Connexions. Engaging young people online
"The website has been a crucial element in getting young people to interact with Connexions. In particular the Impact challenge has brought greater interaction by boys in the community, normally a difficult group to target."
Chris Andrews - CEO, Connexions Sussex
The challenge
At the heart of Connexions' values is the participation of young people in the organisation. They asked us to help them achieve this online through social media.
The results
The results were amazing. As a result of the initial social media campaign, unique visitors to the website increased from 3,700 to 12,000 per month. Crucially, this increase was not temporary.
Young people continued to interact with the website (eg entering competitions, reviewing organisations, joining discussions, voting in polls) on a regular basis. Qube was recommissioned for social media marketing activity for the following four years after this campaign and has now been commissioned by Connexions 360 in East Sussex.
What we did
We delivered:
- Vision Day
- Social Media Roadmap
- Community Builder
- Social Media Marketing Campaign
Vision Day
We completed an engaging and informative Vision Day with young people ensuring we fully understood what the target audience were looking for in the Connexions website.
Social Media Roadmap
Based on the Vision Day we wrote a complete roadmap for the Connexions online engagement strategy. This included:
Marketing & PR plan
This focussed on developing ideas for content for the website that were most likely to engage young people and encourage participation.
Technical plan
We created a full sitemap and page architecture for the website.
Community Builder
To encourage participation by young people and develop a community around Connexions we delivered the following activity:
Community website design and build
We managed the design and build of a sophisticated community website including organisations database and blog.
Ratings and reviews
The website included a huge database of organisations available to help young people with issues from bullying advice to where to play football.
Previously information about each listing had just been provided by the organisation. But what young people really wanted was to know what their peers thought about the organisations. We created a rating and reviews feature where young people could comment and rate their experience. This was fully moderated.
Blogging
We ran a blog on the Connexions website which discussed the dilemmas that young people face everyday. It posed typical scenarios and invited young people to vote on what action should be taken and comment to say what they would do. For every dilemma an expert was invited to provide a response to the dilemma to provide guidance.
Community management
We kept the community active and engaged over many years with activity such as competitions, quizzes and opportunities to add and comment on user generated content.
Social Media Marketing Campaign
Co-creation of advertising campaign
We understood that young people don't always take kindly to be 'told' things. Instead, to get them involved in the marketing of Connexions, we created The Impact Challenge. They would create the advertising, but it would still maintain the quality of a global ad agency.
Email us or call us on 01273 689 672 to see how we can help.