Digital Assets
COA is a storied grassroots environmental organization focused on keeping the ocean and the Jersey Shore clean. They were most successful in establishing the nation’s first Clean Ocean Zone to start a national chain reaction from all coasts and have built a strong membership base of 125, but their audience is older and reliant on getting information from more traditional media sources. Even though the need for activism is greater than ever, getting younger locals to come out to support initiatives that are important to the not-for-profit has proved somewhat elusive. Regional demographics are changing and the survival of the organization as well as the health of the ocean are both at stake. So, we are recommending a refocusing on social media and a total revamp of the COA website to attract a younger demographic and strengthen the organization for the future.
More recently, COA has been having trouble attracting the younger Millenial and Generation Z environmentalists that make up the age group of 18 to 34 in the Tri-State Area. The difficulty can be attributed to changing demographics, habits, and digital assets.
- Making COA more relevant in the environmental space
- Attracting a younger demographic to activism and to ensure the survival of the organization
- Increasing advocacy for the organization and the ocean
Some of our solutions are as follows:
- Using the data to refocus social media to concentrate on content that resonates most
- Trying different content formats such as videos to educate and inspire. Making the content shared more engaging by utilizing GIF’s, audio, and a more pleasing tone and voice
- Revamping the website using hierarchy and better UI to increase donations and engagement
- Making the new site mobile responsive
- Activating the 125 members to spread COA messaging across their social graph
Digital Assets
SUM Engagement by Type
The majority of their posts can include Photo’s or links. A very small portion of their posts is Video, Shared Video, and Status Updates. When this data is broken down by Avg. it becomes clear which type of posts are more effective with their audience.
Avg. Engagement by Type
When looked at as an average, it is clear that the videos are just as effective as the photos they are sharing on Facebook. Both videos and photos are averaging 1300 views per post. Their most effective posts are 3rd party links, which can be expected on social media, as peer to peer influence is the strongest type of content that can be shared. We would recommend based off of this data that COA continue to create posts with Photos, and 3rd party link, while adding more videos, as they are extremely effective based off of the data.
After discovering what type of post was working, we then took the data and labeled each posts content type. More recently, COA has been fighting to stop the construction of the proposed NESE Pipeline, so it wasn’t a surprise to find that a large portion of their current posts is about upcoming rallies to stop it. We hypothesized, that beach-related content would be the most popular post, and the data confirmed this.
As seen in the graph above, every time beach-related content is posted on Facebook, it averages 166 views. Compared to NESE Rally posts, beach-related content gets close to 3.7 more views per post. We also discovered that posts that included pollution in them were the third most engaged with content and the most underutilized by COA, as they have only made 11 posts that contain pollution-related content. Local news content was also very popular and underutilized with 16 posts, but the 3rd most viewed type of content.
To further confirm these insights, we also looked at content types by Organic Impressions.
SUM Organic Impressions by Content Type
Avg. Organic Impressions by Content Type
Once again the sheer number of NESE posts netted COA 20.51% of their Organic Impressions, but they had to make 69 posts to achieve that number. Beach- related content accounted for 16.11% percent of the total Organic Impressions with just 22. To further confirm this, Beach posts averaged 1,623 more impressions than NESE Posts. Not surpassingly, pollution-related posts were the second most effective type of post, followed by local-new posts.
We recommend that COA start producing more beach, pollution, and local news posts because the message is resonating with their audiences. The more content the can put out that is engaged with by their target demographic, the more likely their message will be liked, and reshared furthering their reach, by spending less time and effort. This also gives us insight into what types of events they should be focusing on to get this target demographic more active. COA currently runs two beach sweeps a year, but after looking at this data, they should be doing them monthly in order give the target demo more opportunities to have a soft entrance into becoming more active with COA.
Root Cause
COA is making thousands of the engagements and impressions on a social media we know their target demographic is getting their news from, so where is the disconnect? What is the root cause of their problem? Why isn’t the target demographic not becoming more active?
After analyzing the situation and the data, we have determined that their website is the root cause of the problem. Currently, COA does very well on SEO, and people are being funneled to their website via social media. Once the potential Ocean Wavemaker enters the site, however, COA does not present them with a clear path of what they would like them to do. We conducted 6 usability tests and determined the following are the biggest issues with the site:
- Web 1.0 Design – Every person that entered the site said that if they had stumbled upon the site they would not have stayed there more than 1 second because of its initial appearance.
- Not Mobile Friendly – If a user were to try to access the website from their phones, it is not mobile responsive, and the way the pages are navigated are extremely difficult as they take you pages that open up in a second tab.
- No Clear Customer Journey – When a potential Wavemaker enters their site, the homepage is very crowded, and it is so cluttered that is extremely hard to figure out what COA would like them to do. On top of that, it is really difficult to signup for a COA event as they are hard to find, and when you signup for an event a link can take you to multiple outside venues to do so.
- Security is Questionable – If a Wavemaker would like to make a donation, they are confronted with a page that does displays that is secure in the address bar, but the look and feel of the page makes the user uncomfortable to so,
We are recommending that COA update their website to a new Web 2.0 version, and improve the process of signing up for activist events.
SUM Engagement by Type
The majority of their posts can include Photo’s or links. A very small portion of their posts is Video, Shared Video, and Status Updates. When this data is broken down by Avg. it becomes clear which type of posts are more effective with their audience.
Avg. Engagement by Type
When looked at as an average, it is clear that the videos are just as effective as the photos they are sharing on Facebook. Both videos and photos are averaging 1300 views per post. Their most effective posts are 3rd party links, which can be expected on social media, as peer to peer influence is the strongest type of content that can be shared. We would recommend based off of this data that COA continue to create posts with Photos, and 3rd party link, while adding more videos, as they are extremely effective based off of the data.
After discovering what type of post was working, we then took the data and labeled each posts content type. More recently, COA has been fighting to stop the construction of the proposed NESE Pipeline, so it wasn’t a surprise to find that a large portion of their current posts is about upcoming rallies to stop it. We hypothesized, that beach-related content would be the most popular post, and the data confirmed this.
As seen in the graph above, every time beach-related content is posted on Facebook, it averages 166 views. Compared to NESE Rally posts, beach-related content gets close to 3.7 more views per post. We also discovered that posts that included pollution in them were the third most engaged with content and the most underutilized by COA, as they have only made 11 posts that contain pollution-related content. Local news content was also very popular and underutilized with 16 posts, but the 3rd most viewed type of content.
To further confirm these insights, we also looked at content types by Organic Impressions.
SUM Organic Impressions by Content Type
Avg. Organic Impressions by Content Type
Once again the sheer number of NESE posts netted COA 20.51% of their Organic Impressions, but they had to make 69 posts to achieve that number. Beach- related content accounted for 16.11% percent of the total Organic Impressions with just 22. To further confirm this, Beach posts averaged 1,623 more impressions than NESE Posts. Not surpassingly, pollution-related posts were the second most effective type of post, followed by local-new posts.
We recommend that COA start producing more beach, pollution, and local news posts because the message is resonating with their audiences. The more content the can put out that is engaged with by their target demographic, the more likely their message will be liked, and reshared furthering their reach, by spending less time and effort. This also gives us insight into what types of events they should be focusing on to get this target demographic more active. COA currently runs two beach sweeps a year, but after looking at this data, they should be doing them monthly in order give the target demo more opportunities to have a soft entrance into becoming more active with COA.
Root Cause
COA is making thousands of the engagements and impressions on a social media we know their target demographic is getting their news from, so where is the disconnect? What is the root cause of their problem? Why isn’t the target demographic not becoming more active?
After analyzing the situation and the data, we have determined that their website is the root cause of the problem. Currently, COA does very well on SEO, and people are being funneled to their website via social media. Once the potential Ocean Wavemaker enters the site, however, COA does not present them with a clear path of what they would like them to do. We conducted 6 usability tests and determined the following are the biggest issues with the site:
- Web 1.0 Design – Every person that entered the site said that if they had stumbled upon the site they would not have stayed there more than 1 second because of its initial appearance.
- Not Mobile Friendly – If a user were to try to access the website from their phones, it is not mobile responsive, and the way the pages are navigated are extremely difficult as they take you pages that open up in a second tab.
- No Clear Customer Journey – When a potential Wavemaker enters their site, the homepage is very crowded, and it is so cluttered that is extremely hard to figure out what COA would like them to do. On top of that, it is really difficult to signup for a COA event as they are hard to find, and when you signup for an event a link can take you to multiple outside venues to do so.
- Security is Questionable – If a Wavemaker would like to make a donation, they are confronted with a page that does displays that is secure in the address bar, but the look and feel of the page makes the user uncomfortable to so,
We are recommending that COA update their website to a new Web 2.0 version, and improve the process of signing up for activist events.
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