New Readers/Community Marketing Experiments

Community Marketing Experiments (CMEs) is a project by the New Readers team at the Wikimedia Foundation.

Background

edit

The New Readers program is committed to expanding the reach and use of Wikipedia around the world. Research has shown that “lack of Wikipedia awareness” is a serious barrier to reaching new users. In response, there have been major Wikipedia marketing campaigns in Nigeria, India, and Mexico.

Now, the New Readers program wants to build marketing approaches that Wikimedia communities can easily adapt. Instead of major TV and video marketing, these campaigns will make use of social media ads with easily-edited creative elements.

Experiments in India

edit
 
Community Marketing Experiments: Impact Report

Beginning October 2018, we offered to work with 2 different Indic Wikimedia communities to help them expand their outreach with small social media ad campaigns. In the process, we planned to develop reusable learning patterns, creative approaches, and reporting templates. These will be of use to community groups across the Wikimedia world. The New Readers program planned to evaluate “grassroots” marketing- by evaluating the impact of small tactical marketing efforts that are led by volunteers.

First experiment: Bengali Wikisource

edit

Bengali community produced two videos for the promotion of Bengali Wikisource as a part of the Inspire New Readers campaign. We worked along with the community to promote these videos on Facebook.

Timeline

edit
  • 01 - 07 November 2018 - First week of online promotion
  • 07 - 14 November 2018 - Retro
  • 15 - 20 November 2018 - Second week of online promotion
  • 20 - 22 November 2018 - Retro
  • 23 - 30 November 2018 - Final week of online promotion

Analysis

edit
Average monthly siteviews
S.N. Duration Monthly Average Comparison to pre-campaign
1 1 January 2018 - 31 October 2018 (pre-campaign) 283,179
2 1 November 2018 - 30 November 2018 (during campaign) 526,717 86% increase
3 1 December 2018 - 31st December 2018 (post campaign) 441,697 56% increase

Second experiment: Tamil Wikipedia

edit

Tamil Wikipedia community is organizing a New User contest from January 2019 to March 2019 and we worked with them to promote the contest on their Facebook page.

Timeline

edit
  • 06 - 09 December 2018 - Offline workshop during Project Tiger Training
  • 09 - 21 December 2018 - Project planning with Tamil community
  • 22 - 23 December 2018 - First phase of online promotion
  • 24 - 27 December 2018 - Retro
  • 28 - 31 December 2018 - Second phase of online promotion
  • 01 - 02 January 2019 - Retro
  • 03 - 09 January 2019 - Final phase of online promotion

Analysis

edit
Average daily siteviews
S.N. Duration Daily Average Comparison to pre-campaign
1 01 December 2018 - 21 December 2018 (pre-campaign) 248,378
2 22 December 2018 - 09 January 2019 (during campaign) 303,479 22% increase
3 10 January 2019 - 31 January 2019 (post campaign) 297,332 19% increase
86 new users signed up for the contest.

Project team

edit

Learn more

edit

Please add a comment on the Discussion page here to share your thoughts. You can also email Project lead Satdeep Gill at sgill wikimedia.org to discuss the project.