US Charities’ Adoption of Social Media

Study by

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Center for Marketing Research

Objective

To compare the organizational adoption of social media of the largest 200 US charities in 2007, 2008 and 2009.These 200 charities were chosen from the list of  Forbes Magazine.

Data depend on the detailed interviews with executives of 76 charities (that responded) from that list.

Highlights

Charities still outpacing other sectors in adoption of social media (See the graphs in the  manuscript below).

97% of charities are using some form of social media.

65% of the organizations are blogging. Most improvement when comparing the data from 2007, 2008 and 2009.

42% report that social media is very important for their fund-raising  strategy.

The study online

Use of social media in the classroom

Principal Investigator/Leader of the Research Team

Susan Barnes,  Department of Communication, Liberal Arts; Associate director of the Lab for Social Computing, Rochester Institute of Technology

Susan.Barnes@rit.edu

May 2010

The research, conducted as part of a course on social media tools, examined the use of course management systems and discussion groups to enhance classroom instruction, improve communication and connections between students and translate the benefits of social media interaction to the classroom. The results indicate that the educational use of social media may not counteract poor social connections that are seen in face-to-face communication or elicit the same impacts seen in the use of social media sites such as MySpace and FaceBook.

Of course, this is one study only. On the other hand, it is exciting how this group of researchers are planning to find a good of way to use social media channels for the use of better interaction in the classroom (please see the news release of the university on the study where you will see the “future plans”). This line of studies might have more than one single implication; anti-bullying, increased emotional intelligence, more social employees in the future are only some of them.

Examining the Medical Blogosphere: An Online Survey of Medical Bloggers

Ivor Kovic¹, MD; Ileana Lulic¹, MD; Gordana Brumini², PhD

¹Rijeka University School of Medicine, Croatia
²Department of Medical Informatics, Rijeka University School of Medicine, Croatia

ikovic [at] medri.hr

Journal of Medical Internet Research 2008

ABSTRACT

Background: Blogs are the major contributors to the large increase of new websites created each year. Most blogs allow readers to leave comments and, in this way, generate both conversation and encourage collaboration. Despite their popularity, however, little is known about blogs or their creators.
Objectives: To contribute to a better understanding of the medical blogosphere by investigating the characteristics of medical bloggers and their blogs, including bloggers’ Internet and blogging habits, their motivations for blogging, and whether or not they follow practices associated with journalism.
Methods: We approached 197 medical bloggers of English-language medical blogs which provided direct contact information, with posts published within the past month. The survey included 37 items designed to evaluate data about Internet and blogging habits, blog characteristics, blogging motivations, and, finally, the demographic data of bloggers.
Pearson’s Chi-Square test was used to assess the significance of an association between 2 categorical variables. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was utilized to reveal the relationship between participants’ ages, as well as the number of maintained blogs, and their motivation for blogging. The Mann-Whitney U test was employed to reveal relationships between practices associated with journalism and participants’ characteristics like gender and pseudonym use.
Results: A total of 80 (42%) of 197 eligible participants responded. The majority of responding bloggers were white (75%), highly educated (71% with a Masters degree or doctorate), male (59%), residents of the United States (72%), between the ages of 30 and 49 (58%), and working in the healthcare industry (67%). Most of them were experienced bloggers, with 23% (18/80) blogging for 4 or more years, 38% (30/80) for 2 or 3 years, 32% (26/80) for about a year, and only 7% (6/80) for 6 months or less. Those who received attention from the news media numbered 66% (53/80). When it comes to best practices associated with journalism, the participants most frequently reported including links to original source of material and spending extra time verifying facts, while rarely seeking permission to post copyrighted material. Bloggers who have published a scientific paper were more likely to quote other people or media than those who have never published such a paper (U= 506.5, n₁= 41, n₂= 35, P= .016). Those blogging under their real name more often included links to original sources than those writing under a pseudonym (U= 446.5, n₁= 58, n₂= 19, P= .01). Major motivations for blogging were sharing practical knowledge or skills with others, influencing the way others think, and expressing oneself creatively.
Conclusions: Medical bloggers are highly educated and devoted blog writers, faithful to their sources and readers. Sharing practical knowledge and skills, as well as influencing the way other people think, were major motivations for blogging among our medical bloggers. Medical blogs are frequently picked up by mainstream media; thus, blogs are an important vehicle to influence medical and health policy.

You can read the full article free by clicking on the image below.

This study will encourage and motivate the medical bloggers around the world like myself.

Twitter For Business Case Study: Naked Pizza

Here is a blog post about my favourite social media case study. It is simple and smart.

I like giving this case to my clients and friends in order to emphasize the power of social media in business.

Located in New Orleans, this pizza company made a twitter only promotion in twitter in April 23, 2009. The result: 15% increase in sales on that day and 90% of the customers being new ones.

Growing Social Media Addiction

If social media marketing specialists do not know about people’s attitudes  and behaviours  in the world of social media, they will not be as effective as they should be.

Below is a post (April 2010)  from Social Media Examiner about two recent social media market studies on people’s behaviours and attitudes.

People under the age of 25 are more addictive to social network sites i.e. Facebook and Twitter than people over 25 years old. However, the difference is not so dramatic.

A striking finding from that study is that more than half of the Facebook users check their Facebook pages at least once a day. Considering the amount of members in this social networking site, it is huge!

The second study is after the question “What do users want?”

Chitika, an online advertising network , in their study observed:

“Facebook and Twitter users want news, Digg users have more eclectic taste, and MySpace users want to hear primarily about celebrities and video games.”  Interestingly, Twitter users actually were the largest consumers of news sites at 47%, compared to Facebook’s 28%.