Facebook Is Changing Business, Advertising, Language…
Click Me To Follow MKCREATIVE On Facebook
We wind up our week-long survey of Facebook with a look at how it can be used as a business tool, and how people are using it as such. Even if you do not yet have a Facebook site, the impact of the technology on our language is unmistakable: ‘Friend’ has become a verb. The ‘Like’ button has found its way throughout the internet. Posting or tagging someone’s wall no longer has any relevance to spray paint or graffiti… Certainly Facebook has changed the ways companies and nonprofits reach out to their customers and constituents. If your organization has set up an account, or if your organization was convinced to do so by yesterday’s posting, then you will want to see how to disseminate your site and to see how it is being received. Moreover, you want to be ready to take on the changes that social media have ushered in over the last few years, and – more importantly – the changes that are still to come.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#HowTo: Setting Up Various Facebook Pages – Know The Types!
By the summer of 2009, Facebook came with a few new profiles: personal pages, community pages, and public profiles. The three are distinct, and even within the public profiles, one has a number of choices about the kind of public profile one wishes to establish. There were some issues (surprise!) when the features were first added, but by now many of the kinks have been smoothed out. A little research before you start clicking can go a long way though, because if you start your page in a ‘wrong’ category, all you can do is delete that page and start over, an unpleasant prospect. But please read on and hopefully we can clarify some of the jargon.
Popularity: 92% | Category Community, Marketing, Media Review, Nonprofit, Technology, Web and Print | | 1 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
The Keyword is “Social” – The Medium is Just the Means
From the study by Boyd and Ellison
We continue our week-long series on Facebook with a brief look at what ‘social media’ means. We make no claims of thoroughness in but one blog post. Indeed, some have taken entire academic semesters to explore the field. What we hope to present here are some common sense approaches to envisioning and contextualizing the social-media phenomenon of the last 4-5 years. In fact, a quick timeline will help put some perspective on the topic: The first widely accepted social-networking site was ‘SixDegrees.com,’ which was founded in 1998 and closed its site in 2000 during the Dot Com Bust. Though similar sites allowing the posting of personal profiles and the searching and liking of others via one’s profile percolated up in the intervening 2-3 years, it was only in 2003 that services like Last.FM, LinkedIn.com, and MySpace.com took off and the so-called ‘Social Media Revolution’ took off. Twitter was still three years away at that time! In other words, we are all new to this medium, and what sites will survive with which services is still an open question. (Time line taken from the scholarly study “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship,” by Danah M. Boyd, School of Information,University of California-Berkeley; and Nicole B. Ellison, Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University. Humans wrote on clay and stone for thousands of years before parchment replaced it for many centuries before paper replaced that some 700 years ago. Social media are still in the zygote stage, by comparison, which makes predicting their mature characteristics almost impossible.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#Social Networks: Facebook Has 500 Million Users, Not 500 Million Fans
Image via Wikipedia
Yesterday we saw some of the early history of Facebook and how that history might be pumped up by the movie “The Social Network,” due out this fall. The CEO and one of the inventors of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, seems comfortably nonplussed about the movie’s sexy spin on his and his friends’ efforts. But other concerns about the future surely do weigh on the young man who recently watched his website and company surpass 500 million subscribers. In fact, one of the awkward facts about Facebook is that it is by far the most used social-networking site, yet it is also the most griped about. Most recently: changes in privacy settings left users requiring to comb back through settings to opt out of new modes of sharing and even opt back out of what they had previously established as hidden information. Numerous consumer advocacy groups have cried ‘foul!’ and are challenging the practice. The movie might only sour further an already jaded relationship between users and the company.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
For The Week: Social Media Focus On Facebook
Are you one of the 500 million?
A purely alpha-betic writing established itself in the eastern Mediterranean about 3300 years ago, which marked a seminal shift away from ‘pre-history’ and towards documentation, institutional memory, and social media. We will not be tracing the evolution of writing from proto-Sinaic carvings or Phoenician tablets to Adobe’s Creative Suite 5, but we would like to look at the evolution (or what many might call a ‘revolution’) of the social-media behemoth that is Facebook. Though not the first social medium (Don’t forget Napster, especially in its pre/extra-legal days!), it has become the king of the hill with its profiles and searches and synergies with so many other networks (like Twitter). Facebook recently broke 500 million subscribers, and it brags that over 50% of those subscribers are on Facebook at any given time. Impressive numbers and a market teeming with customers, clients, donors, and ad-hoc NGOs.
But Facebook has had growing pains as well. Security and privacy concerns for its users, a plethora of competitors (admittedly, many bubble up and fall away at a speed surprising even in the age of the 24-hour news cycle), and even the possibility that the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zukerberg does not even own Facebook. All this week we shall be looking at the Facebook phenomenon, as well as offering some tips and caveats for those considering using the social network as part of their personal and/or professional lives. We begin our saga with the recent media frenzy concerning the Facebook biopic/movie, and the allegations of Facebook having been stolen and/or sold away by Zuckerberg.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#Opinion: Corporate Social Responsibility As A Cause For The Deepwater Horizon Disaster?
Are corporations practicing kindness that can kill? Is BP too devoted to appearing green and ‘beyond petroleum’ to get down to the tricky work of deepwater drilling for oil? What about Massey mining concern and the disaster from April? And perhaps Wall Street Banks were too focused on gender equality not to study the bubble they were pumping up? So suggests Chrystia Freeland in a column in The Washington Post this past week. Surely corporate leaders can walk and chew gum, no?
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
As National Recipe Changes, So Should Marketing of Housing
The metaphor of the American melting pot has been around since the foundation of the republic, though the great breadth of peoples coming to the US did not really expand until the end of the nineteenth century. But along with the melting pot have come vociferous and sometimes violent resistance to immigrants – especially toward specific groups at specific times (the Irish in the mid-nineteenth century, the Italians in the early twentieth century, Mexicans today…). The fact of the matter is: the various groups who make up the population of the US have shifted and reshifted over the last couple of hundred years. They are mostly looking for a safe place to participate in the American experiment and raise their families. Therefore we ask if housing marketers and organizations are taking on board the population trends in their outreach.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Social Media Offers Reception, Not Just Dissemination, of Ideas
Social Media Is For Reading, Too
How many of us, individuals, organizations, and small businesses, have shied away from getting involved with social media because we were not sure we had much to say? How many of us have quietly sublimated a sense of distrust of what we could contribute into an unwillingness to learn about social media? I have, for one. The open seas of social media can seem vast, rough, and uncharted (if not ‘unchartable’!), and from the seashore it can seem safer not wade in. Nevertheless, we have often posted on this blog ideas about how to dip a toe, then a leg, etc., into the ocean – get acclimated, then get writing with what you are comfortable sharing with a wide audience that can become wider still with some patience. But a recent blog posting from Neil Vidyarthi on SocialTimes.com cleverly points out that social media can, and should, be as much about reading/learning as it is about writing/teaching.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Perspectives: Don Akchin, Director of Don Akchin Strategic Communications
Don Akchin
Don Akchin, Charm City resident for twenty-five years (“I’m still a newcomer”), has turned his reporter’s training and love of writing into a successful enterprise of marketing mission-based and community-development groups like St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, The Baltimore Collegetown Network, and the Bon Secours Spiritual Center. Beginning his professional career writing for The St.Petersburg Times newspaper, he still considers himself “a recovering journalist.” After leaving the paper in the mid-1970s to pursue a job with the 13-30 Corporation (which later became Whittle Communications), he worked with print magazines and made TV-news format videos for high-school and college kids. During his tenure at 13-30 Corporation, he realized that he was moving accidentally into marketing. Since 2006, he’s kept a lively and information blog, “The Accidental Marketer.”
“I started out as a writer and I am here to help [nonprofits] with communications. But along the way I realized that in fact I was talking about marketing. So to me it was ‘accidental.’ I think that many of the people in marketing positions in nonprofits are there ‘accidentally.’ They were promoted from being the assistant to the president or they were in HR but were called upon to do fourteen other things, and one of those was communications, or PR, or marketing.” He sees numerous intersections between writing, fund-raising, marketing, and communications. “You don’t need a Ph.D. to do this.” Marketing is about story-telling.”
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#Fundraising: Don’t Forget The Nickels And Dimes of (Micro)Donations
These can add up to big support
We are all sensitive to the economic plight that faces our country and the world: the banking crash and bailout and the unemployment that has grown close to 10% and could linger for some time. The beating the economy has taken shows its bruises first-and-foremost on those bodies least equipped to handle it: the working poor, the ill, the disadvantaged, and the organizations trying to help them out. Donations, as we have often noted on the blog, have taken a real hit since late 2008 (even though the US remains the most generous nation on earth in this regard). Nonprofits and charities are often temped to seek out the biggest donors to help balance the books and keep the good work going. Though that strategy has many merits, we would encourage these groups to remember the microdonations that became part of the donor landscape about eighteen months ago and continues to make a positive impact for their recipients (and for the folks who can spare even a few dollars to their favorite causes).
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Followup On Friday’s Post About BP’s And Apple’s PR Problems
On Friday we reviewed the ways BP tried/failed to control the messaging about the explosion and blowout of their/Transocean’s/Halliburton’s ‘Deepwater Horizon’ platform. Numerous pundits, as we noted, believed that BP was fighting a losing battle anyway, and should have coordinated a contingency PR strategy. Perhaps one that stated the facts without suggesting either optimism or hubris – and kept the figureheads out of the limelight whenever possible. In that posting, we compared BPs terrible gaffes with Apple’s efforts to get ahead of ‘Antennagate,’ a reference to reception/antenna problems on their latest iPhone 4. Over the weekend, we found a bit more material that bears thinking about concerning these two ongoing public-relations struggles. We stress again: the two issues are entirely different (BP still should be held accountable for the deaths of eleven workers – iPhone users are occasionally dropping calls when inadvertently using the so-called ‘Death Grip‘ of the antenna), but watching two superpowers in their industries wrangle with their public images is informative for the mission-based organization also wanting to present a forthright and optimistic message to the public.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#PublicRelations: BP/Haliburton/Transocean Blowout Recapped – What About The PR Blowout?
The explosion on 20 April killed eleven workers
BP‘s third effort to cap the destroyed Deepwater Horizon well seems to have been successful, as pressure tests have not done further damage to the emergency mechanisms. As of posting (the afternoon of 16 July), the BP Global website stresses the cleanup of the Gulf without immediate mention of the successful capping done yesterday. Discussion of the cap is found via the link “Gulf of Mexico Response Homepage.” Such an improvement in the situation might deserve mention on each and every page of BP Global’s site, but this post is not going to question BP’s website design. Nevertheless, the successful capping of the well (touch wood), serves as a telling moment to skim some of the thoughts that have been shared about BP’s myriad PR blowouts since the disaster happened. Perhaps the best known of those is @BPGlobalPR as led by @BPTerry and Leroy Stick. We have often encouraged our readers to follow them through this disaster, at least to enjoy some black humor (and offer donations) through the crisis. But many in the communications and media arena have responded to the ways BP has tried to marshal the PR gaffes and crises it keeps finding itself in – the most recent of which are allegations that BP influenced the British Government to allow the only Lockerbie Bomber held in Britain to return to Libya in an effort to secure an off-shore drilling contract with Quadafi. What ‘lessons’ can be learned from these fiascoes?
Popularity: 2% | Category Climate Change, Cross-Post, Facebook, Marketing, Marketing Skills, News and Current Affairs, Opinion, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
The Asia Foundation Discusses Major Fundraising Via Facebook
The social impact of Facebook is beyond doubt. Almost 57 million Americans used it as of March 2009, and that number has since doubled. Facebook itself claims that over half its members are engaged with their 100-plus friends at any given moment of the day. The largest growth is seen among women over forty, and women use Facebook in greater percentages in all age groups (a topic we shall explore soon). They also tend to give more often to charities. The juggernaut has changed our language and our understanding of social networking, and this blog has often discussed its impact and uses.
But when it comes to using Facebook to raise money, charities often see a disconnect between action on their site and income through their calls to donate – especially for smaller charities. How do the heavy hitters leverage their Facebook presence into charitable activity? Sometimes they work around their Facebook pages, rather than on them, as John Karr, digital-media director for the Asia Foundation in San Leandro, CA discusses in a guest blog post at The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The AF’s “Books For Asia” program recently raised $10,000 and send thousands of copies of The Tales of Peter Rabit to children in Mongolia studying English. How did Asia Foundation turn its Facebook presence into big bucks?
Popularity: 3% | Category Nonprofit, Technology, Web and Print | | 1 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
President Obama’s New AIDS Initiative Posted On WhiteHouse.gov
Yesterday, President Barack Obama shifted emphasis from his predecessor on yet another issue, as he announced the administration’s launch of the “Natinal HIV/AIDS Community Discussions” to be hosted by the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP). “HIV remains an serious challenge to the American people and I am committed to developing an effective National HIV/AIDS Strategy,” said President Obama. “The National HIV/AIDS Community Discussions will provide an opportunity for members of the public to give their input on how we can best address this crucial issue. With the insights from communities across the country, we will have a strategy that is focused on the goals of reducing HIV incidence, getting people living with HIV/AIDS into care and improving health outcomes, and reducing HIV-related health disparities.”
The change of emphasis pertains to a stress on helping those who have the disease as well as educating those who participate in activities considered likely to spread the disease. The previous administration stressed abstinence, which certainly helps the spread of STDs, but also tended to sweep aside discussions of treatment or care for those who contracted them. Early reactions seem mostly cautiously optimistic.
Popularity: 4% | Category Grants and Funding, Healthcare, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Nonprofit | | 1 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Baltimore Continues To Revitalize Inner Harbor With Residential Park
The revitalization of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor began in fits and starts as early as the late 1950s by Mayor Thomas J. D’Alesandro, Jr. Though technically a ‘harbor,’ the specific area known as the Inner Harbor was always too shallow for ocean-bound vessels, oven those built in the early nineteenth century. The Inner Harbor thus served as a rump of warehouses and cheap housing for laborers who had to travel a couple of miles east to get to the docks holding the big cargo ships. Almost as soon as the last medium-sized ships stopped coming into the eastern/inner harbor in the late 1950s, work went into finding other uses for the space. The first round of improvements mostly consisted of tearing things down and creating open spaces that could be used when necessary, but hardly grounds (no pun intended) for economic vitality. Rebuilding came in the 1980s, with a focus on tourism and attractions (the National Aquarium, Harbor Place Hotels, a myriad of restaurants, and the Maryland Science Center. Most of this rebuilding was along the eastern rim of the shallow harbor, but housing took a bit longer to enjoy a similar renaissance.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Can An Animation Animate Donors To Help ‘Tarla’ Get An Education?
“A Girl Story is a unique donation-based film that brings to life the experience of many underprivileged girls in India. This particular story is told through the eyes of Tarla, a young girl who simply wants to go to school and receive an education. Our project’s goals are to raise awareness about the challenges that girls like Tarla face, and to drive donations for the nonprofit group Project Nanhi Kali.”
Not only is the effort unique, it has caused a bit of a stir among both the online non-profit and blogging communities, as well as among web/video designers. The idea is that as donations flow to the Nanhi Kali project to encourage education among poor girls of India, the video(s) change to relate the story of the composite character, Tarla. The question at hand is some form of “Will it work?”
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Americans Love Bargains, Unless The Bargains Involve Health Care
Few discussions inspire such vehemence as the discussion about health care in the US. We have been wrestling with what to do with it since the Great War, and we tend to talk big about changes every four years that we have national elections before we go back to (grudgingly?) accepting what we have. Such raving leftists as President Harry Truman called for a national insurance plan that would cover anyone who wished to join. Such level-headed and scientifically-minded groups as the American Medical Association denounced it as the thin wedge of Communism. The debate has see-sawed over the decades between a debate about lost productivity to illness and the individual’s responsibility to earn health care. Of course, it was hot campaign issue in 2008, with then Candidate Obama trying to move the debate away from a social-right to an economic necessity. Though health-care ‘reform’ was passed this past spring, opposition was vociferous and most Republicans are still planning to use that opposition as a catalyst for their fall campaigns.
Health care is about as personal-yet-public a topic as one can imagine. Health seems like one of those things we will sacrifice anything to retain, and putting mere dollars on our wellbeing seems tawdry. By the same token, the business of America is business. And health care is a business – to the tune of some 17% of GDP in 2009 (though the percentage probably reflects an overall reduction in GDP rather than a ballooning of health care expenditure). What do we pay? And what do we get for what we pay for?
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Charitable Giving In US Shrinks But Does Not Collapse In Face Of Recession & Oil Spill
Americans give over 1.5% of GDP to charitable organizations, according to International Comparisons of Charitable Giving by the ‘Charities Aid Foundation’ in England. Such generosity is almost double the next nation’s rate of giving: England with .73%. Such willingness to give to those less fortunate is a wonderful quality about America, and surely stems in part from the fact that ours is a nation that was built by peoples moving into new territories with unproven technologies and with religious motives to help neighbors in the grand experiment. Moreover, the incredible wealth generated by the US (the present economic crises notwithstanding) has given opportunity for many to give back – the incredible sums given by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet in recent months being only the most talked about. England’s coalition government, on the other hand, is trying to spur charitable donations from among the country’s richest to help offset the drastic cuts required in the government’s budget over the next few years.
Though Americans’ willingness to give, even during hard times, is one of the ways we have been able to keep working toward a ‘more perfect union,’ experts are warning that charitable donations will get knocked down severely as the Great Recession continues, and as the full economic and environmental costs of the BP/Haliburton/TransOcean disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are realized.
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Constitutional Balance of Powers Helps Avoid Tyranny of Majority (and Minority)
The framers of the US Constitution wanted to establish a number of levels (the document assumes local governments and outlines the national government’s inability to interfere in the jurisdictional prerogatives of the states) and branches of government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial). One of their ideals was to avoid the sort of monarchic or aristocratic amalgamations of legislator/judge that ruled in early modern England. The design was also meant to try to ensure that no individual institution within the government could unilaterally act. Such a system has launched a good number of debates and conflicts (oh, and a Civil War). And we are about to have another one that will have a significant influence on the specific issue of (illegal) immigration and on the general issue of which level of government is responsible for which kinds of policies. The US Justice Department is suing the State of Arizona over its recent law requiring the enforcement of federal immigration laws and the expedited deportation of any suspected illegals (SB 1070). The argument is that immigration is the purview of the national government. What is the background to this dispute and who will win?
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
States Key To Speeding Up Citizens’ On-Line Connectivity
Welcome back from the Independence-Day Weekend. We hope yours was a festive and safe one to celebrate the birth of a new nation striving for ‘a more perfect union.’ Not perfect, but ever striving. This week, we will look at a few of the ways we might be heading toward ‘more perfect union’ and ways we might be letting ourselves down. Today: High-Speed Internet
“The Pew Center on the States” has recently published a report on how states might be the most important lynch-pins to build a ‘national’ high-speed internet network. The report can be found at the website FoundationCenter.org. The report begins by pointing out the problem to be solved, despite the fact that the sheer numbers seems impressive. “Today, broadband is available to about 95 percent of Americans. But that figure masks wide geographic, economic and demographic disparities, and many experts say both the quality and speed of service in the united States need to be improved to keep pace with other nations. and only 65 percent of Americans actually have broadband at home. The remainder— approximately 100 million Americans—say they cannot afford it, do not know how to use it or believe it is irrelevant to their lives, among other factors.” We would suggest that ‘irrelevant to their lives’ is the thorniest of possible issues, as it suggests people believe they need not access information. Imagine, in another context, 45% percent of people in the 1910s not seeing why newspapers might be relevant?
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Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD