CLF Engagement ReportPrepared by Shawna Foster,

CLF Engagement Ministry Interncontact: sfoster@clfuu.org

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Engagement Philosophy● Trends in social media will come

and go, what people will always seek is to be engaged.

● Our social media practice is different than most entities that utilize social media:○ It is not to create

community as means to something else like purchasing something or brand loyalty.

○ Instead, the goal is the community itself, to provide to all a viable spiritual home.

● Our fluid structure means we provide a framework of meaning while responding quickly to the needs of our stakeholders; we are prone to innovation.

● Thus, we adapt to the need for engagement by showing how our stakeholders influence us across all online platforms.

● Informal analysis of social media engagement models show that 10% of the engaged community can be depended to give an average of $20 - $50 yearly.

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Engagement AppliedExample:

● If our online community gave $200k a year: ○ About 8,000 people

would give an average of $25 a year

○ This would be the 10% of those who were engaged; meaning there would be 800,000 were engaged annually

● There are no known industry ratios between exposure, influence, and engagement, but if 8% of the people who are exposed to CLF engage in it, for 800,000 to engage we would have an exposure of 6.4 million people yearly.

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Engagement AppliedNov|Dec eNewsletter, Web Banners, and Daily Compass Appeals

● $7,755 was raised online as part of our end of year campaign in Nov/Dec, with 76 donors, with an average gift of $106.17. We can not tell if these donations were by members (thus influenced by our mailings) or not.

● More testing is needed to set our own standards between exposure, engagement, and support.

● Thanks to Lisa Kielt for spearheading this successful fundraising.

● Exposure (Oct-Mar)○ 117,000 through social media○ 1,691,484 google adwords

● Engaged (Oct-Mar)○ 9,152 - 13,667 social media○ 20,416 clicks on google

adwords.● Ratio (Oct-Mar)

○ .o7-11% social media○ .012% adwords

Nov/Dec Facebook Example:

● Reached 132,000 people● Engaged 10,309 people - a ratio of

8% between people reached and people engaged. What is notable is the number of people who engaged with us were double the number of people who liked our page.

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Member to Supporter Shift● Investment in social media is an

investment in a model that is becoming more dominant

● We are now a hybrid of investing in social media and relying on traditional funding sources

● All spiritual centers will have to adapt to this shifting dynamic.We are ahead of the curve in seeing these shifts.

● Successful online religious sites show they are either mission or content driven. If only content, they rely on broad engagement to be sustainable. If missional, they provide a service or consumable that is sustainable. (Or, they are not supporter funded.)○ Missional: Sounds True,

Darkwood Brew○ Content: Beliefnet, Patheos○ Not supporter funded:

SoulPancake

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Next Steps● We are developing processes to track

donations procured from social media engagement to better measure our engagement/supporter ratio.

● We are researching the best way to support our traditional membership model and be responsive to our engagement model.

● On April 17, Meg Riley, Teri Burnor, and Shawna Foster, will do a social media retreat to create feasible engagement goals and expectations, and set specific social media goals to meet those goals.○ Board input will be crucial in

goal setting.

● Non-profits that were able to depend on online donations as a revenue stream had at least two-full time staff people dedicated to social media engagement. Our ability to innovate in response to these cultural shifts will depend on available resources.

● Sources:○ Organizing for America○ Non-Profit Technology

Conference○ Socialmediaexaminer.com○ Online ministry thought

leaders○ June 2013 Barna Study○ Shawna’s background in

online fundraising

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Engagement Statistics

Major changes since October 2013:● Content coordination across all media● Youtube channel optimization (thanks to Terri Burnor!)● Launch of Faith Rocket Channel● New online fundraising strategies● Changes to newsletter tactics● Shawna Foster started with engagement in February● “Twitter Chats” live during The VUU; increasing VUU viewers and

twitter engagement● Google AdWords ranking improved● Broke 5k likes on Facebook

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Engagement SnapShotToday:

● Newsletter ○ Subscribers: 2,114○ Open Rate: 45-58%○ Clicks: 75-200 (8-20%)

● Facebook Followers○ CLFUU: 5,212○ Daily Compass: 257○ CYF: 583○ Discussion Group: 223

● Twitter: 784● Google+

○ 240 +1’s○ 132 followers

● Youtube○ Subscribers: 424○ Total: 21,060 views○ Monthly Visitors: 1,899

10/11/13

● Newsletter ○ Subscribers: 847○ Open Rate: 28%○ Clicks: 81 (21.7%)

● Facebook Followers○ CLFUU: 4,273○ Daily Compass: 166○ CYF: 502○ Discussion Group: 223

● Twitter: 632● Google+:

○ 128 +1’s○ 81 followers

● Youtube: Not Tracked

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NewsletterConstant Contact reports that CLF’s newsletter has consistently beat industry standards when focused on engagement. As many of our members and users

are not on social media, it is important to incorporate the newsletter into our engagement strategy.

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NewsletterChanges starting in Feb:

● More consistent look● Facebook has newsletter signup

widget● Subject is natural language

(“Well, this is weird” instead of “Newsletter from xxx date”)

● Comes from Rev. Meg instead of generic email

● Interesting The VUU write-up● Promoted in social media● Added donation link● Optimized Amazon store link

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Impact of ChangesConstant Contact reports that CLF’s

newsletter has consistently beat industry standards when focused on

engagement. As many of our members and users are not on social media, it is important to

incorporate the newsletter into our engagement strategy.

(The dip is for “Copy Feb 11th” is the same email as Feb 11th. It went out as a test email to a select audience, driving our open rate to 55%. However, since we enjoy a 45-58% open rate anyway, we will not need to continue this test.)13

Facebook

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What’s Popular?● People look to their religious and spiritual communities

in times of crisis, and to be informed as to its relevant stance on trending topics. A key part of ministry is naming what is on all our hearts.

● Coordinating content across Quest, Patheos, Huffington Post, Facebook, Worship, etc creates a cohesive environment. This consistency increases engagement on all platforms.

● Showing how our Quest theme is made manifest in our online ministries gives people a way to engage and feel they are part of a global community.

● For facebook, the # who like our page is not as important as reach - one of our trackable areas of exposure.

● (we topped our last most popular by 20,000 people) 17

Most Popular Facebook posts: #5

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Most Popular Facebook posts: #4

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Most Popular Facebook posts: #3

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Most Popular Facebook posts: #2

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Most Popular Facebook posts: #1

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Facebook Demographics

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YoutubeThere are over 1 billion unique visitors to youtube every month.

We have recently optimized our channel and actively promote our most popular show with 50 episodes, The VUU, including making shorter bits for

the casual viewer.

Cassi Hartley has also launched Faith Rocket, a channel for families with playlists to meet families’ needs on everything from family worship to the spirituality of parenting. This shows youtube’s ability to be popular in both

content creation and curation.

Additionally, we’ll be expanding our google adwords for video blips on youtube to increase exposure to our optimized channel - thanks to Terri

Burnor for the organizing of our channel!

Our most engaging worship bits go on youtube as stand-a-lone pieces. We also have all our own adwords displaying on our youtube channel.

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Youtube – Since Oct 1, 2013

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10 most popular VideosAt the Dentist: Fighting the Marriage Amendment 1,076 views | March 28, 2012

Tandi Rodgers Coming Out Day 1,041 views | September 5, 2012

How does a UU minister get a job at a church anyway? - The VUU #1 965 views | April 11, 2013

WOW! What's the VUU?? - The VUU #8 794 views | May 25, 2013

Names of God 715 views | March 23, 2013

Wherever You Are - Chalice Lighting 622 views | February 15, 2012

I Lied to the Dalai Lama 505 views | December 13, 2013

New UUA Logo and Moral Monday - The VUU #46 405 views | February 11, 2014

Upcoming 2013 UUA General Assembly in Louisville - The VUU #12 370 views | June 13, 2013

Litany of Atonement by Rob Eller-Isaacs 362 Views | September 25, 2011

Starr King School tells us about the Muslim-UU Connections - The VUU #31 HD359 views | October 10, 2013

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Google AdwordsDaily Compass now has impressive traffic thanks to Google Adwords (and to

Tim Atkins!)

Shawna took a course in February, and now has the ability to maximize our $330 daily usage and plans to use commercial videos for adwords. Adwords

will be used for our youtube channel and facebook page.

Much of Shawna’s work has been to optimize CLF’s adwords account with the most relevant keywords. Google’s algorithms detect if accounts use

popular keywords with irrelevant products and downgrades ranking based on this, which decreases exposure. This works has improved our add position.

Adwords will not work with everything, for example, the search volume traffic for Unitarian Universalism is too low, and generic “spiritual but not religious” is

too high. Daily Compass worked because it offered a middle path in advertising. 27

Adwords SummaryCampaign Clicks Impressions CTR Avg. Position

Daily Compass 20,046 1,621,108 1.24% 4.5

UU Iceland 21 3,129 0.67% 1.9

Quest for Meaning 211 58,346 0.36% 4.9

Jewelry 138 8,901 1.55% 3.5

Total 20,416 1,691,504 1.21% 4.5

If we were paying for these ads instead of using the Google grant we received, we would have spent $17,860.40 between October and March. During those 6 months, we had about $54,000 available. This is the same rate as the last report.

There have been improvements in ad position and impressions with the keyword improvement. Next steps are to add more precise campaigns and to do youtube video adwords to maximize funds available.28

Website AnalyticsWe have three main websites – Quest for Meaning, CLF UU, and Daily

Compass.

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Visits and BehaviorSince Oct 1 Daily Compass Quest for Meaning CLF UU

Total Visits 37,681 42,389 14,725

Average Time Spent :45 6:03 2:33

Bounce Rate 81.26% 53% 49.92%

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Worship AnalyticsWorship has benefited from tying into social media services and varying from

the 1-person homily format.

The highest visit day was on Transgender Day of Remembrance, with 1,100 site visitors that day.

There is a variance between Livestream’s numbers and Google Analytics. Livestream reports between 20-200 viewers at any time, Google reports

between 300-1,111 visitors on Sunday to the livestream page.

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Viewer Engagement

● 23% of all visitors watch more than 3 minutes - 18,074 people; some watch more than 30 minutes.

● Pageviews increase with duration of stay - people click on videos they like.● More than half of the people who watch for 30 minutes or more watch services

Tuesday-Saturday, which means they watch it without us being there live. Sunday is the biggest day for worship, with a noticeable spike up on those days.

● Analytics has new tools for us to determine engagement at worship we’re still looking at.

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Concluding Thoughts● Spirituality becomes relevant in everyday life through

applied online ministries● Coordinated content provides consistent messaging,

which may help engagement across many social media channels

● Technology is cheap; to go “viral” funders must see beyond concrete costs to the human cost to develop,

manage, and create engaging online human relationships - to create community

● If the ministry’s primary focus is content creation and curation, then exposure/engagement is needed. If the ministry’s primary focus is missional, then concrete

needs must be met. 33

CLF Engagement ReportPrepared by Shawna Foster,

CLF Engagement Ministry InternContact: sfoster@clfuu.org