Get Real! Sustaining Social Media Through Smart Planning

The secret to social media success? Well, there’s no single secret, but in my experience, being realistic about the commitment it takes to do social media right is extraordinarily important to sustaining this aspect of your marketing and communications for the long term.

I often approach strategies and tactics in three stages: ramp-up, core activities and maintenance. This basic structure applies whether you’re listening and monitoring, blogging, social networking, or video sharing. “Build it and they will come” seems to work best in corn fields in Iowa.

Ramp-up

Establishing your organization’s presence on the most appropriate outlets takes time. Who are you most interested in connecting with? How do you build that network. Inviting people to friend/follow/subscribe to a blank page isn’t terribly compelling. So adding some initial content, giving new members of your network an idea of what you’re about and what kinds of stuff to expect from you is important.

Core Activities

Regardless of the channel or the tool, you’ll find once your presence is ramped up that each has a set of core activities that require your attention on a (very) regular basis. It’s important to gauge what that looks like for your organization and to build the time it takes to participate into your strategic social media planning.

For example, I recommend a minimum of 6 – 10 tweets a week to create a baseline level of content. I recognize that seems prescriptive and it’s certainly not mandatory, but it can give an organization a sense of the commitment. Then, of course, you add onto that number the replies and retweets – the actual conversations.

Maintenance

Beyond the day-to-day, each tool or channel has maintenance activities – those activities that help you to build your presence and reach out to expand your network or connect with emerging influencers. This might mean seeking new friends/followers, promoting your social media presence off line, adding new subscriptions to your feedreader.

This three part approach is simply one slice of the social media strategy pie, but may give you a start for thinking about how to approach a given tool.

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We’re Serious ‘Bout Bizness

Amy & I recently had new photos taken by the talented Jason Miller (also Amy’s husband) for our soon-to-be-launched website. We just want you to know we’re serious… serious ’bout bizness.

I also had a hard time figuring out what to do with my hands, a la Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights.

Okay, so maybe not so serious, but we have a freakin’ good time.

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Video Can Illustrate, Simplify

Fighting wildland fires is a complicated business. Government agencies, private contract companies, elected officials, communities on the urban-rural interface… and the list goes on. Verve works with the National Wildfire Suppression Association regularly to help this association tell its story to all these audiences. This year, the strategic plan included producing a video to help NWSA members and partners help tell its story. We invite your feedback.

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Want to Intern at Verve? Here’s the Scoop!

Verve is looking for a summer intern to work with us. We’re a (very) small agency with a handful of local and regional clients. Interns will work primarily with me (Kelli) on public relations, marketing communications and social media projects.

What I look for:

  • Self-driven: this is a must. I’m not often in an office and need an intern to be able to drive the bus on a project, to ask for help when needed and be able to work solo most of the time.
  • Flexible: Every day is different and you need to be able to respond to day-to-day demands of agency life.
  • Great Writer: Whether it’s press releases, blog posts, twitter updates or video scripts, you need to be able to write clearly and effectively
  • Tech-Savvy: I do a lot of social media and need you to understand the basics of Wordpress, Twitter and Facebook Pages. You don’t need to be a coder, but should be able to find your way around.

Interns typically work 10 – 15 hours a week on pro bono and nonprofit projects and will earn a stipend (amount TBD). Eugene-area preferred, but will consider others. I’m wary about a virtual intern, but could be convinced.

Interested? Email me (kelli@vervenorthwest.com) a cover letter and resume. Be sure to include links to your social sites (Twitter, your blog, etc.). I’ll accept resumes through May 14, 2010.

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Social Media for Nonprofit Development Pros

Had a great time chatting with the folks at the Emerald Valley Development Professionals group. Below is my presentation (via Prezi)

EVDP Presentation on Prezi

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Perception is Reality

The first week of March I had the pleasure of presenting at the National Wildfire Suppression Association at its annual conference in Reno, Nevada.

My topic was reputation management and I looked at it by asking the attendees thinking to think about reputation as the sum of the perception’s of individual members of your audience.

Here are the slides. Of course, they may not make total sense out of context. Please leave me a comment or send me an email if I can answer a question for you.

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Building Blocks for Success: Albany Young Professionals Kick-Off

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege to help kick off the Albany (Oregon) Young Professionals Network. I was asked to speak about “building blocks for success.” This created a moment for me to step back and think about those building blocks that have contributed to my success. The journey is by no means over, but these things have certainly been an important part of the equation for me. Check out the presentation below.

Building Blocks for Success on Prezi

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Local Food Connection 2010: Presentation & Resources

Thanks to Local Food Connection 2010 for the invitation to speak! Below you’ll find the presentation & some of the links and resources I recommend.

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- resources

http://eatwellguide.org/i.php?pd=CultivatingTheWeb

http://business.twitter.com/twitter101

http://delicious.com/kellimatthews

- books

Groundswell by Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff

Secrets of Social Media Marketing by Paul Gillin

The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

Tactical Transparency by Shel Holtz & John C. Havens

- referenced

Eat the View: http://www.eattheview.org/

For Young Farmers Wiki: http://foryoungfarmers.wikispaces.com/

Grow Food: http://www.growfood.org/

Farm Foody: http://farmfoody.org/

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Five Ways to Support Your Favorite Fan Page

facebook-icone-7553-96Facebook fan pages. An amazing tool for connecting your audiences online and having conversations. Yay for conversations! However, growing your fan base organically when you’re a small nonprofit or a local business can be hard to do.

To begin, have a fan page, not a group page. Facebook created fan pages long after group pages were available. You might consider having both and moving people over to a fan page (kind of a slow process, but doable!). Fan pages get better real estate on Facebook. They show up on the live news feed of your fans & show up higher in searches. Fan page suggestions are also clearer.

If you want to support your favorite fan page, here are my five tips. Feel free to share them with your fans to help them help you!

  1. “Like” or comment on status updates. When a fan responds to a status update, that update shows up on the live feed of their friends.
  2. Fans can suggest that their friends join the fan page, too. There are two ways to do this. The first is to “suggest to friends.” You’ll find the link just below the logo/photo on each fan page. The other way is to find the “+ share” button in the bottom left corner.

    Just under the logo/photo on every page, you can "suggest to friends."

  3. Leave a comment on the “wall” of the fan page. When you do, that comment shows up in your friends’ live news feed.
  4. Add a fan photo. You can add it to the “wall” or (in most cases) to the photo album area. People love to look at photos! and a fan photo is a great way to show your involvement with an organization or business.
  5. Include reference to the page in a status update. When you use an @ sign just before the name, it creates a link in your update to that page.
    By typing @OregonFamily, the name of the fan page shows up as a link in the status update.
  6. BONUS #6 (UPDATE): You can “share” any update from your favorite fan page and it’ll post on your wall. Try it! Next to “like” and “comment” is a link for “share.” Add a comment and post away!

What other tips do you have? I’d love to hear from you.

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Why I Don’t Link My Social Media Profiles

[Cross Posted at PRos in Training]

iStock_000010959456XSmallIt seems like a good idea. When you update Twitter, why not update Facebook automatically… and while you’re at it, how about LinkedIn?

To me, each of these tools serves a different purpose and therefore needs different content. Certainly there is overlap in many instances, but it’s important to think about how each fits into your overall personal social media use – or how, as an organization, each helps you reach your objectives.

I know that the social media time suck is a big deal and we’re all looking for ways to make the most our time in front the screen – but if you’re going to “do” social media, do it right. And be prepared for how much time it takes.

Twitter: Short updates, more “real-time,” drive traffic to Web or blog, personal appeal. Tweets often don’t make sense out of context and when you add hashtags, RT’s and @’s it can be confusing, particularly for those on Facebook who aren’t familiar with how Twitter works. And yes, there are still plenty of people for whom that’s true.

Facebook Fan Page: More room to wiggle (no character limit), ability to add links with thumbnails for visual appeal. If you update from Facebook, the syncing to Twitter is technically easy, but can look awkward when it goes over the character limit. When Facebook-to-Twitter updates cut off, the result can be just more noise in the Twitter stream. Example:

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LinkedIn: Suit & tie network, business-oriented. I see too many status updates that not only have nothing to do with your business-self, but could be less than helpful if a potential employer, investor or business partner happened to visit your profile at just that moment.

That’s not to say that you can’t use the same subject and update each platform appropriately. I do that all the time. I just don’t often update simultaneously. Maybe it’s a control thing. But I want to know that each group of fans/friends/followers is getting the best content for them, at the right “pace” and the most relevant.

When it makes sense for overlap, I prefer to send updates from Twitter. By using “Selective Twitter” on Facebook (where you add #fb to do simultaneous updates) and adding Twitter to your LinkedIn profile (use #in for simultaneous updates), you can be smart about your updates.

My personal rules of thumb are pretty basic. I use my personal Facebook page largely for personal use, so I only sync my Twitter and personal Facebook when I tweet things that are (potentially) interesting for friends & family. But what if you’re helping to manage fan pages and Twitter accounts?

Twitter –> Facebook Fan Page: Updates that translate easily to a Facebook audience. That means knowing what the people connected to the company on each platform want and expect. And, without exception, the expectations are different. For one company in particular, Facebook fans are only interested in updates from the company and I get very little interaction around other information. Twitter friends, on the other hand, like a variety of information and often retweet or reply to non-company-related tweets. When I sync the two, it’s only when the two groups’ interests overlap.

Twitter –> LinkedIn: Updates that are related to my business and add something to my virtual resume. These updates also need to be more “timeless.” That is, I don’t update LinkedIn as often as the other networks, so the updates should add value and not get stale too quickly.

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I know full well that people will disagree with me and have a different approach to this conundrum. I’d love to hear what you think!

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