December 2022 Overview
Social Media (Meta)
Facebook & Instagram followers were up for the conference promotion and have since plateaued.
We have 1,207 followers on Twitter and have not been posting much since the conference. We will be posting more as the year comes to a close.
Email subscribers
Our email audience is 4,630 subscribers after adding AMPlify volunteers to our main list. As expected, we’ve had higher numbers of unsubscribes with fundraising emails.
Visitors are mobile
22% of our website visitors are on mobile devices, with our top referrers being social media platforms after search engines.
End-of-Year Fundraising
Our end-of-year fundraising campaign is up and so far we have raised $1,006 since launching on November 18. We had a follow-up email blast for Giving Tuesday. The next blast will go out at the end of this week, followed by another before the end of the year. We usually experience higher numbers of unsubscribes when sending out fundraising emails.
New Communications Channel — Talking Trees Podcast
I am working on “Talking Trees,” a podcast for education & outreach, and will be putting together some test episodes in the new year.
Short video (or audio) podcasts on urban forestry topics based on the theme ‘all solutions include trees.’ The podcasts would be between 15 to 30 mins and would introduce the audience to the wide range of benefits provided by urban trees.
Using podcasts like ‘stuff you missed in history class‘ and the Frick Museum’s series ‘cocktails with a curator‘ as inspiration to create a podcast to reach a new audience with our urban forestry messaging.
The ‘Cocktails with a Curator’ series was great in that it focused on one work of art in the museum’s collection and gave the history of the work and artist. This style of an episode would be great for introducing a new audience to the different types of trees in their immediate environment. As people learn the names of things, like plants and animals, it helps to increase their appreciation of the environment.
‘Stuff You Missed in History Class’ is a purely audio-based podcast. Here the inspiration is about things around you and in your environment you may have missed. We can introduce the audience to the various benefits provided by trees; energy saving, test results, health, and healing, etc. These topics would also be great for guest interviews.
Perhaps we could get some sponsors for the podcast in the future.
Another possibility is to reintroduce a membership where for just a few dollars a month, the paying audience could have earlier access to episodes, special Live Q&A with certain guests, etc.
A couple of sample episodes will be produced once the fundraising season is behind us using existing video content from past interviews.
References:
Stuff You Missed in History Class
CAUFC Communications Channels
Facebook & Instagram
Meta (Facebook) has changed how they report analytics for both Facebook and Instagram. Measures like ‘reach’ (how many people are seeing your posts or page) from traditional advertising are more important than follower numbers. Also important to know is the audience interacting with our content. It is important to note that ‘reach’ is an estimated metric.
The percentage up or down measure is this period in relation to the previous period, which is the last month (August 2022) compared to the previous month (July 2022). Facebook is shown on the left, Instagram is on the right, and the previous period is the gray line.
Our page and profile visits have decreased, along with new likes and follows, although our reach has increased. See how the blue line is up over the gray line.
Facebook & Instagram Audience
Meta (Facebook) has changed how they report analytics for both Facebook and Instagram. Statistics on our audience reveal the age and gender, the top cities for our followers, and the top countries. The audience statistics are for all the time that has passed since we set up our page.
Our audience has grown since last month. We passed 1,620 on Facebook and now have over 900 on Instagram.
Facebook & Instagram Content Performance
Statistics reveal how our posts have performed over the past month. It is essential to have our audience interact with our posts. More interaction with a post will then improve the reach of a post.
In November, our fundraising and event announcements had the best combination of reach and reactions.
On Twitter, our followers decreased during November. Twitter removed numerous bots and inactive accounts during November, and we lost a few followers during fundraising season.
I have updated our LinkedIn page and believe there are many opportunities to post more regularly on this site and grow our audience. Our page has grown to 200 followers.
Email Audience & Newsletter Performance
CaUFC Master List: 4,630
Email subscribers have changed as I combined two email audiences; the CaUFC audience and the AMPlify volunteers. There was some overlap between these two groups. The combined audience also reduces our combined audience charge each month. There are also 108 non-subscribers for the annex project in Sacramento.
Our latest email achieved an above-average open rate, well above our usual email performance. The click rate was lower than average, and the unsubscribes were also up more than average, which is usual during fundraising season.
Engagement figures have changed and only cover 80% of our audience due to combining the two audiences. Those who rarely engage with our emails were down 8%, which is good.
CAUFC Website Performance
December 1, 2021 – November 30, 2022
Highlights
The chart on the right tracks the page views and visitors to the site each month and other vital measurements for the website for the past year. The ‘Missing’ page coming in at #2 seems to be a bad link to our website from another site.
Top pages visited in the past month:
- California Urban Forests Council (home page)
- Missing
- Why Urban Forests?
- About Us
- Board
- Staff
- California Climate Trees Map
- Programs
- Dr. Ming Kuo
- Resources
Classy
We launched our store for swag, starting out with Lead with Trees and We Need Trees t-shirt designs. Our store has generated $76.26 in profits.
