announcing the experiment was published on Dinkum’s blog which was accompanied by an email to those subscribers. Furthermore, a series of tweets was scheduled to be made via Twitter (200+ followers) throughout the weekend using HooteSuite’s “Send Later” utility. Finally, while Dinkum tweets were fed to the MyDinkum Facebook page, an event inviting friends to take part in the poll was created on Saturday. In addition Rick posted the survey to his LinkedIn profile and a few of the many groups he belongs to on LinkedIn.
The Results of Our Social Media Project Were:
- 170 Completed Surveys
- 279 Abandoned Surveys
- 449 Total Visits to the Survey Page
- 61% Survey Completion Rate
- 114 Click-Throughs Via MyDinkum Hootsuite/Twitter Accounts
- 31 Click-Throughs Via Personal Hootsuite/Twitter Accounts
- 51% Email Open Rate
- 18% Email Click Through Rate
- Geography: Concentration in the Northeastern US
And the Winner Is…
 The Handsome & Newly Bespectacled Rick Simmons |
What We Learned
After quickly assembling the experiment and reviewing the results, here are a few observations:
Our community has a great sense of humor, as evidenced by the four suggestions that Rick try contacts (if he could, he would) and one suggestion for a new face (once again, he would if he could). Interestingly, a few people thought that we should have shown more of Rick’s face – obviously, gluttons for punishment.
Having a Fun Subject with a Small Time Investment is Helpful- Our overall aim was to explore this new avenue of communications in an attempt to actively engage users and find Rick some snappy new glasses; we accomplished both goals – Thanks!
Advance Testing Would Have Helped – We rolled the experiment out fairly quickly and didn’t have a chance to review the survey software in advance. SurveyGizmo.com did fairly well, but it was a bit light on stats. There were also a few broken links that were distributed; again not allowing enough time to test was to blame. Finally a high abandonment rate makes us think that usability may have been poor, so testing would have helped here too.
Finally, Several Other Observations Include:
- The Rollout Should Be Carefully Timed to Achieve Maximum Impact
- A Focused Call to Action is Helpful
- A Unique, Trackable URL Should be Used to Evaluate Each Platform
- Take advantage of as many available channels as possible. Some may surprise you
In conclusion, we were excited about the response our experiment received. It was fun, Rick found a new set of glasses and the everywhere Rick has gone in the past several weeks, the “Help Rick Pick His Next Set of Glasses” has been the main topic of conversation.
Thanks to all who participated
What are your thoughts? What could we have done better?
Bill Rowland
Tags: email marketing > Facebook > hootsuite > online survey > social media marketing > Survey Gizmo > Twitter
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6 Responses to “Rick’s New Glasses Social Media Project: What We Learned”
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December 11th, 2009 @ 11:53 pm
when can we see the new glassified Rick?
December 14th, 2009 @ 12:03 am
Paul,
We’ll see if we can get some snaps of Rick wearing his “new & sassy” glasses up shortly.
December 14th, 2009 @ 9:25 pm
A fun experiment, guys! And it seems like you had pretty good engagement on Twitter in particular (15% – yes?). I personally participated when I saw it in LinkedIn – partly because I was running a similar test on the different channel’s responsiveness. Facebook was, by far, my most engaging channel.
I think the experiment points out:
- how easy it is to test things in today’s web world
- the character/nature and number of given channel’s subscribers plays a role in how responsive a group is
- the nature of the query (and how interesting it is to the audience) plays a role
and the new glasses look great, Rick!
- Skip
December 15th, 2009 @ 8:58 am
Looking forward to the day (and it will come) for the Progressive or second set of readers survey!
Great info, good lessons learned, as always, Rick
December 16th, 2009 @ 1:41 pm
Skip,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments and sharing you’re experience.
We really enjoyed putting this one together and we look forward to future experiments.
December 22nd, 2009 @ 4:50 pm
i wish happy cristmass for all of you