- Collective intelligence/crowd wisdom: refers to a "cloud' of information that each member of a group can contribute to. Data may be "mashed up" and organized into a slew of different uses for the collective group. When I worked for the Chamber, all board members, interns, and the executive director had access to our online marketing site, Vertical Response. Therefore, we were able to all contribute ideas, key dates, and upcoming events to send out to members in the form of eBlasts. These items were all cross-checked for accuracy and distributed to mass amounts of people, which increased our presence in the community
- Crowd creation: refers to the act of crowds creating original works of knowledge or art; For our class projects with Safe Harbor, we each utilized social mediums in a variety of ways to promote events. An example of this would be our promotion of the Chick-fil-A fundraiser via an event invitation on Facebook. Closer to the event, we tweeted the event as a reminder for the community to participate. By including outside members through these promotions, the ideas and goals of an organization can reach out to even larger groups of people.
- Crowd voting: refers to having crowds vote on their favorite ideas, artwork, essays, people, etc. During my internship with the Chamber of Commerce, I was lucky enough to participate in the planning and execution of the annual awards banquet. We formulated several awards categories and distributed it to members to make nominations and vote. This was beneficial not only in that it gave members a chance to recoginize outstanding business leaders in the community, but it also increased involvement and allowed them to have their voice heard. Though this differs from a poll (as is mentioned in the book), there was still alot of positive feedback and participation from members of the Chamber. In turn, we ended up hosting a fantastic awards dinner with high attendance from both Chamber members and other individuals in the community.
- Crowd funding: refers to the "collective pocketbook and encouraging groups to fund an effort that benefits many people. This category is also relevant to our class' work with Safe Harbor. I was involved with the Homecoming project, and one of our main tasks was setting up a booth on Bowman Field during game day to raise awareness about domestic violence to fans walking around and looking at the floats. As a group, we had little to no budget to work with, so we had to get really creative and resourceful. Luckily we were able to utilize Julie from Safe Harbor for display banners and educational pamphlets to hand out to patrons. We also got creative and made our own signs promoting the Facebook and Twitter campaigns we decided to host. Finally, we offered a raffle for a football signed by Clemson football players if an individual decided to make a donation or participate in one or both social media campaigns. Surprisingly, we earned a substantial amount of donations and were even able to reimburse ourselves for supplies!
Moving on..
The information found in Chapter 9 pertains to learning loops. That is, the need for organizations to have a strong hold of their central goals and objectives of using social media before even considering to begin a project. The text notes that it is imperative for organizations to reach out to a specific target audience before attempting to take on the whole world via social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more. Microplanning comes into play again with the process of learning loops, and may include small periods during the day in which organizations allot time to focus on social media campaigns. There is also the aspect of measuring the success of a campaign. As the book notes, it is very simple for an organization to make these measurements incorrectly. As an intern at the Chamber, I was in charge of social media campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. When I started, the Chamber had a limited number of followers on Facebook and no Twitter account at all. I think I definitely underestimated the task of gaining fans and followers, especially since I was required to submit a montly report on the success of the pages. I was also dealing with board members who were not actively involved with social media outlets, so there was also a need for education there. I started by seeking out all of our members who had Facebook and/or Twitter accounts and expressing our support of their pages. In turn, most of them reciprocated by becoming actively involved with our pages. Where I fell short was by assuming that the individuals who decided to follow or like us in return would automatically become actively involved in our social media activity. I found that stats were actually quite low in regards to interactions and feedback. Therefore, I utilized a number of multimedia tools; videos from Business After Hours and Ribbon Cutting events, pictures relevant to the community, and small blurbs that would get viewers involved. The result was greater interactions and higher response from our fans and followers, but it took virtually a whole summer of interning to reach that point. I think alot of people fail to realize that a social media campaign is like any other campaign or project; it requires planning and a lot of thought to be executed correctly and yield success.
I found these two articles that relate to Facebook and Twitter presence of organizations.. Enjoy!
9 tips for a successful Facebook presence
Avoid these 10 time-wasting tweets
No comments:
Post a Comment