It's possible you've landed here because this space originally housed information about the 2,000 Books in 2 Weeks for Indy Youth campaign that I ran. To make a very long story only somewhat shorter, I personally committed to help MCCOY (Marion County Commission on Youth) and SYPF (Summer Youth Program Fund) obtain 2,000 books to distribute to Marion County summer camps that had participated in a summer reading program. The books were to be given to day campers on July 9th, 2009 to celebrate National Summer Learning Day and the culmination of the summer reading program. I'd heard about the need through one of my closest friends who is associated with the organizations and programs. I thought that since I have a relatively decent number of connects, mostly through social media, that I could be the lynchpin for collecting a large portion of those 2,000 books. And I did pretty well, all things considered. With the support of some extraordinary people, I raised 1,156 books in two weeks.

If you think of this as a marketing campaign, and it was, you might wonder about the metrics.

• Email - 10 books and $100 (2 people)
• Facebook - 273 books (4 people)
• Freecycle - 260 books (1 person)
• Twitter with a little Smaller Indiana assist - 474 books (all because of 1 person who read my Tweets and took action...she asked someone who asked someone who came up with 7 boxes of books)
• Face-to-face - 63 books (2 people)
• Smaller Indiana - 76 (1 person)

That's eleven points of contact across six different media. That shows me (again!) that consistency and frequency over a spread of integrated media can produce results.

My marketing plan included the use of:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Smaller Indiana
• Freecycle
• Email (to a small group, including my Vistage group, not a mass email to my entire database)
• My voice (word of mouth)
• A simple website with a journal as a place to house the details, a place to drive people to for information

The only media source that didn't "produce" (I'm not counting it in the six quoted above) was LinkedIn. I did see some interest expressed, but no follow through. Also with Smaller Indiana I saw a lot of interest, but the follow through didn't happen there either. It's possible I didn't pursue those "leads" properly. Also of interest to me is that both LinkedIn and Smaller Indiana have more of a "business" tenor than my other media outlets.

The other thing that surprised me is that so few people generated so much. I went in to this campaign expecting numerous donations of 5 books on average. What I got was just over 100 books on average from ten points of contact. I had three big and seven medium to small donors. This made me think of the Pareto Principle, or as you may know it, the 80/20 rule that states that 80% of your output comes from 20% of your input. My figures are a little off the Pareto Principal. In this case, 20% of my donors produced 64% of the outcome, 30% produced 80%. Regardless, every little bit helped and I'm not discounting a soul who participated. So, whatever part you played in the 100% - THANK YOU!

Perhaps the most significant problem was, in marketing speak, at "the point of sale." I hadn't worked out the details of how to "complete the transaction." Because there was not a series of locations or even a central location to collect books (except for a two hour window of time on a single day) the act of collecting the books was difficult. If I do this again, I'll arrange with retailers across the metro area to have collection boxes. I'm convinced that the freedom of dropping a few books while sipping coffee would have increased the numbers.

So, from a marketing perspective, what were my big lessons?

1. Integrated Marketing Communications rule. Brand and marketing messages are most effective when delivered in an integrated, consistent fashion across a variety of relevant touchpoints.
2. Pareto Principle: 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. In marketing, you might look at the business you're doing now and see that a minority percentage of your customer list is producing most of your income. Use that information to segment your list and adjust your marketing and service delivery models.
3. Social media is quite powerful, especially when used within a human context. I could not have just set up accounts and started blasting this need with much success. Only because I'd been involved in the media and had made personal human connections did people pay attention to what I had to say. They saw that what I was doing was consistent with my personal brand and so they were willing to enter into a dialog with me.

By the way, I understand that my numbers are tiny and likely don't meet empirical standards for statistical significance. Still, isn't it just a little interesting that what happened in my tiny little campaign fits known principles? Maybe that means that even if you're a sole proprietor that the principles you think only fit "the big boys" really do apply to you, too. What do you think?