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50+ Stats You Might Not Know About Social Media

Firefox cupcake by M i x y.
"Firefox Cupcake" by M_i_x_y

Thanks to Ragan’s PR Daily, I learned about Danny Brown’s post from last weekend titled “52 Cool Facts About Social Media.” Here are a few of the facts that I found most interesting. I encourage to visit Danny’s blog and read the remainder of the list he created.

Facebook

“2. More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) is shared each month.”

“9. People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.”

Twitter

“11. Twitter’s web platform only accounts for a quarter of its users – 75% use third-party apps.”

“12. Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day.”

LinkedIn

“21. LinkedIn is the oldest of the four sites in this post, having been created on May 5 2003.”

“26. 80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.”

YouTube

“34. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.”

“40. YouTube uses the same amount of bandwidth as the entire Internet used in 2000.”

Blogging

“43. 60% of bloggers are between the ages 18-44.”

“44. One in five bloggers update their blogs daily.”

So, did any of these facts surprise you (either from the stats I excerpted, or the ones at Danny’s blog)? If so, which ones?

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Social Media Day :: Tampa :: June 30, 2010

Can’t attend the June 30 Mashable Social Media Day Meetup in Tampa? Then attend virtually via the Justin.tv live feed. The event at Tampa Bay Brewing Company starts at 6 p.m., which is roughly when the video will become available.

I am so looking forward to meeting many of the Tampa social media people I am connected to via Twitter and Foursquare, but whom I have not yet met in person.

NOTE: Thanks to SPARKbrand, I am able to provide the live feed to those who wished to attend tonight, but could not. I have NO control over the content or camera placement in this live feed.


Watch live video from SPARKbrand on Justin.tv

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One Week of Twitter :: Five Tips for Summer 2010 Classes

We’re about halfway through our One Week of Twitter. Many of you have provided your Twitter ID. I have made lists of the names (using a service called TweepML). Be sure to follow everyone in your class, along with the additional people I recommended in the One Week of Twitter assignment blog post. And follow others, too! If you’re not following people who are interesting to you, then you will get nothing out of this assignment.

You can easily add your classmates to your following list in Twitter by visiting the appropriate link below and following the directions on the page:

Five tips to keep in mind:

  1. I see that some of you are tweeting, but not really tweeting anything of substance. It may be okay to write “Sooooo bored!” as a Facebook status for your friends, but in Twitter, try to be more engaging and professional — at least for this one week assignment.
  2. Remember to reply to people in addition to writing your own original tweets. Broadcast-only tweets may be okay for some news organizations, but not for real people.
  3. Check your @UserName (username = your Twitter ID) to see who is writing directly to you. I am hearing from some of my Twitter friends that they’re writing to my students, but my students aren’t writing back at all. Maybe it’s because you didn’t know how to check for replies?
  4. Share links to information you find interesting or useful, along with a little commentary on why others should read it.
  5. Use Twitter’s search feature to find tweets marked with the hashtag for your class (#PRCA2330, #PRCA3330 or #FYE1220).

Hope you found this note helpful.

Barbara

(PS — You’ll write about your Twitter experience next week.)

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10.5 Ways for PR Students to Get the Most Out of Twitter

[Originally posted February 24, 2010.]

In the two years that I’ve been using Twitter, I’ve tried my best to get my PR students using Twitter, too. Most of them dutifully complete their One Week of Twitter assignment, then fade away when it’s no longer a requirement.  One week definitely isn’t enough time to “get Twitter,” but the classes I teach aren’t Twitter 101 classes . . .  Twitter is simply a small component of the classes. And the more I make it an assignment, the less they seem to like it.

So this week, I decided to compile a list of reasons and ways PR students can get the most out of Twitter. Maybe if they (you?) see the benefits, it will encourage you to stick with it even when it’s not an assignment.

  1. Write a good 160-character bio. Mention in your bio that you are a PR student and which university you attend. If there’s room left, include some additional information to personalize your bio. I know a lot of PR pros who always follow students back, if they know they are students.
  2. Upload a profile picture. Make yourself look like a human and not a generic bot. I recommend you pick a nice square picture of yourself. When you use a rectangle, it will be cropped, and you have no control over where the crop is. Try to have a picture that looks relatively professional. And by all means, have only YOU in the photo, no significant others or pets.
  3. Help your followers (or potential followers) learn more about you. In your profile, share a link to your blog (if, and only if, you update it regularly) or LinkedIn profile. Newbie mistake: Adding a link to your Twitter profile. Um, the person is already AT your profile page, so it’s kinda superfluous.
  4. Follow PR people. I created a Twitter Starter Pack for PR Students with about 60 engaging people and organizations to follow. Read what they write. Get a feel for how tweets look.
  5. Reply to people. If someone says something thought provoking, send him or her a note back with an @ reply. Even if the person isn’t following you, he or she will see your message. (I tend to follow back more quickly when someone sends me an @barbaranixon to start a conversation with me.)
  6. Introduce yourself. Twitter isn’t like a midddle school dance. You can’t just stand around, leaning on the wall, hoping someone will “ask you to dance.” It’s okay to send tweets to PR pros. And most of them really like it when you do! Let them know you’re a PR student. You may be surprised how helpful many of them are.
  7. Share links to interesting information. I recommend using Bit.ly for shortening links. Bit.ly can change a URL from “http://barbaranixon.posterous.com/a-fordmustang-sandwich-bump-drafting-stopped” to “http://bit.ly/cLCgNG” — this is a huge help when you’re trying to share a long link but don’t want to use up most of your 140 characters with the URL. A bonus? When you sign up for a free Bit.ly account, you get some analytics for free, which means you can tell how many people clicked on your link.
  8. Ask questions. In “real life,” how do conversations work? Lots of times one person asks a question and the other person answers it. On Twitter, if you ask a question, you may be pleasantly surprised at the responses you get, both from PR pros and other followers. Tip: PR pros tend to like to offer advice to PR students.
  9. Connect Twitter to your cell phone. If you can access Twitter from anywhere, it’s more likely that you will use it more often. I have DMs (direct messages) come right to my Palm Pre. And I can send a SMS tweet to 40404, and it will update my Twitter profile automatically.
  10. Twitter isn’t Facebook. And it’s not supposed to be. Twitter is more than a series of Facebook-type status updates. If that’s what you want to do, use Facebook instead. Very few people on Twitter really care that you’re “really really tired today” or that you “just left the gym.”

And now for tip 10.5: Interested in getting more followers? Take a look at your last page of tweets on Twitter.com. Read them carefully. If you didn’t know you, would you want to follow you?

So those are my 10.5 tips. What else would you suggest?

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Creating a Social Media Policy :: #PRCA3030


P6033675 by afsart.

Due: April 28 by 11:59pm in GeorgiaVIEW

Worth: 200 points

For the final project in PRCA 3030, students have the option of creating their own Social Media Resume or writing a Social Media Policy for a client organization. This blog post describes the Social Media Policy assignment.

The Process

Using the Policy Tool for Social Media, a free service of PolicyTool.net, create a Social Media Policy for your client. (Choose your own client.) In order to do this, you will make and justify several decisions, including the following questions (taken directly from Policy Tool for Social Media):

  • Who can use social media in your company?
  • Must employees obtain permission from someone to use social media?
  • May employee login ID’s or user names include the [“Organization Name”] without approval?
  • Are there certain well known employees who must follow these rules even for personal social media?
  • Are there any ethical standards that your employees must normally follow for publishing or commentary?
  • Do you offer internal assistance in setting up social media accounts and settings?
  • Must the user’s social media profiles be consistent with [“Organization Name”] website or publications?
  • Must official corporate photos be used for profile photos?
  • Should the employee include a disclaimer stating that they are not speaking on behalf of the company?
  • Do you want to add tips for successful use of social media that are helpful, but not strictly speaking required for a policy?

At each stage of the creation process in the Policy Tool for Social Media, you are asked to make a decision about the above questions. For each decision you make, provide a paragraph or so description of how you made the decision. You will want to get input from your client, rather than making these decisions in a vacuum. Put these questions and how you arrived at each decision in the Appendix of your paper.

The Paper

Your Social Media Policy Paper will consist of the following:

  • A short description of your client
  • A description of your client’s current involvement in social media (including how leaders & employees in the organization are using social media). See the Social Web Strategy Worksheet (from Chapter 1) on the Resource CD that came with A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, Tactics, and Tools for Succeeding in the Social Web for suggestions of types of social media sites the organization may be involved in.
  • A few paragraphs on the need for a social media policy (for any client, not just this one). Include information on the dangers of NOT having a policy in place.
  • The policy that you create using Policy Tool for Social Media (copy and paste)
  • A recommendation for how to implement the policy in the client organization
  • An appendix, which lists your justification for each of the answers to the policy questions, along with contact information for your client, just in case I have any questions

Remember

If you use information in your paper that you did not write yourself (for example, the client description), it’s critical for you to cite your sources. For the policy portion of your paper, you can simply indicate that you used the Policy Tool for Social Media to create the policy. As is common in our field of study, use APA Style for citations.

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Tweetin’ in the Classroom

At the annual convention of the International Listening Association, Chris Bond and I will be presenting a session titled “Twitter as a Tool to Transform Listening and Speaking within the Classroom and Conference Contexts.” Chris’ focus will be on conferences, and as I have used Twitter in my public relations (and first-year experience) classes for nearly two years, I will focus on the classroom.

Here’s a sneak peek at my presentation, where I share how using Twitter in the classroom can be both an advantage (w00t) and a disadvantage (meh). If technology is working as it should, I will create an audio recording of my part of our session on Friday morning and sync it to the Prezi below.

Tweetin’ in the Classroom on Prezi

Additionally, here are 11 tips for using Twitter in the classroom:

  • To help students get started using Twitter, use an assignment like One of Week of Twitter.
  • Create a Twitter list to make it easy for students to find each other on Twitter.
  • Let students know your specific expectations about Twitter usage in classroom.
    • Some professors allow (and even encourage) Twitter usage during all class sessions. Others limit it to specific days or times.
  • Create several short Twitter breaks during class.
    • Stop your lecture or discussion and ask students to synthesize and share what they have learned. Encourage them to respond to others in the class.
  • Monitor what they’re tweeting about during class time (once class is over).
    • Redirect them if they’re off topic too much or if it appears that Twitter is a distraction.
  • Be considerate of those who do not have access to a cellphone or computer during class time.
    • Encourage them to take 140-char notes, then tweet via a library computer after class.
  • Always use a class hashtag (like #COMM4333) if you want to make it easy for the class to follow the discussion.
  • Use WhatTheHashtag to create a transcript of tweets for your class.
  • Encourage students to share links to info that’s relevant to the class, along with the class hashtag, during times between classes.
  • Let pros in your field know when your class is, and ask them to contribute to the conversation by asking questions via Twitter during class time.
  • Consider having students participate in a scheduled chat (like #prstudchat) rather than holding a formal class once or twice during the semester.

What additional tips would YOU recommend?


(PS — When I attended the National Communication Association convention last fall, there was a bit of a kerfuffle about Twitter usage during conference sessions.)

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9 Ways to Make the Most of #Listen10

Just I have done for most of the last 20 years, I will be attending and presenting at the International Listening Association convention again this year.

Last week, USA Today’s Brian Dresher posted his tips on making the most of South by Southwest. These were great tips. I asked him if I could borrow liberally from them, and he said “sure thing.” So here goes.

  1. Don’t feel compelled to attend a session at every time one is offered. If you do that, it’s a quick recipe for listener burnout. (And I should know. I used to think it was impolite to sit out a session or two. Now I realize it’s more impolite to be zombie-like in a session than it is to be absent from a session.)
  2. Plan ahead to meet informally with the people you need to see. Check the program to see who is presenting and chairing; that will help you know who will be there.  Realize that the presenters and chairs will be fairly busy right before and after their sessions.
  3. Stay healthy. Make wise choices about your meals and snacks, and drink plenty of water. I usually buy a case of water to keep in my hotel room and make it a goal to finish it off before the conference is over.
  4. Attend a panel or presentation outside your usual area of interest. If you’re an academic, try some of the business panels. If you’re in the helping professions, see what the K-12 educators have to say.
  5. Say hello! ILA members are among the friendliest people I’ve come across. Even if this is your first ILA convention, feel free to introduce yourself. You might even get a hug (that’s a warning).
  6. Arrive early to the popular panels. Sit near the front so you can really engage with the presenters.
  7. Bring a power strip. You can make LOTS of friends, especially in airports, if you are willing to share your power with others.
  8. Bring lots of business cards. Even in this mostly electronic age of ours, one of the best ways to exchange contact information is through a business card. I make my own, and I include my photo on the back, to make it easier for people to connect my name and face.
  9. After the conference, send thank you notes to presenters who made an impact on you. And when I say “thank you note,” I don’t mean an e-mail. I mean a real, handwritten and mailed via USPS note.

So, those are my 9 best tips for making the most of the International Listening Association convention. Do you have a 10th tip to offer?

(PS — I bet these tips would hold true for most communication-related conventions, too.)

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One Week of Twitter :: COMM 4333 and PRCA 3330 :: Spring 2010

Spring 2010 COMM 4333 & PRCA 3330 Students Only

(For Summer PRCA 2330 & 3330 Students, see the updated version of this assignment.)

Our One Week of Twitter assignment begins on Monday, February 15, and will end at midnight on February 22. Your blog post about this experience count as your Topic of the Week for Week Seven.

First, Learn a Bit About Twitter

  1. Listen to Laura Fitton discuss Twitter for Business.
  2. Listen to my Twitter: What’s in it for me? presentation.

Setting Up Your Twitter Account

  1. Go to Twitter. Click Get Started, and sign up. I prefer it if you use some version of your first and last name as your Twitter ID. (Avoid putting numbers in your Twitter ID, or you may appear like a spammer.)
  2. Upload a photo or avatar.
  3. Write a brief (140-character or fewer) bio. It’s good to mention that you’re a PR student.
  4. Send a tweet saying “I’m a student in @barbaranixon’s #COMM4330/#PRCA3330 class”. (Use the correct number for your class.) Be sure to include the #xxx1234 indicator, with no spaces between the hashtag (#), letters and numbers.
  5. If you haven’t already done so, complete my form that tells me your Twitter username before midnight on  Monday, February 15.

Setting Up Your Following List

  1. Follow at least 20 (why not all?) of the people or organizations in my Twitter Starter Pack for PR Students.
  2. Visit your class’ list for PRCA 3330 or COMM 4333 at TweepML. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to easily follow all the people on the list.

Using Twitter

  1. Over the course of the next week, send at least twenty tweets (Twitter messages of 140 characters or less). Tip: Rather than tweeting that you’re having ramen for lunch, instead consider what might be of interest to your classmates and followers. Perhaps point others to something interesting or funny you read online. Share a fact you learned in a class. Maybe you could even pose a question that you’d like others to answer.
  2. In addition to the twenty tweets that you originate, respond to at least five of your classmates’ tweets. To respond, click on the arrow after a tweet. Or you can type the @ symbol followed immediately by a username (such as @barbaranixon).

Additional Information

  1. Review my tips on how college students can use Twitter to their advantage and Choosing Whom to Follow on Twitter: My Strategy.
  2. Review Prof. Sam Bradley’s College Student’s Guide: Twitter 101.
  3. I find using the web interface for Twitter to be clunky. I prefer using TweetDeck, a free Adobe Air app that works great on PCs and Macs.
  4. I’ll occasionally post information on Twitter and use the hashtag for your class (either #COMM4333 or #PRCA3330).By using this hashtag, I’m indicating that I want students in this class to pay special attention to the tweet.
  5. OPTIONAL: If you’d like to publicize your blog posts via Twitter, you can it automatically in WordPress.

Blog About Your Experience

After the week is over, add a 300-word (minimum) post to your blog about the experience and what you got out of it. Include a link to your Twitter profile (here’s mine). Be sure to include at least one way you might find value in continuing your account in Twitter. Your blog post about this experience count as your Topic of the Week for Week Seven.

Questions? Just send me a DM (direct message) or an @ (reply) in Twitter!

NOTE: Many thanks to Kaye Sweetser and Karen Russell for their ideas prompting this assignment.