Social Media for a Cause

When determining an organization to promote, I decided to look at my own life to see what group I was in that could use more promotion on social media. There were several organizations that I am involved in that could receive more visibility within the social networking world, however, I chose to promote the John Deere Dubuque Interns. I believe I could make the most impact with introducing social media pages to this group.

As an intern for John Deere this summer, I am living with approximately 20 other interns in Dubuque, Iowa. There are another 5 interns that live in Platteville, Wisconsin, which is about a half hour away from where the majority of the interns live all together and another 4 people in a Mainstays Hotel for the summer approximately 15 minutes away. Communication and coordination is crucial for the intern group, as some of the interns lack vehicles, or the distance separating the intern group made planning events challenging.

This class was focused on how businesses use social media, and while I have primarily focused on how businesses use social media to market and advertise, I wanted to take a fresh new approach and improve the communication and overall morale and friendships of the intern group. Initially, we had a very long email chain acting as our primary form of communication. The email chain proved to be highly inefficient and lead to people giving out numbers to certain groups of interns, which ultimately lead to people feeling left out of communication or plans.

After surveying the group of interns based on their preferred social media sites, what they would be interested in actually using to communicate and promote various plans/trips of interest, I determined that I would create a Facebook group (The John Deere Dubuque Interns), a Twitter Account (@DeereInterns), and a new platform of social media: GroupMe (members added via phone number).

To provide some background on GroupMe, it basically a mass texting app that allows several people to have a group chat that is quicker than the average texting group and is more visually appealing. You can create a new chat group by adding emails, or phone numbers. I was surprised to hear a GroupMe was a more popular option than Instagram, but after researching and identifying the needs of my audience, I decided to go with those three social media platforms to improve the communication and chemistry of the intern group.

As far as goals, I would like to see 25 or more members of the Facebook page with people actively engaging with the page in terms of liking and posting. I would like to have 15 people follow the page (a more limited number due to interns not all having access to Twitter) and likes on numerous posts I tweet. However on Groupme, I would like 20 or more people participating in the groupme discussing ideas, plans that are spontaneous or liking others’ posts.

Overall I am very optimistic about the three sites I chose since they were proposed by the interns as the most effective ways to communicate with people, specifically the ones who do not live with the majority of the interns.