Showing posts with label KKFI 90.1 FM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label KKFI 90.1 FM. Show all posts

Grassroots Radio Conference (2011)

KKFI 90.1 FM community radio and Friends of Community Media in Kansas City will host the 15th Grassroots Radio Conference. The national conference scheduled for August 18-21, 2011 offers a chance for people from community radio stations to connect with each other, learn new skills, and discuss media issues. My participation on the publicity team includes branding, designing and building a website; creating a conference flier; writing articles and content; and building a following in Facebook and Twitter. Alexis B, a volunteer with KKFI, developed the banner image.
Conference website - click on image for full view
The website is built using a fully-functioning "conference organizing distribution" of Drupal, the largest open-source content management system. The distribution has a feature that allows conference schedules, registration, and sponsorships to be built from items submitted directly by those audiences. The cost of the site is nominal: hosting cost $80, while my labor to design and build the site was donated to the conference.
Conference flier 
Conference registration-by-mail form (click on the image for larger view)
Facebook and Twitter. The challenge in this project is working with an all-volunteer conference organizing team without experience using social media. The number of people who "Like" the conference page has grown to 160 in 3 months. The Twitter account is new, attracting 110 followers over the same time period. Two social media tools were used to build an audience: (1) implement a Facebook Ad the last week before the conference and (2) countdown-to-the-conference tweets using Hootsuite's scheduling function.
First news release sent to 85 area news organizations announcing the national event to take place in Kansas City.
Photos from 2011 Grassroots Radio Conference held in Kansas City, Missouri -
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Homelessness Marathon 2011

The Homelessness Marathon is an annual, nationwide broadcast to over 125 radio and TV stations. The purpose of this year's broadcast, held February 23-24, 2011, is to raise awareness about the problem of homelessness in the U.S. by allowing homeless people to directly participate in the marathon.

The organization focuses efforts at planning and building the broadcast in a different U.S. city each year. This year the organizers selected Kansas City as the host site for the broadcast. The broadcast originated at Hope Faith Ministries, a day center serving 1000 people daily in downtown Kansas City.

Publicity:

With limited resources the Homelessness Marathon staff produce a 14-hour live radio show and publicize the show on their website. To help extend promotion to new media, I quickly built up the following for their Facebook Page, Twitter feed, and YouTube channel. 

The Facebook Page had been a second thought in their promotion efforts by connecting an automated news feed that provided timely information about current events impacting homeless people. The Facebook Page would better promote the radio broadcast by using Facebook a personal, conversational approach. We disconnected the news feed and built the Page from 80 to over 670 fans in five weeks. The Twitter feed was new and has 300 followers after five weeks. 






Note: Organizers removed the Twitter and Facebook accounts after the 2011 broadcast. The accounts will be re-established for the 2012 broadcast.



Facebook - A simple approach to build a large number of fans quickly: cross-post news and comments from homeless advocates and individuals, as well as "@ tag" radio and TV stations airing the broadcast. Additional sources of news and information included the website, Twitter, and the director's commentary. Finally, a low-cost ($6 per day) advertisement was used. The advertisement approach was simple: Create a "landing page" and direct clicks from the advertisement to the landing page (see below for image).


Twitter - The approach to build a following here was to follow as many homeless advocacy organizations, homeless shelters, housing organizations, and poverty relief groups as possible. Due to the micro-blog nature of Twitter, it's easier to find vibrant voices to follow. There were several homeless individuals that were very active, like @staffaroadtrip, @project5050, @hardlynormal, and @awitness2011.




YouTube - Videos thrive on the Internet and are very effective at telling a story for non-profits. I produced three quick videos - one at Hope Faith Ministries, two at a radio station studio.



Report on publicity for event - 
Aside from using social media to promote and document the broadcast, I sent out two news releases for the organizers and made calls to news organizations during the final week before the event. A series of graphic images were developed based on the original design.
During the 14-hour event, photos and video were uploaded in near real-time to Facebook, TwitPic, TwitVid, and YouTube. Because of the once-a-year nature of the event, there was a large increase in the number fans that Liked the Facebook Page or followed the Twitter feed right before the event. Specifically, 150 fans Liked Facebook Page on the day of the broadcast. See the chart below for the four weeks of Facebook activity.

 Facebook landing page graphic

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