Blog Entry 2
1. Hire a mobile vendor such as GZAM
2. GZAM will provide you with a short code and its platform that lets you track incoming messages, filter them, and approve them for the screen.
3. Craft a mobile marketing strategy to advertise your campaign. Be clear about your goals, audience, messaging, and integration with other media.
4. Ensure that your constituency is available and ready for action.
5. Determine your PR and earned media strategy.
6. Set up your web site and test it.
7. Set up the screen and make sure that the feed is functional.
8. On campaign day, use the mobile platform provided by the vendor to publish the text messages to a screen.
9. After the campaign, follow up with users who texted in and engage them in a thoughtful ladder of interaction. One of the advantages of a text-to-screen campaign is that it builds your database of mobile phone users. Now that you have all these mobile phone numbers, how will you use them in the future? You could consider sending each user a message thanking them for participating and asking if they want to be notified of other campaigns or receive SMS notifications. You can also ask people to text in their email address in order to continue with web-based follow-up or fundraising.
10. Evaluate the campaign. How many people texted in? Was most participation from local numbers or from people who saw the live feed on the Internet? Were there technical problems that could have easily been resolved? How could you make a text to screen campaign more successful in the future?