Facebook For TMA

Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed

2011-12-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

Excellent white paper from the good folks at comScore, Inc

The importance of social networking in today’s online experience cannot be overstated. Social networking is the most popular online activity worldwide accounting for nearly 1 in every 5 minutes spent online in October 2011, and reaches 82 percent of the world’s Internet population, representing 1.2 billion users around the globe.

Facebook refers 1,000 times more traffic than Google+

2011-12-14T08:18:00.000-08:00

The good folks at PR Daily report on a new study from Net Applications that finds Facebook is "responsible for two-thirds of all Web traffic referred by social media sites."

Facebook referred 0.66 percent of all Web traffic from social networks, which means that out of every 10,000 times someone clicked on a link, 66 were links posted on Facebook, according to Net Applications.

Nos. 2 and 3, according to the report, are StumbleUpon and YouTube. The remaining social networks—including big players like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+—barely make a blip compared with the traffic that Facebook drives.

Do You Have What it Takes to Be a Social Media Thought Leader?

2011-11-16T09:46:00.000-08:00

Thought Leadership 2.0 by Marla Tabaka, writing in Inc. magazine:

Medical societies of all size -- and our members -- have many of the credentials to be thought leaders on medical and health care issues: we're respected and (generally) know what we're talking about. I've long advocated that social media provides some great platforms for us to become thought leaders. Here's a great article from Inc. magazine on how to do it.

A thought-leader is someone who is willing to step into the spotlight and voice their points of view, innovative ideas, and potentially controversial opinions. He drives conversation and pepeprs the Internet and other outlets with his insights, ideas, and expertise. She inspires others to follow their dreams and teaches them to think big, solve problems, and face their fears.

Here's a the presentation I made in October to the scholars in the TMA Leadership College on social media and thought leadership.

Tmalc social media presentation 2011

View more presentations from Steve Levine

Health care’s mobile revolution - Infographic

2011-11-15T11:50:00.000-08:00

The great team at Health Care Communication News put together this infographic on the exploding use of mobile devices (no, not the use of exploding mobile devices) in health care today.

Is your physician "super mobile"?

According to this infographic, one in four physicians owns a tablet and a smartphone, use online resources at a much higher rate, and use their mobile devices for references, research, and even diagnosis.

Handheld devices have become a million dollar industry for health care professionals—in 2010, the total market for handheld devices in health care reached $8,800,000.

This trend shows no signs of stopping: In fact, there has been a 20 percent increase in the usage of WiFi connected mobile devices in health care this year alone.

Using Facebook to Influence Congress

2011-11-14T09:50:00.000-08:00

NEW ORLEANS -- The American Medical Association brought Brad Fitch, CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF), here for a workshop for physician activists on lobbying Congress.Among the numerous interesting tidbits that the data-dripping Fitch dropped was this one:

Sixty-four percent of congressional aides that CMF surveyed say Facebook is an "instant gauge of public opinion on issues they are talking about." When their bosses are undecided on legislation or what to talk about, they are likely to settle on which ones get the most "like's."

Using Facebook as an incoming communication tool to reach Congress? Never thought of that.

Hungry for details, I dug up the CMF's July 201 report, #SocialCongress: Perceptions and Use of Social Media on Capitol Hill. Under the heading "Congressional offices are using social media to help gauge public opinion, augmenting traditional tools used for that purpose," this is what I found:

According to the senior managers (primarily Chiefs of Staff, Deputy Chiefs of Staff and Legislative Directors) and social media managers (staff who identified themselves as having responsibility for their office's social media practices) who responded to our survey, offices have integrated social media into the array of tools they use to understand constituents’ views and opinions. Not surprisingly, these staffers say they rely most on the more tangible and verifiable forms of interaction with constituents, such as attending events in the district or state, receiving personalized messages from constituents, and holding town hall meetings.

However, it is clear that congressional offices are taking Members’ Facebook friends seriously. Almost two-thirds of the staffers view Facebook as an important source for understanding constituents’ views and opinions. Twitter and YouTube have also clearly gained acceptance on Capitol Hill, with significant percentages of the staffers surveyed saying these tools are important sources for understanding constituents.
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of the senior managers and social media managers surveyed think Facebook is a somewhat or very important tool for understanding constituents’ views and opinions.
More than one-third (42%) say Twitter is somewhat or very important for understanding constituents.
YouTube is viewed by just over one-third (34%) as somewhat or very important for understanding constituents’ views and opinions.

Facebook recognizes this trend and offers advice for those of us who might want to travel this social media advocacy avenue. In this video, Katie Harbath, Facebook's public policy manager, discusses working with members of Congress and their staff to engage with constituents on the platform.

So where do we find our senators and representatives on Facebook? Surprise -- Facebook has compiled a page at www.facebook.com/congress, which the network says "will highlight innovative uses of Facebook by members of Congress, list members' pages and communicate news and information about Facebook and Congress."

The "innovative uses" include Facebook chats with constituents, videos, and polls. The page also includes sub-pages listing all of the congressional Facebook sites, separated into House and Senate. I signed into Facebook as Texas Medical Association and liked both Texas senators and all the Lone Star State representatives I could find.

Now I just have to come up with a strategy to use this new tool to get TMA-member physicians to engage Capitol Hill on Facebook to build momentum for Congress to fix Medicare's broken physician payment formula.

Here are a few more links of interest:

The Facebook Effect: How Congress is Using Social Networks to Strengthen Ties to Constituents — And How it Could be Doing it Better, a 2009 report from the Congressional Institute
Congress Goes Social, a January 2011 story from CNN

How You Are Secretly Driving Away Your Followers and What You CanDo to Stop its

2011-11-13T12:49:00.000-08:00

From the SmartBlog on Social Media:

Relevance is essential to any successful social media campaign. Consistency of tone, purpose and content is how you let people know who you are and why they should follow you. Whenever you post something online, you’re adding to a body of work that becomes your brand.

But what about authenticity? Aren’t we all supposed to be authentic now that we’re on social networks? Sure, but it’s important to consider what that term really means in this context. All brands (personal and organizational) have purposes. There are reasons why we do what we do — even if we’re not always aware of our motivations. Authenticity, simply put, is having a constant commitment to your purpose. It’s your ability to follow your “why” without pause that lets people know who you really are (as a person or as an organization) and why they should connect with you. Because people don’t care about what you’re doing, they care about why you do it.

Social Media Glossary

2011-11-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

From "api" to "YouTube," SocialBrite defines all those wacky new social media phrases you might not understand:

The social media landscape is fast changing and filled with strange terms to the uninitiated. Don’t feel intimidated! Here’s a quick guide to some of the terms you may encounter.

Here's an interesting sample, and a term I had never heard:

Copyleft: A play on the word copyright, copyleft is the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions.

UPDATE: HubSpot just published its own "Ultimate Glossary: 120 Social Media Marketing Terms Explained," in case there's even more words you're trying to learn. (12-31-11)

5 and a Half Tips for Easy But Good Electronic Media

2011-11-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

This is based on a short presentation I did for the American Society of Medical Society Executives County Executives Forum on Nov. 11, 2011, in New Orleans. Many thanks to my AAMSE friends for the invitation. Here is the question I was asked to answer: Faced with few resources and even less time, what can county medical societies can do in the electronic media world that pays big dividends in member participation, awareness, recruitment, retention, etc.

Social media is not free. Although a Twitter app, a Facebook account, YouTube access, etc... don't cost any money, they do require time to maintain and get the most out of them. The two things county societies chronically lack are money and time. So what to do?

Here are the five and half tips I offered:

Tip 1: Monitor what's being said about you. Here are some free tools:

Google news alerts
Google blog search
Twitter alerts:

TweetBeep
Twilert - I like, and use, Twilert, because it sends me a daily e-mail of Twitter mentions of TMA. You can set it to send you alerts of any phrase mentioned on Twitter.
Twazzup

Tip 2: Find a champion

Look for someone who is passionate about social media and wouldn't mind "volunteering" their time to help you, teach you, and maybe do some of it for you. Look to your staff or your family (if you have young adult children, they're usually tuned in). The best champion, of course, is one of your members who likes and uses social media and will post your news on Facebook, Tweet about you, post videos of your events.

Tip 3: Give something free to your members

There's so much free out there, take advantage of it. One service we like, which has earned TMA a nice chunk of non-dues revenue, is a weekly news bulletin to our members. We use MultiView but there are other vendors out there, like SmartBriefs. They collate the week's top stories that you want your members to see, news stories that their patients might be asking you about, and send them a weekly e-mail. Our "TMA Weekly Headlines" includes a short description of the article, when and where it was published, a link to the full article, and social media buttons that allow easy sharing.

They do all the work: gather the stories, sign up the advertisers. We spend no more than 15 minutes a week reviewing the draft "Headlines" the day before it goes out.

Tip 4: Video is king; YouTube is free
Video has it all: immediacy, emotion, impact. Video story telling is the most powerful way to get your message out. Nowadays you don't need a fancy studio and a professional videographer to shoot and share video. Nearly every exec has a mini-video recorder on his or her hip.

Consider shooting a quick-and-dirty, 30-second video of one of your physicians:

Commenting on the health care policy news of the day
Discussing the latest public health problem
Promoting an upcoming society event

Then post it straight to YouTube from your phone. Tweet it. Post it on Facebook. Take a few more moments and embed it on your website.

Tip 4.5: Animoto is fun

Animoto is a free tool that puts together images, video clips, and sound into a nifty looking 30-second video. Then you can post it in all those places I just mentioned. Here's an Animoto video we did about the TMA Calendar of Doom, our newest tool to help TMA members keep up with, and comply with, the avalanche of new state and federal regulations plus commercial insurance rules, that keep coming their way:

Tip 5: Make your members stars

Social media is, well, social. It's all about people -- your people, your doctors. Show them off. Publish RSS feeds from their blogs on your website (here's how we do it at TMA). Post their photos on Facebook. There are 250 million photos posted on Facebook a day, for a good reason. People like to see themselves.) Retweet their Twitter posts. Do all this and they'll return the favor and promote your society and what you're doing.

Facebook Is Most Popular Social Network for All Ages; LinkedIn Is Second

2011-11-10T12:01:00.000-08:00

Mashable reports on a new generational social media study from Forrester:

Of all the social networks, Facebook is the only one that knows no generational limits. From grandparents to teenagers, Facebook — the largest of the social networks — attracts users of all ages. A recent study by Forrester found that of U.S. adults who use social networking sites, 96% of them are on Facebook.

Looking at typical medical society members (Gen X through the Golden Generation), LinkedIn appears to be the only social medium with a substantial showing across the generations.

Get The Picture In Facebook Posts To Boost Engagement

2011-11-09T09:43:00.000-08:00

Interesting post from AllFacebook.com:

Research keeps pouring in supporting the use of photos in Facebook posts in order to improve engagement.

Did my gratuitous use of a photo of a Facebook page make this post any more interesting to you?

The G.O.P.’s Very Rapid Response Team

2011-10-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

Excellent article on blogging and advocacy from the Oct. 24, 2011 New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s image projected from one of the many television screens that hang in Representative Eric Cantor’s office suite, where the president could be seen telling a crowd in North Carolina that he was open to “any serious idea” Republicans offered on jobs.

Within seconds, Brad Dayspring, Mr. Cantor’s Rasputin of retort, was on the case, his fingers ripping across the keyboard as if individually caffeinated. “Obama says he’s open to any “serious #GOP idea,” typed Mr. Dayspring, the aggressive spokesman for Mr. Cantor, the Republican from Virginia who serves as House majority leader, in a message on Twitter. “Here are 15 jobs bills stalled in the Senate to get him started.”

A link from Mr. Cantor’s blog was quickly pasted in, the send button was hit, and Mr. Dayspring sat back slightly in his chair, pleased.

Read the rest of the article.

How Nonprofits are Using Social Media - "InfoGraphic"

2011-10-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

Not sure that I really like the proliferation of "InfoGraphics" I'm seeing all over the marketing web these days, but I think the data in this chart from the good folks at CraigConnects.org is insightful. Couldn't seem to find an appropriate size for the graphic, so I suggest you go to the original to see the detailed information.

How to Lasso Doctors into Social Media

2011-10-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

Should/could/can all U.S. physicians be writing blogs, sending and reading Tweets, and engaging with the www.wide world on Facebook?

Of course not.

But can we entreat many more doctors to move into social media networks? Can many more physicians use these tools to advance health care policy positions? To improve public health? To establish themselves as thought leaders? To advance their own practices?

Of course.

(l to r) Drs.Sinclair, Ryan, Dyer, and Katz

Four "socially active" physicians speaking yesterday at the Mayo Clinic's "Health Care Social Media Summit" shared their own experiences and outlined some techniques to overcome their colleagues' primary objections:

I don't have time;
I'm too old;
I'm afraid of liability or violating patient privacy; and
I don't like/understand/trust the technology.

I'll walk through all of these issues in just a bit, but the primary objection was much more visceral and intimate: "I don't know why I should do this."

Why should physicians get involved in social media?

"I got into blogging out of jealousy; my wife had a blog," said Richmond, VA, family physician Mark Ryan, MD, who started writing about health system reform and what it would mean to underserved populations. "When my local newspaper wouldn't publish OpEds and letters to the editor, I started writing them for my blog instead."

You can read Dr. Ryan's blog, "Life in Underserved Medicine" at http://www.richmonddoc.blogspot.com/. You can find him on Twitter at @richmonddoc.

Kansas City hospice and palliative care physician Christian Sinclair, MD, said he tried to get too many other doctors to join the social media revolution at once. He admits he was "too enthusiastic, too evangelistic" about what social media could do when they weren't prepared for it. "I needed to meet them where they are at," he said.

That means you have to find what motivates each physician, said Dr. Sinclair, who blogs at http://www.pallimed.org/ and is @ctsinclair on Twitter. What problems do they want to solve?

Where else do you find that motivation? Here's a line that Jen Dyer, MD, a Columbus, Ohio, endocrinologist who is @endogoddess on Twitter, uses: "Are you tired of your patients bringing in Jenny McCarthy's vaccines-cause-autism articles?"

Time, Liability are "Meaningful Concerns" -- Age and Technology Aren't

Matt Katz, MD, a radiation oncologist at Saints Medical Center in New England, says you have to acknowledge physicians' concerns that social media will eat up too much time they don't have or expose them to new liability avenues. And, you can tell them that physician social-media trailblazers have already figured out how to put strict walls about their time online and use some basic common-sense standards to avoid HIPAA privacy violations.

You don't give specific patient advice online just as you wouldn't when giving a community health talk or in private conversations with people you don't know, said Dr. Sinclair. You just don't establish a patient-physician relationship via these networks.

Dr. Katz, who Tweets as @subatomicdoc, reminds prospective physician bloggers and YouTubers that once something is posted, it remains there forever. "Anything I put online, it's going to be something I want my mother to be able to read, my patients, my legislators, my partners," he said.

To protect yourself from the time suck that social media can be, Dr. Dyer recommends you start small. "The easiest way is to start with Twitter," she sad. "Say one thing a day."

Using social media can actually save time for a physician, Dr. Ryan said. He depends on the Twitter users he follows to curate the most important information for him so he doesn't have to look for it. That's what social media experts mean when they say "the news finds you."

"I'm a lot more well-read because of social media," Dr. Dyer said.

None of the panelists thought that age was a legitimate barrier -- "Except in how set they are in their ways," Dr. Sinclair said -- and social media tools are very easy to learn how to use.

Doctors "are really good at learning new things and retaining information and making it practical," Dr. Katz said.

Added Dr. Sinclair, "Can you text? Yes. Can you write an e-mail? Yes. Can you use Word? Yes. Then you can do this."

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad from Peace Plaza,Rochester,United States

7 Social Media Habits for the Time-Pressed Nonprofit

2011-10-09T08:08:00.000-07:00

From Connecting Up Australia:

Use a content calendar
Use a social media dashboard
Schedule your posts
Filter your feeds
Share what you're reading
Reduce your notifications
Make your response a priority

One-Third of Physicians Say They'll "Never" Use Twitter

2011-09-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

Interesting findings from some research done in part by my friend Bryan Vartabedian, MD, the Houston-area pediatric gastroenterologist and one of Texas' leaders in the health care/social media field. (Check out, actually suggest that you subscribe to, Bryan's blog at http://www.33charts.com/)

Being a simple-answer kind of guy, I was overwhelmed with the info in the chart below that shows one-third of physicians say they will "never" use Twitter "to share medical knowledge with other physicians," and more than 25 percent say they will never use Facebook.

Bryan, however, looked at what they say they are using now, and he wrote this in a blog post:

When it comes to sharing information with other doctors, facilitated networks and email still seem to rule the day. Video, blogs, real-time micro-blogging, and wikis be damned, it seems doctors prefer to circle the wagons in tight MD verticals or keep it one-to-one/few on email. 70% of physicians in our study use email for professional sharing of information and 50% use facilitated networks like Sermo, Doximity, and Physician Connect. We found that 7% of PCPs and oncologists use Twitter to share amongst themselves. This figure is consistent with Twitter adoption by the general American public.

To me this isn’t surprising based on what I see and hear from my colleagues. What isn’t clear is whether physicians truly prefer closed networks and email or is it that they’ve yet to try and judge the utility of other platforms (I’ll put my money on the latter). I suspect that if we were to look more specifically at the type of content shared doctor-to-doctor we might find that physicians ‘profile’ platforms for different types of sharing.

Nielsen: Social Media Now the Big Online Guerilla

2011-09-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

Nielsen: Social Media Report Q3 2011:

Sunday's New York Times offered a good summary of this report, which is worth printing off (as PDF, not their unfriendly slide show version) and reading in depth:

Social media account for 22.5 percent of the time that Americans spend online, according to the report, compared with 9.8 percent for online games and 7.6 percent for e-mail.

That makes social media the No. 1 specific category and the No. 2 category over all, behind “other” ways Americans spend time online, among them perusing adult content, visiting retail Web sites and reading about subjects like sports and health.

Social Media Essentials Cheat Sheet

2011-08-31T11:55:00.000-07:00

From Kivi Leroux Miller of Nonprofit Marketing Guide:

Kivi says her "cheat sheet" offers "Some Social Media Essentials To Help Put Strategy into Your Social Media Outreach."

Kivi has a simple (name and e-mail address) form to fill out before you download her one-page guide. If you're not already getting her stuff, you should. It's worthwhile.

Here's the link.

65% of online adults use social networking sites, and most describe their experiences in positive terms

2011-08-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

Report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

For the first time, more than half of ALL U.S. adults now use a social network

Two-thirds of adult internet users (65%) now say they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago. That’s more than double the percentage that reported social networking site usage in 2008 (29%). And for the first time in Pew Internet surveys it means that half of all adults (50%) use social networking sites. The pace with which new users have flocked to social networking sites has been staggering; when we first asked about social networking sites in February of 2005, just 8% of internet users – or 5% of all adults – said they used them.

And most like what they're seeing and doing:

8 Ways to Maximize Your YouTube Marketing Results

2011-07-27T10:21:00.000-07:00

From Social Media Examiner:

Create compelling videos
Make your video findable
Brand your YouTube channel
Use annotations to build subscribers
Post a bulletin and alert your friends and subscribers
Use YouTube ads
Leverage other social media platforms
Review YouTube Insights for more, um, insights

5 Scientifically Proven Ways to Get More ReTweets

2011-07-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

An infographic from Dan Zarella.

Summary: To get more ReTweets, you should

Tweet Links
Ask for ReTweets
Stop Talking About Yourself
Say New Things
Tweet About Twitter

Social Media Explained So Your Mom Would Get It

2011-07-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

From the Not Running a Hospital Blog:

The Twitter Glossary

2011-06-30T15:23:00.000-07:00

From the Twitter Help Center

Don't know your hashtags from your mentions? Here's the answer.

The Twitter Glossary contains lingo and vocabulary used frequently to talk about features and aspects of our service. Following each definition are links to related articles in our help center for further exploration of each term.

The Best Time to Tweet or Post

2011-06-25T16:00:00.000-07:00

From the good people at KissMetrics, from Dan Zarella:

It’s important to know when the highest percentage of your audience is eavesdropping on your social networks—so that when you share content you’ll get maximum exposure. Use the following data to learn when your audience is most likely to tune in. Be sure to check in with us next week when we discuss timing & email marketing.

5 PM Eastern Time is the best time to tweet.

The best tweeting frequency is 1 to 4 tweets per hour.

Saturday is the best day to share content on Facebook.

Noon Eastern Time is the best time of the day to share content on Facebook.

The best sharing frequency on Facebook is 0.5 posts per day.

asdf

What's Up (or Down) With Facebook US Numbers?

2011-06-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

From insidefacebook.com:

Did Facebook have fewer monthly active users in the United States at the start of June than it did at the start of May? What about user counts in other early-adopter countries like Canada and the United Kingdom? Is the company continuing to gain as many new users around the world now as it has in recent years?

Facebook's comment:

From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn’t designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook. We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. More than 50 per cent of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.

The Who, Why And How Of Twitter [INFOGRAPHIC]

2011-06-08T07:23:00.000-07:00

From alltwitter.com:

A new infographic has taken a deeper look at Twitter’s infrastructure, citing data from several sources, and revealing information on the who, why and how we use Twitter. The study suggests:

•The typical Twitter user is a 20-something hispanic female
•The most popular reason for using Twitter is to keep in touch with friends
•72% of people use Twitter to post personal updates
•24% check Twitter several times each day
•Of the millions of tweets created every day, some 71% produce no reaction (replies or retweets)
•0.05% of Twitter’s total population – that is, the 20,000 or so Twitter ‘elites’ (celebrities, news outlets, brands etc) – receive 50% of all the attention
•72% of the top US companies have a Twitter account

Facebook Accounts For 38 Percent Of Sharing Traffic On The Web

2011-06-07T10:31:00.000-07:00

ShareThis Study:

Overall, sharing now produces an estimated 10 percent of all Internet traffic and 31 percent of referral traffic to sites from search and social. Search is still about twice as big.

When it comes to sharing on the Web, Facebook rules. Facebook accounts for 38 percent of all sharing referral traffic. Email and Twitter tied for second with 17 percent each. Those are the percentages that actually clicked through. The raw sharing numbers are higher. Facebook makes up 56 percent of all shared content (up from 45 percent in August, 2010), followed by email at 15 percent (down from 34 percent) and Twitter at 8 percent (down from 12 percent). The difference between these two sets of numbers is that some content is shared that is never clicked on, thus the raw numbers are higher.

Facebook posting most common social networking activity at association events

2011-05-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

From the good folks at Association Advisor:

According to last month’s Association Adviser enews reader poll, nearly 30 percent of respondents said attendees are posting instant updates and photos on their Facebook pages right from the show floor or lobby.

Facebook as communications platform

2011-04-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

From Peter Kim of the Dachis Group: "I've been thinking about the different types of possible communication on the Facebook platform."

The History of Social Networking -- Cool infographic

2011-03-02T08:34:00.000-08:00

Via: Online Schools

How associations can use social media to build influence and increase their reach

2011-02-16T10:28:00.000-08:00

This Q-and-A is with Maddie Grant, chief social media strategist at Social Fish and co-author of “Open Community.”

What are the biggest challenges that associations face when they decide to embrace social media?

Who is the primary audience for an association’s social media efforts? Is it more important to engage association members or the general public?

How can associations use social tools to increase their membership? What platforms work best for member drives?

Many associations have very precise focus areas. How can they go about creating compelling content that broadens their reach while still remaining true to their core mission?

What’s the role of day-to-day staff in an association’s social media presence? Should organizations be hiring new people to handle their social presence or retraining existing staff?

What can large associations learn from small associations about social media? What can small associations learn from large associations?

Attentionomics: Captivating Attention in the Age of Content Decay

2011-02-09T11:46:00.000-08:00

Great, but certainly not simple, blog post from Edelman's Steve Rubel on how to use various social media platforms, and when -- exactly -- to deploy them, to get the most oomph, comments, retweets, etc...

View more presentations from Edelman Digital.

I can’t find you: Search Engine Optimization Basics for Associations (Part 2)

2011-02-01T07:03:00.001-08:00

I can’t find you: Search Engine Optimization Basics for Associations (Part 1)

2011-02-01T07:03:00.000-08:00

From SmartBlog Insights

Nice website. Shame I didn’t find it when I did research on your association’s industry.

Associations are natural thought leaders and like to be known as the “go-to-expert” for their niche. However when I ask web users, “How do you research something related to your work,” their answer is almost always “Google.”

Not “I visit my association’s website.”

Search Engine Optimization is constantly evolving with new technologies helping web users find the right websites.

Yet every day I see association websites lacking SEO basics that could help them be shown in more industry related searches.

For all intents and purposes, Google doesn’t even know the site exists. So where should you start?

Post to Your Facebook Page Every Other Day for the Most Likes

2011-01-13T07:15:00.000-08:00

From Social Media Research Guru Dan Zarrella

As pages posted more than once a day they tended to have fewer likes, especially once they got past a 3-posts-per-day level.

The Ten Commandments Of Facebook

2011-01-07T08:08:00.000-08:00

From The Frisky:

For all the negative things one can say about Facebook, it would be hard to deny how easy the social networking site makes it to keep in touch with people. But wouldn’t it be so much nicer if all those people had to abide by a few rules of etiquette? ... My proposed list of 10 commandments every Facebook user should be forced to follow or else suffer an eternal afterlife of emoticons and fundraiser pleas from high school algebra partners.

Online Generation Gap Shrinking: Still, Millennials Rule

2011-01-05T07:16:00.000-08:00

From the great folks at MarketingProfs:

Though the adoption of emerging Web activities such as social media is still dominated by Millennials, older generations are making sharp gains, according to a survey from Pew Research. Moreover, key Internet activities such as email and search are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups.

Excellent summary of extensive Pew research data. For association folks, look at where your members -- and future members -- are. Is that where you are?

13 Tips to Maximize Your Time Using Social Media

2010-12-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

From the folks at Brainzooming

It’s pretty common knowledge that implementing an effective social media strategy takes time. That makes tips on how to maximize your social media productivity, such as those shared by Todd Schnick, co-founder of #Innochat, on his strategy for allocating your time very valuable.

How to Implement a Winning Social-Media Function in Your Organization : MarketingProfs

2010-12-15T07:39:00.000-08:00

From the great folks at MarketingProfs

Social media is a transformational phenomenon that is changing the way businesses are creating and sharing corporate and marketing messages and collecting feedback, internally and externally, with their prospects and customers.

As social media gets inducted into businesses as a strategic communication and marketing channel, it requires a radical redesign of business processes and a fundamental rethinking of the way businesses function.

In this article, we look at the four phases of implementing a social-media management system in your business: assessment, planning, execution, and analysis—all with a feedback mechanism that continuously monitors and optimizes for the best performance.

Green Eggs & Facebook: 15 Social Media Tips from Dr. Seuss

2010-12-09T08:55:00.000-08:00

From the good folks at Communitelligence:

The older I get the more I realize how smart my mother and Dr. Suess are.

Yes, Dr. Suess may have some crazy rhymes and guys drawn in his books. However, if you look at the core of his thoughts and words, the man was brilliant. I think he can teach us some nice lessons in regard to social media.

38 Twitter Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations

2010-12-07T10:01:00.000-08:00

From DIOSA Communications:

Excellent list: Everything from "Authenticity before marketing. Have personality. Build community." to "Repeat your most popular Tweets." to "Ask your followers to "Please RT!""

How Medical Societies Can Stay Relevant

2010-11-29T12:54:00.000-08:00

From Dr. Bryan Vartabedian at www.33Charts.com

How relevant are professional physician organizations in 2010? Why should a doctor join the American Medical Association or any other local physician organization? As the freestanding medical practice in the United States becomes part of 20th century history, the question is almost profound.

I believe as the role of the physician changes over the coming generation, cohesiveness and representation may once again evolve to be critical. I’m quite certain that physicians will come to be organized in ways and for reasons that we can’t predict.

Here are a few things that medical societies can do during this transformation:
Plan for the 21st century doctor.
Figure out what brings value to this next generation of physicians.
Identify real leaders.
Facilitate physician dialog.
Recognize that doctors are increasingly employees.
Plan for the coming of the digital natives.

26 Twitter Tips for Enhancing Your Tweets

2010-11-29T09:19:00.000-08:00

From Debbie Hemley at Social Media Examiner

Almost anyone these days can throw together 140 characters and call it a tweet. But to use Twitter for maximum business impact there are many tried and true content sources ready to be used. In this post I’ll introduce practical ways to use good content for your tweets, everything from A to Z.

6 Easy Ways to Get More Visitors to Your Blog

2010-11-29T08:16:00.000-08:00

From the good folks at HubSpot

A blog is an important asset to any business. It allows you to gain visibility as a thought leader, engages your audience in conversation, and acts as link bait. But you can only reap these benefits if you can actually get visitors to your blog. By now, we all know that content is king and that creating remarkable content on a regular basis will pay off sooner or later. But here are some simple strategies you can apply to each of your blog posts that will make your blog traffic soar quickly.

We try to do all of this at Blogged Arteries. Are we hitting the mark?

More Than 250 Million People Use Facebook on a Daily Basis

2010-11-24T08:51:00.000-08:00

From Mashable:

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg just shared that his company has more than 500 million members, and more than half of them use Facebook every day, with growth ccelerating thanks to mobile.

Seven Steps for Live-Tweeting Success

2010-11-19T05:03:00.000-08:00

From NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network:

I like to live tweet real news events, not just conferences, so I found these seven tips a good checklist to work from.

Live-tweeting -- the kind of tweeting where you replay to your Twitter followers what people are saying at an event in real time -- is something that seems to be gaining popularity at conferences around the nonprofit circuit. It can be fun to do on your own (like at NTC 2011), but it can have real benefits for your organization too.

Small or large scale, live-tweeting is a great way for your organization to create buzz, join conversations, draw attention to your causes, and gain credibility (and followers!) -- all at a relatively low cost (your time). And although there's no "right way" to live-tweet, not everyone is great at it either and it can sometimes come off haphazardly. If you're looking to try live-tweeting for your own organization, follow these guidelines for success:

Open Community - a social media book just for association execs

2010-11-07T17:03:00.000-08:00

A new book from Maddie Grant, CAE, and Lindy Dreyer.

Written for the complicated and quirky world of associations and membership organizations, Open Community is about how associations can—and why they should—build community online. (Not to be confused with building a successful private social network. That’s just one small part of a really big picture.)

The book is a collection of big ideas. The simple yet far-reaching concepts, framed by our own definition of Open Community, describe how to approach the inevitably long and complex process of building community online in such a way as to help your association succeed. The concepts in Open Community are actionable and applicable to any association, large or small.

21 Ways Non-Profits Can Leverage Social Media

2010-11-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

Lots (21 to be exact) of good tips from Social Media Examiner

Are you blogging? Using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube to your best advantage? And don't forget about tools like EventBrite and ShareThis.

HOW TO: Post Status Updates on Other Facebook Page’s Walls as a Nonprofit Admin [via Tagging]

2010-11-02T11:20:00.000-07:00

From Nonprofit Tech 2.0 :: A Social Media Guide for Nonprofits

The title of this blog post may be a bit of mouthful, but Facebook Tagging is very simple. That said, many nonprofits still don’t know how to do it. Without fail, every time I demonstrate Facebook Tagging in a social media training there is always a resounding “Wait… hold up! How did you do that? Can you please show it again?”
Here you go… showing it again.

The Slippery Slope of Association Blogger Outreach

2010-11-02T09:11:00.000-07:00

From Mizz Information:

It's not often that two of my favorite things to blog about happen to intersect but today you're in luck. Mom blogger drama has made its way to the association world. Score. But actually this is a post I've been meaning to write for a while about a topic that I am sort of torn about: associations doing blogger outreach campaigns.
To summarize the two links above, in case you don't feel like clicking, the Corn Refiners Association (CRA), embarked on a blogger outreach campaign to try to dispel some of the bad press High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) has been getting. They gave a group of mom bloggers gift certificates (I'm not sure of the amount) in exchange for their participation in an informational webinar and a blog post hyping how HFCS is actually not bad for you.

60 Proven Ways to Increase Your Online Marketing Influence

2010-09-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

From Jeanne Hopkins at Hubspot:

On July 7, in the late afternoon, I tuned in to The Influencer Project. For the next 60 minutes (actually it was closer to 62 minutes), I listened to 60 online experts tell at least one proven way to increase your influence online. We’re talking real experts like David Meerman Scott, Anne Holland, Brian Solis, Todd Defren and our own Mike Volpe, and all of the unmentioned names are equal in expertise to those I mentioned. While some of the advice was obvious, like create valuable content or get on Facebook, what resonated was that these experts – all of whom have influence online, so they do know what they’re talking about – were passionate about their one or two tips.

As a sponsor for this event we have permission from ThoughtLead, the program organizers, to offer our community both the audio file and the complete transcript. For those of you who don’t have 62 minutes to spare, I’ve taken the liberty of shortening it even more – to 60 sentences.

This will give you the headlines, but you may want to take the additional time and understand why these experts came up with their practical advice. I cannot remember when I've received this much solid advice in such a short amount of time.

A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Insights

2010-09-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

From Ekatarina Walter at Mashable

You have created a Facebook Fan Page. Now what? I bet these questions come to mind: “Is my page a success?” “Who is engaging with us?” “Is our engagement effective?” “Does our content strategy work?”

The Facebook Insights dashboard will help you answer some of these questions. As defined by Facebook, “Insights provides Facebook Page owners … with metrics around their content. By understanding and analyzing trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content, and creation of content, Page owners … are better equipped to improve their business with Facebook.

So what’s the best way to use this relatively new tool? We’ve outlined some steps below that should have you measuring Facebook engagement in no time.

Confessions of a Twitter Tag Abuser

2010-09-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

http://gigaom.com/collaboration/confessions-of-a-twitter-tag-abuser/:

For those of us who use Twitter tags purely for adding a layer of sarcastic commentary to our tweets, the idea of using tags properly — to categorize tweets and make them easier for others to find — may seem a little humdrum. But as I realized last week, using Twitter tags properly can help you to reach a much broader follower base.

Users Over 50 Double Social Networking Use in a Year

2010-09-08T07:41:00.000-07:00

From ClickZ

U.S. Internet users aged 50 and over have dramatically increased their use of social networking services over the past year, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
A research report titled "Older Adults and Social Media," based on telephone interviews with over 2,250 respondents in April and May this year, found that 42 percent of users in that age group claimed to make use of services such as Facebook and Twitter, compared with 22 percent that claimed to do so in April 2009. Among that group, users aged 65 and over demonstrated the most significant growth, with twice as many using social networks in 2010 than in 2009.

Online Video Continues to Grow Among U.S. Users | ClickZ

2010-08-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

From ClickZ

Internet users in the U.S. are continuing to consume greater amounts of online video content, according to comScore's July Video Metrix data.
The measurement firm estimates the average online video viewer consumed a total of 882 minutes, or 14.7 hours of content in July, representing a 12 minute increase per person, compared with June.

Social Media Use up 43% in US

2010-08-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

From Nielsen Wire

Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company. The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email, and instant messaging.

How to Be a "DJ" Content Curator on Twitter

2010-08-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

From Angela Dunn at blogbrevity:

A Content Curator is a DJ. On Twitter, you are mixing content, content that the audience you hope to engage will find--not only interesting--but, irresistible, irresistible enough to comment on, @reply, retweet, share, like, etc. Ultimately, you hope your followers will enlist their followers to follow you because of your great content. Some call it a tribe, but think of it as your own club, a club where you are the DJ and people come to have a good time. As a Content Curator, you should be entertaining. Those who follow you should have access to the best content already disseminated for them. You get to exchange ideas about this great content, learn something new, maybe even change your opinion. Ultimately, when your friends or followers share your curated content with their friends, THEY look smart and cool.

How To Write A Mind Blowing Headline For Twitter

2010-07-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

From JeffBulas.Com:

Twitter is a great way to promote and market your content and the challenge with Twitter for business marketers is that you only have 140 characters to get your message across and your link clicked on. The most important element to make that happen is a great headline to make people click on that link. So in essence Twitter has brought back the art of the headline which has never gone away but Twitter has highlighted its importance.
So what are the important elements in creating and writing a “great headline” and why is it so important?

Eight Tips for Optimizing YourYouTube Videos

2010-07-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

From Marketing Profs
http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2010/3566/eight-tips-for-optimizing-youtube-videos

Creating a YouTube video that's relevant to your business is an excellent way to boost your company's exposure.

According to Nielsen NetView, YouTube had more than 112 million unique visitors who streamed video more than 6.6 billion times in January, making YouTube the top online video brand and the fifth most-visited US website overall.

And according to Forrester Research, "any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index."

Those facts make a compelling case for investing a little time and energy in video—specifically, YouTube search engine optimization (SEO)—to make sure people find your video (and your business)

It doesn't matter how great your video is; if people don't know it exists, it doesn't have much business value. If your intended audience is to find your video, you need to optimize it for maximum visibility in Google and other search engines.

Here are eight tips for optimizing YouTube videos.

Social Sharing Adds 30% to Email CTRs

2010-07-12T09:46:00.000-07:00

From Shel Holtz, Communicator

Email marketing messages with a social sharing option generate 30% higher click through rates than emails without these features. So says a new survey by Get Response - as well as anecdotal evidence that the rules governing email and social media communication are increasingly becoming blurred.

Social Media Monitoring Tools - How to Pick The Right One

2010-07-07T11:57:00.000-07:00

From Convince & Convert

Post by Katie Van Domelen, the social media manager at Off Madison Ave in Tempe, Arizona. She specializes in social media strategies that lead to actionable plans to achieve real world objectives.

I’ve spent a lot of time working with various social media monitoring tools and I’ve whittled my list of favorites down to two or three. But I get a lot of questions about why I like particular tools better than others and how I decide to use which, so here’s a summary of my thought process that I hope will help you make a similar decision for your client or your organization.

Social networking sites: 10 mistakes organizations make

2010-06-29T10:18:00.000-07:00

From the Washington Post

Simply creating an account on Facebook or Twitter rarely equates to being plugged in. Consultants said many organizations spend ample time and resources on social media without seeing much return. Here are 10 common mistakes that they see businesses, nonprofits and government agencies make.

Most Multitask While on Facebook

2010-06-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

From MarketingProfs

Facebook users spend an average of 7.3 hours a week using the social site—roughly one-third of the amount they spend online—and while on Facebook, most are multitasking online, such as searching the Web or shopping and researching products, according to a survey from Morpace Inc.

How to Make the Most of Your Twitter Profile Page

2010-06-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

From Mashable

Whether you’re new to Twitter or are a veteran Tweeter, chances are you give more thought to the content of your Tweets than your profile page. But optimizing your Twitter page is fairly simple and there are a number of tools to help you get the job done.

We’ve showed you how to create a better profile picture and how to organize your Twitter account, and now we’re going to show you how to make the most of your Twitter profile page.

And don't forget to follow TMA on Twitter.

Social Media Slides eBook

2010-06-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

From HubSpot:

HubSpot has compiled 27 statistics, soundbites, and slides from a variety of sources, including marketing thought leaders and research institutions. Click through the presentation on this page for a preview, and then download the entire presentation as a PPT file and PDF file for your own use.

This Social Media Slides presentation includes 27 slides on:
Social Media Marketing Statistics
Definitions and Explanations of Social Media
Free and Paid Social Media Tools
Social Media ROI Statistics

10 Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2010 and 2011

2010-06-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

From Gartner Inc.:

(Thanks to our friends at Fusion Productions for sharing this.)

Gartner, Inc. has identified 10 mobile technologies that will evolve significantly through 2011 in ways that will impact short-term mobile strategies and policies. Investments in mobile applications and technologies will increase through 2011 as organizations emerge from the recession and ramp up both business-to-employee (B2E) and business-to-consumer (B2C) mobile spending.
"We are highlighting these 10 mobile technologies that should be on every organization's radar screen," said Nick Jones, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. 'These mobile technologies were selected because they will evolve in ways that affect corporate strategies, significant numbers of customers or employees will adopt or expect them, or they will address particular mobile challenges that organizations will face through 2011."
The 10 mobile technologies to watch in 2010 and 2011 include:
•Bluetooth (3 and 4)
•The Mobile Web
•Mobile Widgets
•Platform-Independent Mobile AD Tools
•App Stores
•Enhanced Location Awareness
•Cellular Broadband
•Touchscreens
•M2M (Machine-to-Machine)
•Device-Independent Security

The Social Pulpit: Barack Obama's Social Media Toolkit

2010-06-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

From the good folks at Edelmen PR - 2009

I've had a paper copy of this sitting around on my desk for a while. As I looked at what was missing from this blog, I realized I never linked to this tidy 13-page document.

An excerpt:

Obama has already succeeded in changing the way strategists think about engineering electoral victory. But, the lessons learned from his campaign won’t just be applied to future elections. Nor will they be limited to governing how the president relates to the American people. By combining social media and micro-targeting in the manner that it did, the campaign revealed force multipliers that are already being adopted by advocacy groups pushing their own issue agendas.
Smart businesses will embrace this public engagement model as well, particularly in how they ladder engagement among natural allies such as customers, employees, retirees and suppliers. Otherwise, businesses will be at a significant tactical and strategic disadvantage when their critics and competitors create a groundswell of their own.
By examining the social media success of Obama’s campaign and understanding the ways that advocacy groups are incorporating these lessons into their own engagement programs, businesses can learn what is required to remain relevant in this new environment by retooling their communications efforts to successfully leverage social media.

LinkedIn Top Social Site in Corporate America

2010-05-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

From MarketingProfs

Among the employees of the nation's largest corporations, LinkedIn is the most popular social networking site, according to a report by NetProspex, which also found that the employees of Microsoft are the most actively involved in social networking, followed by those of eBay, Amazon, and Walt Disney.

Overall, 43% of employees of large corporations have a membership on LinkedIn. Facebook is a distant second (11%), while Twitter, at 3%, has been gaining traction.

21 Rules for Social Media Engagement

2010-05-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

From Mashable

Social media is reinventing marketing, communications, and the dissemination of information. While businesses now have access to these rich channels, the true promise of social media lies in the direct connections between people who represent companies and the people who define markets of interest.

Today, many businesses approach this with the establishment of social media guidelines and policies. This is indeed an important step, and not one worth economizing. But it’s also not enough. I highly recommend establishing official procedures that remind representatives of the importance and privilege of engagement.

The openness of popular networks is trivial. Any business can join and create a profile. It’s the devices we employ, the intentions that motivate engagement, and the value we offer that dictate the significance of the brand-specific social graphs we weave. It’s a simple investment in either visibility or presence. In social media, just like in the real world, presence is felt.

As social media continues to evolve, defining the “rules of engagement” will encourage thoughtful interaction that benefits the business, brand, customer, peers, and prospects at every touchpoint. In the end, we earn the attention, relationships and business we deserve.

Seven Things Your Organization Must Do Because Of Social Media

2010-05-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

From Forrester Blogs

In the mid- to late-90s, many business leaders observed the advent of the Web and asked the wrong question: “What will the Internet do for us?” Instead, they should have been asking, “What will the Internet do to us?”
The difference between these two questions is the difference between a false sense of security and a necessity for action. It’s the difference between Amazon organizing itself around the online channel in 1994 and Barnes & Noble opening an e-commerce site in 1997—today Amazon is worth $55.7B and Barnes & Noble has a $1.1B market cap. It’s also the difference between newspapers struggling with a 70% decline in classified advertising over the course of a decade and eBay seeing revenues increase over 1900% in the same period.
Today, many business leaders are again asking the wrong question: “What will social media do for us?” instead of “What will social media do to us?” The difference between those two questions will define the business winners and losers of the next decade. Let’s explore what social media already is doing to business and how organizations must adapt.

7 Tips to Brand Yourself on Twitter

2010-05-18T07:28:00.000-07:00

From RISMedia

There is a new wave of communication and lead generation opportunities in 2010, among them are social media platforms like Twitter. As one of the most prominent social networking platforms, Twitter is a great place to connect with people and give “tweets” of information about what is happening in your market. Twitter can also be the first place that people learn about who you are, what you do and why you are valuable to follow online.
With that in mind, think of Twitter as an extension of your business. Now, more than ever, it’s important to create a brand that helps your business stand out from the rest. You wouldn’t go to a networking function without business cards that include your company information, your phone number and a description of what you do, so make sure your Twitter account does. Consistency is the key when you are building and communicating your brand, no matter if it’s traditional advertising or new social media platforms.
Twitter even provides users the opportunity to brand themselves and their business. When signing up for Twitter, you are given the opportunity to use one of their template “skins” to showcase yourself or to create your own custom skin. By creating a custom branded Twitter skin you can showcase your own colors, your slogan or tag line and even your logo, further branding you and your business. With a custom Twitter skin that matches the branding of your business website, you are enhancing the probability that potential clients will remember you and your business.
Here are some simple tips to keep in mind when creating your own, custom-branded Twitter skin once you have created your account:

How To Live Tweet A Conference

2010-05-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

From Mark Stelzner at at inflexion advisors

I received an email on Monday from a respected colleague who asked, “I’ve followed you on Twitter for some time now and always find your live conference coverage to be extremely helpful. How exactly do you go about live tweeting? Is there a protocol? Do other conference attendees find it annoying? Give me a few tips and tricks when you have a second.”
Although I am by no means the master in this area and there is no formal protocol, here are some common sense ideas to get you clicking away in no time.

The Psychology of Social Media

2010-05-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

From SocialSteve's Blog

Now I am not a psychologist, but I play one on TV … but seriously, I have always been interested and curious with the phenomenon of human behavior and what motivates individuals to do certain things. For me, the most fascinating platform to examine the driving force behind human action is social media as this is where I vest much of my personal and professional time.

So this week I have given the question, “Why do people engage in social media channels and what motivates them to reveal or filter their thoughts” much conscious (and subconscious) thought. I realize that the answer to this question is not applicable straight across the board. The response can vary across age groups, gender, geography, income-level, period of one’s life and any other demographics you can think of. But as a marketing professional, it is our duty to understand the audience we serve.

So here are some thoughts, so far from an exhaustive list, but hey, let’s get this conversation started.

16 Tips for Successful Online Video Marketing

2010-05-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

From SocialMediaExaminer:

There’s no doubt that online video marketing is on the rise. Numerous studies and statistics prove that video works. In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 50 times more likely to receive an organic first page ranking than traditional text pages. That’s a pretty impressive stat!

Online video marketing is attractive to many businesses today for numerous reasons. Making videos and posting them online is fairly inexpensive. Plus, online videos stay online forever. If you spend the money to record once, your video could still be getting views a year from now.
In addition, social media sites and video go hand in hand and most sites encourage video posting and sharing. The viral video opportunities are endless when you use the right strategies to create and post your videos online.

If you’re new to video, or have been thinking about flipping on your camera for the first time, here are some tips and strategies to get you going.

ReTweets Are King - MIT Researchers Say

2010-05-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media? - WWW'10

Twitter, a microblogging service less than three years old, commands more than 41 million users as of July 2009 and is growing fast. Twitter users tweet about any topic within the 140-character limit and follow others to receive their tweets. The goal of this paper is to study the topological characteristics of Twitter and its power as a new medium of information sharing.

We have crawled the entire Twitter site and obtained 41.7 million user profiles, 1.47 billion social relations, 4,262 trending topics, and 106 million tweets. In its follower-following topology analysis we have found a non-power-law follower distribution, a short effective diameter, and low reciprocity, which all mark a deviation from known characteristics of human social networks. In order to identify influentials on Twitter, we have ranked users by the number of followers and by PageRank and found two rankings to be similar. Ranking by retweets differs from the previous two rankings, indicating a gap in influence inferred from the number of followers and that from the popularity of one's tweets. We have analyzed the tweets of top trending topics and reported on their temporal behavior and user participation. We have classified the trending topics based on the active period and the tweets and show that the majority (over 85%) of topics are headline news or persistent news in nature. A closer look at retweets reveals that any retweeted tweet is to reach an average of 1,000 users no matter what the number of followers is of the original tweet. Once retweeted, a tweet gets retweeted almost instantly on next hops, signifying fast diffusion of information after the 1st retweet.

To the best of our knowledge this work is the first quantitative study on the entire Twittersphere and information
diffusion on it.

Fascinating stuff in this paper. Link takes you to full PDF of the research findings, plus slideshow.

7 Actionable Facebook Tactics for Marketers

2010-05-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

From ClickZ networks:

Facebook has grown too big for marketers to ignore. Over 117 million Americans visited Facebook in March 2010 and the average visitor spent almost seven hours during the month on the site, as tracked by Nielsen. According to comScore, from March 2009 to March 2010 Facebook's unique visitors increased about 90 percent and its average minutes per visitor increased almost 50 percent.

To show that there's been a tipping point, traffic to Facebook has exceeded traffic to Google since the week ending March 13, 2010. From a marketing perspective, it's important to note that Facebook, like Google, has become a major referrer of traffic. For example, Starbucks has over 7 million Fans (or, in Facebook-speak, "people who like it"). Furthermore, Facebook is the most searched term across search engines, according to Experian Hitwise. Marketers should also note that Facebook is becoming device indifferent. While computers are the preferred device for checking Facebook, 46 percent of the under 35 demographic use their mobile phone to access Facebook, based on Retrevo's October 2009 Gadgetology Report.

While Facebook was initially used by entities with small budgets, such as advocacy and not-for-profit organizations, now, everyone's using it. Facebook is a "must have" for every marketer whether you're a retailer, brand, or media entity. Even companies in regulated industries, whose legal and compliance hurdles make social media a challenge to implement, are using it. For example, TIAA-CREF, a well established financial services company, just launched its "Raise the Rate" campaign on Facebook.

But Facebook requires a different approach from other forms of marketing messaging and engagement. To develop and expand your Facebook marketing strategy, here are seven actionable tactics:

Twitter Catches Up With Facebook in Awareness, But Not in Useage

2010-05-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

From MarketingProfs

The number of US consumers who say they are aware of Twitter has surged to 87% in 2010, up from 26% a year earlier; but despite that near-ubiquitous awareness, just 7% of the population—approximately 17 million Americans—use Twitter, according to a survey from Edison Research and Arbitron.
By comparison, 88% of surveyed consumers age 12+ say they are aware of Facebook, and 41% maintain a profile page on Facebook, roughly six times more than those who use Twitter; however, active Twitter users—those who access the site at least once a month—are over three times as likely as other social network users to follow brands: 51% vs. 16%, Edison and Arbitron found.

21 Creative Ways To Increase Your Facebook Fanbase

2010-04-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

From Social Media Examiner

If you build a Facebook Page, will fans come? This is the great hope for many businesses. However, fans do not magically appear from the Facebook mist.

People must be lured to your fan page. And there are some good and bad ways to go about doing this. In this article, I’ll share a big myth and 21 ways to drive more fans to your Facebook fan page. (Though Facebook recently changed the “Become A Fan” button to the new, omnipresent “Like” button – and a fan page is called a “Business Page” or “Facebook Page” – we can still call them fan pages and people who join are fans!)

Associations Experiment With Social Media

2010-04-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

From AudienceDevelopment.com

Thanks to Don Dea at Fusion Productions for pointing this out.

A recent research report, “Web 2.0: How Associations Are Tapping Social Media” from the Angerosa Research Foundation, the nonprofit research arm of Stratton Publishing and Marketing, says association publishers are following the trend toward social media. According to the survey, 57 percent of the more than 300 associations surveyed have tried at least one social networking application and more than one-third of associations have set up their own social media site. Meanwhile, 61 percent of associations report they have at least one blog, which are typically being used for general conversations (51 percent), conference-related issues (44 percent), magazine-related issues (32 percent) and messages from the CEO (22 percent).
Many respondents say they’re turning to the networks. Forty-three percent are using Facebook, 35 percent are using LinkedIn, 31 percent are on YouTube and 16 percent are on MySpace.

Five Reasons Why Mobile Marketing Is Prime for B2Bs—And Five Key Questions B2B Marketers Should Be Asking

2010-04-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

From MarketingProfs

Thanks to our friends at Fusion Productions and Digital Now for sharing this article:

In the B2C space there's a lot of buzz around mobile marketing, but in the B2B sector it's more likened to a whisper. Yet amid the low level of mobile chatter, B2Bs are missing out on super-sized opportunities for integrating a valuable new brand touch point for their customers and establishing a dynamic new communications channel with professional audiences.
Make no mistake about it, mobile has arrived—and it's changing how (and where) business professionals communicate with one another and how (and why) they interact with B2B brands.
And for B2Bs, mobile's arrival means their marketing must also change if they want to maintain a presence in the media where their audiences have already migrated.
On that imperative, here are five reasons why mobile marketing is prime for B2Bs, along with five key questions that B2B marketers should be asking themselves:

5 Twitter Management Tools You Can't Live Without

2010-04-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

From Lee Oden at SocialMediaToday

Without a doubt, one of the most popular shiny new objects of many social media marketing programs is Twitter. There are Twitter books, Twitter conferences, Twitter blogs and numerous articles devoted to Twitter marketing. Unfortunately, there’s not enough time left over after reading all the promises of marketing nirvana from using Twitter to actually implement recommendations.
Fortunately, social media masterminds at companies like Seesmic, TweetDeck and HootSuite — to name a few — have developed tools to make our Tweeting lives easier. Or at least more efficient. We use such tools here at @toprank to grow our own Twitter presence as well as for clients on a daily basis and have learned quite a bit about Twitter best practices and which tools work best.
Here are five Twitter account management tools to help you keep your Twitter activity in check – whether you tweet for one account or many.

Plugin: Live Twitter Feeds Into Powerpoint!

2010-04-20T14:30:00.000-07:00

From Digital Buzz Blog

I thought I had mentioned these tools on the FB4TMA blog previously, but went looking for it and couldn't find it there. So here goes:

There isn’t a conference or professional gathering lately that doesn’t give a special #hashtag to the event so it can be tracked and trended on Twitter as the audience tweets about how good, bad or ugly the presentation is. I stumbled across this cool looking twitter plugin for Microsoft Powerpoint that basically lets you insert one of 4 live twitter feed apps into your Powerpoint slides starting with a scrolling twitter ticker bar right through to a live crowd meter, voting tool and feedback slide.

Facebook Users Promote Fan Page Brands

2010-04-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

From MarketingProfs

Brands that market their products using Facebook may have a distinct advantage over their competitors: 41% of Facebook users say the primary reason they join a fan page is to let friends know what products they support, and 68% say a positive referral from a Facebook friend makes them more likely to buy a specific product or visit a certain retailer, according to a survey from Michigan-based market research and consulting firm Morpace.

Some 37% of Facebook users cite coupons and discount offers as among the primary reasons they join a fan page, but many join to otherwise engage with a brand: 35% say they want to stay current on new products and 31% want to learn more about the company itself.

Think it. Tweet it. TexMed 2010

2010-04-15T15:54:00.000-07:00

The Twitter hashtag for TexMed 2010 is #TexMed2010. See you in Fort Worth.

Targeting older voters online: Google it, baby

2010-04-14T10:48:00.000-07:00

From The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

In recent election cycles, political campaigns’ successful leveraging and integration of technology into their political, communications and fundraising work has been increasingly evident. However, many political operations continue to treat online as simply a box that needs to be checked, or something done just to communicate with younger voters. The prevalence of both conclusions is a pet peeve of all online strategists, but data that emerged this week suggests that the latter should particularly be so, with it becoming increasingly clear that it’s not just the kids who hang out online— more and more, it’s Mom, Dad and grandparents, too.

Twitter's like a box of chocolates, or, Health care hashtags

2010-04-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

From Health B2B Marketing:

Apologies to Forrest Gump, but you truly never know what you’re going to get out of Twitter.
Like many of you, I follow some common hashtags for our industry on Twitter: #hcmktg (short for health care marketing), #hcsm (short for health care social media) and #healthIT. Lately, I seem to be posting more to and learning more from #healthIT. Just this morning, I saw a tweet from a handle I haven’t yet noticed: @icd10watch, which is run by journalist Tom Sullivan. ICD-10 Watch promotes a website developed by MedTech Publishing and sponsored by InfoSys. With the HIPAA 5010 transition deadline approaching fast and the ICD-10 deadline not far behind, the folks at InfoSys are smart to position themselves as a visible leader in the space.

Editor's note: I really like to follow #hcsm. Users of this tag have a regular Sunday night Twitter discussion that is often fascinating. (stl)

Facebook 125: Creating Community in Your Facebook Group

2010-04-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

From the always-excellent Lee Aase:

A Facebook group is like a garden, to borrow an analogy from Chance, the Peter Sellers character in Being There. It will not grow properly without cultivation.

Because a group is so easy to create, billions have been formed. Facebook currently has 400 million active users, and the average user is a member of 13 groups. Do the math.

The vast majority of Facebook groups have precious little activity.

As a group administrator, you have tools at your disposal that the other members don’t have, and which are crucial to keeping the group vital and active.

Facebook To Release A “Like” Button For the Whole Darn Internet

2010-03-26T12:07:00.000-07:00

From TechCrunch:

There will be lots of news leaking about Facebook’s product announcements at their upcoming F8 Developer Conference in April. That’s because they’re already starting to test out a lot of the new stuff with third party developers, and once two people know a secret, it isn’t really a secret any more.
One of the new features we’ve been hearing about is the extension of Facebook Connect and the Facebook API to allow publishers to add a “Like” button to any piece of content on their site.

Six Questions to Ask Before Launching a Facebook Fan Page

2010-03-23T07:57:00.000-07:00

From Shel Holtz: "A shel of my former self"

Who do you want to become a fan of your page?
What are these audiences likely to want from your fan page?
Who else might your fan page attract?
Who will be tasked with the care and feeding of the page?
Who will monitor the page?
Do you have contingency plans for unanticipated activity?

How Not To Use Twitter for PR

2010-03-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

From PRNewser

Hey @Qualcomm -- this ain't what you're supposed to do:

The Science of Retweets with Dan Zarrella

2010-03-22T12:30:00.001-07:00

Dan Zarrella calls himself a "viral marketing specialist" and he has some great numbers to back it up. Good reading for any tweeter who wants some "re"

The Science of Retweets with Dan Zarrella

View more presentations from HubSpot Internet Marketing.

Data Shows: Articles Published on the Weekend are Shared on Facebook More

2010-03-12T13:19:00.000-08:00

From Dan Zarrella

Group, Fan Page or Both? - Facebook for business

2010-03-10T10:40:00.000-08:00

From Entrepreneur.com

One of the most common questions I get about Facebook is, 'What options should I use? Groups or regular pages?' This is a more complicated question than it seems on the surface, but important for making certain you spend your hard-earned money and precious time in areas that will give you the most bang for your buck. You can certainly have both, but it's important to know what you can and can't do with each.

Social Media: I Don't Have Time for That

2010-03-05T06:49:00.000-08:00

A Post I wrote for the AAMSE Hotline - Advancing Professionalism in Medical Society Management

How to Dip Your Toe into the Social Media Sea without Drowning in the Surf

Given: Most medical societies’ resources are stretched thin now. Given: Most medical society execs can’t find enough hours in the day already.

So why would we want to spend money we don’t have and time we can’t spare messing around with frivolities like Twitter and Facebook? They’re just the latest passing fads. And they’re notorious time robbers. I have other things to do.

But do you? Sure, Facebook only has 400 million active users (as of March 1), but it may fall soon to the next best thing. I remember when CompuServe was the biggest Internet network. CompuServe may be gone, but Internet networks are everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the like may all vanish, but social media are here to stay. They allow the Internet to fill that basic human need of congregating in groups of people with like interests.

“Groups of people with like interests?” Sounds like a medical society. That’s right. Like it or not, our associations and social media occupy the same space these days. That makes them our direct competitors. We ought to at least take the blinders off and see what’s out there.

Here are a few tips:

Start by just listening. Set aside five minutes twice a day to monitor what Twitter and the blogosphere are saying about your organization. Set up a search on Google Feed Reader and HootSuite.
Talk to your members. It won’t take you long to find members who are using social media. Ask them why they do it. How does it affect the stream of information they wade in every day? How would they like to see their society get involved?
Experiment. Pick just one of these tools to try out. Spend an extra 10 minutes a day. Get a good feel of the culture before you dive in. See if you can use it to engage in constructive dialogue with your members, prospective members, elected officials, or patient groups. Give it a few months. If it doesn’t work, drop it and try something else. No harm done.
Remember your media relations strategy. Mainstream reporters say they use social media for story ideas, to pick up tips, or to check facts. Good media relations today involve more than sending out the occasional news release.
Don’t forget the bloggers. They occupy niches. You’ll be surprised at how many occupy your niche. And with proper care and feeding, they’ll share your stories with their readers, who are also interested in your corner of the world. That makes them more than just the average news consumer.

Some useful resources:

“How Much Time Should I Spend on Social Media?” by Chris Brogan, author of Trust Agents
“Time, Value, and Risk for Associations and Social Media,” from ASAE’s Acronym
“Tipping Point Twitter,” by Matthew E. May
FB4TMA – My blog on how professional associations can best use social media as part of their communication strategies.

Mobile Social Networking Usage Soars

2010-03-04T10:08:00.000-08:00

From Mashable's [STATS]

Digital measurement firm comScore released a study today highlighting the rise in social media access via mobile phones and offering some comparison metrics for some of the biggest social networks and their usage on mobile devices.

comScore measured the changes in both mobile browser access to social networks and the access numbers to specific social networks from January 2009 to January 2010. Some highlights:
30% of smartphone users accessed social networks via mobile browsers — this was up from 22.5% in 2009.
Total social networking access via mobile browsers on all mobile phones rose to 11.1% — this was up from 6.5% in 2009. Most of this growth was in the uptick in smartphone usage.

Is Your Target Audience On Twitter, Facebook, Or LinkedIn?

2010-03-03T09:51:00.000-08:00

From Business Insider

What social network should you be using to grow your business? It depends on who your customers are.

We looked into who's using the big three social networks for businesses: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Compare your target audience with what we found.

The Future of the Non-Profit Internet

2010-02-26T09:09:00.000-08:00

From Mashable.com

Earlier this month, Pew Internet released its annual Future of the Internet report. The survey of 900 leaders forecasts the future direction of online media. In turn non-profit strategists can glean insights into the future, and how to steer their individual programs.
This year’s research report dove into five critical areas. Here’s what non-profits need to take away from the Pew report for their efforts:

How to Use “Us vs Them” Stories to create Social Media Evangelists

2010-02-24T10:55:00.000-08:00

From Dan Zarrella:

The villain is wronging the victim.
If the listener believes this statement, and believes that the victim deserves to be saved and if the villain is bigger or more powerful than them they will realize that the only way to effectively challenge the villain is to recruit more people to help. The evangelism hook is implicit, subtle and powerful.

Journalists’ Use of Social Media Is Surging

2010-02-24T08:03:00.000-08:00

From the Society for New Communications Research:

While the 2008 study brought to light a striking disparity in adoption rates and attitudes about the value of new communications and social media technologies and citizen journalism between the youngest versus the older journalists, the 2009 data shows explosive growth in the adoption of social media tools and technologies across all data sets.

How can I encourage my fans to take action?

2010-02-23T12:25:00.000-08:00

From Andy Sernovitz and SmartBlog on Social Media:

Having an army of fans is a fantastic word-of-mouth asset — but that’s only half the job. The other part is getting them to take action — this is where the power of word of mouth really starts to make itself apparent.
While most fans would love to help you, they might not be sure where to start, or where their efforts could really make a difference. But with a little encouragement and hard work on your end, you can turn these fans into true ambassadors.

Twitter Analyze Words

2010-02-22T11:42:00.000-08:00

Analyze Words

AnalyzeWords helps reveal your personality by looking at how you use words. It is based on good scientific research connecting word use to who people are. So go to town - enter your Twitter name or the handles of friends, lovers, or Hollywood celebrities to learn about their emotions, social styles, and the ways they think.