by Nedra Weinreich | Jun 29, 2009 | Behavior Change, Blog, Gaming
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation invited me to write a guest post on its Pioneering Ideas blog, along with several other people who are investigating how games can be used to promote health. This guest blogger series is tied into the 2009 Games for Health Conference, which happened a couple of weeks ago, as well as a recent report from the Sesame Workshop’s Joan Ganz Cooney Center, which looks at how video games can be a positive force for children’s health.
The question they posed for us to answer was:
“There is a growing consensus that digital games can be deployed to support learning and behavior change for positive health outcomes among children. What do you think needs to be done to increase the use of digital games for this purpose?”
In my guest post, I look at the question from a marketing perspective to think about how to increase the acceptability of health games and to encourage their development and use. My post will be up on Monday at the Pioneering Ideas Blog. (I’m on my way out of the country for a week, but will update with the specific link to my post as soon as I can.) I hope you’ll take a look at it and leave a comment with your feedback and perspective.
by Nedra Weinreich | Jun 16, 2009 | Blog, Professional Development, Social Marketing
It’s that time again – time to announce the next session of Social Marketing University! Many of you know that I have been offering SMU trainings since 2006 as a 2-1/2 day introduction to using social marketing to promote health and social issues.
This year, taking into account many people’s requests for the next level of social marketing training beyond the basics, I will be offering the Social Marketing University Advanced Course. This 2-day training is for people who are already familiar with the fundamentals of social marketing who are looking for new ideas and insights, including those who have taken previous SMU trainings in what I am now calling the Foundations Course.
The Advanced Course will be offered on September 14-15, 2009 in Berkeley, CA. We’ll focus on topics like audience segmentation techniques, real-world research and evaluation, effective approaches to behavior change and will spend a full day on using online social media strategically. For more information, pricing and registration, see the SMU information page.
Don’t be disappointed if you can’t make it to Berkeley this time, or if you would like social marketing training but are not quite ready for the Advanced Course. I will also be offering a series of four webinars on social marketing fundamentals through Social Marketing University Online during the summer. You can attend this series to prepare for the Advanced Course, or just to bone up on individual social marketing topics of interest to you.
These 60-minute webinars will happen every other Wednesday at 12 noon PDT in the months leading up to the Advanced Course. The schedule is as follows:
- July 22, 2009 – Change for Good: Using Social Marketing to Make a Difference
- August 5, 2009 – Building An Effective Social Marketing Strategy
- August 19, 2009 – Creating Social Marketing Messages That Work
- September 2, 2009 – Social Media for Social Marketers
Take a look at the SMU Online information page for detailed descriptions of the webinars and pricing (4 for the price of 3!).
I’m also happy to offer a 10% special discount off the Advanced Course for my blog readers (enter discount code “BLOG”), and I hope you will join me at one or more of these events!
Keep up with the latest on SMU by joining the Facebook Fan Page or following the @SocialMktgU Twitter account.
by Nedra Weinreich | May 24, 2009 | Blog, Research, Social Media
This post will be somewhat of a Twitter inside baseball topic – not what I usually write about – so if you are not interested in Twitter arcana, you might want to skip this one.
Those of us on Twitter could not have missed the uproar that happened a couple of weeks ago when Twitter management decided to make a “small settings update” to its service by eliminating an option they said was “undesirable and confusing.” This change removed the option to see the one side of the conversations people you follow are having with people you don’t. Now you can only see these “half conversations” (called @replies) if you follow both people. Sounds like a small thing, but those of us who had chosen to see all @replies are now missing out on interesting conversations, resources and the opportunity to discover new people.
Fairly quickly, word spread across Twitter about the change and a revolt took place as people started tagging their protests with “#fixreplies,” which became the top trending topic on Twitter for a few days. After first seeming just clueless about how people use their service, Twitter offered a non-solution posing as a fix and then flat-out said they will not be bringing the option back for technical reasons. The reason from their post:
Even though only 3% of all Twitter accounts ever changed this setting away from the default, it was causing a strain and impacting other parts of the system.
Okay, given the millions of new users that have come on board in the past month or two in the wake of Oprah and Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter publicity stunts, it makes sense that the system is strained. But, having been on Twitter since around the end of 2007, I found it hard to believe that only 3% of the other users had touched their @reply settings. And given the extent of the outcry, either this was a very vocal 3% or a lot of people were jumping on the protest bandwagon even though the change did not affect them at all.
More likely, this was a disingenuous statistic chosen by Twitter to make their point, but that does not give the whole story. I suspect that they are counting 3% of anyone who has ever created an account on Twitter – including those who try it out for a day and never come back. A recent Nielsen study found that 60% of those who sign up do not return the following month (though this statistic does not take into account the many who sign up at Twitter.com but actively use TweetDeck or another client application). What if they looked at the percentage of active Twitter users (the people who should actually matter) — particularly those who have been on the service for a while? Would the percentage change?
This question nagged at me for a while until I decided to do a quick survey to see if my suspicions were right. I created a four-question survey, which asked the following questions:
- How long have you been actively using Twitter?
- How many people do you follow on Twitter?
- Before Twitter took away the option, how was your @Replies option set?
- How has the loss of the @Replies option affected your Twitter experience?
I sent out a tweet asking people to complete the survey and to retweet it (repost in Twitter parlance) to their followers as well. My objective was to send it far and wide on Twitter so that it was not just my own Twitter followers responding, but a wide swath of users across the service. The result was that people who were following my account retweeted the post 28 times, with a subsequent total of 118 retweets dispersed around different social circles. I ended up with 402 total responses to the survey.
I will be the first to admit that this sample may not necessarily be statistically representative of all active Twitter users (though if it were, the sample size gives us a 5% margin of error and 95% confidence level). Respondents were not chosen randomly, and the people who decided to participate may be more likely to have a strong opinion on the topic. Nonetheless, I think it may be helpful to take a look at the results because this segment of Twitter user has been strongly impacted by the change. (The results for each question can be seen here. I’m happy to share my full statistical analyses as well if you’d like to see them.)
Most respondents had been actively using Twitter for 3-12 months (40%), with 36% on for more than a year and 24% for less than three months. I figured that the longer someone had been using Twitter, the more likely they are to have played around with the options to see what they prefer rather than leaving the default of only seeing @replies when they follow both people.
A vast majority (63%) follow between 50-500 people on Twitter. Next is 501-5000 follows at 24%, fewer than 50 with 12%, and only 2% follow more than 5000. I hypothesized that those who were following more people would probably not notice much of a change in their cluttered feed.
Now, the kicker here is that before the option was taken away, 63% of the respondents had chosen to show all @replies for the people they followed — much higher than the 3% cited by Twitter. Those who had the default selected – to show only @replies between people they follow – were 19%, plus another 17% who said that they didn’t know what option was selected (and presumably hadn’t changed the default), for a total of 36%. And only 1% had chosen the option not to see any @replies unless directed at them.
Finally, 57% said that the loss of the @replies option had affected their Twitter experience for the worse. These were presumably those who had the option taken away from them, but could also be people who did not want to see all @replies for people who started making their replies visible to everyone, such as by putting a character before the “@” symbol or embedding the @reply name within or at the end of the tweet. Only 5% said their experience was better and 39% reported no change (close to the 36% who were already set at the default option).
I also ran some chi-square stats to see how these variables affected each other and created some nifty charts at Chartle.net. Here’s what I found (only reporting the statistically significant correlations at p< .05 href="http://www.social-marketing.com/blog/uploaded_images/Time-Following-707772.png">
The number of people that respondents were following on Twitter correlated with how long they had been on the service, at the highest and lowest following numbers. But most people – no matter how long they had been on – were comfortably in the 50-500 range.
Users who had been on Twitter for a longer time were more likely to choose the “show all @replies” option, with 72.2% of old-timers who had been on for at least a year and 65.2% of those on 3-12 months. Still, almost half (46.3%) of the newbies on for less than three months also selected that option.
Not surprisingly, given that time on Twitter and number following are correlated, the more people a respondent followed, the more likely they were to select the “show all @replies” option (
The quality of respondents’ experience on Twitter after the policy change, as you would expect, depended on which @reply option they had selected before all defaulted to showing only mutual @replies. For those with the “show all” option, 78.2% said their experience is worse, the direct opposite of the other two options (show only mutual=72.9%, show none=75.0%). The correlation between number following and quality of current experience on Twitter also mirrors the distribution of @replies option selected.
***
So what does this all mean? Even if this sample is not representative of all Twitter users, it does represent a substantial segment of users who are not as happy with their experience on the site since the option was taken away. Twitter would be smart to pay attention to this group, which is not only comprised of crotchety old-timers and “power users.” To avoid losing these disgruntled users, Twitter needs to come up with a way to bring back seeing all @replies in a way that they can live with. At the very least, Twitter needs to be honest about the percentage of its actual active users (not including abandoned accounts) who were using the “show all @replies” option. Whether it’s closer to 3% or 63%, by dismissing those who were upset by the #fixreplies kerfuffle as a tiny group of whiners, Twitter increased user dissatisfaction and the likelihood of defection should a service come along that works harder to meet its users’ needs.
UPDATE (6/1/09):
New research that has just come out from Harvard from a random sample of 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009 shows that the top 10% of Twitter users account for over 90% of tweets. And the median number of lifetime tweets per Twitter users is one. So there is a huge difference between the typical Twitter account and an active Twitter account.
This backs up my survey findings that many more active Twitter users were affected by the recent @replies option change than Twitter was willing to admit. To say that only 3% of users had selected the “see all @replies” option was extremely deceptive when it turns out that 90% or so of the total Twitter accounts are not even being actively used. Those who do use their accounts tend to opt to see all @replies. Twitter should not be able to so easily dismiss this loud, vocal majority.
Image Credit: monettenriquez
by Nedra Weinreich | May 17, 2009 | Blog, Cause Marketing
Many of you know that human trafficking and modern-day slavery are the issues I care most about and have volunteered the most time and energy. That’s why I was honored to be approached for a guest post by author Ron Soodalter, who has just written a book with Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves, called The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today. Though awareness is becoming more widespread, far too many people still believe that this is not an issue in the US. Awareness is the first step toward action, so though this post is not specifically about social marketing, I hope that may be the next step we can take together.
A Blight on the Nation: Slavery in Today’s America
by Ron Soodalter
The American humorist Will Rogers once said, “It ain’t that we’re so dumb; it’s just that what we know ain’t so.”
Certain things we know to be true. We know that the South kept slaves, and the North fought a righteous war of liberation. We know that the slave trade was legal right up to the Civil War. We know that the Emancipation Proclamation freed all the slaves, and that the United States has been slavery-free ever since. These things we know – and none of it is true.
On the other hand, most of us do not know that slavery not only exists throughout the world today; it flourishes. Slavery is legal nowhere, yet it is practiced everywhere. With an estimated 27 million people in bondage worldwide, it is the second or third most lucrative criminal enterprise of our time, after drugs, and maybe guns. More than twice as many people are in bondage in the world today as were taken in chains during the entire 350 years of the African Slave Trade. In seeking to place blame, we’re tempted to point to the “emerging nations” as the culprits, whereas in fact slavery exists in such “civilized” countries as England, France, Spain, Italy, Israel, Ireland, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, China…and the United States. Most Americans are clueless that slavery is alive and more than well right here, thriving in the dark, and practiced in many forms in places you’d least expect.
As a student of history, I’d always assumed that slavery ended with the Thirteenth Amendment. Some years back, I had written nearly an entire book on the pre-Civil War slave trade when I stumbled on an account of slavery – in present-day America! My first response – a common one, as it turns out – was denial: “No way. Slavery has had no place here since the time of Lincoln.”
Only after extensive research did I discover that slavery has always existed on this continent, from the days of its European discovery right up to the present day. Christopher Columbus enslaved the Taino Indians, setting a precedent that was followed by every European power to claim land in the New World. Slavery became the social and economic order. After the Civil War, and for decades right up to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, planters practiced a form of debt bondage known as peonage, binding workers and their families to the land in an unending cycle of slavery. For over sixty years, our own government has enabled worker abuse and slavery through the mismanagement of its “guest worker” program. And now, with the global population more than tripled since World War II, and with national borders collapsing around the world, people – in their desperate quest for a way to survive – have become easy targets for human traffickers. And once again, America is a prime destination.
So how many slaves are we talking about? According to a U.S. State Department study, some 14,500 to 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States from at least 35 countries and enslaved each year. Some victims are smuggled into the United States across the Mexican and Canadian borders; others arrive at our major airports daily, carrying either real or forged papers. The old slave ship of the 1800s has been replaced by the 747. Victims come here from Africa, Asia, India, Latin America, and the former Soviet Republic. Overwhelmingly, they come on the promise of a better life, with the opportunity to work and prosper in America. Many come in the hope of earning enough money to support or send for their families. In order to afford the journey, they fork over their life savings, and go into debt to people who make promises they have no intention of keeping, and instead of opportunity, when they arrive they find bondage. They can be found – or more accurately, not found – in all 50 states, working as farmhands, domestics, sweatshop and factory laborers, gardeners, restaurant and construction workers, and victims of sexual exploitation. These people do not represent a class of poorly paid employees, working at jobs they might not like. They exist specifically to work, they are unable to leave, and are forced to live under the constant threat and reality of violence. By definition, they are slaves. Today, we call it human trafficking, but make no mistake: It is the slave trade.
Nor are native-born Americans immune from slavers; many are stolen or enticed from the streets of their own cities and towns. Some sources, including the federal government, estimate in the hundreds of thousands the number of U.S. citizens – primarily children – at risk of being caught in slavery annually. Although these figures may be inflated, the precise number of slaves in the United States, whether trafficked in from other countries or enslaved from our own population, is simply not known. The simple truth is, we’re looking at a crime that lives in the shadows; it’s hard to count what you can’t find.
What is particularly infuriating is the fact that this is a crime that, as a rule, goes unpunished. For the moment, let’s accept the government’s estimate of about 17,000 foreign nationals trafficked into slavery in the United States per year; coincidentally there are also about 17,000 people murdered in the US each year. The national success rate in solving murder cases is about 70%; around 11,000 murders are “cleared” annually. But according to the US government’s own numbers, the annual percentage of trafficking and slavery cases solved is less than 1%. In 2007, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division obtained 103 convictions for human trafficking, with an average sentence of 9 years.
And to further complicate matters, when they are rescued, survivors often deny their situation. There are several reasons for this: the language barrier, a deep sense of shame, fear for their lives and those of their families in their country of origin, and a sense of obligation to pay their debt. In addition, the traffickers program them to fear the police and immigration officials. And in some instances, they come to identify with their keepers.
We don’t yet know how President Obama will respond to the human trafficking crisis; it’s too soon to tell. But we do know that the response under the Bush Administration was inadequate on any number of levels. In a speech on trafficking, Bush once stated, “We’re beginning to make good, substantial progress. The message is getting out: We’re serious. And when we catch you, you’ll find out we’re serious. We’re staying on the hunt.” Strong words. But the unvarnished truth is, with less than 1% of the bad guys apprehended, and less than 1% of the victims freed, it sounds a lot more like spin than fact; meanwhile, the flow of human “product” into America continues practically unchecked.
This is the kind of knowledge you can’t “unlearn”; the only question is, what do you do with the information once you have it? It’s a question we must all address for ourselves. We tend to think of our America as the country where slavery has no place; the dire truth is, we are pretty far from freedom, and it will take a lot of work and dedication – by the government, and by us – to make it so.
Nedra helps nonprofits and public agencies create positive change on health and social issues through social marketing and transmedia storytelling strategies at Weinreich Communications since founding the company in 1995. She helps organizations make a difference for the populations they serve by strategically designing programs that draw on state-of-the-art behavior change techniques, digital media approaches and the power of stories. 
