Get Born

Story, Community and Social Media: A Case Study

The following is a guest blog post from a KW Brand client.

Marketing maven Jonathan Kranz says this about the use of storytelling and marketing:

“Stories aren’t just for campfires and school children: they’re a powerful way for businesses to communicate their value, to create an emotional hook that sticks in their prospects’ imaginations.

Stories can make a business. Yet most businesses remain tongue-tied, not because they don’t have stories to tell, but because they don’t know how to tell them.”

My business–get b o r n magazine–an edgy, mouthy magazine for mothers, began with my conviction that, through story, the full realm of motherhood (that is, every stage and every experience, from adoption to grandparenthood to parenting an autistic, sociopathic or brilliantly gifted child) could be less lonely, and, therefore, less daunting.

As a bona fide evangelist for my product, I surmised that everyone would “get it” if only I could get five minutes of their time. Unfortunately, in the midst of raising four daughters, starting a business, having a limited marketing budget, and then being diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, finding five minutes to give to everyone became impossible.

I realized that my business is a classic niche business. I target moms and primary caregivers from a specific demographic and their support systems. I deliver an edgy, unpolished, though sharp product that doesn’t appeal to everyone, particularly not to any group of moms interested in keeping up a perfect image for the public.

We began to work with KW Brand Translation, defining, refining, and appropriately extending both our brand attributes and our brand definition. During a marketing retreat laden with my particular form of compensation—gourmet snacks— my staff, along with KW, fleshed out our focus, incorporating both short-and long-term goals for multi-faceted marketing strategies. At the end, we drafted a marketing plan. Our goals were lofty. We were working on a new website, doing some direct marketing, facilitating sponsored events and launching a social media strategy. Since our marketing budget is modest, Kyndra suggested we approach the “budget” question by filling in the number of hours each of the (entirely) volunteer staff would have to spend for each initiative in between their other jobs as moms and professionals.

And, because such a large portion of our demographic are at home with small children either full or part time, daily conversations (stories—see quote above) encouraging participation was a no-brainer. So we began a “get born” FaceBook fan page effort.

During the retreat, we’d reviewed our brand position and attributes so when we divvied up the job of administering the content, volunteers know what types of things to post.
We post at least one new thing a day but monitor the site for interaction throughout the day.
We’ve learned what types of posts tend to elicit the most reaction: We start with a personal anecdote of sorts, then lead into an evocative question. We post content that is honest and highlights our humanity. We look for humor and truth.

These parameters have facilitated the ongoing stories on the fan page, allowing our demographic to write their story as we write ours. Since the retreat, we’ve watched the FaceBook page grow:

We started with under 100 fans to and today have over 800 (700%!)
Every week we have approximately 150 interactions and the FaceBook post quality metric suggests that close to 10% of our fans are responding on a weekly basis. Sometimes it’s as high as 25%.
Our website traffic has also dramatically increased from between April 2009 to March 2010:

Category	April 2009 to September 2009	October 2009 to March 2010	%
Visits	1,808	3,788	109% increase
Total Page Views	4,959	25,920	422% increase
Page Views per Visit	2.74	6.84	149% increase
Bounce Rate	53%	19%	34% decrease
Average Time on Site (minutes)	2.24	4.03	79% increase
Primary Traffic Source: Referring Sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)	37.18%	54.49%

Of course the big metric is revenue. I’ve watched my revenue increase, albeit slowly, as a result of the social media activity. Patience seems to be the ticket here since our demographic is leery of a hard sell, and prefers to feel like they’re a part of a legitimate community. But, because our brand embraces a mother’s mental health and her sense of belonging in a community, this approach fits us well.

Our long-term goals will continue to involve a more steady revenue stream through an increased subscription base as well as maintenance and acquisition of loyal advertisers. We plan to continue the use of social media while also branching into both direct marketing and events as our fan base continues to grow and build loyalty. We’re also considering other ways to leverage the community we’ve created.

My advice? The first step is realizing that everyone loves a good story, regardless of the product involved. Because, we, as people, are made up of our stories. Once you’ve established your own story (and believe me, you’ve got one—unless your company is being run by robots), tell it bit by bit through social media, offering tasty morsels of humanity. Then, elicit a response from your customer or fan base asking them to respond in kind. The thrill of social networks like FaceBook is twofold: first of all, people love to see themselves in print, even if it’s online. Secondly, we all love instant gratification, which social networking hands out in spades. When you give your customers the opportunity to interact with you on this level, you don’t simply build a customer base; you build relationships, and in spite of the ever-increasing activity online, all any of us want, at the end of the day, is to be known. The cake is the revenue; the icing on the cake is knowing that you’ve built genuine rapport with real people.

Heather Janssen

Publisher, Editor and co-founder of get born magazine: the uncensored voice of motherhood

Hocus Focus

A woman I’ve known since childhood recently founded her own magazine called Get Born. She started it because she needed a forum in which to honestly discuss her experience of grappling with the daily issues of motherhood as it relates to one’s own child(ren), other mothers and societal expectations. She needed a place where it was safe to be uncompromisingly honest about the experience of motherhood. She needed a literary vehicle that would allow her to wax philosophical, emotional, or spiritual and swear when necessary. She wanted to provide a forum for other women with the same needs. Get Born’s tagline is “The uncensored voice of motherhood.”

And recently, Get Born experienced one of those pivotal branding moments that makes or breaks a new business.

In the course of talking to a woman my friend had met at a networking event, the woman shared that she was an independent consultant for one of those multi-level marketing companies that encourages its employees to achieve success by talking to anyone who will listen, hosting house “parties” and recruiting other people to work as consultants themselves. As this particular woman chatted up my friend, she asked for information about the rates for advertising in Get Born; she said she might like to advertise, which normally would have been great news. Get Born, like many magazines, survives on revenue collected from advertisers.

The only problem was that the very next issue of Get Born was due to feature an essay in which the contributing author described her experience of meeting a fellow mother at a mall play-area and her uncomfortable realization that the woman’s interest in her was primarily motivated by an interest in selling product and recruiting another salesperson to work underneath her.

The mall sales-pitch situation is an experience that most suburban mothers have had. I get invited to a couple “parties” (makeup, kitchen product, candle, children’s books, jewelry…fill in the blank) a year. My friend decided to publish the essay because it spoke to the problem of mothers feeling isolated and the frustration they experience when they try to reach out to women around them. As it turned out, the multi-level company that the woman at the mall was representing was the same as that of the networking associate requesting the ad rates. My friend wisely told her new contact about the upcoming article and suggested that she read it before placing her ad. The following morning she received a call from the woman who informed her that she wouldn’t be placing an ad and neither would she have anything further to do with Get Born.

Losing a potential customer was difficult for my friend not only because at its young stage of development, one might argue that Get Born can use all the customers it can get, but also because, throughout childhood, my friend was conditioned to be nice, to avoid offending others. Many of us have had this conditioning. Therefore, when, as brand managers we’re in the position of laying and defending a clear brand boundary, we equivocate. We don’t want to say “no,” or describe ourselves in any but the broadest terms. We worry that there aren’t enough customers and strive to attract any warm body we can get. We try to be all things to all people and try to offer products and services that go beyond our true strengths or passions. We complain about servicing the difficult customers who sap most of our time and creative energy when the truth is that our goals and their needs were probably never a good fit. We tear our hair out at the resource drain caused by employees who had the right technical skills but whose values are tied into those underlying the brand.

My friend could have pulled the offending article; that issue of Get Born had not yet gone to print. She could have replaced the multi-level critique piece with a happy feature on how to make summer crafts with kids. Doing so would have kept the woman’s business and her approval. However, doing so would have compromised Get Born’s mission, diluting it to the point of ambiguous neutrality.

Losing a potential customer is not a pleasant experience and should certainly never be the goal. However, maintaining brand focus should require the articulation and defense of clear brand boundaries—setting clear parameters and using situations that come up as a chance to clarify and reinforce them. People who don’t like where the boundary lines are drawn may not come back, but in the meantime, there will be other people who hear about the focus of the experience will feel greater assurance that once inside, they will find what they’re looking for.

Brand management is investment. Losing the wrong potential customer is difficult at the time, but if it helps you win the right customers down the road, the payoff will be worth it, for you and for them.

Kyndra Wilson KW Brand Translation

Story, Community and Social Media: A Case Study

Hocus Focus

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Tags