Hey Politicians - Stop Cutting Down Trees! Try Some Online Campaigning

It's election time - this is NOT a political post by the way - and I'm wondering...what notes were these guys taking when Barack Obama (like him or not) demonstrated the incredibly effective (reach millions, seems like 1:1) and efficient (CHEAP and easy) use of social media to get out communications?

Everyday our mailbox is completely stuffed with full color, card stock grade direct mail pieces from dueling politicians. NONE of which are ever read in our household. *The picture above is only from 2-3 days.

Here's why:
1) I assume you're out of touch if you think direct mail or the phone is how to reach me.

2) We are green - and your full color brochure on heavy card stock is a display of irresponsible use of resources and money, not to mention very out of date.

And here's another picture with a full size one subject notebook to give you perspective on the LARGE size of these pieces.

And we get double the mailings and phone calls- one of us is a registered Republican, the other a Registered Democrat, so we're hit twice as hard.

Also, understand that this stuff actually impacts who people choose.

Social Media is the same as you handing me that banana by the train Alderman Moore, only less creepy. We can "have a conversation" only I don't feel ambushed, free breakfast or not, on my way to work. Now, politicians are ambushing our phone lines and our poor little mailbox - which is really only used for sending and receiving thoughtful cards and thank you notes.

I know you won't see this, but if you do, please, try some online campaigning. Save a tree!

Keep Clicking! (Not PRINTING!)

Michelle

Managing Redundancies Across Social Media Platforms

Happy New Year!

I was just answering a bunch of questions on LinkedIn and thought I would share some of my answers with you too - a little bit of "soft goods" karma for the new year!

A question asked was:
What is the best way to manage receiving identical FB/LinkedIn/Twitter status updates from the same person? Do we really need to read the same person's status in every social network?

My Answer (augmented here for you):

How far we've come! Channel conflict within social media (yay!) Good for your friends who are posting across the various platforms - they understand reach and channel preference. But - a facebook status and a tweet really should be written differently and LinkedIn - that's mixing business with pleasure. Definitely don't want to add that hilarious anticdote from last night at the bar when you were late to work today! The FaceBook status is for inner circle communication (where messages should be a little more "between you and me") and tweets are for the general public. LinkedIn statuses should reflect your day to day goals and projects in a professional manner, not make people laugh.

However users will have need to learn to adapt to either ignoring redundant posts, or by adjusting their settings. It is a world of personalization after all!

This question related very closely to the above so here it is for you too:

Is there a Software as a Service that allows you to create an event and then post it out to wide variety of social media outlets like LinkedIn, Facebook, Meetup, evite, MySpace, etc. that you have an existing account on?

My Answer:

There are a lot of ways to save time when posting an event - that are not necessarily "software" or "services" - like using the "Share" tool which will assist you in posting your info just about anywhere! Use the status section of online platforms to post info. And you can use dual updating apps like "Duo" to update simultaneously on Twitter and Facebook. But also be careful in pushing an identical message across all social platforms - each has a unique style - and it will not be as effective if you try to use one style across all of them. Plus most of your recipients are probably tuned into multiple platforms and thus will receive multiple invites from you which could cause problems on your reporting (if they all receive the same message/offer/invite - how will you measure which platform was most successful?) This doesn't even touch on the issue of managing the responses and offers after at the event - "How did you hear about it?" "Where did you get this coupon?"

And, because I'm a big "rule of 3's person" here is a question that has an answer related to the above (measuring effectiveness of social media messages):

By many accounts, 2009 was a year of social media (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc) for individuals, companies and various brands. 2010 will be the year of [_____] ? Why and how?

My Answer (augmented for you here):

Office doors will start opening at companies all over the country and out of touch leaders will decide people need to drop everything and start implementing more social media projects. Shortly after, they will require ROI and other analytical reports which they won't understand and will announce that social media is not effective and go back to direct mail.
Smart leaders will continue to polish their online personas and provide valuable information and communication across growing social media channels. I don't believe any of the big platforms (FaceBook, Twitter) are going anywhere, but the distinction between business and personal use and channels will take more thought and effort. We'll need to get better at controlling frequency and saturation, as well as provide more value as content contributors on these platforms. I receive so many more invites now to shows and events that I now know that these are not as effective as they use to be. We'll have to adapt the messaging much quicker than traditional marketing channels and also prevent the platforms from becoming the "Banner Ads" of this decade. It is our duty to protect the "collaborative" and "community" feel of online media - and not forget that we have to add value to it to get value from it.


I have several more answers posted on LinkedIn - if you see one and you like it, tag it!

Keep Clicking!

Michelle