St James Art Show and Social Media Case Study by Motorize Your Bike
Case study about a local art festival, social media and word of mouth for an event and contest. The event was three days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday during the first weekend of October in Old Louisville, KY. The St. James Art Show averages 750 vendors and more than 300,000 visitors as one of the top art shows in the country. It’s a juried art show and vendors must be approved by a committee.
While we may not have exact statistics, (stats) because our goal was to determine social media usage, we were able to observe the majority of the attendee population (over 70%) were in their 40′s, 50′s, or 60′s and at least 60% were female.
The communication preceding and during the event plus the contest were attempts to determine the social media usage among this group including Twitter and Facebook plus their willingness to join two Facebook Pages - Motorize Your Bike and Gyros & Fries. Promotion began two days before the event. Each person who joined both Pages won a free Gyros (sandwich). This was our strongest and most direct call to action of the contest. Each person who learned about the contest through social media or word of mouth would (and still does) win free food.
The contest was focused around the two Facebook pages but Twitter was used as well. In addition to sending the Facebook invitation for the event and contest (with Google Maps), a separate Blog post listed prizes. The prizes included other food items from Nord’s Bakery on Preston (Nord’s Bakery Reviews on Yelp), who gained Facebook fans and exposure to new customers. Additional prizes were t-shirts, stickers and specialty root-beer from Motorize Your Bike. Posts on Twitter and Facebook were used to direct visitors to the Facebook event and the Blog post which listed prizes. Listings of the Blog post with prizes on StumbleUpon brought the highest traffic to the blog.
The flyers were each 1/4 of a sheet, double sided and printed on 100% recycled paper. One side featured the Motorize Your Bike logo and the Gyro’s & Fries logo was on the other side. Both sides had the same call to action with the logo side listed first: Become Facebook Fans of Motorize Your Bike and Gyro’s & Fries for a FREE Gyros w/this Coupon. On the Gyro’s and Fries side, we did an A/B test. Half the flyers included the call to action outlined to make a box around it similar to traditional print coupons also found in a newspaper or phonebook. Each call to action on the Gyro’s & Fries side also had an expiration date (another subtle call to action) in smaller font centered directly beneath the message. 400 of the 1000 flyers were black and white. 600 flyers were red and black graphics and print with a small amount of yellow and brown graphics for Gyro’s & Fries on white paper. The flyers and Facebook postings were key components of the word of mouth. By the second days, we had more than 15 requests for the flyers. It’s to early to determine the conversion rate of the flyers as the restaurant, Gyro’s & Fries, opens later this month. As this was posted the Motorize Your Bike Facebook Page had 58 fans from 1 prior to the event.
The findings were very interesting and are good news for local businesses. Over 1000 flyers, 100 stickers and 60 business cards were distributed. More than 72% of the respondents were on Facebook. Others requested flyers. Upon being asked, “are you on Facebook?” if they responded no, in many cases that also said, “I look at it with another person”. The “not on Facebook” responses came from about 10% of the total population and from those it was clear many have been regularly using Facebook through others, without an account – over the shoulder views. New Facebook users, from our feedback at this event, seem to have a stronger likelihood for over the shoulder views. As many as 2% of the total respondents who were not on Facebook said they would get on specifically to checkout these Pages, the motorized bikes or to get the free food. The Page for Motorize Your Bike has grown by over 50 new members since the event and Gyro’s & Fries has more than doubled its Fans. Awareness was created and both Pages are growing steadily, s0 this event was a success.
The response to “Do you use Twitter” was far different. Despite the awareness, the winning Twitter Hashtag was only used by our team. There were also a very limited number of posts on Twitter using St James related Hashtags. Of two hundred people asked about Twitter, a higher percentage (nearly twice as many) had never heard of it than were using it. Such a small percentage of the population, less than 10% were using Twitter. So the focus shifted to Facebook and trying to learn more about the over the shoulder views.
As active Twitter users with a background in search marketing: Twitter.com/Rasinen and with a new profile for Motorize Your Bike It’s very clear as amazingly searchable as Twitter is, it has serious limitations and barriers of entry. First the name. In asking people who did not use Twitter, if they were older macho type guys, it was generally fun to get the response. The facial expressions were worthy of pictures and framed versions for their loved ones. Comedy aside, Twitter is a valuable tool that we use for many purposes and often as people ask us to describe why they would want to use it, they respond with feedback about having no use for such features. Personally, I’d like to see everyone on Twitter so we could share and search useful information. As we branch into new subgroups of users and focus on geo-targeting, the findings are very surprising. Twitter is dependent upon the users, frequency of posts by the users, how/where users post and the data. If folks are not using Twitter prior to or at an event or not specially mentioning the it, how could any of the corresponding data be searched? Hashtags are understood by surprisingly few Twitter users and avoided all together by many others. Links, geo-targeting, and real-time search are only possible if Twitter users understand and are share the data. Denser populations and subcultures are what seem be the strong suits of Twitter. After this contest it was interesting to the go and look at the profile pictures of followers on Twitter.
Motorized Bike with Traffic Safety Officer
Very few attendees were noticed seemingly using social media or texting from a mobile device or phone (less than 2%). Maybe the event was just that exciting? Also very few, less than 1% of attendees were talking on the phone. Therefore, much of the current mobile advertising centered around search would be ineffective in reaching this audience. One good way to advertise through a mobile device or phone at an event such as St James might be through a zoom app or other camera application on a mobile phone. Cameras were very popular and seemingly more so than at this event the previous year. Pictures were taken of the motorized bikes with large professional cameras down to flip phones. Feel free to add those to our Facebook Page for a chance to win a lucky prize.
We at Motorize Your Bike™ hope this was interesting and informative. While our background includes market research, we like to keep it simple and fun – like out motorized bikes. Please take a moment and vote in out Poll below then check back soon for more data. You’re also personally invited to join and comment on our Facebook Group & Page.
Simple and the most fun you can have on wheels!™
