For the past 8 months, I have been working on my final project at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism: "Is Giving 'Social'? The Effectiveness of Nonprofit Online Marketing." I'm glad to able to share some of the results in this short video:
Some brave souls have asked to see the actual research paper, so feel free to read this pdf version. The challenge of the final presentation was to strike a balance between sharing data and practical information with a mixed audience in under 5 minutes. As you can see from the 75-page paper, not all of the results made the cut, but here are the highlights:
1) People prefer to give money to nonprofit organizations than to volunteer their time.
2) Most people (68%) prefer to give in-person/ offline.
3) Social media users, on the other hand, prefer to give online.
4) Facebook is by far the most popular social media channel.
5) The closer donors feel to an issue or beneficiary, the more likely they are to donate.
6) Peer pressure works: word-of-mouth recommendations are very effective.
7) Viral videos are a fluke. It's impossible to catch lightning in a bottle.
8) Targeted, strategic messages are much more likely to succeed.
9) Digital and traditional approaches are complementary, not mutually exclusive.
10) Marketing is all about connecting with people, so it's always "social."