Social Media

At AHA, we’re big fans of Danny Brown. He has a great blog post that lists 52 Cool Facts About Social Media. We don’t want to steal Danny’s thunder – and we do want you to check out his blog…but below are just a few of the cool facts:

  • There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
  • The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.

Is your organization on Facebook? Should your organization be on Facebook? Have you looked at the challenges and opportunities for your organization on Facebook?

  • Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day.
  • There are more than 600 million searches on Twitter every day.

Are you monitoring Twitter, even if you aren’t actively tweeting? Is Twitter of value for your organization? Are employees of your organization on Twitter in a personal or professional way?

  • There are more than 70 million users worldwide on LinkedIn.
  • 80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.
  • LinkedIn receives almost 12 million unique visitors per day.

How can your organization benefit from using LinkedIn?

Danny tells us more about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn as well as a few other stats and facts that are very interesting. This post helps put social media use into perspective…it’s worth a read.

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There was an interesting article in The Vancouver Sun last week (it also ran in the National Post, Montreal Gazette and several other daily newspapers) that says that PR is more vital than ever for businesses. Especially in the age of social media.

We knew that. We’ve known it for what seems like forever. This is a great time for communicators (aka PR people). An open, two-way conversation that is based on an organization living up to its promises and aligning to its values is what ethical PR people have been working towards for decades. For organizations with integrity and for organizations that want to improve, this is a great time to be in business. Your stakeholders and customers are ready to tell you what they want from you and how they feel. You just need to listen and want to authentically connect with them.

There is huge opportunity here for product development, customer research, and for connecting and partnering with your target market in a way that benefits everyone involved. And if something goes wrong, you can quickly identify the problem, address it and ensure that the people who have issue with your organization or product realize that you are engaged, care and are doing the right things.

Of course, for an organization that has something to hide, where the values are not aligned with the operation of the company and where they think they can “hide” or “spin” their way out of an issue – good luck. That mindset went out with Enron.

For reputation management and for proactive, positive PR for your organization you need a team that can develop a strategy, write a plan and execute using both traditional PR and social media tools.

If you want some assistance or support in this area, why not send us a quick email at info@ahacreative.com. We’d love to have a conversation!

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Regular readers of this blog know that we’re big fans of Brian Solis. He is someone for whom we have a huge amount of admiration and respect. He has an in-depth knowledge of social media, understands the human side of it, as well as the business application.

He has an excellent blog post today: The Last Mile: The Socialization of Business. It is most definitely worth a read. In fact, if you only read one thing today (besides the AHA blog), read this post!

We are currently in the process of working with several clients to develop their communications strategy and this blog post will be of great value to these teams. One of the biggest challenges that organizations face when it comes to integrating social media into their overall communications plan is making the shift from pushing out information to engaging in the conversation and understanding that the channels of communication are – at the very least – two way.

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There is an interesting blog post on Mediapost.com that highlights how many organizations are using social media without a strategy. The number is high and while it shouldn’t, considering what I see every day, it surprises me.

I have to admit that there are days (like today) when it feels like I am repeating myself over and over again on this blog. Let me say it again – it all comes back to strategy. To be effective using social media, or when using any communications or PR tool, you need to have a strategy.

When it comes to developing a strategy, one of the challenges goes beyond the fact that social media is cool, fun and “new.” I also think that there is some confusion in a lot of organizations about what a strategy is. I have been in quite a few meetings where the meaning of the words “strategic” and “tactical” were confused. Our friends at Beaupre PR have an excellent blog post on the difference between strategy and tactics. It is definitely worth a read, even if you are clear on the difference.

Without defining your strategy, it’s hard to identify your objective. For example, tomorrow (Friday) – we at AHA are launching AHA Flip Cam Fridays on this blog. Our strategy is to further position our Vancouver PR agency as a leader in providing strategic PR in the age of social media. We focused on transforming our small Vancouver PR agency into one of Vancouver’s hottest PR companies. In order to do that, we identified several tactics that would support our objective of building our client base by establishing our knowledge and skill set in the areas of PR and social media. That includes moving AHA up in the Google rankings under the searches of Vancouver PR, Vancouver PR agency, AHA and AHA Creative Strategies.

If we had just decided that we wanted to video blog, that would have been a little like putting the cart before the horse. Why should we video blog and what is the purpose of going to that extra effort? For us, we defined what we wanted to achieve and then we identified the tools that would help us get there.

The social media component of our plan to grow AHA is just that, a component. There are other areas that we are focused on as well. I also speak regularly to groups, associations and organizations about the importance of blending social media and traditional PR.

There isn’t just one prong to our approach and that’s because we defined our strategy first and then developed the overall approach and identified which tools would work in this situation.

That’s my two cents worth for today. I am looking forward to tomorrow and the launch of AHA Flip Cam Friday.

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David Clarke has a great blog post on the Facebook haters who “like” your brand. He outlines some types of people that will “like” (or become a Fan) your brand on Facebook – but not all of them are fans. It is definitely worth a read if you are trying to understand the dynamic of who might “like” your Facebook page.

Recently we’ve seen a few organizations have their Facebook pages overrun by critics. There are some challenges when you choose to develop a Facebook page for your organization. One of the risks you face come from the people that will click that “like” button, but who are really critics or, even worse, haters of your brand. Of course, there are also people who are supporters out there too and you don’t want to miss the opportunity to connect with them because of a fear of the negative.

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