March 3rd, 2010
I have a love-hate relationship with Twitter.
I’m logged into it all day for ELISE, and find it to be a fantastic resource. I’ve connected with other PR pros, found out who’s talking about our clients and reached out to journalists we couldn’t track down through more conventional means. Even on days when we’re not sending tweets, we all take some time over the course of the day to make sure we’re not missing out on any big news. (How do you think we learned of Michael Jackson’s untimely demise or the earthquake in Haiti?) And services like HootSuite and TweetDeck, both of which I use daily, allow users to filter out some static by monitoring key words in which they’re especially interested.
That’s when I love Twitter. But when I hate it, my animosity sometimes overshadows my love. It’s an animosity that I also feel for advertisers who run uninteresting Super Bowl commercials, bus passengers who talk too loudly on their cell phones and retailers who don’t honor competitors’ coupons: it’s a hatred of not understanding the power and reach of your chosen platform. Think about it:
- Super Bowl advertisers have a captive audience that wants to watch commercials almost as badly as they want to watch the game; if your commercial is boring, it could provide the 30 seconds your television audience needs to go open another beer.
- On the phone on a bus? Small metal spaces tend to make sound project, and now everyone knows about that nasty fungus you picked up at the gym.
- If you’re not honoring your competitors’ discounts, people will just go make that purchase—and the rest of their purchases—at your competitors’ stores, too.
So why would you provide bad information, share too much or ignore other people in your field, in your Twitter feed? These behaviors aren’t just bad practice; they’re downright rude. Not rude in the conventional sense—nasty or insulting—just rude in that they show utter disregard for the power and reach of Twitter as a platform and the engagement of people who use it.
There are approximately 75 million registered Twitter users worldwide. That’s a lot of content to sift through. People who provide good information or entertaining content or relevant news naturally get followers. People who send out pointless or self-promoting tweets, or who tweet out too much, too often, without showing that they’re listening to the conversations happening around (or about) them naturally lose followers. Being polite in your tweets by sharing carefully selected, useful or enjoyable information instead of flooding Twitter with a stream of posts nobody cares about will get you far.
And as to that content nobody cares about? You’ll have to tune in next time for some pointers on best practices for courtesy in the Twitterverse.
January 27th, 2010
The recent earthquake in Haiti directed the world’s attention to the needs and suffering of a country that has long experienced dire poverty. Fortunately, there are organizations on the ground in Haiti and elsewhere that work daily to solve the world’s most pressing problems. At ELISE, we support clients who do just that. Through social innovation, education and entrepreneurship, our clients make the world a better place.
Today we continue that theme as we welcome the newest member of the ELISE family—SNV Netherlands Development Organization, an international development organization of Dutch origin currently at work in 32 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Balkans.
SNV works to implement local solutions to social and economic development challenges by supporting national and local actors within government, civil and private sectors. By providing support for local organizations, SNV sets the framework for the poor to strengthen their capacities and bring themselves out of poverty.
Its strategy is to alleviate poverty by focusing on increasing people’s income and employment opportunities in specific productive sectors, as well as improving access to basic services including water and sanitation, education and renewable energy. Above all, SNV is dedicated to a society in which all people enjoy freedom to pursue their own sustainable development.
Stay tuned to our blog for more information and updates on SNV. We are very excited to be working with an organization that shares our commitment to innovation and positive change.
January 13th, 2010
We’ve written before about our location in Philadelphia. Despite the international scope of our work here at ELISE, Philly is home. So we were excited yesterday when it was announced that Philadelphia is a contender to host a World Cup game in 2018 or 2022, if the United States is given the games. (Seventeen other U.S. cities, coast to coast, would also host matches.) Hosting the World Cup would enable us—finally—to cast Philly in a positive light. And also, I really like soccer.
But not long after the good news, a tragedy to obliterate the warm fuzzies: a magnitude seven earthquake in Haiti, destroying most of Port-au-Prince and potentially causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Haitian residents. And the first thing I thought of when the news hit last night? Soccer.
A few months ago, a friend of Carrie’s mentioned a project he was working on to try to deliver the World Cup to Haiti. The ELISE team was interested and did a little bit of research on this endeavor, thinking it segued nicely with our work in poverty alleviation and education. While the efforts to bring soccer on a large scale to this small island nation remain up in the air, we became quite familiar with Haiti and its robust and often volatile history. For better or for worse, yesterday’s quake affected us just a little more because it didn’t happen halfway around the world in a country we’d never heard of, but in a place not too far from American shores that we felt we’d gotten to know, if only a little.
This isn’t a post about PR. It’s a post about solidarity. As some of our favorite columnists here at ELISE reflect on the tragedy that befell the people of Haiti yesterday, we’re sending thoughts to Port-au-Prince, too. Here’s hoping that in no time at all, the soccer—and the joy—will find its way to you.
