Yesterday, Maureen called me looking for new, different ways to reach an expanded audience for the upcoming Waxahachie Chautauqua event. Of course, both time and cost were an issue, like they always are for non-profits. For years, they have been promoting their event on public radio, in local newspapers, with flyers around town, and through direct mail to their mailing list. This year, they’d like to try something new. And they’d like a way to track their results.

This year, the free, annual all-day event celebrates public spaces. Speakers include the COO of the 9/11 Memorial in New York, a talk about the man considered the first African-American architect in Texas and a landscape architect. There will also be a portrayal of Thomas Jefferson, Birds of Prey Flight Demonstrations, and trash can art.

The event is perfectly suited to promoted posts on Facebook.

Not only do these events sound really interesting, they sound like they’ll appeal to very specific people. These audiences should be easy to reach using Facebook boosted posts.

I recommended to Maureen that they make each activity of the day-long celebration its own event. That will make it easy for people to share the specific activity they’re interested in with their friends. But more than that – we’ll be able to advertise directly to the people who care about each piece of the program.

On Facebook, they can go into each individual event, and “boost” the post to a very carefully chosen group by clicking “people you choose through targeting” when they define the audience. From there, they have very granular options to create a new audience for each item. First, select the geographical area you want to limit your ad to, and the age and gender of the users. Then, add demographics, interests, and behaviors. Here are some things they could select: Thomas Jefferson, Chautauqua, Landscape Architecture, the 9/11 Memorial, or Public Art, for example. Facebook will let them know the size of the potential audience for each, and they can add or delete criteria to select an ideal audience for each activity. The cost of this advertising is up to them – they can select how much they want to spend for each promoted post, and over what time frame. If it’s working well, Facebook always gives them the option to continue it for more money. On the other hand, if it doesn’t seem to be getting results, they can cancel that promotion and try something else.

The results will be tracked if there is a specific activity for visitors to do, such as buy a ticket or visit a specific landing page.

If you want help with a social media campaign, feel free to give me a call. And if you want to learn more about the amazing, free Waxahachie Chautauqua event on September 30 – visit them here.