Dear reader, what better way to kick-off the new look Geeking For Good (now on Posterous) than by recounting a story about a girl who had a dream. A dream to get to Liverpool, and to raise some money for two awesome charities at the same time.
Yes, it's about my Your Big Year campaign. Now that the rush of the last few weeks appears to be over, it's time to sit back and review how I got to Liverpool in the first place.
Primary Goal: Achieve a Top 6 position in Fundraising table to ensure place at the Your Big Year finals.
I started fundraising back in late July. On that first evening, I tweeted the call for 5 people to spend less than 5 minutes donating $5 to the campaign by midnight. Starting late on a Friday evening (admittedly a bad time for rattling the virtual tin), I actually received 4 donations for a total of $116AUD - almost 5 times more than what I was asking for. I believe that asking for small donations lowered the barrier to entry for these initial donors - particularly given that it was a party night when Twitter stream is relatively quiet.
The real story in my campaign though can be seen in the last 48 hours. A throw-away comment at the TEDxCanberra organisers meeting became an in-joke that snowballed into success! At the organisers meeting, I'd flippantly announced that if I raised £1000, I would YouTube a video of me dancing to Justin Bieber. Others at the meeting latched on to the idea, egging me on. So I went home, recorded some video on my iPhone, and the donations just started rolling in. More than half of my donations (17, totalling just over $1000AUD, average of $60AUD) were received during this time.
- 31 donations, totalling £1000 ($1600AUD), averaging around £33 ($50AUD) per contribution.
- 260 clicks on http://bit.ly/YBYlozz short URL (launched donation widget for the campaign), worth £3.80 per click
- Generated around 400 video views on YouTube during the last 2 days of competition.
- During this period I had approximately 1100-1200 Twitter followers.
So what was the key to my success? Engaging content and a strong, supportive social network. Surprisingly, there were a few donations from people I'd never spoken to on Twitter (or even knew), so Retweets from my followers to a second-level network definitely played a role there.
If I did it again, I'd set up a ridiculous dare earlier and push it harder - but only for a short period, like a week or two. Message saturation occurs extremely quickly on Twitter, particularly amongst heavy users. There is the potential that too much frequency can actually make people annoyed rather than make them take action.
One last thing. That Primary Goal? Blew it out of the water - I was the top fundraiser by over £150. Thanks to Twitter, of course!
