social media – Pathway Communications

#CollegeChat Transcript: Social Media and Recruiting of High School Athletes

Theresa Smith — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 22:17:48 +0000

Social media has quickly transformed the world of athletic recruiting in just a short period of time according to Karen Weaver, EdD, director of Athletics for Penn State University-Abington and a TV color analyst for ESPN, CBS College Sports and Big Ten Network. Weaver was a recent guest on #CollegeChat and discussed how social media is benefitting both athletic programs and high school athletes who want to play in college.

During #CollegeChat, Weaver addressed the following questions:

How has social media changed athletic recruiting?

Can college coaches “friend” students on FaceBook? What are the guidelines?

What are the best practices in for both recruiters and prospective athletes to use in technology and social media?

What questions should an athlete ask a coach on a college visit?

Has social media changed high school athlete recruiting for the better?

How has social media helped get student athletes recruited? Is Youtube helping? Twitter feeds of club games?

Do high school students need to go through the expense of belonging to fee based online recruiting sites?

The entire transcript is available for download Social Media & Recruiting Transcript

LinkedIn’s Powerful Share Button

Theresa Smith — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:12:30 +0000

Still unsure about the power of “sharing” on LinkedIn? Maybe this article from the Business Insider will change your mind.

Twitter Followers or Facebook Fans: Which is better?

Theresa Smith — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:54:40 +0000

photo credit: Franco Bouly

The answer is Twitter according to research from ExactTarget. According to the study and reported on by Social Media Today, “Twitter followers are more likely to induce advocacy and future purchases” than those on Facebook. Social Media Today reported that “according to their data, 37% of respondents were more likely to purchase from a brand after following them on Twitter as opposed to only 17% of those that “like” a brand on Facebook.”

When the respondents were asked if they were more likely to recommend a Brand after following them on Twitter, 33% of Twitter followers were more likely to recommend a Brand compared to 21% of Facebook fans.

What has been your experience?

Social Media: The Eight Stages of Listening by Jeremiah Owyang

Theresa Smith — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:05:50 +0000

Evolution: The Eight Stages Of Listening

View more presentations from Jeremiah Owyang.

Retailers Adopting Social Strategy Whether They Want to or Not

Theresa Smith — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:23:48 +0000

Retailers are being forced to adopt a social strategy according to new research published in August 2010 by the Aberdeen Group and reported by eMarketer today. eMarketer reports that consumers are using “social networks and other tools like Twitter to discuss brands and products and to get advice and feedback from friends and family on potential purchase decisions–and retailers have noticed.”

According to retailers surveyed by Aberdeen the top social media tools used by retailers included social networks (85%), microblogging (51%), and blogging (41%). Furthermore, eMarketer noted:

In Q1 2010, the e-tailing group also found that social networks were the top community or social tool retailers used or planned to use in the next year; Facebook fan pages specifically were cited by 91% of respondents to that survey. Four in five used or planned to use Twitter, 72% blogs and 71% Facebook Connect. The e-tailing survey was conducted before Facebook introduced its “like” feature, which has also been widely adopted by retailers including Levi’s and Sephora.

How about your company? Are you working on your social strategy? Your customers expect it.

Are You Afraid of Bloggers and Social Media? Maybe You Should Be.

Theresa Smith — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:24:29 +0000

photo credit: M i x y

Are you or your Brand afraid of bloggers and social media? Well, maybe you should be–especially if your brand is still sitting on the side lines and not listening. Jessica Gottlieb , a powerful voice on the Internet and a mom blogger, recently wrote two excellent posts “Five Simple Steps to Bringing a Brand to their Virtual Knees” and “Six Tips for Brand Managers Who Might Be Afraid of Bloggers” . Gottlieb is that “Jessica Gottlieb” that started the “#MotrinMoms” backlash on Twitter in November 2008.

Gottlieb expressed her displeasure with Motrin’s ad campaign that she and others felt wasn’t supportive of new mothers and in a series of tweets expressed that “picking on new mothers is vile.” Her tweets set off a reaction that reverberated across Twitter and then the Internet and finally the mainstream press and it wasn’t until Monday that Motrin finally responded to the moms they were trying so hard to connect with but by then the damage was done http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/11/17/motrin-mothers-groundswell-by-the-numbers/ .In just a weekend, the mommy bloggers had mobilized and expressed their anger in their own blogs, on Twitter, on FaceBook where they created a “Boycott Motrin” Group, on YouTube where they added their own videos, as well as on Flickr. That same weekend the controversy was picked up by mainstream media including the New York Times http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/moms-and-motrin/?scp=1&sq=Motrin%20Moms%202008&st=cse

The title alone of the first post should get your attention if you still think you can sit social media out. In her first post, Gottlieb clearly lays out the steps of how anyone with a blog and or a Twitter account and a handful of followers can take aim at a corporation. Jessica’s steps consist of:

1) Timing is everything: Large corporations close up in the evenings, and many are completely checked out on weekends. If you post something critical of them on a Friday evening, you have a two to three day head start on your buzz versus theirs.

2) Ask readers to take an action and report back: When you post about the evil corporation be sure to ask your readers to do something other than just read. Ask them to call or email (letter writing campaigns have gone the way of the brontosaurus).

3) Track and share the momentum: Set up a google alert. If you’re asking people to say #xyzstinks then you will want updates as quickly as possible so that you can support people who write #xyzstinks. As people are writing be sure to share it in public forums like Twitter, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg.

4) Go multimedia: Really, multimedia doesn’t mean internet, TV and radio. Multimedia (in our frame of reference) means text, audio and video. Post your message to your blog, to cinch, and to YouTube.

5) Get redundant: Stay on message and repeat it ad nauseum. I recognize that after a day or so it’s unlikely that you will care any longer, but stamina is everything. Constant blog posts in every blog you contribute to are key. Repeat steps one through four tirelessly.

As a PR professional, I recommend that companies pay attention to all of these steps but also take a closer look at step 1 –“Timing is everything.” Companies still naively think that if they have bad news that they are required to release they need to drop it on Fridays after the Stock Market closes. Depending on who you are and what you have to announce that just won’t fly anymore. You may think you are pulling a fast one on the traditional press that follows your company but you won’t be pulling a fast one on the bloggers that work 24/7. In addition, the tradional press may also spend the weekend digging up more to include in their story. And like Motrin, you might end up with quite a mess on your hands before the weekend even wraps up.

Maybe you might be thinking that since your company is B2B you don’t need to worry about a possible “groundswell” catching up to your company. Sure you want to bet on that? Jessica’s steps can be used just as easily to target B2B companies as easily as they can be used to target B2C companies.

If her first post gave you pause, then her second post “Six Tips for Brand Managers Who Might Be Afraid of Bloggers” can serve as a road map to get your company moving. Gottlieb recommends:

1. Build Social Capital early and often: The best way to make sure you never have a big problem with bloggers is by participating in their discussions before the drama.

2. Do not hand social media over to interns: Interns are adorable, and I recognize that businesses need them for things like answering phones and fetching coffee. However, when your intern is in charge of your facebook page you’ve just handed the keys over to someone who was probably delivering pizza last month.

3. Monitor your brand round the clock: Small businesses do it, because they have to. You need to also. It doesn’t have to be one person, but at the barest minimum a google alert with YourBrandHere and boycott, sucks, or criminal as a keyword will keep you informed of a tempest brewing.

4. Respond truthfully: One big criticism of of the Motrin fiasco is that the apology wasn’t sincere (authentic).

5. Don’t participate if you don’t have the resources: Really. I honest to goodness recommend that brands stay out of social media if they aren’t going to make it part of their business. Do not set up a facebook page and then let it sit there. If you want to protect your name online buy your URL’s, take your twitter ID’s and just park them. Don’t invite a conversation you won’t show up for.

6. Just be yourself. Social media isn’t about your brand, it’s about you.

Building social capital is critical and without it you won’t be able to build a good relationship with the community your business needs. It doesn’t mean pushing out non stop information about your company and products. It means “listening” first to the discussions in the communities you are looking for a home in. It then means offering useful information to that community or better sharing the information of the other community members first.

I also “love” that tip # 2 recommends that companies not turn over social media to interns. In the last year I have heard a number of companies –including PR companies– either talk about their plan to turn “social media” over to an intern or who have already done it and it always leaves me aghast. Just because an intern has been on FaceBook longer than anyone over 25—and that is because it was originally a college only community– doesn’t mean they have the expertise of company, customer, products or the industry you are in. Would you really send your intern in to close a deal with a potential customer you have been chasing for years or to represent you to the technology reporter you want so badly to cover your company? Then why would you do it in social media?

One other tip I would offer is “transparency”. Gottlieb mentions in tip #4 being authentic—truthful. It is also important to remember in social media that people don’t want to talk with a logo. They want to talk with a person. If you’re tweeting say who you are right up there in your profile. If you have to talk behind a logo try to persuade management to add your name on the Twitter page so your followers can more easily engage with you.

Read the full posts. They are excellent.

Still afraid?

Twitter Keeps Getting Better

Theresa Smith — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 15:20:24 +0000

How to Get Good PR

Theresa Smith — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:13:51 +0000

Altimeter Report: Social Marketing Analytics Demystified

Theresa Smith — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 17:23:03 +0000

Altimeter Report: Social Marketing Analytics

View more documents from Jeremiah Owyang.

Fighting Breast Cancer One Tweet at a Time

Theresa Smith — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:45:26 +0000

Last month Health.com took a look at whether Twitter and Facebook could help in the fight against breast cancer in an article by Sally Chew and Heather Mayer. Chew and Mayer reported in the beginning of their article, “Twitter and other social media sites are often perceived as the ultimate navel-gazing tools. Seemingly a narcissist’s dream, many think that Facebook status updates and the 140-character Twitter messages (known as “tweets”) are really just boring play-by-plays of daily life—I had granola for breakfast! I’m stuck in traffic!”

The reporters described how Laurie Brosius, 31, a business analyst in Dallas, raised $6000 through Twitter for a walk for breast cancer to honor her husband’s deceased mother. Brosius raised 50 percent of the money through strangers that found her original tweet through the power of re tweets, people sending out her original tweet requests to their followers.

photo credit: Steve Beger Photography (Beger.com Productions)

In their article “Can Twitter and Facebook Help Fight Breast Cancer?” Chew and Mayer write:

In a busy world, Twitter posts are succinct and to the point, and that’s one of the main reasons they’re so successful in charity promotion, says Adam Hirsch, the chief operations officer of Mashable.com, a social media blog. Navigating websites can be time-consuming, notes Hirsch. Twitter, however, states a user’s case in no more than 140 characters. “It’s a message you know people will read because, face it, it’s only 140 characters,” he says.

With Twitter, users can interact one-on-one, but they can also broadcast a message to many followers. Even if an individual doesn’t have a lot of followers (say, just family and friends), those people can re-tweet that message in outgoing concentric circles of social contacts—potentially reaching thousands.

In the article, Chew and Mayer also write about breast cancer survivor Sharon Adams who took on Facebook after the social media company took down photos Adams had posted “of her ropy red mastectomy scars” in the hope of shocking her friends in England into “checking their own breasts for cancer.”

What ensued was an avalanche of media attention and a 3,000 Facebook member protest. Facebook eventually relented and allowed her pictures to be posted. Adams saw the whole controversy over her photos as a benefit. More people became aware of her story and the need to do breast exams than would have if Facebook had not removed her pictures.

You can read the entire article here.

Have you used any social media sites to raise awareness for a cause that you believe in?