Laura Fitton

You are currently browsing articles tagged Laura Fitton.

Using Social Media for Social Good: Announcing the results of our charity drive

10 January 2009 in Outreach by Kate | View Comments

Firstly, thank you everyone for participating in our holiday charity drive. We really appreciate it!

We received a total of 70 comments. I’m going to up the donation by a little bit and consider it to be 100. So, in addition to $100 going to Kiva, we randomly picked from the comments to give another $100 to.

All of the suggestions were really great ones, but we had to choose just one.

How we chose:

We used Random.org integer generator for the results.

And the winner is:

Heifer Organization!

What are Heifer’s goals?

Heifer envisions…
A world of communities living together in peace and equitably sharing the resources of a healthy planet.

Heifer’s mission is…
To work with communities to end hunger and poverty and to care for the earth.

Heifer’s strategy is…
To “pass on the gift.” As people share their animals’ offspring with others – along with their knowledge, resources, and skills – an expanding network of hope, dignity, and self-reliance is created that reaches around the globe.

Heifer’s History
This simple idea of giving families a source of food rather than short-term relief caught on and has continued for over 60 years. Today, millions of families in 128 countries have been given the gifts of self-reliance and hope.

Part of the reason Heifer is the winner is basic math: it had a higher chance of winning since so many people find this organization a worthy one!

John Maver said:

“My cause is Heifer International (http://www.heifer.org). There is something great about donating a live animal to someone that can change their lives. I am partial to pigs myself, but it is amazing how even a rabbit can make a difference.”

Shevus said:

“I would also recommend Heifer International. The best thing about them is that they have a built in philosophy of paying it forward. Each recipient of a donation from Heifer International agrees to donate the first offspring to someone else in need.”

Laura W said:

“My second one is Heifer International. Instead of giving hungry and poor people food, Heifer provides opportunities for families to raise food and create a living for themselves. It helps people to help themselves, not too different from Kiva. So a family might obtain a trio of rabbits from Heifer and in return, the familty agrees to provide some of the baby rabbits to another family so that they too can start raising rabbits. It’s a win win situation.”

Linnet Woods said:

“The ability to reach those to whom the tiny amounts we can afford to donate mean so much is one of the things I love about the Internet. What you are doing here is really lovely and I hope it inspires many others. I would like to support Heifer International at http://www.heifer.org in common with some of your other respondents.
Thanks for thinking of this idea!”

Nancy said:

“This is an excellent effort and Kiva is a great choice. In 2009 we can all strive to do more to help others. I also support Heifer International (http://www.heifer.org) as I see it as a sustainable way to help people improve their own lives. Good luck Kate with all of Other Side’s endeavors!”

Laura Fitton said:

“Wonderful idea Kate. Kiva is terrific. I also love Heifer.org and CharityWater.org (obviously ).

Happy New Year and thank you for doing this!

Warmly,
Laura”

And Fiona D said:

“I think you should donate to Heiffer. They’ve got a great program that deserves support.”

Thank you everyone for your support!

New Marketing Summit: Convincing Management About Social Media

14 October 2008 in Conferences & Events by Kate | View Comments

Session: Selling Up – Convincing Senior Management about Social Media

Panelists: Brian Cavoli, VP of Agency Marketing of Digital Influence Group; Laura Fitton, Founder of Pistachio Consulting; Lawrence Liu, Director of Platform Strategy of Telligent. Moderator: David Meerman Scott, Marketing Strategist of World Wide Rave.

David: Who do we convince them?

Laura: Step off about how cool this stuff is. Be respectful of their positions, and demonstrate value. If this stuff is handled correctly, we can show measurable results.

David: Lawrence, how might you have done stuff like this at Microsoft [previous company]?

Lawrence: Measurements and stats will matter more in the next year. It will be interesting to see when people will stop asking about ROI and start focusing on doing more with the tools.

Brian: Social media has changed in the past few years, it’s become a lot more of a business decision and showing the impact it’ll have on business. What’s it’s value? It’s more of an economic discussion about what it’s bringing to the table.

David: What do you guys feel are the “right” things to measure?

Brian: It’s a whole new opportunity to measure. You can really get to the quality of discussions as opposed to just straight data. You have more than just things like volume.

Lawrence: Content is Queen and Conversion is King. You can get down to a granular level with a lot of data. There is a second level of metrics, and they will become more important. Also, how many people are creating the content? Not just using or receiving the content?

Laura: Start with the business goals you’re trying to achieve. Too many people are focused on little numbers. Measure the business result, not what leads to that.

David: We know who should be creating the social media strategy, but who should be executing?

Laura: Everybody. In terms of budget, think first about what could be done better with some of these tools and then think about budget.

Brian: Every group in the organization can benefit from being involved.

Lawrence: There’s a ton of inertia going on with existing business processes with new ones that makes for really great opportunities.

David: Is there a policy that needs to be instituted within a company?

Brian: I think information about what can be done is good, but not necessarily a policy of what you can’t do.

Lawrence: Microsoft’s blogging policy is “Blog Smart.” Think also about when new people come on, training not just on standard policy, but on new tools a well.

David: The one most important tip to convince senior management of social media. Mine is asking them when the last time that the management went to Google vs email. They inevitably say Google.

Brian: Marketing efficiency of social media.

Laura: It has to be diagnostic. Pull up Twitter search right in a client meeting and search their brand. Tie it in directly.

Lawrence: Ask them if they know who your customers are? most of them will not know (whether they admit it or not) and they will realize the opportunity for social media.

David: Should we be measuring all of these tool usages?

Laura: In the area of customer outreach, there are a lot of easy things you can be measuring.

Brian: You have to measure in order to know if these things are working.

Lawrence: Say that you can measure. Once you show it, after a few months, you won’t have to.

David: Try it and just do it!