community based social marketing Archives

Spinning 3 Websites in 6 Months

Posted on September 23, 2019December 27, 2021 by SGA SGA

Good web design is like a spider web: what appears to be simple, functional, and delicate should also be intricate, elegant, and strong. And like an excited spider who’s just caught an unlucky fly, web design is one of those things that gets our team really fired up.

It requires the perfect mix of left and right brain — from planning the overall architecture of a site, to considerations about user experience and design, to coding and the final, fine-toothed top to bottom review. Over the last 6 months, 3 sites that we designed from the ground-up have gone live. These websites have ranged in complexity, breadth, and purpose. Keep reading to find out why we spun them!

1) RethinkWaste

RethinkWaste represents and manages the waste from 12 member cities in San Mateo County. SGA was brought on to redesign its website to improve usability and meet the communication needs of its service area community. After designing this new website from the ground up, here’s what Rethink had to say about us:

[box] “SGA, specifically the amazing Suzi, helped us not only meet our needs with an aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate website on the front and back end, but they also created a custom section to house our important meeting agendas and staff reports. This has helped us improve our transparency as a public agency. Our new and improved website communicates, educates and engages with our community better than ever before.” — Julia Au, Outreach & Communications Manager, Rethink Waste[/box]

2) Lincoln Stormwater

The City of Lincoln’s Stormwater program used to be hosted on a small subsection of the City’s website. SGA was brought in to create a dynamic hub for stormwater-related information, resources, and content relevant to the city residents. In addition to the new website, which we designed to deliver simple, easy-to-understand messaging about stormwater management, we designed a new logo to cement the program’s credibility and integrity.

3) Bayfront Canal & Atherton Channel Flood Management and Restoration Project

The last site SGA recently worked on is a microsite for a flood management project occurring within several diverse communities that are subjected to annual flooding. The purpose of the site was to establish an official, designated area where the County of San Mateo could post project updates, and where residents could visit for up-to-date and reliable information. The site needed to be designed in a user-friendly way that remained intuitive across diverse audiences, clearly communicated the problem and proposed solution, and reduced the potential for uncertainty. You can view our work here.

Like our sites? Want to know more about their structure, our process, or availability to design your dream site? We’re listening! Email us at info@sga-inc.net.

How Can Social Media Contribute to a Sustainable Society?

Posted on January 30, 2019January 11, 2022 by SGA SGA

In his book, Fostering Sustainable Behavior, Dr. Doug McKenzie-Mohr claims that social media is most effective when it supplies an actionable and convenient solution to a large and abstract problem. It’s easier for us to imagine that using fewer paper towels (for example) will help prevent deforestation than it is to understand how a donation is going to be used to “save the polar bears.” Polar bears are not only far away, but they’re outside of the average person’s realm of experience, whereas paper towels are not—chances are you’ve used one in the last 30 minutes.

McKenzie-Mohr’s point here is simple: addressing a problem through small, local, and convenient steps is going to be far more successful than attacking a problem head-on. News Flash: your audience is just as overwhelmed by the problem as you are; do everyone a favor and break your issue up into digestible chunks. While it may seem roundabout, sometimes you need to mask the overwhelmingly big picture for a while in order to get the ball rolling.
This alone, however, is often not enough to catalyze behavior change and/or action. What does it mean if you’ve done the work of successfully dissecting your problem into a series of actionable steps and you’re still not getting traction with your audience? First of all, pat yourself on the back—you did a lot of hard work, and rest assured it won’t be in vain. Second, take a step back and assess the way you’re interacting with your audience and the problem at hand. It’s important to tailor your message to your audience because, ultimately, it needs to grab their attention and speak to them. And if your presentation places either you or a de-personalized behavioral ideal as the hero of the story, you’re probably not going to be getting much traction with your audience. They are neither of those things.

It’s important to remember that your “audience” is an audience in name only—they are individuals and they are the heroes you are looking to write into your story. They are people that you believe have the power to address the problem that you are presenting, and it is your job to help them realize their own potential. One of the easiest ways to engage an audience is to get them to use their own networks to spread your message. How to do this? Elevate the voices of the community! Highlighting community champions creates the appearance that change is coming from within the audience, that the ball is already rolling, and social media is the perfect tool to leverage this perception and spread your message.

Think about how you might share a similar style with your friends or like the same music. People can have powerful influence over each other, and the same idea applies to environmental behaviors when you start to do things like recycle your bottle or pick up a piece of trash after seeing a friend, family member, or role model do it. In the social media world, we see more posts about potential actions and behaviors from more connections than we’d ever get from face-to-face interaction. Indeed, Facebook is the new town square—providing the means for people to share stories and have public discussions from a boundless place with no physical location. It is not only a powerful tool to organize and catalyze grassroots activism, but a fertile proving ground in which to test your ideas and watch the good ones grow.

7 Green Holiday Tips for Your Business

Posted on December 12, 2016December 27, 2021 by SGA SGA

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” -Rumi

People may mistakenly believe that they have to make grand, life-altering changes to make a difference. This can lead to frustration and disappointment. SGA believes that true change begins with a series of small steps — little things you do everyday can make an impact. Small steps turn into daily occurrences and daily occurrences turns to change. This concept can also be applied to businesses. That’s why this holiday season, we are sharing 7 small steps you can take to help your business become a little greener. Start implementing these changes now to lay the foundation for a greener tomorrow.

Donate to your favorite environmental organization this holiday season. Choose a non-profit that is local to your community to make the most impact. Want to donate products to needy communities and other non-profits? Consider donating via good360.org.
- Bonus: Donate in your employee’s name and bask in the feel good nature of giving.

Volunteer time at soup kitchen or shelter. Need more inspiration? If you’re in the Los Angeles area, there’s an annual Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count that will be held in January. SGA staff will be grouping together to make sure everyone counts regardless of where they live. Get a group of your coworkers and go together!

Donate leftover holiday party food. If food is being served in abundance, refresh trays rather than putting all of it out at once to prevent spoilage. Any food that has not been put out at the end of the party can be donated to a local shelter or food pantry. Not only will this reduce waste, but this will enhance the spirit of Christmas giving to those in need. Call ahead for details on what the shelter can use and how to deliver.

Decorate the office with natural or recycled items. It is completely possible to turn trash into treasure. It’s called upcycling. If you need any last minute gift ideas with a more personal and eco-friendly touch, this is it. Get started with a mason jar. Use it to gift baking sets, remake your desk lamp and more. Get ideas here. If you’re wrapping last-minute gifts, use recycled paper or organic material to wrap a gift instead of using a new roll of wrapping paper which can save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.

Don’t use disposable utensils for lunches or dinner.
Twenty-five percent more trash is discarded from Thanksgiving to New Year’s than any other time of year. Let’s apply positive behavior change within ourselves and not add to that percentage.
- Bonus: Before the year ends, set up a casual potluck with your coworkers and aim for a zero-waste shared meal.

After the season ends, recycle your Christmas tree. Yes, it’s possible to recycle your Christmas tree. Live trees are biodegradable. In the Los Angeles area, there are many locations where your tree can be turned into mulch. Find a location near you.
- Bonus: If you don’t have a recycling program in your area, contact the National Christmas Tree Association: info@realchristmastrees.org to learn how you can begin one in your community.

Green employee gift ideas. Give gifts of locally produced food and products in cloth shopping bags or baskets with your company’s logo. Reusable coffee cups or travel mugs can also be purchased with company logos.

Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Posted on October 26, 2016January 11, 2022 by SGA SGA

Many of our clients use email marketing to get their message out to prospects and customers. It’s a great tool. Email allows for segmentation so you are able to target your message to those who will most want to read it. In fact, 13 percent of all leads come from email marketing and customers are six times more likely to click-through from an email than from a Tweet.

Before committing yourself to email marketing, here are some tips to help you prevent common mistakes.

Understanding what permission is and is not

Not following the CAN-SPAM Act can get you into legal trouble. If a form on your website doesn’t specify that those who supply their address will be contacted by you or if you upload a list of addresses you gathered somewhere else, it means permission is not granted. Spamming recipients is a surefire way to wreck your email marketing efforts.

Not confusing the recipient

Email marketing never should stand on its own. Your branding, colors, fonts and logos, should be part of your email campaign. Make sure links within the email go to your website. If this is not done, it confuses the recipient.

Short and to the point

Keeping in mind the way your emails are received are important. Remember we live in mobile society; 41 percent of email is opened on a device. You have approximately three seconds or less to engage a reader. Give them a picture, paragraph and a point of action. Make your message clear and concise.

Is it about you or the audience?

Not every email is an automatic conversion. Be relevant. Make sure your email messages are not about you and your needs (read: no hard sells). Every one of your emails should focus on your target audience and doing your best to fulfill their needs. If you forget about them, you will lose them.

Not monitoring, measuring, or managing

Possibly more important than creating your email marketing campaign and targeting the right audience is taking a look at the results. If you do not, your future campaigns will suffer.

The data you collect in the email metrics can be a gold mine. Examine open rates and days and times that the email was opened. By doing this, you can find the appropriate time to send future emails.

Find out what was more popular and what links received low (or no) click-throughs.

After three or six months, remove inactive subscribers if they have not opened nor clicked-through. Remember, you want to send to a target audience. If these subscribers are not engaged with your mailings, they are not part of the target audience.

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Appleseed: Social Marketing in the Developing World

Posted on September 1, 2016January 11, 2022 by SGA SGA

At SGA, all of our projects focus on using social marketing to change behavior and improve communities working hand-in-hand with our clients. That goal is the foundation of every decision we make in designing our programs and, in this case, even in the decisions staff make when they move on from SGA. This very special blog features Appleseed, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization started by former and current SGAers through a program at SGA called Core Time.

Appleseed (appleseedimpact.org) brings social marketing to the places that need it most to improve what children eat. Appleseed partners with existing nonprofit organizations who are doing great work in deserving communities, but maybe don’t have the marketing background or resources to undertake the kind of social marketing campaigns that SGA implements for communities across the state. By volunteering its expertise, Appleseed is able to increase the impact of its partners by orders of magnitude and make big change in short time.

Appleseed produces a podcast to keep its donors up to date on its work. This episode of Appleseed Radio follows the origins of Appleseed with Stephen interviewing Philip Kao, former SGA Project Manager and Appleseed Project Director.

Listen on if you ever imagined what it would be like to mix social marketing with a healthy dose of giardia.

You can also read the full interview transcript here: Appleseed Radio Episode 6 Transcript

If you want to hear more of Appleseed Radio, check them out on the Appleseed Radio Page and if you want to learn more about how SGA’s work shaped Appleseed (like how a brand guide to get Bay Area teens to stop littering helped shape a strategy to get rural farmers to embrace a funny looking corn), drop us a line and let us know.

The Poop on Poop

Posted on August 3, 2016January 11, 2022 by SGA SGA

Dog waste isn’t a topic most people talk about on a daily basis, but this “business” should be discussed. Pet owners who don’t have their dog’s droppings top of mind likely aren’t aware of how harmful it is to our environment when the poop isn’t scooped.

So, I’m out to start and share the conversation. You see, it’s been pretty commonplace in my family. My mother-in-law is English. Born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, she embodies many English ways of thinking, including a love for dogs I believe can only be topped by Queen Elizabeth’s love for her corgis.

When you’ve got a dog lover like this for a relative, you hear everything about dogs: what goes in and what comes out. Over the years, I’ve heard more than I ever intended to hear about dog waste. I didn’t think it was a topic to share beyond the family. Who speaks of poop in polite company?

Well, when I joined SGA, I discovered that everyone in the office talks about dog waste because we know the problems it causes. And now, I want to get you talking about it with your family and other pet-loving friends, too.

Dog waste isn’t fertilizer. It doesn’t help the environment; it hurts it. Dog poop contains unhealthy bacteria. In fact, the EPA estimates that if there was a spot with just two or three days of dog waste from 100 dogs, that would equate to enough bacteria to close all watersheds within 20 miles of such a location. That’s because dog waste that is not picked up washes into these waterways. That bacteria? It can lead to a variety of harmful viruses that can cause intestinal illnesses and kidney disorders in humans. In the book, “The Truth About Dogs,” author Stephan Budiansky states that there are 65 diseases that can be transmitted to humans from dog feces. Some will give you skin rashes, but others can be more harmful and may turn deadly.

So get the conversation going. Let others know the poop on poop. Picking up after your pooch isn’t simply the right thing to do, scooping the poop and disposing it in the trash or toilet keeps it from washing into waterways. This, in turn, keeps our rivers and ocean cleaner for all of us.

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Good Marketing is a Like a Ramen Shop

Posted on July 6, 2016January 11, 2022 by SGA SGA

Every business is good at something. There are some businesses that try to be good at everything. However, sometimes it’s best to focus on what you know best and let others do what they do best. It can be a win-win for everyone.

Let me explain. During a December trip to Pasadena, CA, we waited in line for more than an hour to dine at a ramen restaurant. Ramen restaurants aren’t typically fancy; here, the menu featured only six dishes to choose from.

With Santa Ana winds whipping, the temperature (if you can imagine it now) was in the 40s in the shade. Yet there were more than 70 people who weren’t dressed properly for the weather standing in a line that wrapped around the corner of the building and into the alley.

Most Americans know about ramen. Even supermarkets that don’t specialize in ethnic foods have a number of varieties on the grocery shelves. They are often a staple for college students and people on a budget because, even when they aren’t on sale, you can get ramen for less than 50 cents a serving. Additionally, it’s pretty filling for such an inexpensive dish. Cooking ramen at home isn’t complicated either. Boil some water, let the noodles steep and add the flavorings.

With a dish that is so simple to find and make, why would anyone seek out a restaurant and wait in line for it? For an hour? Especially in the cold and wind.

Ramen Tatsunoya started in 1999 in Kurume City, Fukuoka, Japan, a city with numerous ramen shops that have very loyal followings. Taking a chance there was a huge step. To differentiate themselves from others, founder Ryuta Kajiwara says he and the staff dedicated themselves to “perfecting the ultimate bowl of ramen” and providing kando, a Japanese word that means “a feeling of awe-inspiring.” They dedicated themselves to give more than customers expected.

Like ramen, marketing and social media isn’t necessarily all that complicated and most people probably know at least one 12-year old wunderkind who somehow manages to attract hundreds of fans on Facebook. An organization seeking to gain exposure might have in-house staff develop content and manage its social media presence. Having staff take on one more duty is cost effective and, in all fairness, it’ll get the job done just like whipping up some ramen at home.

But there’s a reason people are willing to stand in the cold for good ramen. It’s because while they may seem the same at first glance, an expert brings a depth to their craft that makes it better and gives that feeling of awe-inspiring. For marketing and social media, that means a broader reach with deeper engagement across your audience. It means that your ad budget goes farther and your messaging improves as you learn what best resonates with your residents.

Just like an expert ramen shop, SGA brings a depth of experience that helps the organizations we support in marketing and social media do more. When SGA works on a program, it isn’t one more duty assigned to an already overworked staff member; it’s a full team that carefully crafts content and researches why something worked (or, often more interesting, why it failed). The result is a marketing and social media presence that, while superficially the same as any organization that “has Facebook,” better reaches residents and inspires awe. We strive to bring kando to all parts of SGA and are grateful when we get to bring it to our clients.

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Getting OC Gneighbors to Think Saving Water is Gnormal

Posted on June 1, 2016February 2, 2022 by SGA SGA

Stormwater is such an abstract concept for people. But when we’re tasked with getting the public to understand pollution-conveying runoff and the need for water conservation during an ongoing drought, we needed something – or someone – to help in the effort. We needed a gnome.

We looked for a mascot for our client, Orange County Stormwater Program. A lovable and personable garden gnome came to be and residents named Gnorman during a social media contest. While in reality Gnorman is a custom-made ceramic piece, he has taken on a life of his own during this campaign and speaks in a voice that residents listen to.

When emails come from Gnorman, the quality of engagement goes up. More people joined the bi-weekly newsletter mailing list. The open rate topped 60 percent. The message was not only getting out there, but was also being well-received. Website page views increased. We found that the public loved the personal stories that were being shared. People began emailing to share their own stories and photos of their gardens, but not with us, with Gnorman. Emails were actually addressed to Gnorman. So, he replied back. He also showed up at local gardening events to educate OC residents and appeared in a video about a drought-tolerant yard. In all, he was seen across 34 cities, reaching 3.1 million residents.

Getting a social marketing message across always has its challenges. Even when people know how important an effort like water conservation is, getting them to take action isn’t always easy. Gnorman has made it easier. These days, you can find him on more than 1,000 lawn signs all over Orange County. He keeps touting the message: Over Watering is Out. Blue ribbons on those signs indicate that resident has taken action to have drought-tolerant landscaping, reduce sprinkler times, save water and eliminate runoff.

The program’s goal to create a new norm – or gnorm – was achieved. Christy Suppes, an OC environmental resources specialist says, “We believe residents understand their impact and how their actions at home made a difference.” Additionally, the campaign was honored by the California Stormwater Quality Association (CASQA) with the Outstanding Regional Stormwater News, Information, Outreach and Media Award.

For more information on the campaign and Gnorman, check out overwateringisout.org.

STAFF	Songs in Playlist (Title/Artist)
Lauren	The Imitation Game Soundtrack
Megan	“Work on It” by Alicia Keys
Jackie	“Selfish” by Slum Village ft John Legend & Kanye West
Angie	“Blessings” by Chance the Rapper ft Jamila Woods & Byron Cage
Carolina	“You Can Go Now” by Schmieds Puls
Paloma	“History Has It’s Eyes on You” by John Legend
Joy	“There You Are” by Pogo
Ly	“Dancing On My Own” by Calum Scott
Jessica	“My Favorite Part” by Mac Miller ft Ariana Grande
	AND “Say You Won’t Let Go” by James Arthur

STAFF	Songs in Playlist (Title/Artist)
Angeline Lee	Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong – Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
Anya Liddiard	The National- I Need My Girl To be completely honest, “The Good Dinosaur” is what my daughter likes, so I have to listen to: Homestead (From “The Good Dinosaur” Score)
Caitlin Dunham	Miike Snow- My Trigger
Carolina Gonzalez	Alexandre Desplat – The Danish Girl Original Soundtrack
Jackie Ayala	Isaiah Rashad (Ft. Kendrick Lamar & Zacari) – Wat’s Wrong
Judy Seitelman	Gipsy Kings-Bamboleo
Joy Contreras	Silversun Pickups- Circadian Rhythm
Lauren Palmerino	DVBBS & Borgeous – Tsunami
Megan Kang	Alt-J – Dissolve Me
Paloma Rosenbaum	Sia- Reaper
Thomas Kim	Jeff Buckley- Hallelujah
Roanel Herrera:	Gotan Project- Diferente
Stephen Groner	Johnny Cash- God’s Gonna Cut You Down