Objective

Science Chicago, a year-long initiative spearheaded by the Museum of Science and Industry, partnered with CG&A to develop and execute a broad-reaching social media strategy to help drive attendance to the thousands of dynamic Science Chicago events and elevate Chicago's profile as a science-rich city.

The goal was to give Science Chicago a recognizable online identity and position the program as an engaging member of the science community with whom science enthusiasts from across the globe could participate in timely discussions and share their real-life science experiences.

Action

CG&A helped Science Chicago build and enhance its social media presence by strategically redeveloping and re-launching an existing blog, creating a robust Facebook presence, inviting fans to share science photos through a dedicated Flickr group and engaging people and journalists directly via Twitter and YouTube. As Science Chicago's social media manager, CG&A created content, administered social media tools and managed outreach across all social networks.

By diversifying its online presence across a variety of social media networks, CG&A enabled Science Chicago to engage multiple target audiences within the science community including students, parents, science experts, journalists and bloggers.

Results

Through this comprehensive and viral social media strategy, CG&A helped Science Chicago augment traditional earned media coverage, generate significant buzz about Science Chicago events and programs and drive traffic to the Science Chicago Web site. In fact, the redeveloped blog, Facebook page, Twitter account and YouTube channel were all among the top 20 key referrers to ScienceChicago.com.

Average daily blog views more than doubled as a result of Science Chicago's expanded social media footprint and new blog structure. Beyond traditional media coverage, CG&A's social media efforts resulted in scores of Science Chicago placements in influential science, education, news and culture blogs.

Overall, nearly 300,000 science lovers and learners engaged in at least one Science Chicago program or online community.