Category: Social media

Church Signs

via churchmarketingsucks.com

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Survey Reveals 5 Opportunities for Churches on Facebook

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Image via CrunchBase

Most respondents indicated they don’t think their church is doing a particularly good job with Facebook. While those results could be perceived as negative, a closer look reveals some big opportunities for those churches willing to embrace the world’s largest social network.

  1. Communicate More – Clearly people would like to see their church do more on Facebook.
  2. Ministry Pages – A second opportunity for churches is for individual ministries to engage with people through Facebook pages.
  3. Facilitate Connections – A third opportunity for churches is to help their people connect with one another.
  4. Evangelism – A fourth opportunity for churches is to encourage and train their people to develop relationships with those who are not Christians and show God’s grace and love to them.
  5. Facebook Ads – A fifth opportunity for churches is to use Facebook ads to reach out to people in their community.

A detailed report on the survey results including lots of pretty charts and additional analysis is available at OurChurch.com.

via churchmarketingsucks.com

Happy Sunday! I’m blessed to be bringing a new client on board — Q90 FM in Green Bay. Here’s a great post from a great resource I found; Church Marketing Sucks! :-D

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Your nonprofit communications course catalog

Will Robson, Nottingham Carnival costume
Image via Wikipedia

Welcome, all, to the back-to-school edition of the nonprofit blog carnival. (Say, what’s a blog carnival?)

From the many great posts we received, we’ve put together this handy dandy list of nonprofit communications resources. It’s the first day of college all over again, but without the social pressure. Choose a topic, learn, and enjoy.

Know of a great post that belongs in our course catalogue? Post it up in the comments during the add/drop period.

via bigducknyc.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested in these great resources…

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Pull your head out of there, it’s time for a social media reality check

via unhatched.posterous.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the article if you’re interested in learning more…

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B2B Social Media And Lead Generation

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Image via CrunchBase

With a business blog, there are many different ways to get people to become a “lead” from a visitor.  For example: including buttons in the sidebar to talk to a representative, or text links within content to whitepaper landing pages or to download content.  HubSpot has found it successful to add calls to action at the end of content.

We have found that a majority of posts generating leads haven’t been published recently.  Older content is generating  leads.

It’s important to remember that your customers are more important than you are.  For example, HubSpot has a customer in Virginia that installs pools and spas.  All he does is share what someone might want to know when installing a pool.  He doesn’t directly sell his products, but that’s okay.  Even if people aren’t ready to buy, publishing value added content adds them into that consideration section.

Getting all team members involved in the business blog is vital.  People want content from people, not necessarily just companies.  Getting different people from different departments – i.e., research or product, allows marketers to expand the relevant information covered on a given blog to appeal to a larger subset of customers.

Business blogging drives leads and serves as a hub for search and social media visitors.  It doesn’t feel like they are visiting a website that hasn’t been updated in years.  A blog provides much better context for a business.

via toprankblog.com
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The Case For Social Media in Schools

via mashable.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’d like to dig a little deeper…

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5 Tips to Kick Start Your Link Building via Social Media Monitoring

Image representing Gist as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Lately there’s been renewed interest in building links via social media monitoring. To build links this way, a link builder creates a monitoring search in their favorite social media tool and waits for it to find news stories, blog posts, tweets, comments, and other social content. Each new post is an opportunity to find a relevant influencer and build a relationship.

Unfortunately, in some niches or with some very narrowly-targeted searches, the amount of new content being posted may be one or two items per week, which wouldn’t exactly fill the link builder’s schedule. It’s important to start your social media link building with a thorough review of the amassed social content that already exists. So here are a few tips to find bloggers faster with highly-targeted, relevant searches.

via searchenginewatch.com

I use Gist + Google Reader for social media monitoring; the first tracks the important Thought Leaders in my world, the second tracks my trusted news sources. Together they help me monitor the important people and sites in my area of expertise and give ample ideas for creating or curating posts for this blog…

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5 Steps to Reduce the Pain of Starting a Business Blog

Darren Rowse - Photography Blogger Extrodinaire
Image by kk+ via Flickr

Blogging can be intimidating for someone who hasn’t done it in the past or grown up in the age where everyone has a personal blog.  It is, however, critical that business owners and marketers ‘blog for business.’  Putting pen to paper or more appropriately, putting fingers to your keyboard is the biggest challenge for most people.  So let’s talk about how to get started.

via blog.hubspot.com

If you’re interested in blogging but not sure how to get started, you’ll want to follow the ‘via’ link above to read the rest of this article. If you’re going to start, I encourage you to set a goal of posting once per day. If that seems like a lot, remember that all your content does not need to be original! In my book, there are two main types of posts; creation [original thoughts] and curation [quoting someone’s content with proper attribution]. I uses tools like Gist and Google Reader to listen to subject matter experts in my field, quote their articles, and then post my opinion just like I’m doing now…

Comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your business!

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Tyra Banks on creating demand with audience empowerment

Lessons gleaned from Banks’ newest venture?

  • Empower your audience. The data is available and the demand exists, so do your homework and listen up.
  • Leverage your network by pulling in the experts you know who can speak to your audience on the topics they care about. Knowing what they want is half the battle — so when you do know that, make sure you go all out to give it to them.
  • Use your social channels to ask for feedback on what your business is doing — or not doing — to best serve customers. Banks says she frequently surveys her Twitter following to ask for advice and suggestions on her business ventures.

Banks may be on a mission to empower women, but in doing so she is highlighting one of the most important tenets of social media: empowering the audience. By bringing them into the content equation, she’s moving toward a new kind of user-generated content — that which people suggest without even knowing it.

via smartblogs.com

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Social Media: The New Battleground for Politics

via mashable.com

Why is this so obvious to some and yet beyond the grasp of parties and politicians? You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go directly to the source and get the rest of the story if you’d like…

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The Social Media Words & Phrases Most Retweeted

via readwriteweb.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested in learning more…

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400 posts redux; Lesson #1

Image representing Alexa as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

This is the first post in what I anticipate will be a 7 part series…

11 months ago, I posted this introspective piece on the results I was getting from blogging…

Yesterday, I passed the 400 post mark. 400 posts over 18 months. Wow! Roughly a post a day for a year and a half. Is that a lot? Is that too little? I really don’t know. What I do know is this — when I use my ‘pass or play’ methodology, traffic to my site increases and my ‘pipeline’ fills…

My good friend [and brother in law] Jim Gilligan has a blog that he’s starting for his life coaching business at EffectiveLiving, LLC. Jim asked me how many posts he should create before he goes ‘live’. I told him a dozen or so is enough to get started but recently I did an experiment and I believe the number at which you start to see good results is closer to 100 over a 3 month period. Here’s a real world case study…

I had neglected my business blog for a little over a year — my passion was politics and I was attempting to leverage my social media skills in the political space. My political blog was ranked most influential in Wisconsin a dozen times earlier this year and my Alexa ranking rose to within the top million sites in the world, but it didn’t get me what I wanted. More business. One year ago today, my business blog, however, had only served up 147 page views for the month. The whole month. Two weeks ago, I got 233 pageviews in a single day and my traffic so far this month is 11 times greater than a year ago [and the month’s not even finished yet]. By the way, the Alexa rank on my blog is currently 338,142. [That was in the US at the time — now my rank is 341,593 global. ed.]. All this as a result of 100 posts over a 3 month period. Pretty good return on investment, I think.

Yesterday, I passed 2,400 posts — 2,000 additional posts — in less than 11 months. What do I think I’ve learned? Here are some more or less random observations…

1. Blogging is the best, fastest, least expensive way to establish a thought leadership position. Period.

The key to thought leadership is having a point of view that is ‘searchable, findable, knowable and shareable‘ as I say in my seminars. There is not better way to do that then frequent reiteration of that point of view on the internet. If you use the right set of tools, it’s easy and fun to do as well…You can read my posts on blogging here, but two of the best I posted within the past week; read ‘Why I blog’ and ‘Confessions of a really new blogger‘ for two different perspectives on why blogging rocks. It is helpful, however, if you have a simple, repeatable process so that you don’t burn out…

There are 6 more lessons that I’ll roll out over the course of the next week or so; be sure to collect all 7…

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The Rev. Robert Barron takes to TV, blogs, YouTube as a new-media Catholic priest

The Rev. Robert Barron, a Chicago-based Roman Catholic priest, has made himself a new-media messenger for the church, bringing a Catholic perspective to topics from “Avatar” to atheism to the use of steroids in baseball.

The author of 10 books, he has posted more than 180 cultural commentaries on YouTube and delivers a weekly homily on Relevant Radio (WNTD-AM/950 in Chicago). He contributes guest blogs to CNN.com and ABC.com, adding pithy, pointed commentary to hot topics. He has filmed a 10-part documentary, “The Catholicism Project,” which he hopes will air on public television next year.

On Sunday, he will begin presenting a half-hour television show, “Word on Fire with Father Barron,” on WGN America. It’s paid programming, the airwaves’ equivalent of vanity publishing; his messages, from earlier DVDs, will air nationwide for 13 weeks (at 8:30 a.m. Sundays in Chicago). The airtime will be paid for by private donors; he declines to reveal the cost.

“My job is to bring the Catholic perspective to bear,” says the Rev. Barron, 50. Catholicism, he says, “has been underrepresented in the conversation.”

via chicagobusiness.com

Here’s one priest who’s taking the Holy Father’s admonition to start blogging seriously! What about you others? Let’s use the internet to spread a little Gospel and Community! Comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your parish…

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100+ Upcoming Social Media & Tech Events

Every week, Mashable puts together a calendar of upcoming social media and web events, parties and conferences. Would you like to have your conference or event listed here? If so, please contact us at least one month before your event to establish a media partnership. For more upcoming listings, check out Mashable’s Events section.

Mashable has two events this month:

Mashlanta 2.0 – September 30, 2010, Atlanta, GA
Mashable is excited to announce Mashlanta 2.0 in partnership with Regator. After an amazing event last year, we’ve gone bigger (200 – 300 more tickets), longer (an extra hour) and we’ve added a venue with ample parking. Tickets are now on sale, sponsorship opportunities are available and judging from last year, we’ll sell out quickly.

In the meantime, here are some tips on how to network, share your information and/or promote your event(s) using social media:

via mashable.com

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Ashton Kutcher Has Little Twitter Influence

Ashton Kutcher
Image via Wikipedia

A study conducted at Northwestern University determined that celebrities like Ashton Kutcher with millions of Twitter followers are mostly ignored on the social media site, resulting in very little if any influence.

When the researchers applied their mathematical algorithm to the countless tweets that appear on Twitter each day, they found that experts in certain fields were much more likely to cause topics of discussion to become trends. That might come as a relief to social media enthusiasts who crave discussions of substance, and a surprise to critics who argue that social media is prone to inanity.

These findings hit the wire a few months after social media analytics company Sysomos claimed that celebrities’ followers don’t have any influence, either.

via mashable.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’d like to dig a little deeper…

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Head Placement FAIL

via failblog.org

Sigh. All the effort you put into pr and social media and then something like this happens… :-D

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What do the latest social media stats mean for your business?

Social Media Life - Workstation
Image by the tartanpodcast via Flickr

A global business I’m working with is run by a very successful woman who is rarely in her office–or in her home state, for that matter.  She spends a large percentage of her time developing relationships with her clients in other parts of the world and making them wildly successful.

She’s right where she needs to be. And because she is, she trusts her online media presence to others like me who can launch timely social feeds that generate buzz.

Most of my clients dabble in social media, but don’t have the time to stop running their businesses to manage their online marketing and media presence.

But the latest trends show us that someone at your company absolutely must be keeping an eye on what your customers are seeing, hearing and feeling from your brand.

via spreemancommunications.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’d like to dig a little deeper. Favorite quote from this post? “Imagine not tapping into that enormous potential! Gone are the days when we can dismiss social media as a fad or something that only the younger generation is into.”…

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Top 50 social media cities

via holykaw.alltop.com

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How Businesses Are Unleashing Their Employees’ Social Media Potential

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

We know it’s a brave new world for consumers and brands. If United breaks your guitar, or your Maytag doesn’t work properly, you can take on the company that messed with you via social media — and you may well win.

But technology empowerment works both ways. Consumers can take a stand against poor business practices, and brands can empower their customers like never before.

Mobile is a hotbed of innovation in this department. Point your phone at a restaurant and see if it’s worth an evening out. With the addition of cloud services, you get stuff like the iPhone app from UK car dealer Auto Trader, which can tell you the make, model and the price of used cars just from snapping a license plate photo.

To take it one step further, companies that invest in technology and innovation can not only sell more products with digital tools, but empower their own employees. Below, we’ve highlighted some examples of businesses that are using technology creatively to solve customer issues and spur innovation.

via mashable.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’d like to dig a little deeper…

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Are Twitter followers better than Facebook fans?

“Marketers looking to push out the most effective messages to opt-in recipients must understand how audiences differ across channels and what causes them to connect with brands. Marketing venues that seem similar may differ strongly if their users have different needs and motivations. According to the final edition of ExactTarget’s “Subscribers, Fans and Followers” report, the differences between email, Facebook and Twitter also include their influence on customer loyalty. Daily Twitter users who followed a brand were more than twice as likely as daily Facebook users who “liked” a brand to say they were more likely to purchase from the brand after becoming a social media follower. What’s more, Facebook fans were the most likely group to actively disagree with the question. Subscribers to opt-in marketing emails fell in the middle. ” Source: Are Twitter Followers Better Than Facebook Fans? – eMarketer

Do these results surprise you? You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested in learning more…

via ScribeFire
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How do I promote myself on the internet…

…without looking like I’m a shameless self promoter? Consider this…

“Recently, we received the following netiquette question from a relatively self-aware reader:

how do I get my music blog out there (as it is fairly new) and make it accessible to my friends without looking like the pretentious f*** I really am and trying to make them realize that my taste in music is better than their own?

Putting aside the fact that said capital-letter averse typist has decided to start a music blog in this overly saturated cesspool we call the Internet, what we’re really talking about here is the delicate art of self-promotion. If you want to earn eyeballs, buzz or cash dolla bills for something you’ve dreamed up, using social media is pretty much a must (and a topic taken on by plenty of writers before us).

But promoting oneself online is a concept that myriad people hate. There are the humble few who genuinely feel uncomfortable telling you why they are worth your time. Then there are the scores of self-righteous cads who really hate having to bother.” Source: How to gracefully promote yourself online – CNN.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested in learning more. Comment, call or use the contact form to connect — we can talk about how this applies to your business…

via ScribeFire
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