Citizens Against the train
Social Media Strategist and Designer
Twitter, Google+, Facebook
Sprout Social to Manage Content Calendar
I took part in actively seeking out news sites, websites, and blogs taking part in the discussion of All Aboard Florida’s plans and CATT directing traffic to our website for additional information and petition.
I took an unknown issue and made it into a well-known topic around the Treasure Coast, created enough discussion that it even made National News.
Citizen’s Against the Trains concerns our client Citizen's of Martin County who were lobbying against All Aboard Florida, a high-Speed rail company, who planned to upgrade an old railway that runs through the Treasure Coast of Florida to a high speed railway from Miami to Orlando at very minimal costs.
The problem that Citizen’s of Martin County had with All Aboard Florida’s plan was that their plan was not making the much-needed upgrades to the railways to make them safe for high speed trains. Also, that if there were to be any maintenance in the future it would be paid for from the taxpayer's dime. This in their mind added insult to injury, as the federal government was allegedly giving All Aboard Florida a loan to make the project happen.
We were given a month and a week total. A week to make a campaign and a month to execute it initially.
Our campaign goal was to:
1. Have people sign the mass petition against All Aboard Florida’s projected plan. This would be our Return on Investment monitor.
2. Our secondary goal would be to create enough interest that would cause a debate within Florida’s State Government. The people of the Treasure Coast would have more information and could argue for or against the trains. In essence we wanted to make it more wildly known and talked about.
To do this we approached businesses and home owners within the local areas to support the spread of information as this could affect them.
Within the first week we already had attention of individuals who worked with All Aboard Florida who would try to create dialogue and sometimes negative dialogue on our social media. We never engaged in negative dialogue but as those individuals came to make their points, it brought more interest to the page increasing our reach. The negativity from our opposition brought a following that was on our side.
Throughout the campaign we continually reminded followers of the petition and let them know of other polls, or questionnaires that were going on regarding the topic of the trains.
