K Street Cafe

I continue to read articles (well, see headlines – as I don’t bother to read them) about the “Top 50” or “Top 100” power Twitter users or online influencers. This concept is ridiculous. Especially when they show up in public relations or advocacy publications. Unless your industry happens to be the entertainment of sports – and even then I question their influence – the top 50, 100 or 1,000,000 mean nothing. Let’s be honest, here are the so-called top influncers:

Lada Gaga

Justin Bieber

Kim Kardashian

The Onion

Ashton Kutcher

Charlie Sheen

Mashable

Hell, even Ryan Seacrest

Identifying valuable influencers to target your audience has nothing to do with quantity. That’s the problem with all of the “influence measurement tools” such as Klout. The metrics of these tools are limited – there is no human analysis. There is only an algorithm which measures quantity. I suspect that the owners of these influence measurement tools would argue otherwise, making a case that the quantity is tied to like-minded social groups.

Not really.

Want to raise your Klout score? Do this: Tweet constantly and tweet about whatever the hottest topic of the day is, regardless if you give a damn about it or not. Tweet about the latest trending topic, scandal, and celebrities to see your score rise.

Determining the quality of a network is not a task for computerized algorithms. It requires human intelligence. It requires a discriminating approach to whom your audience is, and who the most valuable surrogates in that audience may be.

Let’s consider the legal community. If you have a massive network of Twitter followers filled with spammers, product promoters and porn stars, your reach is limited. If your network consists of legitimate individuals that have a limited to non-existent interest in legal theory or practice, but who are trying to build their own networks through use of automated tools, you’re not building an influential network. You might be building a broad network, but one that is untargeted and unhelpful.

Be selective. Know your audience. Weed out anyone in your network that does not advance your purpose for being online. Think of it as compound interest. If you build a small group of in-the-know followers – no matter your industry – then you will be reaching the holy grail of what PR folks refer to as target audience. Each of these finely selected individuals will, in all likelihood, have their own networks of various sizes, with a significant degree of others who follow your issue and care about the topic you’re promoting. They can, in turn, then share that information with their networks of similarly minded individuals. With each circle outward that you go, the value of the network diminishes of course. However, that is the very nature of social networks.

Do the unthinkable: Make your network small. You will be far better off with a smaller network of people whom only you can know fit the profile of infuencers within your target audience. In the old days, these folks were called surrogates. So shrink. Klout will frown on you. All the social media mavens will frown on you. But your audience will smile. As the content you’ll be providing, and the content you’ll be receiving will be relevant.

Several years ago our Innovate to Motivate conference hosted then Gallup Managing Partner Ron Balmer to talk about Gallup’s research on customer engagement and how it applies to grassroots organizations. It was one of our most highly rated workstorms. Gallup has been at the forefront of engagement research; they define it as the degree to which people will work for or against your organization or brand. I think most of us would agree that definition of stakeholder engagement is worth pursuing. They have published recent research which reinforces Ron’s prescient admonitions.

Engagement matters because the world is driven to distraction. With engagement, your stakeholders give you the benefit of the doubt when you screw up. They also have your brand as a part of their own identity. They can’t imagine a world without your organization or cause, and criticizing your organization means criticizing themselves.

Gallup conducted research with over 17,000 social media users to determine how people interact with social media and its effectiveness as a marketing tool. Gallup doesn’t conduct shoddy research, so I think it’s worth our time to see if there are applications for those of us in the grassroots persuasion business. After all, we are marketers of ideas and action.  (more…)

Cross-posted from e.politics 

Originally posted on November 3, 2011

Do recent changes to Google and Facebook affect political and marketing communicators? Potentially a lot, so let’s take the sites in turn. First Google, which announced today that it’s making major changes to its search algorithms to update its main search index more frequently. Also, results pages for many queries will feature more recent content (including breaking news) over information that might have grown stale.

Overall, this change in emphasis is potentially really useful for users, particularly if Google can follow through on the idea of separating searches for evergreen content (“learning from Obama online campaign PDF“) from those for ephemeral content and recent news (“Herman Cain harassment suit“). One implication for political communicators: this emphasis on the new and the now gives us even more reason to jump on news stories quickly, since Google’s main search function should have a better chance of highlighting relevant recent content. Crank up those blogs and rapid response machines, kids: catch a news wave, and your words might spread far and wide. (more…)

By Iverson Gandy

Cross-posted from the Adfero Group blog

With the quick popularity of Google+ (G+), many social media gurus are proclaiming the slow but sure downfall of Facebook. To that, I say one thing: not going to happen. Here’s why:

1. Too little, too late

In a very rare and embarrassing moment (and for what feels like the first time), Google made a really big deal about a really bad product. Google Buzz was a complete failure on multiple fronts. From privacy lawsuits to simply bad aesthetics, Google’s seemingly invincible persona suffered a breach in its armor with a subpar product that was clearly a reactive idea in contrast to their usual forward-thinking, proactive approach – and people noticed. The best team in the league showed a weakness, other teams capitalized on it, and now they’re playing catch up, with Facebook remaining the “face” (pun intended) and authority on social networking. (more…)

Cross-posted from the Public Affairs Council blog

It’s hard not to laugh at the Occupy Wall Street campaign, the bizarre group of protesters who recently shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and, dressed as corporate zombies, staggered past the New York Stock Exchange, chanting, “How to fix the deficit: End the war, tax the rich!”

But there was something familiar in the media interviews. “We want a voice, and our voice has slowly been degraded over time,” a St. Louis man told USA Today. An unemployed woman from Connecticut said in The Wall Street Journal that too many people have been dismissive of the protests. “The only way to do it is to show them, to make them open their eyes.”

Substitute the word “government” for “corporation” in the signs and slogans, give them a wardrobe change and a few gray hairs, and they’d look a lot like the early tea party demonstrators.

There are major differences, of course, beginning with the fact that conservative politicians ran to the front of the tea party line to promote their causes. Many liberal politicians have been skittish about being associated with the folks sleeping in a Manhattan park since Sept. 17. While the tea party founders actually organized protests, the group behind the Wall Street demonstrations decided to bring people together first and then figure out its demands later.

But the anger and desire to take back power from the powerful is the same. And, as the demonstrations spread to Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and other cities, major unions like the AFL-CIO and advocacy groups like MoveOn.org are now on board. The mainstream media — no doubt ready to make the same tea party comparison — will surely follow, especially as we enter an election year. The politicians won’t be far behind. (more…)

By Kalee Miller and Caroline Sheedy of Adfero Group

With 800 million active users, Facebook has earned the title of most popular social network around the globe. At the f8 conference a few weeks ago, CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg announced some big changes, the latest in the site’s constant evolution. It’s hard for a lot of users to adjust to the new features and, for organizations using Facebook in advocacy efforts, it may seem like things are changing just as they were getting the hang of things. Despite the growing pains, Facebook is a valuable tool that can raise awareness and inspire action.  

Here are a few rules to live by:

1.       A Few Can Activate Many

Engagement, not number of fans, is key. On average, every time someone shares a link to your organization’s website on Facebook, two to five people will visit it. In any online campaign, it’s imperative to utilize social context. People care about what their friends are doing and are heavily influenced by actions. If you can show Facebook users that their friends “liked” or engaged with your page, chances are high that you can get them involved, too.  
So, now the question is, how? 

 
• Use Facebook Questions. Asking your fans a question leads to viral exposure. If you ask a question, it will appear on your fans’ newsfeed. If they answer or follow that question, their friends can also see the activity. This is also a good way to get direct feedback from your fans. 
• Use Facebook to live stream your events or town halls. Free tools like UStream allow you to broadcast your event to all of your fans. Also, if you use event materials to let people know they can tune in on your Facebook page, you are likely to get more fans.
•  Make everything you can an event.  All of your organization’s events should be shared on Facebook. You should also use this tool for virtual events or calls to action (i.e. “Call your congressman by noon today!”).  Again, this allows your fans’ friends to see their action, making them more likely to join in. (more…)

by Patrick Hynes

Cross-posted from The Daily Caller

Despite the successful and headline-grabbing launch of Google+, only 13 members of the U.S. Senate and 15 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have established profiles on the new social networking site, far fewer than the number from each chamber who are active on Facebook and Twitter.

Google+ launched in July to much fanfare and within three weeks had attracted 20 million users in the U.S. Some technology pundits have labeled it a “Facebook killer.”

Congress’s slow adoption of Google+ comes as a surprise because the new social networking platform contains at least one unique function the others do not: It allows users to segregate relationships into “Circles,” meaning members of Congress can isolate constituents from other followers. Heavy social networking “spam” from non-constituents is a significant frustration for members and their social media staffs.

“Just the other day, someone posted on our Facebook wall that she wished my boss was her senator,” a Hill press secretary told me.

A recent study by the Congressional Management Foundation reports that members of Congress and key staff have embraced social media as a tool to communicate with constituents. But privately, many also complain they receive too much pre-packaged “Astroturf” in the form of canned Tweets and Facebook wall postings. In many cases, these communications come from people far away from the members’ districts or from undetermined locations. Google+ Circles allow members of Congress to target their communications directly to people in the states or districts they represent, while ignoring communications directed at them from people outside their states or districts. (more…)

Cross-posted from the Adfero Group blog

By Kalee Miller of Adfero Group

Obviously, the list of reasons to use Twitter are endless. These reasons could range from promoting thoughts, ideas or people, to updating followers on news and events or keeping up with current trends. I personally use the site for all of these reasons, but I have to be honest about another motivation for my Twitter usage. Here is my big confession: I love celebrity gossip. It’s easy to learn what’s going on in Hollywood via Twitter. Following celebrity accounts has saved me time and money because I can get the “news” free and quick, instead of buying magazines at the grocery store. And while some of us may just be in it for the gossip, I also believe there is a greater lesson in social media to be learned.

Our headline would make a great name if the Institute of Makers of Explosives ever decides to rebrand. (Isn’t everyone these days?) Alas, it’s taken, by a very worthy non-profit. KaBOOM! is devoted to promoting play and giving kids access to great playgrounds. The name is just the beginning of CEO and founder Darell Hammond’screative organizational approach.

Darell published a book called KaBOOM! How One Man Built a Movement to Save Play last month, coinciding with the organization’s 15th anniversary. it has reached the #4 spot on The New York Times Best Sellers list. Darell says the book is a platform to excite the organization’s base, open itself up to new audiences, and convince them that play is not a luxury but a necessity. He hopes to turn people into advocates for play, so that if recess is being eliminated in their schools, they will show up at school board or city council meetings and write op-eds. KaBOOM! has also created an online tool that allows people to input and find information about local parks and playgrounds and organize events there. The tool will become available on a mobile app in three weeks. By mapping out parks, KaBOOM! can also overlay race, health, and crime statistics and get a better understanding of where the deficit really exists.

To read the entire article on BisNow, click here.

Organizations talk about social media with the same obsession and confusion as Donald Trump’s hair. But to what extent are they using it and how effectively? A new survey asks 11,000 non-profits and professional associations just that.

The study, conducted by the Nonprofit Technology Network, Common Knowledge, and Blackbaud, looked at organizations of all types and sizes. Nonprofit Technology Network executive director Holly Ross tells us one of the most common questions she gets is “Can I raise money with social media?” The survey found that 46% of organizations are raising $1 to $10K through social networks—up from 38% the year before. Only 0.4% of organizations raise more than $100K per year on social networks. But not all of these “Master Social Fundraisers” have giant budgets. In fact, nearly a third have budgets of less than $5 million. What they do have in common are massive followings. The average Facebook following of a “Master Social Fundraiser” is nearly 100,000—more than 15 times the average non-profit. In addition, 30% have at least two staff dedicated to social media, compared to 2% of the sector as a whole.

Holly tells us a new breed of non-profit is emerging that exists almost exclusively in the social media space. These groups sometimes don’t have traditional websites, but rely on Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and YouTube. She recalls meeting a guy from one such organization who was talking about e-mail as the “traditional” form of fundraising. She had to correct him to say that traditional fundraising was actually done with direct mail. Holly says it’s all tied up in a larger trend of what it means to be a non-profit. Social entrepreneurs and mixed models of business and charity are changing what it means to do good.

To read the entire article on BisNow, click here.