aquariumdrinker
-
Did Facebook Give Democrats the Upper Hand? -
“ The user doesn’t come out of nowhere. We don’t land on your page and then head happily to those social networks to promote you, just because you have a button on your site. We find content through Facebook, Twitter, Google , Pinterest etc., not the other way around.
Whoever uses social networks to find content, usually begins the web journey there and goes back naturally. We don’t need to be reminded of what network we use on the way. We know. We came from there.
For those who don’t use social networks the social media buttons are completely useless.
If readers are too lazy to copy and paste the URL, and write a few words about your content, then it is not because you lack these magical buttons.
”—Sweep the Sleaze | Information Architects
I hardly ever use share buttons when I tweet or post a link to my news feed. However, when I do use them, I find them slightly more convenient than when I have used a “share” bookmarklet in my browser (which is how i share the majority of my content).
-
via @mashable: Twitter’s Official Analytics Product Has Arrived
Twitter will offer analytics to all users — for free — including information on which tweets were most successful, when people unfollowed you, when you were mentioned and retweets.
While Mashable notes this is bad news for companies (bit.ly) that currently offer analytics for twitter, it’s probably good news for anyone who can figure out how to pull in analytics from across the web (Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) into one dashboard and provide some context and connections between those analytics.
That’s a product businesses will pay a lot of money for.
-
notes on non-profits and social media
Several weeks ago, I commented on Chris Brogan’s post, The Problem With Social Only Nonprofit Campaigns. Cleaning out my inbox today I saw that he’d responded to my post — like four weeks ago — with a fairly pointed question.
Even though the post is stale I went in and commented anyway. I’m sharing part of that response here because I think it gives a fairly good explanation of my philosophy when it comes to how non-profits should use social media:
When I look at our twitter stream I want to see engagement, conversation and information sharing — links, lots of links — and mostly not to our own content. We want to prove ourselves as a resource for the environmental community and if people like us, they’ll come to our site and join us.
Facebook is a different animal altogether. There we’re having discussions with members, supporters, and even some detractors/skeptics. We’re posting content that exemplifies what the Conservancy does, sparking conversations and answering questions and concerns and engaging in debate.
With both of these channels, fundraising is not a primary goal (although we have a facebook causes section for people who do want to engage in that way). The goal is to engage, listen and share. To help people build an affinity with the Conservancy that we can then, hopefully, cultivate into a donor relationship.
The irony of course, is that as I’m posting this, we are asking people to vote for us in the American Express Member Project! So, as you can see, we don’t ignore these things altogether. As I said, it’s a balance.
-
Really, Facebook? You should know me better than this.
