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Target Prospective Donors: Make Your Best Plan

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Imagine this: you’re planning the perfect party for your organization. You can invite anyone, including Oprah or Richard Branson. Who do you want to have in the room?

Now that you have had a chance to go through The 8 Essentials (TM) in part one, take this opportunity to meet with your team and board to make the ultimate guest list of every strategic partner, company sponsor or high-level donor you have wanted to secure for your organization. This is your dream list. Put it all in there, because they won’t come if you don’t invite them!

Your Action Plan: Start by making a list of the key people and companies you are looking to connect with over the course of the next year. Start with who you know, then build toward who you want to know. Through this process you might even find a new group of people you didn’t know that you want to know!
Tip: Creating a Google doc is a simple and easy way to get started with your list. It can be easily shared with your internal team, board and any high-level volunteers that might be helping you with outreach during the year.

Defining your relationships: Fundraising is all about relationship building. You’re inspiring people to invest in your organization’s mission. This might feel strange at first, but rating relationships will go a long way in helping you prepare for your year. This idea came from Keith Ferrazi’s, author of the book, Who’s Got Your Back. I adapted his relationship measurement tool for you here:

(-1) Damaged– Someone who has had a bad experience in any capacity with the organization. The relationship needs repair
(0) Prospect – A potential contact, someone you haven’t met yet and are adding to your action plan
(1) New – You have been introduced, & will follow up on the conversation
(2) Engaged – They have an understanding of the organization, maybe attended an event or made a visit, but haven’t made a donation
(3) Donor – They have a deep understanding of the organization and have committed with time, talent and/or treasure

Once you’ve defined the relationship, start tabling out your list of contacts, like this:

Relationship Level: 1
Point Person: Executive Director
Company: “Large Company”
Contact Name: Jane Doe
Title: VP of West Coast Marketing
Contact Info: Jane.doe.c.Com
Info/Interests: Met @ networking event; married w/ 3 children; loves baseball; never attended an event
Initial Ask: Purchase a table @ annual gala for $5,000
Timeline: Early June, 3 months before gala

Once you start pulling these together, drop them in a spreadsheet for easy tracking!

Strategy: Each person on your list has a set of interests and unique ways to contribute time, talent or treasure to your organization. So, be sure to specify why you want to reach out them and how they can help your organization.

Timeline: Next, sort your list by relationship level and determine the order of people to whom you’ll be reaching out. You’re making a networking plan, so start with the networkers in your community. Set monthly and quarterly goals for outreach. I often find teams check-in with one another frequently, but are always chipping away at their massive yearly goal. Quarterly goals are key to keeping on track and staying motivated!

Planning Tip: Your “half-way mark” in fundraising will not always be six months into the calendar year. If your annual gala raises most of your operating budget, but isn’t until October and you don’t see much activity during the summer months, consider aiming to hit your 50 percent mark by the end of May/early June.

If you enjoyed these exercises today, be sure to come back next week for part three where you’ll learn how to leverage social media for prospect research to identify partners and sponsors. I’d love to hear how this worked for you. Tweet me @bradyhahn or leave your comments below.
 

Brady Hahn is a facilitator, researcher and strategist, Brady specialing in matchmaking non-profits, for-profits and social entrepreneurs. She has developed more than 80 professional development and special events for organizations such as Step Up Women’s Network, Pamper Me Fabulous, Social Media Week and her own series, Social Media For Social Good in partnership with Digital LA.

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Posted in Business, Media & Communications, Uncategorized

What The Social World Has to Say About Our Hosts: São Paulo

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Hello again! Sheldon from Sysomos here with another look at another one of our Social Media Week cities. Using Sysomos’ social media monitoring software, MAP and Heartbeat, I’ve been looking at what the world is saying through social media about our host cities. Today we’re taking a look at the talk about São Paulo, Brazil.

Doing a search for mentions of São Paulo coming from around the world in the past six months I found 1.1 million blogs, 934,323 online news articles, 109,913 forum posts and 1.8 million tweets.

Trended out over time we see the popularity chart below. It appears that forums are not a popular place for talk about São Paulo. However, Twitter seems to be widely used to talk about it. This is no surprise as Brasil has been known to be one of the worlds largest Twitter using countries.

As I just said, Brazil is known as having a large Twitter using population. That probably helped in mentions of São Paulo coming from Brasil accounting for 71.4% all the mentions from around the world. The US makes up the second most mentions with only 7.1%. Interestingly, the Netherlands seem to talk quite a bit about São Paulo as they have the third most mentions with 6.1%.

Next, I pulled up a buzzgraph to see what all the talk of São Paulo was about. Most of the words I found contained in the buzzgraph were worlds talking about the city like “cidade” which means city and “Brasileiro” which mans Brazilian. What I found very interesting in this buzzgraph was the word “automovel” which mean automobile or car. I dug a little deeper into that and found out that São Paulo has a very large automotive industry. In fact, São Paulo is slated to soon become the world’s third largest automotive manufacturing city.

I then started to dig into who was creating all this talk about São Paulo. I started with the blogs and found that 77% of all mentions of São Paulo in blogs are made by males. That’s a fairly large amount. No clear reason on why women only mention São Paulo 33% of the time. I also found that there are a lot of bloggers aged 21-50 mention São Paulo. There was almost an even amount of bloggers aged 21-35 and 36-50 (35.2% and 36.1% respectively).

Looking at the industries that are talking about São Paulo, I found that communications blogs mention it the most. Again, this plays into the fact that Brazil is a heavy Twitter using country and a lot of communications blogs these days have a strong focus on social media. Education is the second largest industry to mention São Paulo in blogs at 16.2%.

I then explored the Twitter users mentioning São Paulo. Here I found a bit more evenness between the genders with males making up 63% and women 37%. I also looked at the top sources on Twitter mentioning São Paulo. These are the accounts that have a high authority ranking and mention São Paulo the most. The top Twitter source I found was @buscami, which is a Twitter account that tweets for an Ebay like service called Mercado Libre. Football (or what North Americans soccer) is quite popular in Brazil, so it’ no mystery as to why a few Twitter accounts that talk about São Paulo FC, like @spfcradar, are on the list.

Lastly, I looked into two of the larger spikes in activity that I found around talk of São Paulo. The first spike that I found occurred between September 20-22. When I pulled up a buzzgraph for that time period I found the love of soccer shining through again. In the middle of the buzzgraph we can see the word “Corinthian.” The Corinthians are one of largest football clubs in all of Brazil, who happen to play in São Paulo. At this time there was a huge match between the São Paulo FC and the Corinthians, and that drove this conversation spike. It’s also closely connected to words like “jogo” (game) and “jogadores” (players).

The second spike I explored was very recent. This spike started on January 24th and still getting a large as I write this post. Here we see a very strong connection to “Pinheirinho” which is  a section of São Paulo currently getting attention. Apparently Pinheirinho was a forgotten part of the city where over 6,000 residents were squatting. Police are currently trying to evict these people and they refuse to go. The people have been using social media to try to draw attention to what is happening here, and it’s been working. The current battle in Pinheirinho has got the whole world talking.

Those were some of the interesting things I found about the social world talking about São Paulo. I’ll be back again soon with another Sysomos look at yet another Social Media Week host cities.

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Posted in Analysis, City Focus, Reports, Uncategorized

What The Social World Has to Say About Our Hosts: Miami

Friday, January 27th, 2012

Greetings! Sheldon from Sysomos here again to shed a little light on where we’ll be going for Social Media Week. Using Sysomos’ powerful social media monitoring and analytic tools, MAP and Heartbeat, I’m taking a look at what the social web has to say about our Social Media Week host cities. In this post I’ll be taking a look at sunny Miami, Florida.

First, I looked up how many times Miami had been mentioned through social channels in the past six months. In this time period I found Miami being spoken about in 962,147 blog posts, 915,499 online news articles, 841,453 forum postings and 4.3 million tweets.

Trending that data out over time, we see the popularity graph below. It’s interesting to note in this graph how blog and news activity about Miami seems to fluctuate almost in unison. Forums seem to follow the pattern mostly as well, except for a big noticeable lul around the end of August and beginning of September. We’ll be exploring the activity spikes a little later on.

Most of the talk about Miami was coming right from the United States, 63.1%, where it’s located. There’s also a good reason for this as we’ll see when we get to the buzzgraph. And, just like I’ve also seen in the past two posts about Hong Kong and Toronto, Canada (5.2% ) and the UK (3.5%) are right behind it. This is likely happening because these three countries are some of the highest content producers in the world.

As I said before, there’s a good reason that the United States owns over half of the conversation about Miami. When I pulled up a buzzgraph about Miami over the past six months, we can see that a lot of the talk is about Football, an American favourite. The words we see most connected are “Florida,” “Dolphin” as in the Miami Dolphin NFL team, and “winning.” As well, all around the buzzgraph we can pull out football related terms like “coaches,” “quarterback” and “offense.”

Next I looked into the people who were talking about Miami through social channels. This time I started with Twitter. Using a system exclusive to Sysomos, I was able to determine that 61% of people that were tweeting about Miami were male. This may not come as a surprise as the Miami talk was football focused. The top 12 Twitter sources talking about miami seems to be dominated by local news related Twitter accounts like @miaminewsnow who accounts for 43.4% of the talk. There’s also some classified accounts, like @motorvenfsbo, an account for car sales. Both of these kinds of accounts seem to be a trend we’re seeing in all cities.

When I looked at the people that were writing blogs that talked about Miami I cam across this football trend peaking in yet again. The skew of gender in the blogs is 77% are written by males, while women make up the other 23% of blogs that mention Miami. The age also points towards football fans as almost half of the bloggers fall between the ages of 21-35 (45.9%).

When I looked at the industry these blogs fall under, I found something that goes against the football theme I was seeing. The industry mentioning Miami the most in blogs was the communication industry (18.1%). This was not the surprise. The surprise was that sports related blogs only accounted for 4.5% of all the Miami talk. Instead of being in second place as I was starting to suspect, it turns out that real estate seems to be a big blogging industry. I guess there’s lots of property to sell in Miami.

As I looked into the larger activity spikes that we saw about Miami, I found more evidence that Miami is a sports town. The first large spike of data we see happened around August 16-18. The buzzgraph for that time shows a lot of “NCAA.” It turns out from some investigation that at this time there was a scandal going on Miami University, home of the “Hurricanes.” Apparently “Nevin” “Shapiro” had been giving benefits to the schools team that were outside of NCAA regulations. This was a hot topic in the college sports world and caused this particular spike in all the social channels.

The second large spike that I found was mainly on Twitter, but we can also see a slight rise in blog activity as well. This spike is yet again another sports related theme. On December 25th, the NBA finally kicked off their season. Miami loves their basketball, so this spike is related to the Heat’s first two games of the season in the date range of December 25-27. We can see a lot fo talk about the “Heat” and their star player “Lebron” James. We can also see strong connections to their first two opponents, the “Dallas” “Mavericks” on the 25th and the “Boston” “Celtics” on the 27th.

Well, that’s some interesting things I was able to find around talk of Miami. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this analysis it’s that whoever is doing Social Media Week sessions in Miami might want to think about incorporating some sports into their events. I’ll be back again soon for another Sysomos look at one of our upcoming Social Media Week host cities.

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Posted in Analysis, City Focus, Reports, Uncategorized

Announcing Tigerlogic’s Postano Integration Into Social Media Week Platform

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

Yesterday we posted an interview with Cliff Torng, head of marketing for Tigerlogic, makers of Social Media Week Technology Partner Postano, talking at length about what Postano is and how it can benefit brands and organizations of all shapes and sizes.

Today we’re happy to announce that Postano has now been integrated into the Social Media Week platform to feature “all things social,” with global and local Postano pages set up to help share the social conversations taking place around many of the brands and organizations and speakers participating in Social Media Week around the world.

As the Social Media Week Technology Partner, Postano responsible for aggregating and integrating all the social media content generated by the events, selected sponsors and speakers during the week into their web site. Postano updates the content in real-time, and displays it in an attractive newspaper/magazine format.  This represents the first time this type of platform has been used to support an industry event of this nature.

You can see Postanos in action anywhere you see the following button on SMW pages–go to socialmediaweek.org/postano to jump into these conversations and find out what our partners are up to.

We’re very excited about this collaboration and encourage you to check it out and learn more!

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized

#SMW11 Euro Tour Day 1 Recap: #SMWGlasgow

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

Social Media Week Director Ben Scheim is roadtripping this week during SMW 19-23 Sept 2011, doing a European tour of SMWs in Glasgow, Berlin and Milan. Follow his travels on this blog and via his twitter@slangeditorial.

As I outlined in my initial post on Monday, this is a pretty awesome week for Social Media Week and an even more awesome week for me, as I am traveling around Europe experiencing all that our three Social Media Week cities have to offer. So far, it’s been fantastic.

The week started with Day 1 of #SMWGlasgow, where our partners Twintangibles and New Media Corp have done a completely bang-up job of pulling together the community and making something special.

Here was my agenda for the day:

#SMW11 EURO ROADTRIP, MONDAY

My flight touched down in Glasgow around 8:30am and I was met at the airport by morning keynote speaker Jeremy Gilley of Peace One Day and Elizabeth Mitchell of Nokia, who’s been instrumental in helping to bring the Peace One Day events together. We grabbed a cab from the airport and headed off to Skypark, where much of Monday’s #SMWGlasgow activity would be taking place.

We arrived at Skypark and the SMW Glasgow team and I gave a welcome to the crowd, touching on what was to come for the week both locally and globally. Then, the real events began as Jeremy took the stage.

Jeremy is perhaps one of the most passionate and engaging speakers I have ever before encountered, and his talk on the need for a global Peace Day and his goal toward a cessation of violence on September 21, 2012. It was an awesome talk and the crowd loved it and it was a great way to kickoff #SMW11. See video footage from his event here.

Following Jeremy’s talk was a panel on the evolution of breaking news featuring Peter Bale of CNN International and Craig Hepburn, Nokia’s global head of digital and social media and moderated by SMW Glasgow city partner Arvind Salwan of New Media Corp.

The conversation touched on the role that social and mobile platforms have played in influencing and changing the way that news is discovered, sourced, collected and shared around the world in profound ways–and, as Craig said, those “who are not part of the new conversations are being left behind.”

Peter discussed at length how CNN has expanded into citizen journalism with its iReport program and how it has enabled over 750,000 people around the world to help CNN tell a better story about what it is happening today. And of course, iReport is a partner of Social Media Week this September, so make sure to check out the SMW-specific iReport assignment here.

After the News talk concluded, Riccardo Webb of 1000 Heads, Nokia’s creative word-of-mouth agency, came on stage to explain the unveiling of an awesome #NokiaConnects project in Glasgow during SMW–the Nokia Gift Machine (pictured above). By using Foursquare to “check-in” to the machine, guests were able to collect prizes, which ranged from candy to, ahem, high-end Nokia phones (yes, seriously). A truly awesome idea, and more details on this to come specifically later this week.

It was lunchtime now and so some folks from Nokia and CNN and I decided to get a bit to eat. With Craig as a native Glaswegian, we want to an old favorite spot of his in town and then stopped by to visit his brother at a local establishment in town, where we were treated to some local flavor in the form of “flair” by a local barkeep. See the footage below I captured with my Nokia E7 phone:

 

After lunch we returned back to Skypark, where I took some meetings with folks I’d met and waited for the evenings sessions to begin.

 

The evening sessions then began with a welcome from Fiona Hyslop, Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, followed by a BBC event featuring presentations by three BBC leaders in tech and social and then concluded with the Psychology of Social event also featuring Craig Hepburn of Nokia. Each session was fantastic and it was great to hear that Glasgow is looking ahead and hoping to embrace the new opportunities that can be found in social exploration.

 

Finally, we ended a very long day by rounding up a crew of speakers and folks from Nokia and 1000 Heads and heading to local establishments for local fare, including a stop at the amazing pub-in-a-church More and More, where I sampled some of the finest Glaswegian drinks I’ve ever imagined.

 

I then headed home and concluded a very long and awesome day by … getting online and doing work.

How was YOUR first day of SMW?

Posted in Uncategorized

“My #SMW11 Euro Roadtrip,” by Ben Scheim, SMW Global Director

Monday, September 19th, 2011

#SMW11 kicks off in Glasgow with the CNN/Nokia conversation on the role of social media in breaking news

Social Media Week Director Ben Scheim is roadtripping this week during SMW 19-23 Sept 2011, doing a European tour of SMWs in Glasgow, Berlin and Milan. Follow his travels on this blog and via his twitter @slangeditorial.

As some of you may know, I’m a director of Social Media Week and head of partnerships for Crowdcentric, the company that owns Social Media Week globally. Part of my remit entails serving as global liason with the many great Social Media Week city partners around the world to help them coordinate and execute the best SMWs that they can.

The saddest part of Social Media Week, for me, has therefore always been the fact that I spend months speaking with these folks to help develop and shape awesome programs around the world but when The Week finally comes, I can’t possibly be in everywhere at once to see each city’s efforts come to fruition–especially in February when the New York conference takes place and our global team at Crowdcentric needs to be there.

This September we at Crowdcentric aim to try our best to overcome that, with Social Media Week Executive Director Toby Daniels (@tobyd) hitting SMWs in Los Angeles and Chicago and I have planned a sort of crazy four city tour of our three Social Media Week cities in Western Europe: Glasgow, Berlin and Milan (after flying into and out of London): hence The SMW Euro Roadtrip.

I know of one other person–Bonin Bough, global director of digital at PepsiCo–who’s hit three SMW cities before, but I hope to at least provide the most documentation of such a trip. My sort of preposterous itinerary is posted below where you’ll be able to see for yourself, and I’ll be using an awesome Nokia E7 phone (provided by our global headline sponsor Nokia) to capture as many photos and videos of my travels as I can.

MY #SMW11 EURO ROADTRIP ITINERARY
Check out the official SMW September 2011 schedule to learn more

Monday:

Tuesday:

  • 8am flight Glasgow to BERLIN, arrival at 12:30
  • Noon-4pm, TBD meetings
  • 4pm-11pm, SMW Berlin Main Event (including Nokia and CNN sessions) at Festhalle Kreuzberg

Wednesday (Berlin):

  • Morning TBD (so much to do, still trying to decide!)
  • 6pm-10pm, MTV and Nokia events at Aufbau House

Thursday:

  • 8am flight Berlin to MILAN, arrival at 10am
  • Noon, Aperitivo Social
  • 1:30pm, Lunch
  • 2:30pm, Evento Advisor – Urban Screen, Media Architecture e la Media City” with Oliver Schuerer (HQ)
  • 4pm,  Mind The Bridge Boot Camp Open Forum (Mediateca)
  • 6:30pm Blogger@Ford (Science & Technology Museum) & Museum Tour
  • 8:00pm Aperitivo Corto (HQ)
  • 9:30pm, TBD Dinner

Friday:

  • 10:00am, Digital Breakfast (HQ)
  • 10:30am, Semaforo Verde (HQ): Ford event in streaming
  • 11.30am, visit to HUB Ford & HQ
  • Noon, Lunch
  • 1-4pm, Nokia Contest :
  • 5:30pm, Let Me Go War Contest
  • 7:00pm Back to Nokia Contest
  • 9:0opm Final Party

—-

Ok, there it is–look out for more updates from me as the week progresses!

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Posted in Coverage, Featured, Uncategorized

What You Need To Know Week of Sept. 5th

Monday, September 12th, 2011

Ranging from Michael Arrington’s attempt to purchase AOL back to NBC’s twitter account being hacked, there was a lot going on this week online. Catch up with this week’s compilation of some of the biggest news items of the week in various sectors. Send us your tips for next week’s edition!

People & Society
Talking about governments, society and individuals impacting the world:

Two Mexicans to be Sentenced for Spreading False Terrorism Report on Twitter (via The Next Web)
First Commercial with Lesbian Couple to Air (via PSFK)
Watchdog Seeks Fair Trade Regulations for Social Media (via SmartBrief)
South Africa Requests Access to BBM (via TechCrunch)
Checking-In Least Popular Smartphone Activity (via Mashable)
China to Move Social Services to Cloud (via PSFK)

Science & Tech
Talking about the latest in technology, applications, and the science world:

BMW Tests Driverless Prototype (via PSFK)
New App PayMeBack Helps Track Money Loaned Out (via The Next Web)
DeskAway Brings Project Management & Social Media Collaboration Together (via The Next Web)
Starke Bikes Let You Charge Devices With Built-In USB Ports (via PSFK)

Entertainment & Gaming
Talking about pop culture and the world of gaming:

FourSquarOpoly a Hot Ticket Ahead of Launch (via SmartBrief)
Netflix Deals With Streaming Cap Glitch (via Mashable)
Atari Makes Own iPad Arcade Controller (via The Next Web)
Netflix Partners With Miramax for Latin America (via TechCrunch)
Watch the NFL Free, Legally (via TechCrunch)
Retail Video Game Sales Fall 23% (via SmartBrief)
NBC iPad App Features Full-Length Episodes (via Mashable)
Gamify Your Life With OneFeat (via The Next Web)

Art & Culture
Talking about the arts and the latest in culture and fashion:

Zara Joins the ‘Cheap Chic’ Online Fight (via SmartBrief)
Zengo Brings the Luxury Shopping Experience to the iPad (via PSFK)
Tumblr Asks Brands to Pay For Fashion Week Coverage (via SmartBrief)
Flavorwire Highlights Magazine Covers Designed by Artists (via PSFK)
New Mobile Travel Guide Launched to Compete With Lonely Planet (via TechCrunch)
Chalk Party Brings Sidewalk Art Online (via PSFK)

Business, Media & Communications
Talking news that impacts your business, the latest media trends and basic communications:

Yahoo Fires Carol Bartz (via AllThingsD)
Michael Arrington Seeks to Buy Back TechCrunch from AOL (via AllThingsD)
EverWrite and DeskMetrics Migrate From Brazil to the US (via The Next Web)
Low Click-Through Rates and Display Ads Can Be Very Effective With Engagement (via SmartBrief)
Samsung Removes Galaxy Tab From IFA After German Injunction (via SmartBrief)
Social Commerce’s Growth and Future (via The Next Web)
Flying Connected Rents an iPad 2 to Travelers in NYC (via Mashable)
Facebook Adds Former Clinton Chief of Staff to Board (via Mashable)
InternMatch Connects Students With Internships (via TechCrunch)
IndieGoGo Raises $1.5M For CrowdFunding Platform to Compete With KickStarter (via TechCrunch)
Sony Brings on Former Homeland Security Exec as Security Chief (via Mashable)
Sprint Joins AT&T Fight, Suing to Block Merger (via Mashable)
.XXX Domains On Sale to Brands (via Mashable)
Twitter Has 100M Monthly Active Users, With 40% Not Tweeting (via TechCrunch)
Sprint Offers Unlimited Data Plan For iPhone (via TechCrunch)
NBC Twitter Account Hacked, Tweets False Terrorist Attack (via The Next Web)
Facebook to Auto-Group Friends Into Smart Lists (via TechCrunch)
Google Acquires Zagat (via TechCrunch)
MileWise Factors in Earned Miles to Help Find Flights (via Mashable)
AirBnB Offers 24/7 Concierge Services to Users (via Mashable)

Education
Talking about the latest tech news in education:

NYTimes Partners With WNYC to Provide News on NYC Education (via Mashable)

Music
Talking about the music trends:

Tokyo Police Club Utilizes Brand-Sponsored Music Distribution with Mashable (via PSFK)
French Music-Streaming Service Deezer Teams Up with Orange (via The Next Web)
Pandora Adds 12 Workout Stations (via AllThingsD)
Google’s “Music Beta” Works on iPhones & iPads (via AllThingsD)
Ford & Spotify Team Up for In-Car Integration (via TechCrunch)
Facebook’s New Music Integration to Feature Scrobbling & Track Unification (via TechCrunch)

Global Change & the Environment
Talking about innovation in philanthropy, charity, the environment, and corporate social responsibility:

Jamie Oliver Takes His Fight Against Obesity to the UN (via PSFK)
Chipotle Teams Up with Willie Nelson for Sustainable Farming (via PSFK)
charity: water Uses Videos to Personally Thank Donors (via Beth Kanter)
LinkedIn Now Lets Users Add Volunteer Experiences and Causes (via PSFK)
Enhanced Landfill Mining Has Recycling and Energy Benefits (via PSFK)
Tweet to Donate to Help Texan Fire Victims (via Beth Kanter)

Just for Fun
A little extra to bring some fun to your week:

Give Social Media Citations for Online Infractions (via AllThingsD)
Conan O’Brien Puts TV Studio on AirBnB for $1 (via Mashable)

Did we miss anything? Which stories surprised you this week? Let us know.

Posted in Uncategorized

Twitter Debates: Should Employers Monitor Social Media in HR Practices? #JobDebate Thurs, 12pm ET

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Recently, a teacher in Florida was suspended for posting anti-gay remarks on his personal Facebook page, creating a bit of a stir over just how much say employers have in your online life. As LinkedIn grows in popularity and more employers turn to reviewing social media profiles prior to hiring and for general management, online reputations are increasingly important. Should your online presence affect your job search or current position? What information should employers examine and/or overlook? If an employer sees something they disagree with, could it affect your position and possible promotions- and should it?

Share your opinion with us this Thursday, September 1st at 12pm ET. Use #JobDebate to join.

Posted in Uncategorized

SMW Twitter Debates: Does Censorship Have a Place in Social Media? #SpeechDebate on Thurs at 12pm ET

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

This past week, San Francisco’s transit system shut down cell service to prevent protests, and this week, government officials in the UK are meeting with major social media platforms to discuss how to curtail violence stemming and organizing on social media. However, social media has been instrumental in governmental change in many Arab nations. Many now feel that access to social media is beyond a privilege, moving closer to a right.

Should governments step in and censor social media? If so, at what point is appropriate? Do social media platforms have a responsibility to prevent violence? This Twitter Debate, using hashtag #SpeechDebate, will look at both sides of this issue- the need for safety and the right of expression and to organize. Join us this Thursday, August 25th at 12pm ET.

Have a topic you want to see debated? Email us or tweet us with #SMWDebates. We look forward to chatting later this week!

Posted in Uncategorized

#NameDebate- Online Identity and Social Media

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

What’s in a name? Last Thursday, we discussed the implications and difficulties of real name policies during our #NameDebate on Twitter, spurred by Danah Boyd’s critique of their use in social networks.

With the increasing growth of social media, social networks are moving toward real name policies as a way to authenticate users and provide some mechanism for managing online behavior in communities. However, are real name policies effective? What security measures do work? We looked at these questions and ran down a few rabbit holes, as well. Here are some highlights from the discussion:

1. A pseudonym can be just as personal as a real name.
Does the ability to verify who an individual is legitimize their participation? While many felt that some assurance of who is saying what helps protect users, there was a sentiment that a pseudonym can accomplish this but some sense of personal identity or branding is needed. Twitter is an example where pseudonyms can work while still providing a sense of identity.

2. Social networks should establish their expectations at the outset and work with users to sensitively implement policies.
Proper time allowance to respond to contests of name use, clear communication with users, and proper redress for grievances were all listed as important aspects for networks to keep in mind as they navigate this issue.

3. Some security measures should be in place for users in sensitive situations.
Users residing in countries in conflict or with oppressive regimes was one example cited often as a condition where users should not be forced to provide real names. Proper support of cultural naming conventions to support minority populations should also be incorporated into policies. Currently, few real name policies take these aspects into account.

4. Networks can use multiple email verification and supplemental search information, such as age/location/geolocation, to authenticate users.
The discussion lead to items that networks could use as alternatives for real name policies. However, there doesn’t seem to be a silver bullet, as any of these items could also be falsified.

5. Social media access is no longer considered a privilege, but an expectation.
Use of social media is the new norm and is intertwined in everyday life. Given it’s proliferation and prominence in business and society, individuals rely upon social networks to communicate. Denying access to social media can pose very real consequences and difficulties.

What aspects concern you regarding real name policies? Add to our conversation!

Thanks again to all those that participated and let us know if you have a topic you’d like to see discussed.

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Posted in Opinion, Uncategorized

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