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To Event Organizers, Attendees and Living Historians:
As we all know, the modern age of social media has changed the advertising landscape forever. Just a few short years ago, the vast majority of on-line advertising was accomplished by attracting people to your web site. Everyone was on the internet, but there was no singular driving force to guide people to the myriad of sites that wanted to sell something. It happened organically. That is, people advertised their sites through print media, e-mails and forums.
In reenacting specifically, the forums ruled the internet. From the late nineties up until around 2009, if you wanted to know what was going on in living history, you went to the forums. If you wanted to advertise your unit or event, you created a web page. During those times, the forums were definitely the driving force.
Then there was social media. MySpace was founded in 2003 and "From 2005 to 2008, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world, and in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States." (Source - Wikipedia)
While MySpace had a huge following, it did not really take root in the reenacting community. It wasn't until 2009 and 2010 that Facebook came to the forefront. Around this period, people were continuously increasing their time on social media, but the forums still ruled the roost.
Then, in 2011, the 150ths began and the traffic began to shift just as a large number of reenactors were eyeing their retirements at the end of the cycle. From 2011 to 2015, the reenacting community and specifically the authentic side of the ledger was focused on raising large numbers for mainstream adjuncts. There were many efforts including Shiloh, Perryville, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Bentonville and Sailor's Creek. The primary driver for attendance at these events were the umbrella mainstream organizations and by that time, social media.
When I took over the Authentic Campaigner in January of 2014, it was a shell of it's former self. The traffic had moved to social media and at the same time, event listings were more-and-more restricted. An AC Facebook page was launched prior to my coming aboard, but at the time, the goal was to make it a social media version of the forums. This didn't work for two reasons. First, it drew traffic away from the forums. Second, the attempt was made to run it just like the forums with the same rules and standards. For social media, this is nearly impossible when people can run around and post whatever they want on their own pages and their friend's feeds. The initial AC Facebook experiment failed.
This was the biggest challenge I faced upon my arrival. How could we use social media without drawing people away from the forums? How could we have a large presence without enforcing our standards? I knew the answer - "The Drudge Report". (http://www.drudgereport.com/)
If you follow the Drudge Report, you know what it is. For those who don't, the idea is pretty simple. Drudge gathers links from various news and political sites and posts them on their page with catchy headlines to drive people to the various sites. For instance, an article on CNN might be "President Signs New Transportation Bill". Drudge posts a link to the CNN article, but changes the headline to "President Defies Congress to Sign Controversial Bill". The result is to drive thousands of Drudge followers to CNN to read the article and in turn post a comment. The important lesson is that LINKS are extremely powerful because they send someone exactly where you want them to go.
The Drudge Report continues to be a force in the on-line world. From a Poltico article in April of 2015, "The Drudge Report is the leading source of referral traffic (excluding social media and search referrals) for many of the top news organizations in the country, according to a new report from the Drudge Report's advertising management firm Intermarkets." (Click Here for Article).
The genius of Drudge is that it does this with practically NO original content, yet they rule the narrative on-line because of the numbers they draw on a daily basis. This allows them to charge very high advertising dollars with a minimal staff. Genius.
So, "how does this relate to The Authentic Campaigner?" Because early in 2014, we started doing the same thing that Drudge does, except all of the traffic that is generated on the AC Facebook page is funneled right back to the AC Forums. The difference is that the content we are using is YOURS. Whenever there is a hot thread, event announcement, preservation effort or anything else that might be of interest, we "blast" it out on our Facebook page (Click Here for the AC Facebook Page). Also, we created a Twitter Page for the same purpose (Click Here for the AC Twitter Page). The reason we did this is obvious. It is because ALL of us are using social media more and more. So, logically, the AC had to go where the traffic was... where you are.
But it wasn't enough to just blast out posts from the AC when we had less than 100 followers on Twitter and around 800 on Facebook. I made a conscious effort to get us out of what I call the "Reenacting Bubble". See, with many people retiring, moving to other time periods and spending less time on the forums, the only way to grow the authentic hobby was to look for new people. We started paid advertising on Facebook to increase our following. We did the same thing on Twitter, except more gradually. So you know, Facebook gets more traffic for living history than Twitter does. This was obvious early on, so most of our efforts were targeted to Facebook. Since we started this social media campaign we have increased our following on Facebook to over 13,000 and over 1,300 on Twitter. Now, let's start drilling this down.
During a normal week, our AC Facebook page "reaches" between 10,000 - 50,000 people. For those of you who are Admins on your unit or event Facebook page, you have seen this term in your statistics. So, what is "reach" exactly? Reach is defined by Facebook as "Post reach is the number of people who have seen your post. Your post counts as reaching someone when it's shown in News Feed. Figures are for the first 365 days after a post was created and include people viewing your post on desktop and mobile." (Click Here for Facebook "Reach" Definition).
Now, let's get to the meat of the matter for marketing and advertising the authentic hobby and specifically EBUFU and Adjunct Events. Let me say that all of this that I have described here is set up for YOU. It was created specifically to drive more people to OUR events. It was tailored to be the bullhorn for the authentic hobby. It was all made for us to expand our reach during a period that we are supposedly "shrinking".
Look at the graphic at the top of this post and I will explain how this is supposed to work. For marketing, you always start with a funnel. That is, at the top of the funnel, you have the largest number of people. Since I referred to it earlier, let's call it the total "reach". At the bottom of the funnel, you have a newly minted Authentic Civil War Living Historian who has a genuine interest in our hobby and our events. Marketing is all about numbers. You can't convert every person at the top of the funnel, but the more people you attract, the better the odds are that more will come out of the bottom of the funnel.
So, Let's Look at a Detailed Analysis of "The Funnel"
1) Authentic Campaigner Forums - At the top of the funnel, you have the 13,590 members of the Authentic Campaigner. Not all of these people are active, obviously, but it is the most concentrated demographic that exists for authentic living history because, even today, it is the largest web site that our hobby has and it includes people have already "opted in" to join. That is, you are all here by choice. You came here from word-of-mouth, different web sites, search engines, links, etc. Now couple this with the Authentic Campaigner "brand". Whatever you think of the the traffic at the forums, you may not realize that the forums are the hub, but we are no longer just a web site, because through social media, we have expanded the "brand".
2) Authentic Campaigner Facebook Page - As referred to earlier, by design, we have greatly increased our following on Facebook. We started with a little over 800 when I got here, and have now increased this number to over 14,000, and growing. Because we have such a large number now, it has begun to grow on it's own. If you check the size of other living history Facebook pages, we are one of the largest and certainly the biggest for authentic living history. I watch the numbers religiously and this is the case. Just about everything we "blast" out from the forums gets at least a reach of 1,000. Many of the posts reach 2,000 - 5,000 people. Some of our posts get a reach of anywhere from 5,000 up to 30,000. If we "boost" a post, or pay Facebook to increase the reach, we have hit as many as 50,000 people. Now, for all of you who are admins on your unit or event page, compare your numbers to get an idea how we are jumping outside the "Reenactor Bubble".
When we blast out a post on Facebook, the number of people viewing a particular post on the AC can skyrocket, depending on the post. For the average blast, you may see a folder jump from 10-20 people viewing it up to hundreds of people. It happens very quickly. I have been on the phone with some of the staff here and showed them what happens when we put out a blast. Just a couple of weeks ago, we broke a record that had stood since 2009 with 1,045 people on the forums. The day after the Picket Post, we spiked at 2,215 people on the forums. We more than doubled the record. That is how powerful the Facebook blast can be.
Another important aspect to the "blasts" is that we always use a picture or photo. If you read up on this, you will find that having a visual greatly increases the attention that your post gets. Simple text posts don't even come close. I have found that the ideal size for a photo to show up in a link is 800 pixels wide x 420 pixels tall. That makes sure that your photo covers the width of your post and maximizes it's size. So, if you are posting links, ALWAYS use a photo.
We use the funnel principal for the AC as well. Because of our increased reach, we have seen a parallel increase in our membership at the forums. This increased dramatically at the beginning of this year, which was why Ken Cornett now focuses exclusively on new registrations. It became too much for me to handle without help.
3) Authentic Campaigner Twitter Page - As I mentioned earlier, Twitter has been a different animal than Facebook. It is much more difficult to get followers on Twitter in general and even more so for Living History. Twitter seems to focus more on personalities, celebrity, news, politics and niche hobbies. Nonetheless, in the past week or so, we have finally popped the 1,400 mark in followers. We use Twitter in the same way we use Facebook. We post links back to the forums at the same time we blast them out on Facebook. At times, Twitter can also cause a surge in viewership on the AC, although not quite as much as happens when we blast out on Facebook.
4) Unit Facebook Pages - Typically, I have seen unit Facebook page sizes at between 600 - 1,400 followers. These pages have quite apparently eclipsed web pages for each of our groups for several reasons. First, in the old days, you had to install a forum into your web site. Now, you set up a page and can talk to people and put out information right at your fingertips. You can also invite people to join very easily through your own feed, because let's face it, we are ALL on Facebook. When you increase your reach, it goes first to the people following your page and then if they comment or share a link from your page, it goes out to the second layer of people - their friends. Since so many of us are on Facebook, it is easy to get more reach. The other aspect of a unit web page is that it is very easy to share photos and as mentioned here, photos are very powerful.
When it comes to utilizing the AC to attract new members to your web page, I encourage you to post links to your unit Facebook page. Links are the key. We are constantly watching for new material to blast out, and if you hadn't noticed, we have sent out several recruiting blasts for people who post here on the forums. Remember that the AC has the same goal as you. We WANT to attract more people to our hobby. We WANT each of your groups to grow. That's the idea anyway, right?
5) Event Facebook Pages - It seems to me that Event Facebook pages routinely have from 300 - 1,400 members. This isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but it looks like it is a by-product of the funnel affect once again. You have the bigger platforms, which are the AC, Umbrella Groups and Messes and out of that pool come the people who actually attend the events.
I must acknowledge that much of the pre-event communication that used to occur on the AC now happens on these Event Facebook pages. And you know what? That's fine. With your page, you have the ability to instantly share updates to the people who are most-interested in your event. You have a captive and targeted audience who has "opted-in"to your effort. They have to say that they are either interested in attending or going to attend your event. I cannot begrudge the usefulness of this new tool that you have at your disposal, and I completely understand why you use this today in lieu of the "old system" of posting your updates on the AC. However...
If you do not post updates on the AC, you are only utilizing the bottom of the "funnel". You are missing out on a huge target audience that we are attracting because of the expansion of the AC brand. I'm not saying that you need to post every update; every photo, or every communication, but the best-attended events in the last couple of years have hit their FB pages hard in addition to posts on the AC. If you have an event folder, use it. We will blast out your updates. If you post a link to your Event FB page in your AC post, you are attracting many people who may or may not be tied into the feed for your event, simply because of the math. If you have 300 people on your event FB page, your reach goes to their friends and maybe to the next level. That means a reach of 900 - 1,000. If you see numbers different than that, please let me know, but that is my guess.
Every time I see someone on my personal FB feed say "I never heard about this event", I cringe, because I know what we have in the AC that can help you. I also know that our branding is important, because we perform the screening process here on the forums before it ever goes out to social media. Obviously, you have a focused audience, but you could exponentially increase your reach just by posting updates on the AC, which in turn are blasted out to our 14,000 followers on FB and 1,400 followers on Twitter.
6) EBUFU & Adjunct Attendees - Now, we have reached the bottom of the funnel. This is where the rubber meets the road. How many people can we get to attend OUR events? You should note that currently, Szabo's Forum does not participate in Social Media. I can honestly say that I have encouraged them to do so for the sake of the whole Civil War Reenacting hobby, but to this date, they have not. The old model of the Campaigner/Progressive/Hardcore hobby was that people would start in the mainstream and then find their way to us. So ask yourself this question. Why does that model need to still apply today? Can we not "flank" the mainstream by attracting newbies to our hobby? Shouldn't we be using every tool at our disposal to attract new people? Have you noticed that our numbers today are roughly the same as they were ten years ago, while mainstream events continue to get smaller and smaller? We have an opportunity to continue to grow our hobby. It is my goal, with the AC as a primary tool to do just that. I think that with increased cooperation, we can hit some big numbers. We have an opportunity at Perryville this year and next year looks even more promising.
This is our opportunity to grow our hobby in this generation just as the previous generation created the campaigner movement, it is now our task to not only maintain it, but grow it. I think we have the most powerful tools we have ever had to do that now. I believe that overall, we are more savvy in using the internet to achieve some tremendous results. I am writing this post today to both clarify what we are doing at the AC and to assist you in every way possible. This hobby is my passion, as I know it is yours. My other passion is studying marketing, social media and trends. By sharing what I know and what I have learned, it is my desire to help strengthen the things we are already doing to improve and prosper.
I hope that this article gives you some ideas. I hope that this will encourage event organizers to use this megaphone that we have created. The days of the forums ruling the internet are gone, but the Authentic Campaigner is no longer just a forum. It is now built as a brand that reaches far beyond the single place it occupied before. This is your site. All of this was done for you. The Staff here are only the caretakers of the AC for this generation. The rest is up to you.
I would love to hear your comments, questions, and other ideas. Fire away!
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