Kiwano Marketing Partners With EcoApprentice

You have a cool company. You made sure your eco and social values are deeply rooted into your organization. You are just getting ready to launch your next environmental challenge. How do you get the word out?

We’re very excited to present our newest partner, EcoApprentice. EcoApprentice helps businesses, non-profits and individuals promote their eco challenges by crowd-sourcing sustainability challenges. What does this mean?

The EcoApprentice.com model is pretty straight forward:

1. Businesses share their environmental initiatives, or EcoChallenges, on EcoApprentice.com. The goal is to crowd-source reliable solutions to their particular issue.

2. University and MBA students work to resolve those EcoChallenges with specific solutions (EcoSolutions), gaining real world experience and, in many cases, credit from their University for the project.

3. Businesses select their favourite EcoSolution and give the prize (if one is provided) to the winner.

One of the things I like the most about EcoApprentice is its potential for EcoChallenges to go viral. I’ve always been a strong supporter of using social media to communicate corporate environmental initiatives (check out this post). When a business posts an EcoChallenge, it has the ability to engage customers, partners and the whole community on its environmental initiatives and
learn how it can take them to the next level.

EcoChallenges can be categorized in 8 areas: Buy Green, Carbon Offsets, Green Shipping, Light Less, Recycle, Reduce Waste, Reuse and Think Local. Check out some of the recent challenges on EcoApprentice.com to get a better feel on how they leverage these categories.

Kiwano will be working with EcoApprentice to boost their website traffic while raising awareness to this fantastic platform among the business community. Watch out for further developments!

Recommended reading:
Social Media: The Perfect Marketing Tool For Green Businesses
Bringing Personality Back To Your Business
How To Deal With Negative Word-Of-Mouth on Social Media

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of talking with Elisa Birnbaum, an established freelance writer and contributor at Charity Village. Elisa writes about social media strategies and tactics for non-profit organizations. This time around, she focused on social media policies – and what can happen when you don’t have guidelines in place.

”If you’re an avid devotee of social media, chances are you’ve already heard about this infamous gaffe,” writes Elisa on her cover story, Social Media: What’s Your Policy? ”A Red Cross employee uses HootSuite to send out an otherwise-innocent tweet about her alcohol-induced evening in the company of a specific beer. She thought she was sending it from her personal account. But she was wrong.

As we all know, mistakes like that are not easily repealed and once you’ve hit that send button it’s hard to take things back. But here’s the thing about the Red Cross and their reaction to the incident: no one got fired, nothing hit the proverbial fan and no one went into heavy crisis mode. In fact, they made light of the situation with an affable response.”

Elisa goes on sharing similar stories (with not so similar happy endings). After interviewing a handful of social media experts, Elisa compiled a list of top 5 tips for crafting your own social media policy:

1. Don’t forget it will have an impact on internal operations. For example, your hiring process may be affected and you may now need to re-evaluate who you hire and the type of qualifications they offer.

2. Make sure your policy is comprehensive, but yet easy to understand. Your goal is to get people to read and follow your policy (and not just scan through it).

3. Work on your policy with your marketing and sales team. Make sure your policy and your social media presence are aligned with your brand.

4. The policy should cover every possibility, including the likelihood of replacing your social media manager. People may be attached to a certain voice, making it hard for new staff to take over.

5. Keep in mind that your social media policy is always a work in progress. Social media is a dynamic, evolving medium and you want to make sure your policy stays relevant at all times.

Read the complete article at CharityVillage.com.

Recommended reading:
How To Deal With Negative Word-Of-Mouth on Social Media
How To Avoid Social Media Pitfalls, Ninja-Style!
Social Media for Small Businesses

Today marks the first day of 2010’s Social Media Week. This is a time we marketers take to reflect on the developments of this exciting field and its impact on businesses’ overall marketing strategy. At Kiwano, we’re taking this time to contemplate some of the best social media initiatives that promote environmental and social values… and how we can take this one step further.

It’s well known that marketers can no longer ignore social media as part of their marketing programs. Just in Canada, 9 in 10 organizations use social media, with thirty-one per cent saying social media plays a major role in public communications around their brand.

But how do you use this widespread medium to promote environmental responsibility? Here are 3 campaigns that we loved:

1. Billion Acts of Green:

The Billion Acts of Green campaign is a global effort focused on encouraging simple actions on behalf of the planet, with the goal of aggregating millions of environmental commitments from individuals and organizations to showcase the collective power of service to the planet.

Launched by the Earth Day Network especially for the 2010’s Earth Day, the Billion Acts of Green campaign featured social media tools that made it easier for the public to participate in this global effort, with Facebook and twitter apps encouraging users to pledge at least one “act of green” and share it with their social network.

The Billions Acts of Green campaign was tremendously successful, with media mentions across new and traditional media, and registered over 5 million pledges.

2. Charity: Water Twestival:

This campaign is an oldie, but one of our favourites. Back in 2009, when the number of tweets was under 22 million tweets a day (compared to 65 million daily tweets nowadays), the Charity for: Water Twestival campaign was an eye-opener to the potential of social media for cause marketing and fundraising.

On 12 February 2009, over 200 international cities hosted a Twestival to bring Twitter communities together to raise money for Charity: Water. With over 1,300,000 followers on twitter, the Twestival raised an astonishing $250,000 and brought worldwide public awareness to the global water crisis.

Charity: Water is now running its September campaign, with a rough $500,000 raised so far. Help raise funds for clean water in Africa through twitter.

3. Go Green Twitter Sweepstakes:

The Go Green Twitter Sweepstakes was another campaign especially created for 2010’s Earth Day. Spun by Create the Good and the AARP, the campaign consisted of users tweeting at @createthegood with methods for environmental action by using the #gogreen hash tag. The prize? A zero-emission trip to Washington, DC for the official 2010 Earth Day celebration. Over 150,000 people participated in this campaign and its twitter account is still running at 6,000+ followers.

What other cool social media campaigns do you know of? Share your thoughts below or send me an email.

Recommended reading:
Social Media: The Perfect Marketing Tool For Green Businesses
Leveraging Your Green Message Through Cause Marketing Programs
Sustainable Brands Recap: CSR’s 7 Best Practices

Our unique Networking Ninja Cecilia Lu was recently interviewed by Sam Zipursky, blogger at AdviceTap, a community that helps marketing and creative professionals find quality projects, connect and collaborate with others.

Sam and Cecilia had a great time chatting. Check out the interview:

“Hey there Cecilia, thanks for dropping by the Advicetap towers…we weren’t really expecting you, but now that you’re here have a sip of your coffee and give us a run down of who you are and what exactly you do?
Thanks for having me! I guess you didn’t hear me skulking around in the back— I’m a Ninja, after all! More specifically, I’m the Networking Ninja of Kiwano Marketing, a sustainable marketing agency specializing in online marketing strategies and tools to help spread the word for our awesome clients.

Ninja School: Kicking Ass at Social Networking
What are the top do’s and don’ts for using social media networks as a networking tool? How do you portray your non-profit’s personality online and engage your volunteers, stakeholders, and sponsors? When’s the right time for moving the conversation offline? Join the Ninja for a casual, down-to-earth discussion on practical tips about how to get personable online.”

Read the complete interview at AdviceTap.

Recommended reading:
NetSquared Camp Vancouver: Get Your Social Change Geek On!
Ninja Interview! Social Media And Women
How To Deal With Negative Word-Of-Mouth on Social Media

Last month, I read a great article on negative word-of-mouth on eMarketer. According to Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst, “Social media amplifies the voice of disgruntled customers and makes it easy for others to jump on the bandwagon if they can relate to the pain. The potential for negative to buzz to escalate into mass criticism puts pressure on companies to react quickly.” But exactly how should you react?

This topic takes me back to a great post I read last year by Alexandra Samuel. Here’s what she recommends:

1. Thank the blogger for his feedback. Don’t just say “thank you” – offer a little concrete acknowledgement of the input. That applies even if you’re super annoyed. And yes, you can use boilerplate text here, if it’s thoughtful.

2. Apologize, if you feel you can do that with integrity. You don’t need to say “we’re sorry we did X” – you can apologize for the impact it had, even if that impact is subjective.

3. Clarify your intent. What were you trying to accomplish as a company, brand or campaign? Help the blogger see things from your perspective by telling them what led to the situation, experience or content they complained about.

4. Be transparent and share your information. Since the blogger already reached out to you, make sure you’re including him on the process – share what you’re doing, ask him for feedback and make him feel involved in your business.

5. Be on your guest behaviour. No matter how annoying the blogger is, you have to remember that when you’re leaving a comment, you’re playing on their playing field. The “be polite to your host” etiquette still prevails.

6. Convey concrete next steps. The more specific you can be about how this issue is being addressed – either as a result of the comment, or due to preexisting plans – the better. Tell the blogger the specific steps you’ll take to escalate the issue and ensure their feedback is considered – and how and when you’ll be conveying the result.

7. The sig line matters.Whoever is responding to social media comments in your organization, make sure their title conveys that they are either senior or directly responsible for the issue or product in question.

8. Follow up with personal contact. Write a post on their website and reach out my email or phone.This is a great way to win the appreciation of your critic and turn them into an ally.

Recommended reading:
How To Avoid Social Media Pitfalls, Ninja-Style!
Ninja Tips: The Best of Social Media Metrics & SEO from the F5 Expo
Ninja Interview! Social Media And Women

A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed on social media by Viveka Von Rosen for her upcoming book on social media and small businesses. During our chat, Women in Social Media Series, Viveka and I talked about how small businesses are empowered through the use of social media and, more specifically, how professional women are using this effective tool to get the word out. It was an engaging conversation full of insights. Here are my main Ninja take-aways:

Cecilia: I primarily see social media as a tool to connect people. I can increase brand awareness both on a professional and a personal level. For me, it allows me to get the word out and promote my clients in a soft kind of way. It engages you. There are meaningful conversations and interactions instead of spamming and push advertising (which no one likes).

Cecilia: This discussion just illuminates the fact that social media opens up so many doors for small business owners and particularly women. It allows you to connect with people all across the world and it’s really there to help you build your personal and professional brand and all in a very, very limited budget. I think it helps businesses drop the veil and become more honest and more transparent and basically more personal when connecting with their clients and with the general public.

Read the complete interview at Linked Into Business.

Recommended reading:
Ninja Tips: The Best of Social Media Metrics & SEO from the F5 Expo
Social Media: The Perfect Marketing Tool For Green Businesses
How To Avoid Social Media Pitfalls, Ninja-Style!

The Vancouver community turned out en masse at new ‘changing technologies’ conference player, The F5 Expo, this week. Vancouver is really coming into its own as a hub for fast and furious new media development. That being said, conferences like F5 have a long way to go before becoming truly useful to a wide audience. For newbies, the seminars would have been a chaotic introduction to social media with too much terminology and ‘in-crowd’ jokes. For those of us more up on the lingo and best practices, there wasn’t enough meat for our conference-going buck.

Still, there were some useful takeaways that I’d like to share on two of the seminars throughout the day:

The Metrics of Social Media: Buzz, Bust, or Booming?

• Chip Off The Old Block: Instead of designing one apart from the other, your social media strategy should overlay on top of your existing marketing plan. Just like with any other marketing tool, having goals and a roadmap before you start will determine what to measure, how to tweet and, most importantly, how to measure success.
• What Should I Measure?
  • Quantity (number of followers, number & velocity of click-thru rates) and quality (kind of followers, engagement) are both useful indicators.
  • Sentiment (positive & negative associations) calculated by algorithms are decidedly less useful.
  • Most small businesses plagued by the problem of not enough attention, so until it becomes truly unmanageable, certain measurements are better off being tracked by the human eye.
• And The Experts Weigh In: The two most metric-rich campaigns you can run these days? Google Adsense and Facebook campaigns.
• Some Nifty Tools:
  • Netvibes (at-a-glance custom dashboards)
  • Social Media Firehose (Google-style alerts for social media)
  • Scout Labs (all-around social media tracking, mid-range paid tool)

Search Marketing in 2010

• Top Tips for SEO-friendly Websites:
  • Don’t confuse search engines with poor markup
  • Build content
  • Build links
  • Keep your content (and links) up to date
  • Make sure that your content communicates the goals of your website
  • Inbound links are very important, especially if they’re high quality
    • Guest posting, link affiliation, etc. are good ways to make this happen
    • Authoritative is best (the big names on the web)
    • Get listed in more directories, especially local listings
• SEO or PPC?
  • Long term, SEO is more helpful
  • Short term, PPC is a great add-on and generally leads to extra traffic
  • Users are 25% more likely to click-through if you’re listed as paid and organically ranked, whereas if you’re one OR the other
• What NOT To Do:
  • Using nefarious tactics will cause search engines to flag your site as unsafe
  • Hosting malware, link farms
• Other Bonuses:
  • Tag all your images and videos so they’re being indexed properly
  • Hosting a video on YouTube, Vimeo, as well as your own site may seem like content duplication, but fantastic for SEO
• The Final Word: SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) shouldn’t be an afterthought when building a website. It should be built right in.

Special thanks to Amanda Farough of violetminded Design for contributing her takeaways on the Search Marketing seminar.

Did you attend F5? What did you think of the conference overall? And what were your top 3 takeaways?

Related Posts:
5 Tips To Build A SEO-Friendly Website
Social Media: The Perfect Marketing Tool For Green Businesses
How To Promote Your Small Business Online

Social media is no longer “the new thing.” It’s a common marketing tactic for most organizations and one of the best tools to reach out to consumers, be it through Linkedin, twitter, Facebook, YouTube or through bloggers. But how are sustainable businesses using social media? Are they using it at all? And how can organizations leverage social media to promote their green message?

Some of the big players in the green industry have already figured out the impact social media can have when getting your message out there. Take Seventh Generation. They have a Facebook page with over 57,000 fans, 16,000+ followers on twitter and a YouTube channel reaching the 500 subscriber mark.

Patagonia, another green business mogul, keeps an active blog and has an impressive profile on Linkedin, on top of its 35,000+ fans Facebook page and twitter account of over 10,000 followers.

Social media is clearly one of the primary marketing platforms green businesses use to promote their message. Why?

• Social media goes hand-in-hand with transparency. If you want to be perceived as a green leader, one of the first steps your organization must take is to promote clear, honest communication.

• Social media is a two-way communication media. Mass media campaigns are great for exposure, but they won’t go far in establishing your brand as a leading green business. This is better achieved with public relations and interaction with consumers.

• Social media is a great platform to build trust. Consumers are becoming more and more inquisitive about the companies they do business with, and some are even wary of green claims. How can a green business position itself as such without being faced with extreme scrutinity? Social media empowers clients to interact with the brands they care about. If brands follow the basic rules of social media (transparency, honesty, consistency), this media becomes the ultimate trust-building tool for green businesses.

So, how can you start leveraging social media to promote your green message?

1. Create a social media plan (define what you want to achieve)
2. Identify your target audience
3. Determine who will oversee your social media programs (having an independent, third-party may help you getting started)
4. Track your efforts
5. Keep an eye on what other green businesses are doing

Do you have any successful stories you’d like to share? Please leave a comment below or connect with us live on twitter.

Recommended reading:
Green marketing: what works, what doesn’t
Social media release: top 5 tops on successfully marketing your green business
Building trusting relationships through social media

Social media marketing is one of our top services at Kiwano Marketing. Individuals, companies, and the media are all abuzz about this phenomenon and what it means for doing business. What’s the big deal? And how can you use it effectively for your small business?

A good social media campaign is one of the most effective marketing programs for a small business on a tight budget. Why? Social media enables companies of every size engage in open and honest conversations with their customers, leading to a better understanding of their consumer needs. Companies that share stories of their ups and downs and humanize their employees become more credible in the eyes of the consumer, making it easier to relate to a business – and, in the end, leading to more sales and online visibility.

As with any service, I believe that in order to effectively get the word out, small businesses need to diversify how they do marketing. Social media is a powerful tool, but it cannot be the only way that your business engages with your audience. Used in conjunction with an overall marketing strategy and other marketing tools, however, we’ve found no better all-in-one toolkit for creating publicity, buzz, and enhancing your network with meaningful connections that will help your business grow.

And here’s where we need to put the brakes on slightly. It’s so easy to get excited about social media, and it’s definitely something that we’re passionate about. However, there are a few flags that we’d like to get out of the way sooner rather than later:

• Go Big or Go Home: Are there any ’secrets’ behind social media? If there’s one lesson that companies should learn early on, it’s that an authentic presence is key for social media success. The ‘halfway’ attempts we’ve seen on social media can actually be more damaging than helpful to a company’s online reputation.
• Sleepless Nights: Social media is, at least at first, a time sink. Having an agency’s expertise on board will ensure that time spent on education is as streamlined as possible. There may, however, be a considerable learning curve and time investment.
• Where Are My Sales?!: Powerful communication and marketing tool? Check. Clients instantly lining up at your door the day after you get on twitter? Probably not (but we’ll gladly take all some of the credit if that does happen!). Building awareness and a presence on social media takes time, and this period varies from company to company and user to user.
• What The Hell Am I Doing?: We’re glad you asked, and that’s exactly why we’re here! Before every campaign we launch, Kiwano needs to make sure that this specific program is going to make practical business sense and provide you the desired ROI. Get a company that will sit down with you, do some goal-setting and set up measurable benchmarks for success. Based on those goals, you’ll be able to determine exactly what type of content you should put out, how you should be engaging your audience, and how frequently you should be doing so. And of course, for goodness sake, track what you’re doing on social media! (more to come on this overlooked topic…)

Got more to say? Drop me a line or a comment below.

Check out these resources:
3 Tips For Social Media Networking
Kiwano’s Networking Ninja Attends CBC’s Open House and Food Bank Day
Social Media for Small Businesses

This article was originally written by the eMarketer group.

In the few short years that social media has been a marketing vehicle, it has already had an enormous effect on the way companies do business. In the coming years there will be even more changes, as social media marketing extends from the marketing department to nearly every aspect of a company’s business.

In the Insight Brief “The Future of Social Media Marketing,” eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson outlines several trends to watch in the coming years.

“Advertising—which some might say has already failed as a business model for social media companies—will not be the primary revenue driver,” said Ms. Williamson.

Instead, the strongest business models in the future will incorporate analytics, as social media becomes truly integrated into all marketing efforts. In addition, TV will become more social, as will search.

Location will become more important to social media, and brand monitoring will increase in sophistication so that companies can begin to understand the “why” of consumer chatter as well as the who, what and when.

“Naturally occurring conversations will be utilized in product innovation and design, and companies will create incentives for people’s attention and engagement while repurposing and analyzing content and engagement in new ways that will deliver valuable input.”

—Ravit Lichtenberg, founder and chief strategist, Ustrategy.com, in an article in ReadWriteWeb.com, December 11, 2009

What will not change is the source of social media transformation today: the users.

“The voice of the consumer is only going to get louder and stronger,” said Ms. Williamson. “It will shape what social media is and what it will become. Not too long ago, a company might have made major changes to its products or services based on a few focus groups, some financial planning and a degree of gut instinct. Social media has already changed all that. And more changes will come.”

Recommended reading:

- Social Media Quick Tips From The Networking Ninja

- Kiwano Marketing Shares Its Wealth With Charity Village

- Media & Green Marketing: How To Effectively Promote Your Company’s Green Practices