Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, oh my! How to prioritize?
We are one month in on our Idealware Facebook experiment. I know I shouldn't succumb to the Ashton Kutcher complex, but I can't help checking the number of fans multiple times a day (which isn't great for my office productivity). We are up to 247 fans. After an initial push at the beginning (as you might recall from my last post about the launch, we got 100 fans in just over 24 hours), for the past month fans have been trickling in. Just this week we "featured" the page in our eNews, and hada quick jump from 218 to 247.
I posed the question to the fans yesterday (by writing on the wall), "Why did you decide to become a fan of Idealware?". I got two answers: one from a personal friend saying he is a fan because Idealware hires great employees (thanks, Bob), and another saying that she became a fan to get additional information to pass along to her own audience.
We asked a similar question in a survey a couple of weeks ago, "In general, How do you decide to be a fan of a page on Facebook?" Most of the answers fell into the same two categories as above, either they personally know the person inviting them or the organization, or, they have high expectations as to the quality of information and resources that would be posted. Someone also wrote for their response, "A better question would be, how do I decide to unfan a page?" (Their answer: "poor signal/noise, high volume").
Survey participants were eligible to win free Idealware seminar (either live or an on-demand recording), and so I want to say congratulations, and thank you, to Bianca Taulman from the University of TX at Austin for winning!
One of the challenges I have been having is trying to balance listen, responding to people, and creating content through our three social media channels (this blog, Facebook, and Twitter) with the other aspects of my job that seem (to me) to be more pressing and a higher priority. I know I am not alone in this. It may boil down to a question that was asked at a recent Social Media Breakfast I was presenting at.
The question goes something like this: My organization has limited resources, yet we know our audience is using multiple social media channels. How do we choose which tool to use?
The organization knows they shouldn't go from zero to multiple channels all at once, especially with the resource constraints and lack of experience. While the standard answer is to consider your audience and your goals and go from there, what does that actually mean? If your audience is using multiple channels (as more and more are), and multiple channels would help you reach our goal...the answer isn't actually so easy.
Of course, that standard answer is what I gave, but I can't help feeling like I took the easy way out.
How did you choose which channels to jump into? Did you go from not having a social media presence to having Twitter, Facebook, and a YouTube channel? Or, did you start with one channel and gradually include more? Please leave thoughts in the comments...
I posed the question to the fans yesterday (by writing on the wall), "Why did you decide to become a fan of Idealware?". I got two answers: one from a personal friend saying he is a fan because Idealware hires great employees (thanks, Bob), and another saying that she became a fan to get additional information to pass along to her own audience.
We asked a similar question in a survey a couple of weeks ago, "In general, How do you decide to be a fan of a page on Facebook?" Most of the answers fell into the same two categories as above, either they personally know the person inviting them or the organization, or, they have high expectations as to the quality of information and resources that would be posted. Someone also wrote for their response, "A better question would be, how do I decide to unfan a page?" (Their answer: "poor signal/noise, high volume").
Survey participants were eligible to win free Idealware seminar (either live or an on-demand recording), and so I want to say congratulations, and thank you, to Bianca Taulman from the University of TX at Austin for winning!
One of the challenges I have been having is trying to balance listen, responding to people, and creating content through our three social media channels (this blog, Facebook, and Twitter) with the other aspects of my job that seem (to me) to be more pressing and a higher priority. I know I am not alone in this. It may boil down to a question that was asked at a recent Social Media Breakfast I was presenting at.
The question goes something like this: My organization has limited resources, yet we know our audience is using multiple social media channels. How do we choose which tool to use?
The organization knows they shouldn't go from zero to multiple channels all at once, especially with the resource constraints and lack of experience. While the standard answer is to consider your audience and your goals and go from there, what does that actually mean? If your audience is using multiple channels (as more and more are), and multiple channels would help you reach our goal...the answer isn't actually so easy.
Of course, that standard answer is what I gave, but I can't help feeling like I took the easy way out.
How did you choose which channels to jump into? Did you go from not having a social media presence to having Twitter, Facebook, and a YouTube channel? Or, did you start with one channel and gradually include more? Please leave thoughts in the comments...
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9 Comments:
Seems to me that it depends on your product. If you were an aspiring musical artist, for example, YouTube should be your first stop - it's the best way to let your audience directly experience what you have to offer. If you're a new coffee shop, it might make sense to go with Facebook - because what you want to do is build a loyal community of repeat customers, and give them a space online to recreate the community atmosphere they appreciate in your physical space. I'm not sure there is a product for which Twitter would be a good first salvo, because Twitter seems to be better suited to building on momentum that already exists. It also seems to be the one for which more expertise is needed up front, both in terms of writing micro-content and using appropriate etiquette (e.g., when to use the "@" and when to use "RT").
With Citizen Schools, we started on Facebook since we knew that a large percentage of our staff was already there, then went to Facebook because it let our fans experience what we're doing for kids more directly. Twitter has been our third channel, and has mostly been successful because of the foundation we built elsewhere.
Thanks for sharing Dan. I completely agree that it depends on product (and seems here you are using product as a building block for goal?). Just to clarify, you say that Facebook was your 1st channel (to reach staff) and also your second channel (to reach extended audience) is that correct?
Sorry Kaitlin, that was a typo. I meant that we used Facebook first, then YouTube - so that supporters and other interested folks could see our kids showing off what they'd learned.
Here at Aspiration, we're also just kind of stepping into the Social Media world with our Twitter and Facebook. What we've been trying (and finding useful) is a "Publishing Matrix" with all of our communications channels in a grid so that we can have an organizational process in place for when to use each channel and for what.
For instance, for a new publication, on the grid we map out if we announce it on our Twitter account, Facebook, eNewsletter, etc. I think it sort of forces the org (or at least the comm. arm of the org) to sit down and think about communications (announcements, audiences, forms of communications) ahead of time because so often with social media it's more of a haphazard task.
A Publishing Matrix takes all of these disparate communications channels and pulls them together. I guess this is less a prioritization and more of a synchronization and organization.
Matt, thank you for sharing. I like the idea of a communications matrix, especially for a launch or a specific campaign. It is interesting though since social media channels are used for ongoing communications, and not just launches or campaigns, and it seems to appear much more informal (even if it takes just as much work on the back-end). I wonder if it is necessary to plan out all of the less-formal, daily communications?
Right, I think that a majority of the time, it's silly for an organization to plan out the content of daily social media messaging any significant time in the future. However, what I was trying to get across was that having a plan in place for what kind of content to push through the different channels gives an organization a structure in which to work in an otherwise very unstructured communication form.
So for example, we don't plan out the content of our tweets ahead of time, but if something comes up at our organization, I can look at the publishing matrix to be reminded on what communications channels (and their corresponding audiences) to alert. Whether that be twitter, linkedin, facebook, a blog post or whatever. Because each of these different channels have a different audience we've found it useful to map what kind of content we push through each.
So we use a publishing matrix as kind of a guideline for our communications practices rather than a calendaring out of individual tweets or facebook content. Also, keep in mind that these guidelines aren't rigid at all. So that when you do read that interesting article or want to respond to something online you don't have to consult anything. You just do it. But for organizational content that we want to push out to multiple channels we have a process in place to cover all the communication channels that our organization has.
Hopefully that makes more sense. I don't want you think we're over here with a big Twitter flowchart newly crafted each day. :D
Thanks for clarifying, Matt, that makes a lot of sense!
I find that a lot of non profit actually don't know what their online communication goals are. And I think that's where you need to start. Too often the answers are too vague or too general. "Fighting Malaria" for example is not your online comms goal. That might be your organization's goal. Your online comms goal might be "raise money online for bednets". i think it's from there that you have to make a decision about which online platforms to use.
However, I would always advice to create a Facebook page. Even if it's only to secure the URL.
been trying all on the internet.Myspace,facebook, twitter, linked in,Plaxo,Mylife, Hi5,and many more and still getting no attention-we are a nonprofit for the better of society and seems something is wrong- do people really take the time to read- answer NO- they are only interested in posting their lives moments in a hurry- viola !
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