A Canoe + Social Media = Sweet Success

Most people don’t want to live life on the edge: catch dinner from a river, sleep in a tent, or bathe very seldom… but if you do an adventure like this, people will live their adventure through you!

My cousin (Jon Detweiler) and I took a canoe trip from Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico last year, from August 14^th-November 3^rd. A lot of planning and time goes into a trip like this, so we began planning in December of 2010. We went through 10 states and were on 5 different waterways, which totaled around 2,000 miles of water paddled!

Experts in the “adventure world” will tell you to not embark on an adventure without certain things: lighters, maps, dehydrated food, or bug repellant. They left out some very important things that are essential for creating an adventure that everyone, not just you will enjoy.

Adventure Essentials (what we took):

• > DeLorme PN-40 GPS
• > “Spot" Locator
• > GoPro HD waterproof video camera
• > Kodak HD handheld video camera
• > Canon 1D camera
• > Cheap little point n’ shoot camera
• > Verizon WiFi card
• > Solar panels

In an adventure, packing light and taking the least amount of everything is usually the norm, but sometimes you have to make exceptions so others can benefit from your adventure! When you make life about others, things are always better.

Our trip, dubbed “Sugar 2 Salt” by Jon, had Facebook, Twitter, a website, and a “spot locator” all connected to the trip. Wondering how in the world we updated all of these? Someone that I knew gave us a Blackberry Storm to use on the trip! Jon, being the adventure mountain man, and me, being more savvy with computers… I had the job of updating these during the trip.

Facebook was the best and easiest way for people to keep up with us as we paddled down the rivers. I would post pictures and random posts about what life was like on the river. Some days I would get lonely and even home sick, but I would get on Facebook to post something and see that a friend or family member had posted something, and it would give me a sense of being back home. We would get to know someone for a day and then have to leave, but Facebook gave them the ability to follow us as we paddled on to the Gulf! Facebook created a “community”, even if we were a 1,000 miles away from those we knew.

Twitter was used as well on our journey. We had our Twitter page linked to our Facebook, so when something was posted on our Facebook page, it went directly to our Twitter page. Linking your social media pages is a great way to keep them updated, especially when you are on an adventure. Twitter offers people quick and precise info about what you are doing at a certain time. Being tired a lot and out in the “boonies” (among other things) made it hard to want to update all of our social media outlets, but we are glad we did!

Our "Spot" locator was a priceless addition to the trip as well. A spot locator is a personal tracking GPS that can ping your location to Google Maps every 15-20 minutes. With the purchase of the right service, this device will keep people up-to-date to your location in just about real time fashion! We had this device hooked to our Facebook and website. During the day people could watch where we were via Google Maps. At night we would click the “check-in” button on the Spot, and it would post a link on our Facebook page to the exact location where we would be camping that night (above picture)! To help ease my Mom's nerves, I also had the spot locator connected to her phone, so every night when we would “check-in” for camp it would send a text to her phone.

Our website was also a big player in the success of our trip. We tried to do most of our updates on our Facebook page, but some great information was on our website. We wanted our website to be a portal for our blog, spot locator, and ministry links. Hundreds of people used the links on our website every week, the most popular being the “track us” link. People were able to see in almost real time where we were at and, with the aid of Google Maps, were even able to see the landscape that we were encountering! On the bottom of our website a “wibiya” toolbar was installed. This specialized toolbar had all of our social media links right there for people to view.

Every weekend we tried to post a new blog about the week we just finished. We wrote in our journals almost every night, so we could remember what happened each day. Keeping a journal and blogging are two things that require discipline and hard work. I fell asleep some nights while journaling, but we knew that we needed to keep track of all that happened in our travels. When we would post a new blog, we would also try to post on our Facebook page that there was a new blog to read. This gave people a heads-up, instead of them having to check our blog every day to see if there was a new post. We had links to our social media pages on our blog also, so people could stay engaged in-between blog posts. A blog goes more in-depth than Facebook and Twitter, but requires more time. Our Twitter and Facebook pages helped people know and stay engaged as to when we updated our blog.

This trip wouldn’t have affected the amount of people that it did if it wasn’t for social media and the web. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, and websites are all essentials if you are planning to do a successful fundraiser!

-Ben Swartz, Now Marketing {Account Manager}

If you want your adventure in life to be found, be social and be useful online contact us NOW at 877.380.6698 or email us at info@NOWMarketingGroupInc.com