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Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky, A Book ReviewBook Reviews, Killer UX Design, Content Nation by John Blossom, SEO Made Simple, Lee Odden, Dave Kerpen, Liana Evans, dummies, cluetrain manifesto, shama hyder kabadi, Numerati, Guerilla Marketing, White Space, Clay Shirky, Trust Agents, Kristina Halvorson, Stephen King, Zen, William Zinsser, Drupal for Dummies, Executive, XHTML, Communicating Design, Joshua Porter, Strategic Planning, Google Advertising Tools, Web Analytics, Right Hook, David Meerman Scott, web analytics, Revved Up, robot building, Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff, style guide, elements,

Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky, A Book Review

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on August 4, 2020

Let’s Look at Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky really has something here. Because I have to say, I just plain love this book. I am a fan! In addition, this book ended up tying with Groundswell for being my favorite of the six books that we were assigned to read in my first Quinnipiac University social media class, Social Media Platforms (ICM 522).

At the time, I started classes thinking I would only get a certification and nothing more. However, I ended up staying long enough to get my Master’s of Science in Communications in Interactive Media (social media). And a part of that decision can be traced directly back to reading this particular work.

Philosophy To Go

Furthermore, I really liked the philosophical and sociological aspects of his work. Essentially, what he ended up saying was – society is changing. It’s not just the Internet; it is happening to humans ourselves. We are in the process of becoming new, and different. Hence there is a seismic shift going on, in our society.

Of course, that is likely to just be the wealthiest slice of society. Because heartbreakingly poor people in Third World countries simply aren’t going to be adding to online or offline content any time soon. Or, if they are, it is far more likely to consist of content that is survival-based.

Hence this would be items for sale, rather than the products of truly creative pursuits. But the internet is also one, big, giant marketplace. And those contributions are just as valuable.

Clay Shirky on Amateurs vs. Professionals

In addition, I really love what he had to say about amateur participation. Because in Chapter 5, on page 154, Shirky persuasively writes:

“As more people come to expect that amateur participation is always an option, those expectations can change the culture.”

So, here’s to amateur participation. Because it is here to stay and I suspect it will never, truly go away.

Ten Years Later, What Do I Think?

I think what Shirky has to say is still useful. However, one piece of social media has a use case which he did not think of when he wrote the book. I am talking about people who do not own a tablet or a personal computer or a laptop. They don’t even own an e-reader. But they do own a smartphone.

There are great swathes of people, particularly in Asia and Africa, who consume social media only one way—via mobile.

Amateur participation is happening on ever smaller screens. And mobile users move quickly! If you don’t grab them in the first few seconds, guess what? They’ll swipe left.

I think my rating right now would be 4 1/2 stars. But that’s not really the fault of Clay Shirky. And, if he updates this seminal work to include more mobile-only users, then my rating would go right back up to 5 stars.

Rating

Review: 5/5 stars.

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The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott, A Book ReviewBook Reviews, Killer UX Design, Content Nation by John Blossom, SEO Made Simple, Lee Odden, Dave Kerpen, Liana Evans, dummies, cluetrain manifesto, shama hyder kabadi, Numerati, Guerilla Marketing, White Space, Clay Shirky, Trust Agents, Kristina Halvorson, Stephen King, Zen, William Zinsser, Drupal for Dummies, Executive, XHTML, Communicating Design, Joshua Porter, Strategic Planning, Google Advertising Tools, Web Analytics, Right Hook, David Meerman Scott, web analytics, Revved Up, robot building, Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff, style guide, elements,

The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott, A Book Review

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 12, 2019

A Look at The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott was a fascinating book that I had as required reading for Quinnipiac University’s Social Media Platforms course (ICM522).

The Premise

First of all, the premise is, like a lot of other books about the Internet and social media marketing, that marketing has become less of a one-size-fits-all/push system. Instead, it has instead evolved into a far more balanced bilateral conversation.

And perhaps the most interesting part of the book consists of the rules themselves, which are in Chapter 2, on page 31 and are as follows –

David Meerman Scott and The New Rules

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

• First of all, marketing is more than just advertising
† In addition, public relations is for more than just a mainstream media audience
• You are what you publish
† And people want authenticity, not spin
• People want participation, not propaganda
† Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it
• Furthermore, marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the web
† In addition, public relations is not about your boss seeing your company on TV. It’s about your buyers seeing your company on the web
• Marketing is not about your agency winning awards. Instead, it’s about your organization winning business

And the internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media

• Furthermore, companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content
† In addition, blogs, online video, e-books, news releases, and other forms of online content let organizations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate
• And social networks like Twitter (X), Facebook, and LinkedIn allow people all over the world to share content and connect with the people and companies they do business with
† Finally, on the web, the lines between marketing and public relations have blurred

Because customers are talking back.  And companies and their marketing departments had better start listening.

Rating

Review: 5/5 stars.

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The Future of Lonely Writer and Adventures in Career Changing

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on March 9, 2017

The Future

The future? Well, more specifically, I mean the future of the Lonely Writer website.

Wait, What?

So as some readers may recall, I started that website as my capstone project at Quinnipiac University. I needed the project in order to graduate with a Master’s in Science in Communications (social media).

Well, graduation happened in August of 2016. However, I had paid for the domain until the end of March of 2017. It seemed silly to try to cancel early.

But now it’s March of 2017.

Changes

Hence I want to change things up. My life has gotten considerably more busy since I graduated. I currently hold down four part-time work from home jobs, all centered around various tasks having to do with blogging. I also podcast every month and I blog for that podcast and for its parent podcast. Furthermore, I still blog about social media and even about fan fiction.

In addition, I still write and still work. I always try to get more of my work published. As a result, I just plain don’t have the time for yet another domain. Most noteworthy, I’d also like to save a few bucks. This project does … okay. Yet Adventures in Career Changing does better.

Therefore, I realized: I should combine the two.

What Will Happen in This Future?

The Lonely Writer YouTube channel and Facebook groups will both live on. And the Twitter stream won’t be going away, either. They do not require as much work as a separate blog. Plus, they are also free of charge. I am only talking about the other domain and those particular blog posts.

So, where did they go? Why, they came here! As a result, the blog URLs changed, and the blog posts themselves were removed for later re-posting. I changed them up, too, so they would be more up to date. That’s all. So don’t worry, okay? That advice and that work will not go away.

It all just moved here, down the street. I was excited about the move. I thought it would help to freshen up Adventures without losing the focus, which is altering my career and also embracing social media. And the writing-related posts, of course, would give that more of a writing bent. That’s all.

Thank you so much for reading.

But then…

Greetings from the Future!

It’s 2024 as I update this post. So, here we are, seven years later. Still no flying cars.

Just kidding.

But in all seriousness, combining the two blogs was a good idea but it also wasn’t. Because the God’s honest truth is, like for so many blogs out there, this site has too much content. And, the content’s focus is often scattered.

So, how do I fix this? One way is here, by updating things. Another is by deleting (or, rather, unpublishing) a ton of stuff. But then that runs into issues with other posts pointing at the stuff which is no longer live.

Of course, I can stop pointing at them. Which… is more work.

I swear, I have the ambitions of a full SEO team for this blog, and the team is just, well, me. Heh.

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Quinnipiac Assignment 11 – ICM 527 – Continuing Program EvaluationQuinnipiac, impression management online, virtual groups, persuasive industry, locative media, what is information, role of social media, ICM top 5, strategic planning, defining publics, strategic planning to nonprofits, strategic plan implementation, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Wal-mart, project management styles, future, journalism, reflections, NESN SEO, onward to Quinnipiac, A Day in My Life in Social Media, Viral Videos, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics in my Life, social media monitoring tools, Media Convergence, Basic Web Analytics, A Crash Course in SEO, Semantic Search, Monopoly, Algorithmic Surfacing, Ambient Awareness, Polarization, Television, Participation, Physician Boundaries, Ethical Dilemmas, Charlie Hebdo, Premium Service, Spiderman, Brian Williams, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, Most Important Role of a Community Manager, Influencer Impact and Networks, Harrison Parrott, Content Marketing for Community Managers, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Best Practices in Using Social Media for Customer Service, Highly Regulated Industries, Sabra Hummus, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Message Strategies, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, RPIE, Biblical Texts, Disruption, Facebook network, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics, NESN Key Indicators, Writing Ethics, Spiderman, Wireframing, Sabra Hummus, Lonely Writer, Final Project ICM 522, reinvention, Regulation, Position Statements, Formative Research, Creative Obfuscation, Copyleft, Recommender Systems, social listening, POST method, regulation, Ad Astra Community, Persuasive Industry, What is Information, Biblical Texts, Strategic Planning to Nonprofits, Message Strategies, Strategic Plan Implementation. Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, Center for Science, RPIE, Compare Project Management Styles, Content Marketing for Community Managers, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Ethical Dilemmas, Spiderman, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Social Media for Customer Service, Brian Williams, Wal-Mart, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, How Highly Regulated Industries Can Best Use Social Media, Sabra Hummus, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Wireframing and Paper Prototyping,

Quinnipiac Assignment 11 – ICM 527 – Continuing Program Evaluation

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on November 12, 2015

A Look at Quinnipiac Assignment 11 – ICM 527 – Continuing Program Evaluation

This week, we continued studying the evaluation of public relations campaigns as a continuing program evaluation.

Ethical Issues Regarding Evaluation

As is true for any presentation of numbers, there are ways to spin findings which can lead a reader to believe one thing or another. You can use numbers to make a case. And some numbers, if suppressed or deemphasized or just plain omitted, could alter organizational decision-making. This only gets into telling the truth with numbers.

All bets are off if a strategic planner or any sort of analyst out and out alters the figures they have to present,. Or if they didn’t get accurate or truthful numbers to begin with.

Cans Get You Cooking

But even if the analyst is completely honest about results and figures, there are still issues with emphasis and language. For the Cans Get You Cooking campaign, the initial purpose had to have been to increase the sale of canned goods. Instead, they labeled the campaign as a success for leading to an increase in awareness of canned foods.

Awareness is a perfectly legitimate (and objective) goal for a campaign. But they seem to have swept the goal of increased sales under the rug. This was in favor of the one, demonstrable, favorable outcome – a boost in awareness.

On page 125, Place notes

“The role of ethics in public relations evaluation was described by participants as inherently associated with truth and fairness. For some professionals, this meant conveying evaluation data accurately and truthfully to organizational leadership or clients. For other professionals, this meant measuring whether the most accurate story or brand image reached an organization’s publics.”

Upshot

Professionals, fortunately, realize that others can misinterpret their words, even if they are reporting accurately on the numbers. If a campaign increases, say, signups for a class by five over an initial figure of five, then how do they report that?

Is it a report of a new five signups, or does the professional state that signups have doubled? Both are mathematically correct, but there is an exciting spin to the latter which may be making it look more significant than it truly is.

The Real Warriors and Okay 2 Talk Campaigns

A review of both campaigns revealed good attention to detail. Both campaigns seemed to be rather carefully planned.

The Real Warriors Campaign was designed to encourage active armed services personnel and veterans of recent American military campaigns (since 9/11) to seek psychological counseling and other help for post-traumatic stress disorder, e. g. ‘invisible wounds’. Primary research included focus groups and key informant interviews. All of the campaign’s goals were awareness-based.

The goal was to decrease stigma felt by veterans seeking mental health assistance.

Measurements

The measurement of the effectiveness of the campaign included the distribution of campaign materials, website visitors, and social media interactions, plus news stories. This is good for an awareness campaign, but where are the actions? Where are the increased numbers of veterans seeking help?

A far more germane measurement would be to show an increase in personnel hours for armed forces mental health professionals.

Or perhaps there could be a measurement of the hiring of more counselors, or agreements with more civilian counselors. Without naming names or otherwise violating privacy, the number of patients in treatment is easy to tally. So can the number of appointments made, even if some of the appointments were never kept. Another objective measurement of success would be a decrease in suicides and fewer calls by veterans to suicide prevention hotlines. The campaign shows none of that.

OK 2 Talk

As for the OK 2 Talk Campaign, that campaign’s goals were to create awareness and also to launch a safe social media space. Tumblr was their chosen platform as it allowed for anonymity. It seems to have also been chosen for a demographic match although that is not spelled out.

Metrics

The measurement of the effectiveness of that campaign was a lot more closely aligned with its initial goals than the Real Warriors report showed. For example, the OK 2 Talk report gave objective figures regarding engagement on OK2Talk.org. The page views are not necessarily indicative of much. It is the content submissions which seem to better reflect engagement.

On the Tumblr blog, they encourage visitors to anonymously post about how they are feeling. The blog makes it clear that they will not post everyone’s writing.

However, there are several well-written or illustrated posts showcasing various viewpoints. OK 2 Talk intelligently shows all kinds of posts. This is even those where the writers clearly need help or are just reblogging messages put together by creative professionals.

The Continuing Program Evaluation Campaign

The campaign report shows the number of content submissions and the number of clickthroughs to a ‘get help’ screen. There is also a statement regarding ‘thousands’ of comments but no specifics. They could have shown this more clearly. But that does not truly matter.

Showing the number of clickthroughs to the ‘get help’ screen was an objective and direct measurement of how the campaign is going. It answers the question, ‘did it work, or was it just a colorful and fancy waste of time?’ with ‘yes, it did’, and far more effectively than the distribution of materials ever could.

Smith Says…

As Smith notes on page 335

“Guesses aren’t good enough; Hard work and cost aren’t measures of effectiveness; Creativity isn’t, either; Dissemination doesn’t equal communication; Knowledge doesn’t always lead to acceptance; and Behavior is the ultimate measure.”

In particular, Real Warriors should have remembered that dissemination does not equal communication. After all, the distributed campaign materials could have gone right into the trash. Yes, the campaign’s stated goal was awareness. But the campaign can only really measure it with some form of observable action. Without some demonstrated actions, Real Warriors seems more like a lot of paper redistribution.

The two campaigns have similar goals, and both have the valiant ideal of helping the mentally ill. But it’s only OK 2 Talk which is showing objective and relevant results.

Relating it all back to the ILSC

For the Institute for Life Sciences Collaboration, deciding what to measure, and to make sure it is being accurately measured, are important steps to take. It is pretty easy to count website visitors using Google Analytics or the like. But a better measurement is actual engagement like blog comments, Facebook comments and shares, and LinkedIn comments. This will tie directly to awareness objectives.

For objectives on adding high schools to the Small World Initiative, good measurements include the number of times that educators click through to a ‘get information’ page. The ILSC should add one to a revamped website. They can also expect such inquiries in the comments and messaging sections of a possible future ILSC Facebook group.

A similar vehicle for obtaining such inquiries could be a possible future LinkedIn group for the ILSC, and its topics.

Measurements of the campaign reaching donors could be a look at the number of visits to a donations page. It would also be the percentages of site visitors who went all the way through the online donations funnel. Knowing where they stop (if a visit does not lead to a donation) would be extremely helpful information to have.

More About the Continuing Program Evaluation

For the website, Google Analytics should be used to tie back to visitor acquisition. If Facebook turns out to be the most popular place for visitors to come from, then the ILSC should concentrate there. A surprisingly small amount of money (e. g. $20.00 or so) can boost a post and reach even more people.

This measurement is useful for all types of objectives, as it helps to define where to best concentrate the ILSC’s social media time. There is little use in devoting substantial time to LinkedIn if the publics don’t come to the website and don’t donate any funds.

Awareness needs to be related to action, for it is action that will get the SWI out of its funding gap and help keep the ILSC going for years to come.

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Quinnipiac Assignment 10 – ICM 527 – Program EvaluationQuinnipiac, impression management online, virtual groups, persuasive industry, locative media, what is information, role of social media, ICM top 5, strategic planning, defining publics, strategic planning to nonprofits, strategic plan implementation, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Wal-mart, project management styles, future, journalism, reflections, NESN SEO, onward to Quinnipiac, A Day in My Life in Social Media, Viral Videos, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics in my Life, social media monitoring tools, Media Convergence, Basic Web Analytics, A Crash Course in SEO, Semantic Search, Monopoly, Algorithmic Surfacing, Ambient Awareness, Polarization, Television, Participation, Physician Boundaries, Ethical Dilemmas, Charlie Hebdo, Premium Service, Spiderman, Brian Williams, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, Most Important Role of a Community Manager, Influencer Impact and Networks, Harrison Parrott, Content Marketing for Community Managers, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Best Practices in Using Social Media for Customer Service, Highly Regulated Industries, Sabra Hummus, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Message Strategies, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, RPIE, Biblical Texts, Disruption, Facebook network, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics, NESN Key Indicators, Writing Ethics, Spiderman, Wireframing, Sabra Hummus, Lonely Writer, Final Project ICM 522, reinvention, Regulation, Position Statements, Formative Research, Creative Obfuscation, Copyleft, Recommender Systems, social listening, POST method, regulation, Ad Astra Community, Persuasive Industry, What is Information, Biblical Texts, Strategic Planning to Nonprofits, Message Strategies, Strategic Plan Implementation. Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, Center for Science, RPIE, Compare Project Management Styles, Content Marketing for Community Managers, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Ethical Dilemmas, Spiderman, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Social Media for Customer Service, Brian Williams, Wal-Mart, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, How Highly Regulated Industries Can Best Use Social Media, Sabra Hummus, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Wireframing and Paper Prototyping,

Quinnipiac Assignment 10 – ICM 527 – Program Evaluation

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on November 5, 2015

Quinnipiac Assignment 10 – ICM 527 – Program Evaluation

Let’s do a program evaluation. This week’s readings were about evaluating a strategic plan and program.

Key Concepts

As Smith said, on (Page 331), “Program evaluation is the systematic measurement of the outcomes of a project, program or campaign based on the extent to which stated objectives are achieved.”

With a plan in place and measurable, clear objectives included in it, the next question is whether anything is working. This comes from figuring out how to measure results and what’s ‘good’ or at least adequate.

In Module 8, we studied Cans Get You Cooking, where the idea was to increase awareness of cans’ use in cooking via cooking shows and blogs. However, another objective was increased sales (after all, why bother with such a campaign if sales don’t increase?), and in that respect the plan was unsuccessful. According to Companies and Markets, the purchase of canned goods declines because of improvements in the economy.

When consumers have more discretionary income to spend on foodstuffs, they purchase fewer canned goods – no matter how well-crafted a campaign is. There was increased awareness, yes, and under that criterion, the campaign worked. But under the criterion of increased sales, it did not.

The Case of the Traveling Goalposts

It seemed a little as if the goalposts were moved in that campaign, that increased sales became a less attainable goal. Awareness was a far more readily attainable goal, and so they presented awareness as the premise behind the campaign.

These moved goalposts are the difference between what Smith refers to as awareness and action objectives, on pages 332 – 335, with the third type of objective, acceptance, straddling a line between both of the others. For the Cans Get You Cooking campaign, it seems as if the attainment of the awareness objective was the only cause for celebration.

Smith makes a compelling case on page 334, that creativity, effort, and cost don’t count as measures of effectiveness. All of those facets of a campaign are on the side of the organization. But measures of awareness, acceptance, and action are all effects felt (and acted upon) by publics. By definition, creativity, etc. should not have anything to do with the effectiveness of a campaign.

The Eight-Step AMEC Social Media Measurement Process

Jeffrey (Page 4) outlines, “The Eight-Step Social Media Measurement Process

  1. Identify organizational and departmental goals.
  2. Research stakeholders for each and prioritize.
  3. Set specific objectives for each prioritized stakeholder group.
  4. Set social media Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) against each stakeholder objective.
  5. Choose tools and benchmark (using the AMEC Matrix).
    • Public Relations Activity
    • Intermediary Effects
    • Target Audience Effects
  6. Analyze the results and compare to costs.
  7. Present to management.
  8. Measure continuously and improve performance.”
Quinnipiac Assignment 10 - ICM 527 - Program Evaluation
Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0

What’s it Like?

This process compares favorably to methodologies learned in ICM 524 – Social Media Analytics. In that class, we read Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik. On pages 29 – 32, Kaushik outlined his Step 3 – Identifying Your Web Analytics Soul Mate (How to Run an Effective Tool Pilot) (average time: 2 years) Evaluate the following –

  • Usability
  • Functionality
  • Technical
  • Response
  • Total cost of ownership

Also –

  • Get enough time
  • Be fair
  • Ask about data sampling
  • Segment like crazy
  • Ask about search analytics
  • Test site content grouping
  • Bring on the interns (or the VPs!)
  • Test support quality
  • Reconcile the numbers (they won’t add up, but it’s fun!)
  • Check the daily/normal stuff
  • Sweat the TCO (total cost of ownership)

What Kaushik said, and what Jeffrey said, are similar. Because measurement is an objective activity. This is why objectives need to be clear and measurable. Five percent is measurable; better exposure (in general) is not.

For both authors, the idea is to have specific objectives and then act on them, whether those objectives are to launch a strategic campaign or select a web analytics vendor. Then, once they choose the vendor, get the yardstick in place, and use it.

Kaushik further reminds us that, while our intention may be to select a vendor and essentially ‘marry’ it, we still need to be evaluating the evaluator. If it’s not performing up to our reasonable specifications, then it’s time for vendor divorce court.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

On page 7 of Jeffrey, it says, “Shel Holtz, principal of Holtz Communication + Technology (www.holtz.com) defined a KPI as a ‘quantifiable measurement, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of one’s effort.’”

This puts KPIs on a par with what we have been calling objectives. Wanting to ‘get better’ is one thing. But it’s vague and subject to weaseling.

Wanting to improve recognition of the Institute for Life Sciences Collaboration  (ILSC) and its missions by 5% as is measured by surveys taken during the second quarter of 2016 is a measurable key performance indicator. Therefore, anyone who can read numbers will be able to determine whether the KPI has been met.

Program Evaluation Re: Applicability to the ILSC

Beyond just recognition measurements, there are any numbers of KPIs to measured. These include the number of schools served by the Small World Initiative by a certain date, or increasing donations by a particular amount, subject to a clear deadline.

The ILSC

Currently, the ILSC website in particular seems to be just something people threw together. But it’s without any sense of how to deal with technological and design changes, or scalability. Keeping measurements out of the mix means the ILSC website can be started and then forgotten about. And it seems a lot like that’s exactly what happened.

However, a website cannot be a flash in the pan, as that can cause the publics to feel the organization behind it is also fly by night. Particularly when asking for money, an organization needs to give forth the impression of trustworthiness and solidity.

Adding Key Performance Indicators and measurements means there needs to be a sea change in how the ILSC views the website. It isn’t just something you throw together in an afternoon, for some temp hired for a few weeks to handle and then never see again. Instead, it needs to be an integral part of the organization.

Program Evaluation: Takeaways

While the organization’s work is (generally) offline, there still needs to be room for the website in the minds of the organization’s board members. One facet of their thinking has to include how to best use the website and social media, to better communication the ILSC’s mission and goals, and to communicate with its publics.

The website has got to have a place in those conversations, and it currently does not. That has to change.

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Quinnipiac Assignment 08 – ICM 527 – Communication TacticsQuinnipiac, impression management online, virtual groups, persuasive industry, locative media, what is information, role of social media, ICM top 5, strategic planning, defining publics, strategic planning to nonprofits, strategic plan implementation, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Wal-mart, project management styles, future, journalism, reflections, NESN SEO, onward to Quinnipiac, A Day in My Life in Social Media, Viral Videos, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics in my Life, social media monitoring tools, Media Convergence, Basic Web Analytics, A Crash Course in SEO, Semantic Search, Monopoly, Algorithmic Surfacing, Ambient Awareness, Polarization, Television, Participation, Physician Boundaries, Ethical Dilemmas, Charlie Hebdo, Premium Service, Spiderman, Brian Williams, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, Most Important Role of a Community Manager, Influencer Impact and Networks, Harrison Parrott, Content Marketing for Community Managers, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Best Practices in Using Social Media for Customer Service, Highly Regulated Industries, Sabra Hummus, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Message Strategies, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, RPIE, Biblical Texts, Disruption, Facebook network, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics, NESN Key Indicators, Writing Ethics, Spiderman, Wireframing, Sabra Hummus, Lonely Writer, Final Project ICM 522, reinvention, Regulation, Position Statements, Formative Research, Creative Obfuscation, Copyleft, Recommender Systems, social listening, POST method, regulation, Ad Astra Community, Persuasive Industry, What is Information, Biblical Texts, Strategic Planning to Nonprofits, Message Strategies, Strategic Plan Implementation. Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, Center for Science, RPIE, Compare Project Management Styles, Content Marketing for Community Managers, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Ethical Dilemmas, Spiderman, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Social Media for Customer Service, Brian Williams, Wal-Mart, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, How Highly Regulated Industries Can Best Use Social Media, Sabra Hummus, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Wireframing and Paper Prototyping,

Quinnipiac Assignment 08 – ICM 527 – Communication Tactics

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on October 22, 2015

Quinnipiac Assignment 08 – ICM 527 – Communication Tactics

Let’s start with key concepts for communication tactics.

As Smith says on page 227, “A communication tactic is the visible element of a strategic plan.”

Smith mainly talks about more traditional means of communicating with publics, dividing the methodologies and strategic communication tactics into working with organizational media, the news media, or utilizing advertising and promotional media. Some of this applies pretty seamlessly to social media, whereas other aspects do not.

Organized Media and Communication Tactics

With organizational media, the questions are of the type of organizational control and ties, e. g. is the media internal like a company newsletter, and is it controlled? Is it for a targeted media (targeted buyer personae) or the mass media? Is the communication via popular media (e. g. The New York Times) or trade media (Variety)?

Do the communications go only one way, or are they interactive (the hallmark of social media)? Is the media publicly or privately owned, and what type is it, e. g. print, electronic, or digital?

The question of popular versus trade media applies well to social media. Is a message intended for Google or a mainstream blog, or is it being disseminated in a closed forum or a specialty Facebook group?

Smith goes on to bring up planning and various events for communications, such as special events (an art exhibition’s opening, for example) or contests. Planning involves putting together print publications such as press kits, electronic communications like podcasts, digital media like websites, and social media, like blogs or wikis.

Special Mention

One tactic deserving of special mention is creating a ready to broadcast bit of media for a news outlet, such as a news fact sheet or a video B-roll. Smith explains, on page 276,“One of the most frequently used categories of news media tactics is direct information subsidy – information that is presented to the media more or less ready for use.”

For news producers facing deadline pressure and needing to fill a ravenous 24 hour news cycle, ready-made media is most welcome.

Applying These Communication Tactics to the ILSC

Putting together ready-made press information would be a great way for the Institute for Life Sciences Collaboration to get more positive press. A reporter looking to prepare a piece on the HIV crisis in Ghana is not necessarily going to have the time to gather the best images.

They may not be able to find the most articulate patients for a story focusing on the ILSC.

Maybe the ILSC just provides names and contact information. Even so, that can make the difference between a story not being written at all, versus one that is not only written, but shows the ILSC in the best possible light.

The same is true for the Small World Initiative. Rather than making a reporter dig to find the contact information for educators, why not provide it for them? It’s up to the reporter, of course, to decide whether to pursue the story at all. But why not lower one of the hurdles?

Case Study Tactics

We looked at three case studies this week, “Giving Tuesday”, “Cans Get You Cooking”, and “Search for Amazing Women”. 

Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday was all about a campaign to take advantage of the spending momentum that annually swirls around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It dovetailed well with increased giving impulses. These tend to coincide with the holiday season and the end of the calendar year.

The 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation found the following from their research: (Page 2).

“Our initial secondary research showed us that in 2011, Americans gave almost $300 billion to favorite causes, but total dollars donated had yet to rebound to pre-recession levels. People were spending, though: Holiday retail sales were increasing at a rate of 3.3 percent a year. And we know that people are willing to give if asked.”

Social Media

The campaign, which was communications on social media which spread the word, was a success. According to the case study, “on #GivingTuesday, nonprofits raised amounts up 63 percent over 2013 on five major donation-processing platforms.

Based on initial results from Blackbaud, U.S. online giving was up 36 percent among its clients, compared with #GivingTuesday 2013 (to $26.1 million), and it saw a 15 percent increase in the number of nonprofits that processed online donations.”

Cans Get You Cooking

For Cans Get You Cooking, the idea was to increase awareness of cans’ use in cooking via cooking shows and blogs.

It was a well-coordinated online marketing campaign in particular, which (Page 3) “implemented campaign’s Search Engine Marketing initiative, targeting consumers on Google already searching for ‘what to make for dinner’ or ‘easy recipes,’ among hundreds of other key word/phrase triggers, driving them to CansGetYouCooking.com, where they were exposed to campaign messages, the 30-minute special with Kelsey Nixon, canned foods recipes and much more.”

After reading the case study a few times, the thing I could not find was anything about sales. There was more interest in buying canned goods, but there’s nothing in the study about any actual increase in purchases.

I was able to find a survey online (A Look Inside America’s Cantry) but still nothing about dollar figures.

Older Surveys

I was also able to find a survey about the sales of canned fruit from 2011 through 2014 inclusive, and the numbers did not fluctuate significantly. And according to Companies and Markets, the purchase of canned goods declines because of improvements in the economy.

When consumers have more discretionary income to spend on foodstuffs, they steer away from canned goods. This is true no matter how well-crafted a campaign is, or how companies use said campaign. It seems that Cans Get You Cooking was least effective where it really counted. 

The Search for Amazing Women

The Search for Amazing Women was an effort to draw a defunct competitor’s customers to Christopher & Banks; a clothing store catering to women aged 40 – 60. The campaign included using Facebook to target key demographics (age and gender). These included military wives and professions traditionally dominated by women. For example, nursing, teaching, and dental hygienists.

Competitors were also targeted, as were mentions of breast cancer (men can get breast cancer, too, but women make up a good 99% of all diagnoses). A look at the Christopher & Banks website reveals that the campaign is ongoing, which fits in well with page 3 of last week’s Vocus article, which mentions creating and maintaining a steady and consistent presence and not just dabbling.

But Did These Communication Tactics Work?

Did it increase sales? According to the campaign, not only did sales go up, but the number of qualified leads increased.

On page 3, the campaign notes its results were as follows.

“Created new brand-loyal customers through the contest: 2 grand prize winners and 6 runners up were non-customers. Since being named Amazing Women, the winners have posted pictures of themselves and friends at CB stores and shared CB promotions on Facebook. • Added 4,656 qualified prospective customers to the CRM database for future marketing efforts, with the goal of converting them to active customers. With this group added prior to the critical 2014 holiday season, the company achieved their holiday sales goals.”

Unlike the Cans Get You Cooking campaign, the Search for Amazing Women showed demonstrable and actionable results.

Applications to Other Coursework

In most of our other ICM coursework, we talk about reaching buyer personae and even about identifying them, but the nuts and bolts often seem to be left out. This week’s readings were not only about plans, but how they worked out.

The Search for Amazing Women targeted its key demographics with real out of the box thinking. After all, women posting on Facebook about breast cancer might seem to be a viable market. But of course they need clothing.

The Cans Get You Cooking campaign went in a different direction. This was by working with Kelsey Nixon and adding some celebrity appeal. It added the kind of authority behind messaging mentioned in last week’s Vocus reading.

The less than successful nature of that campaign seems more to do with the improving economy. That is, versus any fault on the part of the strategic planners responsible. Sometimes a great campaign just falls flat or has unexpected results.

And the Giving Tuesday campaign piggybacked on its public’s natural generosity impulses to create a successful campaign.

Communication Tactics and Takeaways

My other courses have outlined theory. This week’s readings, in particular, demonstrated practice. The road map has arrived.

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Quinnipiac Assignment 03 – ICM 527 – SWOT and PEST AnalysesQuinnipiac, impression management online, virtual groups, persuasive industry, locative media, what is information, role of social media, ICM top 5, strategic planning, defining publics, strategic planning to nonprofits, strategic plan implementation, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Wal-mart, project management styles, future, journalism, reflections, NESN SEO, onward to Quinnipiac, A Day in My Life in Social Media, Viral Videos, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics in my Life, social media monitoring tools, Media Convergence, Basic Web Analytics, A Crash Course in SEO, Semantic Search, Monopoly, Algorithmic Surfacing, Ambient Awareness, Polarization, Television, Participation, Physician Boundaries, Ethical Dilemmas, Charlie Hebdo, Premium Service, Spiderman, Brian Williams, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, Most Important Role of a Community Manager, Influencer Impact and Networks, Harrison Parrott, Content Marketing for Community Managers, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Best Practices in Using Social Media for Customer Service, Highly Regulated Industries, Sabra Hummus, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Message Strategies, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, RPIE, Biblical Texts, Disruption, Facebook network, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics, NESN Key Indicators, Writing Ethics, Spiderman, Wireframing, Sabra Hummus, Lonely Writer, Final Project ICM 522, reinvention, Regulation, Position Statements, Formative Research, Creative Obfuscation, Copyleft, Recommender Systems, social listening, POST method, regulation, Ad Astra Community, Persuasive Industry, What is Information, Biblical Texts, Strategic Planning to Nonprofits, Message Strategies, Strategic Plan Implementation. Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, Center for Science, RPIE, Compare Project Management Styles, Content Marketing for Community Managers, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Ethical Dilemmas, Spiderman, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Social Media for Customer Service, Brian Williams, Wal-Mart, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, How Highly Regulated Industries Can Best Use Social Media, Sabra Hummus, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Wireframing and Paper Prototyping,

Quinnipiac Assignment 03 – ICM 527 – SWOT and PEST Analyses

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 17, 2015

What are SWOT and PEST Analyses?

SWOT Analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats/PEST Analysis – Politics, Economics, Socio-Culture, and Technology

In both Smith and Williams, we learned about SWOT analysis. In our other readings, we also looked at PEST Analysis.

Key Concepts

SWOT and PEST Analyses
Swot analysis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Smith, on Pages 47 – 49, refers to the following players who are external to an organization:

• Supporters
† Competitors
• Opponent
† Advocates – you stand in the way of their goal
• • Dissident – opposition to positions you hold or actions you have taken
†† Anti – a dissident on a global scale
• • Activist – similar to anti (is also seeking change) but tactics go beyond discussion
†† Missionary – self-righteous activist
• • Zealot – single-issue activist with a missionary fervor
†† Fanatic – a zealot without any social stabilizers.

Williams, however, was more concerned with how to apply SWOT internally, particularly with reference to communications. For Williams, it’s more about looking at company goals and objectives, or at specific internal and external issues.

Then the question is about the second step of SWOT analysis, which is to apply it to how to communicate that.

E. g. if a company is applying an analysis to its overhead, its strength might be in owning a building, its weakness might be that the building is in an area that is in transition and losing its cachet, that could potentially also be an opportunity, but the threat could be that customers would not visit the building in person if they felt the neighborhood was unsafe.

Communicating those findings presents the strength of being able to quickly pinpoint the issue. It adds the weakness of perhaps not being able to act decisively until external factors play out some more. And there’s opportunity in the form of investing in an area where rents are suddenly taking a nosedive.

Whereas the threat could be that too much investment in a possibly dying area might hurt the company’s reputation.

Applicability to Current Events

The more I read about SWOT and PEST analyses, the more I realized they can apply to pretty much anything. I decided to take a look at Quinnipiac in the context of the White House’s College Scorecard, which was released on September 12th, and is thereby current although not really an ‘event’, per se.

The scorecard puts together basic data on various collegiate characteristics, including size, location, and the programs on offer. Then the program pulls out colleges and compares them. I looked up Connecticut four-year-programs and found Quinnipiac is third-best for salary after graduation.

The program could potentially be the subject of a SWOT analysis, that Quinnipiac shows strength in how its graduates earn after they leave, but a weakness in terms of price, as it lists QU as third-most expensive.

Opportunities

Opportunities include showcasing the school as coming up better than U Conn for salary after graduation. Threats are from schools like Yale, which comes out as less expensive but with a far better graduation rate and a better salary after graduation.

The point of the exercise is that the data are mixed, as for a lot of organizations. If you dig deeply enough, most organizations will have something you can place into each of the four buckets. No organization is perfect and without threats or weaknesses.

PEST

As for a PEST analysis (politics, economics, social-cultural, and technology), the scorecard remains applicable. Politics applies because of not only how the scorecard itself was put together (deciding what to emphasize could very well have been at least partially a political decision), but also because of how public institutions are funded.

Quinnipiac is a private institution, but there can still be an affect if public universities are funded (or not) due to political dealings. This can determine whether public institutions can compete effectively with Quinnipiac.

Economics certainly applies in terms of budgeting but also due to financial decisions such as how much to charge for tuition and what to pay professors – and whether to offer more expensive full professorships or instead pay adjuncts. The social-cultural part applies as Quinnipiac is a part of Hamden itself. How the school conducts itself makes a difference in the fuller community.

Is the campus safe? Does it recycle? Are the students loud? Finally, the technological aspect applies as the school cannot adequately function without working, up to date technology. Even for students who go to the campus and attend classes in person, there is a dependence on technology for everything from interlibrary loans to how tuition is calculated and collected.

Internal versus External Environments for SWOT and PEST Analyses

I see the two as being equally important to analyze and research as an organization can feel an affect either way. For the ILSC, for example, because part of their work is done in Ghana, external threats include the possibility that the government of Ghana might not be as stable as believed.

Internal weaknesses include the fact that the organization’s website doesn’t seem to have a setup for regular updating. Both can affect the very existence of the organization. A strategic planner should be researching both kinds of problems (and positives as well) as they can decide the fate of an organization.

Organizations looking to thrive – or at least to stay in business – need to look at both. No one can afford to ignore external in favor of internal, or vice versa. And no organization can afford to ignore PEST and SWOT analyses.

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Quinnipiac Assignment 02 – ICM 527 – Strategic Planning, Formative Research, and Issues ManagementQuinnipiac, impression management online, virtual groups, persuasive industry, locative media, what is information, role of social media, ICM top 5, strategic planning, defining publics, strategic planning to nonprofits, strategic plan implementation, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Wal-mart, project management styles, future, journalism, reflections, NESN SEO, onward to Quinnipiac, A Day in My Life in Social Media, Viral Videos, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics in my Life, social media monitoring tools, Media Convergence, Basic Web Analytics, A Crash Course in SEO, Semantic Search, Monopoly, Algorithmic Surfacing, Ambient Awareness, Polarization, Television, Participation, Physician Boundaries, Ethical Dilemmas, Charlie Hebdo, Premium Service, Spiderman, Brian Williams, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, Most Important Role of a Community Manager, Influencer Impact and Networks, Harrison Parrott, Content Marketing for Community Managers, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Best Practices in Using Social Media for Customer Service, Highly Regulated Industries, Sabra Hummus, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Message Strategies, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, RPIE, Biblical Texts, Disruption, Facebook network, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics, NESN Key Indicators, Writing Ethics, Spiderman, Wireframing, Sabra Hummus, Lonely Writer, Final Project ICM 522, reinvention, Regulation, Position Statements, Formative Research, Creative Obfuscation, Copyleft, Recommender Systems, social listening, POST method, regulation, Ad Astra Community, Persuasive Industry, What is Information, Biblical Texts, Strategic Planning to Nonprofits, Message Strategies, Strategic Plan Implementation. Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, Center for Science, RPIE, Compare Project Management Styles, Content Marketing for Community Managers, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Ethical Dilemmas, Spiderman, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Social Media for Customer Service, Brian Williams, Wal-Mart, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, How Highly Regulated Industries Can Best Use Social Media, Sabra Hummus, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Wireframing and Paper Prototyping,

Quinnipiac Assignment 02 – ICM 527 – Strategic Planning, Formative Research, and Issues Management

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on September 10, 2015

A Look at Strategic Planning, Formative Research, and Issues Management

PR and strategic planning were top of mind for this assignment, as was formative research.

Key Concepts in Strategic Planning

During the course of this week’s readings, a lot of concepts surfaced, with several definitions. These were words that we use in common, everyday parlance, but they have special meanings in the world of public relations/strategic planning.

Smith covers increasingly difficult positions for a strategic planner to be in. First there is the fairly neutral situation, which is basically just a set of circumstances facing an organization. It neatly divides into opportunities and obstacles.

After all, when the lights went out during the 2013 Super Bowl, Oreo could have sat tight like everyone else. Instead, ‘you can still dunk in the dark’ was born. Oreo didn’t just tread water – they scored a major victory. And it all happened during a situation that could have gone either way.

Strategic Planning for Issues

A step more difficult than a situation is an issue. Now, concern to the organization is baked right into the definition. There is more potential for problems when it’s an issue. And finally the definitions move to risks and then to crises.

The job of the strategic planner is to minimize and address the risks while, at times, dealing with out of control crises.

In the Reitz reading, the ‘dialogic model’ is (Page 43) where there is “a ‘communicative give and take’, where the process is open and negotiated between an organization and its publics.” This, in a way, is the essence of social media. It’s less of organizations dictating terms and paradigms to various publics. Instead, the publics are talking back, and it’s up to the strategic planner to carefully listen.

Formative Research — Its Role

On Page 15, Smith mentions formative research, denoting three pieces of it, to analyze the situation, the organization, and the publics.

To evaluate matters intelligently, the strategic planner must take a look at what’s happening. For a financial services company, it could be anything from a worldwide sell-off to crop failures in Argentina to an employee engaging in what might be insider trading.

For a car manufacturer, it could be recalls or new safety regulations or the applicable news from the United States Patent Office.

Next Steps for Formative Research

The social media professional must assess the organization. Is there an opportunity? Is the organization vulnerable? Could this even be fatal to the organization?

When Tylenol was laced with cyanide in 1982, there was a very real possibility that the fatal dose could be to Johnson & Johnson as well as the victims of the poisonings.

Publics

As for the publics, it behooves the strategic planner to consider how receptive they will be to any actions taken (sometimes the action to take is inaction, e. g. do nothing).

For Johnson & Johnson, they were dealing with publics who were used to trusting drug manufacturers, and who felt that trust had been betrayed. If the organization had opted to do nothing, the publics might not necessarily have blamed the organization for the poisonings, but they might have saddled the organization with a reputation for not caring.

Seeing the connections between caring, purity, and trustworthiness, the organization built its response around addressing safety concerns immediately. They probably removed a lot more product from shelves than was necessary. It’s possible that some of the safety precautions added were redundant and/or unnecessary.

But the organization spent the time and the money and the brainpower and it paid off with dividends. Johnson & Johnson is still roundly praised for its response to the crisis. It’s hard to see how they could have handled it better.

Issues Management

On Pages 49 and 50, Reitz talks about issues management. On Page 49, Reitz defines issues management as quoting, “Cutlip, Center, and Broom define issues management as ‘the proactive process of anticipating, identifying, evaluating, and responding to public policy issues that affect organizations’ relationships with their publics’ (2000: 17).”

Crises

A crisis is, by definition, unpredictable, but companies can anticipate certain crises. If an organization prepares for inevitable crises, they have already won over half of the battle. Here are some instances wherein an organization should prepare

It is not a question of if, but rather when of when any of these will occur:

  • Automobile manufacturers and recalls
  • Product manufacturers and product liability claims
  • Maintenance companies and snow removal or trip and fall claims
  • Transportation carriers and lateness and accidents

If any of these organizations is unaware that such crises could happen, and that they could escalate, then those organizations might want to rethink their business plans.

Life does not come without risk. It’s a foolish organization that doesn’t at least make an effort to plan for it.

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Quinnipiac Assignment 04 – ICM 526 – The Importance of Content Marketing for Community ManagersQuinnipiac, impression management online, virtual groups, persuasive industry, locative media, what is information, role of social media, ICM top 5, strategic planning, defining publics, strategic planning to nonprofits, strategic plan implementation, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Wal-mart, project management styles, future, journalism, reflections, NESN SEO, onward to Quinnipiac, A Day in My Life in Social Media, Viral Videos, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics in my Life, social media monitoring tools, Media Convergence, Basic Web Analytics, A Crash Course in SEO, Semantic Search, Monopoly, Algorithmic Surfacing, Ambient Awareness, Polarization, Television, Participation, Physician Boundaries, Ethical Dilemmas, Charlie Hebdo, Premium Service, Spiderman, Brian Williams, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, Most Important Role of a Community Manager, Influencer Impact and Networks, Harrison Parrott, Content Marketing for Community Managers, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Best Practices in Using Social Media for Customer Service, Highly Regulated Industries, Sabra Hummus, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Message Strategies, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, RPIE, Biblical Texts, Disruption, Facebook network, Qualitative and Quantitative Analytics, NESN Key Indicators, Writing Ethics, Spiderman, Wireframing, Sabra Hummus, Lonely Writer, Final Project ICM 522, reinvention, Regulation, Position Statements, Formative Research, Creative Obfuscation, Copyleft, Recommender Systems, social listening, POST method, regulation, Ad Astra Community, Persuasive Industry, What is Information, Biblical Texts, Strategic Planning to Nonprofits, Message Strategies, Strategic Plan Implementation. Strategic Campaign Plan Formatting, Center for Science, RPIE, Compare Project Management Styles, Content Marketing for Community Managers, SWOT and PEST Analyses, Ethical Dilemmas, Spiderman, Authentic Brand Voice in Social Media, Social Media for Customer Service, Brian Williams, Wal-Mart, Dark Patterns, Content Moderation, Big Data, Net Neutrality, Privacy and Big Data, Forgotten, How Highly Regulated Industries Can Best Use Social Media, Sabra Hummus, Communication Tactics, Program Evaluation, Continuing Program Evaluation, Wireframing and Paper Prototyping,

Quinnipiac Assignment 04 – ICM 526 – The Importance of Content Marketing for Community Managers

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on June 9, 2015

The Importance of Content Marketing for Community Managers

Why is content marketing important for Community Managers?

It is deceptively easy for companies to ‘get on Facebook’ or ‘get a Twitter’, and start pushing content out through a firehose. Companies may even make a splash in the beginning. But it’s unsustainable. Furthermore, it’s not serving customers and potential customers terribly well.

Much like any other aspect of modern business, online content requires strategy and structure. Just having content is not enough. It has to be relevant to fans and followers, and be more than something they will just click on and read. Instead, content is for marketing; it is for getting customers and potential customers into the sales funnel and then bringing them along. This is the case whether the sale occurs online or in a brick and mortar store.

The Content Marketing Institute says –

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

The Numbers Say It All

As Steven MacDonald reminds in The 5 Pillars of Successful Content Marketing, the amount of data being created in two days is more than was created from the beginning of time until 2003. Certainly, that figure is only going to grow. The United States census, in 2012, released an infographic comparing 2012 data on computers and Internet usage with 1997 (when the census first began asking about Internet usage) and 1984 data.

Per the United States census, the percentage of households without Internet has fallen dramatically, from 45.3% in 2003, to 25.2% in 2012. This does not even take into account persons who might not have home access, but are using the Internet at work, school, a café or public library or other such location.

Relevancy

With all of these people online, and all of that content coming at them 24/7/365, the race is less to get any sort of content online. It’s more to get relevant and preferred content to consumers.

A potential customer is being bombarded with Instagram images of their friends’ lunches and Facebook status updates with pregnant friends’ ultrasounds. They get gossipy Tweets about celebrities and amusing Tumblr blog posts about upcoming movies. And they get Pinterest boards with recipes.

Yet somehow, some way, a company’s content has got to compete with all of that.

Buying Reach?

While companies can purchase additional reach and engagement, a more sensible ad spend is to target content more closely to customers’ and potential customers’ preferences and demographics. This is easier and more detailed and better-researched than ever before. It’s due to all of the tracking coding which is embedded in social media.

As Avinash Kaushik has said about digital marketing (a term often used interchangeably with ‘content marketing’ but a bit more general, involving the use of digital devices but not necessarily as fully integrating marketing with content types like in true content marketing) and measurement –

The root cause of failure in most digital marketing campaigns is not the lack of creativity in the banner ad or TV spot or the sexiness of the website. It is not even (often) the people involved. It is quite simply the lack of structured thinking about what the real purpose of the campaign is and a lack of an objective set of measures with which to identify success or failure.

Structured Thinking

Structured thinking and objective measurement can help marketers to create and define success. Content marketing is similar in that it’s studied and planned.

Content marketers don’t just put up any old content whenever. They study the various platforms, as Gary Vaynerchuk strongly suggests. Successful content marketers listen to their audience (there’s that idea of measuring again!). They determine what does and doesn’t work. They post their content when their customers and potential customers are online and listening.

Putting Content Marketing Together With Community Management

Community Managers often must shape conversations online. This is everything from thanking happy users to publicly addressing complaints to being the first line of communications for public relations problems. But that’s mainly reactive communications. Proactive communications from community managers can and should dovetail with company plans. These can be to market to consumers (or to businesses in a B2B organization).

Offering helpful, engaging, amusing, and informative content is the job of the community manager. It’s as much as the soothing of angry online customers is. Posting the right content, when consumers want to see it, can be the difference between a sale and no sale. Put enough of those together, and jobs and even companies can be on the line. The community manager, doing content marketing right, can bring in business. They can help a company retain its customers even in hard economic times.

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Quinnipiac Final Paper – ICM501 – Creative Obfuscation

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on November 27, 2014

Quinnipiac Final Paper – ICM501 – Creative Obfuscation

What is creative obfuscation?

Internet identity, reputation, and deception in the online dating world. Truth and little white lies on the Internet.

Introduction

Several weeks ago, when participating in class, I used the term creative obfuscation. The idea behind it was (and still is) that people of course bend the truth or cover it up, or they lie by omission. Some of these lies are more egregious than others.

For my final paper, I decided to look at what it all means with reference to internet dating. And boy, was there a lot of fodder! Here are some excerpts.

Identity

For many people[1] these days, social media is wrapped with identity, as identity is, in turn, intimately wrapped up with social media. It is often a daily[2] presence in our lives. As Julia Knight and Alexis Weedon discovered, online life and self are increasingly just as important as offline life and self.[3]

“In 2008, Vincent Miller’s article in Convergence recognized in our ubiquitous and pervasive media the essential role of phatic communication[4] which forms our connection to the here and now.

Social media has become a native habitus for many and is a place to perform our various roles in our multimodal lives, as a professional, a parent, an acquaintance, and a colleague. The current generation has grown up with social media and like the 10-year-old Facebook, Twitter too has become part of some people’s everyday here and now.”[5]

References

[1] About 39% of the world is online, according to Internet World Statistics. This includes just fewer than 85% of North America and over 2/3 of Europe and Oceania.

[2] According to Pew Research, in 2013, 63% of Facebook users visit the site daily. Just under half (46%) of Twitter users visit that site on a daily basis.

[3] Knight, Julia and Weedon, Alexis, Convergence, ISSN 1354-8565, 08/2014, Volume 20, Issue 3, pp. 257 – 258, Identity and social media

[4] Phatic communications are generally language for the purposes of social interaction rather than the conveying of information or the making of inquiries, e. g. ‘small talk’.

[5] Knight and Weedon, Ibid., Page 257.

Reputation and Creative Obfuscation

Unlike offline reputation, online reputation can be categorized and quantified. For sites attempting to preserve and promote civility, but which cannot or will not adopt a real-names policy like Facebook’s, reputation scores can sometimes alert other users to an individual’s tendency to be either helpful or abusive.

AS Crane Said…

As AS Crane noted in Promoting Civility in Online Discussions: A Study of the Intelligent Conversation Forum[6],

“Moderation in combination with reputation scores have been used successfully on the large technology site Slashdot, according to Lampe and Resnick (2004). Slashdot moderation duties are shared among a group of users, who can assign positive or negative reputation points to posts and to other members. Users who have earned a sufficient reputation rating are allowed to participate in moderation if they wish. Meta-moderators observe the moderators for abuse and can remove bad moderators, or reward good moderators by assigning a higher point value to their votes.” In Slashdot’s case, it would seem that good behavior not only is rewarding in and of itself, but it also provides a reward in the form of being granted the ability to police others’ behavior.

[6] AS Crane, 2012, Promoting Civility in Online Discussions: A Study of the Intelligent Conversation Forum, rave.ohiolink.edu, Page 17

Deception

For those who bend the truth on Facebook and other social media websites, some of the consequences are unexpected ones.

For example, a ten-year-old child claims to be thirteen. So, in five years, they’ll be considered eighteen on a social networking site. This will alter her privacy settings automatically. And lets everyone see images, including pedophiles.[7]

[7] Olsen, Tyler, 22 April 2013, Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire: An Explanation of Deception, Professor Combs English 1010-21

Creative Obfuscation: Conclusion

It is fairly easy to bend the truth when composing an online dating profile. But an in-person meeting will expose the lie to all. As a result, the liar will lose social capital and likely never make it to a second date. More problematic is when a person’s sincerely made identity does not jibe with their appearance or their birth characteristics.

Differences between online verbiage and offline appearance might not have an intentionally malicious origin. So, it is entirely possible for online daters to, through ambiguity or poor word choice, appear deceptive and untrustworthy. When they may be anything but.

But regardless of the reason for an untruth, online daters care about their reputations. And their online and offline appearances. What others think matters to them. Much of that directly relates to the object behind the use of an online dating site. So, the object is to meet. That is, the mission is the date.

Setting up the date for failure or the loss of face is not in online daters’ best interests. So, most act to assure success or at least prevent and minimize failure and the loss of social capital.

Personal Identity

Personal identity matters in the online world, and it is a heady brew of inborn traits, learned and attained characteristics, and identification, desire, and preference.

For the person presenting their identity and showing this admixture to all and sundry, what it means to be them, what they think of as the ‘self’, is they cobble together from potentially thousands of measurable and nonquantifiable data points in order to present a full picture of their personality.

For the recipients of these messages, the potential dating partners and perhaps even more permanent mates, the choice is whether to read or listen to these many messages. And accept all or some of them. Even if they conflict with or downright contradict the evidence that the recipient can observe or otherwise gather independently.

You are who you were at birth, who you have become, and who you claim to be, and who you think you are. But that does not mean that anyone has to believe you, accept you, or love you.

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