Social media … a modern day tale of loaves and fishes

Much like the Biblical parable of turning nothing into something through faith, social media has been a modern day “loaves and fishes” for my niche non-governmental organization (NGO), the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).  Through it we are building community, building buzz, and our rolodex.   We are getting people excited …and we are getting them to do something.

ICRW is a global think tank composed of 100 or so agronomists, economists, sociologists and demographers – in offices in Washington, D.C., New Delhi and Nairobi.  Our product is research.  

We were founded 35 years ago … a time when the people who determined how nations spent their resources to combat poverty, hunger and poor health didn’t include women in their calculus.  They didn’t exclude them purposefully – they just didn’t include them.  ICRW was created to address that.

ICRW believes that research is a key component in the process of social change, so we rely on evidence, not ideology or intuition, to guide how to tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems. And we make sure women’s unique needs and contributions are considered in that process.

We are on the ground in 30 countries with nearly 120 partners. And that’s important – because investing in women used to be a revolutionary concept, now the space is crowded more than ever.

Today “investing in women and girls” is more in the slipstream than ever – Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, the Obama Administration, have made international development a cornerstone of diplomacy and in so doing have put women front and center.  So has the foundation world: Bill and Melinda Gates, NoVo, and the Clinton Global Initiative, to name a few.   As for corporate America - Goldman Sachs, GAP, NIKE, Exxon Mobil, all have placed women at the heart of their corporate and social responsibility practices. 

So, then how does ICRW distinguish itself and the role that research plays in social change?  We have a very special product offering – intellectual property.  But, there’s not a lot of instant gratification in research.  There’s not a lot of speed to market.  Not everyone feels a responsive chord with a white paper.  We wanted more people to know about our work and to use it to inform theirs.

We turned to social media and the web to burnish our brand and raise our visibility.

To leverage social media’s potential; first we put all our eggs in a “virtual basket” and redesigned our web site to be our “broadband channel to the world.”  We wanted to drive traffic to a great destination.  We wanted each visitor to be rewarded for spending time with us.  We thought through how seven different kinds of users would approach their search for information from us.  Then, we created the smoothest, fastest pathways to get them to it. 

Our philosophy is influenced by the fact that the communications shop is small, so whatever we do has to go a long way.  We use the “COPE” practice, meaning “create once – publish everywhere.” So when new content populates our landing pages, we push it out through multiple channels … our blog, RSS, Twitter, Face book and if it makes sense, You Tube.  Then, we re-aggregate it for our electronic newsletter, which we publish ever two weeks.

Going after mindshare – without the quid pro quo of birthing kits and malaria nets to send in exchange for donations, but intellectual property, we decided to:

• Raise visibility/awareness.
• Build community to get people exited and then get them to do something. 

Our Strategy is to:

• Avoid “spray and pray” -- We target our audience to reach existing followers and to attract new ones.

We plan – our content meetings are every Tuesday at 10.  We target our audiences.  We “can” our tweets.  We write many in advance so that we are ready to go for a specific push or event.  We keep an eye out for what others are doing … and how they use our content.

• Reward the user experience.  We make sure they get something in exchange for spending time with us (stories about our work, original reporting, blogs form the field, copies of our research, information)
• Measure everything.

So how are we doing? From launch May 11, 2010 to today (10months) -- we’ve have 192,569 visits and1 million page views.  Our bounce rate is now only .5% (versus 50%).  Visitors to our site are spending 3 minutes there and they are looking at five pages of content.  So, we’re reaching the right people.

What else are we noticing?

• Most everything we Tweet is re-Tweeted, and our Twitter followers grow daily.
• We rarely write press releases – preferring rather to connect with audiences through our own storytelling. As a result, stories on our website – our blogs, etc. are being republished by other sites, and blogs.  Ironically, more reporters are finding us.
• Subscriptions to our electronic newsletter are up 11%.
• Downloads are up – one paper on Innovation had 38,000 downloads in four months as a result of social media.  Before social media it would have taken us a year to achieve that number.

As for our next trick – we’re starting to experiment with QR codes, or Quick Response barcodes that any smart device with a camera can read. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data. QR codes can be used to display text to the user, to add a vCard contact to the user's device, to open a URL or to compose an email or text message.   We’ll be adding this one to our print and marketing materials.

To us it’s more than just social media.  We believe mobilizing people with our research can lead to social change and many more loaves and fishes.

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Jeannie Bunton is the Vice President of External Relations for ICRW.  She is a proud member of the College of Charleston Department of Communication Advisory Council.

How To Navigate the Social Media Landscape

With so many options for active engagement with potential consumers, customers and clients, it is important to understand each social network site (SNS) before a company begins engaging with its publics. The fabric of Web 2.0 is comprised of user-generated content and the interactivity of the medium. We're social creatures by nature, and the evolution of the World Wide Web reflects this interactive and dynamic process of interaction and the possibilities for the exchange of information cross-culturally.

You may hear your grandmother, boss, and your 15 year old talk about social media. But what is it really? Brennan and Schafer, in Branded! How Retailers Engage Consumers with Social Media and Mobility, offer this explanation of what social media is: it is an electronic media for social interaction. It makes use of Web 2.0's highly scalable and accessible publishing techniques to transform and broadcast media monologues into social-media dialogues. It supports democratization of knowledge and information and allows general users to go from being content consumers to content producers.

But even knowing what social media and SNS are doesn't help a business translate this definition into reaching potential consumers, and it certainly doesn't help achieve the bottom-line in business transactions and interactions. Below is a video interview conducted by Doug Stephens of Retail Prophet  explaining some of the things your business can do to see an increase in bottom-line satisfaction.
       

How to use Web 2.0 in Your Business

After reading Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0, there are some key points that the author makes. For one, it is important to note the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 as the dynamics of usage, consumption patterns, and publishers of information have drastically changed. Those that used Web 1.0 were considered thought leaders, and the mere presence of an online identity trumped the actual content on the site. As an early adopter of the new web-based medium, one was able to control content information and be viewed as experts on a given topic, merely by having an online presence. If it was on the web, it must be true.

But as Web 1.0 began to be adopted by the late majority and laggards, it developed a greater presence and began to manifest across internal organizational developments, allowing businesses to communicate cross-sectionally. Essentially, before the Internet, the work week ended and began as soon as the employee arrived and left. With the advent of the new medium, work and home began to blend as the "speed and efficiency with which information cold be created and published to the World Wide Web" (Casarez, V., Cripe, B., & Weckerle, P.).

The authors also apply Newton's first law to the business model: "Organizations not doing anything in a particular area tend to keep not doing things in that area and if, by chance, they are doing something, they tend to do the same things the same way for as long as they can." If something works, why go outside your comfort zone to try something that may or may not work. The major shift between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is the culture of the mediums. Web 2.0 is more about social networking and collaborative services between users of the medium, where as Web 1.0 was about establishing a presence. As usership increased, the way the medium was used also saw a shift. The Internet became a community in a "Participatory Marketplace" where the empowerment of users working in the community created a value.

As Social Network Sites (SNS's) continue to grow in membership and usage, businesses must adopt these new practices and technologies. While one is not going to be considered a thought-leader for using the Internet these days, it is crucial to maintain a presence.

Questions or comments? Visit us on Twitter and let us know what you think.

How will we manage?

Really interesting video that hits some key points dealing with the workforce. It’s a tad long and there are some random statistics but overall very good and eye opening. Check it out.

One part I really liked and thought was a good point is when it says "When the talent pool is globally competitive and constantly evolving...How will we manage?"

Social Media Revolution

Is social media just a fad, or is it the biggest switch since the Industrial revolution?

The numbers in this video are outrageous and some are pretty interesting. Not to mention it was made in 2009 so just imagine what they are today...

Literature Review for "Using Social Networks for Staff Recruiting"

APA Citation

Mitran, A. (2010). Using social networks for staff recruiting. Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication / Revista Romana de Jurnalism si Comunicare- RRJC, 5(2), 59-69. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Overview

            In this article, Adina Mitran researches how the Internet is affecting the world globally through social networking and the recruiting process in Romania.  The hypothesis for this article is that Romania does use social networking when recruiting new employees to a company. With the United States as a comparison, Mitran measured how Romanian companies utilize social networking sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn when looking to hire new employees.  With help from Marshall McLuhan’s Technological Determinism, Mitran illustrates how new technology, the Internet, has become a part of people’s daily routine lives, both personal and professional.  This journal was composed in order to be a starting point for further research on the subject.  Mitran stated that a lack of previous bibliography was an obstacle for this work.  The fact that the world is at an online age, businesses need to continue to keep up with the trend for numerous reasons.  One being that using online recruitment is much cheaper than traditional hiring methods, and thus helps maintain human resource departments that usually get cut first when there is a need for a budget cut.  Another reason is that much more information about a possible employee is revealed through social networking profiles.  Employers can view necessary information for their company through these sites to tell if the person is a good candidate for the job or not.  The question posed was if Romania, and the rest of the world, is ready to keep up with the technological revolution.  According to Mitran’s findings, Romania is ready and willing to use social networking to hire certain staff. 

Methodology

            Mitran used a questionnaire survey in gaining the information necessary for this research on the use of social networks in staff recruitment in Romania.  This questionnaire was made in order to ask if social networks are used in Romanian companies to their full potential and how they compare to how American companies use social networking for hiring purposes.  The model used for Americans was made by Jobvile.  The nineteen questioned survey was structured to analyze how Romanian companies comprehend and adjust their practices according to social networks on the Internet.  Mitran found e-mail addresses on company websites, posts and LinkedIn, and used those to distribute the survey.  Out of seventy-four surveys sent out, sixty-four were filled out completely through November 16 through December 17, 2009.  The ten who did not fill out the questionnaire completely resembled the companies that did not see the full potential and importance of social networking. 

Findings

            After analyzing how Romanian companies answered the sixty-four survey questionnaires, Mitran discovered that the people in Romania who are job hunting need to be checking and updating their social network profiles.  Businesses are checking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook to determine employment, except for CEOP and top company positions.  These higher-level jobs still require traditional methods of employment.  According to McLuhan’s Technological Determinism, there is no hiding from this technological trend.  It is becoming a way of life, and companies are catching on to stay ahead of the game and save money.  Companies know that the rising generation has grown up with this new technology and now must adapt to it. 

            Although Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the United States, LinkedIn beat out Facebook in Romania, which is another example of the importance of social networking there.  In both countries, Twitter is rising rapidly as well.  But, no matter the need or importance of new technology, there will always be some people of companies that refuse to join the trend and stick to traditional methods that they are more comfortable with, even if it means more money and less human resources.  According to this study, the most important aspects of social networking for someone looking for employment are their profile and picture for identification.  Not only do companies want to see if you are a potentially passive employee, they can also compare you to other possible employees at a much easier rate. 

            Ultimately, Mitran’s hypothesis on Romania’s use of social networking was correct.   The majority of businesses in Romania do rely on social networking websites when looking to hire a new employee.  This is because there is such lower costs with this method, much lower recruiting time used, undemanding contact with the applicant and simply have an easier time determining whether someone is credible enough for the position. For many people, their life-stories are on their social networking site, which makes a very easy interview for employers.

Critique

            I really enjoyed reading and studying this article.  When I first read the title, I almost kept going because I could not imagine anything interesting about Romania that could have anything to do with technology.  Surprisingly, I was proven completely wrong.  It turns out that Romania is right there with us in the United States on enhancing their use of technology for personal and professional spheres of life.  Ironically, that is also a part of my negative critique.  Mitran goes into how social networking and staff recruiting is a part of everyone’s lives, but there are no further details on what the people interviewed think regarding that aspect.  I know that I am nervous about how much of my life is no longer private, if anything, and that is a big part of a discussion that is undeniable in the future of technology and social networking.  I am glad that LinkedIn and Facebook are spreading globally, but can social networking websites become too much? 

Application

            This article works quite well with what our group is preparing for our project on how social media affects marketing and public relations practitioners globally.  It turns out that even in Romania, social networking is causing quite a stir amongst businesses, and is getting extreme notice.   The Internet is undeniable, and the access that is granted through the World Wide Web and social networking sites makes information so much easier to attain than ever before in history.  Technological Determinism is going to play an immense role in our project because McLuhan’s theory describes how new inventions and technologies have transformed history, and there is no stopping it because more new advancements are being created almost as soon as the last was released.  Companies need to be ready and prepared for the up-and-coming generations, because all of this “new” technology is not going to be so “new” to them.  We need to be prepared now for what to expect on a global field, because almost every company desires for global presence, and gaining that global presence is what we are lucky enough to be learning about in college now.

Technology and Art: An Unlikely Match?

Today Lucy and I went to Spoleto Festival USA and interviewed their Director of Marketing and PR, Paula Edwards, about their use of social media and technology. She had a lot of great advice and input on the topic. She said their main task, and possibly the most difficult, was keeping up with the day-to-day of social media while also making it fit to their market. The Festival uses YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to reach consumers. She said that Facebook is great because it allows them to take their product and put it right in front of the consumer. Twitter is a little more difficult because they don't want the consumer to feel like they are being pressured to buy anything. While talking about this, she gave a really interesting statistic we hadn't heard before. 80% information, 20% promotion.  At first, we talked about how we would have thought that would be switched around, but after thinking about it more, it makes complete sense. Always trying to sell and promote will drain the consumer. Give them the information, and promotion will follow. Paula also stressed that strategy is very important when using social media. For you students out there, the advice we were given is to read and research professional blogs and keep up on it! Maintaining that online presence is one of the hardest parts. She also suggested joining professional associations and connecting with reputable people online.

As for the future, a mobile app may be in the making by Spoleto Festival USA, so keep a look out!

And be sure to look at how they're using social media and technology!
Spoleto's Facebook Page
Spoleto's Twitter
Spoleto's YouTube Channel