Developing a Social Media Presence for Michigan DeMolay

For my final project, I decided to help create a better social media presence for an organization that I have worked closely with for many years, Michigan DeMolay. The organization, whose members consist of young men between the ages of 12-21, is a non-profit that aims to build better leaders and better men out of the members that come through. One of the big missed opportunities that they have had thus far are connecting the alumni and the active members, and then using that connection to their benefit.

My goal for working with them was to not only better their presence on social media, but to show them how using social media can help them accomplish their goals as an organization.

The first thing that I set out to help them do was to set up their Facebook account as a brand page. Prior to this project, they operated a Facebook page, but as a personal page, which presented a few areas for concern. Among those was the ability of Facebook to delete the account for violating the terms of service. I was able to convert the profile page to a user page, but at first the friends didn’t transfer. This was a major area of concern for me as the page had upwards of 2,000 friends. I was very thrilled, however, to find that all the friends were likes by the end of the day. This was a huge relief for me, and I am excited to see what this type of page can do for us.

 

 

One major area for improvement for this organization is their Twitter page. The organizations Twitter page has not been active in well over a year. While, at one point, the Twitter was extremely active, and a great place for the organization to spread its message, it has since been irrelevant. I have begun working with the organization to regain control of the Twitter. This is preferable, however, if this is not possible, they will begin to implement a new Twitter profile.

 

 

One page that I set up for the organization was a Google+ page. While not many people are on Google+ at this point in time, I expect that, in time, Google+ will begin to take off. I did run into a few problems with Google+, however. One of the big problems I ran into was that you cannot connect with people without them adding you to a circle first. Being a small, non-profit organization, there are many people (mainly members and advisors) who are members and would probably like to connect with Michigan DeMolay on Google+, but without them adding the page first, we are at an roadblock. Another problem that we have run into is that Google+ currently only allows for one administrator on each page. Having been the one to set up, I am the only one update the page, which is difficult as I am not as connected with the organization as I once was. However, from what Mashable tells me, Google+ will allow for multiple administrators by years end.  The last of the major problems that I ran into was that there is currently no way to update a brand page using the mobile application. With working 40+ hours per week, and having 12 credits in school, much of my updates on my own social media sites are from mobile applications. It would also be helpful if Google+ were available on Hootsuite, however that is still in beta testing.

 

A second social network that I set up for this organization was foursquare. There was a very big opportunity using foursquare that I felt could help the organization. What I did with foursquare was create a brand page and leave tips at different places. The locations where I left tips were Masonic Temples, which is where each individual chapter meets. My tips stated when the chapters met. I also created a list of all of these Masonic temples and the tips I added. One problem with this was when the certain chapter’s meeting places were not on foursquare. I have a plan to go to each of these places so that I can add them to foursquare’s list.

 

The final social media presence that I created for Michigan DeMolay is a company page as well as a group on LinkedIn. One of the biggest assets of any fraternal organization is the built in networking among people. Generally people who are connected with a fraternity will give others connected to the same a leg up. Using a professional social networking site, such as LinkedIn, helps to make this easier. Connecting people on LinkedIn will allow Michigan DeMolay a few opportunities that other sites cannot. Mainly, it gives those people who work in a position where they are able to hire employees, the chance to promote a job opportunity in their group first. This is one of the goals of Michigan DeMolay’s social networking: assist the members, both active and senior, even outside of the organization.

During this project, I ran into quite a few problems. One issue that I ran into was that when working with a volunteer organization, getting stuff done quickly is difficult. When people volunteer for an organization, their work there generally takes a backseat to other priorities in their life. Another problem I faced was some of the organization’s policies. Being a youth organization, there were very strict policies set forth concerning the privacy of the members. A status update could not contain the members last name, pictures cannot be updated by the organizations page unless they, and their parents, have signed a release form. The privacy issues of it’s youth members is a big concern of the organization, and working around that was a difficult task.

One major concern of mine came in relation to the Michigan DeMolay Twitter Account. The account, which up until about 1 year ago, was extremely active. It promoted events and pushed relevant information to its followers. But it has since been lost, and the organization is unable to find the current owner of the account. I have been working to resolve this, and while it has not yet happened, I believe that I am on my way to resolving this issue, and hopefully we can prevent it from happening again.

Michigan DeMolay has the mission statement of “Building Tommorow’s Leaders Today”. Their philosophy with social media is to continue this ideology and to help support the organization. The organization hopes that social media will accomplish a few things for them. First, they hope that it will allow them to better promote their events. As kids today spend most of their time online, and on Facebook in particular, it would seem like the best place to promote an event would be on Facebook. They have used Facebook events in the past, and continue to use them, but using them more effectively is something they are working on. They also hope that social media will allow for better communication. One major secret to success of any organization is communication. With email slowly working its way out as a mainstream communication tool, and the postal service way gone, everyone, including Michigan DeMolay, is struggling to find ways to better communicate. Social media will give them that opportunity. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ will allow them to communicate with their most active members, LinkedIn will allow them to communicate with a large portion of their alumni. The biggest thing that they have to remember when communicating with their audience is that most of them are still youth. They, and myself in particular, must remember that while it is important to get the youth excited, it is equally important to make sure that their parents are aware of what is going on.

One of the advantages I have is that even after this semester is over, I intend to work closely with Michigan DeMolay, specifically with regards to their social media devices. The youth leadership of Michigan DeMolay changes every August, and I intend to be working with those young men, as well as the advisors, to help the organization thrive.

My Storify of the Nov. 9 GOP Debate

This is my Storify about the Republican Debate held on November 11, 2011 at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.

The topic of this GOP Debate was the economy, a fitting topic for a debate located just outside of Detroit.

[View the story "GOP Debate" on Storify]

My Netflix Apology

I made many choices in my apology that the actual Netflix CEO did not. The first thing that I did is something I learned from my current job. We have a policy when we get a customer complaint that is L.A.F.T. which stands for Listen, Apologize, Fix, Thank. I tried to incorporate that philosophy into my video. I made sure that each of these aspects were known to the viewer. In my video, I came right out and apologized on behalf of the company.

While the tone of my video wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, I think that I got the message across. I think that taping the video made me seem more awkward than anything. But the tone that I was hoping for was sincerity.

I don’t know that I left anything out on purpose. I think the things I tried to touch on were the things that the customers of Netflix became really upset about. So if I left anything out, it was not on purpose, but rather because I thought the issues that I touched on were the more important ones affecting the company.

I tried to be honest with the customers. I explained that we as a company made the mistake of making choices without getting feedback from our customers. I think that customers can see through all the lies and b.s. that companies shove their way. I think that if you are honest to your customers, they appreciate that more than anything.

My video was a little weird. As I mentioned before, I feel like the recording of me is a little more awkward than anything else. But, given the means at my disposal, I don’t think it was too bad. If I had the money that Netflix has, as well as a little bit more time, I would have done things very differently. I think I would have done something a little more like Apple Keynotes, although these are becoming a little overused. I think it would be important to reach out to the customers of the company in a more professional manner than what was done. I think the video they made was about on par, at least as far as quality is concerned, as the video I made.

Untitled from David Bodine on Vimeo.

Hopefully the Vimeo video above actually works.

Microsoft Social Media Snafu

Earlier this month, Microsoft ran into a potential disaster because of social media. An employee of Microsoft thought he was just updating his Linkedin profile, in all actuality, he was ending his career with the technology giant.

Robert Morgan, who listed is title as “Senior Research & Development” and has been with Microsoft for nearly 8 years posted this as a summary of his job:

“Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and long term projects. Research & Development projects including 128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan.”

This post only leaks 2 relatively small details, first that the company is developing a 128bit system, and second, that the company has already started working on a Windows 9 platform. It also started a domino effect of leaks about the company’s new operating system. The product is shipped in a paper that says ”shh… let’s not leak our hard work,” which goes to show that the company fully expected at least one leak about the product, but it also goes to show how secretive the company is trying to be.

The domino effect leak included plans to create a Windows store, plans for a tablet, as well as an overhaul of the company’s strategic plans.

If you look at Robert Morgan’s current LinkedIn profile, he has removed all of the controversial portions of the post. But this does pose a very important question to Microsoft: how could this happen? Microsoft clearly expected leaks to get out about the new program, but for the original leak to come from something as minimal as an employee’s LinkedIn profile is just flabbergasting. What I find to be interesting is that, while two people have been fired (presumably in connection with the leaks), Robert Morgan appears to be still employed by Microsoft (or at least he hasn’t ended his career at Microsoft on his LinkedIn profile.

Getting Social with Variant Interactive, Inc.

 

 

Variant can be defined as not agreeing or conforming; differing, especially from something of the same general kind. I think that is something that Variant Interactive has truly taken to heart, not only with their own company policy, but also with regards to Social Media. Variant Interactive, Inc. is a company that specializes in media development and software. They create applications, marketing materials, and entertainment products for the many different platforms that are becoming popular in todays day and age, including computers, video game systems, wireless devices, and the Internet.

I was able to interview Cristopher Boyer, who is the CEO and co-founder of Variant. Social Media is an increasingly important, and this company has been able to use social media to their advantage.

Variant engages on Facebook, Google+, YouTube, and Twitter, and they also have an active blog with comments enabled. Facebook is their most popular platform. And Google+ is their least used platform. “Nobody cares about G+,” Boyer said.

Variant has found it more beneficial to them not to outsource their social media. In fact, Cris handles a majority of the company’s social media personally. He has used third party update tools, including both Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. Because they handle all of their own social media, Variant has implemented its own social media policy, in part because of an recent mishap when an employee caused a deal to fall through by claiming that he was working on a project that the company was still trying to get approval on. “It not only blew the whole deal” Cris said, “but it made the company look really, really bad in the process. Never again.” Variants social media policy reflects the use of personal social media accounts. It states that tweets, blogs, posts, etc. about company products under development are only allowed through company accounts. That personal social media accounts are subject to the non-disclosure agreements that each employee must adhere to.

 Thus far, the biggest promotion the company has used social media for was to promote their online gaming site, Variant ON. To track their effectiveness on social media, Variant has used the built-in analytics of the various sites, especially those beyond the obvious tracking measures of likes, fans, and followers. They have also started looking into Klout as a third party analytics tool, but “it’s still pretty new so it’s hard to say whether it’s very valuable or not yet.”

Variant has big plans for their future with social media. They are exploring integrating their products, specifically their entertainment brands, with the different forms of social media. But one of the key risks that they have to control before full integration is over use. “Nobody likes t have a Twitter feed all clogged up with some jerk’s high scores on all their games,” said Boyer. But he thinks that it is an idea worth looking at because it provides “unique opportunities that can both help spread the word about our products as well as bring people together.” Another new tool that the the company is looking at is the idea of crowd sourcing the financing of a new product. New sites like Kickstarter provide more than a measure of interest in a product, but they also allow followers of the company and interested parties a stake in the project at hand.

Cris doesn’t believe that there has really been a missed opportunity with their company and social media, but there are concepts that they would like to look at.

I think there is a lot we can learn from the company with regards to social media. One key thing that the company has not done yet is integrate their products with social media. There is so much opportunity, especially when you are involved in multimedia developments, to integrate with social media. Many companies have already been able to incorporate social media in to their similar platforms, so not doing this is putting the company behind their competitors. Another thing that we can learn from this company is that activity is crucial. While no one does like their feeds getting clogged with stories from all the same person or company, for a company to be inactive can negatively impact the effectiveness of a social media campaign. You cannot push yourself on to consumers if you are not pushing yourself out there. The company’s last Twitter post was on October 7, the last Facebook post was October 6, the last Google plus post was October 5, and the company has yet to post a video on YouTube. While the company does have videos available on their own platforms on their own sites, you must take your videos to the people, with the advance of social media, you can no longer expect the consumer to come to you.

In the end, the company has experienced the ups and downs of social media. But they have come out on top. When Google+ was introduced, they jumped in and got involved quick. There is no one who can tell if a company was successful in a campaign other than the company itself, and Variant Interactive feels that their campaigns have had a positive impact on their company.

Two iPad Apps: @Square and the @Daily

The news organization iPad application that I use the most is from “The Daily“. Until recently, when they added a Facebook application, The Daily was only available on the iPad, therefore extremely limiting the target audience. Of iPad owners, I think that the audience is limited even more. They seem to target the older people, as young people are becoming increasingly less interested in day to day news. This app is very social, it allows users to share nearly any story they read with their friends on Facebook and Twitter, and it also allows users to email the stories to others. As an added bonus, it allos users to talk amongst other readers and comment on stories within the applications. The company does not charge for the application itself, however it does charge a subscription for the user to read the content. For .99 cents/week or $39.99/year, the user is able to read all of the stories published by the news company. This is, I believe, a fair price for the application, as many news papers charge more than this for a subscription.

The brand application that I have chosen is Square. Square is a new technology, founded by Jack Dorsey, who also founded Twitter. This application allows users to accept Credit Cards wherever they are. The Square application is available on most mobile platforms including Android and iOS, including iPod, iPhone, and iPad. This does more than allow users to accept credit cards however. It also allows the user to keep track of every purchase someone makes from them. Not only item numbers, but also pictures and descriptions. And it allows the user to send a receipt to the customer instantly.

This company is trying to reach people who operate small businesses and mobile businesses. Specifically, it targets people who sell items at fairs and other events where getting internet access may not be as simple in order to use traditional credit card readers. The apps are not very social, but I am not sure that they really need to be. The only possible social application would be to allow buyers to share the items that they bought. But mixing credit card information and the social web could be a very touchy subject. The company does not charge for the application, but they do charge a service charge for all credit card transactions, however a 2.75% service charge is not too unusual for a service like this. All in all, this is a fair price for a service that could come in handy to many different users.

SCVNGR: A Whole New Kind of Game

I think that the game SCVNGR could be a great asset for many organizations, but the one that I think it would benefit would be a youth organization. I have worked very closely with multiple youth organizations, and this is something that I think they could, and probably should, take advantage of.

The organization that I have worked the most with is called DeMolay, and at their annual Winterfest this year, they are breaking out geocaching, which is very similar to SCVNGR. The difference, is that this is a game, that could offer a winner, which provides motivation for playing. Using a game like this would allow the organization to give all of the members a reason to check out all of the different things that the event has to offer.

Some challenges could be

• Check out the store, where a qr code could be.
• Who was the first in the pie toss
• What room is registration in
• and really anything that gets the people to check out all of the features and events within the convention

It could offer the organization a chance to get its members and event attendees, most of which are young men ages 12-21, motivation to stop playing video games in their hotel room and to get out and explore the hotel and see everything that the event has to offer. The organization has already jumped on the geocaching bandwagon, and they should jump on this.

A Missed Opportunity

One brand that I think could develop an application is CMU,or perhaps, a company such as Blackboard.

This application would be something that would connect the students together and would promote their advancement in education.

If Central Michigan, or any other school for that matter, were to create an application, it should be one that allows students to connect together based on shared classes. This application would not only allow students to meet other classmates before class even started, making those first day introductions pointless, but it would allow students the opportunity to find others in their class to work with.

The app should use the students schedule an group people together, and give them a space, similar to that of Facebook groups to communicate with each other. But it would also give the students a place to work together, similar to Google Wave where people can collaborate on projects in real time. It would also allow people to work together to study for tests or to share notes missed in class.

Not only that, but this would connect with Blackboard, allowing users of the app the same tools that Blackboard provides, but it would allow students to see their grades, upload assignments, and anything else you can think of, all without leaving Facebook, which most students are already on, even while doing their homework.

I think this is an app that would recognize the fact that students are already on Facebook all the time, and bring the educational tools to them.

The New Facebook

Last week, Facebook announced a plethora of new changes to take effect on the social media giant. Among these are a new home page set up, a ticker, top stories, subscriptions, and Timeline. All of these will effect every Facebook user in different ways, however they will also have a huge impact on brand pages in the future.

The new features have sparked outrage by users, who have taken to status updates to show their disapproval of the new layout. But are these changes really bad? or are they just different?

The new home page set up was created to include the new features, such as the ticker. The ticker is basically a real time feed of what your friends are doing. It eliminates some of the clutter on the news feed of the less important features, and leaves your news feed for the big stories.

The news feed has now become a seperated list of recent items and top items. When logging on, the top stories since your last visit are displayed on the top. After scrolling about halfway down the page, you see the recent stories. This is something that many people have yet to notice, as they are jus to distraught over the fact that the option to toggle between the two options is no longer at the top.

Subscriptions are another new feature of Facebook. Subscriptions, which allow people to see the status of someone without giving them all of the permissions of your typical friend.

But Facebook’s biggest new introduction is that of Timeline. Timeline will replace the profile view, and will provide a detailed list of everything you have ever done on Facebook. From, and even before, you joined Facebook until the last thing you shared. What is a tad creepy is that some of the things that Facebook remembers may be stuff you don’t even remember being posted.

The biggest effect of these new features will be on brand pages. Brands will have a more difficult time staying on the top of your news feed. The changes to the news feed will push the stuff that you’ve already seen out of the way, so you wont see them again unless you go looking for them. They will push stuff out of sight, and by default, out of mind.

The subscriptions feature will also have a large impact on brands, but more specifically on people who also maintain a fan page. People such as celebrities and reporters can now maintain their Facebook and allow only friends to be their friends, while others who want to subscribe to them will receive their posts. This will be something similar to a Twitter experience. It will allow people to maintain a private Facebook and share their personal posts with only close friends, while sharing the public posts with anyone.

It will be interesting to see how these changes progress in the future, not to mention, what Facebook will come out with next.

Response to Videos on YouTube and sharing on the social web

The videos we watched in class last week were both extremely interesting.

The first video was a brief introduction to Web 2.0. The video itself presented information through the use of moveable text and through a neat video presentation. It discussed a little of how websites advanced and code has advanced and how things have changed. As someone who dealt with, on a very limited basis, html code and webpages, it is amazing to see how things have progressed to the point they are currently at.

The second video, and the much longer one at that presented a lot of information. This video was very similar to another one I watched a few years back, which we also coincidentally watched the first day of class, about Socialnomics, which is the effect of social media on society. This video, which contained many of the same statistics, was a little different in that it involved a person explaining the information rather than just giving the information. This presentation, which was given over 3 years ago, was  a little more in depth as well. He showed a little more behind the scenes stuff. He also presented some truly eye opening information. He discusses how the numa numa video became so popular. Another video that he discusses is that of Soulja Boy’s Crank Dat (sorry I can’t find the original to link to it), and how that became popular and even used the music video to display how it rose to fame.

I think what surprised me most is how social media has impacted things without us even knowing it. For instance, I had heard the song by Soulja Boy many times, but I never knew the story behind its popularity. Another thing that surprised me was the statistics presented. I have seen many videos with the statistics of social media, but it still is surprising, and amazing, to me everytime I see it.

I think the applications this has to the rest of the social web are immense. Social media is growing to the point that social media is interconnected. Because of how closely they all work with each other, the effects of one severely impact the effects of the other. The rise of social media has impacted society in ways we could have never imagined just 10 years ago. Everything done on the social web effects everything else on the social web. Just look at Facebook‘s new changes, many of which are taken directly from another social media site, Google+. The applications discussed in these videos not only impact the social web, but they impact our daily life, mainly because our world is impacted by the social web.