The Evidence For Social
Media
by
Stephen Ryan
Head of Marketing, Fota Wildlife Park
@MarketinginCork & @Fotawildlife
Facebook.com/Fotawildlife
• Marketing is the social process by which
individuals and groups obtain what they need
and want through creating and exchanging
products and value with others. (Kotler)
Marketing Quiz
• Branding
• Public Relations
• Advertising
• Signage
• Website
• Sponsorship
• Direct Mail
What are the benefits
of Marketing?
• Awareness
• Drives traffic
• Service Experience
• Word of Mouth
Word of Mouth
• Surveys for Fota Wildlife Park will always ask
"how did you find out about the park"
• The majority of people will say "word of
mouth"
• Therefore one might say "is there need for
Marketing?"
Yes
How do you nurture
"Word of Mouth"?
•Social Media
What is Social Media?
• "a group of Internetbased applications that
build on the ideological
and technological
foundations of Web 2.0,
which allows the creation
and exchange of usergenerated content.”
Kaplan, Andreas M.;
Michael Haenlein (2010).
Fota Wildlife Park
Social Media Objective
• In 2009 we started by creating a website with the user in mind
• Build a stronger relationship with our existing and potential
customers.
• Capture customer details
• Reach people with news and events on a weekly basis.
• Nurture Word of Mouth
Fota Wildlife Park
A Social Media Success
• Twitter – 6173 followers
• Youtube – 23,215 people have viewed the FotaWildlife Channel
• FlickR –Fota Fan Group which has 102 members and 873
pictures taken in the park
• Facebook – The jewel in the crown with 30,926 fans
• Since we went social in July 09 580,601 individuals have visited
our site
HOW?
We Create Stories
•In September 2010 we
announced the birth of a Red
Panda
•It made RTE 6 O’Clock News
•Asked people to name it via
online competition
•Public went for Rua
•Most viewed story on our
blog/news section with 6,500
views
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
•We announce that our baby Gibbon is
named “Shay Gibbon” on Monday
before Euro 2012
•Bank Holiday Monday
•Celebrity Endorsement
•88 hits per second on Website
•Live interviews on Today FM, BBC
and Local Radio
•Makes Guardian, Mirror sites in UK
•Viral Story across Europe
•Daire O’Brian gives celebrity
endorsement
News as it
Happens
•On the 10th August Something Amazing
happened at the park a Giraffe gave
birth in front of a crowd of over 1,000
people
•The result was the creation of a news
story by our community
•Pictures, Videos, Posts emerged on
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
•This in turn spread to traditional media
•We Shared and Replied to everything
posted
•Our Facebook page had a reach of
173000 for that week
It’s about creating a
community
•We set out to create an online community and in
July we knew we had done it
•We lost our colleague Paraic Casey and we
wanted to let people know what he meant to us,
so we told our fans on Facebook
•2625 Likes
•252 comments
•262 shares
•52,324 viewed the post
•It touched our hearts but also Paraics family and
friends told us it meant a lot to them
FOTABOOK
• Takes the art of creating conversations
online to a whole new level.
• The Park has moved on from customised
guestbook's and a Members Login area
• Fotabook allows it gather the very best
tweets, photographs and videos posted
about the Park on the web.
• All this content is visitor-generated
• Creates a wealth of information for visitors
to come back and browse through time and
time again.
The Value of Facebook
• Facebook Insights -You know who likes your
business, what age, sex, where they live, how
old..........
• Instant updates – In control of your own Story
• There has been over 102.625 pictures tagged at the
park
• 173,000 people saw our page over one week at the
end of July
• Over 41,000 hits directed to our website alone from
Facebook since 2009 (21,000 in 2012 alone)
• 9% of all hits to Fotawildlife.ie have come from
Facebook alone in 2012
• Over 31,000 fans is bigger than the readership of
local newspapers
Summary
• Social Media is mainly free to use
• You don't need to be a web developer, just a communicator
• Its Measurable
• Growing by the second
• Replacing traditional media as the way to communicate with people
interested in our product/service
• If the words LIKE, TWEET, POST or SHARE are not part of your
communications strategy then your business will be in trouble in the
near future
Where is the
Evidence?
•The Park went from 331,000
visitors in 2008 to 390,000 visitors
in 2011
•Won Grand Prix Award for Best
Website in Ireland in 2010 solely
on interaction with customers
•Social Media now creates news
on our new Website with
FOTABOOK
•http://www.fotawildlife.ie/fotabook