Justin G. Roy

Recently, I came across a post by Celeste Wroblewski, vice president of external relations at Donors Forum in Illinois on Getting Attention blog titled Less Is More! – Uncommon Advice from a Nonprofit Social Media Enthusiast.

Wroblewski brings up some very valid points for the use of time in social media but does focus a bit more on the traditional billboard marketing strategy rather than stepping out of your comfort zone, realizing and understanding that today’s consumer is demanding a much different experience with your brand (yes, a nonprofit is a brand). It goes without saying that social media (online branding and marketing) is not a fad, it’s here to stay, and the delay in acceptance only puts your competitors that much further ahead.

Moving into a more donor-based brand, isn’t the purpose to share your mission, open your arms, and educate your different constituents? You do not have to share that you recently got a coffee or saw a plane, but what about opening your gates a little to let folks know what goes on in your office on a daily basis? If something funny happened that day, share it. Let your current and [just as important] potential future donors get to know you as a human.

Let’s not forget (and I am not going to explore it today) the additional search results that come from participation on social networking sites. Can your brand afford not to create additional pages of search results?

I wanted to share my response to the article and ask for your opinion:

My response:
There are some great points brought up in the post above, in regards to sometimes flooding the online waves and I wanted to thank, Celeste for posting!

I do agree on the “rules” or accepted numbers challenge above; there really is not any “proven” magic number on how many blogs, posts, comments, tweets, or what-have-you. When you see interesting posts or information that you think your followers would like to read – post it. If you don’t then do not retweet something or post just to cross it off your list. Everybody’s following and their habits are different than another’s, so experiment and find out what works best for you in regards to building your followers/friends/readers/etc.

I am curious, however, why a nonprofit would go out onto any of these social networks if they are not going to be active? Simply being present is not enough for any online branding and marketing (aka social media) strategy. Would you attend a networking event and sit in the corner, choosing one person (based on the numbers), walk up to them and announce your good news, then walk away?

Any good strategy/plan would understand and touch upon the importance of building your audience (your target market), engaging your audience, building links and traffic to your site, and having a call to action. It’s time to throw away the billboard mentality and truly understand what online marketing and branding (social media) really is.

Time (free or spent) is absolutely an ongoing challenge for any brand (yes, nonprofits are brands too), adding in the question of who is responsible for social media. Some larger brands have resources to assign and most small(er) businesses don’t. When I speak to small business owners, I often remind them that it is just as important to “work” for your own business and don’t loose sight of that. If you allocate 10 hours a week to marketing then fit social media and engagement strategy in there.

I am really curious to hear others thoughts on this, knowing that I may be standing alone in left field. However, just as we embrace the ability to say what we feel we also need to embrace the possibility of standing alone.

What are your thoughts?

Could I be any more behind? Sorry!

So back in March the Worcester Business Journal published a very nice article highlighting yours truly on my position with Nichols College as their Director of Social Media.

Social what?

Trust me, it’s more than being on Facebook all day. It’s online branding, online marketing, digital communications, digital applications, and social networking. I am responsible for making sure the college is found online and dominates the competition. Though I am aware my outlook and strategy here is more inline with the corporate world I truly belive higher education needs to think of themselves more as a brand.

How do we brand ourselves? Who is our competition?

Well, I will say this – the concentration is filling the first three pages of search engines with at least 18 keywords and key phrases in 18 months. (I think my favorite numbers are 3 and 18)

How will I do this? Oh, a number of ways. Subscribe to this blog (look to the right on the sidebar – or scroll up and look to the right) by email or simply use the RSS feed to find out.

What? Give away my secrets?

If you just thought that (or said it out loud) prepare to rethink 2010. It’s not the internet age anymore, it’s the age of open source, open communication, and sharing. I’ll let you know what I am doing, where I am positing and going. Mimic it if you want. Contact me with any questions (hint – click contact tab)

Oh, wait, I veered way off subject here. So here is the link to the Worcester Business Journal (WBJ) article.

Click here to read the article.

As I sit here at Coley’s house (one of my best friends) in Worcester, MA, I realize I only have 16 hours left until I arrive on campus and begin the next step in my career. academia.

The web, or where I have worked the past 14 years:

• Food Service
• Retail
• Fortune 100
• Start Up & Entrepreneur
• and now academia

All I am missing is Nonprofit, however as you all know, I have been extremely active in volunteering, matching volunteers to opportunities, and getting free training and consulting for nonprofits.

So I suppose it’s natural for me to be a bit nervous going into a new industry, though the position is similar to everything I have been doing: Marketing. Funny thing is, I did not set out in College to go the marketing route and here I find myself semi-obsessed with the service.

However, I do pride myself on bring a mix of traditional and new. Huh?

Well, traditional media and marketing will never disappear. I know this is different from what most might think or assume I might say.

Social Media is simply another way, avenue, and strategy to market your brand to your consumers. Rather than billboards and articles, we have forums and blogs. Rather than focus groups and test markets, we have social networks and engagement trials. When you work with the traditional marketing strategy the energies and collaborations are endless and challenge another to raise the bar.

That’s what I like to do. Strategize on both, raise the bar, and emerge out of the shadows.

Seth Godin had a great post the other day, Benefit of the doubt that got me thinking about how many people are judging us based on first impressions and how, as Godin puts it:

“It’s almost impossible to communicate something clearly and succinctly to everyone, all the time.”

What does this mean exactly? Are people dissecting every status update of mine on Facebook or LinkedIn? Are people discussing my latest tweet on Twitter? Should I be more careful and worried? Perhaps if I wanted to paralyze myself and drive myself crazy.

Rather than hold still and analyze my voice and every single word I type or say, I prefer to (as Godin says): “earn the benefit of the doubt.”

I’ll leave you with just that and am curious how you earn the benefit of the doubt….

Corporate robot was managing their online and social marketing strategy in a space where consumers turn to talk with human beings.

If you are on Twitter, have a strategy.        If you are on Facebook, have a strategy.        If you are online, have a strategy.

Common theme today is strategy and the dire need for one, whether you are online for personal reasons or online for professional purposes. Perhaps this should be filed as a rant, or perhaps should not be written at all; however, I enjoy writing what I am thinking.

So where is this coming from? A conversation with an extremely friendly gentleman who I sat next to on my Southwest flight last week.

I settled into my normal (or however normal it can be) routine when I fly Southwest and turned to my row-mate to say hello and learn more about him; a flight in conversation is a much better use of time than a flight watching a movie. We ended up talking for the majority of the flight about social media, but more as he knew social media and believed social media was: twitter.

We started with a crash-course (our flight was only 2 hours long, and I tend to be long-winded) in how Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogging, etc are simply platforms to engage with business partners, current customers, potential partnerships and customers, and build brand awareness. Then we moved onto Twitter. Unfortunately his experience with Twitter was with, what I would call, billboarding and viewed Twitter as an advertising tool (billboarding) to push content onto the online world, push their message to customers online, and simply convert their offline marketing strategy with their online marketing strategy.

He was, after all, a consumer at that point AND part of a brand who wanted to push their content in the online world.

Fast forward about three months, and he convinced his company to go social media and begin their journey with Twitter and Facebook. Three months after their launch the company was trying to figure out why their Twitter followers were low and their Facebook FanPage was not growing at the same rate of others. Unfortunately they are not the first, only, nor last brand to experience this.

Thirty minutes and a coffee after landing – and the availability to connect to the internet – it was very clear what happened. I will share a bullet list of what went wrong:

• Company had a lack of strategy
• Company had a lack of understanding of platforms available
• Spaghetti approach – they threw everything onto the wall and see what sticks BUT never had conversations
• Employees engaged and spearheading the campaign had limited knowledge of online branding
• Assuming offline strategy would convert easily online based on limited exposure

What went correctly:

• Company knew the importance of social media and thought it imperative for their presence online
• Company had produced some wonderful content to share online (articles, press releases, highlights)
• Employees involved did not give up, were trying to learn and reach out, and truly believed in their company (I hope they do receive special recognition)

Where did this bring us? In the end of the day, the company had great content they were pushing into the online space but never talked with (or responded to) their followers and customers. The company did not have any metrics in place to judge and measure their success with social media.

Corporate robot was managing their online and social marketing strategy in a space where consumers turn to talk with human beings.

My suggested changes to their approach were simple, easy to change in the short-term, and would yield them some quick turn around. There certainly is more this company can explore, but until the responsibility is taken upon (or delegated) to oversee the social media strategy, step one is a giant step in the right direction.

If you are not aware, Google provides a free service to businesses, and their locations, to create a business listing that is similar to the phone book.

A few of the features include,

• List your company name, address, contact information, and website.
• List your hours of operation (easy to change if you are a seasonal company).
• Create coupons and special deals.
• Display company logo, pictures, and links.
• And more….

It takes about 5-10 minutes to set up (if you have all information necessary) and requires minimal (if any) maintenance unless something changes. Check out JG Social Media Listing!

Click here to go to Google Local Business Center.

Another great and informative post by Mel Lester on his site, E-Quip Blog on how a firm could and should be using their CRM system.  he is right on target with the comment that most systems fail due to lack of staff participation. 

However, as somebody who has designed a CRM System, I believe a lot of problems also lay in the lack of ability(on the designers part) to customize a pre-made and delivered product.  Purchases of software are based on the amount of functions the company can use; but with the ease of changing many functions, I always wonder why we cannot make simple changes.  Call most developers, and it seems like a chore to change some wording, text, etc. 

Aside from some systems inability to see the larger picture and be open to customizing a software for a client (my opinion), Lester talks about how a firm can break their system of failed programs and offers the following tips:

• Choose a system based on what you want to do with it, not what you could do with it
• Master CRM with some key accounts before rolling it out firm wide
• Sell people on the personal advantages of using CRM, not just the corporate benefits
• Develop some respected internal champions to promote greater use of CRM
• Make it as easy as possible to use
• Delegate responsibility for keeping CRM up to date where necessary
• Tie performance metrics to CRM.

Make sure to check out the entire article, where Lester goes more in depth on how to use these strategies to successfully use your new CRM system. 

Click here to view the full article.