Last month, I participated on a citywide effort to bring greater awareness to the problem of child abuse in our community. It was called Cardboard Kids. On April 3, two-foot-high cardboard cutouts similar to a “flat Stanley” appeared all over San Antonio and the surrounding areas. 5846 of them – one to represent each confirmed child victim of abuse or neglect in Bexar County last year – were decorated in all shapes and styles and appeared in government offices, grocery stores, businesses, yards, schools, and hospitals. All had a name tag on the front and an explanation on the back.

We wanted people who saw a Cardboard Kid to do these things: read what it was about on the back, take a picture with it and share it with the hashtag #cardboardkidssa. We had some ambitious ideas about what might happen on April 3, but we naturally had a lot of questions. Would people see them? Would they visit the web site? Would they take a picture and use the hashtag?

There were many elements to this campaign, but the social media elements were focused in four areas.

First, we reached out to influential San Antonio bloggers and asked them to help spread the word. To assist in that effort, we invited them to a coffee hour with the ChildSafe team to hear about the problem of abuse in our community and how we thought Cardboard Kids could create greater awareness of the problem. We also developed a content package for them to share easily in their preferred social channels.

The second element of our campaign was a content strategy for ChildSafe’s existing social media channels.

Third, we communicated frequently with the organizations and individuals who had been decorating many of the Cardboard Kids in the previous months.

Finally, we used the social media amplification service Thunderclap and organized 100 influencers to “donate” a Tweet or Facebook post to be released on the morning of April 3. (thunderclap screen grab)

We laid a strong foundation for this effort in the weeks before the event, but the real magic happens when the campaign takes on a life of its own. The connections we made through social media helped to make that happen. In fact, two of the bloggers – Colleen Pence and Stacy Teet – curated an online magazine using Flipboard to put all the photos in one place.

View my Flipboard Magazine.

We are still analyzing the impact of this campaign, using Zoetica Media’s Framework for Social Media Measurement, but here’s the preliminary impact of the Cardboard Kids campaign:

• Tripled the activity on ChildSafe’s social media channels in the 15 day period
• 952 Tweets from 525 contributors created an estimated 1.34 mm impressions on Twitter
• Facebook reach increased by 40%; fans increased by 30%
• More than 2,700 unique visitors to the dedicated Cardboard Kids microsite. It was the number one landing page during the 15 day period
• 100 Thunderclap participants created 140,000 social impressions
• 1400 photos with hashtags appeared on Instagram; more than 100 photos per hour were uploaded to this channel on April 3.

The ChildSafe team believes that awareness of their cause has never been higher, due at least in part to the addition of Cardboard Kids to their already-jam packed activity level during Child Abuse Awareness Month.

What is truly significant is that the number of “walk-in” cases arriving at ChildSafe this April is eight times higher than the number of walk-ins from a year ago. (39 in April 2014; 5 in April 2013). While the individual social channels were important to this cause, the most important takeaway is that we’re starting to reach the people who need our help the most.