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Eight Tips For Corporate Volunteering

It’s almost certain that you’ve never heard of the the Global Corporate Volunteer Council (GCVC).  Created by the International Association for Volunteer Effort, its founding members include Citi Bank, Disney, Levi Strauss and Samsung.

Corporate volunteering is nothing new: a business releases its employees from their day job to allow them to engage with the civil society within which the company exists. How long the release is for varies between a day a month and a week a year.  Sometimes the employee receives a stipend from their employer, sometimes they don’t.

International corporate volunteering (ICV) is much the same beast but on a bigger scale.  Businesses place their employees on a volunteer basis in international projects where their skills can contribute to the achievement of a defined goal.  Sometimes these can take months to achieve, sometimes shorter.

Back in June 2011 GCVC published a final report into the international state of ICV, and it makes interesting reading.  Part of the report is “Seven Learnings” which, although aimed specifically at ICV, are almost equally applicable to any company of any size running a volunteer programme.

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Brands Take Notice – American Moms Are Active and Influential Online

women-brandsAmerican mothers are very active online, and they’re also very influential. They’re reading, writing, and sharing product reviews and opinions across social networks with family, friends, and strangers. Brands are often part of the online conversations happening between people around the world, but did you know how popular social media really is for American moms? A great infographic from Nielsen puts a lot of the data into perspective. Here are some highlights.

Social Networking for American Moms:

  • 3 out of 4 American moms visited Facebook during March 2012.
  • Moms are 38% more likely to follow a brand or become a fan of a brand online than the average online audience, and moms who blog are twice as likely to do so.
  • Facebook is the top social network for moms (72.5% of U.S. moms who went online visited Facebook during March 2012) vs. 14.1% of U.S. moms who went online and visited Twitter.
  • American moms are 61% more likely to visit Pinterest than the average American.
  • During March 2012, 5 million American moms visited Pinterest, which equates to one-third of the site’s unique visitors from home computers that month.

Blogging for American Moms:

  • 1 in 3 bloggers are moms.
  • Moms visit blogs more frequently than the average online population.
  • 52% of bloggers are parents with kids under 18 in the household.

E-commerce for American Moms:

  • Moms are 59% more likely to buy toys, 35% more likely to buy clothes, and 23% more likely to buy ebooks online than the average online population.

Mobile for American Moms:

  • Half of moms use social media via mobile devices vs. 37% of the online population.
  • 54% of moms own smartphones (of U.S. mobile subscribers).

Here’s what brands need to understand about American moms, and moms around much of the world. They’re spending a great deal of time online and much of that time is spent discussing and analyzing brands and products. Why wouldn’t your brand be a part of those conversations? Why shouldn’t your brand be part of those conversations? It’s hard to come up with valid arguments against spending time where your target audience clearly spends a great deal of time. Don’t you think? Next time an executive tells you that your female target audience isn’t digitally-savvy and social media or online marketing in general shouldn’t be a priority, show him or her this data and ask those two questions. The responses are likely to be very weak.

Image: Hilde Vanstraelen

Huffington Post to Manage Content Sites for Brands

huffington post logoThe Huffington Post is known for its relentless pursuit of mastering search engine optimization techniques and creating content that people want to read. Now, The Huffington Post wants to give extend that expertise into a new revenue opportunity by creating content sites for brands. Ad Age reports that the new content sites will likely be white-labeled versions of the Huffington Post publishing platform, and brands could either manage the sites themselves once they’re up and running or The Huffington Post can manage the sites on an ongoing basis by helping with content creation, curation (including content from The Huffington Post), and distribution.

The reason for this new push is simple. Brands are realizing they need to be in the content publishing business. Content marketing is powerful, but few brands have the in-house talent and expertise to instantly be great publishers. The Huffington Post has been perfecting its publishing strategy for several years, and brands could surely benefit from that experience.

For media companies, giving brands an opportunity to own a space on a media website has been a marketing strategy for years, but bringing the media company to the brand is a new twist that has a really good chance of working — assuming the price is right. Rumor has it that The Huffington Post will urge participating brands to use parent company AOL’s Devil ads or other AOL proprietary ads on their white-labeled sites. However, the AOL advertising team claims this won’t be a requirement (at least not yet).

Participating brands will also get access to the same analytics and content performance reports that The Huffington Post uses to manage its own content strategy. Of course, it can be assumed that much of the behind-the-scenes performance analysis that The Huffington Post does is coveted intellectual property. It remains to be seen if the reports brands will get truly are the same ones that The Huffington Post uses. Even a confidentiality agreement could be risky for The Huffington Post in this area.

According to Ad Age, a major consumer goods advertiser is already in discussions with The Huffington Post (through Razorfish) to create a branded website with lifestyle content. We’ll have to wait to see the rest of this story play out. What do you think?

CEOs Cite Social Media as Number 2 in Hierarchy of Customer Interaction Methods

ibm ceo study bookletTraditional marketing practice for years has placed face-to-face as the number one method of interacting with consumers with websites coming in second place. However, new research by IBM, which surveyed over 1,700 CEOs across 18 industries and 64 countries, reveals that CEOs expect social media to steal the second spot within three to five years. Traditional media will plummet to the bottom of the hierarchy of customer interaction methods during that time.

At the heart of social media is transparency, and CEOs are catching on that people expect honesty and forthrightness from brands and companies just as they expect those traits in other people. Many CEOs who responded to the IBM in-person interview research study indicated that they’re prioritizing internal openness through a more social workplace. Of the top 20% of companies included in the study (based on revenue and growth) nearly one out of two reported that they promote social workplaces and openness in an effort to increase collaboration.

However, the social media learning curve is still huge, particularly where performance measurement is concerned. The majority of CEOs indicate that they don’t have access to the data they need to make decisions. For those companies that have found ways to measure social media efforts and turn that data into strategic decision-making, there is a new understanding that engaging consumers, lengthening conversations, and listening to people can mean the difference between brand success and failure in the future.

The hierarchy of customer interaction methods looks like this today according to the IBM report:

  1. Face-to-face
  2. Websites
  3. Channel partners
  4. Call centers
  5. Traditional media
  6. Advisory groups
  7. Social media

CEOs don’t expect that hierarchy to stay the same for long. Is your brand ready for the shift? There’s no turning back now. Leave a comment and share your thoughts on the future of the hierarchy of customer interaction methods.

Image: IBM

Feed Your Branding Addiction with Logo Game Apps

Time to have some fun with branding. After all, branding is a creative process, and we need ways to keep our creative juices flowing! For most of us who work in the world of branding, it’s a bit of an addiction, and we feel more for logos than people who don’t share our addiction. Fortunately, there are ways to feed our branding addictions, even when we’re on the go.

Thanks to some really cool logo game apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices, you can quiz yourself anytime you want. Put your logo knowledge to the test with any of these free and affordable games. But I warn you, once you start, it’s hard to stop guessing logos!

iPhone and iPad Apps

Logo Quiz: There are two versions of this app. Logo Quiz Free and Logo Quiz which costs $0.99. The paid version offers a few more features, but give the free version a try first.

logo quiz free

Logos Quiz Game: This is another great option for a logo game. It’s free and offers fun features like challenging friends.

logos quiz iphone

Android Apps

Logo Quiz: The free Logo Quiz app is one of the most popular free games downloaded from Google Play.

logo quiz android

Logos Quiz: This is another very popular free Android app that you can use to test your logo knowledge.

logos quiz android
All of these apps are fun, and they’re sure to feed your branding and logo addiction for many hours. Take a look at your mobile device display when a variety of logos are shown together. Which stand out? Which colors jump out at you, and which shapes are most eye-catching? Your customers are moving more and more to becoming completely mobile. Is your brand ready for mobile consumers? Not only can these apps be fun, but they can jump start your thinking about how your brand identity will transition to the mobile space.

Images: App Store, Google Play