New Readers/Community Marketing Experiments

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

Background

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn more

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