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There are thousands of articles, tips, and blog posts (many found on this site!) that provide guidance on starting, managing, and optimizing a social media campaign.
So let's change it up a bit and look at a real-life example of how an organization, here in our own backyard, is effectively using social media as a part of its marketing efforts.

The Willamette Valley Cancer Institute recently launched two new websites, one (oregoncancer.com) which provides information on the organization itself, and the other for the Believe Institute - "An emotional, physical, and virtual extension of everything the WVCI believes in."

As the sites were under construction, we were lucky enough to also work with the WVCI on planning and building the social media portion of the online campaign. The blocks used to build this campaign consisted of a blog, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

The Believe Institute blog acts as the hub for the social media campaign. This is where the latest information is launched - inspiring patient stories, what's new at the center, the latest in cancer news, and more. The blog is set up in an effective and user-friendly way, with photos, links to more information, and a share button to allow the reader to share the post via other social media channels.

The blog's posts also help the WVCI appear in search rankings, through well-written content with quality keywords, optimized page titles and descriptions, and a solid linking strategy.

A perfect example is the post on the WVCI's use of SmartArc technology. The post contains relevant, interesting content, an optmized page title and description, and several strategic links throughout the post (a few of which are to videos on YouTube that users may also share and comment on). So, did this blog post get indexed well? If someone performs a search for SmartArc technology in Google, this blog post ranks No. 4, well above the fold.

The Willamette Valley Cancer Institute Facebook page is set up to land a first-time user onto a great looking welcome page, with a clear path to Liking the page. After Liking the page, the user is taken to the page's wall, where they see an active stream of updates and a nice set of options on the left navigation, including links to detailed information about the WVCI, Flickr photos, and the WVCI YouTube channel. An image link to the WVCI Facebook page can also be found in prominent locations on the WVCI and Believe Institute websites.

The WVCI Twitter page is complete with a well-written description and a stream of interesting, consistent posts. The posts include links to relevant information and many include hashtags (#), to allow for appearance in Twitter's search index. And like Facebook, a link to the WVCI Twitter page is displayed on both WVCI websites.

The WVCI YouTube channel has a complete organization description, with videos that contain relevant tags for search and informative descriptions. Each video is set up to allow for user comments, providing yet another engagement platform for the WVCI and its audience.

Not only does the WVCI have two great new sites and a well-built and managed social media campaign, they also do great things for their patients and have been an inspiration to all of us here at CAWOOD.