Todd Marks President Mindgrub

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Case Study usaVotes2008.com

Social Media Summit12/11/2008

• Todd Marks President Mindgrub

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The Voice of America

• Official external radio and television
  broadcasting service of the United States federal
  government. Its oversight entity is the
  Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)
• Started in 1942 as part of ffice of war
  information.
• In 1994, the VOA became the first broadcast-news
  organization to offer continuously updated
  programs on the Internet.
• Content in English and 44 other languages is
  currently available online through a distributed
  network of commercial providers, using more than
  20,000 servers across 71 countries

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The Requirements

• VOA News wanted a new election site
• Interested in SAAS model and rich site to engage
  users
• Interested in new CMS or Social Networking
  Framework
• Quick turn-around required
• Researched several CMS vendors and Social
  Networking frameworks

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The Process

• May Initial Brainstorming session
• June Research Vendors, speak with subject matter
  experts, create Information Architecture
• July Finalize Wireframes, Create Graphic Designs
  for site, finalize software vendors.
• August 1st Start development
• August 15th Go Live
• August 16th current Evolve site for debates,
  election, user adoption, first 100 days

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The Widget
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The Results

• Over 150,000 unique visitors from over 200
  countries / territories
• 54 from Referring Sites, 33.5 direct traffic,
  12.5 percent from Search Engines
• 3000 community members who have logged in 12,000
  times
• Several groups including a learning English
  group, Spanish group, and VOA fans group
• New site and widgets coming out with Russian
  focus

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Next Steps

• Use Social Framework widget capability to
  populate other VOA news sites
• Pull groups currently under usaVotes2008.com into
  VOAnews.com
• Evolve usaVotes2008.com site into presidential
  process cycle website.
• Implement SAAS CMS to replace internal content
  management system and work with social framework

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Questions?

• ContactTodd.Marks_at_mindgrub.com