WebProNews recently covered a study from Chitika, which found that Facebook was the most valuable social media tool for driving repeat readers to content sites-> The study was based on 33 million unique users across Chitika's publisher network in September-> It compared the number of visitors coming from major traffic sources Digg, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Twitter, to the number of times those visitors came back to the referred site-> Visitors that went to a site four or more times in one week were considered loyal users-> By a wide margin, Facebook led the pack in providing loyal traffic-> 20% of all visitors from Facebook visited the site four or more times per week->
Last May, when Target announcement that it would be giving away its $3 million to ten organizations based on the percentage of votes they could rally from people on Facebook, the Red Cross was ready-> They were able to mobilze enough votes to get 1/3 of the budget->When they first started their social media efforts, the communications staff needed to access Facebook but it was blocked -> So, because of the earlier listening efforts had effected a change of attitude about social media, they were able to put into place an internal social media policy-> They unblockdFacebook-> This was important because staff members who were on Facebook all helped with the mobilization of Red Cross fans to help with the voting process->
They also know that in order to have more impact, they need to scale-> They wanted to go beyond having social media be a silo in the communications department, and through the Target experience they realized the value of employee use of social networks/social media-> They worked on a social media policy, guidelines and an operational manual so that anyone working in affiliates as well as national could be ambassador on social networks-> The guidelines also extend to volunteers-> The overall policy is encouraging, not controlling-> The operational handbook gives them specific steps, examples, and tips for being effective->
For example, they are able to provide advice and support to their affiliates who want to use Twitter effectively-> Show example of all Twitter Accountshttp://redcrosschat->org/twitter/Now they have this network set up in the event of a disaster to quickly spread news/information->Their constituents/donors/stakeholders expect them to have a presencehttp://redcrosschat->org/twitter/#comment-37060 (screen capture of this comment)Summarize: The Red Cross found value from social media – by monitoring brand, reaching out to new supporters, and mobilizing them – and they did it by following these incremental steps: listen, engagement, build relationships, mobilize and scaleIt isn’t just Red Cross that has found value in Twitter-> Here’s a couple of brief examples->
donations, leads, new subscribers, increased page rank,
The remedy – education, discussion, policyLooks at the opportunity costs if they don’t participateConsider the worse case scenarios and have a policy that addresses
Karen
at Karen
1 year ago