Auditing People Water
People Water is an organization that for every bottle of water purchased, will donate an equal amount to a person in need. It’s target audience is technically very broad, but it’s social media audience appears to be directed towards college aged activists. People Water has a Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and updates all three frequently with closely related stories and posts.
They are very engaging on Twitter, always replying quickly and warmly to followers and people who mention them. While I couldn’t get administrator access to their Facebook page, I looked at the proportion of people currently talking about the organization, 456, to the number of people who like the page, 24,701. That means that roughly 0.02% of the people who like the People Water page are talking about it. That doesn’t seem like a great proportion to me, they need to post stories that their followers want to “share” and talk about. I would recommend more “Challenge of the Day” posts, because these seem to get the most “likes”. Of the 29 tweets about People Water (found using the Twitter search bar) going all the way back to May 24, 2011, 16 were positive, 13 were neutral and none were negative.
There are many campus specific People Water Facebook groups and because of their blogging challenge, there are many blog posts to be found about the organization and the world water crisis. There are many Youtube videos made by people who believe in the cause and want to share it with the world. I heard about People Water through a friend who often links her status’s and tweets to their home pages so it is easy for her curious friends to see what the fuss is all about.
Because People Water is a charity it doesn’t necessarily have competition. Success in other organizations like Charity Water is still a success for the world and can’t be seen as a loss for People Water. However, this organization constantly competes with other water production companies, the People Water can seem a bit pricey with twelve one liter bottles costing $22.95 USD before shipping. But, after doing some comparative shopping, ordering FIJI water online with free shipping and a coupon code comes out to $37.50 USD for twelve one liter bottles. The water can only be obtained from shop.peoplewater.com and participating stores. This is a weakness of the company because it cant be obtained easily everywhere.
Their biggest competitor appears to be HumanKind Water which can be purchased at participating Walmart stores and 100% of the profits go to helping those in need. However, People Water has the upper hand when it comes to their website which is beautifully designed with links to everything from Facebook to Vimeo to Instagram.
https://www.facebook.com/peoplewater
https://twitter.com/PeopleWater
hconover 
This is a very good and well described audit. I was able to easily follow your entire surveillance of People Water and their social media usage. Interesting!
Is the organization donating a $1 for a $1? How do they stay in business?
I apologize, my wording was unclear. They donate an equal amount of clean water for the amount you purchase. They call this #dropfordrop.