In order to stay current and top of mind among target audiences, travel brands must deliver itinerary-worthy digital content to inspire and book visitors from around the globe. Photos and videos of breathtaking scenic views, guests clinking glasses over happy hour, and detailed descriptions of iconic attractions all have the power to instantly transport viewers to the destination of their dreams. Sharing bits and pieces of what travelers can expect on location helps brands maintain relevance for prospective visitors. This way, the next time someone is contemplating making a trip, specific hotels, cities, and activities are competitive contenders in the vetting and planning process. Here’s a look at how creative travel brands use the power of social media year-round to demonstrate what their distinct destinations have to offer, both virtually and in-person.

Methodology

For this assessment, we took a look at some of the most successful destination travel accounts online. We selected a number of travel and tourism destinations active on Instagram between June 1, 2019 and May 31, 2020 that outperformed the Instagram engagement rate benchmark of 1.01% for Hotels & Resorts from our 2021 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report. We also teamed up with VERB Interactive, an award-winning interactive creative agency with a strong travel and tourism portfolio, to feature a few of their most notable online case studies today.

In our analysis, four brands immediately rose to the top of the list: Cody Yellowstone and Hilton Head, both managed by VERB, as well as Visit Laramie and Tourism Ireland. After assessing their best-performing content during this yearlong period, here are some of the notable trends and best practices that emerged.

Crowdsource High Quality Photos

I’m sitting in my office in San Antonio, Texas, but suddenly I can detect a cool breeze blowing from my phone screen. As I scroll the ‘gram, my real surroundings fade into the background and I’m immediately transported onto a dusty, remote road in the middle of Cody, Wyoming. I’m not hallucinating, I’m simply exploring one facet of the social media home of Cody Yellowstone: an all-encompassing destination designed to explore the rugged adventure, warmth, and charm of The Wild West.

Offering fresh air and wide-open spaces, Cody Yellowstone is a refuge for travelers to find peace while communing with nature. For many, this is a much-needed reprieve from the daily grind of never-ending responsibilities and stress. Using imagery to evoke a serious case of FOMO (fear of missing out) for online visitors, Cody Yellowstone uses Instagram to keep tourism alive and well.

The social media team behind Cody Yellowstone zeroed in on an effective tactic to dramatically enhance the aesthetic of their feed while simultaneously increasing engagement. Their secret? Sharing pictures taken by both professional and skilled amateur photographers.

Subject or photographer? Originally posted as part of the ongoing #WildlifeWednesday campaign and reshared at the end of the year during the #12DaysofCodyYellowstone campaign, this bison steals the show with a sky-high engagement rate by follower of a whopping 25.6%.

With Yellowstone National Park as Cody Yellowstone’s backyard, there is no shortage of incredibly talented photographers with a good eye and professional equipment capturing stunning imagery in the wilderness.

With the knowledge that many people who visit the region visually document their experiences, VERB created a campaign with the hashtag #WildlifeWednesday to invite photo submissions and encourage friendly competition and sharing among creatives. If chosen, the creator has a chance to be featured on Cody Yellowstone’s Instagram account, broadcasting their name and good work to a predisposed willing audience.

Once selected, Cody Yellowstone confirms they have permission to share and appropriately credits the creator on each post with the corresponding campaign hashtag. As far as compensating these talented photographers, the arrangement is based on mutual exposure as opposed to a financial transaction. “These creators generously let us share their photos as long as we provide credit and amp them up a bit while also amping up Cody Yellowstone,” said VERB.

According to the social media management team, they feel lucky that there are so many people who are willing to share their photos. “Plus, it’s just dumb luck that the town happens to be one of the most beautiful places in the world,” said VERB.

This mutually beneficial transaction is a win-win for both parties. Cody Yellowstone gets to use stunning photography without having to allocate time and budget to create it on their own, and each photographer gets brand exposure to Cody Yellowstone’s large Instagram audience of 48.4K followers.

In the example above, it’s not often that one sees a bison taking a photograph in the wild. While this picture is an effective engagement driver because it is a great image, it also scores major points for humor and creativity. It’s no wonder it received a mind-blowing 25.6% engagement rate per follower.

Notably, Cody Yellowstone launches a countdown campaign called the #12DaysofCodyYellowstone at the end of every calendar year. A play on the 12 Days of Christmas, the series is posted over 12 days in December to highlight best-of moments and images recapping the previous year. Interestingly enough, over half of Cody Yellowstone’s top ten performing social media posts from 2019 were associated with the #12DaysofCodyYellowstone campaign, and all of the posts featured photos taken by third party photographers.

While the high engagement rate speaks for itself, Cody Yellowstone also has several anecdotal examples from its audience that highlight why this series is so successful. Not only do creators like vying for the opportunity to be featured, the audience loves the content as well. This became especially apparent in 2020, as the audience made it clear that Cody Yellowstone is a bright spot for them in an otherwise impossibly difficult pandemic year. “We regularly see comments from people saying ‘this is a real source of joy for me during COVID,’” said VERB.

Push Calls-to-Action to Encourage Audience Engagement and Participation

If you’ve ever visited Hilton Head Island, you’ve likely returned more than once. In fact, this South Carolina oasis is known as a premier destination for annual beach family gatherings and frequent weekend getaways (if you’re lucky enough to live close by). For many folks, Hilton Head isn’t just a location, it is the steady backdrop of a lifetime of happy memories. “Hilton Head Island is a destination people return to year after year for family traditions and to make memories. We’ve seen people share stories of how they’ve been going 50 years and they now bring their grandkids,” said VERB.

These long-standing, generational traditions make it unsurprising that Hilton Head Island has a robust social media presence with over 55.7k Instagram followers, 21.6k Twitter followers, and over 230k likes on Facebook.

Consequently, visitors have a strong personal connection to the island, considering the “Lowcountry” to be a way of life, instead of merely a regional descriptor of the area along the South Carolina coast.

To guests and locals alike, Hilton Head Island is a sacred place and synonymous with relaxation. That is one of the reasons why VERB has tremendous success showcasing soothing sunset views over the ocean. Many of their top-performing posts have impressive engagement rates by follower that exceed the industry benchmark, like this Facebook post with a 9.6% engagement rate.

Hilton Head Island’s accounts are full of imagery like this depicting the destination’s natural beauty, and VERB prioritizes posting real photos over official branded content to maintain authenticity. That said, the strategy doesn’t stop there. To take things up a notch, VERB designed a strong call-to-action engagement strategy so people will join the conversation. Hilton Head enthusiasts are typically strongly motivated to share their experiences with equally enthusiastic peers, and also prove that they’re part of the fabric of the island.

By simply putting a call-to-action in the photo caption asking followers to like, share, tag, and respond, Hilton Head Island sparks audience engagement and stories about the island begin pouring in. This approach helps boost analytics that are important to Hilton Head Island, such as tracking audience growth year over year and month over month, as well as changes to engagement rates and social referrals driving traffic to the website. In this case, the ask to “double-tap” generated an engagement rate by follower of 8.59%.

Promote Community-Specific Social and Cultural Moments

With just a few clicks of the trackpad, we head back out West. This time, stopping to explore the vast social media realm of Laramie, Wyoming.

Like its northwest neighbors in Cody, Visit Laramie posts its fair share of imagery that celebrates the region’s beauty. However, by expanding their content strategy to include cultural moments that celebrate the community at large, Visit Laramie depicts a holistic picture of what it’s really like to be in “Laradise.”

Visit Laramie’s mission is to highlight the vibrancy of this western college town with a lot to offer in terms of its rich history, culture, and abundance of activities. College football reigns supreme every fall, especially when hosting the Wyoming State Football Championship playoffs at the Jonah Field at War Memorial Stadium, the football stadium on the campus of the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

This sponsorship announcement drew the attention of players, parents, coaches, and fans while earning Visit Laramie a staggering engagement rate by follower of 29.7%.

Appeal to Fandom Subculture in a Timely Manner

From the silver screen to binge-worthy shows on streaming platforms, television and movies are known for captivating audiences. A combination of storytelling, realistic acting, and camera work has a way of drawing the viewer in, creating super fans in the process. At the turn of the century, a cultural phenomenon known as “movie-induced tourism” was born. This trend, in which the choice of the tourist destination is directly motivated and inspired by the movies, helps moviegoers and TV buffs recreate the cinematic experience in person to relive movie-driven emotions at the film’s location. What was true back then is also true today. When a particular town or region serves as the backdrop for a popular show, a burst of tourism is sure to follow.

A few months into the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Tourism Ireland seized the opportunity to promote the wildly popular novel and Hulu/BBC drama series Normal People on their YouTube account, Discover Ireland. As worldwide lockdowns and travel restrictions brought the travel and tourism industry to a screeching halt, over 273,000 people tuned in from home for a virtual behind-the-scenes look into Normal People.

This form of video content earned Tourism Ireland an all-time high engagement rate by follower of 8.13%. The video resonated with audiences for a number of reasons, but primarily because there was a built-in audience ready to consume content aligned with their interests, and the timing was spot on. While large swaths of people binge-watched TV series, desperately yearning to see something other than the four walls of their living room, Tourism Ireland delivered behind-the-scenes footage that a large group of fans could instantly devour while hopefully waiting for a better day to come.

Wrapping It Up

With so many incredible places in the world to visit, destination travel and tourism brands have their fair share of work cut out for them on social media in order to earn their share of visitors. However, tried-and-true methods like evoking emotion, encouraging audience engagement, celebrate unique destination traits, and piggybacking on meaningful cultural moments are surefire ways to stand out in the travel social media crowd.

The post Your Next Destination Awaits Via Travel Social Media appeared first on Rival IQ.

And yet, that’s exactly what some of the country’s top c-store locations have become, with their positive reputations only growing through the powerful vehicle of social media.

Standout convenience store marketing transcends geographic limitations by smartly captivating audiences on social networks. We turned to the data to discover how best-in-class performers remain top of mind among target audiences, and reveal the social media trends and strategies that catapult them to the convenience store marketing hall of fame. Here are our findings.

The Convenience Store Top 20 Market Landscape

For our analysis, we evaluated 20 convenience stores profiled in the 2020 C-Store Digital Ranking and rated their social media performance relative to audience, activity, engagement, and top content over a six-month period. We focused our assessment on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

We surveyed top-performing convenience stores on social media between January 1, 2020 and June 30, 2020 on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Using this data and a weighted formula, we generated an overall engagement ranking for each c-store. The top-ranked convenience stores on social media have high engagement rates with average or better audience size and posting volumes.

We define engagement as measurable interaction on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, and reactions. Engagement rate is defined as the total engagement divided by the number of followers.

As you can see below, Kwik Trip is the front-runner, edging out the competition by outperforming in overall rank and score, as well as claiming the top spot for Facebook and Instagram respectively. Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores and Kum & Go weren’t far behind in overall rankings, clutching second and third place in our landscape. Our content deep dive revealed the reasons why these brands dominate the convenience store marketing landscape.

While Kwik Trip may be in the lead, other c-store brands deploy notable marketing strategies to firmly put their names on the map. Here are a couple of trend takeaways we observed.

Top Trend #1: Fan-favorite partnerships for a cause

To surprise and delight fans, top-performing convenience stores join forces with powerful brands to create unbeatable partnerships. For example, Kum & Go and Budweiser recently launched their first-ever merchandise collaboration: a limited-edition T-shirt and tank top.

The clever campaign is branded as “World’s Best Buds,” which is eye-catching and humorous enough that target audiences for both brands would reasonably want to acquire these pieces for their wardrobe. That said, it’s also a powerful corporate social responsibility story for both companies. As part of Budweiser’s partnership with Folds of Honor, all proceeds from the sales will go towards educational scholarships to families of fallen and disabled soldiers. Using social media to promote these products and the program at large earned significant engagement, to the tune of 4.6K likes on Twitter.

Similarly, Ohio-based convenience store United Dairy Farmers partners with USL Championship soccer club FC Cincinnati to raise awareness for the team’s philanthropic arm, the FC Cincinnati Foundation.

By posting mouth-watering product shots on social media, United Dairy Farmers encourages customers to stop in for a scoop of Caramel Pretzel Kick ice cream. A percentage of each sale goes to the FC Cincinnati Foundation, which aims to improve the lives of children in the Greater Cincinnati area through the game of soccer.

This online promotion worked well for UDF with a 4.34% engagement rate by follower, boosting awareness and sales for both United Dairy Farmers and the Foundation. These types of posts are popular among fans because customers can score a sweet treat while also supporting their local team and community.

Top Trend #2: Going the extra mile during COVID-19

By the time COVID-19 swept through the United States in March, increased e-commerce consumption by end consumers required more mid-mile transportation. As truck drivers delivered vital goods to families across the country, Oklahoma-based Love’s Travel Stops and Country Stores wanted to express their gratitude.

Teaming up with vendors, Love’s took to social to offer truck drivers a $5 coupon as a token of appreciation to be used at any Love’s for in-store purchases. In addition to simply providing goodwill during an unprecedented pandemic, Love’s also used social to incentivize professional drivers to stop at their locations over competitors. Especially as the coronavirus pandemic created a sense of shared difficult circumstances and communities supported one another, this message was particularly timely and well-received at the time of posting.

While the pandemic increased demand for certain industries, others were not as fortunate. Practically overnight, many people quickly saw reduced hours and lost jobs across the world. 7-Eleven USA immediately took to social media to promote current job openings, suggesting that people facing reduced hours at work could find secondary or new employment with 7-Eleven. The brand’s Facebook post (which was likely boosted with social media advertising) earned over 73,000 positive reactions and many comments thanking the company for providing opportunities during the pandemic.

Compare your performance to top convenience stores with live benchmarks.

Explore live C-store benchmarks

Kwik Trip is the Landscape Leader in Total Social Engagement

In theory, one wouldn’t think a convenience store would inspire brand loyalty. They’re all pretty interchangeable, no? Gas, check. Food and drink, check. Clean restrooms, check (well, if you’re lucky). Ask any Kwik Trip enthusiast, and you’ll soon learn not all convenience stores are created equal.

With more than 700 locations across Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, family-owned Kwik Trip is a favorite among Midwesterners and has the social media track record to prove it. After all, their 964K total engagements across all channels are head and shoulders above the landscape average of 126K.

Kwik Trip really knows their audience

Affectionately known as KT by loyal patrons, Kwik Trip knows what its fandom wants and serves on-brand content to both delight followers and fan the subculture flames. Best known for its friendly customer service, clean restrooms, high-quality food, and signature catchphrase, “See you next time!”, KT is more than a convenience store, but a place customers identify as part of their lifestyle.

KT could teach a master class in social engagement with one fundamental takeaway: Prioritize getting to know and listening to your customer base.

The brand is intimately familiar with its audience. They know fans will go out of their way to bypass competitors, even if that means sacrificing the convenience of other store options along the way. They know customers crave products they can’t get anywhere else, whether it be Kwikery cookies, pothole pizzas, glazers, or roller dogs. They know fans have a strong allegiance to the brand and a competitive spirit, believing KT to the superior choice on the road. Most of all, they know they talk about their KT passion among friends in person and on social media.

All of this means KT can confidently post jokes and shared sentiments they know will resonate with their fans. Just look at this top performing tweet with a 3.4K total engagements and a 6.63% engagement rate by follower.

Nice try, Chicago.

The approach, which may seem simple and even random to an outsider, works well for the audience that truly “gets” KT.

Inspiring the audience to share

As evidenced in the example above, KT consistently uses a witty, deadpan tone of voice. This personifies the brand, turning the convenience store into a familiar voice that customers often agree with, respect, and seek out. By sharing relatable points of view, the audience is invited to join the conversation, resulting in fans flooding the comments section with opinions and stories of their own.

For example, this humorous post triggered nearly 700 comments and 700 shares, as well as a slew of meaningful user-generated content.

The clever quip quickly turned nostalgic as readers shared funny and endearing stories of personal date nights past and present. By creating a space for followers to feel comfortable sharing, the brand strengthens its bond with consumers.

Humorous Kum & Go Crushes It on Twitter

Overwhelmingly, we found the convenience stores with the most effective online presence use an authentic and humorous approach to social content and engagement. After all, liking or following a company, especially a convenience store, is inherently kind of odd, right? Therefore infusing content with witty humor is the best way to make a corporate presence something worth talking about. It also goes without saying that the goal of any social media effort is to capture the target audience’s attention. If a brand posts great content and no one responds, something is wrong.

Iowa-based Kum & Go, another family-owned operation with 400 stores in 11 states, does not have this problem. The brand has some of the highest engagement rate by follower on Twitter in the landscape, with the average number of interactions per follower clocking in at 2.3%. Kum & Go’s average engagement rate by follower is exceptionally high when compared to other brands on our list who are falling behind with a median of just 0.13%.

With a name like Kum & Go, you definitely can’t take yourself too seriously. Luckily, Kum & Go has established an engaging and exciting presence by using creative and sometimes crude humor to successfully get the Twitterverse’s attention. Exhibit A:

It’s silly, it’s fun, it makes people want to RT. For reference, this tweet has a 12.2% engagement rate by follower, which is approximately five times greater than their average tweet.

High engagement rates now create higher engagement rates later

Much like when a stand-up comedian interacts with audience members during the show, Kum & Go applies the same philosophy to Twitter. People can either follow Kum & Go as a passive spectator, or engage to truly be part of the community. Many choose to engage.

Recently, Kum & Go ran a campaign asking followers to share their astrological sign and favorite food in exchange for a customized convenience store name. Kum & Go actually replied to nearly every single person for ten hours straight. The significant time investment pays dividends: the more frequently they earn engagement on the “fun” tweets, the more likely they are to get a similar level of engagement on more traditional business messages related to corporate social responsibility, product marketing, and news announcements.

Convenient conclusions

The moral of the convenience store marketing story is: superior brand development, memorable products and service, and diehard customer loyalty directly contribute to putting top convenience stores on the map (both literally and figuratively). Those with the strongest points of differentiation, both offline and online, often attract loyal, lifetime customers; and reaching them through social media could not be more convenient.

If you’re hungry for even more stats or are ready to start comparing your performance against these top c-stores, start a free 14-day trial with Rival IQ.

Did we miss your favorite convenience store, or do you just want to tell us what your convenience store name is? Let us know on Twitter!

The post Top Convenience Stores on Social Media appeared first on Rival IQ.

What started out as a small group of volunteers with a love of the outdoors, has become Washington state’s most trusted leader in regional land conservation and sustainability.

Forterra’s key objectives are:

• Acquire keystone lands in Washington state. From old growth to the highest mountaintops in the Cascades, Forterra has completed over 400 land deals covering more than 250,000 square acres. Their projects have ranged from protecting farmlands from becoming subdivisions, saving property in the heart of the city for affordable housing, and securing funds to purchase land that has sustained the region’s most popular and scenic hiking spots.  
• Care and develop keystone lands. With the help of local partnerships, the Green City Partnership Program, and community volunteers they restore, maintain, and care for the lands they acquire.
• Create livelihoods in keystone lands. From working with city planners to develop sustainable urban areas to backing sustainable building materials and securing funding, Forterra works with a wide range of groups to increase economic potential.

Saving the Lake Serene Hiking Trail

Just an hour long drive north of Seattle, the Lake Serene hiking trail is one of Washington’s most popular hiking destinations. Take a 4.1-mile hike on an old logging road up a series of thigh-busting stairs to find yourself surrounded by towering cliffs and staring across a placid alpine lake.

Another great experience from 2017 was helping save the Lake serene trail. @forterranw raised $275,000 to keep it from being logged close to the trail. #savelakeserene #forthisplace #northwestnature #northwestcoast #northwestlife #northwest #pnwlife #skykomishvalley #skykomish #king5explore #q13fox #kiro7seattle #komoloz #adventurevisuals #thatpnwlife #pnwonderland #wanderfolk #beautifuldestinations #pnwcollective #hikingadventures #hike #hiking #bridalveilfalls

A post shared by Brian Kilpatrick (@kilpatrickphotography) on Dec 6, 2017 at 6:43am PST

Weyerhaeuser, one of the world’s largest owners of timberlands, owned a quarter-mile portion of the timberland that borders the Lake Serene hiking trail. The trees that run along the trail were scheduled to be clear-cut over a year-long period beginning in fall 2017.

Even though Weyerhaeuser would replant after harvesting their trees, clear-cutting would leave a massive bald spot along one of Washington state’s most beloved day hikes for years to come. This kind threat falls right into Forterra’s wheelhouse.

Forterra decided they wanted to purchase the land from Weyerhaeuser to preserve the forest within 500 feet surrounding the popular hiking trail, but they needed money. A lot of money. Weyerhaeuser was willing to sell the land at the market value of $800,000 US dollars.

So, Forterra put their resources to work. They reached out to their community partners and connections securing $405,000 from the Snohomish County Conservation Futures Program. An anonymous donor agreed to match donations up to $75,000, but they still needed to raise $275,000 before October 30, 2017 (it was mid-August). 

Amazingly, with the help of over 600 contributing hikers and climbers, they reached their goal! They purchased the land from Weyerhaeuser, protecting the forest from ever being logged.

But, how did they do it?

Certainly, there were many contributors to their success in raising awareness and the funds they needed to save Lake Serene. It’s worth noting a few social media marketing tactics they used to help them cross the finish line.

Tell a story

When you plan on running a social media campaign, one of the first questions you need to ask yourself is “which social channels will be most impactful for achieving my objective?” (assuming you’ve already defined your objective). Forterra shared posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for this campaign which were good choices because these channels are:

• Great for engaging with communities (ie. Facebook Groups)
• Popular for driving a lot of conversation (hashtags and mentions)
• Intentionally built for generating excitement around events
• Designed for easy sharing
• Effective at educating people

No matter your objective, capturing your audience requires good storytelling. We more easily absorb information from stories because they engage us. We want to know what happens next. Stories use emotion and personal connections to inspire action.

In this campaign, Forterra used video to tell a powerful story in a short amount of time.

Choosing your media type

A joint study by Neilsen and Facebook found that people who simply see an impression (<1 second) of a video without actually watching the video were still impacted by the ad. In the first second of Forterra’s video, they stated their objective, “Save the Lake Serene trail.” That is the message that people will remember even if they just scroll by, so make sure to get to the point early in your social video to increase engagement.

In this video, they tell their story and keep it brief, which is perfect for social. They distill their problem, what they hope to achieve, and the call to action in 30 seconds. Simultaneously, they use imagery in the background that illustrates the beauty of the area at risk. They also manage to tug at the heartstrings by showing video clips of families enjoying their outdoor adventures on the trail.

Embrace the dark side 

What is dark social media, you ask? Coined in 2012 by former deputy editor of The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal, dark social refers to “the portion of referral traffic that lacks the information to trace it back to its source and is essentially invisible to most analytics programs.” When people share content on private channels, such as email and instant messengers, it’s considered dark social. Madrigal estimates that roughly 70% of social referrals come from dark social. 

Think about the last time you shared a link to blog with a friend in Facebook’s native messenger or via email because you didn’t want the world to know that you’re into craft shows. That’s dark social. The primary takeaway is that there is a lot of valuable activity happening that you can’t track. There are over 1.37 billion daily active users on Facebook every day. Although you can’t track dark social, it has the potential to pack a ton of value, so keep this in mind when you’re reporting on the impact of your social media campaign. 

Social tracking headaches

On a related note, to help social markets track their campaigns better, we recommend that you always use UTM parameters in your social media posts. Sometimes, even UTM’s can get a little messy when people begin sharing urls on the internet.

To help wrap your mind around what we mean, let’s say your organization sends an email to your subscribers with a link to donate to your cause. One of your subscribers copies the donation link in your email, pastes it in a Facebook post, and shares it with a Facebook group to help spread the word. Awesome! Except that it’s going to be tracked as traffic from your email campaign, not from Facebook. This is because the URL they shared in the Facebook post still has the email UTM parameters attached to it. 

This is exactly what happened in Forterra’s ‘Save Lake Serene’ social campaign. Here’s a screenshot of a Facebook post in a public Washington Hikers Facebook group.

Check out the social engagement metrics in this post:

• 23 comments
• 27 shares!!!
• 143 reactions

This post generated incredible organic engagement! Imagine if just one of these 27 shares was as successful as this Facebook post. The reach of this post has the potential to grow exponentially, but it’s not accurately tracked. This is one of the reasons why accurately tracking the ROI of social media campaigns can be really difficult.

We decided to dig deeper to see if we could discover anything else about where this post came from.

Here’s the link that was shared in this Facebook post:

Notice anything?

We clicked on the link in this post and found that the Forterra’s email campaign UTM parameters were still attached to the link. It’s likely that this user subscribes to Forterra’s emails and copied this link from an email campaign. If this is true, this also means that Forterra’s Google Analytics will report that all the traffic generated from this social post (and traffic from its shares) came from the email campaign, not the social media post. So, the traffic generated from this post will have attribution metrics, they’ll just be incorrect at no fault of Forterra. Double bummer.

You may feel that attempting to track your social media campaigns is pointless, but we’d argue the opposite. Regardless of dark social and misattribution, your message is still reaching the right folks and making an impact.

Seek out public and private social communities to find audiences who are most likely to make a difference and share your content. To help curve the misattribution problem, ask your followers to share specific links on different channels. Justifying social media can be tough, but you should still report on the activity you can track and keep in mind that your efforts have likely made a bigger splash than you can prove. That’s a good problem to have.

Drive momentum by sharing your goal progress

Your followers will notice when you share a new post every week about how close you’re getting to reaching your goal. That’s exactly what Forterra did. As more partners and supporters committed to donations, Forterra made sure their base knew about it by posting about it on Facebook and Twitter.

Here’s a Facebook post from September 26, 2017, when a community donor offered to match up to $75,000 in donations. By sharing your progress, your audience will be energized by the momentum of your organization and the likelihood that they will share your content (and donate) increases.

Call supporters out by name!

Calling supporters out by name and sharing their content encourages more engagement and builds trust in your relationship. Share the UGC warm-fuzzies when someone writes a blog, snaps a high-quality image, or shares your content.

Collaborate with partners

As they say, “many hands make light work.” It’s almost always worth the extra effort to collaborate with partners, vendors, local businesses, and organizations who have a similar audience to help amplify your message and reduce the workload. 

As a conservation organization, Forterra is well-versed in partnerships. They were able to mobilize quickly with the support of their community, nonprofits, outdoor retailers, local breweries, and other active partners to help save Lake Serene. They know that their audience is active and that they love the outdoors, free gear, and craft beer (welcome to the PNW).

Here’s a list of events they co-hosted with a few of their community partners to help raise awareness and money.

Concerts at the Co-op

In the month of August, REI planned a concert every Thursday to celebrate a life outdoors. Forterra came to discuss their cause, increase awareness and energize attendees to get behind the cause.

Guided tours of Lake Serene

REI also lead a guided hike up the Lake Serene trail. They organized this hike as a fun and interactive way to show what could be lost, to educate people about what Forterra was trying to accomplish, and to teach people about the history of the land.

REI also hosted the event on their Hiking and Camping Classes & Events page.

Happy Hour at Fremont Brewing

Working with Seattle-based Fremont Brewing, they hosted a happy hour event to raise awareness and money. They also gave away some pretty awesome swag!

On the Facebook event page, they made sure to communicate what each individual could do to help the cause.

“With a $45+ tax-deductible donation to save the Lake Serene trail, you’ll receive an exclusive member patch! The first 200 patch members to the happy hour will receive a special treat from the brewery! Learn more and donate at www.saveserene.org.“

You don’t want to surprise people or make them feel as though they were baited and switched. Spell out what you’re looking for upfront when you host events.

Ask for help

You won’t get help if you don’t ask for it. Forterra wasn’t shy about asking for help from their audience. In blogs, press releases, articles and on social media they asked their followers, supporters, and readers to help spread the word about their mission and their goal.

Nonprofits understand that some supporters don’t have extra money to give, but they can help raise awareness and share the message with their friends, family, and social networks. For those who couldn’t make a monetary donation, they wised up and asked for them to spread the message about what they were doing in an effort to reach a wider range of people with similar interests.

Here was their alternative ask:

People interested in helping to save Lake Serene Trail can learn more and donate at forterra.org/serene.

People who visit Serene, or have in the past, are encouraged to help spread the word over social media:

• Use #SaveLakeSerene with photos and posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
• Use the geotag “Lake Serene–Bridal Veil Falls” when you share your photos
• Tag your photos with three friends you’ve hiked with or would like to hike with to raise awareness

Thank your supporters!

It goes without saying that raising $250,000 takes a massive community with a lot of love, and nobody could do this alone. Forterra took on a huge challenge and brought the right people to the table to achieve what they set out to do. Without the supporters, this never could have been done. Forterra understands the hard work and commitment it takes and they made sure their supporters were recognized for their contributions, participation, and activism in spreading the word.

It was just as much of an achievement for their community as it was for them, and they gave credit where it was due.

Want to get involved? Here’s what’s next.

The next project in Forterra’s the campaign is to secure the 320-acre Maloney Creek property in the town of Skykomish. The Washington Trails Association and Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance have flagged a suite of new hiking and mountain biking trails that depart from an in-town trailhead and work up the scenic Maloney Ridge.

Forterra’s will help secure the keystone land. The property includes old growth, a critical habitat for endangered species, and protects the watershed above the town of Skykomish. 

If you have any questions about the project, you can contact Michael Beneke, the VP of Communications at Forterra at 206-204-8059 (office) or email him at mbeneke@forterra.org.

Follow Forterra on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter to keep up on what projects they’re working on!

**Featured Photo Credit- Brian Kilpatrick of One Summit Media

Editor’s note: All of Forterra’s hard work paid off! In October 2018, Forterra acquired the last privately-held piece of the Lake Serene Trail. Congratulations to all involved!

The post Forterra Uses Social Media to Help Save A Washington Treasure appeared first on Rival IQ.

The Canadian Olympic Committee is responsible for all aspects of Canadian involvement in the Olympic Games. The committee is not only critical to preparing athletes for the Olympic Games, but they’re also committed to providing comprehensive services to Olympic athletes.

A post shared by Canadian Olympic Team (@teamcanada) on Aug 28, 2017 at 1:57pm PDT

The digital team within the Canadian Olympic Committee oversees the fan experience, always ensuring the Team Canada brand is elevated and its athletes’ stories are told. They engage Canadians globally, publishing a constant stream of content covering over 500 athletes worldwide.

The Canadian Olympic Committee’s challenge

In 2014, the digital team needed to understand their competition. As social media emerged as a critical component of sponsorship proposals, as well as a growing method for engaging Canadian fans, the Committee wanted to benchmark themselves against other sources of information on Olympic athletes.

How Rival IQ was the perfect solution

Digital Director Georgia Sapounas’ team produces content at an impressive rate. It’s not surprising considering the staff is following over 500 Canadian athletes competing around the globe in preparation for and during the Olympic Games. “All eyes are on us,” says Sapounas, “we do our best to be fast, be first, and be accurate.” The volume of content combined with the need to move quickly means it is critical for them to invest in content that performs well. The team measures themselves by the level of fan engagement.

“All eyes are on us,” says Sapounas, “we do our best to be fast, be first, and be accurate.”

Understanding engagement is where Sapounas and team turned to Rival IQ. Each month they take time to review reports that show what’s worked and what hasn’t. “We chose Rival IQ because it allows us to compare our performance against large brands, Canadian media outlets, and other National Olympic teams,” says Sapounas.

“We chose Rival IQ because it allows us to compare our performance against large brands, Canadian media outlets, and other National Olympic teams,” says Sapounas, “we’re able to see what’s succeeding and how we can tweak and do it even better.”

While the team knows to focus their effort on what’s entertaining and exciting, there’s more nuance to what they create and share. With Rival IQ the team can determine how to engage the maximum number of Canadians inside and outside the Games. But the team doesn’t stop with engagement.

How far would you make it?! ? // Jusqu’où vous rendriez-vous ?! ??‍#Repost @kelseyserwa: Straight up ballin ? #alwaysgoodtimes ?: @dunc_ski

A post shared by Canadian Olympic Team (@teamcanada) on Sep 19, 2017 at 8:31am PDT

Georgia and her team can translate that engagement metric into real ROI by turning social followers into fan club members. The fan club, Canadian Olympic Club, gives fans an even more in-depth look into the run-up to the Olympics along with rewards and recognition. Each week top fans rise up the leaderboard and are recognized.

Leading National Olympic Teams globally on social media

The digital team has used the insights from Rival IQ to place themselves at the top of social media. They lead National Olympic Teams globally with the highest engagement per capita. Each year they move the needle significantly on their engagement, most recently increasing Facebook and Twitter engagement rates by over 300%.

Between the engagement on social channels and the passion of the Canadian Olympic Club members, it’s a compelling story that Sapounas can share with partners. Sapounas relies on Rival IQ to tell that story. “With Rival IQ, we’re able to paint a picture of how we stay ahead of the curve,” said Sapounas. The value their social channels provide is exceptional.

The post The Canadian Olympic Committee Grew Engagement by 300% appeared first on Rival IQ.

Founded in 1935 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, it has grown to serve over 350,000 members nationwide. Using Rival IQ, Alliant Credit Union has been able to enhance their social strategy, engage their audience, and celebrate successes.

Alliant Credit Union’s challenge

Credit unions face a unique challenge to engage and satisfy member-owners, ensuring that their relationship with the credit union deepens. For Alliant, social media has become an essential part of their communication strategy, helping them to engage their members and foster a sense of community. They rely on social to educate customers, celebrate member successes, build brand awareness, and grow their membership.

In 2016, the Marketing and Digital Strategy Team understood that to get more out of social media, they needed to invest in tools to better understand their competition.

“With Rival IQ’s Facebook Insights, it’s easier to search, customize, and create an impactful social report.” said Maggie Tomasek, public relations & social media specialist at Alliant Credit Union.

How Rival IQ was the perfect solution

After evaluating several tools, the Alliant team landed on Rival IQ. “All the pieces fell into place with Rival IQ,” says Maggie Tomasek, public relations & social media specialist, “it’s user-friendly, easy to set up, and would serve us beyond a competitive audit.” Tomasek and team have been able to utilize the platform to report each month on the competition and draw insights that are directly reflected in the Alliant editorial calendar.

The team also relies on Rival IQ to report on their own performance, making it easier to find exactly what they need versus using native social tools. Rival IQ has become a part of their planning, and strategic exercises as the team learns how to engage their audience more effectively.

Alliant delivering social results

Each month as the team builds the editorial calendar they extract insight from their competitors to determine how to improve their approach. The insight has lead to dramatic changes for Alliant.

By refining their social strategy, the team has increased engagement per tweet by over 130%. Along with the competitive view, Tomasek looks to Rival IQ to dive deeper into Facebook data. She’s been able to translate that knowledge into doubling Alliant’s Facebook reach – no small feat. “With Rival IQ’s Facebook Insights it’s easier to search, customize, and create an impactful report,” said Tomasek.

For long-term strategy, the team expanded their use of Rival IQ to look at brands that leverage social media well. Most recently the team expanded onto Instagram. With Rival IQ, they were able to do the research and learn from the best. They’ve used it to get a sense of what growth would look like, what posting tactics brands use, and how they could make changes to get the biggest impact.

“My favorite feature is the breakout social post alerts. Seeing when our own social post has taken off is cause for celebration and it lets us keep tabs on our competitors’ most successful content.” said Maggie Tomasek, public relations & social media specialist at Alliant Credit Union.

The alerts have helped Tomasek educate her team, both on their competitor’s tactics but also on their own performance. “My favorite feature is the alerts,” says Tomasek, “seeing when our own social post has taken off is cause for celebration.” Since the team is constantly testing new content, tactics, and strategic opportunities, the alerts resonate and provide affirmation.

The post Alliant Credit Union Doubles Social Engagement with Rival IQ appeared first on Rival IQ.