The Office of Community Affairs (OCA) implemented an in-person community canvassing strategy to explore a bigger reach through outreach into trusted neighborhood spaces and meeting residents directly where they live and work.

OCA was able to distribute 760 physical postcards to Daly City, San Mateo, Redwood City and North Fair Oaks. These flyers were also given to 10 of contracted outreach partners to further reach audience in trusted spaces. 

These areas in San Mateo County were selected in partnership with Faith in Action's information and data on communities with high immigrant populations. They were also selected due to high traffic areas for local merchants and proximity to public World Cup watch parties and public gathering spaces.

OCA also used the strategy on using social media to raise awareness in a digital format. OCA ran 12-post multilingual Instagram posts, and 4 out of the 12 posts were "boosted" to San Mateo County and neighboring Bay Area Counties. "Boosted" posts use Instagram's suggested targeting with a Bay Area radius in mind, that way messaging is focused on San Mateo County and neighboring counties rather than a broader region.

The results for this boosting campaign were that OCA was able to reach 136 thousand unique accounts, the posts were viewed 219 thousand times, there was a 48 percent engagement rate (which means people either liked, commented, shared or saved the post) and there were 205 new followers. Out of the new audience acquired OCA noticed that 37 percent were men, 61 percent were women and 2 percent are unknown. Age ranges were also analyzed and the biggest age group reached at 40 percent rate were people between the ages of 25-34 years of age.

Key takeaways from both campaigns  

During the canvassing campaign, residents were most interested in how to report rumors of immigrant enforcement anonymously, how to find verified information from a trusted resource and were given the opportunity to ask questions in-person. As for the social media campaign, using the boosted method to promote the World Cup Campaign, OCA noticed that 94 percent of the new viewers came from the boosting and only 6 percent of viewers were the original audience. If you would like to learn more about this campaign, please see the flyer for more detailed information