Author Archive
Written by Jan, March 04th, 2011
Today and over the next few weeks we will be taking a close look at social media for non profits: we will even share some of our “Social Media Strategy Smarts” specific to this sector with a view to helping you understand how using social media can benefit your organization and help it grow.
Keep It Simple and Achievable
The Out-Smarts mantra for our non profit clients has been “Keep It Simple and Achievable”. Adding social media tools to the strategy of non-profit business is essential in our networked world and tools such as Facebook, email, blogs and twitter are not only cost effective they also encourage a two-way conversation between people and organizations that can effectively increase the momentum and reach of a non-profit - but it has to be manageable given your time and resources.
Good Planning Makes for Good Fortune:
Non profits that focus first on developing a clear strategy are best positioned to succeed with an Social Media program. The first step is to develop a strategy that authentically reflects the organizations strategic goals and vision – whether the aim is to increase fund raising opportunities, engage volunteers or educate the public.
Here are some questions to explore to jump start your Non Profit Social Media strategy:
1. What do you want to accomplish with social media?
i.e. Do you plan to use Social Media to:
- Listen and Learn?
- Build Relationships and Issues Awareness?
- Improve Reputation?
- Generate Conversations?
- Drive Visitors to a website or blog?
- Taking Action or Fundraising?
- All of the above or other?
2. Identify and Research your Audience:
- Who must you reach to meet your objectives?
- What do you want to say to your key audience? (and what will they say back!)
- Which social media tools does your key audience currently use?
- Is there research required to better understand the online social behavior of your target audience?
3. Integrate your Social Media with existing marketing – harmonize with your online approach with off-line message:
- How does your social media support other components of your communications and fund raising strategy?
- Is your website Social Media ready?
4. Change can be hard – Social Media means added transparency for your Organization
To move forward with your strategy you will need to face these common fears and concerns:
- Loss of control over your message
- Dealing with negative comments on-line
- Perception of wasted of time and resources
- Suffering from information overload already, this will cause more
- Not being successful, fear of failure
5. Pick Your Tools and Your Leader
- What tools to support your objectives?
- What tools suit your audience?
- What tools do you have the capacity to implement?
- Who will be responsible for over sight?
6. Get Started
- Do you need any outside expertise?
- Who will implement your organization’s social media strategy?
- Do you have a Social Media Policy to provide posting guidelines
- Determine how much time you can you allocate to your strategy?
If your Non Profit can answer most of these questions it is clearly ready to step out onto the Social Media stage with your message. Remember keep it simple and achievable. Treat your first steps as experimental. Go easy and record your successes and challenges to share with others.
Written by Jan, September 20th, 2010
Jan Littler Finseth is our in house expert when it comes to online couponing. This blog post gives you an insight into the latest web phenomenon and whether it is indeed a viable marketing option.
Make a Deal with Social Media
The morning coffee and email check has become a shopping opportunity for millions who are registered with one of the 43 Daily Deal sites (I counted yesterday!) such as Living Social and Groupon.
How does a Groupon-like deal work and are they a positive internet marketing and promotions tool?
Basically these new coupon deals all work similarly. They make an offer to their list of internet subscribers – every day – in the various geographic markets they serve. The deals work as an assurance contract so that if a certain number of people sign up for the offer, then the deal becomes available to all. If the minimum is not met no one gets the deal that day. This reduces risk for retailers, who can treat the coupons as quantity discounts as well as sales promotion tools. The daily deal sites make money by getting a cut of the deal from the retailers – in some cases up to 50%.
Group-buying deals are by no means new on the scene. They surfaced during the original dot-com heyday and mostly failed. But now advancements in social media have made it a much more stable business model. Facebook and Twitter sharing buttons are ubiquitous on daily-deals sites, as companies encourage consumers to tell all their friends and ensure that the deal goes through. The sites that are the winners are those who best harness the power of social-media channels.
Groupon
Groupon, based in Chicago is definitely the best known and leader of the pack. Groupon was originally called Thepoint.com, a platform to allow people to organize actions or boycotts of some kind. The action would only occur if enough people signed up. But when the financial crisis hit the company decided it needed to re-focus to make money and focused on assembling a crowd -`or the collective buying power to offer the most competitive deals to pre-registered consumers. Groupon and others have quite simply built their businesses around an email subscriber list and by focusing on the deals their specific demographics want.
Groupon goes direct to savvy, deal seeking consumers where they are these days – in their inbox. There is also a built in artificial scarcity
‘in the deals they offer with a tight time frame and the introduction of Caps on quantities of any given deal.
Consumers win by selecting deeply discounted offers from a seemingly endless parade of local businesses – from laser skin care, yoga classes and restaurant meals. Another new twist can be found on http://www.lifesta.com that brokers unused daily deals to those who missed the purchase by deadline. Consumers can also sell deals they can not or will not use.
Should you consider running a Groupon style ad?
Should you consider running a Groupon for your business or service? Yes, if a) you sincerely want more customers, b) can afford to discount your items or services c) are prepared to handle a surge in traffic to your website, your phone and to weather the additional wear and tear on your staff.
Right from the beginning of the Daily Deal phenomenon there have been complaints from participating merchants that they were overwhelmed by the business they gained after they offered a deal. To succeed your Groupon offer must be carefully designed to balance a desire to sell with your ability to deliver. An additional pay-off is the free advertising that comes with being exposed to thousands of subscribers. The exposure is magnified as it gains momentum because subscribers can forward e-mails, post to facebook and tweet the deal to their non-subscriber friends.
Preparation is the best way for a business to survive and flourish during and following a daily deal offer. First crunch the numbers – don’t make an offer that you can not successfully deliver to the high standards you aspire. Make sure your website is optimized and that your email server can handle the flood of inquiries – same goes for your phone line. Train your staff to handle the influx of new customers to ensure that a good portion of those customers become loyal ones. Mine the data of new customers for future offers. Also remember that 20% of the new customers redeem in the first month 20% in the last month and about 10% never to redeem. So plan accordingly.
Detractors report that many of the ‘new’ customers never comeback and are not apt to be ‘up-sold’. Dan Yoo http://www.linkedin.com/in/danyoo wrote that his restaurant business in San Francisco sold 2,600 Groupons and that this gave a huge boost to our business. Our post graph revenue was 63% higher than our pre-graph revenue over same amount of time. He wrote in his article How Social Media can Help your Business Grow that the new normal was almost 50% higher than before the Groupon and that in his opinion the reason for the repeat business was the viral spread through social media efforts combining to create a surge of viral knowledge about his business.
Daily Deals are best not considered as a fad but to be carefully considered as another Social Media tool that can create profitable marketing opportunities for both small and large businesses.
Have you used online couponing either as a consumer or as a company? Please share your experiences with us.
Written by Jan, January 08th, 2010
This is a guest post from Jan Littler-Finseth.
Last night – driving home – I heard a discussion on the CBC’s ‘The Current’ about a Facebook page that has grown exponentially this week (it was set up last weekend and has grown from zero to over a hundred thousand members in a few short days). Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament is a page that provides a conduit to protest the decision by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to initiate prorogation and it is gathering steam.
Whether you supported the Conservatives or the Marijuana party in the last election or think that is wrong or okay for Parliament to be temporarily discontinued, the fact that a Facebook page is national news says something about the lengthening tentacles of Social Media.
In my car – windshield wipers working overtime – I was bemused at the number of ‘serious’ people out there who are convinced that Facebook is mostly a vacuous portal only frequented by teenagers when on the contrary, the over 35 age group is the fastest growing.
Can Social Media sites bring about democratic reformation or real-world change of any kind? That remains to be seen but the truth is, Facebook, Twitter, and the likes are ‘little’ things that can make big change happen.
Grass roots politics has long been a facet of the Canadian political landscape but now tools like Facebook allow for communication and networking, bringing geographically diverse (but likeminded) communities together to join forces, communicate their message and have more impact.
Let’s face it, however, if your group, your idea, or protest is poorly focused and unsupported – no one thing will help. Social Media is only a part of a program – changes come when we act and believe that what we do makes a difference.
