During my job at the marketing, advertising and social media-department at the "Official German Music Contest" (DMW), which is a contest for professional, young classical musicians who study their instrument, my main task was to build a facebook-page for the contest and to feed it with the latest informations and results. I also had the task to try to make the competition as well known as possible because it was hosted in Stuttgart for the first time that year. Our success was measured in sold tickets for the two final concerts which completed the contest.
The plan was to attract young people as well as the stereotypical concert-enthusiast, who obviously is a little older.
For the various target groups, certain means were used: As advertising there were posters and banners n public places in the city. Public relation-wise we tried to invite journalists to the pre-concerts and to bring them together with the young artists for interviews.
My main task was to run the facbook-page which was recently built and completely unknown. I was successful in generating a little interest in the page by directly approaching former contestants and supporters but at one point (approx. 170 "likes") it stagnated. Still, we had 3-4 posts per day, including results from the quarter- and semifinals, pictures of contestants, videos and links to press coverage. We also unsuccessfully tried to cooperate with other, well known, local pages.
Not only was the effect facebook-page not satisfying at all, the promotion of the final concerts failed horribly so that we had to approach companies and clubs by handing them free tickets, to at least fill the concert hall.
In restrospect, on the facebook-page we could have worked more with links, for example linking the young musicians in pictures. Another improvement would have been offering discussions to get people to participate more - but I hardly believe that anybody would have participated.
At the end we had to face the truth that most of the young facebook users are not interested in classical music and that you better emphasize on the target group of older people if you try to sell tickets for two concerts. And facebook is no tool to talk to them. Yet.
Thanks for sharing your experience using social platforms for campaigns ! You're well on your way to crafting a comprehensive social media plan. I particularly enjoyed reading what you learned from the process. Every campaign is an opportunity to learn and improve for the next one!
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