Social Media ROI for Non-Profits – A Case Study By Aaron Bramley

Aaron Bramley is one of my good friends on Twitter. Since meeting Aaron, I’ve been reading his blog, Featurism, and when I noticed a few posts on social media ROI, I invited him to guest post for my blog. Aaron – thanks for taking the time and making the effort to write this post!

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by Aaron Bramley

Deploy Peace is group of women with a mission to give retired military aircraft “one last mission,” to reunite wounded military heroes with their families in their time of need. They do this through dog tag peace necklaces with inspirational quotes. A portion of the proceeds goes to The Fischer House Foundation.

The Problem:

  • Very slow sales
  • Low Goggle ranking on all related keywords
  • No buzz
  • No community of fans

    • The Solution:

    1. A Website redesign that makes customers feel comfortable buying on their site. Meta tags, descriptions and site tittles were added to help their search engine optimization (SEO).

    Old Deploy Peace Site

    Deploy+Peace+Old Page 1 Social Media ROI for Non Profits A Case Study By Aaron Bramley

    New Deploy Peace Site

    Deploy+Peace+New Page 01 Social Media ROI for Non Profits A Case Study By Aaron Bramley

    2. Their MySpace page was completely redesigned. A Facebook Page was added. The Deploy Peace Blog was created. Since this technology is new to Deploy Peace, a Social Media Boot Camp will be scheduled soon.

    3. The press was contacted with Deploy Peace’s story and it was picked up several times locally and a few times nationally.

    The Results

    1. The new site was launched on the 9th of December. A moderate upswing in site traffic followed. Then hits slowed until the CNN interview. That’s the dramatic spike. (Click on the graphs to make them bigger.)

1st Social Media ROI for Non Profits A Case Study By Aaron Bramley

2nd Social Media ROI for Non Profits A Case Study By Aaron BramleyThe rest of the Top Content list gives us some great clues about what people like.

  • People like the Hendrix Necklace best.
  • Kennedy is their second favorite.
  • People like burgundy and sand more than olive.

    • since+CNN+top+content Social Media ROI for Non Profits A Case Study By Aaron Bramley

2. Conversion is 1.5%. based on how many people visited the site vs. how many people visited the merchandise cart and did not exit. This give us no clue about how much stuff people bought when they did check out.

    since+CNN+top+content+2 Social Media ROI for Non Profits A Case Study By Aaron Bramley

    The social media

    1. Facebook

    facebook+visitors Social Media ROI for Non Profits A Case Study By Aaron Bramley

    They got 56 views to their Page and 12 new friends from the CNN interview. It’s also good to know that 56 of the people who exited the Deploy Peace site, probably did so to look at their Facebook Page.

    Robin+quote Social Media ROI for Non Profits A Case Study By Aaron Bramley

    You can also check out some demographic data for the Fans of the organization on Facebook. This could be enlightening once they build some more connections.

    facebook+fans Social Media ROI for Non Profits A Case Study By Aaron Bramley

    The blog had a decent increase in traffic too.

    blog+views Social Media ROI for Non Profits A Case Study By Aaron Bramley

    Once Deploy Peace reports their sales figures, I will share those with John so that we can all begin to understand ROI of CNN interviews and social media’s effect on the media and ROI a little better.

Aaron Bramley is a communicator and a collaborator using social media for social movement. He does this through his jobs as the Director of Digital Media for Tucson, Arizona-basedRidgewood Associates Public Relations, Inc., the Director of Communications for the Austin Museum of Digital Art, and a Citizen of Planet Earth.

This entry is the result of three posts on Aaron’s Blog and should not be reproduce with out his permission.

If you found this post useful, please leave a comment, subscribe, or find out how I can help your non-profit. Thanks.

Posted January 26, 2009
  • Social Media ROI for Non-Profits - A Case Study By Aaron Bramley http://tinyurl.com/cq2hdu
  • I understand all the challenges, especiallywith limited staff/time and resources.
  • John,

    I really enjoyed this post, and your blog in general.

    I'm really pleased to see that some of the most creative social media experimentation is taking place in the nonprofit sector.

    What I like about this article is that it starts to help people look at 'hard' measures for understanding the benefits of all this 'soft' stuff.
  • Hi MikQ,

    The way that I usually "brand" social media to my clients is that it's 'word of mouth for the 21st century.' Now, being weary of the apprehension against the 'new' terminology, I think that looking at this as simply word of mouth might be useful to you.

    Personally, I can't even count the number of conversations that I have in a day that end with "I'll send you a link." What social media does is begin that conversation on a platform where the link is easily accessibility and easily shared throughout any number of communities.

    I also understand where you're coming from when you talk about Web know-how and limited Web access in your client-base. I'm currently working on using social media for a literacy initiative, a subdivision of the community with very little facility with the web. We've come up with some interesting solutions that I will share with John once they're ready to be made public.

    In the meantime, I'll say that whatever your NGO is, members of the general public are talking about you, your client-base, or your cause already. The only way know what they're saying, have access to those supporters, or even raise funds among that global network is to participate, experiment, and open up your organization to the world. Good luck!

    Did that answer your question? If you have any more, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer them.
  • this is something I'm trying to wrangle with in an Australian context, particularly with geographically and/or demographically focused NGOs (as opposed to issues focused ones). at the local level tho', web resources are very low, which then impacts on web know-how. even me, I'm just a community development practitioner with limited social media experience.

    but, the biggest dilemma i come up across is the 'branding' of social media. the organisations i work with generally are sick to death of 'new' approaches to helping them build capacity.

    community development? capacity building? sustainable social ecologies? social capital (dare i say it)? to me they're one and the same, just hijacked terms of different generations.

    me, I'm an Asset Based Community Development zealot. i understand its all same-same, and i think I'm pretty good at the 'hard sell' - but will social media be any different, to a community who is already skeptical about how much the media's audience really cares?
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