Business Blogging with "Personality" - Should You get Personal or Professional

Today’s Social Media for Business topic is about how should you maintain a blog for your organization; and just how personal should you or the blog be with your written or visual content?

Should you or can you be relaxed and talk in the first person - from a more intimate sort of view? -Revealing your personal opinions and emotions or experiences?    

Or are you possibly working on behalf of someone else, and you will need to keep a written voice that is strictly professional. This week with my social media class lecture - our professor tells us it depends on the business of course - and what your particular goals are going to be. 

Who are your more relevant consumers or customers, and does the business environment allow you to show off some of your organizations personalities to them? Maybe you can engage your online consumers through certain company personnel or some other prominent individual? 

Perhaps a blog can be written by the owner of the business, or the CEO of the company?  These are a few of the key players in a business that might act as a less stringent voice for the company – showing a more human side for the organization, with which you can possibly create more consumer engagement.    

Personally I have a hard time with getting too personal on a blog such as this. Although I am a younger baby boomer – a baby boomer I am. So not being like most millennials, I do have some reservations about having to display personal pictures or for telling my life’s stories online. 

I am just now warming up to the thoughts of keeping a limited social  media presence online with developing my  “personal brand” - which is intended to help develop my professional career track, and maybe in time, to try to achieve some personal business endeavors.  

But it makes sense to get more intimate to attract people; especially if you’re a business owner who can adopt an online presence for your company.  I just saw a commercial on television for a used car dealership in Vista California, called Classic Chariots. The owner of the company is the face of the organization, and he regularly appears on local cable television; encouraging people to find him on his Facebook and Twitter pages. 

It was engaging for me as a consumer to go online to see his Facebook page, as I’m currently in the market for a new used car. I think if he maintained a blog emitting the same eccentric personality I see on TV, he would be very successful with a blog too - complementing his already very savvy social media presence.  

Twitter for Marketing & Business Research: Create Beneficial Relationships

This week my Social Media for Business class is covering the utilization of a micro blogging website called Twitter.  Our professor points out that Twitter can be quite valuable for you as a business marketing tool. 

Contrary to some people’s opinions that Twitter seems like a complete waste of time for teenagers, or that it seems contrite; as they hear about people who are tweeting what they have had for breakfast. We actually need to take another look, think about our brands, and drill down into what is being said by these consumers in their tweets and on their twitter feeds. These tweets can actually provide you a way to listen to people, and to reach out to some industry thought leaders, as well as do some free marketing research.  

Those every day seemingly mundane types of tweets are coming from your current and maybe even more importantly your potential customers. These everyday tweets can become the most valuable information for you as a social marketing communications manager, to create some positive consumer engagement and possibly increase your profits.    

For those who do not know how Twitter works; it is a micro blog where you are limited to only 140 characters or less of written text within each post or tweet (as they are called on Twitter).  Within these tweets you can put any kind of quick or short message:  an advertisement, links to articles or other websites, and even graphic images. You can create a personal or organizational profile and you can follow other people/topic profiles which are of interest to you.  You or they (Twitter profiles) can represent either a business, organization or a single person.  

All tweets are public information except for when you send direct messages (DM) to followers, which are between you and one follower.  Even though these DM’s will not be seen on other peoples (your other followers) Twitter feeds, they will still appear on your profile wall.  When someone uses your @username in their Tweets it is called a “mention.”   If you put @someone’s user name at the very beginning of your tweet – (but not within the middle of the tweet) - it will only be seen by that user and it will also appear on your profile.   

There are design options available for your profile’s appearance to help you develop and complement your branding with other websites and offline.  You can include #hash tags for more search engine optimizations (SEO).  Refer to Twitter help for more details. 

Our class was instructed to use the advanced search tools available to find some related Twitter users or industry related organizations/key people – thought leaders - for our business to follow.  This is an excellent tool for a business owner or manager to use for consumer marketing research also. You can search key terms related to your business needs and find people who are interested and tweeting about them.  

For example my project business the Sabrina Keller Foundation has a fundraising event next week on November 6^th – An eat-to-donate event at Panda Express in San Marcos California. Out of curiosity I searched the key words Chinese Food and Panda Express with the location of Escondido/San Marcos California (in separate searches). I found several users who said they liked Chinese food or were noted for eating at Panda Express. I could either passively follow them (to raise their curiosity about our organization), or aggressively market them for the event next week at Panda Express.  Or perhaps less invasive I could get in on their conversations – perhaps “retweeting” their comments and/or responding with my adding my own mention of the event at Panda Express next week.   

Another marketing strategy to adopt on Twitter is to find people or organizations related to your industry or brands and “follow” them - sometimes called “Influencers.” Hopefully you will be able to develop relationships with them online by creating and joining their discussions through Twitter over time.  

I searched the Key word terms “sudden cardiac arrest” and found several related organizations for the Sabrina Keller Foundation to follow including SADS – The National Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome Foundation.   The group Parents Heart Watch, and another called Heartfelt Cardiac Projects - which is an organization in Orange County that holds regular screening events for adolescents and teens to get genetically tested for SADS related disease.  These are just a few of the heart health related organizations I found with these three words alone.  I searched for “children’s health” and I found Rady Children’s Hospital to follow also.  

Twitter even started to suggest some organizations to follow as it noticed my patterns for selecting them. After choosing some local media outlets that I thought might be good candidates to reach more people on topics about heart health and health care in general. I had searched the key terms “San Diego,” “health,” and “media” - and the results gave me a large list of local health organizations including Blue Cross and several not so related topics for me, but it also gave me PBS “woman’s health” listed as second.  Upon choosing that organization to follow I was suggested by Twitter to Follow CBS Channel 8, NBC 7, the San Diego Tribune and several others.  

I also searched the key terms Girl Scouts and followed the national organizations profile as well as the local San Diego and Escondido, San Marcos Chapters.  As they are major stakeholders in the Sabrina Keller Foundations goals - as we are raising scholarship monies for this particular group.

There are other tools available to utilize for organizing your marketing efforts on Twitter as well, including a list feature, which you can use to manage and organize or to separate those people you follow into identifiable groups. Such as “girl scouts” or “Chinese food lovers” etc.  That way you can easily find these people or organizations to target your marketing efforts daily as needed. 

My class professor also recommended using Twitter for finding content ideas either for retweeting or to use elsewhere like on Facebook.  One of the organizations you may be following might have a good article or some good ideas to learn from, and you can use them elsewhere to promote your business and better reach your business goals.   

Some Non Profit Collegues and their Visual Social Media -

Continuing with our discussion on visual social media marketing this week; our class is now analyzing some of the organizations that are similar to our own business, to see who has been using Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, or Instagram effectively.

Starting with Pinterest - I found several Non profits similar to The Sabrina Keller Foundation who are making strategic pages and targeted pin boards - to reach out to potential stakeholders with their visual social  media marketing efforts. Such as featuring their sponsors or creating topic boards, which are dedicated to engaging and highlighting their supporters and the community projects they are involved with.  

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a Pinterest Page with several Pin Boards related to worldwide topics, and are featuring videos highlighting Billionaire Philanthropist Bill Gates (and others) giving speeches about the philanthropy and other endeavors with the Foundation.  They have one pin board dedicated to the World Economic Forum (which is held annually); as well as pin boards dedicated to highlighting community and woman; with “Newborn Health”, a “Social Good Summit,” and one entitled “Faces of Humanity” to name a just few.   

Another Non profit on Pinterest is called “Operation Smile” which is a medical group dedicated to helping children worldwide who suffer from facial deformities.  Some of their Boards and Pins include highlights about the Charity and their volunteer doctors who work with the organizations founder Dr. Bill McGee. The boards include pictures and commentary about their twenty care centers located around the world including India, the Philippines, and Guatemala.    

Tumblr is said to be a good place to share your “story” as business or organization, where you can present information and content in short visual blogs, while using mostly visual media with short written captions.  According to Mashable.com the blog can get very viral, and is great place for tagging your content (for SEO optimization), displaying videos, and making creative image postings.  But they do recommend that you have used solid unified branding for you organization across all your social media marketing platforms when you decide to participate with the website.   

A nonprofit called “Meatless Mondays” strategizes for social media reach by using Tumblr content tags related to non meat recipes such as meatless pizza. They tag the visual blog with the words like  “pizza recipes” – which when people who find the recipe in a Google search and they click the link, it would bring them to the Meatless Monday Tumblr page, to learn not only about how to make a pizza but about the organization’s meatless  mission and other endeavors as well.   

While Mashable.com doesn’t recommend you use the Tumblr site to disseminate your annual report; it does recommend you use the visual blog to explain what your organization does, and to show off and highlight your successes.   Another nonprofit using Tumble effectively in this manner is called “Good Neighbors U.S.A.,”   who is using images as updates about their latest projects and partnerships with the United Nations. There visual blogs highlights their efforts to aid nations with improving educational standards  and life quality, as well as helping people who are affected by civil unrest or when  facing natural disasters.  

The ASPCA – American Society for The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals - has taken advantage of YouTube’s nonprofit channels program, where it provides qualified nonprofits the access to free tools to use on their Video Channel WebPages, including a Google Wallet donate button, call to action overlays, live video streaming, and video annotations.  With a YouTube video channel page your organization can highlight videos about your organization, show past events, and make advertisements, sales or donation pitches; like in this example case with the ASPCA using an MTV celebrity “DJ Pauly D” to solicit for donations from their page visitors.  

The last Nonprofit using a visual social media platform I will be highlighting today is called Robin Hood New York, who is using the mobile social platform tool (an app) called Instagram; which works much like Tumblr with a visual blog and the use of limited text for content captions.  

The digital company Instagram started off on just a mobile platform but has since expanded for some limited access for business and individuals to see, comment, or like a page/blogs online with a computer or tablet devices.   Robin Hood New York’s mission is to “fight poverty” in New York City. There visual blog is seen here through a third party webpage called Webstagram, designed to bring in the Instagram mobile blog-feed through a shared  RSS platform.  The blog highlights RHN’s fund raising events, partnerships, and the volunteers who make the organization successful. 

Hey Picture This! -Growing Your Organization With The Right Visual Platforms

This week my class is covering the use of the more visually oriented social-media-tools that are getting popular and are available online for business promotions, including Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube and Instagram.

I am not going to pretend in my blog today that this week’s social media lessons (and the following examples for business use) present some easy online strategies for me. And I don’t think they will be for the smaller business owner either. And especially for those who do not have large marketing budgets and are not artfully minded or artistically inclined.

Also not every business will find a need to use them, or that they fit into their best strategies for their Branding and their Product or Business Development. Each business needs to come up with its own strategies and ideas of how these social media tools can potentially be useful to them. 

But for those of you who can manage the costs of digital media outsourcing, or are more artistically inclined, or perhaps you are just an artist at heart, or you have a business that is highly visual; such as within the industries of fashion, publishing or broadcast media. You just might find these visual social media tools I am going to cover today quite useful.

These tools would also be good for those of you who might have larger highly-visual business websites. Where you probably have the needs and access to large amounts of visual materials and related business content. Plus the capabilities and resources to manage the time, and personnel, you would need to create and publish these digitally appealing Social Media Pages.

  

Even though I speak with the caveat toned above – those on a lower cost budget (such as with my project with the Sabrina Keller Foundation) can still use these tools in more simple ways – such as by creating a quick promotion or providing product/service information or presenting a how-to video (etc.) on YouTube. And by posting more simple pictures, images and other imaginative content on Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram using simple Microsoft Office tools, a computer webcam or a cheap digital (or video) camera.   

I will first start off with the social image website Pinterest – which is essentially a public pin board for you and your followers to post images from online or off, which are uploaded to share and comment upon by your Pinterest Community. This is good for a Business or Brand with image intensive content, such as those selling products and services, or who hold events and manage attractions.

Maybe with some experimentation I think this is probably one of the most useful visual social sites for the Sabrina Keller Foundation, with their need for low budget or no budget options for social media strategies.  The Foundation can post photographs from events as well as other images regarding nonprofits and heart related or arrhythmic diseases. Pinterest has also been increasing the utility of their site with added tools that help you create and manipulate your images for more creative pinning.  They use features similar to Facebook with a “like,” “comment” and “re pin” functions - which is when users are sharing their favorite posts with other friends.

The foundation could encourage followers to pin their own images from SKF events or their own (heart related) information on the Keller Foundation Community Pin Board. Event pictures can be linked to the Foundation Website as well as to their Facebook Page. Pleas for monetary support or recruiting volunteers can be integrated into the content occasionally, and be linked to a landing page for giving donations or signing up to attend an event/volunteer, etc.  

Tumblr is similar to Pinterest with visual posting as well as using textual content (akin to a visual blog) to explain the materials in captions. This would use the same strategies for engagement as with Pinterest - using images and linking back to other Sabrina Keller Foundation websites/pages for getting more information and increasing our audience engagement.  They have many unique features to engage an audience including a random post function, post archives, and a “piggy back” feature, with capabilities to integrate with other social media tools.

A lot of visual context is used by business at this site with dynamic imagery. Someone - a business that is more artistically inclined - would find this site a very attractive tool to promote their brands. Video and sound clips can also be integrated into your business profiles on here if they are relevant and work with your marketing strategies.

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet after Google and it is a good place to showcase a business or organization with videos; especially if it can go viral. As mentioned above, showcasing How-to-Videos for using a product are a good example of how to utilize YouTube for engaging and attracting your audience. 

Using YouTube for The Sabrina Keller Foundation might not be that functional, as they are not selling a product or service, or have a need to show how to use something properly. They could probably post video clips from SKF and other related events to entice followers to engage with them. Linking the videos to the main SKF Foundation Webpage/Facebook to make comments and create anticipation for upcoming events within new and old followers/fans. SKF might also use the national SADS Foundation Videos (and other related organizations) as a repost through their own YouTube channel and then link these videos to their own content on their Home Webpage and at Facebook.

The last visual platform I am covering today is Instagram - Instagram is like Pinterest and Tumblr – it acts a place to showcase mostly images and generally limited textual content. It was originally designed for mobile applications but has expanded to a greater web based presence - where users can use many types of devices to engage with it –including smart phones, tablets and now on regular computers.

It is one of the fastest growing social sites on the web and attracts many types of growing demographics, with their largest demographic base currently being those between 18 – 34 years old, and who consist mostly of women. The Keller Foundation would be wise to use this application – or social tool - as women are a large part of their target market and have been the biggest fans on Facebook who demonstrate their engagement with SKF. 

Growing Your Business: Facebook Strategies Part II

Today we are finishing up our lessons on using Facebook Strategies in my Social Media for Business class.  And the topics were covering include creating some engaging content for our page, planning it out over time, and then scheduling it to be posted using the Facebook Event and Scheduling tools. 

We have learned this week that we should think about our Brand and our Customers Psychographics (target audience), and then think about the “language” or “tone” of our Facebook Pages – what we can say or not say - and what we should use to attract and engage with them online. Can we be light hearted and fun with the audience, or is our Brand Image something that needs to be more professional and we should maintain a more reserved tone? 

Does it need to follow a strict corporate image such as maybe for a law firm, banking, or an accounting agency? Or can you be more personal and campy like an owner of a used car lot called Big AL’s Automotive?   

Getting personal when you can is what makes Social Media most effective – so even if you have a certain corporate image that needs to be maintained and more reserved; it is a good idea to get creative and reach out to your customers on a more “intimate level.” Some articles I read this week suggested you create Facebook Company (upper management) Personnel Profiles connected to Blogs, which can make the owners or senior managers more accessible to customers.  

Topic number one for this week has been challenging for me – how do I reach and engage my nonprofit audience?  What do I post to engage both my Facebook Fans and the non-fans who visit my page and/or see my posts? What kind of content will get them to take some actions while on the page or when they see my news feed, to get them to click on them by liking, commenting, or sharing?
 

These are questions I am still struggling with for the (SKF) Sabrina KellerFoundation Page, as well as my Personal Branding and Career Page HTDEnterprises.  The images above are some of my first attempts with planning out some content for SKF.  

SKF is a nonprofit and little is going on right now for events – the next planned event which is still in development is not until next year - sometime in February. So I am essentially just trying to build the brand knowledge and awareness of the page right now as I do my class projects.   

I am searching for content that is going to be interesting and hopefully engaging.  I have linked or “liked” and “featured” several pages such as the National (SADS) Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome Foundation Page and some other related nonprofits, which promote SADS education and raise funds for research. 

Before we were assigned this week’s lecture and assignments to learn how to use the Facebook Scheduling and Events tools (which are located at the top of your Facebook Business Page in a text box with the labels “Status,” ”Photo/Video,”  “Offer/Event+” -refer to Facebook Help).  I posted a link on SKF to an article for a related SADS story; about a teen collapsing recently on a football field, and I also posted a question I wrote out asking who ate healthy food today. At first I got little or no response.   For the question post I made there was no one but myself (through my personal page) who responded and answered the question I had posted. I was disappointed. For the article I linked - I paid Facebook $5.00 for a 24 hour “Boost” – to prospectively reach several thousand people with extended news feeds. 

According to the Facebook statistics 1,432 people saw the post; just ten of them actually saw it on my page.  There were eight (8) that engaged with the page. We received five (5) page likes, six (6) “liked” the article linked to the post, but only two (2) actually clicked the link to go and read it on a third party webpage.  

I also had placed some other linked article-posts which did dismally without any boosts over the past week or two.  So I am still struggling to find the content that can be engaging for my nonprofit. It is recommended we make our posts and content “dynamic” and varied”. I am kind of running out of ideas. I have read that women (a core target audience who has been doing the most engagement by my analysis with Facebook Insights) are more visually interested in pictures than men who prefer videos. So I am going to try to post more pictures or images for women in the future. I shared an image of a short epigram which spoke about a "Happy Heart" which has received several likes in just a few short hours. I will have to strategize with some more content like this. If you have any ideas of content for a Non Profit such as The Sabrina Keller Foundation Page please leave a blog comment.  I welcome your ideas.

With the next four SKF Posts illustrated above - I have scheduled them over the course of the next two days. I have tried to mix them up a bit - first with a question asking about the importance of genetic testing for SADS related diseases. I have that scheduled for two separate days at different times (Monday 6am & Tuesday 2pm). I am hoping to get existing fans to engage with the page more. Something the SKF page has received very little of in the past few years.  While the SKF director has posted content and events in the past, people have not engaged with them very much so far. We need to work on this.

I also have posted an Event (see above) – inviting people to come “LIKE” the new Sabrina Keller Foundation Page from on our older page - “The Sabrina Keller Scholarship Foundation” - which was set up first and actually has more Fans following that feed. We are trying to migrate our older fans to our newer page. According to the director this has been very challenging to do – the old page has over 400 “likes” - the new page has just over 150.  I have created an “Online Event” to get people excited about the newer page and come to comment on it. I used an eye catching photo with lots of balloons to attract some attention and hopefully spawn some actions. 

The second post pictured above (Scheduled for 10 am, Tuesday, Oct. 15) is to an article about living with SADS related diseases which is located on the National SADS Website.  The third post is for an embedded video that is about SADS - it is touching and emotional as well as educational – it is also short and to the point - lasting only about two minutes. I am hoping these scheduled posts bring our page some more engagement over this coming week.I will probably “Pin” (a way to keep an important post or picture at the top of your page/feeds) this video post to the top of the feed.   

The planning out for my SKF strategy is still a work in progress with trial and error sure to come - I need to come up with something more creative to engage my audience that is fun.  What do you think?