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Youthline Online Viral Marketing Strategy

Submitted by Meredith Crowe for the yMedia Challenge 2009

The aim of this document is to review Youthline’s current web2.0 viral media

situation and suggest possible directions to take that could improve this.

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Contents:

1 Title

2 Contents

3 Facebook

8 Bebo

9 Youthline Home Site

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Facebook

Overview

Typing “youthline” in the facebook search function brings up 89 results. The

New Zealand group is the second option down, and it isn’t very obvious that this

is their central page. Because facebook is very limited in its page customizing

opportunities, it makes it very difficult to stand out.

Youthline currently has a facebook ‘group,’ I would suggest creating a ‘page’ so

you can have ‘fans’ rather then ‘members.’ Due to their security features, and

size limitations (only groups under 5,000 members can send email blasts),

Facebook Groups are set up for more personal interaction. Pages can send

messages to their fans through the status function, and these messages will

appear on the fans homepage, not in their inbox. There is no numbers limit on

this function. Groups are considered more ‘private’ and this may put some

people off using the group, as I understand, Youthline often help youth with very

personal things, and requiring them to ‘Join the Group’ may be off putting.

Groups can’t have applications. Statistically, pages benefit more from

advertising then groups.

Facebook Chat

I have looked into using the chat function on Facebook because it is very

functional as an instant messaging service, although groups cannot use this.

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However after some research it appears that the chat on facebook is not

suitable for this for these reasons:

• There could only be one person ‘chatting’ on the Youthline end,

meaning that if they had too many people trying to talk to them at once

this would be overwhelming.

• If people wanted to talk to Youthline they would have to ‘add them as a

friend’ which would put some people off. It is too personal. It means that

Youthline could see all of their photos and who they were posting with

and what they were saying and I don’t think that people would be

comfortable with this

I think that Youthline should use facebook to encourage people to the Youthline

home page. The mass of information and opportunities Youthline has to offer

cannot be justified through facebook.

Facebook advertising

Something that I think would be worth investing in is facebook advertising

directing people to the Youthline home page.

What you need:

• A link -> your facebook or their website.

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• Advert title + body -> a little blurb about who you are/what you do.

• Photo/image -> 110x80px (optional but recommended. I personally

don't pay attention to any ads unless they have an eye-catching picture.)

What you need to decide before starting:

• Daily budget (per day. min $1US)

• Pay per click or 1000 views (I recommend per click (CPC, since you

want people to actually visit their page and interact with them)

• Duration of ad (continuously starting from now, or between specific

dates)

- You don't have the option of setting a total budget (only daily), so I recommend

setting specific dates to make sure you don't go over your budget.

The process as an example:

1. Design Your Ad.

• Fill in form (link, title, body, image.)

• Click continue.

2. Targeting:

• Location: NZ

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• Age range: 13-20yrs = 226,540 NZers on facebook. 13-18 = 142,180.

Any age = 1,031,800 nzers. Bigger range = more exposure, but smaller

range means the ad is actually appearing on the pages of the people

they're targeting (so they're not wasting clicks on 50 yr olds).

• All the other targets could probably be left blank.

3. Campaigns and Pricing: (in US$)

• I suggest using pay per click (CPC) rather than views, since you want

people to actually visit your page and interact with you.

• Price you pay per click is up to you. Minimum $0.01. The higher the

bid, the more likely the ad will get shown. The bid they suggest to me is

$0.18 - $0.29 (depends on the targets you select. I've set NZers

between the ages of 13-20). I have used a price in the middle for

examples ($0.24).

• Pick a daily budget (min $1). This will depend on how long you’d like

the ad to run for.

• Working with a budget of $2000 for the advertising, (about US$1300)

@$0.24/click that will be just over 5,000 clicks altogether. If you have a

daily budget of $40 (so with a total budget of $1300, the ad could run for

about one month), you will get a max of about 170 clicks/day.

• If you don't get 170 clicks in a day, they only pay for the clicks they do

get.

• There's a daily spend limit. This is the max Facebook will allow you to

spend in one day. The starting limit is $50, but will increase as you

successfully make payments (because you're such a good customer!).

This just means their daily budget can't be over $50 to begin with.

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• Total cost: There's no way to set a total cost for the ad campaign. You

can either set it to run between specified dates (so at $40/day, if you

want to spend a max of $1300, you would set it to run for about a

month), or set it to run until you delete the campaign (so you would have

to keep an eye on it and make sure you don't go over your limit). I'd

recommend setting the dates just to be on the safe side, it just means

they have to do some maths to work out how long you can have your ad

running until you reach your set budget. Alternatively, decide your total

budget and how long you want the ad to run for, then work out your daily

limit/max bid per click from that.

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Bebo

Overview

Searching ‘Youthline’ on bebo brings up 54 results, of which the national one is

fourth. While bebo allows for ‘skins’ so that the page is more graphically

interesting then facebook, the theme of the page does not align with the

Youthline website. The text on this page is lime green on a white background

and is very difficult to read. The page is obviously not used very much as there

are comments on the front page from 79 weeks ago and only 39 members.

Bebo is used mostly by teenagers under 16 years old so it could be a good tool

for Youthline. The page needs redesigning to make it functional and attractive,

and there needs to be advertising else ware on the internet or on the bebo site

to drive people to the page. As it is, it is not functional, known about or used.

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Home Site: Youthline.co.nz

Overview

The Youthline website is successfully aesthetically targeted at the right audience.

It is young, informal and inviting. It is designed attractively for all New Zealand

cultures.

The main page is very busy. It combines good graphical elements with the

menus and other options. The ‘news’ and ‘fast facts’ are quite distracting and it

means the site does not fit vertically on a smaller screen size, which can be

annoying. However, overall the hope page is very good. The incorporation of

hand drawn graphics is inviting, and makes the site feel approachable in a way

that a clean cut, formal website would not. Also, the ‘games’ link is more

prominent, and links to quizzes, not games. This can be really disappointing

because there are so many websites that integrate games very successfully into

informational sites. I would suggest making a link ‘Quizzes’ on the menu leading

to this content.

There is a huge amount of information available from the site that is all well

written and integrated. This calls for a complex menu system which because of

the other graphics on the site, has a small amount of room. I find the menu text

very hard to read. This is because of the combination that text size is quite

small and is white on black. While most teenagers have very good eyesight, this

may effect parents or guardians being able to use the site easily.

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The integration of information from URGE is very well done. The pages are

themed the same and it is easy to navigate back to the Youthline site, or other

informative URGE sites.

Integrating Chat

I would suggest integrating a ‘chat’ function to the home page, similar to

facebook, but allow people to chat anonymously.

There are 2 primary options, one is a "not so live" live chat, which means the

chat gets sent from the user, to some server, the server stores it into the

database, and the server then tries to make sure all the clients stay up to date

with what's in the database. It mainly means that it's a "pseudo" live chat as the

lag that exists is through the time differential between the txt sent and request to

fill up the screen with what’s happened. Best way to envision this is to think of a

very quickly updating message board, so you could still have private messages

and the likes. Think of this one as a twitter like feed...

Static Tech:

Pros: cheap and simple to set up, simply need a standard web set up (web +

database) and better for when time differentials can be large (when you are not

"live" chatting, but leaving messages or w/e)

Cons: slow/laggy, can look very out dated

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The second way this is done is through a more "live" technique, which usually

involves secondary software along side the website. What happens here is

instead of sticking with static web based technologies like the first way, you

have a service running that manages it and dispatches messages. This is more

like embedding MSN instant messenger into the page. Usually it requires having

a flash or java app in your page that connects to the service.

Server Tech:

Pros: fast and usually feature rich, can be usually made quite stable and secure

(support for redundancy and such) and active connections allow instant alert

when new messages are being posted

Cons: larger hardware and tech requirements

Youthline have a very specific age group that they are targeting, and this age

group is very tech savvy. Live chat online is a very popular way of

communicating. Sending messages or emails can be difficult for people when

they are owning up or asking for help, but ‘chatting’ online is easy. Many people

find it easier then talking to people about issues face to face or on the phone.

I hope this has been helpful.

Meredith Crowe