Tammy Friedeck is a dedicated communications professional who works for Goodwill Industries of Central North Carolina, Inc. She is speaking at the next Greensboro Social Media Club benefit event for #citizengulf (I'm helping to organize the event.) And she was kind enough to give me an interview to answer some questions about her background in PR, and social media.
Tammy Friedeck: My communications background is varied as I’ve had exposure in many different areas. My undergraduate degree is in Radio/TV and Public Relations so I’ve always worked in and around the media and as a spokesperson. While earning my MBA I learned about utilizing strategic planning when it came to communicating with any external audiences. I also started an e-zine in 1999 and began blogging personally in 2001 so I guess that was the beginning of my foray into online communications.
John Cass: How did you first get involved in using social media at Goodwill?
Tammy Friedeck: Prior to utilizing social media, Goodwill would constantly update our website to share the latest information (both internally and externally). In 2009, we did a complete overhaul of our website to streamline the content and decrease the amount of daily maintenance that was being done. In order to still have an outlet for the latest and greatest news, I launched our social media plan which included using Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, Flickr and YouTube.
John Cass: How does social media work for Goodwill Industries?
Tammy Friedeck: Our social media presence revolves around brand awareness. As I mentioned above we do share tidbits of information on a daily basis regarding our mission services and our retail stores but we also monitor conversations in the community and offer solutions to problems or just simply act as a sounding board.
John Cass: What campaigns have given you a good ROI.
Tammy Friedeck: One of the campaigns that was really successful for Goodwill was our “March Madness” Donation Drive. We opened a new weekend donation center in the Elm/Pisgah Church area that was underperforming and we couldn’t figure out why. Using only social media we promoted a Donation Drive to celebrate March Madness. We invested in some tickets to the Men’s ACC tournament and raffled off one pair every hour on a Saturday. To enter you just had to make a donation of clothing or housewares. The campaign was promoted on our blog, Facebook and Twitter. While we had great success the day of the event, the most important ROI measurement for us was the number of donations made at that center in the following weeks. During the next two months the number of donation drop offs increased almost 250%. The campaign was effective enough to help influence our decision makers to build a store in that area rather than just have a weekend donation center.
John Cass: How do you measure the success of your campaigns?
Tammy Friedeck: Aside from the measurement described above, we also look very closely at the connection between our website traffic and our social media sites. There is a lot of cross-referencing done to see how many people are moving from our social media sites to our website and/or blog in order to get more information about our company.
John Cass: How do you listen to what’s going on in the community?
Tammy Friedeck: My most common answer to this question is that we do a lot of active listening. Google Alerts is one of my most popular tools for seeing what the community is saying about us. I also actively monitor Twitter (using both Twitter search and TweetDeck) to participate in conversations that are centered around topics that Goodwill could be a part of (ex: where to donate items, where to buy vintage, what job training services are available, etc).
Thanks Tammy, looking forward to the event, and your description of how social media has been used in the gulf crisis.
8/23/10 Update: Tammy posts her own post about the upcoming #citizengulf event
