Hitting a milestone for brands is a natural marker of success. The millionth sale, the 10 millionth customer etc etc always leads to celebration and justification that those selling are delivering on what’s required. In social media however, the ebb and flow of milestone numbers can sometimes be both impressive but can also be confusing. How many of those followers are spam, how many actually follow the “likes” they have or read the tweets that are posted. Are they following 50 or 50,000? Now finding a way to hit a milestone and use that milestone as an effective call to action in the social media space to show the value of all those followers can be tricky.
One recent example of using a milestone to drive ROI was out forth by the folks at Runner’s World this past week. Individual action sports…from running and tennis to skateboarding and skiing…certainly have a good sense of community that is conveyed through social media and word of mouth. While in many instances those communities are not as large or as buzzworthy as team sports or large media properties, individual action sports can drive product, event activation and best practices against a core audience very quickly. Those involved are passionate to be involved, not just watch, and that translates into a very solid following looking to engage and give positive feedback.
Runner’s World social media editor Susan Rinkunas knew that the magazine was approaching some social media milestones, and came up with a good reward system to tie signups and engagement for their passionate followers. As the magazine surpassed 200,000 Facebook fans, they commemorated the event/occasion/landmark/milestone by giving a free issue of the magazine to first 200 U.S. residents who joined. That offer closed quickly and ended up serving 600 new subs thanks to the overwhelming response. Then through Facebook and RunnersWorld.com, the publication also offered deep discounts on Runner’s World branded book titles over the following 200,000 seconds after crossing the 200K threshold (through 2 am ET on Thursday 4/28… approximately 55.5 hours). All in all, the Runner’s World Facebook event/occasion/landmark/milestone sold over 200 units (actually about 350 books, training plans, Challenge packages) in the 55.5 hours the offer was extended. Runner’s World then steamrolled past 210,000 on May 4 (today) just nine days after crossing 200,000. The magazine had been averaging about 10K new likes per month, but surged in April, adding almost 30K likes in the month. That was thanks in part to the Boston Marathon, the brand’s coordinated efforts to keep Facebook compelling (including live updates during the Boston Marathon and other big events) and just plain old good spring running weather. On Twitter, Runner’s World has north of 76K followers, up close to 50 percent from the beginning of 2011 and 8K new followers in April, in part thanks to the brand’s specialized Twitter hashtag (#RWBoston) that allowed runners to ask our editors questions in the weeks leading up to the race, and follow the weekend in Boston and then the race itself.
What’s the lesson learned? Always know your customer and your followers, and service them with offers they want and need and can engage around. It’s great to hit milestones, but showing how those milestones drive the bottom line with engagement is the key, and you can only do that by asking, following, and then creating the right offer around news.
