Mark Lane, Director of public relations. for Goodwill Industries presented how they have been using social media to great success at the Social Media Club Detroit meeting Wednesday, March 16. The event was at a great room in the Compuware building downtown. It was a very cool, funky space with free Faygo redpop slushes. Thanks to Quicken Loans for the great space.

Goodwill Industries is celebrating 90 years this year. Many people may know them for their resale shops, but in actuality they hadn’t had one in the Detroit area for 10 years until this year. They are actually all about jobs – helping people find jobs, train for them, connecting them, etc. Right now 300,000 metro Detroiters are looking for a job.

“We are in the business of putting people back to work” says Lane. “We are a social business. We retrain, evaluate their resumes, help improve skills.”

Ben & Jerry’s is a partner company and Goodwill runs two stores, including one in the Compuware building. It’s a place where workers can learn work skills, how to handle money, people skills and more. While students complete their work at Ben & Jerry’s, they’re learning skills and getting training on how to get a job when they’re done working there. They d

Goodwill has another program called Greenworks that has created over 70,000 jobs in the last 10 years. This program has been recognized by the Detroit Free Press as a 2011 green leader.

They shoot and post a lot of video on Goodwill TV, their YouTube channel. As channels have changed from traditional media to interactive media, they’ve found that having a channel on YouTube has gotten them a ton of traffic. It has updates on jobs, videos on how to get a job, etc.

Lane talked about how you need to create different types of content for different audiences. One thing Goodwill did that got them a lot of attention and posted on other channels was to put together a golf tips video series. They were kind of humorous tips like don’t text on the green. It got so much traffic and passed around so much that the series got listed in the on the PGA site as one of the top ten golf tip sites. Creating something like this is a way to connect with donors, both individuals and corporations.

Another way they connected with an audience while getting the Ben & Jerry’s co-branding message out, was to create another fun series of videos. They created a character out of a Ben & Jerry’s cup and shot fun videos of him visiting all different areas around the metro area. It created over 4000 views in a week after debuting

Goodwill has used their Facebook page to connect with followers, post their events, post media events, job fairs and more. One story Lane told was how they connected on Facebook with a guy who had been a long time supporter and had lost his job. He had been with the same company for over 25 years and hadn’t ever had to put together a resume in all that time. Now, he wasn’t sure what to do and where to go. There weren’t many jobs available in his specific area of expertise. So, Goodwill put him in charge, running one of their Ben & Jerry stores – under his guidance it became on of their best stores. It all happened because they connected on Facebook.

Lane also said they use twitter to connect with other nonprofits, supporters, media and businesses. Right now they have a twitter campaign, posting that they’re looking for high school students that want to make a difference. For each RT of their message, they get a dollar from Huntington Bank for up to a $1000 scholarship. If you’d like to help retweet this: “RT @GoodwillDET: Help fight for local jobs. RT to add $1 to scholarship for Detroit area student #forjobs http://on.fb.me/ForJobsAward”

Also, twitter helped them get a new truck for their store. They had sent out a tweet about needing a truck and if anyone know someone who might be interested in donating one. Then Lane was tweeting with someone at Art Van and asked if they knew anyone who would like to donate a truck. He was told to talk to a particular person at Art Van. He did and they ended up donating a truck from their fleet of delivery trucks.

Goodwill also used Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn to do job search and placement. Through this they are finding people willing to hire Goodwill trainees. “Our LinkedIn account has become a place for businesses to connect in their groups” says Lane. “We’re using all the new media channels to engage, build relationships and hopefully eventually get someone a job.”

Lane says other businesses and nonprofits have asked them how can you do that, be out there on social media. You can’t control the message. He tells them, we don’t want to control the message, we want to get the message out and engage the community. And if there are issues, we want to know about it.

As far as the recently opened Goodwill store on Ford Road in Canton (across from the Ikea), it’s a retail resale shop receiving over 7000 lbs of donations every week. Goodwill is looking at the metrics of who comes in and when. That way they can find out the times that people are shopping and what the demographics are – and have events/sales based on that info.

When they were getting ready to open the story, Goodwill brought in media for a tour before they opened. They had videotaped different people who were employed and talked about each of their stories. It was 25 new jobs and every one of them came with a story. So, Goodwill set up interviews and tours with the media. What would normally have been about a half hour visit turned into a much longer event. By engaging the reporters in the stories, most of them ended up staying for about two hours.

Prior to the opening, Goodwill used social media to highlight some of the deals that were awaiting in the store. For instance they had an antique pinball machine for only $600 that was donated and would have cost much more on the open market. They made a video of that pinball machine and put it out there before they opened. This was just one of the stories they got out there through social media channels. By the time they opened, there were huge lines. They did over 800 transactions that day and missed the biggest opening day take ever by $300. Canton chamber of commerce said it was their best store opening in over 10 years.

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