We live in a world where anyone can hijack a brand and put it on the Internet with their own views, positive or negative (image by Brent Nelson). Brand control no longer exists, in large part because of widespread fragmentation of traditional and citizen-created media. The resulting brand distortion creates a situation where communicators attempt to paint the abstract.
The abstract takes pieces and puts them together to create a larger picture. Sometimes the pieces are clear, other times they are not. In the case of fragmented branding, some pieces are issued by corporate, others are the expressions of stakeholders, positive and negative.
There’s no greater example than the current Pepsi Refresh campaign. A brief recap of the initial Buzz Bin post: Pepsi has opted out of the Super Bowl in favor of a $20+ million integrated campaign that features crowdsourced charitable giving, a contest form of corporate social responsibility.
Ironically, given the quality of this year’s ads, this may have been an incredibly brilliant coup. Both Richard Laermer and I dubbed the campaign an instant success on our podcast, simply because of the many conversations it has created. See Richard’s breakdown above in this video.
And why should they? In spite of cause-based and marketing critiques, to the common American this is a huge investment in society and a big statement. The abstract brand picture, even with the smudges, is a pretty strong one for Pepsi. In fact, without the criticism one could argue that the conversation would be less believable and loud. Brand fragmentation in the form of generosity and community contribution works.
It should be noted that Pepsi did not just launch a social media campaign. The Super Bowl ads are missing, but the company has not left the abstract painting strictly in the hands of folk artists. There’s been serious PR as evidenced by stories like the CNN piece appearing in every major media outlet, as well as substantial advertising to notify citizens of Pepsi’s Refresh America attempts.
Welcome to the fragmented brand marketing of the 21st century: A combination of mass campaigns featuring traditional advertising and PR mixed with corporate social responsibility efforts as well as authentic social media that enables both good and bad conversations. There’s no call to action beyond doing good, because Pepsi simply wants to refresh its brand. And in this case, it’s a win. I guarantee you that people — as in the people who walk into Safeway with a grocery list — will think about Pepsi again, and in a new light. Fragmented branding measures the composite view — not the individual wins or Monday morning quarterback complaints — to determine success.
Three Additional Musings for Those About to Experiment
1) Pepsi is relatively early in the crowdsourced social philanthropy game, but not the first. What was notable in this project was the size of the purse, as well as the opt out of the Super Bowl. Copy cat marketing efforts are sure to arise, and less successfully so. Less money + me, too copycat = a yawn.
2) Corporate social philanthropy needs to be authentic to the core of the company. Customer-centric efforts with crowdsourcing efforts are cool, but ultimately represent a novelty especially for niche brands that are not serving mass markets. They will be better served building programs around the corporate culture or strategy. For example, if one is a software company, one might focus on digital freedom, transparency, developing programming jobs in the U.S., as well as technical education in high schools and universities.
3) Contest fatigue is setting in. And criticism of cause-based contests is also on the rise. Make sure this is the right tactic as opposed to engaging your community in a different, more sustainable way.
Ten days. In today’s social media fueled world, a crisis can begin – and even end – in hours, if not minutes. Ten days. That’s how long it took Toyota to announce a fix to the rapid acceleration (faulty gas pedal) problem that prompted a recall of 4.2 million cars worldwide and 2.3 million in the United States, including some of Toyota’s best-selling models, such as the Camry and Corolla. To make matters worse, millions more had been recalled earlier because of floor mats that could catch the gas pedal causing a similar sudden acceleration issue as the current recall.
Ten days. Even 10 years ago, that would be considered an awfully long time to leave Japan’s number one brand name and one of the most powerful brands in the world in limbo.
In a related event, AutoBlog UK reports that PSA Peugeot Citroen has recalled nearly 100,000 Peugeot 107s and Citroen C1s built between 2005 and August 2009 at the facility it shares with Toyota in the Czech Republic for the same faulty accelerator problem. The cars were built alongside the Aygo, one of eight Toyota models that make up the Japanese manufacturer’s 1.8m vehicle recall in Europe.
How long does it take to lose $20 billion in market value (a one-week stock price decline of 16 percent), to irrevocably harm a brand that for years has embodied the Japanese auto industry’s hallmark of quality and reliability? Less than 10 days. Far less than the 10 days that have indelibly sullied the once omnipotent Toyota brand.
(For the record, I have owned many cars in my lifetime, including two Toyota’s – a 1999 Avalon that we drove for, oddly enough, 10 years, and a late model RAV4, not part of the recall, that my college-age daughter currently drives.)
First the good news – business loves social media. A January 3 update to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research annual survey on the adoption and practice of social media by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., found that more businesses are experimenting and engaging with social media. Among the survey respondents, 91 percent of companies report they incorporated at least one social media service or tool in 2009. Literacy and awareness was also on the rise with roughly 75 percent stating that they were now “very familiar” with social networking. Conversely, there was an impressive drop in Inc 500 companies that did not use social media at all, which plunged from 43 percent in 2007 to 9 percent in 2009.
Now, here’s the bad news. Control is still a major issue, especially at larger companies. According to a nationwide survey conducted by Robert Half Technology, 54 percent of 1,400 companies surveyed completely restrict employees from visiting social networking sites. Another 19 percent restrict use for business purposes only.
Businesses are increasingly using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for marketing purposes, but those same companies don’t want employees logging on during work hours.
The Robert Half spokesperson said employers find social networking a waste of time. “It takes away from primary responsibility. When socializing on sites such as Facebook, we lose track of time.”
A secondary concern companies mentioned is the potential for employees leaking confidential information or sharing thoughts that may reflect badly on the company. The spokesperson said that many of these companies are still trying to set boundaries.
So while business increasing embraces the desire to “push out” info using social media, they still have not gotten over the fact that they have engage communities by trusting people to have conversations with customers, suppliers and their many other stakeholders.
I’d love to see a survey of how many of the 91 percent of companies using social media are failing miserably because they still just don’t get the fact that every employee is an ambassador, whether at the supermarket, a cocktail party, the kids soccer match or when active on a social media site. They trust their salesmen to represent the company unsupervised, but can’t trust their employees to use social media responsibly. Seems like there’s still a lot of growing up to be done in 2010.
After repeatedly hearing how executive buy-in is critical to social media success, I decided to sit down with April Harned, the Director of Communications at Progress DataDirect to see what was her magic formula. My podcast with April will tell you how a B2B company embraced social media and started reaping the results of a successful blog, Data Connections. Yes, the podcast is a little long but trust me if you are still on the fence with corporate blogging, you want to take 10 minutes to either listen or read the transcribed version below.
Priya Ramesh: Thank you April for joining us today. We’re very excited to speak to you about how Progress DataDirect has embraced social media and share your experience in making social media a part of your overall PR process. Could you please give us a brief intro to yourself and Progress DataDirect?
April Harned: Sure. I’m April Harned, the director of communications for Progress DataDirect, formally known as DataDirect Technologies. We are the world’s leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration. Some say that we’re the industry standard for standards based data access. Progress DataDirect is now the data infrastructure division of Progress Software, which is a leading provider of software to enable enterprises to be operationally receptive.
Priya Ramesh:Excellent! April, do you want to tell us what was the defining moment when you said, “Okay, I think it’s time for us to start leveraging the power of social media.” And walk us through your decision making process in implementing social media at Progress DataDirect?
April Harned: Well having been a ten year veteran of the PR agency world and keeping up on latest trends impacting our industry, I noticed that more and more people were embracing social media tools and tactics. I knew that was the future of a successful PR program. So we made initial efforts to research third party firms that could help us educate our internal audiences and decision makers on the importance of social media and help us create a foundation to get started, and then build upon.
Priya Ramesh: Could you tell us more about what were some of the initial steps you took in implementing a social media program? Where you focused on a blog as a first step, creating a thought leadership position using a blog, and then eventually taking your brand to Facebook and Twitter. Tell us how you went about selecting what media to choose.
April Harned: Well the problem we had faced initially was that several internal thought leaders had maintained their own blogs separately. So we knew we wanted to bring those blogs together under one corporate umbrella where we could more easily manage traffic, as well as topics that were being addressed, etc. So that was initiative number one. Secondly, we knew that we also needed to embrace other tools that were becoming very popular by not only our customer and prospects, but the software community at large. By that we mean, not only blogging but the growing presence of Facebook at the time and the importance of being on LinkedIn, and at the time, the new phenomenon was Twitter that more and more people seem to be embracing.
The blog was definitely our first concern; its not only bringing all of those under one umbrella, but then to encourage other internal resources and thought leaders to be more active within the blogosphere and to demonstrate the value that the blog would bring to our marketing and sales efforts.
Priya Ramesh: That’s great. We’ve seen from an agency perspective, that’s pretty much the first step that a lot of the B2B companies take, start off with a corporate blog and start aggregating industry leading topics and eventually take that content to Facebook and Twitter. So I think you guys were very smart to start off with Data Connections and see such increased traffic through your blog to your main corporate Website. Well done there.
April, one of the things that keeps repeating when we talk to communication professionals, people like you, is the fact that there is this huge roadblock when you have to get your executives and top management to say, “Yes, let’s do social media.” Because with social media comes that loosing some control over messaging, and loosing a little control over your brand, and opening that door to your community online and having a conversation, which is two way. Did you save any organizational challenges as you got started to implementing social media at Progress DataDirect? And, if yes, could you share with us how you overcame some of those challenges? I think that would be very beneficial to some of our listeners and companies out there still kind of struggling to overcome that roadblock.
April Harned: Well first and foremost, I think that our real problem wasn’t necessarily their concern about not being able to control the message, but rather the time commitment that was involved. Just a misunderstanding or misconceptions of how much of their time might be needed for participating in the blogosphere. How we overcame that was – I could tout day and night why we needed to be more active in the blogosphere and with social media tools, but it just seemed to be falling on deaf ears, and maybe because I’m an internal resource – we felt the best strategy to convince the leadership team was by the importance that we needed to be out there and needed to be active, not only to communicate with our communities, but to drive sales. In an effort to do that we thought it was very important to have a third party, unbiased expert come in via an agency. So that was definitely the route that we looked to take.
Again, even to this day, I don’t ever hear any real concern about controlling the message. I think that if you’re out in the blogosphere, and I think our participation there is pretty well maintained, I work closely with all of the bloggers to ensure that they’re not going out there with something that we as an organization don’t feel comfortable with or that might get us into some legal hot water. We’re very conscientious about what we put out there, but at the same time we want to answer our community’s most pressing questions. We listen and we respond accordingly.
Priya Ramesh: That’s fantastic. That leads us to our next question: Progress DataDirect has done an excellent job of getting some of your senior executive team members to take that time that you just talked about and, not just that they’re actually very active, they’re actually very passionate about Data Connections; they want to talk about some of the hot topics that matter the most to your audience online, and having worked from an agency perspective on Data Connections for you, we’re just so happy to be talking to some of your senior like Gregg Willhoit who’s a thought leader in the IT space, taking the time with his busy schedule to actively blog and talk about key industry topics on Data Connections. Any tips, advice that you can share with our listeners today on how you manage to get your senior staff to embrace social media?
April Harned: I would say that, that was definitely our biggest hurdle, and an ongoing challenge. The way that we overcame it was giving them a taste of the success that can be achieved through social media. While they were reluctant, and when kicking and screaming, once they had a taste of how it could be used effectively they were sold. For instance, with Gregg Willhoit, from the get go he was concerned about the time commitment of actually sitting down and writing blog posts – he just didn’t see that happening throughout the course of his day. So what CRT/tanaka advised, and I think it has been quite successful, is doing once a month a one hour podcast where we go through and ask him in a Q&A type format various questions that relate to product news or industry trends that we’re seeing, or competitive news. And he goes into great detail about each of those topics, and then we edit those podcasts and get it on the blog with transcription services provided as well. So that has been a great tool to get the content we need up on the blog, but at the same time not spend too much of Gregg’s time throughout the course of the month – only one hour. So he’s definitely bought in there.
And then in terms of his conversion, from a skeptic to a fan, has really been with some recent competitive events that we’ve been able to get our positioning quickly up on the blog and not have to go through the legal, corporate, bureaucratic channels to get our position up and quickly, and then point media to how we differ from this other particular competitor in the space has really done wonders. So there is a lot of confusion out there on how the DataDirect Shadow product differs from Neon zPrime, and through the blog we’re able to constantly answer and clarify those concerns by the market place. So we’re often pointing people to the blog in order for people to get that quick fix, both from prospects that are unclear, as well as media that have some confusion on how our product differs from another competitor.
Priya Ramesh: April, I think you hit a key point in how a company can use blogs as that extended platform to communicate different things that you may or may not be able to do on your Website or through a press release or some of the traditional modes of communication. It just gives you that much more ability to clarify things or be able to comment on some industry topics or even on some of your competitors. I think that’s a great way on how you have taken Data Connections as that extended medium to engage in more meaningful conversations and leverage to get beyond the traditional modes. So that’s great.
April Harned: In that respect, too, we’ve found some of our blog posts being included in extra articles in the mainframe space. So that’s exciting to see.
Priya Ramesh: From a PR perspective, and April we know how metric driven you are and that’s great because one of the challenges of the PR profession is always being able to explain ROI, the tangible benefits of your PR efforts. So with social media, would you mind sharing some of your ROI and some of the tangible benefits you have realized?
April Harned: Just from a traditional PR standpoint, obviously, I’ll address how we use blog posts to pitch the media as well. So I think it offers us real time information sharing that is so difficult. In terms of metrics, it is very difficult to measure the success of PR programs through traditional media. You can say, we had ten hits, but you really aren’t sure if those hits in traditional media outlets are driving traffic to your Website, or helping with sales. You might hear some anecdotal stories here and there, but just a very difficult activity to measure.
With social media, there’s so many tools in place, through Google Analytics and our own analytics program, Omniture where you can easily track how certain blog posts have fared, what the traffic has been, how much of the traffic is moving from your blog to the DataDirect.com as well as our rankings within search engine optimization. I know recently that when you type in mainframe middleware we’re the third term, right below IBM. That’s a big success measure that resonates within internal audiences as well. So it’s always about keeping them happy, and keeping them in the know. They might not understand all that goes on under the covers, but they certainly understand when you can say that you’re third, behind IBM, on Google. I think that’s been a huge success for us, and just the volume of traffic that’s coming to the blog now verses what it was 6 months ago on the three various blogs. That’s up from a few hundred to now a few thousand a month.
Priya Ramesh: And I know we’ve noted visitors being directed to your main Website, DataDirect.com, which is a huge metric that we’ve accomplished through social media. Now that we’re in the last quarter of 2009, and all of us are putting together the budgets for 2010, as a PR professional, as someone who has embraced social media, do you think that it is here to stay? It is probably a no brainer question, but what are your thoughts on the future of social media? And more and more companies, especially in the IT industry such as Progress DataDirect embracing it and taking it to the next level.
April Harned: I think that PR as a profession will no longer exist. I think traditional media will still have its place, but I think social media in the years to come is really where the profession is heading. So companies that want to get their name out there, and that are accustomed to and have bought into PR programs much embrace social media or they will be left behind. So I think that it’s critical, and I think that corporate blogs are going to be kind of taking on more and more. Almost becoming their own news room, if you will. I think that traditional media outlets are going to become thinner and thinner, and companies are going to go directly to the source, verses the third party media outlets.
Priya Ramesh: That’s a fair statement to make, definitely. With that I want to wrap up with some advice from you, any lessons learned. Every company has to go through a process when they implement something new. I’m sure with the social media implementation there are some lessons that you learned or the marketing team at Progress DataDirect went through. So any advice to other companies that are just getting started would be very helpful.
April Harned: I would say be prepared for change. I think that I wasn’t as prepared – I didn’t prepare myself for the time that it was going to take to not only help manage expectations internally, but insure that myself and that those that were involved in the program were educated, and that we continue to educate ourselves because I feel like there’s new tools and new techniques available, almost on a daily basis that I need to get up to speed on in order to be successful. And to insure that we are using the best tools available to us. Those that make the most sense for our organization and our corporate culture. I would advise people to read up on what’s available, and definitely ask the expertise of their firm to help them guide through the processes.
Priya Ramesh: That’s a great point: Flexibility is key to social media. Facebook and Twitter are here to stay, but then every day we see a new trend or a new tool out there.
April Harned: And they enhance those staples.
Priya Ramesh: And at the end of the day I think it’s not just about tools, it’s about making the connections with your audience online. I see a lot of people get a little bogged down by let’s have a Facebook campaign or a Twitter campaign without thinking through, why is it that you want to be on Facebook or Twitter? What kind of conversations would you like to have with your target audience? Definitely, flexibility is key, and having that open mind to social media definitely drives success at the end of the day.
Thank you so much, April, for taking the time to speak with CRT/tanaka and sharing some of your experiences with social media. And we only look forward to continued success for DataDirect.
April Harned: Thank you for all of your efforts. It’s been a hectic six months, but a very successful one. I’m very proud.
Priya Ramesh: We have enjoyed working with you. Thank you.
The really old school capitalists like to say that the only business of business is to provide a return to shareholders. Long before the concept of “stakeholders” came into being, business was conducted, customers and suppliers were treated fairly or not, and it all somehow moved along. Now, companies need to do better. The concept of “conscious capitalism” is taking hold.
Companies concerned with social responsibilities are finding many new places to carry on their activities, and in the process of talking and doing, they are creating
Freedigitalphotos.net
value for all of their stakeholders. Add this expansion of business interests to the explosion of media and the advent of social networking, and you get very positive tools for boosting capitalism, as well as some strange phenomena.
It strikes me as just a little odd, for instance, that a company can now attract a “fan” for good customer service, when it really was Bob in customer service who provided the heroics that resulted in getting what should be expected and given to every customer. Have we lowered our standards to the point where getting a normal result is exceeding expectations? Also, I don’t think company fan pages is a trend that bodes well if too much celebrity is attached to companies. Many of them simply don’t deserve all the attention — and certainly not our adulation. (But, I digress.)
One very interesting frontier for this new dynamic is what’s being called the post-carbon economy. What previously sufficed as measures of good citizenship will no longer, as companies will have to show us their costs to society so that we can compare those costs to the benefits they bring us. Customers are increasingly focused on this from the perspective of water, waste, energy use and other previously uncounted impacts. Other stakeholders are able to get their contrary perspectives before large audiences via social media. Good public relations demands a game plan for this new CSR environment, and, with a nod to CRO Magazine, here are a few ways to address some of the challenges they covered recently:
If you are in a traditional industry — energy, mining, chemicals, heavy manufacturing and the like — get carbon savvy in the same way your process improvement teams are doing it. Be conversant it all of the measures being used in your company.
Learn how employee health and safety, sustainability, governance, risk and compliance activities in the company are being conducted, specifically how they are having an impact on profit, and build this knowledge into your plans for various stakeholders.
Track peers, competitors and best practices in Corporate Register or in CRO (link to sign-up page). There is a wealth of information on what others are doing to create value for their companies with the new capitalism.
Help your company move from defense to offense. The public relations function is ideally situated on the “border” between a company and its stakeholders. There is going to be increased transparency by regulation, and the public relations function should be in the business making the transparency serve the business. It will be particulary important to translate business practices into benefits for stakeholders. Sometimes this will mean kudos for the company, but more often it will mean making and communicating changes that will allow the company to improve its citizenship over time. (This is tough work.)
Don’t be sucked in by the “going green” mantra prevalent in so many businesses. In this age of increased transparency, it won’t be about the labels of “green” versus “dirty.” It will be about innovation in product, services and in citizenship.
Move away from the “campaign” mentality altogether. Quarterly themes of green, sustainable, diversity, human rights, etc. must move out from the realm of messaging and into the realm of exchange of ideas. PR is ideally situated to help nurture the values that foster these principles in conscious capitalist companies.
Consider a more interactive online presence, built by your Web consulting team or available through such products as Report-Works.
I may never get used to companies having fan pages, but if just some of the coming challenges in this new social and media world are handled well, there will at least be a reason to salute the top practicioners of conscious capitalism. Corporate Responsibility Officer recently reported, btw, that the best companies in CSR outpoint their competitors in profits by 26%.
That’s certainly enough to create some shareholder fans!
The Case Foundation launched its Gear Up for Giving: Social Media Tutorials for Nonprofits initiative this week. As part of the series, the Foundation is featuring “Giving Gurus,” including me as the opening act this Thursday, Sept. 10, at 1 EST. To prep for the session and your questions, I was asked to kick off a discussion via a blog post. Here’s a preview…
With causes, we seek to create movements using word of mouth tools, and in particular, tools within social media. It’s very easy to get stuck in the mindset of a single track effort, such as Twitter, or even an online multichannel effort that involves several tools. Yet, to be truly successful cause-based movements bridge social media, traditional media, as well as good, old-fashioned, brick and mortar offline life.
No one eats their dinner and says to their partner or self, “Hmm, I think I’ll go play on social media for an hour tonight.” They just go online and surf. Social sites are part of their lives, but so is their favorite magazine, the office bulletin board, tschatkes they pick up at events that they attend, perhaps church or synagogue, etc., etc.
A movement means they do more than click on a tweet! They bring it into their life and talk about it. They tell their friends, both on and offline, and their friends tell more friends!
At the heart of creating movements are word of mouth marketing (WOMM) principles. Social media represents just part of the mix; some — not all — of the tools that facilitate conversations and discussion about our special movements. Andy Sernovitz in his soon to be released entertaining light read, “What Is Word of Mouth Marketing,” notes tools are just part of the five Ts of WOMM. Those Ts also include Talkers, Topics, Taking Part and Tracking.
For context, in summary of last Friday’s post: To celebrate rebranding from the Christian Children’s Fund, ChildFund International is giving gifts of agricultural love and hope from the organization’s gift catalog for every 200 Twitter followers @childfund receives. These efforts will directly benefit children in Gambia, Zambia, Kenya and Ethiopia. There is no cap on followers, and the offer will continue through July 27.
Funding
OK, on to the controversy: On Twitter and later in a blog post, Colin Carmichael questioned the funding of the effort:
I’m guessing that ChildFund International set aside a specific amount of money for this campaign to be donated at those 200 follower increments. Note that this is money/aid that ChildFund International already has since they aren’t asking for donations from those followers. My suspicion is that the aid in question was destined for Africa regardless of how many followers @ChildFund gets.
It was my wrong assumption that the money had been allocated of the marketing budget instead of advertising. In actuality, ChildFund International reached out to donors who have said they will fund this campaign. This is above the amount they usually give.
To be clear: The Twitter campaign isn’t about raising money, either. It’s about raising awareness of the work that ChildFund does for deprived, excluded and vulnerable children in the 31 countries where we work.
And it’s more than sponsoring gifts for followers to reach out and spam folks. ChildFund has promised to report back to its Twitter followers who have invested. We designed the effort to attract followers that want to see firsthand how the money can make a difference. Twitter followers can expect open dialogue from @childfund as well as reports in the form of photos, videos and the stories of those who received the gifts. In short, it’s a two way give and take.
First of all, Alex had some great points in her post. I want to acknowledge that. We did or are planning to act along most of these steps. Here are some deeper insights into the ChildFund effort as it applies to Alex’s post.
Wait: We could not, unfortunately. Rebranding ChildFund demanded an immediate effort to move capital from the old name to the new effort in a rapid fashion. In many ways, because Twitter is but the first part of a plan for building a social web community the rest of the year, we wanted to do this first and attract followers quickly. In order to extend the initiative, we need an interested community.
Attainable benchmarks and realistic rewards: I like what Alex said about 500k followers and a reward of the same fashion. We have no stated goal, just a hope to attract a strong vibrant community. I’d rather see 1,500 rapid fans than 150,000 uninterested followers who don’t do anything. Thus it’s an open ended WOM, opt-in initiative that will run for the rest of the month.
Based on cost per gift we felt that 200 followers was the correct benchmark per gift. Keep in mind followers are not leads, they are people who will give us a chance to maybe, just maybe become a long term Twitter community member.
I like providing a reward in social media. Too many marketing efforts ask you to follow and give nothing back to the follower. Whether it’s a donation and a commitment to report back like this or some other type of give, people need to be rewarded. Social media demands a two-way relationship, not abuse of followers. Call it a return on freely given social capital.
Follow-up: We hope to build a long-term community with @childfund’s followers. There’s some commonality: Wanting to help children in impoverished countries. A dialogue along those lines seems possible. To succeed, @childfund Twitterer David Hylton and later a new community manager will engage with people in real and meaningful conversations. It’s our hope that people on @childfund’s stream are already seeing Dave talk with, not at them.
Alex has agreed to interview @childfund for more insights into the campaign so stay tuned. And thanks to the many people who have already provided their support for this effort. Please continue spreading the word to your friends.
Here’s an exerpt of a Mashable post that Beth Kanter, Qui Diaz and I wrote about our Philanthropy 2.0 research…
While the social web has been a fantastic place for nonprofits to harness the long tail of giving with movements like Twestival and the Case Foundation’s Giving Challenge, high dollar donor cultivation has not been prevalent. The goal of our Community Philanthropy 2.0 survey one month ago was to determine whether there is potential for nonprofits to cultivate significant donors online (defined as someone who gives $1,000 or more), and how that can be accomplished.
Tremendous opportunity for nonprofits
What we found was a tremendous opportunity for nonprofits to participate as trusted providers of credible information and ultimately cultivate the next generation of major donors through the social web.
There comes a time in an organization’s life cycle when its leaders ask, “How far is our community willing to go?” It is such a time for United Way of America.
In 2008 United Way launched its LIVE UNITED campaign “to advance the common good” around three core issues: Education, Income and Health. After undertaking significant rebranding and PSA efforts with partners such as the Ad Council, United Way is ready to tackle a great opportunity: The digital road.
With nearly 1,300 local member organizations, United Way will face a common challenge for most membership agencies and associations: The coalescence of internal and external constituents.
Externally, United Way of America aims to build relationships with its target audiences. When current and prospective donors, activists and volunteers end up at www.liveunited.org, they’ll have the opportunity to connect to their local United Ways, and each other. But they also need the flexibility of connecting in their existing online/offline locales.
Internally, the United Way network seeks to get local groups on board. Dozens of local United Ways have already taken to social media, but need a more unified effort for the LIVE UNITED community take flight. Healthy levels of commitment, support and education are required to build such a framework.
Only through research, education and word of mouth from loyal influencers can United Way take this bull by the horns. It will be a matter of tapping into systems and people who are willing to be influenced – including internal stakeholders – for the common good. In the case of social media and WOM, ‘Living United’ starts from the inside, out.
Please excuse me for taking the opportunity to write this brief post that shines some light on some of Livingston Communications’ current efforts.
National Ranked Blogger Jason Fall, the lead voice at Social Media Explorer, wrote up our reputation management efforts with Network Solutions. Jason said, “This reputation management effort was a success. It’s still ongoing and not finished by any means, nor is any social media effort. These are not episodic, quarterly defined campaigns. These are ongoing conversations and relationships with your customers. But as Livingston Communications and Network Solutions have proven, even those can be quantified and measured.”
And the world’s top change blogger and non-profit social media consultant Beth Kanter did a case study on our current Save Darfur campaign. Beth wrote, “Be A Voice for Darfur is an excellent example of multi-channel campaign designed to bring attention to the appalling genocide in Darfur. Geoff Livingston and Qui Diaz are behind this brilliant multi-channel campaign that is using social media for social good.“
Thanks to both Jason and Beth for taking the time to write these case studies.
Fragmented Branding - The 21st Century Reality:
Social Media May Be The Media Darling, But E-mail Is Here To Stay:
Google's Great Buzz Gamble:
Moving from Siloes to Hives:
Showing Love Increases PR Influence:
Facebook Fan Page Best Practices: