Social Media Reality Check

Re-posting from Care2.com's blog, frogloop:

The U.S. Population Does Not Spend Their Day Using Social Media

Guess how much of the U.S. population (comprised of 311,446,341 people) uses social
media these days? The stats may suprise you.

Twitter: 1.1 % of the U.S.
population is on Twitter. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

Facebook: While Facebook says that they have 150M U.S. “active” users,
which is 48% of the U.S. population, only 50% of active users login any given
day. So 24% of the U.S. population logs into Facebook on any given day to check
or post updates. (source: Facebook)

LinkedIn: 0.37% of the U.S.
population is on LinkedIn. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

YouTube: 19.94% of the U.S population is on YouTube. (source: April 2011
results from Experian Hitwise.)

MySpace: 1.19% of the U.S. population is
on MySpace. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)"

Holy moly. 1/4 of Americans check their facebook page EVERY DAY. That's actually pretty revolutionary when you think about it, especially when you consider how relatively new the site is in the grand scheme of things.

Still, 75% of Americans don't check it every day. And 52% of the population aren't on it at all.

It all goes back to who you're trying to reach. If you are looking to highly educated, computer saavy individuals, it's probably still worth it log on and spread the word, but only as an augment to other strategies.

Giving it away for free

These days, almost everything you need to run a great organization is basically out there for the taking. I've put together a list of free or cheap online resources on the web that can help you put together some great fundraising campaigns.

Check it out: www.maustinfuller.com/resources.html

Sound advice on planning your social media strategy

Lori Laurent Smith at Mediameme outlines sound advice on how to outline a media strategy that works for you "in five days".

"To get started, building a social media strategy requires focused thinking sustained over a few days. Not the multi-tasking mayhem that most managers find their daily lives to be, but the kind of focused thinking done in preparation for a major test or when writing a thesis."

Then she offers ten points to keep the process focused:

1. Keep your objectives tight and reasonable.
2. Make the social media strategy EASY
3. Create the perfect storm
4. Clearly state your business objective.
5. Get engaged with your customers and target audience.
6. Be trustworthy.
7. Go extreme.
8. Fail to plan = plan to fail.
9. Don’t change your strategy.
10. Review, rinse, repeat.

See the points explained in the full text here.

The Day Facebook was crowned king...

This is old news, but appreciated the chart...

"Mark it on your calendar - April 19, 2008 - the date that Facebook overtook Myspace as the #1 social networking site on the Web."

click here for the full story on Alexa blog

Reminder to self: the fundamental limits of online tools

Daily travels through little corners of the blogosphere, myriad YouFacespacester accounts, email accounts, online collaboration websites/wikis, and plain old websites, it's tempting for a fundraiser to hide behind her computer screen and feel productive, when what she should really be doing is "getting on the horn" (as my grandfather would say) and speak to people directly.

No fancy facebook app or flashy splash page is going to substitute for the power of a firm hand shake when it comes to building trust, and no online donation button is going to subsitute for the face-to-face appeal. Online tools help us broaden our reach, visualize networks of relationships that are invisible in the real world, collect data about our audience and our prospects, and better communicate with images, sounds, and printed words. But in the end, all these play suplimentary roles to meeting people on the ground. Business deals are still sealed over lunch or on the golf course, even if they are maintained using twitter...

Adding pledge power to online campaigns...

Some journalist friends of mine are interested in doing some stories probing the claims and accusations that show up in political advertising during the election season. Anyone familiar with the state of journalism will be interested in the fact that journalists are pursuing crowd funding as a means of support for in-depth investigations (Hats off to you Spot.Us!). I'll save my rant on the lack of funding for quality non-commercial journalism in an age when corporate media consolidation is running rampant slashing editorial budgets for another post...

But the means of my friends' campaign is of immediate interest. They are using an online social media website called The Point that allows anyone to post a cause or petition, and ask people to sign on in a pledge of support in the form of a donation or action. The pledge is only fulfilled if the organizers hit their target for either number of members or donation pledges.

I like the social action bent of this style of online giving. It makes people feel that they are a part of a very specific endeavor and they can feel the momentum of the campaign move forward as they track the progress of the campaign. Plus it allows anyone interested to comment and to see what others who register pledge to the campaign. A good strategy for this one would be to get someone to set the bar early- like at $100 or $250- and challenge people to dig deep. The social nature of this tool lets people see what others are doing, so if people pledge small at the beginning, that pace will probably be set without some additional effort on the part of those running the campaign. But the real point is to get people involved by making it easy and fun to participate.

Coupled with other online media such as email, websites, and other social media sites, this tool gives organizations one more way to break through donor hesitation by letting them know that their credit card will only be charged if the full goal is attained, which gives donors the confidence of knowing that they will only contribute if the means are there for the project to move forward. In other words, they won't waste their money.

One more bright and shiny web 2.0 tool to build movements and get some change for your dollar!

Check out the tool: http://www.thepoint.com/