Social Media Contests: Choosing The Right Channel

So you’ve decided to run a social media contest as part of your marketing plan (perhaps because you read a blog post on the advantages of contests?) Now comes the part where you decide which social channel to go through (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) There are a number of factors to consider when making this decision: your comfort level with each channel, the number of followers you already have on each, the type of product or service you offer, and the goal of your contest.

We’ll take a look at the advantages and best application of 4 of the most popular social media platforms for running contests today. For our purposes, we’ll take comfort level and followers out of the equation since those vary for everyone.

1. FacebookFacebook is one of the most popular places to run contests, sweepstakes and giveaways, largely because people are so familiar with it and almost everyone has a Facebook page. Other than ubiquity, one of the major advantages of Facebook for contests is the opportunities it provides for virality. Not only do most contest creating tools give participants the option (or requirement) to share the contest with their friends, Facebook’s built-in ‘reporting’ also helps spread the word. Depending on privacy settings, Facebook will often generate stories when people do things like enter a contest, share a contest link, or like a contest page. This increases the chances of your contest spreading to more and more Facebook users. So if your goal is exposure, Facebook is a great choice for your contest.

One note before you get started: Facebook has pretty details terms for how contests can be run on the site, so it’s best to use a contest creation tool or service to avoid getting into hot water by creating something from scratch.

2. InstagramThough Instagram doesn’t have as many users as Facebook, it is owned by Facebook and therefor has a lot Facebook-sharing built in. If the goal of your contest is to build your brand and endear your followers to it, Instagram is a perfect fit. Consider running a contest that encourages followers to post photos of themselves or their families interacting with your product or service. This will not only give them a chance to consider the role that your business plays in their life, it will provide a slew of visual testimonials for everyone who sees your profile or the hashtag you might use in your contest.

Not only are photos a great way to engage viewers, Instagram has the added advantage of a baked-in sense of nostalgia that is created by the apps vintage photo filters.

3. TwitterBecause of the limitations on characters and the very mobile nature of Twitter, this medium is a best bet for very simple contests like sweepstakes and giveaways. Prolific tweeters tend to be ‘instant gratification’ people who are using the app from their mobile device, and therefore shy away from anything that requires them to stop, think, and type. But the effort required to retweet or reply with a hashtag is minimal, and therefore these users are pretty likely to do it. Also, when users enter a contest by doing these actions, all of their followers see it and the viral spread begins.

4. PinterestIf your business offers a physical product, Pinterest is a natural platform for your contest. Similar to the advantage of Instagram, Pinterest contests usually ask users to consider the role that brands or products play in their lives. Because Pinterest is so much about lifestyle and aspirations, it’s also a great place to run a contest that is related to your brand, but does not actually feature your product. This is great for brand building, and gaining exposure with people whose lifestyles are similar to your followers’, but who might not be acquainted with your product.

For example, if your business is a pet grooming service, you could easily run a contest that asks followers to post photos of their adorable pets on a board you create for the contest. You could pick a winner at random or have the user with the most re-pins win. It doesn’t directly sell your service, but it gives people who have pets a reason to interact with your business and think of you in the future.

There are lots of channels for running social media contests, and with a little creativity, you can run a successful campaign anywhere. 

The Web and the Internet are not the same thing

The terms “the Internet” and “the Web” are often used as if they are the same thing. They’re not, and understanding the differences can help make things a lot clearer.

The Internet has been in development since the 1960’s, and is a way to allow different computers around the World to talk to one another. Whether it is downloading a pdf file from a website, or chatting to a friend over Skype – it is the Internet that connects the computers together. The Internet is not actually a single physical network – it’s just a set of rules (Internet Protocols) that allow different networks to communicate.

When you connect your computer to the Internet, it joins this network – and you can send or receive information from any other computer or server online.

The Web (or World Wide Web) is the system of web pages and sites that uses the Internet to pass the files across. It was developed in the late 1980’s by Tim Berners-Lee, and you need a Web Browser to access it. This could either be in a PC, a mobile phone or one of the new iPods.

The Web is just one of many services that use the Internet – other services include e-mail, internet telephony and peer-to-peer file transfers. In the not-too-distant future, most people will probably get all their TV programmes piped down the Internet as well. And, looking deeper into my Crystal Ball I see people being digitally transferred from location to location.

Since many of the services that use the Internet (such as e-mail) can now be accessed through websites, the confusion is likely to get worse.

In simple terms, just remember that the Internet is the computer network, theWeb is a service that uses it.

How Search Engines Work

The Web would be virtually unusable if it were not for Search Engines – allowing us to quickly track down information on virtually any topic under the sun. Understanding how Search Engines work can allow you a much better chance of finding what you are looking for faster.

Search Engines grew out of the Information Retrieval field – which has been around ever since documents began to be digitised. Rather than a specific set of relatively similar documents in one company or organisation, however, Search Engines have to index pages in multiple formats, across millions of websites, with information changing by the minute. On top of this, they have to deal with the problem of webmasters trying to cheat the system to get their pages to the top of the rankings.

Search Engines are a kind of “know-where” – that is, they tell you where you are likely to find out about a certain topic. They don’t know the answer themselves.

The Index

Search Engines build up an index of the web, by sending out special programs – called Robots or Spiders – to jump from hyperlink to hyperlink to reveal all the pages on the Web. This index is updated all the time - pages that are considered more important are checked more frequently.

When you search for a word or phrase, the search engine looks through its index for pages that contain those words. It then lists the pages it finds in order of relevance – with the first item being the one most likely to contain what you are looking for.

If you and the search engine were having a conversation, it would go like this.

You: Hello Google. Can you please tell me where I might find out about “Titanic”

Google: I’ve looked in the index of all the pages I’ve visited. I’ve found out that there are 13,443,233 webpages that either contain the word “titanic” or that are probably related to the word. I think the most likely place is here (first page). Second is this place (second page)……. and this has the least chance of being what you are after (last page).

Search Engines never reveal the exact formula for how it ranks the pages, but some of the main considerations include:

• The title of the page
• How many times the phrase appears in the main text of the page
• If the phrase appears in bold on the page
• How many other pages link to the page
• The domain name of the website

Caching

Most search engines store a copy of the pages on their own servers – which is called the cache. This allows users to see the content of the page, even if the server it is stored on is down when they want to view it.

Top 6 Technologies That Are Revolutionizing How We Socially Connect

Today, more than ever, we’re sharing our lives with each other in both simple and profound ways. With the rise of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, we can keep in touch with our existing friends or make completely new ones with just a few clicks of a button. Which technologies are advancing this idea even further? Today we’ll take a look at six of them. From the huge site that calls itself “the front page of the Internet” to an up-and-coming video sharing platform, these six are revolutionizing the way we socially connect.

6. Vine

If Instagram and Twitter had a child, it would look something like Vine. The mobile app lets users create and post quick, 6-second video clips and then share them on services like Twitter and Facebook. Founded in June 2012, the company was acquired only months later, in October, by Twitter. (When asked why he acquired Vine, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said this “hyper-constrained publishing” is the “next best thing down the road.”) As of April 9, 2013, Vine has become the number one most downloaded free app in the Apple App Store. While many are trying to figure out how businesses are going to use Vine for advertising purposes or how Twitter could make money from their investment, early adopters are just having fun, sharing their short, entertaining clips with the world.

5. Sony VAIO Duo 11 Ultrabook™

The Sony VAIO Duo 11 Ultrabook is a touchscreen tablet and a full HD laptop in one. Its clever design includes a keyboard that’s hidden underneath the 11.6-inch screen. By sliding the screen up, one reveals the backlit keyboard. Running Windows 8, Microsoft’s latest and greatest operating system, the user is presented with a series of Live Tiles that horizontally stretch across the screen. For students or young professionals on the go, this sleekly designed hybrid acts like both a powerful tool and a fun toy. Not only is it fast with lots of storage space, by running Windows 8, it lets you connect to people, apps, folders, photos and websites in a quick and seamless way.

4. Facebook Home

If you’re a person who uses your smartphone mostly for checking your Facebook feed, you must have been excited when you first heard about Facebook Home. Launched in early April, the new user interface replaces the standard Android homescreen giving you a full-blown Facebook experience. From the moment you turn on your phone, you’ll see what your friends are doing, from their posts to their photos. Through this software you can also send and receive text and Facebook messages all in one place or chat with friends while you’re using other apps. Current Android users can install Facebook Home for free right now on the Google Play Store or you can pick up a HTC First to see Home built right in. While critics are still trying to decide if Home is a hit or a miss, one thing is certain, there’s never been a mobile device that could be this social.

3. Google Plus

Photo credit: Trey Ratcliff

It’s finally time to believe that Google Plus is a verified hit. When it first launched, in the summer of 2011, tens of millions of people quickly signed up, and then it seemed to have lost its luster. According to Internet analytics firm GlobalWebIndex, Google Plus, however, has been silently gaining momentum, continuing to outpace Twitter as the world’s number two social network only behind Facebook. Throughout the past few years, Google Plus has carved out its own niche. It’s now widely regarded as a place where strangers can connect over shared interests like photography. With the most hyped about gadget on the horizon, Google Glass, we’ve yet to see what this social network can really do.

2. Instagram

Last April, when Facebook announced that they had purchased the photo sharing social network Instagram for a whopping $1 billion, many were shocked by the exorbitant price. While at the time of purchase, Instagram had about 30 million users, today there’s more than 100 million monthly active users posting more than 40 million photos a day. Celebrities and brands have jumped in head first, as they see it as an important place to visually market themselves. Just recently, Instagram launched a new feature that allows users to “tag” photos. Called “Photos of You,” the feature is similar to tagging your friends on Facebook. It will be rolled out on May 16.

1. Reddit

Ask anyone on the Internet which website they think has the most influence right now and more often than not they’ll say Reddit. The user-generated news link site has been grabbing headlines these days for doing everything from getting President Obama to participate in an AMA (“ask me anything) to contributing to the most crowdsourced terror investigation in American history (over the Boston Marathon bombers). In 2012, Reddit had more than 37 billion pageviews and 400 million unique visitors. More than its incredible numbers, Reddit wields incredible power as people from all walks of life flock to the site to share and read some highly personal and often inspiring stories.

Which of these technologies do you use?

Source: Forbes

Authors: Alice Yoo / My Modern Met

Sectoral Dimensions of Resource Diversification for Sustainable Economic Development in Nigeria: The Role of the Librarian Part I

Nigeria’s economic aspirations have remained that of altering the structure of production and consumption patterns, diversifying the economic base and reducing dependence on oil, with the aim of putting the economy on a part of sustainable, all-inclusive and non-inflationary growth. The implication of this is that while rapid growth in output, as measured by the real gross domestic product (GDP), is important, the transformation of the various sectors of the economy is even more critical. This is consistent with the growth aspirations of most developing countries, as the structure of the economy is expected to change as growth progresses.

Successive governments in Nigeria have since independence in 1960, pursued the goal of structural changes without much success. The growth dynamics have been propelled by the existence and exploitation of natural resources and primary products. Initially, the agricultural sector, driven by the demand for food and cash crops production was at the centre of the growth process, contributing 54.7 per cent to the GDP during the 1960s.  The second decade of independence saw the emergence of the oil industry as the main driver of growth.  Since then, the economy has mainly gyrated with the boom-burst cycles of the oil industry. Government expenditure outlays that are dependent on oil revenues have more or less dictated the pace of growth of the economy. Looking back, it is clear that the economy has not actually performed to its full potential particularly in the face of its rising population.

In general, economic growth and population growth rates are very close that the margin cannot induce the required structural transformation and economic diversification.  The Nigerian economy has grossly underperformed relative to her enormous resource endowment and her peer nations. It has the 6^th largest gas reserves and the 8^th largest crude oil reserves in the world. It is endowed in commercial quantities with about 37 solid mineral types and has a population of over 160 million persons.  Yet economic performance has been rather weak and does not reflect these endowments.  Compared with the emerging Asian countries, notably, Thailand, Malaysia  , China, India and Indonesia that were far behind Nigeria in terms of GDP per capita in 1970,  these countries have transformed their economies and are not only miles ahead of Nigeria, but are also major players on the global economic arena. Indeed, Nigeria’s poor economic performance, particularly in the last forty years, is better illustrated when compared with China which now occupies an enviable position as the second largest economy in the world. In 1970, while Nigeria had a GDP per capita of US$233.35 and was ranked 88^th in the world, China was ranked 114^th with a GDP per capita of US$111.82.

The major factors accounting for the relative decline of the country’s economic fortunes are easily identifiable as political instability, lack of focused and visionary leadership, economic mismanagement and corruption. Prolonged period of military rule stifled economic and social progress, particularly in the three decades of 1970s to 1990s. During these years, resources were plundered, social values were debased, and unemployment rose astronomically with concomitant increase in crime rate. Living standards fell so low, to the extent that some of the best brains with the requisite skills to drive the developmental process left in droves to other nations, and are now making substantial contributions to the economic success of their host countries.

However, since 1999, the country returned to the path of civil democratic governance and has sustained uninterrupted democratic rule for a period of over 11 years. This in itself is a great achievement and gives reason for hope in a country that has been burdened with almost three decades of military rule. It has provided an opportunity to arrest the decline of the past and provide the launch pad for the take-off into an era of sustainable and all-round economic development. The successive civilian administrations since 1999 have committed to tackling the daunting challenges. Economic growth has risen substantially, with annual average of 7.4 per cent in the last decade.  But the growth has not been inclusive, broad-based and transformational. Agriculture and services have been the main drivers of growth. The implication of this trend is that economic growth in Nigeria has not resulted in the desired structural changes that would make diversification of the economy create employment, promote technological development and induce poverty alleviation. Available data has put the national poverty level at 54.4 per cent.  Similarly, there has been rising unemployment with the current level put at 19.7 per cent by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Furthermore, the country lags behind her peers in most human development indicators. For example, while China and Thailand are on the 5^th and 22^nd positions, respectively, on the 2009 Global Hunger Index, Nigeria was ranked 46^th.  This can be traced largely to the huge infrastructure deficit, rising insecurity, mass corruption and widespread poverty. 

Why is Information Valuable to us?

We all recognize that information is valuable – if you've ever paid for a newspaper or magazine, you have demonstrated this. But why – specifically – is information valuable, and why is one piece of information more valuable than another?

There are three ways information can be valuable to us….

1.       It entertains us

2.       It helps us make better decisions

3.       It helps someone else make better decisions, and we can exchange this information for something else

Entertainment Value

We pay for films, music and video games. While some movies and song lyrics do help us think about issues in our lives, we generally use them for short-term entertainment. We value them because they give us pleasure. They change the way we feel.

Generally, the more pleasure they give us, the more we are likely to value them.

Decision-Making Value

A lot of the information we seek out and deal with – particular in a working environment – is really about helping us make the right decisions.

•        You may have a Satellite Navigation system in your car to help you decide when to turn left and right on the road

•        You have a phone book so you can decide which numbers to press on your phone to call a friend

•        You look at the message boards at the Airport to decide which gate you need to go to for your flight

•        You check the weather report on Friday morning to decide whether to call off the barbecue you've got planned for the weekend

•        You look at your car’s speedometer to decide when to stop accelerating as     you've reached the speed limit

All of these examples show how this information is really about helping us make better decisions.

If we don’t use information, we can only base our decisions on what we receive directly through our five senses, or from what we already know.

The more significant the decisions we are making, the more we will value the information that helps us make the right decisions.

Exchange Value

The third source of information value comes from the fact that we often acquire information not because it either entertains or helps us make the right decisions, but because we know it will entertain or help other people make the right decisions in their lives. We can then exchange this information with them for something of value to us. We can think of this as information’s trade ability value.

Most information workers do exactly this. The reports that we produce at work are often just to help someone else make a better decision. We exchange this information for our wages.

It can involve the information being exchanged several times before it eventually reaches the decision maker, so it is not always obvious that it is about decision making – sometimes you may think you are just producing reports for the sake of it.

As with the decision-making aspect of information, the more significant the decision the other person is making – and the more the information you are providing will help them make a better decision – the more they will value the information you have to offer.

The exchange value doesn't necessarily have to involve money. It could also apply to conversations we have. We keep up with news, current affairs and celebrity gossip not because they directly affect us, but because it gives us something to talk to others about.

Combining

Most information we come across contains a mixture of these three sources of value – a novel may be entertaining, but it also teaches us about morals, and it also gives us something to talk to our friends about.

Qualifying an Information Source

When someone sees a piece of information, the first decision that they make is “Should I look at this further, or move onto something else.” This is the qualification phase.

This applies to the subject line of an e-mail, the title of a poster, the headline of a newspaper article, etc.

In this qualification phase, we ask such questions as:

•        Does this affect me?

•        How important is this?

•        Can it wait until later?

•        Would this be of interest to someone else I know?

This phase is critical to how we control information overload. When you browse through a newspaper or magazine, if you were to read every single article and advert, you would simply not be able to cope with a daily newspaper.

When producing an Information source, you should not get arrogant and assume that everyone should read it. Instead, try to make it as simple as possible for the people who are not likely to need it to come to that conclusion. In other words, it’s often just as important to help people disqualify a piece of information as it is to get the right people’s attention.

You need to help them make that decision as quickly as possible. This is why you should never use “Important” or “Urgent” as single-word e-mail subject lines, or as headlines on posters and notices, because it doesn’t help them do this.

When you use terms such as these, people simply start ignoring you –Just because something is important or Urgent in your opinion, doesn’t make it so to other people.