SocialButterfly

Quote of the Week: Failure Happens (and One Way to Avoid It)

Monday, March 15th, 2010 | Public Health, Quote of the Week, Web Communications | No Comments

This is not a boggy-too sad to read post. This post is about failure, yes, but it’s also about what can be learned from it. This week’s quote comes from Sarah Ragsdale over at the Walking the Path blog:

“Failure happens.”

However, Sarah doesn’t mope and pity in the eye of failure–instead she offers insights into why failure happens based on the text Marketing in Public Health. Sarah reviews four types of common failures when it comes to communications interventions:

1. Strategy failures occur when external barriers exist in the community that cannot be overcome by communication messages. For example, a condom usage campaign may be very effective in raising awareness, but if condoms are not available in the community, the campaign is moot.
2. Execution failures are the result of poorly constructed messaging or targeting the wrong audience. We must always remember to do our homework and study our audiences.
3. Measurement failures happen when we planned the communication strategy appropriately and delivered it well, but we had a poor evaluation strategy. Check out our post on evaluating social media.
4. Expectation failure results from overestimating the campaign’s impact in the community. Change occurred but not to the level stakeholder’s expected.

I would like to call your attention to reason number 3–measurement and evaluation. Why? Because this can be one of the easiest to avoid and is also one of the most important elements in any social marketing campaign. Think about a project that you are currently working on–do you have an evaluation strategy for your communications? If not, some resources you may find helpful are provided below:

• Pubilc Communication Campaign Evaluation (PDF)
• Guidance for Evaluation Mass Communication Health Initiatives (PDF)
• Web Analytics: An Hour a Day (for Web and social media types)
• Complete Web Monitoring (for more Web and social media types)
• Planning a Social Marketing Program Outline from Craig Lefebvre (overview)
• …and for those who want to completely geek-out with me, here is the motherload of all evaluation resources.
• (What other resources do you suggest?)

If you do have an evaluation strategy, I want to also challenge you and ask you two questions: What are you evaluating and why are evaluating it? Often, by asking these questions, you can avoid some of the other failure pitstops that Sarah mentioned. I know our team internally are asking ourselves these very questions on some great projects we are brewing up–and I look forward to continued thoughts from the team and from you. Because when it comes to “success” in social marketing, my head automatically thinks of desired behaviors, behavioral objectives and behavioral outcomes–what does your mind think of?

flickr credit: fireflythegreat

Tags: communications, communications resources, evaluation, evaluation strategy, failure, health communications, health evaluation, measurement, public health planning, Quote, resources, Social Marketing, strategic planning, Walking the Path, web analytics

One Word of Advice for Voters of Pepsi’s Refresh Project

Monday, February 1st, 2010 | Blog Talk, Case Studies and New Orgs/Campaigns | 5 Comments

Sustainability. In a fast-paced, 140-character world, short term and one-hit wonder thinking is rampant. But when it comes to making a difference and solving the great problems of our times, we need to be thinking for the long-term. This is why I hope the voters of Pepsi’s Refresh Everything Project will keep the concept of sustainability top-of-mind.

Let me first say that I applaud Pepsi’s jump into social good–and I hope more groups follow their lead. Perhaps if more did, then we’d have more case studies, a deeper set of lessons learned and more refined best practices. In a sense, we’d have more to talk about. This post is not for the folks at Pepsi. Rather, it’s aimed at the people who are engaging in Pepsi’s Refresh Everything Project.

For those not familiar, Pepsi is foregoing its Superbowl Ads and instead, engaging in a social good experiment. Pepsi will award a total of $20 million in grants over the course of the year. Who will receive the grants? That’s for you, me and everyone else to decide by voting–and a big reason why I hope, each voter, keeps in mind the concept of sustainability when reviewing the proposed projects. (More on how the project works.)

When reviewing the proposals, a thought kept pulsing, growing bigger and bigger inside me. Pepsi is awarding $20 million dollars in resources–but what if you had $20 million dollars or your organization did–how would you allocate those resource and why?

Sure–Recruiting people to help clean the highways is great–but what if we knew of a way to make it where people didn’t litter in the first place?

Sure–It’s great to offer a summer camp to kids to teach them to better appreciate the earth, but how can we scale this to reach more children in more places?

Sure–It’s great to find ways to get people up and moving. But, there are so many good people working to achieve this already. What strategies do they find working? Let’s invest there.

The Pepsi Refresh Project is a great initiative, but it’s just a start. I expect (and hope) we’ll start to see more of it. I also agree with Beth Kanter that, with crowdsourcing efforts, this is where having a key group of content experts involved is key. But, to me, the biggest take-away is that we, as a community, need to be thinking more strategically with our resources–this is why I love social marketing. It addresses both the short-term and the long-term. It looks at advocacy as well as promotion and a wide range of other various tools. It thinks both upstream and downstream. In other words, it offers a framework for us to create sustainable programs, products and services that truly can make a lasting change and a better world.

Thus, to all you voters, when reviewing, please keep in mind the idea of sustainability. What’s going to make the biggest difference for the amount of effort, resources and time?

What about you–what advice do you have either to Pepsi or to the fellow voters?

Tags: behavior change, beth kanter, change, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, CSR, Engagement, framework, good, Pepsi, Pepsi Refresh Everything Project, resource allocation, resources, social good, Social Marketing, sustainability

CDC Launches Re-Design, Focus on Tools

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | Health 2.0, Public Health | 5 Comments

Today, I received a tip that Monday night, CDC.gov launched it’s re-designed Web site–placing a larger emphasis on tools. I think it’s looking pretty good myself–especially the “connect” icons as I’m a large fan of communicating visually. Plus, icons are fun, right? What about you? What are your thoughts?

I think one of my all-time favorite features is the CDC.gov Tag Cloud. According to the Web site, “[the] Tag Cloud is an alphabetized list of the most popular search topics on the CDC.gov Web site. The text size of the term shows its relative popularity: bigger terms are more popular than smaller ones.” Even better, each term is click-able for information about that specific topic. Here’s a quick snap shot:

It’s simple. It’s user-generated (via consumer search queries). It offers a quick snapshot to what consumers are concerned about in regards to public health. And, thus, it’s powerful. And, it communicates all this and more, visually. For a visual learner like myself, I give it two thumbs up. I’m envisioning that one day, we might be able to update these types of queries in real-time, though from my own experience, I also know it’s going to be a challenge.

Tags: cdc, CDC.gov, health, Public Health, resources, Social Media, tag cloud, tools, Web site, Web site re-design

NIDA and AIDS.gov Join Together in Blogger Outreach Effort for World AIDS Day 2008

Sunday, November 30th, 2008 | Blogging and the Blogosphere, Changeblogging: NP, activism, social change +, Social Media, government 2.0 | 6 Comments

“HIV/AIDS has now become a pandemic that has literally put the world at risk, affecting diverse populations in different ways”. –Dr. Nora Volkow, NIDA Director

HIV/AIDS has been a global epidemic for more than 27 years. Most of today’s youth have never known a world without it. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently published national HIV incidence (new infections) that showed much higher numbers that previous estimates.

On December 1st, individuals and organizations will recognize World AIDS Day. This year’s theme is leadership – from all sectors, including government, but also leaders among individuals and families, communities, non-profits and other organizations.

Today, on December 1, many of us are joining together through our online activity in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Joining us are two government agencies: the National Institute on Drug Abuse and AIDS.gov.

Together, they both offer numerous free resources for the public that address the HIV/AIDS issue. This is why they are joining together, along with Bloggers Unite, to harness the power of the blogosphere for good and join in community.

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Personally, I find this effort important beyond the issue of HIV/AIDS, though I definitely do not want to undermine the issue by my saying that. World AIDS Day 2008 is also important because this (to the best of my knowledge) is the first official blogger outreach activity conducted by not just one government agency, but two. Working together.

Both the National Institute on Drug Abuse and AIDS.gov are joining together with Bloggers Unite to recognize World AIDS Day 2008 through a blogger outreach call to action to raise awareness not only of the issue, but also of the great, free, public resources both agencies offer. The online Webisode below, provided by NIDA, is just one of these many resources. For more information, please visit the Bloggers Unite Participation pa

Other resources include:

NIDA’s Learn the Link Campaign

Drug abuse by any route can put a person at risk for getting HIV. This is because drug and alcohol intoxication affect judgment and can lead to unsafe sexual practices, which put people at risk for getting HIV or transmitting it to someone else. NIDA has developed the following resources to help educate, share and increase awareness of the AIDS issue.

• Learn the Link: drugs + HIV Web site and Resource
• DROGAS + VIDA = Educate Web site and Resources in Español
• d’cisions Online Webisode Series
• Other Campaign Materials
• Drugs and HIV Resource Page

AIDS.gov

The Federal government has developed a wealth of HIV/AIDS testing, prevention, treatment and research information. In addition, the following are some of the many resources you can use to help response to HIV/AIDS.

• AIDS.gov blog about Using New Media Tools in Response to HIV/AIDS
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – HIV/AIDS
• Finding an HIV Testing Center Near You
• KNOWIT HIV Testing Text Messaging Campaign
• National HIV/AIDS Awareness Days
• Podcasts from AIDS.gov
• Updates from AIDS.gov from Twitter

What are your thoughts about the increasing rise of government agencies in the social media playground? Thoughts, concerns or comments. I know you’re not shy.

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Full disclosure: I am leading this effort at IQ Solutions for our client The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), along with AIDS.gov and Bloggers Unite.

Tags: #WAD08, AIDS, AIDS.gov, AIDS.gov blog, blogger outreach, Bloggers Unite, blogging community, government, government 2.0, government outreach, HIV, HIV/AIDS, NIDA, resources, World AIDS Day, World AIDS Day 2008