Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

Tweeting 9 to 5: The Social Media Work Routine

Photo of Chrystie Corns

Chrystie Corns is the Social Media Marketing Manager for Where.com, a location-based application chock-full of widgets that deliver essential information about what's around you. I decided interview her because her slideshow, "Tweeting 9 to 5: The Daily Routine of a Slightly Insane Social Media Marketing Manager" caught my eye. 

I saw so many pearls of wisdom that are definitely translatable to anyone who is doing social media, whether full-time or  just a few hours week or for a nonprofit.   Her advice about work routine is particularly valuable.

1. Tell me about you

I am Chrystie Corns, Social Marketing Manager for WHERE.com. I consider myself an enthusiastic geek girl with a passion for everything Web 2.0, Social Marketing and SEO related. I am fascinated by the power of social marketing to build brand awareness and community around companies and products. I believe that the companies who exude personality come out on top.

I started blogging in 2001 with my very first 'blog' on Diaryland. As a SEO and Social Media Manager, I have learned the ins and outs of traffic building, lead generation, website user conversion and community building.

2. Tell me about your job

My job is pretty amazing. I get to use sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace for a living! My job is actually using sites like that to help spread brand awareness of our company and our product, the WHERE mobile application. The job also involves a good amount of social media strategy, content production, customer service and statistical analysis. It's fascinating and exciting and I love it all.

3.  How do keep sane?  How do stay efficient? What's your secret?

You did see that I billed myself as the 'slightly insane internet marketer' right? Mmm..that's a great question how do I stay sane. I'm not sure I do. I think about social marketing a lot, it keeps me up at night. Ironically some of my best marketing ideas have come to me between 11:00pm – 1:00am , so I imagine my insomnia is working in my favor.

Efficiency: Numbers don't lie.  Everything I do is tracked and analyzed. Not all social marketing campaigns take off. It's my job as a social marketer to use the stats to figure out what is working and what is not. Cut out the part that doesn't and either re-create or expand upon what is working.

Secret: The most powerful social networking secret I have is to network offline just as much as you network online. If you have established relationships online whether through blogs, forums or Twitter, meeting those people in real life brings a new depth to the connection.


4.  What do you think is the minimum time per week for someone just starting out?

I would encourage someone starting out to devote at least 1 or 2 hours a day in the beginning of their social media strategy.  In 1 or 2 hours, one should have enough time to at least research their industry, find their target market, set up profiles and begin to engage. Once the research and profiles are set up, less time (or more time, depending how addictive these sites can be ;) will be needed to maintain the profiles and conversations.

5.  Your profiles have so much personality - love it. How did you organization let you do that?

Haha, Thank you. I feel so fortunate to work for a company which recognizes the importance of individuality and personality.   Part of my passion in being a social marketing manager is helping companies find their personality. Every great company has a certain personality which comes across in their communication. Showing personality is what really sets one apart.

6.  If someone in a nonprofit organization just approved to spend 5-10 hours per week on their first social media strategy, what should they do for the first three months?

The first month should involve a lot of research, goal planning and strategy. Really take the time to figure out their goals, as well as defining their target market. Once the goals and target market are identified, finding out where that target market 'hangs out' online is essential to creating an effective social media strategy.

The next month should involve, setting up profiles across the various social networks, identified in the strategy. Once the profiles are set up, one should begin to listen to the conversations which are happening and find a way to become part of the conversation.

The third month would involve a lot of content creation in the form of blogs, articles, press releases, e-books or whatever else they found to be lucrative in the research phase.

Social media is neat in the way that the more you give the more you get.

How To Be An (effective) Social Butterfly

How To Be A Social Media Butterfly

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: brigida danielle)

Danielle Brigida has posted an excellent slide show about her work flow as the social media person for the NWF.

I like her point about listening is actionable!  It isn't just about looking at the what people saying  -- it's about doing some pattern analysis and linking it back to a decision - like what should we write about on our blog.   In other words, your content reflects the community.

Social Media Basic Literacy Skills In the Nonprofit Workplace

Source:  Pew Internet and America Life Project: "Networked Workers" Study

 

Michele Martin and Tony Karer have been blogging at the Work Literacy blog for several months now.  Work Literacy is a network of individuals, companies and organizations who are interested in learning, defining, mentoring, teaching and consulting on the frameworks, skills, methods and tools of modern knowledge work.  The topics they look at are what I might call social media literacy skills.

When I get out into the real world and come in contact with people who are no early adopters of Web 2.0 tools,  I find that there are still many people who haven't heard of many of these tools - blogging, tagging, RSS,  etc, let alone have incorporated them into their daily professional work practice.   Mostly they are aware,  but haven't experienced it.   

Fast forward ten years from now, and the nonprofit workplace - maybe it is only five years from now - but will social media basic literacy be on the list of basic job skills?

Marshall Kirkpatrick at the Read/Write Web has two recent posts, one that analyzes some research and a second providing some great tips for incorporating social media into your work life in a productive way that can enhance your work.

 

Survey: Most Workplace Internet Use Remains Rudimentary:  Marshall gives a good summary of what he thinks the implications are from this research.  I'll just quote him here:

The gist of the analysis is that people who use the internet at work also use it to do work at home; it makes them more efficient but also increases the demands on their time. Any of us who live that kind of life could have told you that - but what we find more interesting is the surprisingly low number of people who say they use certain technologies at work.

Greg Sterling at the excellent blog SearchEngineLand pulls out some of the most salient data points from the survey and we'll excerpt further from his post below. We question both the definition of "networked worker" in the survey and Sterling's perspective on it, though.

Reading Blogs at Work: How and Why You Should Do It:

This is a fantastic post that gives us the why - first mover advantage, something that Chris Brogan has talked about.  Marshall's tips for reading are all about listening. There's a few more strategy/tool ideas tools that I think are definitely worth incorporating into the WeAreMedia Listening for Nonprofits section.  And, it has given me some inspiration for social media listening step-by-steps projects.

When do you think social media basic literacy skills  -- reading blogs in an RSS reader and listening to what people are saying - will be come a standard part of the nonprofit job description - at least for someone doing marketing for the organization.