White Paper

 

 

Tamell Green

Market and Research Analysis Research Paper

Public  Relations Master of Arts Program

Full Sail University

January 18, 2015

 

My goals for the Marlboro Literacy Council in Bennettsville, South Carolina is in need of volunteers to teach the adult citizens of Marlboro County the basic literacy skills to read or write. Once the citizens are taught these skills, the next continuum is for the students to either obtain a high school diploma or GED and/or to become gainfully employed. This capstone will attract a targeted buyer persona online through the use of social media that would aid in that process. Before beginning this capstone project, Marlboro Literacy Council did not have any social media presence or a website. During this capstone project we will establish a website, social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, create a template for quarterly newsletters via email, and use technology to allow those that have moved from Marlboro County a chance to also serve as a tutor for Marlboro Literacy Council.

 

This capstone project is the first marketing plan done for this organization since its existence.  Branding is a brand new concept to Marlboro Literacy Council of Bennettsville, SC. It has realized that it needs this brand makeover in order to attract more volunteers to serve in its program. In our initial research and evaluation of the entire program, the organizational structure needs to be made clear of blurred lines between other entities that exist in the same building. It is in dire need of reorganizing its governing board to support the Literacy Council. Before implementing our entire marketing plan, there will be a couple of things that will need to be done before we begin the actual marketing portion of this campaign. There are no drastic historical issue that Marlboro Literacy Council has had to overcome.

 

Our buyer persona is a 30-year-old female looking to give back to her community by helping others to overcome obstacles. Janine is looking to meet new people and possibly network through her volunteer opportunities to advance her career goals once she graduates from graduate school. She is married with children. Janine is a professional with an income level of $35, 000. She would love an increase in her income, but currently she is okay with where she is financially because her husband also works. She is comfortable at this income level because she is also an online graduate student. The level of commitment this volunteer opportunity will take will give her the chance to show her kids the importance of giving back to the community. Being an online student, she does not have the chance to volunteer on campus like traditional students. Having a chance to volunteer will give her the sense of community that she is missing from being in an online setting vs. a traditional campus setting.

 

Janine is frustrated about the illiteracy rate of Marlboro County, South Carolina and how it affects the economy around her. She knows people who cannot read the newspaper, engage in social media, fill out job applications, or help their children with their homework. She is also concerned that there are no new companies looking to locate to Marlboro County because of the high school dropout rates, illiteracy rate, and bad ratings of the educational K-12 system. She wants to stay in this nice, quaint, rural environment to raise a family, but is frustrated because of the impact these things have on their livelihood. She is also frustrated by the lack of recreational things to do such as no movie theatre or lack of a variety of restaurants or coffee houses. There practically is not a social life in Marlboro County, South Carolina. Volunteering is her social life and a way for her to get out of the house while being a role model to her children at the same time. It is also possibly something that she and her husband can do together.

 

Janine lives in Marlboro County, South Carolina and is content with where she lives despite her frustrations.  She is content enough to want to change her environment and make it better for herself and her family. She relies on social media, the local newspaper, the Marlboro Herald Advocate, and the local news station for communication. She knows someone who can benefit from the services of the literacy council. Her hobbies include spending time with her family, surfing the Internet for shopping, social media, blogging, reading books, and staying fit and active.

 

My current goal for Marlboro Literacy Council is to increase their brand awareness, volunteer base by 50%, and participant base by 50% over the course of the next six months. I also want to be able to use free online and smartphone technology as a way to have volunteers tutor students and possibly serve as brand ambassadors on and offline for their program.

 

I will move this goal forward through the use of an online survey that will be delivered to the target buyer persona to convert her into a volunteer tutor for Marlboro Literacy Council. There is a social media and online characteristic for the buyer persona chosen for this research; therefore, many tools used to conduct this research will be delivered online. An online survey can provide a safe place for customers to respond as their truest selves when taking the survey from the comfort of their home or office. They tend to give more insight as they share their responses, opinions, and ideas (How, 2014).

 

Currently the client uses email, news releases, phone calls, and brochures as communication. These forms of communication are not effective because of the low volunteer population it currently has had over the past two years. There has not been any consistency for any of the current communication efforts due to the structure of the governing board and the blurred lines of Marlboro Literacy Council with Marlboro County Adult and Community Education and Marlboro County School District’s Family Literacy Program. The implications of the current state of Marlboro Literacy Council is that job duties need to be made clear of the literacy coordinator’s role in coordinating more literacy focused programs as well as the Workkeys aspect. Current forms of communication talk more about Workkeys than it does the mission of the literacy council.

 

Marlboro Literacy Council’s image and reputation with the community is that it is only there to serve those citizens that are attending adult education to receive their high school diploma or GED. The image and reputation that the client wants and needs to convey is that the Marlboro Literacy Council not only teaches those citizens who do not know how to read or write, but it also combats the high unemployment rate by assisting those citizens with the Workkeys Assessment that is needed to be employed in most manufacturing jobs in Marlboro County and surrounding areas. It helps with this effort with their Literacy Learning Labs across the county. The problem is the community or targeted volunteers may not be aware of this resource or volunteer opportunity.

 

Volunteering is going through a dynamic change in the world.  With the use of Kickstarter campaigns, online giving funds, it is no doubt that volunteerism is being connected through the use of social media and online tools. Engagement is changing. I am currently researching what I need to know about social media in order to utilize it as a possible volunteer program manager as well seeing how to use social media to promote Marlboro Literacy Council’s volunteer opportunities and recruit volunteers.  Many businesses and nonprofits are utilizing social media for recruitment and to retain their volunteers (Social, 2013).  

 

After conducting research, I found that Florence Area Literacy Council would be a great council to model Marlboro Literacy Council after and is the main leader in the market and in the region of which they are both in in South Carolina for adult and community education. They have a great website, but it is not eye catching. That is its only weakness. The site does include great information such as statistics, sponsors, testimonials, contact information, and tells who they are. It is organized in a good way. I especially like their facts section. It would be great to include this for my client.  Another tool on their site that I love is the page that shows people a breakdown of how they can support the literacy council financially and what it would specifically pay for. I also do not see any social media on their website, but I conducted a search anyway to see if they do have social media sites and they do. They really should connect them to their site. I think that this is another weakness for their site.

 

I will set my client apart by creating an eye-catching site with great colors to go along with the great information that will be shared. I will also use other technologies in order to capture email addresses for the newsletter mail outs. Their site also does not include many pictures. I will be sure to include event photo galleries on my client’s website. One of the main things that will set my client apart from Florence Area Literacy Council is that our focus is so heavily focused on engagement through social media. Our website will link to the social media sites created and the social media sites will link band to the site.  Many nonprofits do not have websites due to small budgets. They sometimes have utilized only the skill set of those who work for or volunteer for them. My client is fortunate in that my skill set is up to par with social media and other technologies needed to help create their presence on the web. There are two main reasons why nonprofits need a website. The first reason is for exposure and the second reason is to encourage support from the community (Gardner, 2012).

 

After conducting the SWOT analysis, I have identified the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for this campaign. The strengths are the relationship that the client and I hold. We have worked together for several years; so many things come natural to us during this process. Marlboro Literacy Council is definitely at a point in which in order to grow it needs to make these necessary changes. The main strength is that the Literacy Council Coordinator is open to new ideas and ways of doing things. One of the weaknesses of the campaign is that the organization does not have a solid board in order to move fast with these changes that we are making. Structurally, with the coordinator being the only paid employee, she has not had the time nor the resources to do the things that she truly needs to do in order to change the unwanted patters of the literacy council. She does not have time to do the research needed to fully evaluate her effectiveness or keep track of her volunteers and participants. That is where the opportunity comes in for this Capstone. I am able to assist her as needed in order o get her to a point in which I can truly launch the organization. These past few months of planning have been wonderful and our timelines have had to change accordingly, but her willingness and support to continue has been tremendous. With the weakness of not having a strong board or many necessary members, one of the threats is that Marlboro Literacy Council will gain the volunteers needed through this campaign, but will not be able to manage it all. This provides an opportunity to offer other volunteer opportunities besides serving as a literacy tutor.

 

This capstone is affording me the opportunity to research five related topics to help further this project along. They are social media, volunteer recruitment, technology and how it can be used for volunteering, designing and conducting focus groups, and web design for literacy councils. I have found qualitative and quantitative research on each topic to drive my capstone forward. In my social media research, I have found that social media appeals to 67% of adult women between the ages of 18-29. They tend to use Facebook the most (Duggar, 2013). The most used sites social media sites by this demographic are Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest (Duggar, 2013). My client will be using those and a few others. This information helps me to decide which to do first and which group these appeal to. According to the Pew Research Center, as of September 2014:

 

• 71% of online adults use Facebook

• 23% of online adults use Twitter

• 26% use Instagram

• 28% use Pinterest

• 28% use LinkedIn (Social, 2013)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In researching social media, technology, and website building, the one thing that brings them all together is the smartphone technology. It is imperative that I create a responsive website that viewers can use on their smartphones when they are not at a computer. 100,000,00 US households do not have access to broadband. The upside to this startling statistic is that Pew Research project reported that 58% of American adults have a smartphone (Smith, 2013). In order to be a website that works for Marlboro Literacy Council and not against it, I have to make sure that the site’s graphics and things of that nature are ok for smartphone technology. Marlboro County is located in a rural area where Internet access is very slow, therefore, graphics and photos will have to be a certain size in order to load properly and fast for those visiting the site. The last and most important research topic is volunteer recruitment through social media and traditional strategies. This is very interesting to see the various things that can be done to recruit people to volunteer through social media.  It is important to use the right content to engage your followers on social media. Doing this the right way will help encourage the community built on these social media platforms to act by commenting, sharing, liking, retweeting, and repining (Stern, 2013).  Social media can keep volunteers and supporters up-to-date and help spread the word about news with your organization. It can also help to attract volunteers that are not defined by location. Research shows that content shared such as multimedia, inspiration, asking a question or humor should be kept brief, timely and actionable (Sherman, 2013).

 

Secondary research that has come up with my primary research is how often to post content on social media and what type of content should be posted on each platform. There have also been social media calendars that have prompted me to look at creating a social media calendar for Marlboro Literacy Council’s social media platforms. This will be completed with research from other literacy councils to see what types of things they are sharing and what gets the best engagement. I am also research Google Hangouts as a possible way for volunteers to tutor online if they are unable to be there in person but would like to volunteer their time. This will be meaningful for people who have moved away from Marlboro County, but still would like to give back to the community. This may also be a way for them to serve on the board and give the literacy coordinator the much needed manpower support that is needed to thrust the literacy council into the next cycle of its development.

 

My campaign will continue in this direction because there is tons of research to decipher through on how social media plays a big part in volunteerism in America.  I will research and create an evaluation tool while also utilizing tools such as Google Analytics to see if our website and social media creation generate traffic and see if that traffic leads to more volunteers.

 

References

 

Duggar, M., & Bremmer, J. (2013, February 14). The Demographics of Social Media

Users — 2012. Retrieved January 18, 2015, from http://www. pewinternet.org/files /oldbmedia/Files /Reports/2013/PIP_ Social MediaUsers.pdf

 

Gardner, M. (2012, July 11). Why all non-profit agencies need a website. Retrieved

January 18, 2015, from http://www.yourtrainingprovider.com /blog_main /bid/ 147436/Why-all-non-profit-agencies-need-a-website

 

How To Conduct An Online Survey and Engage Customers In A Dialogue. (n.d.).

Retrieved Janaury 18, 2015, from http://www.esurveyspro.com/article-how-to-conduct-an-online- survey-and-engage-customers-in-a-dialogue.aspx.

 

Sherman, A. (2013, January 24). Social Media for Nonprofit Volunteer Recruitment.

Retrieved January 16, 2015, from http://www.slideshare.net /alizasherman /social-media-for-nonprofit-volunteer-recruitment-16164487

 

Social Media and Volunteer Engagement. (2013, June 12). Retrieved Janaury 18,

2015, from http://www.slideshare.net/volunteermatch/social-media-

resources-22872944?redirected_from=save_on_embed.

 

Social Networking Fact Sheet. (2013, December 27). Retrieved January 18, 2015,

from http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/

 

Smith, A. (2013, June 4). Smartphone Ownership 2013. Retrieved January 18, 2015,

from http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/06/05/smartphone-ownership-2013/

 

Stern, A. (2013, December 5). Engage, Inform, Recruit: How Nonprofits Can Use

Social Media to Recruit Donors and Volunteers. Retrieved January 18, 2015, from http://www.nten.org/articles/2013/engage-inform-recruit-how-nonprofits-can-use-social-media-to-recruit-donors-and-volunteers-0

 

 

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