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Archive for June, 2009
June 14th, 2009
Video Blogging Boosts the Outreach of Non Profits
Beth Kanter, at Beth Blog, writes about how video blogs enable non profits to reach out further and with more impact and less costs than ever before. Non-profits are now producing videos that bring the stories, sights and sounds of their field work to the whole word at minimal cost and with great speed and ease.
A good example of how non-profits leverage video blogging is what the United Nations’ World Food Programme is doing in Tanzania. Their videos include a visit to nutrition centers where school kids show up for their daily meals and get a taste of original Masai goat. The host is Marcus Prior, the WFP spokesperson for East Africa. This is just one of the many different ways WFP is using social media for its global battle against child hunger.
The WFP’s homebase Web site shows how creative the organization is at leveraging social media. These developments are due to the drop in price of cameras and to their enhanced ease of utilization (HD pocket cameras like the Flip or Kodak’s Zi6 are under $200), to the rise of user-friendly editing software and to the emergence of many sites with sophisticated functionalities for uploading these videos. The most popular cameras include Kodak’s Zi6 and Pure Digital’s FLIP camera . Pure Digital even has a giveaway program for non-profit organizations. The Flip site has a resource section with lots of tips for using the camera.
There’s also a YouTube Channel with some how-to videos and lots of other useful information.
See 3 has a step-by-step guide which provides valuable advice on topics ranging from shooting the videos to storytelling, editing and marketing these videos. It’s one of the better guides for nonprofits.
Witness Training Materials focuses on the use of videos for human rights advocacy. Their how-to and training resources are top notch!
Get Seen by Steve Garfield; Steve is a video blogging pioneer with a book due in December 2009.
Distribution
If you are looking to go viral and are interested in big viewer numbers, rather that uploading your video to YouTube directly, you can use sites like TubeMogul.com to submit your video to multiple sites and save energy and time. Here, you can also track the progress of your videos. MySpace videos, Yahoo Video, MetaCafe, Grouper and DailyMotion are also possibilities.
If you are looking to make news, the CNN site, which uses blip.tv software, and the ABC site, are worth trying.
Blip.tv has an impressive range of distribution and community options: download, post, email, communicate, etc. Uploaded video is available for sharing immediately.
Vimeo has simple uploads, tagging, commenting and voting, but it’s light on community features. Weekly storage of 30Mb is probably too limiting for most people.
Veoh has unlimited distribution capacity for full-screen, TV-grade video content which is then made available to anyone with a broadband connection, including high-definition videos.
VideoEgg does not have a site to watch and download video and the service lacks community features, but it provides simple sharing with other mainstream sites. Their software captures video directly from the webcam, camcorder and other mobile devices. VideoEgg limits videos to 5 minutes.
Any stories about how non-profits leverage video blogging to make this world a better place to live?
Tags: Non-profit, Online video
Posted in Non-profit, Online video, PR, Social media, blog | No Comments »
June 14th, 2009
Charitable Organizations Transformed by Social Media
Beth Kanter, author of Beth’s blog dedicated to how non profits can use social media is also 2009 Scholar in Residence at the Packard Foundation, and one of Business Week’s “Voices of Innovation for Social Media.”
She recently published a great article in Mashable where she outlines four ways in which non-profits are being transformed by social media.
a) First is the ability to create deeper, more meaningful relationships and engagement with their constituencies.
With the rise of social media, the role of the non profits rapidly evolving from initiating and controlling charitable initiatives to letting stakeholders control them, and they can focus on nurturing initiatives in the field.
b) Charitable Giving is more and more becoming self-organized, by people with a social conscience leveraging social media. Stakeholders are feeling more and more empowered to self-organize and take charitable action on their own. Applications like Facebook’s “Causes Birthday” encourage people to leverage their birthdays to raise money for a cause. And Stephen Colbert’s “DonorsChoose” recently launched a similar feature called “Birthday Give Back.” Social media allows non profits to reach a lot more people than before, in a more effective and less costly manner. We are witnessing the dawn of a social-media enabled groundswell in social responsibility.
c) Social media help people within and across charitable organizations collaborate rapidly and inexpensively. Whether it is communication between volunteers, or between the organizations and other funding or granting organizations, or whether it is sharing ideas for charitable programs, the ability of charitable organizations to operate and join forces effectively is being dramatically increased. Beth Kanter goes on to describe how WeAreMedia, a wiki project has allowed more than 100 technology professionals to pool knowledge and resources to develop training materials to help no profits lean how to use social media effectively. The initial content, says Beth Kanter, was facilitated through discussions on blogs, Twitter reviews and Facebook reviews. The presentations were then remixed and delivered as trainings to non profits at conferences and workshops across the US.
d) The reengineering functionality inherent to social media (flattening organizations, enhancing decision-making speed..) fosters change within the non profit organizations to a significant extent, and with a speed which would not have been possible otherwise. For Danielle Brigidia, with the National Wildlife Federation: “We have started to focus on cross-promoting our ideas and programs thanks to social media tools like Yammer.”
As social media fluency grows among people in non profits, and as more supportive applications get developed, we can expect to see a growing transformation in how non-profits operate and in the results which they are able to generate.
Tags: New Media, Non-profit, Social media
Posted in Non-profit, blog | No Comments »
June 3rd, 2009
New study: Social Media Trend #1 in Internal Communications
National Public Relations, a Canadian Communications firm, published today a study called “Start the Dialogue, Employee Engagement in Tough Times.” The findings, based on in-depth qualitative interviews at 30 organizations in Canada, reveals that the top trends impacting internal communications are perceived by respondents to be: social media (92%), demographic challenges (50%), timely, relevant communications (30%), new technology (22%), managing employee expectations (18%) and management turnover (12%).
In spite of the rise of social media, face to face dialogue is viewed by respondents as the most effective way to communicate.
According to Carolyn Ray, Vice President, Employee Engagement, NATIONAL Public Relations, “Social media is indicative of a shift from a more traditional internal communications model of simply ‘communicating to’ employees to a more holistic model of engaging employees as active partners to drive business performance. Rather than trying to control social media, organizations should embrace it as part of their internal communications strategy to facilitate purposeful dialogue with employees, along with face-to-face communications. Increased dialogue can help improve employee engagement, productivity and morale, particularly in these challenging times.”
Other key trends identified include:
- Employees of all ages demanding more timely and transparent communications
- Organizational restructuring driving a need for greater visibility by leadership, and greater access to senior management
- A need to create alignment between external and internal communication to build trust and demonstrate transparency.
The study further identifies a need to fundamentally evolve internal communications from controlled to uncontrolled, from mass communication to personalized, from top down to across (cascading communications don’t work anymore) from monologue to dialogue, and from CEO as leader to CEO and managers as communicators.
Your comments?
Tags: Internal communications
Posted in Employee engagement, Internal communications, blog | 2 Comments »
June 2nd, 2009
Online Video: Fastest Growing Media Platform in History
Gavin Malley, in the Online Media Daily newsletter from Media Post News looks at the implications of the growth of online video, which has gone from zero to mass market globally in three years. “Online video,” says Malley, “is the fastest-growing media platform in history, according to a report from social media research consultancy Trendstream and research firm Lightspeed.”
Malley goes on to say: “In one week in January, 97 million Americans viewed a streaming clip online — as many as are tuning into any major broadcast network — according to a recent survey of 1,000 U.S. active Web users ages 16-65. With 72% of U.S. Web users watching clips online, Web video outstrips both blogging and social networking, and is now the leading “social-media platform.”
The “broadcast mode is dead,” said Tom Smith, managing director of Trendstream. “Now is the time for co-creation, user distribution and a true democratization of video content.”
The Trendstream/Lightspeed report also notes the power of interactivity that online video affords. In January 2009, 39% of respondents shared a clip online, and 32% contributed to the mass of online media by uploading a clip.
Homemade content is the most popular content to upload, with 27% of those who uploaded a clip contributing such material. Content from digital cameras is most likely to make it onto the net: 48% of contributors used this medium to create their content. At 26% and 22%, respectively, home PCs and mobiles are the next-most popular choices for creating content.
82% of 16- and 17-year-olds watched video online, compared with 65% of those ages fifty-five to sixty four. 52% percent of 16- and 17-year-olds shared video clips online, compared with 29% of 55- to 64-year-olds, and a further 46% and 21% respectively uploaded a video.
With users from across the age spectrum watching, creating and distributing video content online, the so-called “digital divide” is not as wide as might be expected, according to Trendstream. Also, the online video audience is more sophisticated and influential than was believed, with the heaviest viewers in the 25-34 age bracket.
With 49 million active Web users -32% -uploading content in January 2009, users of all ages generate far more content than traditional broadcasters and contribute the majority of video content to the Web.
According to Trendstream, broadcasters who wish to engage with this highly influential and affluent group need highly compelling, multi-platform content that can be accessed through multiple gateways including email, music sites, news sites, film sites, blogs and social networks.”
Any comments, or suggestions?
Tags: Advertising, New Media, Online video, Social media
Posted in Marketing, Online video, PR, Social media, blog | No Comments »
June 1st, 2009
Airlines falling behind in reputation management
An article by Linda Fox on the Travolution site
reveals that “global airlines are failing to manage their online reputation effectively according to new research.
The study, from US-based online branding specialist RepRelations, on ten of the world’s largest airlines, shows carriers are not ranking highly on Google or taking advantage of new media including YouTube.
Of the airlines only Continental, American and British Airways own seven out of the top 10 Google results while others such as Ryanair and Lufthansa only own up to three.
The majority of airlines scored a ‘C’ overall based on a number of criteria including negative results on Google, strength of the negative versus positive results, number of websites in the top 10 results owned by the airline and presence and placement of YouTube or other video service.
BA and AA tied for second place in the research, scoring a ‘B-‘, while Southwest Airlines was the only carrier to score an ‘A-‘. Ryanair, meanwhile, came off worst, scoring and ‘F-‘.
RepRelations vice president of marketing David Goldman stressed the need for airlines to have a reputation management strategy because of how prone to incidents they are. He added however that only about two of the carriers do have a strategy.
Goldman also said there was significant opportunity for airlines to take control of their Google rankings and improve their online reputation.”
Any comments or suggestions?
Tags: Reputation
Posted in blog | No Comments »
June 1st, 2009
Advertisers moving from campaigns to conversations
In an article in USA Today June 1, 2009, Theresa Howard looks at the branded social media sites which advertisers are now creating. These sites serve as useful complements to mega social networking sites like Facebook.
They offer users sent by ads an environment where they can form user groups and have conversations about the brand. Some of these sites are on Facebook, some on Tweeter, and they link back to a corporate site.
According to Theresa Howard, “Volkswagen, Tropicana and marker brand Sharpie are pioneers in this area, with new social-networking sites that give people tools, blog capabilities and insider access to offers. Sharpie will introduce this week sharpieuncapped.com, a site at the center of a campaign about using the markers for self-expression. Print and TV ads will promote the site featuring a gallery of work by users, a drawing tool, 12 bloggers who talk about using Sharpie products and a how-to section. A gallery shows Sharpie’s 44 colors and ideas to dress up shoes, jeans or cards with the markers. The site features loyal fans showing what they do with Sharpies. Sally Grimes, Sharpie’s VP of global marketing, says: “It’s a new world out there with how you interact with consumers. It’s what consumers say about us that matters. It’s about being a part of that conversation and inspiring others.”
According to Howard, last month, VW launched blog TDI Truth & Dare (tditruthanddare.com), where people comment on and learn about VW’s clean diesel technology, and launched a Facebook group. The blog has received 35,000 unique visitors in three weeks, and the Facebook site already has 60,000 “friends.” “As it relates to social word of mouth and this new world order, it boils down to consumer control,” says Charlie Taylor, general manager of digital marketing and events for Volkswagen. “No longer are brands in control of the message.” He adds: “I don’t feel entitled as a brand to get too sales-y. We’re trying to create relationships and dialogues. We believe that consumers are the ones selling cars for us.”
Pepsi, Howard says, has a companywide social-media plan. Its Tropicana brand, has introduced The Juice, (www.blogher.com/thejuice), where women share tips on getting more out of life. “We allow open conversation in branded areas, and encourage dialogue good, bad or ugly,” says Bonin Bough, director of global social media. “Marketers are moving from impressions to building connections and from campaigns to conversations.”
Any comments?
Tags: Advertising, Corporate sites, Social media
Posted in Advertising, Marketing, blog | 3 Comments »
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