Video: Introduction to 24 Hours of Reality

Between September 14th and 15th, the event 24 Hours of Reality saw people around the globe calling attention to the climate crisis and working to solve it. By the time former Vice President Al Gore finished his presentation on the evening of September 15th, the 24 hour long event had 8.6 million views.

24 Hours of Reality

This event is a 24-hour worldwide marathon all about the reality of the climate crisis. 24 Hours of Reality will be broadcast live online, over 24 hours, representing 24 time zones and 13 languages. The Climate Reality Project will host the live streaming event, which begins on September 13 at 8 p.m. EDT and ends at the same time on September 14.

Social Media and Toyota's Greener Cars

Car manufacturer Toyota has developed a private social media platform know as the “Toyota Friend” service. This social media platform will enable drivers of Toyota's electric and plug-in hybrid cars to use their smartphones, tablets and computers to access their car's data.

The Toyota Friend service will allow these drivers to share diagnostic information about their cars with dealerships and relevant servicing personnel. The information include things like driving habits, car performance and battery level.

Drivers of Toyota's greener cars can also connect the network to existing well-known social networks like Twitter and Facebook to share stories and improve efficiency. Toyota is not the first to develop social media platforms for their vehicles. Ford has worked with Microsoft to create Sync, an on-board wireless system that lets drivers access the Bing search engine and a number of interactive online features.

Toyota is developing this social presence along with Salesforce, a provider of web-based software for large companies. Salesforce.com will invest $2.7 million in Toyota Media Service, which oversees Toyota’s cloud computing projects like Toyota Friend. As part of the deal. Toyota will also invest $5.4 million in its media subsidiary to fund the private social network.

Toyota will benefit from Salesforce.com's private enterprise social network known as Chatter. This network feeds into its customer relationship management (CRM) software and is designed to streamline collaboration and internal communication. Like Yammer, chatter is a mainstream social networking site for large enterprises. The service will first be available in Japan in 2012.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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Social Media is Mobilizing the Youth Vote

Social Media is Mobilizing the Youth Vote in the Canadian Federal Election

Social media has been driving the environmental movement to new heights and encouraging businesses to be more sustainable, now it is being used to challenge Canada's federal government. As the first social media influenced election in Canadian history, the 2011 Canadian federal election seems to be poised to produce dramatic results.

Due to fragmented nature of Canadian politics pundits predicted a Harper majority even though the majority of Canadians do not support him. Organizations like LeadNow are working hard to mobilize the youth vote in the face of historic voter apathy. In 2008, just 58.8 percent of Canadians voted and only 37.4 percent of the 18- to 24-year old demographic bothered to vote.

Leadnow is using the power of social media to encourage a Vote Wave and social media campaigns like Vote Mobs are connecting with the young voters and mobilizing youth which is increasing support for the New Democrats.

Flash mobs are well known to supporters of the environment and now we are seeing a more organized event known as a “vote mobs.” In a vote mob, university students use social media to encourage their peers to get out to advanced polls. Leadnow asked people to host 'voter socials' during advanced polling between April 22nd and the 25th. Organizers of voter socials invited friends and family to meet at an advanced poll, vote, and then celebrate together afterwards.

These vote mobs are getting Canada's youth involved to help energize and encourage them to vote and engage in the political process. The first vote mob appears to have taken place at Ontario’s University of Guelph, at the end of March. There are now 38 separate vote mobs listed on the website of LeadNow.

Whether or not social media and initiatives like vote mobs will actually get more young people to the polls depends on whether they shed their tendency towards slacktivism. (Slacktivism is the tendency express interest but not follow-up). There is reason to believe that young people will actually vote on May 2. Voter turnout at the advance polls this year set records, rising 34 per cent over 2008 numbers.

On May 2, we could see a radically different outcome than the one predicted by the pundits. The polls are suggesting that a big turnout for the under-35s could end in unprecedented gains for the NDP. This would be of immense benefit to Canada's environment.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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Social Media Marketing and Environmental Sustainability

As we reviewed in a preceding post, social media can be used as a weapon against unsustainable businesses, but it can also be a powerful tool to help companies to engage in conversations with an environmental theme.

Social media sites have changed the way we communicate, not only by connecting people, but by providing valuable promotion opportunities. With research showing that Americans now expect companies to have a social media presence, companies cannot afford to avoid this marketing channel.

Most leading companies employ social media, however, small and mid-sized companies are actually better candidates for social media because they are more agile than larger companies.

Research conducted in 2009 by Minneapolis-based Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law surveyed management, marketing and human resources executives within companies across the US. This survey revealed that the most popular Social Media Channels are Facebook (80%), Twitter (66%), YouTube (55%), LinkedIn (49%) and Blogs (43%).

In association with efforts like search engine marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click advertising (PPC), and online branding, social media sites like the ones listed above can be an important part of green marketing.

Social media sites provide opportunities to network with those with shared interest and link up relevant causes. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are the largest and best known social media sites, but some social networking sites focus exclusively on green issues (e.g., Greenwala, WiserEarth and MakeMeSustainable).

Posting articles, ads, updates, pictures and videos on social media sites drive traffic. However, such posting does not help search engine rankings because backlinks from sites like Facebook are not given any value by search engine crawlers. For SEO purposes it is important to get sites to post links to your site. This can be achieved by asking site owners to post your link, but one of the best ways to achieve this is to publish organic content.

Join green groups, and explore green apps and events. Check out LinkedIn's events calendar and connect with other green business people. Blog about green issues, customize your profile with green widgets, videos and updates. Join up with causes, on Facebook add a causes app that allows you to raise awareness and help raise funds.

The best social media campaigns avoid over-selling and are focused on organic content. A step by step roll out is usually preferable to an all at once approach. Social media is a conversation not a monologue, so it is best to listen much more than you sell. Successful campaigns employ frequent posts, involving items of interest to a defined target market. These posts should encourage a dialogue through comments and a forum for conversation.

Encouraging participation is one of the keys to using social media effectively. One of the easiest ways to foster participation is to start a contest or offer coupon codes with enticing value. Self interest is always the most compelling reason for people to act, but a social media campaign should also provide incentives to share with others. This can sometimes be achieved by offering an environmentally redeeming message.

It is not enough to be environmentally sustainable, organizations must also effectively communicate this effort. A great example of an organization using social media comes from the Co-operators Youth Conference for Sustainability. Its success can be attributed to several factors including the ability to share stories online, proven learning materials and a high profile partnership with David Suzuki. A survey produced by Hewitt on employee engagement, indicated that 94% of Co-operaters participants believe the company is socially and environmentally responsible.

Enterprises that are using social media promotion to promote their brand and serve the environment include the Pepsi Co. Social media is not only for communicating it is also a powerful technology for market research. According to ReadWriteWeb, in 2011 companies are harnessing the power of the social media to “inform strategic decisions, and execute on the organization’s objectives, marketing plans, product roadmaps and more.”

There are many examples of how Enterprises and organizations are using social media for external marketing, but many are also using social media internally for collaborative learning and/or performance and productivity improvement.

Online social networking is sewn into the fabric of our daily lives, and companies that promote their green initiatives with social media are doing good for the planet while engaging in effective marketing communications.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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The Growth of Social Media as an Increasingly Important Vehicle for the Environment

The rapid growth of social media has made it a revolutionary force for prosocial change. Facebook is a great illustration of this rapid growth. In less than seven years Facebook has accrued more than 500 million users. This gives Facebook the distiction of having more users than the population of any country in the world except China and India.

Organizations of all sizes are incorporating social media into their marketing programs. According to Kiwano, 9 in 10 organizations use social media in Canada and thirty-one percent say social media plays a major role in public communications around their brand.

There are many social media campaigns that have benefited the environment including 10/10/10, Earth Day, Earth Hour and WWF's Online Event. These events relied on social media tools to facilitate massive public participation.

Nowhere is this growth more evident than during the most recent social media week conference. In 2011, the fourth social media week was celebrated between February 7-11. The two year old social media week conference has become one of one of the world’s most important platforms to explore emerging trends in social and mobile media.

Here are the nine cities took part in the first social media week conference of 2011, Rome; São Paulo; Toronto; Paris; San Francisco; London; Hong Kong; Istanbul; and New York. Around the world there were over 1,800 speakers and 600 events. More than 30,000 participants were present, an additional 80,000 unique viewers watching events live via Livestream.com and nearly 200,000 unique visitors engaging through Socialmediaweek.org. Real-time conversations included more than 75,000 tweets shared during the week, which created almost 300 million impressions in the social sphere, according to social media monitoring company Sysomos.

“This year’s Social Media Week was a truly global phenomenon—showcasing borderless brands and communications, via the power of social media,” said Bonin Bough, Global Director of Social and Digital Media for PepsiCo. “We are proud to have been an integral partner—with PepsiCo employees contributing to discussions and idea exchanges on three continents and there, demonstrating the depth and breadth to which digital media is permeating our company.”

“Social Media Week is more than an event, it’s a movement,” said Nokia’s Craig Hepburn, Global Director, Digital. “Such an innovative event that taps into the human networks of people across the world and encourages sharing and best practice will move us forward faster and more effectively than traditional event silos.”

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.


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The Revolutionary Power of Social Media Driving Corporate Environmental Sustainability

Businesses are increasingly reckoning with the revolutionary power of social and mobile media. New media is impacting our lives and changing the way we connect and communicate. In places like Egypt and Tunisia, social media has demonstrated itself to be a formidable force that is even capable of toppling governments.

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, give individuals and businesses the ability to correspond with vast audiences.

There are many examples of social media's power to change corporate behavior. With the help of social media, environmentalists managed to reduce illegal logging of rosewood and other hardwoods in Madagascar. When a French company called Delmas continued with their shipments of illegally harvested rosewood, thousands of messages were directed at the company and the French government. This forced Delmas to cancel a major rosewood shipment (worth between $20-80 million), they then put an end to their rosewood business a few weeks later.

No one knows the power of social media better than Greenpeace. They have managed to force Nestle to adopt more sustainable business practices that will lessen deforestation in Indonesia. The scope and influence of new media are hard to resist. When Nestle tried to launch a misinformation campaign, social media users unearthed a multitude of Nestle's questionable business practices including the illegal extraction of groundwater in Brazil.

According to a BBC documentary, pressure from individuals is causing big corporations to flex their supply chain muscles. Food and cosmetics manufacturer Unilever dropped Sinar Mas Agro Resources and SMART for clearing rainforests and carbon-dense peatlands. Nestle, Kraft, Burger King, and General Mills have all followed Unilever's lead.

Pressure brought to bear through social media is driving corporations to cleanup their supply chains. Some businesses are responding to this pressure and changing the way they source commodities. Cargill, is now pressuring SMART's parent company, Golden Agri Resources, to clean up its operations. In the summer of 2009, a Greenpeace report on deforestation in the Amazon, caused Nike to make their supply chains more sustainable.

The World Bank suspended lending to all oil palm plantation projects, after the Wilmar Group, was found to be environmentally irresponsible and Cadbury New Zealand stopped using palm oil altogether after consumer complaints. This kind of public pressure has not only arrested the clearing of land in these areas, it has strengthened the market for sustainable palm.

The ability to foster change proves that social media has come of age. Social media is a powerful communication and coordination tool. As long as environmental groups accurately present the facts regarding a companies environmental problems, they are performing a highly beneficial public service.

Individuals now have the power to make businesses cleanup their supply chains, and adopt more environmentally friendly approaches to business. As the targets of these campaigns know, social media can seriously damage a firm’s reputation.

Companies must now acknowledge that the revolutionary power of new media make the risks associated with irresponsible business practices a serious threat.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

Next: The Growth of Social Media as an Increasingly Important Vehicle for the Environment / Social Media Marketing and Environmental Sustainability


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Environmental Activism and Social Media

The failure of governments to make progress on climate change is leading climate campaigners to renew their focus on social media to get people involved in the push for carbon emission controls.

The Global Work Party organized by 350.org is at the forefront of a successful new approach to social change. The 10/10/10 event is a prime example of the new social movement powered by the extraordinary reach of the Web. The proliferation of increasingly powerful mobile technologies have radically increased the reach and immediacy of social advocacy.

The unprecedented success of 350.org's "International Day of Climate Action" on October 24th 2009, was eclipsed only by this year's 10/10/10 Global Work Party event. Thanks to digital media like chat, text messaging, and social networks, the 350.org team mobilized over 7000 actions in 188 countries this year.

Some have called this reliance on accessible online tools "open source" activism. The use of new media is building an enduring climate constituency.

Activists are downloading online toolkits for decentralized events and using the power of social media to push for greater climate protection. Coordinated online outreach has made the immense scale of the Global Work Party possible.

Thanks to social media, climate activists are cultivating resources that are mobilizing people in ways that are transforming our cultures and our civilizations.

Climate activists are up against the immense resources of the fossil fuel industry and their powerful propaganda machines. While environmental groups cannot outspend or outmaneuver the fossil fuel industry, social media is leveling the playing field and democratizing the debate.


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