Email & Social Channels Help to Muster Support for Community College Rebuilding Project
We all know about how reluctant voters are to support infrastructure projects at a time of burgeoning deficits, etc. Right?
In November, 2010, Voters in Madison, WI, proved that they will indeed support building projects. Not only did they vote for a necessary improvements to Madison College, a significant community resource. But they responded to a broad-based campaign designed to educate voters about the need for these improvements conducted via multiple channels, but spurred primarily by email and social channels. The college created an extensive, multi-channel campaign designed to generate public support for the rebuilding project, an effort that passed with 60 percent of the vote.
Ellen Foley, executive assistant to the president and executive director of the communications and community development teams at the college, wrote a smart piece in the Chronicle about how the college did it.
You might guess from the title (“E-Mail Marketing Campaign Gets By With a Little Help From Some ‘Friends’”) that the effort was all about email and Facebook.
You’d be wrong, though. My take-away from her article is that despite the fact that the college used Facebook extensively, it was an add-on to the other things that they did to help build awareness. I don’t mean to diminish the role of Facebook, which was clearly important, especially in the last weeks of their awareness-building effort. But it seems to be the synergy, not just the social media, that ultimately paid off for the college.
Interesting, too, to read about how faculty and staff at this state-supported institution could use social media to “educate” during work hours and only “advocate” during free time, breaks, and before or after work.
One idea worth noting is the Future of Madison forum (there’s a screen capture at the top of this post). Foley explains how it worked,
Finally, late in the campaign, we launched a digital “idea forum” called FutureofMadison.org that awarded scholarships for big community ideas. This crowdsourcing tactic promised entrants that all suggestions for our community’s future would be placed in a time capsule inside the foundation of the first building the referendum dollars would finance. Seven winners were chosen, and while we received more than 350 ideas, we intend to expand this good idea and repeat it by partnering with our local K-12 school students, our future customers.
Very smart approach. This is worth reading. Twice!
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