Stats Canada recently released new information on how many people in Canada use the Internet on a regular basis. The Vancouver Sun has an overview on it here.
According to Stats Canada, in 2009 usage jumped up to 80% (or 21.7 million Canadians) up from 73% in 2007. The increase shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone.
The New York Times has a good article about an incident involving Boeing. It’s worth a read.
When I began reading the article and saw that Boeing had responded to a small child who had taken the time to send them his ideas for a new plane with a “legalled” up form letter, I was appalled. And even though they have recently jumped on to Twitter, their response to feedback on the microblogging site still seemed old paradigm big business. (We have a process here on top of the mountain!)
However, it turns out that Boeing gets it. They saw an opportunity to connect and to improve their public relations through this incident and they did it. Good for them. And if a large corporation with layers and layers of administration, legal and bureaucracy can step away from their ivory tower long enough to realize that they are dealing with human beings – in this case little human beings – then any organization can too.
What would your organization do if it was called out like this on Twitter? How would you respond?
There seems to be a trend happening that is quite interesting. It certainly created some engaging discussion at the AHA office. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit beside the VP of Social Media for a large PR firm. I have a passing acquaintance with this woman and we got to talking about the demands of our jobs and how our roles have changed because of social media. She surprised me by saying that at the end of the month, she was turning in her BlackBerry and was going back to a cell phone. One that would be turned off at 6 p.m. and back on at 8 a.m. – just business hours. Keep in mind, this is the VP of social media.
Another friend approached me to ask about Facebook protocol and etiquette. It turns out he took a look at his Facebook “friends” and realized that, for the most part, they were friends of friends or acquaintances that really don’t impact his life very much. He was trying to figure out how to “unfriend” people, going so far as thinking about deleting his page and starting a new secret page just for people that he wants to stay in touch with.
I have another friend who entered the Facebook world cautiously. He doesn’t use his real name on Facebook, he keeps his friends to a small number because the only way you really know he is on Facebook is if he emails you and explains that his “alias” wants to friend you and it’s really him.
We hear it from clients, colleagues and friends all the time. Keeping up with what is going on in social media is overwhelming. Just recently, Facebook rolled out community pages and began to group people based on likes. They have also stopped supporting Facebook Lite, which appeared to be a Twitter-like approach to Facebook. Ning has announced that it will eliminate the free component of its service…and the list goes on and on. How can anyone keep up not only with the changes, but what they mean to your organization?
There is a great piece on hubspot.com entitled 4 Ways To Make Your Corporate Website More Social. This is a recurring topic here on the AHA blog and with our clients. An organization has a real opportunity to use their website to provide relevant information and to connect with stakeholders. Unfortunately, more often than not, websites don’t receive the attention they should because the focus is on some other online tools or technology that have more buzz, hype or profile at the moment.
Take a good look at your website or have a professional provide an audit on your site. There may be opportunities that you are missing because your site is stagnant, stale or just plain outdated.