Anti-litter group’s Facebook bins to clean up

Keep Australia Beautiful marketing director Lara Shannon at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. The group is creating a database of bins to register on Facebook Places. Picture: Nic Gibson.
Source: The Australian

WHEN Keep Australia Beautiful decided it needed a new way to promote itself, the organisation was told its social media strategy should include a “chuck-in” option.

The environmental group was keen to incorporate geo-marketing into its strategy to take advantage of the booming number of consumers who use location-based software on smartphones.

To do so, it is registering tens of thousands of rubbish bins as “places” on Facebook so online users can “check-in” — or in this case “chuck-in” — when they chuck away their rubbish. Facebook Places is a section of the social media site that allows members to use their mobile phones to register their location.

“We’ve been trying to crack how we should use social media and when Clemenger BBDO came to us with the Facebook concept we realised this was an opportunity we really haven’t leveraged properly before,” said Lara Shannon, marketing director of Keep Australia Beautiful.

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The “Keep Australia Beautiful; Chuck in, to a bin” campaign will help the nine million Australian Facebook users locate their nearest bin.

The environmental group is working with councils to create a database of tens of thousands of individual bins that will be registered on Facebook Places. In June Coca-Cola in Israel became the first marketer to use Facebook Places in such a way when it uploaded the locations of more than 10,000 recycling bins to the site.

James Theophane, digital creative director of Clemenger BBDO, said geo-marketing in this circumstance was effective because it targeted people “who have a conscience and don’t want to litter, they just want to know where the bin is”.

Mr Theophane said location-based campaigns were reaching a critical mass in Australia because of the growth of mobile hardware and also because of 3G and wi-fi.

“These factors are pushing people to use their mobile devices as an integral part of their day-to-day lives and this allows geo-location marketing to become important as we are seeing huge growth in online mobile traffic,” he said.

Facebook last week announced it would allow businesses to offer discounts to customers who check-in using the social networking site.

Such discounts, which are common in the US and Europe, are already being offered by brands such as Wagamama, Commonwealth Bank, Westfield and 7-Eleven.

Digital planning director at MC Saatchi, Dan Pankraz, said this trend could only continue in the current retail environment. “When brands are fighting with e-commerce sites these discounts are an opportunity for Aussie retailers to recognise and reward consumer shopping through the mobile phone,” he said.

Geo-marketing campaigns can also target highly lucrative markets — such as teenagers and mothers — that are attractive to advertisers.”You’ll get the youth demographic, i.e. students who are sometimes strapped for cash and looking a discount, but you’ll also get mothers who are digitally savvy and are looking for deals and opportunities to engage with brands,” Mr Pankraz said.

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Social media help available from new company

Social media has been all the craze of the past few years. There are a slew of how-to books available and a number of companies available to help build and implement social media marketing campaigns. A new social media company just opened in March in the Green, North Canton and Jackson Township area, My Own Media Creative Marketing, that specializes in helping companies use social media as a marketing tool.

Tammy Rothacker and her husband decided to open the company after Tammy lost her job at a local radio station. She had worked in marketing for over 15 years and had built a large customer base.

“I had so many clients tell me they didn’t know what to do with their marketing campaigns after I was gone that my husband and I decided to jump in and start the company,” Rothacker said.

According to Rothacker, most social media marketing campaigns include using resources such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Flickr. Companies can benefit from using only the sites that fit their company’s profile or, if appropriate, using all of those options.

“Social media marketing is only part of the big picture when marketing. And, it’s not for everybody. Not every business or industry needs to be on LinkedIn or Facebook,” Rothacker said.

Part of Rothacker’s services include helping a company assess their individual needs for social media. She can help companies either start using social media or find ways to improve a social media presence. Other services include: helping create and implement event marketing, media placement, web site analysis, mapping and creating blog content and help with creating, deploying, measuring and monitoring social media campaigns.

Rothacker said Twitter is one of the greatest opportunities for businesses to watch and listen to potential customers. For Facebook, companies need to continually monitor text and photo posts to make sure they remain appropriate. And, for all social media resources, companies need to have creative and interesting posts that catch attention and keep people coming back again and again.

One example Rothacker sites is how a local animal hospital posts photos of their clients with their animals on Facebook and then tags the photo with the person’s name which sends the photo to the person’s personal or business Facebook page.

Rothacker  works with a least one local retailer, Velocity. According to Rothacker, she helps manage the company’s social media and ecommerce sites for the retail business. Tammy took a web site and social media site that were stagnant and not very helpful to the business and creatively made them active and interactive sites where the business could develop relationships with current and potential clients. The updates to the sites have converted clients into sales in the store and online, all within a very short time period.

Rothacker feels the one mistake people and companies make when using LinkedIn is that they do not include enough professional information or they try to sell themselves, their company or their products and services. For companies on LinkedIn, she recommends to put lots of professional details for customers. The more professional details the better is also the rule for those looking for employment. Many employers are now checking Facebook or LinkedIn before calling people for an interview.

YouTube is another social media site used to post short videos. “A company does not have to spend thousands of dollars to create effective videos. You want to grab attention with the title so that it will turn up in searches, keep the video short and then link the video to the company’s web site, Facebook page and send a tweet about it,” Rothacker said.

For more information about My Own Media Creative Marketing, visit the web site at www.myownmediacreative.com or call 330-696-9663.

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