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.

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. 

In this post, I’ll feature the first engagement myth busted by Gallup, and feature additional research findings in subsequent posts.

Myth #1 – Social media initiatives drive loyalty and acquisition.

Gallup Fact: Engagement with a brand drives social engagement.

Many of us believe that if we get enough online participation, it will lead to offline engagement. But according to Gallup, organization-sponsored social media initiatives “have very little impact on decision making.” Nor do they drive prospects to recommend your cause to those in their social network. According to Gallup, it’s actually the reverse: engagement with your brand drives social engagement. In other words, as my very smart colleague Dr. Kelton Rhoads said, “It’s the dependent variable. Social media is the result, not the cause. It is the result of political or social action and conversations. It’s a marker that something is happening.”

I was reminded of this rule when talking with my friends at Southwest Airlines. They are frequently asked to speak at marketing conferences about their social media prowess. They said that as much as they hoped other organizations could maximize their customer relationships through social networks, the inherent challenge for their audience members is that their corporations belatedly came to the “customer is king” philosophy; Southwest has held that belief system and ingrained it in their culture since its genesis. A corporation that uses social media to drive customer loyalty like what exists at Southwest Airlines will fall short because they aren’t Southwest Airlines. Online engagement is the result, not the cause.

What does work? Engagement is the result of psychological needs and rational needs. For your organization to benefit from social media, it must create stakeholder engagement by meeting those needs.

How You Can Drive Engagement

Now, so that we don’t see too many rainbows and unicorns, here is my real-world application on how you as a grassroots leader can, through your behavior and creating a culture of engagement, fulfill those needs. I have listed these from the lowest level of engagement to the highest. At the lower end we have the rational logical elements of engagement and then we get to the good stuff – the emotional side, where your behavior can make the difference.

1. An overall satisfaction with the organization – not particularly outstanding performance, but you are honest, forthright and don’t try to manipulate your audience.

2. Delivers on promises – you do what you say you’ll do. You don’t over promise. I see this most pervasive when we exaggerate the power of “advocacy.” Sometimes we make our advocates believe that their form email or letter will change a lawmaker’s mind, or that one good story is all it takes to persuade someone. If that were true, every group would win its legislative issues.

3. Treats me fairly – When you screw up, you admit it and make it right. Have you ever had a grassroots volunteer treated poorly by a legislator or his or her staff? How do you address that situation? Who do you defend? Do you make excuses for the legislator or kindly remind the lawmaker that such behavior isn’t appropriate?

4. Treats me with respect; I feel proud to be a customer – Do your grassroots volunteers get to use their talents? Do you know what they are? Do you ask for their opinions, either formally or informally? Do you incorporate their suggestions?

5. Can’t imagine a world without your organization – At this level, your stakeholders will mentally resolve discrepancies about your organization or brand in your favor. You get the benefit of the doubt. This is exemplified by volunteers who view you as a friend, coach or mentor vs. a transactional figure.

The bottom line? Encourage your team to be evangelists with their networks, and focus on the most engaged volunteers. As the Gallup report stated, “They are most likely to advocate on your behalf and least likely to criticize you.”

Do you know who your most engaged volunteers are? How will you engage them on your behalf in 2012?

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.

Next Facebook, which revamped itself yet again back in September. As Farhad Manjoo points out in Slate today, Facebook’s latest changes emphasize recent content in users’ news feeds over posts from people you might actually like (i.e., friends with whom you’ve interacted with regularly). I’d also argue that the “improvements” appear to be featuring visual content over written, because my feed is now cluttered with photos posted by people I barely know. Manjoo’s article focuses on how the new feed emphasis is leading certain LOLCats-style word/picture combos to go viral, which may be useful for some advocacy and electoral campaigns to know, but it also suggests that our substantive content is LESS likely to get noticed now than before. Great!

Facebook’s solution is to have you “subscribe” to feeds and to set the amount of information you receive from them. Next up for political communicators: begging followers to “subscribe” and to become bosum buddies rather than distant acquaintances. Once again, it’s time to wonder how much it’s worth paying for advertising to get new supporters to “like” your page, potential email list members though they may be. Perhaps the company’s new marketing bootcamps will bring us around to their way of thinking — or else.

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.

2. Live by minimal, die by minimal

One of the biggest praises for G+ so far has been its clean, minimal design. On the flip side of that, Google plans to continue to add features, bells, whistles, and widgets. Yet for some reason, the public seems to think that they can request more functionality without any impact to the layout. Facebook has suffered from the same symptoms with the addition of chat windows, friend lists, and important vs. unimportant news feed posts. The difference is users, myself included, have already established Facebook as a part of our everyday lives. So even when new features were added that we don’t like, we were stuck. With Google+, users have absolutely no reason to defect from Facebook when the difference between the two isn’t all that drastic.

3. It’s not how the real world works

Google+ is about circles. You put your going-out buddies in a circle so you can share embarassing drinking snapshots. You put your coworkers in a separate circle so they can’t see anything but industry-related sharing. All your circles are comprised of people you know, and the people you don’t know get their own circle… with whom you never share… ever. There’s only one problem with this social architecture: the world is one BIG circle.

One of my biggest praises of Facebook is the way it sparks conversations. Let’s say a girl you went to college with posts a status saying “I need a new allergy medicine…” and you comment with a suggestion. Shortly after, another girl whom you’ve never met or heard of before, leaves a comment informing you that she used to used that medicine but there was a news story about it not being safe. Now there’s an informational dialogue going on between you and someone you’ve never met. Next week, you both end up commenting on that mutual friend’s status again. And again.  At this point, you might as well friend her, right? A few months later, your new Facebook friend is visiting your mutual friend for the weekend and suggests you all go out for drinks. A new thread has been added to your social network similarly to the way it would have if the same conversation came up in a bar.

The way Google+ presents itself will make it very hard to expand social networks. Sooner or later, that will get old and they will have to think of something else. However, that “something else” will take away from the heavily praised white space, generating more criticism. That, along with us assuming, of course, that Facebook hasn’t already implemented it renders G+, again, as a follower – not a leader.

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.

Meanwhile, across the globe, larger-scale protests of another type have been taking place, Forbes notes in a must-read cover story called “Social Power and the Coming Corporate Revolution.” Ordinary people, using Facebook and Twitter, have helped to topple dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya — and have created instability in Syria. These actions are truly remarkable for the speed with which they brought about change. They also speak of the basic human urge to be heard and respected.

So how does the Arab Spring relate to the Occupy Wall Street crowd?

“This social might is now moving toward your company,” David Kirkpatrick writes in the Forbes article. “We have entered the age of empowered individuals, who use potent new technologies and harness social media to organize themselves.” Neither governments nor companies are prepared to deal with social power.

“The elites — or managers in companies — no longer control the conversation. This is how insurrections start,” Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, a cloud computing company, told Forbes. “This isn’t just about Arab Spring. This is about Corporate Spring.”

While email was the catalyst for early online activism, Facebook, with its 750 million active users in every country in the world, has become an even more potent tool for spreading opinions. Once like-minded people start saying the same thing — whether it’s about favorite movies or corporate greed — these “memes” quickly become part of our common belief system.

Some companies have learned this lesson the hard way. When rugby fans in New Zealand learned they were paying more for Adidas team jerseys than fans in the U.S. and elsewhere, they launched a massive online protest that resulted in customers returning Adidas clothing to stores. When a social media campaign in the Netherlands protested executive bonuses at Amsterdam-based ING, large numbers of people threatened to close their accounts with the bank. According to Forbes, ING’s CEO finally decided to waive his $1.8 million bonus and ordered company directors to follow suit.

In a bad economy, it shouldn’t be surprising that large, profitable companies have become targets for protesters enraged by corporate scandals and high unemployment. These types of demonstrations have gone on for years; the difference now is that inexpensive tools are available to enlist the help of a sympathetic public.

In this new world, writes Kirkpatrick, executives and their companies will need to demonstrate authenticity, fairness, transparency and good faith:

Clearly, the best way to manage these changes is to realize you can’t manage them. “And pragmatically,” says Kirkpatrick, “social power can help keep your company vital. Newly armed customer and employee activists can become the source of creativity, innovation and new ideas to take your company forward.” More and more companies, particularly those with high-profile brands, are becoming true believers.

He notes that Gatorade operates a full-time social media command center where it monitors and participates in conversations on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and elsewhere. Ford uses social media to help it design cars and communicate effectively with young consumers.

But learning to be humble and open can be difficult for executives who are used to touting their successes and downplaying their failures. This requires a new way of thinking. “Trust is built by sharing vulnerability,” John Hagel, co-chairman of The Deloitte Center for the Edge, said in the Forbes article. “The more you expose and share your problems, the more successful you become. It’s not about the top executive dictating what needs to be done and when, it’s about providing individuals with the power to connect.”

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.

 2.       Don’t Be Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

Facebook encourages open communication, something that may seem daunting to organizations because it can indicate a lack of control. If you want to successfully use Facebook as a tool, you have to put some time into engaging with your fans, monitoring your page, and moderating the comments. That being said, most press is good press.

 
• Post a clear comment policy on your page info, and stick to it.
• Don’t delete comments just because they’re negative.  Even negative comments make it more likely for people to see your page. Supporters will defend against these negative comments and drive traffic to the topic.
• Be active. When people know that someone is actively monitoring and responding to comments, they tend to be nicer.

 3.       Be Human

If you let your fans and activists get to know a little bit about the people behind your mission, you give them a way to connect.  When people are more connected to the page, they view it as a legitimate source of information, and will be more inspired and inclined to take action.

 
• It’s great to post a story or anecdote about your staff that’s not strictly related to your organization. Show the personalities behind the work you do.
• If you have a good relationship with your fans, you can raise money without even asking for it
• If you’re posting more than press releases, you can provoke interesting conversation on your site, giving it a lot more personality.

Facebook is evolving, and so should your organization. In your advocacy campaign, be innovative and embrace these tools as a way to reach a wider audience.

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.

The Circles feature offers additional benefits as well. For example, members can compartmentalize constituents based on the content of their communications. A member could have a Veterans Issues Circle or an Energy and Environment Circle, for example. Circles can also streamline and facilitate press communications. And Circles are by no means the only promising functionality on Google+. So-called “Hangouts” — a native, pushbutton small group video chat feature — could become an alternative to district town hall meetings, which have become made-to-order YouTube set-up moments over the last couple of years.

Nevertheless, one staff member for a Republican U.S. senator told me he was reluctant to dive into Google+ because, “We already have enough difficulty keeping Facebook and Twitter up to date.”

It appears that Google has not yet made a concerted effort to encourage members of Congress to use its new platform. “While Facebook and Twitter appear to actively work with the caucus, Google has made no such effort,” another Republican staffer told me.

Of the senators who have established profiles on Google+, only four appear to use it to reach out to constituents actively: Sens. Bob Casey, Orrin Hatch, Bernie Sanders and Mark Warner.

Only thee House members on Google+ (Reps. Jan Schakowsky, Jared Polis and Kathy Hochul) use it frequently to post and interact with followers. The others have profiles and occasionally update their spaces.

One reason for the relative lack of Capitol Hill enthusiasm for Google+ to date may be the fact that the platform has not yet lived through an election cycle. In the past, heated primary and general-election contests have fueled the explosive growth of Facebook and Twitter in the political world.

It’s also important to note that despite its widespread use, Google+ is still a Beta product. Google is currently testing a platform for business entities that might have additional functions that will benefit political leaders, like advertising tie-ins to aid brand management and data collection. And in addition to its native applications, developers are certain to enhance the Google+ experience with custom apps.

Some Hill staffers I have spoken to feel a bit burned by the overstated expectations of other social media platforms. It’s not altogether clear to them that they are getting out of it all they have put in. But the successful launch of Google+ ensures it is here to stay. And its native functionality and promising future appear well-suited for leaders in government, politics and public affairs.

Patrick Hynes is the President of Hynes Communications.

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.

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.

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.