Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Opportunities in a Challenging Environment
The economy, unemployment and overall consumer and corporate confidence have clearly been damaging to the nonprofit industry. A new study by Giving USA Foundation shows that charitable giving fell last year by the largest percentage in five decades.

While individuals and institutions gave nearly $308 billion in pledges during 2008 – a healthy commitment by any standard – it nonetheless represents a decline of over $6 billion from 2007, or 5.7% on an inflation adjusted basis. While the real decline started in the Fall of 2008, this year isn’t shaping up to be much better. What can a nonprofit do to begin turning this around?

The Importance of Branding
Some nonprofits have understood the importance of branding their organizations, but most give it only “lip service” while continuing to put pressure on their fundraisers to produce even more. Now, an important new study from Cone, LLC and Intangible Business quantifies the leverage that a stronger brand could provide.

The study ranks the top 100 U.S. nonprofit brands among organizations providing social, environmental and animal related services. Historically, while many surveys have analyzed the financial side of nonprofits and many have looked at image and awareness data, this new study puts both sets of information together and presents a Power Brand Rank. Comparing a brand’s “revenue rank” with its “image rank” points to a number of marketing implications:

• A high “revenue rank” coupled with a low “image rank” suggests the potential financial growth if the image rankings were strengthened;
• Similarly, leveraging a strong brand image asset should lead to incremental financial rewards.

The question then becomes, what’s the best approach for a nonprofit to take to build brand awareness and image. (It should be noted that while this study did not include universities, civic or cultural institutions, there is no reason to believe the conclusions regarding the importance of branding would differ for these organizations.)

Nonprofit Anniversary Marketing
The anniversary of your nonprofit’s founding is an ideal opportunity to galvanize your employees, board members, donors, foundations, government and corporate sponsors, and to re-kindle their commitment to the relevance, importance and needs of the organization.

This is a unique opportunity, with the potential for a yearlong marketing program that, done properly, sets the stage for your fundraisers, strengthens your longer term brand image and improves the organization’s ROI.

For-profit organizations, both large and small, have long recognized the importance of company anniversary marketing because it isn’t just the latest advertising, public relations, direct mail, internet or event program. Rather, it is a unique chance for an organization to link the strength of its past to its plans for the future. For nonprofit organizations this story can be especially important among new members, volunteers and donors.

And, importantly, anniversaries do not need to be celebrated in multiples of 25 years. Your 33rd can be as powerful as your 75th.

Planning for an anniversary marketing program should begin well in advance of the anniversary year. As you begin to develop your strategic plans and budgets, you also should audit your resources and perhaps conduct research to determine what your stakeholders really think. This research also can provide a benchmark against which to measure your progress and ROI at the conclusion of your program.

A theme and logo are essential. You should also consider a historical book, or CD, newsletters, direct mail, multiple events and the internet to communicate your story. Advertising and public relations may also play a part. All of these tactics require coordination and integration with your overall strategy, mission and vision statements.

Further, you should consider hiring an outside consulting group. Not only will they bring “fresh eyes” to your situation, but they will have the experience and ability to coordinate all of the facets of your program, something that your staff or volunteers may not have the time or expertise to do.

Today’s marketplace is uncertain, distrustful and, frankly, afraid of the future. When you celebrate your historical success, and position yourself for a vibrant future, you reassure people about your staying power and relevance. Ironically, the current environment couldn’t present a stronger marketing opportunity.

GUEST BLOGGER

Gary Kullberg has served on five nonprofit Executive Boards, two as President and one as Vice Chair. He is the CEO of the Kullberg Consulting Group (KCG), founded in 1994, a strategic alliance of sixty entrepreneurially driven marketing and marketing communications companies whose service, http://www.MarketingMilestone.com, provides both effective strategy and execution to organizations and brands celebrating their milestones. KCG brings together the combined experiences of its members, who have worked with over 585 organizations, profit and nonprofit, in 21 major industry groups.

Author: Gary Kullberg
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Multi-cooker

Image by mark_am_kramer via Flickr

So, you tell me:  Can a person have their Facebook account disabled for promoting and marketing their brands, products and services?

SCENARIO 1.

Just the other day, as the anchor for Social Media Television, I had the distinct pleasure interviewing a guest who described what he did to have his Facebook account disabled (unknowingly).  He’d created a business page, but because of SEC rules, and his profession, he had to take it down.  So, he began engaging his community and “promoting” his products and services on his personal profile.  To his horror, one day, Facebook sent him a nice little note that said:  ”Your account has been disabled”!

SCENARIO 2.

Today, I received an exciting note, that a community member had reached 5,000 “friends” on his personal profile and Facebook said, in other words, “time to get a Fan Page” (i.e. Business Page).  He was shocked at the limitation.   Here’s my reply, and I’m curious what you would add to this:

Dear X,

First, Congratulations on reaching this milestone with the equity of your brand!

Can I respond / weigh in?  Just a few thoughts, which I know you “already know” …

You make sense, but think about it:

If your personal profile has nothing to do with your business or profession, then a Business Page (i.e. Fan Page) is the most appropriate.

What I’ve observed is that we start building a personal brand/and or our services or products, and sometimes, we’re promoting them on the personal profile (and thus a violation of the terms of service) and that really isn’t the purpose of FB personal profile.  It’s intended to be, well, personal.

You can determine what you’re promoting by looking at your profile picture.  If it’s a logo, or image and NOT your personal picture, then, you may be tight-walking the “promotion” violation, and risk having your account disabled by Facebook.

If you aren’t doing anything to build your business or brand, and you reach 5,000 “friends”, then I say, you really need to have a “celebrity” page on the the Business side (you know you have a choice when you create your page to be a local business, product/service,  “celebrity”, or public figure, etc.).

At any rate, the content that you publish on your Fan Page will push through to your wall, so your entire community will have visibility.

Just my two cents, unsolicited, but given out of sincerity.

Have a great evening and congratulations again on your “stardom” success!!

Tiffany Odutoye, Social Brand Equity Coach

SCENARIO 3.

My client was sharing their progress to date and had great engagement on their business page.  However, they shared with me the personal profile, which was:

1) In a business name

Violation:  Your personal page must be a “real” first and last name.  A business entity should have a presence on the Business Pages.

2) Highlighting ONLY a business in the “info box” and promoting their products and services

Violation:  Well, this is walking that tightrope again.  I cannot be dogmatic.  However, here is where people come to learn about “you”, not necessarily your business.  If you want to have your business in the URL section, great, but lets stop promoting what we do, and focus more on “who” we are.

We reviewed the Facebook terms of service, they decided to make some changes.

What about you?  What do you think?  Is this approach too strong? Should Facebook ease up and “allow” personal profiles to be whatever we want?  Should they force you to have a business page?  Should they open the limits to the number of “friends” you can have on your personal profile? Since they’ve reached 400M+ users and would not be able to manage enforcement, should we take a chance and promote, promote, promote?

Pick an area and let’s hear from you!

Many received a notice via email from SMC Columbus with this invitation:

Our time has come social media lovers … And It’s Official! Thanks to Mashable.com, Social Media Day is being held worldwide on Wednesday, June 30, 2010. In Columbus we’ll be celebrating at O’Shaughnessy’s Public House at 7:00 p.m. Come along and bring a friend … while we ring in what we hope to celebrate for years to come!

And…

An intimate group in Columbus Ohio gathered.  All that was needed was the promise of a video shoot, talk of Facebook, a few cold ones, and viola!  The room was full of buzz and chatter.

Some met for the first time, but most we excited to be a part of a global media movement.

Social Media Television was on site to cover the event. Here is a quick recap of the evening.

What is Social Media Day?  Here’s what Mashable.com said about  it:

Thanks to @CherylHarrison, @SMCColumbus and others for organizing the first of many such events!

Sponsors:

The difficulty in embracing public social networking outlets is the current inability to measure the success of your online community. A recent survey from Jupiter Research and Verse Group found that achieving measurable results was the number one goal of marketers in 2009. Which begs the question — If you want to know if your efforts are paying off, what can you do to obtain measurable results?

Public social networking platforms (like Facebook and MySpace) offer a free space to cultivate connections and collect friends. The data is frequently erroneous and the site lacks reporting features. On the plus side it is free and available and comes with a site name that everyone knows.

Private online communities and membership sites offer your members the same robust, entertaining features and ability to connect, while providing your administration with something that we all long for — accountability. Reporting features within private communities deliver a strong level of accountability and allow you to monitor and export data on your members and their activities.

The number of friends (or fans) on your public site is not a viable measure of return on investment. In addition to bogus information/member data, the ease at which someone can become a friend or fan of your site actually becomes a negative for your organization as many individuals will merely succumb to the ease/pressure of pressing a fan button because their friend sent it to them, not because they have any interest in your organization. Becoming a member of a private online community is a much bigger commitment because it is an active approach and one that speaks (silently) to their intention.

The perfect fit for your organization may be a combination of both approaches — having a public membership site that funnels traffic to your private site. It’s often a good tactic to incorporate public social networking sites into your marketing mix. It’s certainly a good idea to fish where the fish are! But be sure to bring them home to your organization’s private community — where you can capture valuable member information and provide measurable value to them in return.

About YourMembership.com Inc.
Founded in 1998, YourMembership.com Inc. develops online member communities and web-based membership software for associations, non-profits, government organizations, corporations, congregations, secondary schools, universities, foundations, fraternal organizations and private social networking sites. Serving hundreds of customers around the world, YourMembership.com creates truly dynamic, secure and connected member communities with all product features, design, hosting, future product upgrades and customer service included for one low fee.

David L. Sieg
Vice President, Strategic Marketing
YourMembership.com Inc.

Author: David L Sieg
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Creditcard Currency Conversion Fee

–Relationships matter more!

I don’t know about you, but the hype over having large communities might be a little over rated.  That is if you look at sheer numbers to determine influence.

Here’s what I mean, if you have recently received a “Facebook Friend” request, then ask yourself:

1) How does this person know me?

2) Why do they want to connect?

3) Do I really care?

4) What will I give back?

5) Have I tossed the ping-pong ball back by visiting them and giving a meaningful “shout-out” or acknowledged their presence?

It’s so easy to accept a request, only later to find out that you’ve been fooled by a spammer! Or worse, that you’ve become a “taker” and not a giver.

That applies to Twitter too!  Really, any community that you commit to joining expects something of you–engagement.  Will you “bring it” when you join?

Here are five tips to being a “giver” and not a taker while social networking:

1) Listen first.  Try get a sense for what your audience likes.  If it doesn’t work for you, swap out a friend or two to improve the quality of your network and relationships.

2) Think about what they need.  Give them both what they want and need.  You’ll only know this if you’ve grown your community in a targeted way.

3) Mix it up a little by making the shift from “marketer” to “problem solver”.  Stop pushing your stuff and pull a little to figure out a solution you can respond with.

4) Stop looking for your angle.  You know what I mean…you’ve got a favor “you” need.  STOP!  Put agendas aside and just “be here now”.

5) If you feel you have nothing of value to say, then be okay with contributing a “ditto” via RT (re-tweet).  Imitation is still the greatest form of flattery. Oh, and saying nothing at all might be the wise course too.

Ultimately, never forget that social networks are just platforms, and that we must humanize the tools.  A case in point, not long ago I noticed that Starbucks had a post on Twitter for a talent opportunity. Notice the human touch after I contributed a response…

Saw this while online

Thought of who in my network would fit.

They provided a human response. Notice the initials.

At the end of the day, people care about, and want to do business with people that the know, like and trust.  So be more than a “friend” or a “follower” taking up space on someones profile – be engaged and watch your influence shoot through the roof!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Growing a new community is hard work and may not change people’s habits (socialmediatoday.com)
• How to build your following on social sites (solutionset.com)
• 10 Ways to Measure Social Media (howtospoter.com)

If you are reading this post, no doubt you are wondering about measurement, metrics and how to track and measure your activity while social networking.  Here is one spin on it that might be compelling.

ROI – Return on Influence

If you’ve not come across the term already, you might be somewhat surprised by the twist in the tail. Here you were expecting ROI to talk about Return on Investment, and what do you get? Return on Influence? What is that anyways? And why should you care?

Good questions. Let’s take them one by one.

What is Return on Influence?

Well, we have already established elsewhere what social media is. Connecting and sharing is at the heart of social media. So, what happens when you connect and share? Look all around you. People all over the web are talking about the latest gizmos and the latest developments. Millions are tuning in to these conversations. It’s what Google is all about. When you Google a term, search for information and take a decision based on that information, you have just put into action what Return on Influence is. Somebody shares their experiences with you and influences you to take a particular action. If you are convinced, you follow their lead.
When you take this into the world of small and big businesses, the reach of this influence is – to put it simply – overwhelming!

I mean, imagine if you were selling a product and your clients in Japan were unhappy with it, and instead of telling you about it, they were discussing your weaknesses all over the internet. Your sales would be squished and you wouldn’t even know what hit you!

That is why it is worth your while to BE the one who influences the thought process. People are talking about your product. You have two choices. A) Allow them to talk and become a victim of that talk (if they’re talking nice, you have an advantage) or B) Take charge of that conversation and become a part of it.

When you do the latter, you begin to influence others in that conversation. It’s what Blendtec did with their ‘Will it Blend’ campaign.

Will it blend?

The campaign kicked off with a video of the founder of the company blending some interesting stuff. The marketing director at Blendtec, George Wright says, “We put them (videos) on willitblend.com. No body knew willitblend.com and they didn’t know our name on YouTube. So we passed it on to all of our employees, customers and friends and told them to pass it on if they liked it. From the day we did that, literally one week later the videos had five million views.” Phew! Imagine 5 million views.

Now THAT is Return on Influence!

When people like you or your product, they watch or listen, they spread the word – and before you know it, you have more publicity than you could get with a $5 million ad campaign! In one smart move, Blendtec grew from a product no one knew about to a recognized brand. This brand has registered a 700% growth in sales and is now the leading maker of blenders, in the domestic and international markets.

That is Return on Influence.

If you notice, Return on Influence does not make you a million dollars directly because your are mobilizing the masses to speak for you, promote and drive traffic for you.  There are lots of tangible ways to track and monitor that activity and you should invest in them, so are FREE and some are paid.  Here are five tools:

So, you cannot really measure ROI in solid financial terms. But, the return is there, and though soft, it can propel you into the top league in your bracket. Return on Influence is very much real though quite intangible.

You know it’s there, you see it influencing your sales but you cannot put a finger on it. That is why, it’s important to start with strategy so you know clearly what your metrics are, then you’ll be able to measure ROI.  This is still very significant for your business development, and why you simply cannot afford to overlook it.

How can ROI help Small businesses?

Return on Influence is recognition of the fact that consumers and producers can influence each other, and together they can influence an entire community of consumers.

ROI does not subscribe to the “conventional” measurement of success through quantifiable numbers. Instead, it relies on personal interaction to get success from influence. For example the 80/20 rules says that you get 80% of your results from 20% of your effort.  The same is true within your social communities.  You may find that the majority of your traffic is generated by a few loyal followers who are major influencers themselves.

Read the rest of this entry »

ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR:

ONN - Ohio and Company

Good morning!

So jazzed that we were privileged to be featured on the Ohio News Network with Eve Mueller and Wade Meyer (Inviting Conversations).

The focus of the segment was to highlight what social networking “newbies” could do to ensure success.  Here are a few tips I’d like to add:

Tips for getting started with Social Networking:

1. Start with the end in mind – strategy has to come first.  Maps to success with social networking should fit into your existing marketing plans.
2. Determine how much time, bandwidth and skill you have and what you’ll have to augment with an expert, staff or a retained partner.
3. Research and commit to being social.
4. Listen, listen, and listen some more – you may have a lot to say, but being active and quiet in social networking can tell you a lot about your target audience and your community.

More tips here in this interview with Eve and Wade…

the book…

So Now What Do I Do?  An Entrepreneurs

Book by Author, Tiffany Odutoye

Guide to Getting to the Next Step with Social Media - get a copy today!

Tiffany, this book is easy to read, informative, and concise.  You give great up front reasons for “why” to do it.  You provide great tools.  I’m surprised you packed so much into such a small book! – Patrick Keegan, Biz360

As far as price is concerned, there is no other low-cost method out there that will deliver a large number of visitors, whom can come back to your website again and again.

Whether you are selling products or services, or just publishing content for ad revenue, the efficiency and benefits of social media marketing is an unmatched method that will make your website profitable over time.

Social News Websites:

The benefits of a social media website vary, but a proven method is creating viral content and promoting it through social media channels. Link Baits, otherwise known as content created for the purpose of getting people to link to it, are a great start. Successful link baits are not hard to accomplish – you just have to know how to do it. Creating high quality content and then getting it listed on social media websites like Digg and StumbleUpon will lead to a number of benefits for any website.

There are two methods to this madness:

• Primary and Secondary Traffic: Primary traffic is the number of visitors who come directly from social media websites. Secondary traffic is the referral traffic that come from websites that link to your content and ultimately send you visitors back to your website.
• High Quality Links: Social News websites, like Digg or Reddit will get you a large number of links – that have the possibility, with high quality editorial content, to bring you traffic and ultimately raise your ranking in search engines.

There is no secret to this. As SEO has taking a bashing over the past few years – many SEO firms and specialist battle back and forth on the importance of keywords, Meta tags, link purchasing -you name it, they have fought over it. In the end though, the secret isn’t that hard to uncover, quality content, sewn together with valuable keywords and building inbound links, are the three components to placing your website in the top of search engine results.

When a website receives a large number of natural, permanent links from trusted domains, search engines begin to trust you. After gaining this trust, you continuously build upon it to either gain ranking or maintain it. And if you begin to optimize your website and begin link baiting – you can easily start ranking for competitive keywords, which in turn, bring you search engine visitors.

Continue this method of marketing and your website will undoubtedly increase its traffic. Many bloggers and Webmasters will see an article on Digg or del.icio.us and trust its usability and then reference through a citation link.

Even new websites that start with little traffic or trusted links – will find social link baiting to their advantage and can quickly establish a reputation and begin to build upon it. But just remember, it’s the quality of the content that ultimately matters. Content is still king and always will be when it comes to online marketing. Optimizing it in a number of ways will quickly gain you the trust needed by search engines to rank highly, and ultimately deliver the traffic you need to your website.

The Naysayers Are Out There

They’re out there. The Naysayers. The ones who adamantly agree that social media marketing is a waste of time and brings in useless traffic, leading to visitors quickly leaving after they clicked upon a website. Bounce rates are inevitable – even to your most loyal customers, they aren’t always going to be interested. But don’t mistake bounce rates for a lack of interest – if your entire website is relevant to the general interest of a social media website, there will always be a handful of users who will begin to track your website for future content.

Don’t forget about the secondary traffic either, which I think is more important in the end. General websites or blogs with the same interest will link to your content because it helps add value for their users and readers alike. Most of the time, this is done naturally on a daily basis.

Primary traffic might come in larger volumes, but secondary traffic build links from other websites and ultimately delivers their traffic to your website. This help build your brand, establish your presence online, ultimately making it more valuable in the end.

Why you must consider Social Media Marketing?

You could ignore the power of social media marketing, who needs it? After all, you could stick with link exchanges, banner purchasing, editorial ads and search advertising. You certainly could, but why would you?

Social media marketing:

• Is natural. Not only do you get natural links back to your website, it is also is exposed to large groups of people in an unpredictable fashion.
• Successfully mastered social communities can be a great source of web traffic that helps boost your ranking and add to your already established search engine results.
• It’s a low-cost/high return business model. If you do it yourself, costs are limited and the only time and expense you have involves hiring freelancers to do it. Ultimately, the benefits exceed the cost – it would take you thousands of dollars to purchase links, which some search engines penalize you for doing now, or are starting to. Social media gives you all of the above FREE!
• Social Media optimization and marketing normally won’t interfere with any methods of getting traffic to your website. This new level of marketing will only add to your already established campaigns – and most of the time, exceed them.

So How Does This Make Me Money?

Directly? It won’t – that is not how this method works. Your site needs to perpetuate itself and build upon its established exposure. The more supporters you have, the faster word spreads about your website. And social media websites deliver more traffic on a daily basis, compared to all other web communities. Because social media websites can be leverage for links and better search engine rakings, they ultimately increase your website’s potential. For example, you will be able to price ads higher or generate revenue from any paid business model.

The Blog Secret

It is as simple as it sounds, an excellent blog will bring you traffic and sales you need to succeed. There is a secret to blog writing and marketing thereafter – it’s very simple. Instead of creating numerous blog posts that ultimately go nowhere, just one excellent blog post, which is then pushed through social media channels and emailed to other bloggers through email pitches.

You can write just one post and get a enormous amount of links and traffic to your website through the use of social media.

Social media marketing is not a secret, but to do it correctly and monetize your brand, and bring in the new traffic you need to succeed – it takes know-how and the willingness to ‘give in.’ Everyday, I speak with someone who has interest in social media marketing, but are just not sure of how it might work for them and figure it may not be worth the investment. And that is the exact reason why people don’t pursue social media marketing, because they are unaware and are not sure to approach it .

Simply put, to ignore this new branding technique of social media marketing, would just be foolish.

By VWI Media

http://www.vwi-media.co.uk

Author: Nicholas Cifuentes
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Cellphone news