Case Study – Cognation, Neath Port Talbot Council. Managed Social Media Marketing
This Case Study has now been updated. You can read the new version here: Mountain Biking Marketing Case Study
Objectives
Working with the marketing team from Neath Port Talbot’s Economic Development department, Mogi Marketing was tasked with creating and delivering social media marketing support for the Off-road Cycling Centre of Excellence project, branded as Cognation. The objective of Cognation is to improve the mountain biking facilities and trails in South Wales as a key driver for economic development in the region.
Working with the marketing team from Neath Port Talbot’s Economic Development department, Mogi Marketing was tasked with creating and delivering social media marketing support for the Off-road Cycling Centre of Excellence project, branded as Cognation. The objective of Cognation is to improve the mountain biking facilities and trails in South Wales as a key driver for economic development in the region.
|
Creation of an initial marketing strategy (Completed)
The Economic Development team were keen to use social media as one of the key tools for marketing the Cognation project. Facebook had already been identified as the ‘master channel’ for all content, that is the place where all posts would be made relating to the marketing of Cognation and that all other channels would be secondary. A website would then follow later in the year, more than likely taking over from Facebook as the master channel. It was really exciting for Mogi to work on a purely ‘social’ marketing strategy. Normally a business already has a blog or a website that will be the final online destination for their target audience, where as the Cognation project would initially push all visitors to the Facebook page. Also the nature of mountain biking is that it is well and truly online. There are lots of videos on YouTube and Vimeo, an active Twitter population and heaps of mountain biking pictures and videos on sites like Flickr. This presented a great opportunity as firstly it would allow Mogi and Cognation to produce lots of content across these mediums and then share it on Facebook doubling as a great link building strategy. Secondly it would allow virtually unlimited sourcing of third party content to keep the audience’s interest and attention on Cognation when there were gaps in news about the actual project. With this in mind Mogi wrote a very straight forward initial marketing strategy with setup and content distribution phases that would act as a guide to the whole marketing campaign and enable all parties to track progress. Setting up of marketing channels (Completed) Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Slideshare and Flickr channels were setup and customised both visually and in terms of functionality. For Facebook this involved the creation of a page, with a customised URL, HTML welcome page (with links) and the use of third party apps to share content on other channels like YouTube or Flickr. |
The Toolbox:
|
Posting of multi-media content (Ongoing)
The nature of outdoor activities such as mountain biking lend themselves perfectly to social media. Combine that with the range of online content types out there such as forums, blog posts, videos, pictures, tweets etc and there is plenty available to ensure that your social audience is engaged with properly.
The key with Cognation was to make sure that the messages of the project we’re not overshadowed by third party content and that the majority of third party content was relevant to the audience and the geographical areas covered by the Cognation Project. For example too many posts about North Wales Mountain Biking or videos etc of BMX riding whilst possibly engaging would affect the audiences’ relationship with the brand.
One challenge that the marketing of Cognation faced was how to distribute a PDF newsletter without a website to host it on. This was overcome by using the presentation sharing site; Slideshare, which allows the uploading of documents such as PDFs and PowerPoint Slides for free and then they can be shared on Facebook and Twitter.
The nature of outdoor activities such as mountain biking lend themselves perfectly to social media. Combine that with the range of online content types out there such as forums, blog posts, videos, pictures, tweets etc and there is plenty available to ensure that your social audience is engaged with properly.
The key with Cognation was to make sure that the messages of the project we’re not overshadowed by third party content and that the majority of third party content was relevant to the audience and the geographical areas covered by the Cognation Project. For example too many posts about North Wales Mountain Biking or videos etc of BMX riding whilst possibly engaging would affect the audiences’ relationship with the brand.
One challenge that the marketing of Cognation faced was how to distribute a PDF newsletter without a website to host it on. This was overcome by using the presentation sharing site; Slideshare, which allows the uploading of documents such as PDFs and PowerPoint Slides for free and then they can be shared on Facebook and Twitter.
|
Update of the marketing strategy (In Progress)
A marketing strategy is always a fluid document and in constant need of appraisal. The initial Cognation marketing strategy included short term and long term objectives and the latest version encourages the implementation of new initiatives such as the use of advertising and competitions to coincide with the launch of a website. Outcomes
- ‘Cognation South Wales’ (Cognation articles dominate the entire first page) - ‘Cognation Mountain Biking’ (Cognation articles dominate the entire first page) |
Cognation Videos
Cognation has produced several videos and Mogi has helped get them thousands of views on You Tube and Vimeo |