First up - as a blogger, I'm often amazed at how little people comment on my blog. Last week, I found a sure-fire way to get people to comment - write a provocative headline.
Is social media is a fad? Don't count it out. Brenda D makes an excellent point that, as always, you should choose a message delivery method that appeals to your audience. Social media is just one more tool in your toolbox.
On the subject of comments - I found this interesting post on why people don't comment on blogs.
Gerry McGovern recently wrote a very funny post about how to write a great web link. One would think that this is a post about writing - but it's actually a post about links that do what the user expects. Not surprisingly, (whack the side of your head here) is the expectation of a visitor that a using customer service or contact link will actually result in a contact.
McGovern writes that in the case of one Web site, 50% of all contact requests went unanswered. He continues with some suggested new contact links:
"If your organization is unwilling to get back to people who contact you, here are some alternative ways you could name your link:
Contact Us (only joking)
Contact us if you can
Just try and contact us
Don’t contact us; we’ll contact you"
Do you need to rewrite your contact links?
And finally, Jeanette Warnert has passed along a link to an eXtension presentation on Search Engine Optimization.
If you've ever wondered the difference between a visit and a hit, how spiders and bots work, if you need to worry about metatags and keywords, or want to improve your site's ranking in search results, this is a presentation worth watching.Earlier this week I had lunch with a colleague who is in marketing for a publisher in the East Bay. As we traded war stories and marketing strategies, my friend asked me - "Are you guys doing anything with social networking?" I had to admit, I have no Tweed cred.
On the heels of this admission, I came across this latest 5 minute online video on the changing face of how people use the Internet.
Setting aside the cool soundtrack and the flashy graphics, what are the implications here?
The evidence is overwhelming that social media is a tsunami of change for how people interact socially. Even President Yudoff tweets. But what are the implications for organizations like ANR?
- We should be concerned about what bloggers are saying about us. (Do we know what bloggers are saying about us?)
- Social media can be a powerful tool for organizations like 4-H and Master Gardeners that rely on volunteers and where there is a high level of social involvement.
- Units that play a role in disaster response (like fires and oil spills) or have breaking news can benefit from tools like Twitter.
- Organizations that post information frequently, or have changing information can benefit from RSS feeds.
- Tools like Twitter and Facebook can put a more human face on large organizations among certain demographic groups.
Social Media Marketer is one of the fastest growing job titles. But is the use of social media as a marketing tool effective?
Once again, Jakob Nielsen has some answers with a study about the effectiveness of distributing content through social media and feeds.
It's an interesting study, and it points to the key issue with using social media for marketing - "business messages that appear in a context that is permeated by social messages."
Top annoyance? Too-frequent postings -- marketing messages crowding out messages from your "real" friends.
RSS feeds were viewed as more trustworthy than social messages.
The study was conducted in two rounds, three years apart, so they were able to track changes in use over that time period - and the findings are surprising.
The summary as well as a link to the full report can be found at Nielsen's Alertbox site.
A couple of articles of note I thought I'd pass along:
First, Gerry McGovern has an interesting post this week about the relevancy of page views. While I don't think any of our folks are engaged in this kind of metric abuse, it's a useful caution about reading too much into Web traffic statistics.
And there's an interesting article in today's New York Times about the hottest new job among the Twitterati (their word): social media specialists also known as professional Twitterers (My word. Is that a word?) to attract and engage younger customers. Perhaps what's more interesting that this article is in the Style section, rather than the Business or Technology section.
- Recommended Links
- Nonprofit Marketing: Getting Attention
- Gerry McGovern - New Thinking
- ANR Blogs