By jackie
You’re all well aware that the Pokemon Go craze has brought new traffic into cemeteries across the country. At the beginning of August, we took the opportunity to educate the public, especially since this was a timely topic in the news. We developed a 1-minute video on Cemetery Etiquette for Pokemon Go (PoGo) players. We posted the video to our Funeral Innovation’s Facebook page (for those who haven’t seen it) to educate and remind the public of best practices for being at a cemetery.
After creating the video, set up in Facebook was pretty simple. Below you’ll see the caption, title, and tags we chose. Notice that we directly asked viewers to “share this with your community…”
Since the PoGo game has been in the news for quite a while now, we decided to promote the video, spending $100 to reach a larger audience. Here are the insights that Facebook compiled on the video.
Here are some interesting things we realized after analyzing these stats:
For many viewers, it really hit a nerve.
With 368 comments, we noticed some trends. Generally we had two types of comments; those of gratitude for sharing and those of anger. Many people were upset that PoGo players were even entering in cemeteries, and our post was a place they chose to share their frustration. Understandable.
Some really great conversations happened from some of these posts of anger and frustration. Check out this example:
Danny brought up a good point, which we actually saw in other comments as well, that different generations have different experiences with cemeteries and funerals in general. We really enjoyed seeing the conversations happening in the comments. These sorts of comments really emphasize the need for funeral homes and cemeteries to focus on education. This is just the purpose we love Facebook for, dialog and education about the death industry that you wouldn’t necessarily get to be a part of otherwise.
What surprised us a little was those who commented and even shared the video with their local PoGo groups. These were PoGo players who genuinely cared and wanted to remind themselves and others to be respectful.
Check out these two examples:
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Aim to educate.
As we developed this video, we made certain to not choose sides. We didn’t want to say that “yes, this is allowed and encouraged” or “no, this is disrespectful and frowned upon.” Keeping neutral allowed us to 1) not speak for cemeteries since they have varying opinions and 2) we were able to keep it educational. The most important thing was to educate and bring awareness to cemeteries and the necessary etiquette.
In this example, a cemetery chose to add their own caption before sharing, which is great. They, like many others, chose to warmly welcome PoGo players into their cemetery, yet took the opportunity to educate on how to show respect.
Facebook loves videos.
We’ve been aware for a while now that Facebook prioritizes videos over photos and text. This video is a great example of that.
In a study by Buzzsumo, since last August 2015, the number of people sharing videos has more than doubled. Videos on Facebook are still relatively new, the study reports, and therefore Facebook is giving them an advantage.
We’ve capitalized on Facebook’s video trend by building an exclusive library of funeral home and cemetery relevant videos. These videos cover topics such as planning ahead, grief and healing, hospice and more. They have been generating incredible reach for our customers, and are available to you now within the Social Media Copilot Premium. Contact us now to learn how you can use these videos to reach, educate and engage your community.
