Amanda Marie Photography: A small business with a large social media presence

Amanda Lipsey understands the importance of engaging with her customer base.

“I built my entire business on Facebook. It helps with word-of-mouth, and makes access to me and my portfolio very easy and fast.”

Word-of-mouth matters. Over at Fox Business, Ned Smith reports that 77% of surveyed moms rely on advice from friends when making purchasing decisions. And moms are exactly who Lipsey is targeting.

Her small business, Amanda Marie Photography, specializes in photos of children and families. Titles for specialities include Michigan Child Photographer, Michigan Newborn Photographer, and Michigan Family Photographer. Scroll through her business’ Facebook page and you will quickly see why there are multiple comments that praise her creativity. To use a word from the writing lexicon, her photos have a distinctive, original voice to them.

While Lipsey uses Twitter and her blog to promote her business, Facebook is her go to social media channel.

“I find Facebook is my favorite. I like the immediate interaction there.” She also knows that Facebook is where moms are. And moms are her target audience.

Blogging for TODAYmoms, on April 13, Leslie Meredith reports that moms are more savvy users of Facebook than women with no children. A study by Performics found that moms  base purchasing decisions based on recommendations and reviews from Facebook. It also found that “almost 60% of moms make product recommendations on Facebook,” Meredith reports.

Now matter how busy she is, Lipsey makes sure her social media channels stay current. Her stragegy for social media is basic, but it’s also effective. She updates them in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Look up advice on how to best use social media tools to promote a business, and you’ll find that one of the first lessons is to keep your posts current.

Inkling Media, in their tips on how small businesses can use Facebook effectively, recommends that they post at least once daily, and two or three daily posts is even better. Amanda Marie Photography takes this advice to heart. She also follows another one of their important tips: vary your content.

Her Tweets and Facebook posts emphasize her dual role of photographer and mom. She also uses them to promote contests and give-aways. A rather clever contest she has right now encourages people to interview a child about the imaginary world he or she plays in, and then submit that interview to her along with the child’s photo. Each entry will be put online, and the child and imaginary world with the most votes will win a thematic photo session based on his or her fantasy.

Part of what makes this contest clever in regard to it’s social media aspect is that it encourages potential customers to drive more participants to her site. This increases her following, and also potentially her customer base. It’s a win-win strategy.

Lipsey explains, “I would rank social media as  #1 for spreading the word about a promotion or change in the business.”

As effective as social media is as a tool, Lipsey understands that there are still some things that it can’t do.”I feel like it has made the personalized aspect of my business suffer. Sending a private message thanking a client isn’t nearly as effective as sending a handwritten thank-you. I lost that aspect for a while and am trying to get back to it.”

Being a photographer, you would expect Lipsey’s social media channels to reflect an eye for design. They don’t disappoint, so be sure to check them out.

https://twitter.com/#!/AmandaLipsey

http://www.facebook.com/#!/AmandaMariephotography.Mi

http://amanda-mariephotography.blogspot.com/

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School districts who want to reach a large audience on social media need to be on Facebook and YouTube

When a school district moves to using social media as a PR tool and a model of communication with students, parents, and the community, the district needs to know what social media these groups are using. I am working on a presentation for a school board that recommends that they expand their social media presence by opening up a YouTube channel for the school, and a Facebook page. Both of these social media sites would augment their Twitter account.

A simple questionnaire was passed out to the ninth grade class at this district in order to gather data on the use of three types of social media by these students and their parents. I tracked whether or not each group used Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

As you can see by the numbers, only 9% of freshman parents are on Twitter, while 89% use Facebook. It will make sense for the district to use Facebook as a communication tool with so many parents on it – 80% more.

While the number of Twitter users rises when looking at the student population (33%), 94 % use Facebook. Again, Facebook is the social media tool that would reach the most users.

YouTube is used by 70% of parents and 95% of students. This is another medium the school district can use to reach a large audience.

The numbers show that if the district agrees to open a YouTube account and a Facebook page, a large audience is there for them to reach.

Social Media is Good for Us!

In an era where the ubiquity of social media coincides with the fear that too much of it can be detrimental to your health, it’s important to pay attention to what the science says about it.

Voice of America is reporting today that Australian researchers found that the use of social media, sites like Twitter and Facebook, during natural disasters lesson people’s psychological damage. One reason for this is that survivors can easily share their stories.

It makes sense; we need to share our stories, whether they be full of tragedy or fear. To me it seems part of what makes us human.

What I wonder about is the difference between telling our story to another human being sitting next to us, and getting it out there on Facebook. Is there a difference? Part of the storytelling experience, I have always assumed, is connection you feel as you see someone react physically and emotionally to your story – their smile or tears mirroring your own.

Perhaps I’ve been wrong. Is the catharsis we feel coming from the person next to us, or does it come from the relief of telling the story?

I don’t have an answer to this question. Do you?

Social Media in the Public School System

While researching school districts that use social media, I came across this: The Oakridge School’s social media page. What a clever way to use social media as a tool. In an era where school’s are criticized for being behind the times, it’s refreshing to see one that models for its students how to use social media in a professional and responsible manner.

If you scroll down their site, you’ll find links to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. There are also links to various podcasts and a blog.

It’s a private school, which makes me curious. Do they have more room to explore the social media realm without the worry of liability that school districts have?

The Peoria Journal Star: How social media is transforming the way a paper shares news

The Peoria Journal Star

Adam Gerik is the web producer of the Peoria Journal Star, the local paper of Peoria, Illinois. The paper has a circulation of 60,000, and is owned by GateHouse Media. As the web producer, Gerik also handles the social media accounts for the paper. The Peoria Journal Star newspaper is the main product, but it’s been several years since print was only realm of its news service.

The Beginnings of their Social Media Presence

The initial online presence of the paper was its webpage. By the end of 2008, the newspaper was using Facebook and Twitter to promote and expand news coverage. Gerik had the foresight, while using Twitter for personal use, to reserve handles for the newspaper. It had already lost journalstar.com to a Nebraska newspaper, and Gerik didn’t want that to happen with Twitter or Facebook.

A year after registering on Twitter, the paper began using an autofeed. Headlines were automatically posted onto their account. A year or two after that, reporters officially signed on, and now they add to the Twitter feed on a daily basis.

The Reasoning for Social Media and their Strategy

There was no official corporate memo to start this social media campaign. It was created to build up an audience, Gerik said. In order to build audiences for the different social media platforms, the paper had to learn that what worked for print didn’t necessarily translate to success on Facebook or Twitter.

Gerik said that the paper “spice things up” for its Facebook audience. The paper focuses on visual elements and quirky or irreverent details. Twitter posts are hybridized.  Headlines are rewritten to make them conversational; they emphasize things they wouldn’t necessarily focus on in print.

With the building of a social media audience, there is no specific numerical goal of followers that the paper is working to reach. The focus is to keep building a following, which it’s doing. Because the audience isn’t growing as rapidly as it was at the offshoot, Gerik is working to figure out why.

Social Media as a Tool

A goal in the incorporation of social media at the paper is getting reporters comfortable with it. Experience with it varies. There are requirements for reporters to Twitter and blog, requirements that add to their responsibilities. Gerik said that reporters are learning to look for ledes on Facebook and Twitter. A goal is to have them see social media as “just another tool.”

Another goal is to increase interaction between the paper and its social media followers. For example, when someone from the paper responds to a post on Facebook, the response comes from “js” (journalstar).  In order to be more personable, Gerik and others now initial their comments, that way it’s a person responding, not an institution.

What is Going Well for the Peoria Journal Star

The paper is actively engaged in social media and continues to build an audience. It understands the nuances of the different platforms, and reporters shift their writing style and headlines accordingly. By taking an active step to have all reporters at the paper invested in Twitter, the business is increasing personal investment in the medium as another tool to increase readers.

In an era of shrinking revenues and budgets, the newspaper understands that social media is also a marketing tool. Gerik explained that the paper may not have the budget to buy a billboard in downtown Peoria, but through Facebook and Twitter, the paper still gets their brand out there.

Through the use of Google metrics and analytic tools on Twitter and Facebook, Gerik said the newspaper is gathering large amounts of data.  For example, he learned that their Facebook audience is largely female. Using that piece of data, journalists can begin tailoring more posts that target a female audience.

Is there room for improvement?

The next step that the paper can make is transforming the data it’s collecting through Google, Twitter, and Facebook into another tool that can be used to target a larger audience. This of course requires personnel and time, something that many papers are short of these days.

Also, news isn’t just words. The website could add a link to a Flickr account where the paper stores its photojournalism. Videos on the site could also be stored on Youtube. Through both platforms, future audience members could stumble upon a photo or video that could take them back to the newspaper.

As Gerik said, “it’s about having our brand out there.”

P.S. Adam Gerik is also a photojournalist. Click here to check out his online portfolio.

Important questions about online privacy that everyone needs to ask!

This is what privacy looks like on a frozen lake. Will there ever be a place like this on the web?

I think that it is easy to forget just how open the web is sometimes. When you rank a movie on Netflix or a song on iTunes, if you are like me, you imagine your audience to be fellow movie viewers or music purchasers. What I don’t imagine is someone trawling the internet looking for anything or everything I have ever posted. What I also don’t except, naively, is that same person judging my fitness for a job based on what they find there.

I get it to a point. My Facebook page is private; my pictures and postings are only viewed by friends. I refrain from vitriolic commentary on political pages. But occasionally things still slip. Friends have posted pictures without tagging me, and I stumble upon them weeks later. They aren’t doing this maliciously, and I have done the same. Eager to put up photos of camping trips or family Christmas parties, I have posted pictures that, because I know the context, are innocent. Someone else looking at them, someone who wasn’t there, could interpret them in completely different ways. And no matter how “private” my Facebook settings are, I have no control over what other people post.

The internet is predominantly a public forum; as a society, we are going to have to come to terms with the rules and regulations for how to maneuver through this forum legally and morally. In order to do that, we have to come up with common answers to questions like those listed below.

Where should we draw a line of privacy in a public age?

This is a difficult question to answer. One could say that if a person wants privacy, they need to stay offline, but that is impossible for most people in today’s age. Employees in a majority of industries are expected to do things virtually, even if it’s just the basics of email. Computers aren’t a newfangled thing anymore. Rules should be set for online sites that could be considered privacy zones. Places where, as Clay Shirky explains in his interview with Switched, we can expect a semi-private sphere. The analogy he gives is that even if talking on a public street, we have the expectation that people going by will not stop to listen and record our private conversation. We extend an arm of civility and give people privacy and the right to talk amongst one another without listening in. We would never say, “Oh this person might apply for a job in my company someday, I think I’ll listen in to see what he or she is saying.” We just move along.

How should we live our lives in a world where employers believe they have the right to search the internet, looking for potential missteps in your online reputation?

Jeffery Rosen, writing for The New York Times Magazine, reported that the European Union started a public service campaign reminding people to “Think B4 U post!” It’s a message that bears repeating. (And perhaps a message that should pop up on your screen before anything you go to submit online.) It’s also really an old-fashioned message: Think before you speak. We need to realize that at this point, potential employers are searching for applicants online. When I think about how potential comments or posts could be viewed by a boss, I slow down and really make sure my message is fair and necessary. We also need to make sure we are matching our privacy settings on social media sites like Facebook with our belief of what they should be. danah boyd is a researcher at Harvard. In a pilot study, she found a discrepancy between what people thought privacy setting should be on Facebook, and what they actually were. We need to be more conscious of matching up our actions to our beliefs.

Do employers have the right to search the web for information on a potential employee and base their hiring decision off that information?

Rosen reported that in a survey conducted by Microsoft, three out of four recruiter and human-resource staff collect online research on applicants. It’s obviously an institutional norm. And it’s not necessarily an unfair norm. Running background checks on people isn’t a new thing. But the places employers are going to for this information has changed, and it’s not clear how necessary it is for them to go there. If you do keep privacy setting on your Facebook page at a maximum, why do potential employers need you to open it up in front of them, as Michael Fertik, founder of ReputationDefender, said he was getting reports of. Perhaps we need to consider ourselves as owners of our page, like we are the owners of our cell phones or diaries, things employers would not think of asking us to hand over to look through before hiring. Until that stance becomes the institutional norm though, we have to be vigilant about what we say, and what people post.

Should there be a statute of limitations on how long posting stay online?

The technology is there to make it happen. Rosen reports that Cuil, a search engine, will not store personal data, and there is an app that automatically erases sent text messages, no matter what phone they’re stored on. Not everything we ever say or write down deserves to be saved for posterity. People develop their online presence at an early age now. Could you imagine a world where every note you ever sent in middle and high school was recorded digitally and stored online? People change and grow; our opinions shift and mature. A statute of limitations on postings allows people the space to make those changes without the constant reminder of everything they have ever said or did assessable to anyone with enough skill to dig it up online.

Will the answer to privacy be decided in a court of law or will there be a technical solution?

There will probably be a bit of both. As mentioned above, we have the technological capacity to limit the life span of text messages and online posts. Privacy settings are already there; a simple shift to having the strongest privacy setting as the default settings would signify another mindset shift – privacy being a part of the online forum. Technology will probably not be the only answer though. Rosen discusses a University of California, Berkeley  study that showed that 88% of 18-22 year olds believe that it should be illegal for websites to keep all their data on users indefinitely. Setting laws that address privacy boundaries and data storage will allow people and businesses to know when background checks are slipping into a zone of intrusiveness. At the very least, people should be made directly aware of what sites are storing about them. Laws that force these online sites to send you a copy of what they have on you would allow people to fully understand just what is being gathered about them.

Can The Oscar’s Learn from MTV’s Success?

With the VMA’s gaining viewers every year, and the Oscar’s losing them, maybe it’s time for the Academy Awards to take a page from MTV’s social media playbook. (Twitter writes up their success story here.)

It’s not that the Oscars don’t use social media (take a look at their app here), they just haven’t used it with the same sort of pizzazz that came along with the 2011 VMAs.

Through the use of social media during the 2011 VMAs, MTV reported a 76% increase in internet traffic from the year before, with an increase of over 40% in video streaming alone. The company created multiple and clever methods of audience interaction with the show and performers by utilizing Twitter, gaining 12.4 million viewers along the way (a new record for them).

While the Oscars App brings audience members to the show, it doesn’t bring them directly to the celebrities, and it doesn’t bring the celebrities to their fans. During the VMA’s, viewers could go online, find out where their favorite entertainers were sitting in the theater and catch their twitter feed live. And as viewers responded to tweets and retweets, those in the theater could respond to viewers.

The Academy Awards were panned last year for their too obvious campaign to bring in younger viewers by handing over the hosting reins to Anne Hathaway and James Franco. They didn’t bring in stellar reviews. If the ratings over at MTV are any indication, it could be argued that what the youth vote wants is as much real-time interaction with the event and the celebrities as possible.

Will Chevy’s Game Time app become the new norm for Super Bowl marketing strategy?

With Super Bowl Sunday approaching rapidly, talk around the lunch table has shifted to predictions, side bets, and a small amount of pouting from a Packer’s fan. We are also talking about commercials. As someone who has a difficult time even sitting through a single commercial (the DVR has revolutionized my television viewing), this is the only time of year where I actually get excited to be marketed to.

After reading Heidi Cohen’s piece for Clickz on the “7 Top Online Marketing Trends for 2012,” it struck me that Super Bowl ads would be the perfect place for companies to interact with their base. After all, the Super Bowl is one of few events that can still garner millions of American’s attention. The Huffington Post reported last year that Super Bowl 2011 broke the record for most viewed program in American television history.  (The record broken came from Super Bowl 2010.) Not since 1983 with the final episode of MASH have this many people gathered around the TV.

Cohen’s first piece of advice for businesses is to remember that consumers are using multiple devices to interact online. As the weekend evening wears on past six, traffic is fairly equal between people on cell phones, computers and tablets. The Super Bowl starts around the time when, while all eyes may be on the game, people are sharing their attention to it with multiple internet devices.

People are going to be online during the Super Bowl. My Facebook newsfeed was filled last year with real-time commentary on the game, and more often than not, the ads. How many companies will pay attention to this and take advantage of it?

On the marketing blog TopRank, Dave Folkens reported last year on the disappointingly low number of companies that utilized social media during their 2011 Super Bowl ads. While some companies used Twitter in small ways, Folkens opined that Volkswagen, by using YouTube to air a teaser trailer to their commercial, took the greatest advantage of social media.

Enter 2012 and the Rebirth of the American Auto Industry

Teaser trailers for Super Bowl 2012 ads abound on YouTube right now. Apparently companies have caught on to Volkswagen’s success last year. But there is another company that is preparing to take Super Bowl commercials to an entirely different realm: GM. They have created Chevy Game Time, an app that can be downloaded for both the Droid and Apple market. The app will connect you to Chevy during the game and will allow the user to enter into a trivia competition based on the 2012 game. Prizes include new Chevys.

I downloaded the free app on Sunday, clicked the option to register through my Facebook account (it also allows you to use Twitter), and entered into an interactive site with live Twitter updates, polling questions, and much more. Chevy, it seems, is aware of Cohen’s tips on online marketing.

Because it can also be played through the computer, Chevy’s app will be available to consumers regardless on the device they use to stay connected to the internet during the game. It will be interesting to see how many people participate in this.

IN ORDER TO “GET” TWITTER, YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO BE A PARTICIPANT…

New Perspectives

Part Two: Using Twitter as a Tool for Promotion

Over at thenextweb.com, Sherilynn Macale presents statistics that demonstrate that Twitter users are participants in social media, not voyeurs. Over 70% of Twitter users blog, over 60% write product reviews and post comments on news sites, and at least 50% are posting online videos, contributing to wiki sites, and posting articles online for third parties.

She also explains that Twitter users drum up more influence for businesses than Facebook users do.

Twitter is the tool to use for online professionals.

In his TED talk, Clay Shirky explains that media professionals are now involved in two-way communications with media consumers. Web 2.0 is a movement away from professionals who have the only set of keys to the printing press or broadcasting tower. Bloggers are becoming just as influential as mainstream journalists and writers in influencing what people are thinking and talking about.

Because there are now so many voices, and multiple forums where these voices can be heard, Twitter is a tool that allows a journalist or blogger to advertise his or her voice, and to get a foot in the door as they say, into the conversations that are happening.

Some bloggers and Twitter users will enter the realm of social media and rise quickly to the top because of the name they have made for themselves on the outside. But others can make a name for themselves and gain a following by offering insightful thinking and commentary on the world through the use of Twitter.

Twitter needs to be seen as a realm of reality that a blogger or journalist ignores at their peril. If you want your next post or article to become part of a larger conversation, then you have to be a part of the social realm that is carrying on the conversations.

As a professional journalist or writer, your audience can now be so much larger through mediums like Twitter. Someone writing for a local newspaper can, through Twitter, have an audience well outside the range of the paper’s distribution. A simple tweet can inform followers of a new article or blog post, driving more of an audience to your writing, and to your organization.

The power of a tweet goes further than that. Searchenginejournal.com reports that “Google is now indexing twitter pages.” Bloggers can now increase their online presence and influence through their repeated use of Twitter.

It’s important to point out that Twitter isn’t just about what you tweet; it’s also about who and what you are following. The people and sites you follow are a reflection of who you are willing to engage in conversations with. Twitter can be used as a networking tool to further your profession. Whatever your focus is as a blogger, there will be others out there with a shared interest. Use Twitter to see what they are thinking and talking about.

IN ORDER TO “GET” TWITTER, YOU HAVE TO BE A PARTICIPANT…

Popular Keywords used on Twitter from http://www.sysomos.com

Part One: On the Importance of Twitter…

I have often wondered about the importance of Twitter. My initial understanding of the medium formed when it first developed popularity. It was like Facebook, but better because as someone excitedly shared with me, “you only get the updates.” I’ll be honest, this didn’t exactly woo me. There is a piece of something inside me that balks at the idea of promoting my daily habits and thoughts to an invisible audience. Even on Facebook, I am much more of a voyeur than a participant.

Now I’m not a shy person. I stand up in front of a classroom on a daily basis and use my cult of personality as a tool to drag 125+ freshmen down the path of least resistance (hopefully), that will lead them to some sort of competent understanding of classics like The Odyssey and Romeo and Juliet. I share exorbitant amounts of thinking, and carry on countless conversations with my students. So why do I have a problem doing this online?

I took this question to my teaching colleagues. Interestingly, my admittedly small sample mostly echoed my own line of thinking about Twitter. They didn’t see a point to it. Only one had ever signed up, and she closed the account shortly afterwards because she felt it “contributed to a society that only wants instant gratification.” In a very non-scientific poll of these same colleagues a few days later, most of them said that they were on Facebook, but also explained that they rarely posted anything. They shared my tendency to not actively participate, even while using social media.

And this I think is the real question about Twitter. Can it be important if you are not willing to be a participant?

The Research

Twitter is about posts, but it is also about conversations. It’s about real information that is coming at you quickly. Twitter is like a finally (mostly) reliable game of telephone.  You are allowed to add information, but it doesn’t have to replace or distort the original message, your tweets augment it instead.

In an article on Twitter for the New York Times, David Carr quotes Clay Shirkey who says that Twitter has been useful to both Iranian dissidents and celebrities like Martha Stewart. This seems to be Twitter’s real power. It has a usefulness to disparate people in completely different arenas with completely different needs, except for one: the need to communicate to a larger audience.

Maybe that’s why, as a teacher, my colleagues and I couldn’t understand the necessity of Twitter at first. Our audience is conveniently scheduled to meet with us Monday-Friday, in hour-long increments. We don’t have to actively seek them out, and they don’t have much choice in the matter either. Twitter users fight to be heard, and if good enough, reach a far larger audience on a daily basis than some teachers do.