Through her own personal experiences Kerry Sauriol has seen how social media can be properly used for both small and large businesses, as well as non-profit organizations and media, to expand awareness of products, services or events. Here are three examples of how Kerry brought greater awareness through social media and how it positively impacted the companies and organizations.
1. Purple Hats Campaign
Through her personal blog at Crunchy Carpets.com, Kerry was part of a blogger outreach program designed to spread the word about Purple Crying in infants and its effects on parents. Using her own personal stories of raising a child that was currently in the phase of purple crying, Kerry spoke passionately about the emotional toil that a crying infant can have on the sleep-deprived parents and their siblings. She also asked for and received the personal stories from her blogging community to help support the Purple Hats campaign to spread awareness about solutions available to frustrated family members experiencing this difficult moment in their lives.
As a result, Kerry was interviewed by CBC Radio One and CBC TV to share her own story of Purple Crying and the effects it had on her family. She also brought greater awareness to the Purple Hat Knit campaign held by the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation to support awareness for parents of purple crying babies across Canada and the United States.
2. Maple Leaf Foods
After the horrifying loss of life and illness due to a terrible listeria outbreak at their processing plant, Canadian-based food manufacturer Maple Leaf Foods reached out to influential online parents to rekindle their brand image and show that their food products were safe for families.
Kerry was contacted by Maple Leaf Foods and asked if she would like to be a part of the company’s outreach efforts. She agreed, but only on the condition that no question was off limits and that Maple Leaf was totally transparent with their communications. The Vice President of Maple Leaf’s Food Safety and Quality Assurance answered Kerry’s questions and made sure that her company remained transparent and open to scrutiny from bloggers and concerned mothers.
As a result of their sit-down, Kerry endorsed Maple Leaf’s safety procedures and praised the company for tackling their public relations image head-on with truth and openness.
3. BirthFest/Birth Lounge
The Birth Lounge is a group of pregnancy and birth-based businesses and organizations in Vancouver that are passionate about all things baby. Every year they promote local businesses, groups and individuals that are available to Vancouver Moms-to-be at the Birth Fest held at Britannia Community Centre.
Through her extensive social media presence and featuring of the event on the women entrepreneur portal Wet Coast Women, Kerry has used her online influence to recruit other bloggers to become promotional partners with Birth Lounge. As well, through her online outreach efforts Kerry has brought in more vendors and customers to Birth Fest. The event continues to grow every year in popularity.
By using Wet Coast Women to tap into the network of women run businesses and services, the site has become an advocate of promoting small business in Vancouver and Victoria through interviews, advertising and its growing directory.
Dear Kerry,
This is long overdue! I wanted to extend my gratitude for your involvement helping to spread the word about Birth Fest 2011. Part of our grassroots marketing strategy for this event was to access the “word of mom” so we talked with you about being involved in connecting us with mom bloggers in Vancouver that could spread the word about Birth Fest to their own networks. Together, we successfully recruited 5 high visibility Vancouver Bloggers who all wrote awesome posts about Birth Fest before the event to create buzz. We even had one Blogger contact members of Birth Lounge and profile these women on their blog in dedicated posts. Not only did Birth Fest get great visibility, the women of Birth Lounge did, too. Our attendance surpassed 2010 significantly and I have no doubt that it was in part due to your ability to connect us successfully with bloggers that were the right fit that had the right circle of influence. As a volunteer run event, we highly rely on social marketing to support visibility and ultimately attendance at our event. And working with you certainly assisted us in reaching our goals. Thanks Kerry.
Kind Regards,
Karen
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4. Corazon Gold Corp.
Snaptech Marketing and Web Design have many resource and mining based companies as clients. One of their clients – Corazon – had requested aid in developing an positive online presence through social media. Snaptech contracted my services for this. Corazon had no experience at all with social media and therefore it was up to me to build up their presence from absolutely nothing. This involved creating a community on Twitter, setting up a Facebook page and writing blog posts for their site. Corazon was a challenging project due to their unfamiliarity with online marketing. Marketing online and off requires a strategy. You need a focus. Corporations need to be aware of the brand presence they want to project to potential investors and other stakeholders and share that with the people in charge of their social media. My research concluded that the modern mining industry, be it gold, copper, silver or other resources has to focus not only on results but how they achieve their results. Mining in places like Central and South America requires strong community relations with the people they are working with. It also require a commitment to the environment. Potential investors want to know that you care. This is what I focused on for Corazon and in less than three months they went from zero followers to 111 on Twitter and robust daily traffic to their website.
“Kerry always delivers. The Social Media market changes so quickly its nice to know we could rely on Kerry to stay on top of this sector to meet our needs. Happy to endorse Kerry and her work!” July 27, 2011
Top qualities: Great Results, Personable, Creative
Patrick Brauckmann, President & CEO Corazon Gold Corp.
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