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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

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.

Tags: Communication, competition, Klout, Social Media, twitter

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.

Tags: Communication, content mar, content marketing, email marketing, nonprofit, Social Media

Facebook vs. Twitter ?

Friday, July 29, 2011 —

I came across a great infographic yesterday that illustrates the 2010 demographics of Facebook and Twitter. There is a lot of information in these two pie charts. Here is what I found most interesting:

Number of users
• Facebook – 500 million
• Twitter – 108 million
Clearly, Facebook is this winner here. And with the ability for advertisers to target their messages by location, age, gender, and interests, Facebook offers a lot more opportunities for businesses to promote themselves.

Usage patterns
• 41% of Facebook users log in every day
• 27% of Twitter users log in every day
If you are marketing a business, this is an important distinction because you will either need to adjust the frequency of your posts depending on the network or adjust your expectations regarding the timeline of your campaign.

It is also worth noting that only 12% of people who log in update their status on Facebook, while 52% of Twitter users update their status every time they log in. While this statistic can mean a number of things, I think it shows that Facebook users are more consumers of content, while Twitter users are more generators of content. Facebook users may be more likely to be receptive to your messages, provided they are appropriate for the social network setting, while Twitter users may be too busy talking about themselves to care about anyone else. Or not. The statistics are true, the rest is just a hypothesis from me.

Age of users
• Facebook – approximately 60% of users are ages 13 – 34
• Twitter – approximately 60% of users are ages 26 – 44
Twitter users are also more educated. 76% of Twitter users are in college or are college graduates. Only 50% of Facebook users are either in college or are college graduates. This might make you think that if you are targeting educated individuals, you should choose Twitter. Don’t be so hasty! It is important to convert these percentages into a head count. 50% of Facebook users = 250 million users. 76% of Twitter users = 80.5 million.

I hope you will take a minute to look at the infographic. What does it tell you? We’d love to get your insights!

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.

Tags: content marketing, Facebook, marketing, Social Media, twitter

The UNfollow challenge – did you miss me?

Thursday, July 14, 2011 —

As an organization or business, we all want people to like us. That’s a gimme.

And now in the social media world, it’s become the norm to want people to like us and follow us. But what if we start challenging people to UNlike us? Or UNfollow us?

By doing this, we are showing a sense of confidence that we know you really like us. Right now, all people see is “Follow us!” “Like us!” “Join us!” “If you do this for us, we’ll give you this!” So do something different. Posing this UNfollow challenge does make people take extra steps, but it will engage them to think about if they really need you.

Should you expect some people not to come back if they unfollow you? Of course! Should you worry? Of course not!

They way I see it there are five possible reactions to the challenge. People will:

1) Do nothing but respect what you’re doing (and what you do) even more
2) Do nothing because they’re not engaged
3) Accept the challenge and come back to you
4) Accept the challenge and not come back because they decide they don’t really need you
5) Accept the challenge and not come back because they think you’re crazy and tell their friends

Only one of these reactions is not good for you, and even then it’s not that bad. Which one do you think it is?

I’ll wait.

(insert your own waiting music here)

Number two (although I could be guilted into admitting other ones are also not great, depending on your situation). Why is only number two not good? If you don’t have people actively engaged in what you are all about, they’re just a number to you. And that’s not the kind of audience anybody craves. Creating a community with 100 engaged audience members is far better than 2,000 people who couldn’t care less!

What do you think? Does this have the potential to massively backfire? Explode into flames? Or is this something that you would consider trying? I’d love to hear what you think! Or unread what you just read, I challenge you!

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.

Tags: Communication, customer experience, Facebook, marketing, Social Media, twitter

I don’t have time to blog!

Friday, June 17, 2011 —

This is a very busy week at Clear Verve. In the last two weeks, we landed three new clients, and just this week picked up projects from some former clients. While we are most certainly GRATEFUL for the additional work and glad to see our former clients call us when they have needs, we have a lot to do. On top of the increased workload, Susan is on vacation, and we are moving the office to a larger location at the end of next week. I’ve been working at home nearly every night just to keep up. In fact, I’m typing this as I sit in the bleachers during my kids’ swim lessons so I can get it done.

So, why am I taking the time to write this blog? There are a couple reasons. First, blogging is good for our company. Continually adding to our website via our blog is good for SEO and helps keep our Linkedin profiles and our Facebook page up to date. Also, we think it’s important to practice what we preach. Because we focus on working with professional service providers and not for profits, we are always talking to our clients about content marketing and sharing their knowledge. We tell them that blogs, newsletters, and social media are ideal ways to help them showcase their expertise and their personalities. We bug them (in a friendly way of course) to provide us with information we can use to generate content for them or to generate the content themselves. So if we expect them to do it, we should also be doing it. Otherwise, we’d be like the shoemaker’s kid with no shoes.

I hope that when your business gets busy, you can also remember to take time – even if it’s just a few minutes each day – to do something that helps your business grow. Small actions over time add up to great things. Don’t wait – the time to grow your business is NOW.

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.

Tags: Blog, branding, Clear Verve, Communication, Facebook, marketing, persistence in business, Social Media

Most Liked Pages on Facebook

Thursday, May 19, 2011 —

The 25 most liked pages on Facebook surprised me when I stumbled upon it. While I currently lead a semi-active Facebook life, I joined back in the “olden days” where there was no news feed and you typed information in the About Me section with total freedom. (Did I also mention you had to walk uphill both ways before logging into Facebook?)

I was surprised when I looked at the longer Top Pages leaderboard list and saw mostly celebrities and music stars. A few other notable details:

Texax Hold’em Poker eclipses everything else by more than two million likes. It’s both an online and real-life game so it would potentially have more “likes” than running or swimming because you can use Facebook to BOTH play the game and connect with others.
Facebook is number two on the list. Isn’t being on Facebook enough to show that you like the company?
The only movie (series) in the top 40 is Toy Story.
The only food in the top 40 is Oreo. My guess is they must have done some kind of promotion to get this high because it doesn’t look like they do too many deals from their wall. But I could be wrong.

Two companies that I thought would be on the list were Coca-Cola and Starbucks. These two still make sense to me because they do a pretty good job keeping up with technology, social media and interacting with customers.

The only one I like in the top 25 is Disney, and I like them because they post random screenshots with quotes. I’m not in anyway obsessed with Disney movies, but it’s fun to have something different amongst friend updates and nonprofit organization updates (which make up most of what I see in my news feed).

Which of the top 25 do you “Like” and why? Or why not?

Erica Gordon is a Marketing Associate at Clear Verve and also works part-time at a Milwaukee area nonprofit. She recently received her Communication MA from Marquette University. Follow Erica on Twitter: @erica_g.

Tags: Communication, Facebook, marketing, Social Media

Keeping up with the times

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 —

The other day I was working on a document and trying to save something when this box popped up:

Did you catch the word floppy? Because I laughed so hard when I saw this that I didn’t even care that Word lost data.

But it also got me thinking. Looking like you are up-to-date with technology and marketing trends means you need to have all the little things covered. I tend to think that Microsoft is keeping up with what they need to in order to stay competitive. So it was surprising to me that “floppy” was left in the mix, although I have to confess that this box did appear from 2003 Microsoft Word and not the most recent edition.

I only laughed at this blooper because, in my experience, Microsoft has been trustworthy and the mention of floppy did not seem to impact anything I was working on. There was at no point when the only option was to insert a floppy. So Microsoft will survive. But what if this was a detail that was overlooked by a company that had changed all its branding and missed a word on an important part of communication? Or if it was a company that switched to Twitter for most customer service continues to direct customers to an email that somebody doesn’t check often?

I hope this post serves as a friendly reminder to stay on top of communications and to remember the details!

Tags: branding, Communication, marketing, media relations, Public Relations, Social Media

The Twitter Triangle

Thursday, March 31, 2011 —

It’s just like the Bermuda Triangle, and possibly worse. The path to the Twitter Triangle starts out seemingly innocent:

Oh I know. I’ll go take a quick peek on Twitter and get a few updates. That will help me re-focus on the project I’m working on.

Twenty minutes later…

Crap, I’ve been sucked in.

Sucked in usually means doing one or all of the following:

Clicking on one story and then reading two or five.
Following an interesting tweet by someone you don’t know and checking out that person’s recent tweets. And then maybe another.
Vowing to look at ten-ish tweets and then seeing one more beneath those tweets that interests you. And then one more.
Finding it hard to stop clicking on the inviting “X New Tweets” box
Thinking that you’ll just scroll all the way down the page once before remembering (or pretending to remember) that TWITTER NEVER STOPS SCROLLING.

Twitter makes it hard to stop and easy to keep clicking and scrolling. It gives you everything you want. It’s like those State Farm commercials where you can just say what you want and it magically appears. The only difference is that Twitter doesn’t even make you say anything.

Now, the time you spend in the Twitter Triangle isn’t necessarily WASTED time. But it’s time you didn’t plan on spending doing…that. That. (My definition of “that” is professional development and staying up-to-date on issues that have to do with what you do, and fun.)

Is the solution to just not go on Twitter until you have large chunks of free time? Well that doesn’t seem to make sense because Twitter is there as a feed. If you don’t check it for a whole day, you’re really not using it for what it’s there for.

So then how do you limit yourself to a balanced amount of time on Twitter a day? I try to keep my Twitter time constant but brief during the day and use the starring option as more of a bookmark system. If I know I want to read it later, I favorite the funnier tweets and then spend some time on those later. How do you keep yourself from slipping into the Twitter Triangle (or maybe the Facebook Fog)?

Tags: Social Media, twitter

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