How integrated is your social media strategy with the rest of your marketing strategy?

For a few years now, social has been the “big thing,” and marketers every where have been pushing for brands and organizations to embrace it. Social media jobs are hot, and every type of agency – marketing, public relations, advertising – wants a piece of brands’ or organizations’ social budgets.

However.

A study recently released from Forrester reveals that only 49% of marketers say social is fully integrated into their communication strategies.

This is despite the fact that 59% of of online consumers are active on social media sites weekly and one-third have become a fan of a brand on Facebook or Twitter.

Although this study was focused on brands rather than organizations and nonprofits, I can’t help but wonder how those nonprofits stack up against brands. Do you think associations have been quicker or slower to embrace social?

I think at this point, everyone agrees that social plays an important role in marketing and communications. But the real trick is successfully integrating it into a holistic, omni-channel strategy.

At larger associations, create a “‘social media taskforce” with representation from every department. This way, every department will have a stakeholder in the success of social, and it will be inherently tied to marketing efforts. Small staff associations, on the other hand, may have an easier time integrating social, since they might only have one or two people dedicated to all marketing efforts.

TALK TO US: How has your association integrated social media into its over-arching strategies?

Are you a community manager at a small staff association looking to increase your knowledge of word-of-mouth and social marketing? This Community Manager Online Training Course might be for you!

Who will benefit from the course?

• WOMM-COM Module 1 graduates looking to extend their knowledge and/or begin to explore what it means to take the next step in their career.
• Current community managers looking to round out their knowledge and insure their skills are up to date.
• Executives and managers looking to better understand the community manager role and how to best leverage it in their organizations.

Community Managers often serve as the face of the organization, and can include both senior and more junior-level duties, including moderation. Depending on the size of your association’s community, moderation, listening and measurement might fall under the “community manager” role too.

Sponsored by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, The Community Roundtable and ComBlu, this course is sure to help association community managers. Register here!

Props to KiKi L’Italien for the heads up on this.

It’s no secret Pinterest is the hot social channel right now. But just how hot is it? The site reports that in March, they had 4 million unique viewers per day, and served up 2.3 billion page impressions. For a platform that’s still pretty young, those are some impressive numbers.

Check out the below infographic, aptly titled, Interest in Pinterest. One big thing to note is that men are starting to join. Obviously, this remains a steadfastly female-focused channel, but creative brands and organizations will learn how to optimize their campaigns for men. Additionally, Pinterest users are predominately in the “sweet spot” when it comes to ages: 25- 54.

How can your association use Pinterest? Pin photos of your events (one board per event, perhaps?). Share infographics that relate to your members. Share a visual history of your organization.

Of course, not every social network is right for every organization. The important thing is to be open to new networks and understand how they could benefit your association.

Have you heard about Google’s new offering, Google Drive? Google’s 5GB cloud-based storage service is now available!

Google Docs is now fully integrated into Google Drive, so you can create, collaborate and store all your files in the cloud and access them anywhere. It’s no secret that those of us here at MemberClicks are obsessed with cloud computing, so we think Google Drive has some awesome potential for small staff associations.

One major perk? Google’s search capabilities are integrated into Google Drive. Search your files by keyword, file type, owner and more. Store up to 5GB for free, and if you need more space, you can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month.

The ultimate perk of cloud computing and storing files in the cloud is the ability to access files anywhere. As far as mobile technology goes, Google Drive is only available on Android right now, but Google says it has plans for an iOS app as well. This could be so beneficial for small staff associations whose staff works remotely or from home, or for people who travel frequently for work.

Check out the below video from Google, and let us know: would your small staff association consider switching to Google Drive?

According to a recent release from the Economic and Social Research Council, it’s a myth that all young people and students are constantly attached to their phones or laptops. Many millennials are actually overwhelmed at the array of technology available.

Some of the findings:

• 4.3 per cent of those aged 20 or younger never used social networking websites compared to 78.5 per cent of those aged 35 years or older.
• Almost all (97.8 per cent) had a mobile phone, just over three quarters (77.4 per cent) owned a laptop and over a third (38.1 per cent) owned a desktop computer
• Students who were 20 years old or younger reported being more engaged in instant messaging, texting, participating in social networks, downloading or streaming TV or video and uploading images than students who were aged 25 years or more
• Certain new technologies were only used by a minority of students regardless of their age: contributing to blogs (21.5 per cent) and wikis (12.1 per cent) or using a virtual world (2 per cent)

So, what does this mean for you and your small staff association? As much as people (including, yes, us) talk about technology and social media like they’re the be-all, end-all of communications, they’re not. They’re still just a piece in the communications puzzle.

Remember: just because they’re younger and grew up with technology doesn’t mean millennials only want to hear about your associations via social media.