Digital Strategy For Great Barrier Reef Foundation

Research

Introduction

The Great Barrier Reef foundation was founded with the purpose of ensuring the conservation of coral reefs for the future generation. The foundation tends to seek solutions that will benefit coral reefs and prevent the extinct of the plant (“Great Barrier Reef Foundation”, 2018).

The Great Barrier Reef foundation is a leading charity organization that is trying to protect the coral reefs through bringing in solutions bases on science, technology, on-ground action and engineering. The foundation was built in 2000. This was a response to the request by the United Nations World Heritage Convention, which encouraged countries with sites with reefs to bring in ideas on the protection of the reefs. The Great Barrier Reef foundation main aim, is to reach more people in different countries and get more technological ideas in conserving the reefs. Funds are also raised, which are used in projects bringing in large impacts. To meet the goals and objectives set by the foundation then a well-designed and analyzed digital strategies must be implemented.

Research

Problem statement Objectives

The major threats to the Reefs include: climate change, poor-water quality, fishing and the coastal line development. The climate change usually leads to the bleaching of the coral reefs, which in extreme cases could lead to the ocean acidification. Poor-water quality, is as a result of contamination of sources of water in the large water bodies. The poor-water quality results to the outbreaks of the crow-of thorns starfish. The other threat is fishing activities, which, have turned to illegal fishing. The other major threat to the reefs, is the coastal development which is affecting the habitat of the reefs along the coastal line. The habitat is destroyed due to the litter, marine debris and the damaged urban run-off. The threats are increasing at high rate yearly which weakens the Reef’s resilience. This is a big threat of Reefs in the future. Over the past 20 years,  the Reef is substantial due to the extreme weather conditions. Other minor threats to the Reef include; mass bleaching, flood, drought, heat stress, cyclone Hamish, Cyclone Yasi, Cyclone Uni, Cyclone Monica, Cylone Ului, Cyclone Deddie and other threats (Chen & Dai, 2008).

Goal

• To preserve the Reefs from the threats that are reducing their presence in the coastal region.

Objectives

• To create aware to the people, of the importance of the Reefs and give reasons as to why The Reef should be preserved.
• To bring in technological ideas, engineering ideas, scientific ideas and the on- ground ideas that will help in the preservation of the reefs.
• To donate funds that will be used in the projects that will make a great impact in the conservation of the reefs.

Digital strategies

A digital strategy was laid out to help The Great Barrier Reef Foundation met the goals and the objectives (Karakas, 2009).  A digital strategy involves ways in which any organization tends to use, in order to complete the investments and meet the goals. Digital strategy involves selecting a technology to use and which to leave in order to meet a goal or the set objectives. The strategy to be used by The Great Barrier Reef Foundation include: adding analytics to the website, extending the online experience,  optimization of the search engine, community management, content management on the website (Mandal, 2017).

Measurements and Analytics

The Great Barrier Reef foundation wants to improve on the view the audience has on the organization.  The measurements and analytics have determined: the benchmark for the website contribution, the audience behavior, the search performance and the understanding of the content.

Problem statement Objectives

Google analytics tool was embedded in the website for the Great Barrier Reef Foundation which is “https://www.barrierreef.org/”. The tool was meant to give analytics on the activities happening website. The report that is derived from the Google Analytics, involves: the number of visitors in the site, the number of the new users, the bounce rate on the site, the behavior overview, the goals overview, current users on the system, the traffic of the website, the organic search report, the search over view and the users in the website each day.

Google Analytics is a free tool provided by Google but very helpful to The Great Barrier Reef Foundation. One of the goals by the foundation, is to create awareness of threats of the reefs and the need to conserve the reefs. The Great Barrier Reef Foundation targets many people via the website. Google Analytics can help the foundation know the number of people it has reached and the reaction after knowing about the objective and goal of theorganization. Some people may get to the website but after reading the content on the landing page, they may opt to leave the site. This is referred to as the bounce rate. The bounce rate tells the number of the website visitors, who are not interested in the content. The Google analytics also gives the number of visits every page has. This helps in telling what most people who have accessed the website, are interested in. Google Analytics can help in determining the location of various visitors of the website. From the report, most visitors are from United States having a total number of 67,445 visitors. Other visitors are from United Kingdom, India, Canada, Germany and France. The daily average traffic of the website is approximately 15,000 visitors. This depicts that website has quite a number of visitors.

The Google Analytics also displays the customer engagement in the website. This is depicted by the pages/session, average time spent in a session and the bounce rate.

The bounce rate shows the percentage of the visitors that navigated away from the website without interaction, after only viewing one page only. The pages per session is the average number of pages each visitor has viewed, exclusive of the bounce rates. The average session duration is the amount of time each user spends on the website. This also, does not include the bounce rate. From a look, the bounce rate on the website is quite high. This could mean that the users are not interested with the content or the users don’t care on the information delivered.

The data displayed on Google analytics is also combined with the set goals (Headworth, n.d.). This is importance as it helps the organization in making valid decisions. Such as, enhancing marketing in the areas that there is need to create awareness about the conservation of the Reefs.  The data derived from the Google Analytics tools, is true and accurate.

Searching Strategy

The foundation has also implemented the searching strategy, which involves the implementation of the Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization on a website (Berman, 2012). SEO determines which site deserves to be ranks first for any query entered in the search engine. A website that appeals most visitors gets high search engine ranking. The Great Barrier Reef foundation has utilized the SEO and conducts SEO work weekly (Ratcliff, Smarty, Boachie & DiSilvestro, 2018). This is to ensure that the websites’ layout and content are optimized to take advantage of everything the users are looking for, from the website (Fishkin, 2018). The more the optimization of the website, the more the traffic is increased in the website. Thus, resulting to much awareness about the Great Barrier Reef foundation to the world.

Goal

The Great Barrier Reef foundation, has also implemented a paid search to promote the visits to the website. The paid search is include in the Display Ads and the Social Ads.

Content Creation Strategy

The content on the website also matters a lot, when it comes to the users on the site. The Great Barrier Reef foundation has laid a strategy on displaying the website content. The website uses lots of graphics and videos on the website (McGill, 2018). The utilization of graphics will attract the website visitors to read the content or watch the videos and get more knowledge about the threat of the Reefs and also, find ways to do to conserve the reefs along the coastal region. The Great Barrier Reef foundation considers the content on the website and the targeted audience (“Developing a Content Strategy”, 2018). Therefore, an effective content strategy is implemented by the organization to ensure it meets the users’ expectations and enhance the fulfilment of the business goals and the objectives. The workflow, factors when developing the content strategy (Johnson, Collins & Wandersman, 2013). The website has laid out the goals, the threats, the solutions, the value and the impact respectively. The flow of the content is an important factor in the content creation. The element of content strategy include: the content components and the people contents. The content component involve both substances and the structure. In the substance components, the topics, tone and the message are depicted in the website in a clear way. The structure content components involve prioritization of the content in building blocks. The threats affecting the coral reefs are prior, as that is the greatest worry (“SEO Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide”, 2018).  The people contents involve the workflow of the website content displayed. The organization has identified the target audience first, and then created the appropriate content for the target audience. This is the reason, there are quite many users in the site. The bounce rate is quite big, this shows that the organization should make an improvement in the content creation strategy (“How to Create a Content Strategy That Will Actually Drive Results”, 2018).

Community Management Strategy

The Great Barrier Reef foundation has engaged in the community management, by use of social media. This method involves much interaction with the community through social media platforms such as twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook (Ang, 2011). The social reviews about the organization plans and services to the community really have a great impact to the success of a business. If people tend to give bad reviews about the company deeds then, there is no doubt that the organization will fail. If the work done and services provided to the community are commended, then, the good praise about the organization will reach many people and the business will get closer to the goal. The service review on the social media platforms tend to influence the service awareness, the level of participation and the loyalty. The minor review on the website content, will always affect the majority as per the Law of the few Theory. More social media experts should be recruited in the company, to add more posts on the social media platforms. This will result to creation of project awareness (Oostra, 2018). The organization also, shows the public on the expenditure of the money donate. This builds the trust of the donors, as they are sure the money is not misused.

Objectives

The report above, depicts the number of followers the Great Barrier Reef foundation has on Face Book, You Tube and Instagram. The report displays the engaged users, page impressions, the total page likes and the new page uses on the social media platform (Williams & Jones, 2011). The report is used to determine the social media platform that is bringing a great impact in the creation off awareness of the website. Twitter has most followers, followed by Facebook and Instagram has the least number of followers as it has nearly a quarter of the Twitter followers. More followers need to be reached in Instagram and Facebook, so as to create awareness in a wider scope (Gratton, 2010).

Advertising optimization

The Great Barrier Reef foundation should optimize the online and offline advertising, to create  awareness on the need to conserve the Reefs. There are three categories of advertising that have been implemented (Ratcliff, Smarty, Boachie & DiSilvestro, 2018). The categories inlude: paid advertising, owned advertising and earn advertising.

Paid advertising include:

Blogs – There are quite a number of blogs with the content about why it is important to preserve the reefs.

YouTube – Google charges The Great Barrier Reef foundation based on cost per view on the ads it’s placed in.

TV advertising- Whereby, The Great Barrier Reef foundation is creating awareness of the importance of the Reefs and giving ways as to why and how to conserve the reefs through advertising on the TV screen.

Face Book – The Facebook platform offers promotion packages. To help a posts on the organization page, the company pays Facebook some amount of money to enhance in the market awareness to more people in the Face Book platform.

Search display ads- Ads about The Great Barrier Reef foundation could be displayed on other websites at a cost (Brown, 2012).

Owned advertising include:

 The Website- the Great Barrier Reef foundation has a website. In which, there is much content about threats of the reefs, the impacts of the threats, the solutions and other important information about the reefs.

YouTube- the Great Barrier Reef foundation has uploaded videos on the YouTube which are also viewable on the website to encourage the conservation of the coral reefs.

Emails- the Great Barrier Reef foundation can send emails to people who have subscribed to newsletters in their website.

Earned advertising includes, the public relations whereby, the targeted audience who have experienced the services of The Great Barrier Reef foundation, tend to market the organization by its deeds.

Conclusion

From a look at the digitalized strategy implemented by The Great Barrier Reef foundation, there seems to be a likelihood of the organization meeting its goal. The achieving of the goal may take a while for fully and accurate implementation of the set goal. After a number of years, with more effort in the implementation of the digital strategy, the organization will have meet the goal of conserving the reefs. The wider the creation of awareness by people about the need to conserve the reefs, then more people take action in conserving the reefs and make donations to the company to implement the ideas at hand.

Recommendation

The Great Barrier Reef foundation, should market the organization more and create awareness in more countries that have got the coastal line. The organization should utilize the social media platform to reach more people. The greater the number of people that is aware of the project, the greater the donations to fund the projects. The digital strategy utilization is very important in the organization. The major objective of the organization is creating the awareness of the value of reefs to most people (Reynar, Phillips & Heumann, 2010).

When the organization implements the digital strategies at hand, then the organization processes will be efficient and effective. The digital strategy applies the modern technologies thus the organization will be in a position to meet the goals and the objectives faster.

Reference

Great Barrier Reef Foundation. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.barrierreef.org/

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Headworth, A. Social media recruitment.

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