K Street Cafe

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…)

The 5 Pitfalls of Social Media Engagement
(Business 2 Community)
Social media is a great tool to get people involved in your cause, so be sure not to fall prey to these common mistakes.

Twitter Tip: Don’t Auto-Connect Your Facebook And Twitter Accounts (Mediabistro.com)
Twitter and Facebook are two very different social media platforms, and your audience on Twitter has different expectations than those of the fans of your Facebook page.

Jeff is right on the mark in his post “Your Social Media Strategy May Not Be A Strategy.” But it may even be worse than he reports. Some companies and organizations don’t even have clear tactics when it comes to social media, but still think they have a strategy.

I often remind people that knowing how to use social media is not the same thing as knowing how to use it strategically and tactically.

I have trained many college students (in my classes and interns at work) who claim to know how to use social media at the start of the training. By the end of the training the invariable comment that they never thought it through strategically or tactically before.

Our strategy at the Center for American Progress and Center for American Progress Action Fund is to use social media to influence influencers so they will share our ideas with their audiences. Sometimes that is simply to get our policy reports, videos, and interactive graphics out to an influential audience. Sometimes our goal is to mobilize people to take action to influence policymakers.

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W.H. Builds Message Wall for the Troops (Tech President)
Utilizing classic online activism techniques, the White House new media team gathers virtual salutes to mark deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Reach Older Users on Facebook and Twitter (PC World)
As the age of social media users matures, organizations must be mindful of engaging an older audience.

Video: A False Belief in Numbers? (Brian Solis)
Does having 5,000 Facebook fans indicate that you have 5,000 engaged consumers? Probably not.

Timesavers to Manage Your Social Media Presence (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)
Tips for making efficient use of social media efforts.