Arriba Latinas Project created in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Professional Communication Program Priscilla Angulo 4/18/2014 2 Table of Contents Literature Review……………………………………………………………………… 10 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………. 13 Appendix A…………………………………………………………………………….. 15 Appendix B…………………………………………………………………………….. 16 Appendix C…………………………………………………………………………….. 17 Appendix D…………………………………………………………………………….. 18 Appendix E…………………………………………………………………………….. 19 3 I worked with the domestic nonprofit Arriba Latinas. Erika Carlsen, Samantha Vasquez and I discussed the experiences we had being Latinas in high school interested in higher education. Being first generation college students and minorities we felt support from our families, but we had little help navigating how to get into college or how to fund our education. We wanted to create an organization that would partner high school Latinas with Latinas who are in college or who have completed college. A challenge we faced early on is that Erika is on the East Coast attending Harvard Divinity School. Our weekly communication is done through Google Hangouts, which has worked really well. We are able to video chat, share files, and see each other’s desk top. We took meeting minutes; however, Google Hangouts lets you publish your session so we also have videos of our meetings. We faced the challenge of being a new, start-up organization. We needed to build our audience and let people know our organization exists. We wanted to communicate the services we offer. We offer mentoring for high school aged Latinas interested in going to college. Naturally our audience is female, high school Latinas in Northern Utah. Our secondary audience is parents, who play an important role in their daughters’ decisions about education. The third audience we have is our mentors. I envisioned the focus of this project to be on reaching out to potential mentees. We currently have a Facebook page whose analytics show that we aren’t on target for reaching the population we’re interested in. We are liked most by females age 25-34, and many are not even in the state of Utah. I want to target those who are 13-19 years old in Northern Utah. The data I will be analyzing is our Facebook analytics and how many girls are attending our events. Our webpage is hosted on Wordpress. It was put together quickly so people interested in us would have a place to land. It needed to be updated with our logo and colors. Bi-monthly I wanted to set up a guest blog post from Latinas in our local community and in the nation who, just like our mentees, started off not knowing how to get into college and now have graduated from a university. I drafted a set of questions to ask the guest blogger so we can have consistency in what can be expected from reading each month’s spotlight post (appendix E). The posts have not been published at this time. 4 Wordpress visits and views The first form of communication that needed to take place is physically getting in contact with the potential mentees. We are seeking girls who are interested in going to college, but don’t know where to start. This would be girls who are first generation college students, girls who’ve been told they aren’t capable of going to college, and students who are taking AP or concurrent enrollment classes. Our first scheduled outreach was at the Multicultural Youth Summit held at Weber State University on Wednesday, October 30, 2013. They attendance for the whole conference was estimated at 1,000 student from all over the state. Myself and two other colleagues conducted a workshop. See (appendix A) for workshop guidelines. Our audience was 52 jr. high school girls. It wasn’t our ideal target audience, but we were appreciative of the experience and opportunity to reach out to the girls. We opened up the session with introductions and a few pictures of ourselves when we were in jr. high (appendix B). Then in accordance with the guidelines provided to us, we played a game where we threw out a beach ball and asked various questions. If you had the ball you could answer. We allowed three to five people to answer per questions. We gaged the audience interaction and allowed more answers if the question was engaging. There were very few shy girls, many were eager to answer. We saved the last five minutes of the session to introduce Arriba Latinas and provide our contact information. We invited the girls to stop by our booth and sign up for our email list. At our booth we estimate interacting with 200 Latinas. We created a plan to increase Facebook likes by offering a spin of the wheel to win a prize if they got on their phone and liked our page. It didn’t work as expected because our location in the building had poor cell phone service. What we could have done differently was provide a business size card with our contact info on it so they could refer back to it and find us online. 5 In addition to partnering with the WSU Multicultural Center, we established a partnership with Latinos in Action. They are a 501(c)(3) non-profit in Utah whose mission is to empower Latino youth to graduate from college. They teach a leadership class in high schools and junior highs. We partnered with them to access their youth and find mentees that are interested in our services. During the Multicultural Youth Summit we connected with El Grito, a radio show that broadcasts every Wednesday afternoon from Weber State University. They hosted us on their show where people called in and asked questions about our program. Most calls were from parents. We also got in contact with Betty Sawyer who is a part of Gear Up, a college readiness service, between Weber State University and Ogden School District. Throughout the project I wanted to test the concept of QR codes. I think our target audience is technically savvy and QR codes will be a great way to connect them with our Facebook page. After completing the literature review about QR codes it seems that 6 they are not as widely used as expected. We still created one as an option for finding our Facebook page and website. www.arribalatinas.org 7 www.facebook.com/arribalatinas Our Facebook page will be used to reach mentees with information about upcoming events and scholarships, while nurturing a sense of community. I analyzed the insights to get a better understanding our audience. Our following from August 2013 to March 2014 increased by 74 followers. We have a fairly low following in our target mentee age group. The literature review provided many articles about teens being less active on Facebook and opting for other social media channels like Instagram and Snapchat. 8 Our top posts. Early on in the project we decided we needed to switch from a one-on-one mentor model to a group model. We were trying to pair a mentor with a mentee, but it wasn’t going as well as we anticipated. Doing things in a group setting seemed like a better approach for the girls to support each other and make new connections. We wanted to plan a monthly group session with a specific topic. Part of the communication process will be advertising the event and creating material for the session. We wanted to be consistent by offering an activity on the 3rd Thursday each month at the Library from 7 – 8 p.m., so the girls know they can always drop by on that day and we’ll be there to help them with anything they need. During February we did a Valentine’s activity called Love Letters. It was sponsored by Mentor Up and DoSomething.org. The idea was to create Valentine’s Day cards for homebound seniors in the community. There was a raffle type scholarship tied to participating. We thought it would be a fun activity that offered them a community service project and an opportunity to apply for a scholarship. We advertised the event at Ogden High School and Ben Lomond high school with a Love Letters flyer (appendix C). We had five girls participate and we made a total of 40 cards. I set up Google Alerts for Arriba Latinas to get alerted if someone was searching for us. After this activity I received an alert that we were mentioned in the Davis Clipper (appendix D). Resources This past summer we launched a kick start campaign to raise funds for Arriba Latinas. We brought in a total of $1,296.75. We’ve had a few expenses setting up a mentor training session and a mentee introduction session, so we currently have $1,167.21. We applied for the Zion’s Smart Women Grant, but were not awarded the funding. We will get in contact with Zions Bank to see if they provide any other funding options. Our vision is to be able help mentees with AP test fees, ACT/SAT test fees, and college application fees. We were able to award one of our mentees who was accepted into the Ivy League Project with $350 towards this opportunity. 9 Conclusion Working on the communication pieces for Arriba Latinas has taught me that you have to be flexible. Since this is a start up organization we’ve had to change our model several times as we test what works and what doesn’t. We’re still exploring what works. We will continue using Facebook to reach mentees, mentors, and supporters in the community. When we post we have great engagement through likes. We need to build strong visual content to continue engaging our followers. My favorite part of working on this communication project was organizing the mentor sessions. I made some amazing connections with women who are interested in being mentors. They each have an amazing story and inspiration to offer. What I would have done differently would have been to build stronger partnerships that could help us have access to our target population. It was difficult to get access into the high schools because they have policies about referring their students to outside organizations. We will continue our efforts by reaching out through different avenues, including church groups, after school programs, and the library. It’s a balancing act working full time and doing this side project, but it’s important to me and I want to continue building the program. In the near future we will survey the population to see if they have knowledge about our program, what services they are interested in, and what activities they would like to do. We want to continue doing monthly activities and being a resource for Latinas in our community. Literature Review There has been a decrease among teen users between 13 and 17 year olds on Facebook. Two weeks ago Facebook changed their policy to allow teens to post publicly, unlike before where they could only share with friends and friends of friends. Teens are among the savviest people using social media and are likely turning towards other apps like Snapchat and Instagram (Wagner, 2013). This article was of interest to me because I am trying to reach that age group, but their lack of receptivity could be a result of their limited engagement on Facebook. It’s been released that teen use on Facebook is down, but research shows that Facebook still has more teen users than anyone else. According to the Pew Research Center surveys, 94% of teens between 12 and 17 years old have a Facebook account, compared to 26% who have a Twitter account. A youth research unit owned by WPP found that 75% of teens responded that they visit Facebook at least once in a 30 day period, compared to 32% who use Twitter. Facebook isn’t exactly sure why teen use is down, whether it is a statistical blip or because they are using personal messages more. The research numbers suggest teens are still part of the social network, even if they aren’t sharing on a daily basis (Cotton, 2013). Facebook recently released hashtags, which were originally used on Twitter, then Instagram. It appears that there is a lack of functionality with the hashtags on Facebook. 10 Some of the problems include no reporting feature to track how many people click on your hashtag or how many people are repeating the tag. Facebook doesn’t have a trending topics feature, but they say it’s coming soon. The hashtags function can’t be used on the mobile app. Like many tech companies, Facebook is probably testing the waters to see how this new feature is doing before they add additional features. Ultimately they’re thinking of ways to monetize the feature (Herczeg, 2013). It will be interesting to see the additional functionality they will add to hashtags because I think it could be used for many of Arriba Latina’s posts, especially when featuring events. It would be nice to have an analytics feature. For any business, understanding your customer is key to longevity and success. Google Analytics is a free service that has several great tools that can help you know what your audience wants. You can use the Traffic Source option to view the Organic Search data that shows search terms that drove traffic to your site. Then you can use this information to make sure posts and the webpage have some of these popular terms people are searching for (Brown, 2013). I think analyzing what terms are bringing people to the Arriba Latinas site will give us a better understanding of what kind of information people are interested in when they are searching for mentoring, Latinas, higher education, etc. A QR code should direct a user to a mobile-optimized webpage. It works exceptionally well to get users linked to a Facebook page so they can “Like” the page. It can be put on every piece of promotional material. It’s important to put a compelling call-to-action next to the code so the audience knows why they should spend the time to scan the code. Don’t forget to test-scan the code before producing material to make sure it links correctly (Galica, 2011). I have created a QR code for both our website and Facebook account. I am interested in tracking how many people are directed to our sites through the code. QR codes present an accessible way for people with smartphones to interact with advertising, marketing, and media. However, the rewards of scanning don’t measure up to the effort it takes to scan the code. A study by comScore states that 14 million American mobile device users have interacted with a QR code. That means less than 5% of people have scanned a code (Barocas, 2012). The article talks about how humans are more visual, so the QR code doesn’t really appeal as much as some other alternatives. QR codes seem like a good way to get users to connect, but knowing that it hasn’t really caught on as well as marketers hoped is good information to know. “Wordpress is one of the most popular blogging and publishing platforms available” (Petronzio, 2013). They offer a free content management version or a software version to build a custom website. The difference between the two services is most notable when it comes to how customizable you want a site to be. Money is a factor to consider when looking for flexibility. Budget for registering a domain name and for a host. I’ve run into trouble customizing our site like I want it, but the article suggests that if the tips they give are over your head, you’re better off sticking with the one-stop shop version offered 11 by wordpress.com. For the purpose of our site I don’t need to invest the time or money into a lot of customization at this point. There are several tips that WordPress offers that will change your experience. The first notable one is changing the page and blog post URLs. This could be for several reasons. One, the URL that was generated contains special characters. Sometimes the characters make it difficult for search engines and browsers to read. Second, the URL is too long. Shortening the URL will make it easier for people to get to. Customizing the URL helps post rankings by using keywords that people would likely search for (Goldford, 2012). Google allows you to organize contacts into groups, and merge duplicates or contacts that are perceived to be related. Google saves every single email address you use in an “Other Contacts” folder (Casti, 2013). This is one additional task that needs to be addressed, going through and updating contact information. Arriba Latinas uses Google for their email service. As we grow this will be an important feature for us to use in grouping our contacts into sponsors, mentors, and mentees. QR Codes are great in theory, allowing marketers to make all types of media interactive. However, only 5% of Americans who own mobile phones actually use the codes. According to Forrester Research early adopters tended to be young affluent males. One reason why the codes haven’t really caught on stood out to me, “some who have tried the technology were dissuaded by codes that offer little useful information or simply redirect the user to the company’s website” (Patel, 2012). The article talks about how poorly placed the codes are. One example is on airplane or places with no cellular reception. This actually happened to Arriba Latinas at the Multicultural Youth Summit. We had our code out for people to scan, but cell reception in the Union building was poor. Implementing the codes is inexpensive so marketers are not giving up on the technology. It’s important to think about what the codes connect the user to. Marketing must be geared towards linking users to something of interest. It’s been suggested to set up Google Alerts for your name or business name so Google can notify you when someone’s search term matches those key words. Lately it has been rumored that the tool is broken, or no longer working as good as it was before, rendering the service useless. Google responded that they know they are having issues with the results not being as comprehensive as they’d like, but they haven’t done anything about it. The next question is will Google Alerts meet the same demise as Google Reader (Hill, 2013). I found this article interesting because my classmates/advisory board suggested that I set up Google Alerts to see if anyone is searching for our organization and to get alerts about searches related to Latina youth and mentoring. I will be monitoring these alerts for post content as well as to monitor if our organization is gaining more awareness. It will be interesting to see if I get good alerts or if Google will get rid of this tool. Google has sought out ways to make their social networking service more relevant. Enhancements will be made to Google Hangouts, one of Google+’s most popular 12 features. The app lets you video chat with more than one person per session. Some updates will include location sharing, and improvements to the On Air feature. HD calls will be offered, as well as video enhancements (Hof, 2013). The three founders of Arriba Latinas do a weekly Google Hangout to check in and discuss business. The service works well for us because one of our founders is at Harvard. We especially like the feature that lets us record our “meeting” so we can refer back to it. Google is ubiquitous in our digital lives. Google Hangout is one serious service that can boost your productivity, get your team on the same page, and market your company. You can see and hear up to ten people, collaborate on Google Drive documents, share your screen, or run third-party apps (Arar, 2013). Arriba Latinas has been using this service, but not to its full potential. We need to look into using more of the features such as collaborating on a document while we’re chatting. November has a new American tradition. After Black Friday and Cyber Monday comes Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday presents an opportunity to start off the giving season. More than 500 organizations were inspired to sign on to Giving Tuesday in 2012. It’s an opportunity for people to donate to the charity or non-profit of their choosing (Seidman, 2012). Arriba Latinas wants to do a campaign around Giving Tuesday. In order to become a partner you need to be a 501(c) (3) non-profit. We are only a domestic non-profit. I will do further research to see if we can do our own thing and use the Giving Tuesday name and hashtag without actually becoming a partner. The 2nd annual Giving Tuesday took place on December 3, 2013. It is a national day of giving driven through social media. More than $10 million was raised in 2012, that’s a 53% increase from the previous year when it wasn’t promoted through social media. The topic trended on Twitter as over 2,700 partners were talking about it. One of the first steps in getting ready for Giving Tuesday is to build an online presence. This includes directing your offline donors to engage with you online. Step 2 should be setting a goal and identifying one or two things you are trying to accomplish on that day. Be ready to tell people about it. Having an audience that knows your goal will drive higher engagement and support. Step 3, sign up with Giving Tuesday to get a partner kit that includes a fact sheet, social media guide, and sample posts. Step 6, developing your messaging plan is going to the meat of your campaign. Identify the theme or narrative for your campaign. Identify what questions may come up and connect with your audience on a personal level. Include when your campaign will start and end. Step 7, be social now by creating media that you’ll be using such as posts, images, memes, and infographics. Once you have a theme get the conversation started early and let your followers know about #GivingTuesday. Step 8, nurture new donors that come through. Set up automated emails to go out to these new groups of people (Corrado, 2013). We wanted to focus the majority of November on Giving Tuesday. After reading the terms and conditions we did not qualify to be an official partner of the national movement since we are not currently a 501(c)3 non-profit. We are working towards becoming a non-profit organization. 13 Works Cited Arar, Y. (2013). Great Google Tools for Business. PC World, 31(2), 30. Barocas, Jon. (2012, Feb 15). Why QR Codes Won’t Last. Retrieved https://mashable.com/2012/02/15/qr-codes-rip/ Brown, Danny. (2013, September 09). How To Use Google Analytics To Create Killer Content. Retrieved from https://www.openforum.com/articles/how-to-use-google-analytics-to- create-the-ultimate-content/ Casti, Taylor. (2013, Oct 11). 6 Tips for Sorting Your Gmail Contacts. Retrieved http://mashable.com/2013/10/11/organize-gmail-contacts/ Delo, Cotton. (2013, Nov 01). Marketers: Facebook Still Has Way More Teens Than Anyone Else. Retrieved http://adage.com/article/digital/marketers-facebook-teens/245073/ Corrado, Taylor. (2013, Oct. 4). 8 Essential Steps to Get Your Nonprofit Ready for Giving Tuesday. Retrieved http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/8-steps-nonprofit-giving-tuesday- List Galica, Matthias. (2011, Feb 22). How To: Use QR Codes for Event Marketing. Retrieved http://mashable.com/2011/02/22/qr-code-event-marketing Goldford, Jonathan. (2012, Dec 05). 5 Essential WordPress Tips For Beginners. Retrieved http://mashable.com/2012/12/05/wordpress-for-beginners/ Herczeg, Alicia. (2013, June 24). Five Things Facebook Should Have Included When It Rolled Out Hashtags. Retrieved http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/things-facebook-hashtags- needed-start/242821/ Hill, Kashmir. (2013, June 30). ‘Google Alerts’ Are Broken. Retrieved http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/30/google-alerts-are-broken/ Hof, Robert. (2013, Oct. 10). Google+ Gets Massive Upgrade To Improve Photos, Hangouts, Video. Retrieved http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2013/10/29/google-gets- massive- upgrade-to-improve-photos-hangouts/ Patel, Kunur. (2012, Jan. 02). Why Marketer Love for QR Codes Is Not Shared by Consumers. Retrieved http://adage.com/article/digital/marketer-love-qr-codes-shared- consumers/231854/ Petronzio, Matt. (2013, June 11). How to Set Up a Hosted WordPress Site. Retrieved http://mashable.com/2013/06/11/wordpress-how-to/ Seidman, Dov. (2012, Nov. 6). A Tale of Two Tuesdays: This Election Tuesday, I Look Forward to Another Tuesday. Retrieved http://www.forbes.com/sites/dovseidman/2012/11/06/a- tale-of-two-tuesdays/ Wagner, Kurt. (2013, October 30). Facebook Admits Teen Use May Be Declining. Retrieved http://mashable.com/2013/10/30/facebook-teen-use-declining/ 14 Appendix A 15 Appendix B 16 Appendix C 17 Appendix D 18 Appendix E