Using SocialRank for Local Events

This past September, the American Red Cross and its supporters set a world record for simultaneous downloads of its Blood Donor App. This local event was part of a broader national grassroots campaign to get more people signed up to donate blood via this award-winning mobile app.

Getting people to show up for blood drives and other health-related initiatives is always a tall task, so we were very excited to hear that the Red Cross had used SocialRank to help market their event. Using SocialRank’s free tools, they discovered their biggest Twitter follower in Las Vegas (famous MMA fighter Wanderlei Silva) and partnered with him to get the word out:

Ultimately, over 40 supporters participated in the event and downloaded the mobile app (which significantly simplifies the registration process for donating blood). The Red Cross must collect 15,000 units of blood per day in order to meet the needs of accident victims and cancer patients, so grassroots events like these can make a significant impact on people’s lives. According to Curtis Midkiff, Red Cross Director of Social Engagement (now the Senior Advisor of Social Business Strategy at Southwest Airlines):

“Launching the mobile app for blood donors was a big step for the Red Cross in our ongoing efforts to leverage technology to fulfill our mission. SocialRank allowed us to quickly and easily connect with our influential Twitter followers in Las Vegas which included Wanderlei Silva and the local CBS Radio affiliate which featured us on a morning drive show. These connections, forged with the tool, were pivotal to our launch event.”

Social media is definitely in its first inning, and so there’s still no clear blueprint for how brands should leverage their online audiences. However, as the Red Cross has shown, there are many creative and out-of-the-box ways brands can engage with their followers. In this specific use case, local events can be very powerful. To give you some ideas on how you can use SocialRank for local events, we have included some examples below.

SocialRank for Local Events

Invite Your Biggest Supporters

You can use SocialRank for Twitter or Instagram to run detailed searches on all your followers and organize them along a handful of powerful parameters. These include: Most Valuable Followers, Most Engaged Followers, bio keyword, location, interests (only on Twitter), hashtags (only on Instagram), verified accounts (only on Twitter), and more.

If you host tech events in New York, you can filter your followers by your Most Engaged Followers who live in New York City (location filter) and have an interest in Technology (interests filter on Twitter or #technology on Instagram via the hashtag filter). Now you have a robust list of people to invite and reach out to for location-based activation. Or you can save this list for future reference (just click on the green “Save & Export” button).

Partner with Your Biggest Followers

Another way to use SocialRank for local events is to target individuals who themselves have large audiences. People usually call these people “influencers” (although we don’t love the word, we think everyone is a snowflake). The “Most Followed” or “Most Valuable” sort options and the “Verification” filter are probably the easiest ways you can compile a list of these influencers. You can combine these with a location filter if you want to narrow your search to a specific city. As discussed above, the Red Cross used this method to find their most followed follower in Las Vegas and partnered with him to market a local event.

Find Reporters to Cover Your Story

A third way we have seen SocialRank used for local events is for local media coverage — specifically, to find reporters and journalists. This is where filtering by bio keyword, interests, or organization comes in. Setting up a Bio Keyword filter for “Writer” or “Reporter” or a related term will populate a list of people you could contact for a story. Running similar filters under Interests (ex. “Journalism”) or Organization (ex. “Editor” or “Producer”) would work just as well.

Other Use Cases People have been using SocialRank in ways we hadn’t imagined, and so we’ll be sharing many of these use cases with you all as we learn of them.

If you are using SocialRank in an unexpected fashion, please get in touch with us at hi@SocialRank.com! We’d love to chat.