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When you give, you get!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 — 

 

Clear Verve Marketing was recently featured in a Profile in Philanthropy from BizTimes Milwaukee. These profiles, which appeared in the BizTimes Giving Guide, highlight the services of individuals in the Milwaukee area who have made significant contributions to the nonprofit community. Clear Verve, along with Catral Doyle creative and Welke Group, were highlighted for our Tri-Adathon work. You can view our profile, along with profiles of other generous individuals and some deserving nonprofits, online.

If you’re not familiar with Tri-Adathon, it’s a once a year opportunity for Milwaukee-area nonprofits to receive some really great pro-bono marketing work. Each year, we take applications from local organizations, select a number of projects to work on, and then shut down and complete these projects in a 24-hour work marathon. It’s exhausting and fun. It’s also given us the opportunity to meet some really great people and learn a lot about the many organizations that make our community a better place. The 2012 Tri-Adathon will be held in spring. Be sure to watch for our call for entries coming in March or April.

We don’t do Tri-Adathon specifically to get publicity, but it’s nice when that happens. Many thanks to our friend and client, Gary Ross from Community Health Charities of Wisconsin for nominating us. We’re looking forward to another successful creativity marathon this spring.

Here’s a video of our Tri-Adathon experience last year:

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

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A new social media planning tool

Monday, December 5, 2011 — 

 

I recently spoke at an event for the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee.  The event, called Social Media for Nonprofits, featured Wayne Breitbarth, LinkedIn expert, and me; and although it was targeted at the nonprofit community in Milwaukee, much of what we spoke about can be useful to for-profit businesses.

My presentation focused on the results of our recent Social Media Survey of Nonprofits ( get the results here) , specifically what nonprofits value about social media, and the challenges nonprofits face in implementing social media tools for their organizations. Because the Business Journal was kind enough to ask me to speak at this event, I wanted to be sure to deliver some high quality content for them. The result of my prep for this event is a new tool we hope you’ll find useful in planning your social media strategy. We call it the Ongoing Social Media Strategy Wheel.

One of the biggest challenges faced by nonprofit is getting others involved in the effort, either from a participation standpoint or from an implementation standpoint. This is partially because most nonprofits (64%) do not have a social media policy guiding the people charged with implementing social media. If your organization doesn’t have a social media policy, be sure to download our template so you can fix this!  A social media policy can help make it “safe” to build a team of people to get the work done, rather than relying on a single person (who often has other work to do).

The other challenge is finding time to plan a strategy. Although most of us would never think of spending advertising dollars without a plan or hiring a receptionist and not training that person on how to answer the phone, many people don’t think anything of just jumping into social media without a plan of action.  We hope our new document, the Ongoing Social Media Strategy Wheel, helps address the planning issue. When we created it, we wanted to be sure we recognized the following things:

  • Most organizations are already using social media in some way. It would be stupid for me to lead you through the perfect planning process for people that are not yet involved in social media. That process won’t work if you’re already participating because you can’t stop and undo what you’ve already done just to make a plan.
  • Planning is not a one time activity. You have to constantly reassess where you are at, look for new ideas, and pay attention to what is going on in the world.
  • The world doesn’t stop while you plan. You can’t take a vacation from interacting with your social media contacts while you think. You have to think and act at the same time.

The ongoing social media strategy wheel attempts to show this by using continuous circles. The inner circle illustrates the planning and reflection activities that most people forget. These activities are conducted internally and aren’t seen by the public, but they are very important because performing these activities will increase the effectiveness of the woare the public sees. The outer circle illustrates the activities that most people see. Both wheels are rotating constantly and at the same time.

We hope that this new document will help you continuously refine your communications on social media.

If you want to see the rest of the presentation from the Social Media for Nonprofits event (the ideas work for for-profits too), you can view it here:

Social Media for Nonprofits

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

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Going Green & Seeds to Plant

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 — 

 

I was at the post office yesterday and found a new line of products the USPS is selling called Go Green.  I don’t often go into the store so this may not be all that new but it was new to me.  One of the items in this line was the following postcard with a design on the front that is reminiscent of the BP logo icon but still pretty neat.

The cool thing about it was that you can not only mail this card but plant the seeds within it.  For four postcards at $8.95 you can share your love of “going green” and plant a few seeds.

Susan Schoultz is Design Director at Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create,  and execute marketing campaigns.  Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve2.

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Thoughts on the PR & Social Media Summit

Friday, October 14, 2011 — 

 

I don’t think I realized the brilliance of the PR & Social Media Summit presented in Milwaukee until the next day, when I found myself missing the energy of the conference. Being a part of a community on several different levels was extremely enriching.

We all got to take a day to navigate the social media landscape as a group, with very few outside disturbances. This was my first conference with a smart phone and tweet screens and I really enjoyed it for two main reasons:

1) It was great to SEE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE WERE THINKING as the presentations were taking place (even in the other session) and even see how people outside of the summit were responding.

2) I really enjoyed the FREEDOM to feel like I could be on a phone or computer without insulting people around me for once. We are taught from a young age that paying attention means looking at the speaker, actively listening and nodding (not off to sleep, obviously). But multi-listening opened things up in an amazing social media savvy way!

2.25) It was my birthday and somebody not at the summit figured out they could wish me a big screen happy birthday tweet all the way from Africa.

Being in sessions with people who were into social media (or wanted to learn more about social media) was helpful, and the summit set us all up to communicate successfully. Presenters wanted to interact with both in-person and Twitter questions/comments, and audience members shared information about social media tools, planning, influencing influencers, videos and driving engagement as fast as they learned it.

Did you attend # PRSMS in Milwaukee? If so did you feel this same connectedness? Or have you attended another conference where you felt similarly? I know that one day later, I was still inclined to tweet about what I was experiencing to others and missed being in that type of environment.

BONUS! Some one-liner takeaways that I found quality enough to write down on actual paper:

• Seek what people are seeking, not what they already have. (@georgegsmithjr)
• Social media is less about the moment more about the movement (@georgegsmithjr)
• Technology changes but remember it’s about consumer’s behavior and how they interact with the changing technology that matters (@georgegsmithjr)
• Liking something means something in the real world, but not on Facebook (@augieray)
• ROI tools are different for everyone depending on what you’re trying to accomplish (@sarameaney)
• Foster a narrative with your consumers (@alkrueger)
• You can’t influence an influencer unless you ARE an influencer (@the_spinmd)
• People don’t sign up on Facebook to be marketed to (@the_spinmd)
• “The shadow is what we think of it, the tree is the real thing.” – Abe Lincoln, re one’s character (@JennyMcTighe)

Erica Gordon is a Marketing Associate at Clear Verve and also works part-time at a Milwaukee area nonprofit. Follow Erica on Twitter: @erica_g.

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What Maroon 5 reminded me about marketing

Thursday, September 29, 2011 — 

 

Recently, I was watching videos on VH1 with my 13 year old. (Yes, VH1 does still actually show music videos sometimes.) While we were watching, the video for the Maroon 5 song, Moves Like Jagger came on. After watching it for a few moments, my daughter said, “This is a really stupid video.” Meanwhile, I was watching it thinking it was a really clever video.

In the video, there are shots of Adam Levine dancing like Mick Jagger interspersed with other people dancing like Mick and actual footage of Mick Jagger performing on stage. At the end, when Christina Aguilera sings, she’s dressed to look like Jerry Hall, Mick’s long-time girlfriend.

After I explained the video to her and pointed out the real footage of Mick Jagger, she suddenly got it and decided that the video wasn’t so stupid after all.

The experience reminded me about the importance of perspective when crafting your messages. One of the biggest challenges every business faces when building their marketing messages and campaigns is remembering what the target audience knows, understands, and cares about. Just because something is important to you as a business owner or as an employee, doesn’t mean your customer gives a hoot about it. This is why defining a target audience is so important. The more closely you can define your target, the easier it will be for you to choose words and images that will resonate with that group of people.That way, you might not be trying to appeal to a teenager using images that only make sense to her forty-something year old mom.

Check out the video here:

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

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The Importance of a Good Graphic (and Vice Versa)

Tuesday, September 13, 2011 — 

 

I’m all for a good image or graphic. A good one can draw attention to pertinent data, make information easier to grasp, and/or add some fun and color. But I saw one the other day that reminded me we should all ask this very important question when combining data with an image: does this enhance the information I’m trying to share?

So here’s the image (you can click on it for a bigger version):

Here are the good things: pleasing to the eyes, easy to read, pop out colors to show the highest number in each data set, a simple font.

Here are the things I’m confused by:

  • What do the numbers mean (it doesn’t look like percentage or numbers of people)?
  • Why are most of the numbers so close to 100?
  • Why is the one image a female for something called “Unique U.S. Audience Composition Index to Social Networks and Blogs,” especially when females only “win” 103 to the males’ 96 … somethings.
  • Why is each piece of information pointing to a spot on the woman? (As a pal on Twitter so eloquently put it “The only thing I learned was that gender is all in your head and education comes from your pants.”)

Now, to be fair, I discovered a more “complete” graph in Nielson’s full report on page four:

So the image of a female makes a little more sense with this title. And sentences were added under each category like “She likely lives in New England” (I personally like this touch). But overall the graphic is still not doing much to enhance the information. And pointing to the woman’s random body parts is still nonsensical to me.

What do you think? Do you think the image adds to the information in any way simply because it’s not just text? What kinds of images do you do with your work?

Erica Gordon is a Marketing Associate at Clear Verve and also works part-time at a Milwaukee area nonprofit. Follow Erica on Twitter:  @erica_g.

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Can social media exist without competition?

Thursday, September 1, 2011 — 

 

I get it. We’re a competitive society. I want to win my fantasy football league (again). I’m working to become a faster runner. I want my idea in a brainstorming session to be the one that sticks. But I also watched that episode of Donahue about how our society is obsessed with competition. And I remember identifying with the kids on the show who were awesome AND interesting, but weren’t exceptional athletes, gifted artists, brilliant mathematicians, or talented musicians. Because I remember thinking, it’s okay not to be the best at something.

In the here and now (because really, what good is it to reminisce about Donahue shows?) I enjoy learning about new ways to form communities online for nonprofits and organizations and people in general. The best way for me to explore that interest is to be active and experiment on multiple social media platforms. And I was thoroughly enjoying myself, especially on Twitter, until I began realizing it was hard not to subconsciously compete and not just interact.

Case in point: “I’ll join Twitter. It will be fun.” “My company will join Twitter. It will be beneficial and a great way to connect with people.” It IS fun. It IS beneficial. But it also quickly becomes all about keeping track of how many followers you have, if you get retweeted, how many people mention you, what level of Klout you have and what topics you are influencing others about.

Since when did EVERYTHING become a competition? I always try my best to offer solutions when I bring up problems but I’m dumbfounded with this competition thing.

Do you feel pressure to compete against coworkers, friends, businesses in social media? Does it drive you to be better? Or make you feel like you’re talking just to talk?

Erica Gordon is a Marketing Associate at Clear Verve and also works part-time at a Milwaukee area nonprofit. Follow Erica on Twitter:  @erica_g.

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How old do you feel now?

Friday, August 26, 2011 — 

 

Beloit College recently released its Mindset List for the class of 2015, this year’s freshman class. The college has released this list each fall since 1998 to provide a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college. It was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation.

I’ll admit, reading the list does make me feel old. I actually found myself reminiscing about the “good old days” for a minute or two. But the main purpose for reading it should be to remind ourselves that change is inevitable and rapid. Need a reminder to keep innovating? Check out this year’s list.

For the class of 2015
• Ferris Bueller could be their father
• Bill Clinton was the President
• Jimmy Carter is a nice older gentleman who shows up on TV to promote disaster relief
• Televisions have never had a dial
• States and Velcro parents have always required bike helmets
• “Yadda, yadda, yadda” has always come in handy to make long stories short
• Video games have always had ratings
• Music has always been available as a download
• Arnold Palmer has always been something to drink
• PC means personal computer, not Politically Correct

And the one that made me a little sad…
• Sears has never sold anything out of a Big Book that could also serve as a doorstop

Don’t get me wrong. I love the convenience of shopping online. But how many of you remember the days when you would spend hours circling everything you wanted in the Sears Christmas Catalog and dreaming about what you might get on Christmas Day?

Although this list was originally intended for educators, as marketers we can use it to remind ourselves that communication is changing rapidly. We need to find ways to keep our fingers on the pulse of what our customers really want. New communication methods have made communication much easier, and it is important to listen carefully and work to understand which messages matter and which ones don’t.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Nonprofit Survey Results: The Challenges of Social Media

Thursday, August 18, 2011 — 

 

Although we are still working on the ebook for our recent survey on social media use among Wisconsin nonprofits, we thought we could share some advance information about what we have learned.

Of our survey participants, 90 percent are using social media to promote their not for profit organization. Although the participating organizations plan to increase their use of social media in the future, they cited many obstacles to social media success. They are:
• Enough resources to keep the sites current
• A lack of expertise in the best ways to use the sites
• Ensuring content on the sites is consistent with the organization’s brand
• Difficulty with driving consumers to the sites

Many for-profit businesses suffer from the same challenges. There is so much online content that a social media presence is certainly not a case of, “If you build it, they will come.” However, there is some good news. The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently released a new study on the online habits of Americans. The study shows that email and search are the most common activities performed online. It also shows that wealthy and educated individuals are more likely to use the internet for search or email on a daily basis. These are the people that most nonprofits are targeting as potential donors. By combining SEO and email, nonprofits can drive people to their social media platforms where hopefully, an active online presence will be waiting for them to see. It takes time to build a community, but by combining various tactics, everything will work more successfully.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve.

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Explanation Overkill

Friday, August 12, 2011 — 

 

When crossing the street in West Allis the other day, I noticed this sign:

Who would have thought that crossing the street was so complicated? My kids understood the basics of walk/don’t walk before they started kindergarten, and they never would have been able to read this sign back then.

Sometimes, the same thing happens with marketing, especially when you are trying to market a service. You can’t show anyone what you are selling, so you explain, and explain, and explain… Recently, I met with someone who called it “feature puking.” It may be a little gross, but it is a good analogy.

So what’s the lesson? Figure out what matters to your audience. Tell them that, and then STOP. Too much information can actually make decisions more difficult. (Even if you are just deciding whether or not to cross the street.)

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve.

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