The Green Facts on Facebook's 10th Birthday

It has been a decade since the social media phenomenon known as Facebook first opened its doors. In that time Facebook has succumbed to public pressure from Greenpeace’s Unfriend Coal campaign and has been moving quickly in a more environmentally sustainable direction.

In addition to greener facilities Facebook hosts a vast assortment of Groups and Facebook pages related to green business, social entrepreneurs, and nonprofit activism.

Top 25 Sustainable Brands on Twitter

Here is Triple Pundit's list of 25 for-profit businesses who are using Twitter to support their advocacy of people, planet and profits.

1. @SCJgreenchoices: Daily tweets from SC Johnson’s Global Corporate Affairs, Communication & Sustainability team on environmental topics, tips & green choices.
2. @Unilever: Sharing new content and engaging topics like marketing, business strategy, results, and sustainable living.
3. @SustainableSAP: Tweeting general sustainability and CSR info, and news about SAP’s sustainability solutions/efforts.
4. @CiscoCSR: Sharing resources for nonprofits & NGOs as well as global corporate social responsibility news & updates from Cisco.
5. @WalMartGreen: WalMart believes that together, we will create a more sustainable world to help people live better. 6.

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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Video: Leadnow's My Canada

This video from Leadnow.ca was created by Smart Bubble Society, it targets younger voters and encourages them to vote for the Canada they want. Leadnow is famous for its Declaration For Change which is intended to set the agenda for the new Parliament. The Declaration for Change calls for political cooperation that amongst other things, protects our environment.

This video was written and produced after Leadnow.ca hosted a cross-country process that brought Canadians together online and in their local communities to create the Declaration for Change. The video reflects Canadian's priorities articulated by 4,000 online participants, and over 80 local events.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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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Greener Cars and Social Media

Automakers are seeing the value of social media to promote greener cars. Toyota, Tesla, Nissan and Ford are all using new media to pitch their hybrid and fully electric cars. The interactive format provided by social media give these companies the ability to communicate information and interact with consumers.

Toyota announced a line of new Priuses using social media and Toyota executives answered questions about the new models of Priuses via Twitter. The company also made announcements via livestream on the company’s website. In 2010, Toyota announced the release of six new hybrids with a tweet.

Nissan has a Twitter feed for its electric Leaf and electric car company Tesla used its blog to announce the completion of a working prototype of the company’s 2012 all-electric Model S sedan. Instead of more traditional marketing, Tesla used three high-quality videos that showed a walk-through of the car’s engineering.

Ford has established itself as a leader in social media marketing. With more than 20,000 Twitter followers, Ford has four times the number of GM's Twitter followers. Ford's new Fiesta, introduced contests for YouTube, which drew thousands of submissions, gained Twitter followers and generated a healthy dose of blog and news coverage. Ford has almost 250,000 videos on YouTube, while GM has a bit more than 13,000. Ford's presence on YouTube has also carried over into Flickr.

Ford was also recognized as an automotive leader by marketing research firm Virtue. They published their annual list known as the Virtue 100, which covers the 100 most-discussed brands in America compiled using these five criteria:

1. Social networking (which brands are being shared)
2. Video sharing (which videos from which brands are being viewed and shared)
3. Status updates (which brands are being tweeted and included in updates -- and how strong is each sharer's influence)
4. Photo sharing (which photos are being passed around)
5. Blogs (general mentions in the blogsphere, including comments)

Ford is at the top of this list because Scott Monty (Head of Social Media for Ford) is working hard to give the company a dominant social media presence. However, Ford is followed closely by prestige brands Mercedes and BMW. With its line-up of fuel efficient and hybrid vehicles, Ford jumped 13 places over last year, while the ratings of gas guzzling Ferrari, fell.

Social media is a powerful form of interactive marketing that can spike awareness and help build brand affinities in a more cost effective way. Social media is clearly an increasingly integral part of car marketing that is garnering considerable attention, particularly for auto brands that have a green focus.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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Top Green Social Networks

Do The Right Thing: This social network gets users to collectively rate the performance of large corporations, with the goal of getting companies and their executives talking to consumers about sustainability issues. This is one of the first sites to use a Digg like rating system on corporate social and environmental performance.

Zerofootprint.net: This is a nonprofit social network with a sustainable business model. This Toronto-based company creates branded carbon calculators and community sites for cities and large organizations.

BeGreenNow: This site was created by Austin, Texas-based clean-electricity provider Green Mountain Energy. It is a great example of how companies are using green community sites to market themselves. It’s includes a carbon calculator and ways to offset carbon emissions.

BigCarrot: This site offers cash prizes to help address the world’s problems, they offer prizes for innovations (such as the Auto X Prize and Virgin Earth Challenge) into a distributed community project. Individuals can pool their resources into a cash offering, which they can then use in the community or to build a language-teaching web app. The site makes money from a combination of a 5 percent fee for transactions, advertising on its website and investing the cash prizes in “low-risk financial” tools.

Carbonrally: This social network seeks to capitalize on the desire to compete. Carbonrally uses the draw of being on a team to help members focus their efforts on challenges that reduce carbon emissions. This site is great for corporate customers because it helps them organize company carbon programs. Corporations could also be Carbonrally’s real moneymaker, as businesses could be willing to pay for more premium subscription services.

WorldCoolers.org: This site is a browser add-on made by marketing company Collactive that alerts you to news and announcements on global warming. The site also has a section for online campaigns and a blog. Their desktop app is designed to give people concerned about the climate crisis the means to connect with one another, organize their efforts, and reach out to the larger community.

2People.org: This green social media site gets its name from the motto: “How do you move a nation: 2 People.” This site is focused on the important work of trying to organize people around climate policy.

Celsias.com: Celsias started as a blog and evolved to include a social network community site for climate change-fighting advocates. Celsias organizes its community around “Projects” that users can create and join.

Care2.com: Launched in 2008, Care2 is one of the oldest green social networking sites. With millions of members this is one of the more popular social networking sites.

Change.org: This social network addresses a variety of philanthropic actions but highlights several green projects like “End Dependency on Oil,” and “Stop Global Warming,” and features “take action” and “donate” buttons directly under the appropriate news stream. We also like the “network graph” which lets users take a look at all their recruits and contacts around the cause they are fighting for.

MakeMeSustainable: As the name suggests, this site offers ways of reducing your carbon footprint. The “Manager” section monitors your carbon emissions over time via “actions” you’ve taken like. Then there’s a social-networking component where you can join user-created groups and see who’s involved in the site in your local area. This site is well designed, with easy-to-read charts and Google maps of other MakeMeSustainable members nearby.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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Hashtags and Twestivals Essential to Using Twitter for Green Marketing

Twitter is one of the world's most powerful social media technologies, it includes some great green and sustainable feeds that can be followed.

Since its launch in 2006, there have been over 2 billion messages posted on Twitter. A 2010 study examining Twitter usage in the US, found that Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users. New users are signing up at the rate of 300,000 per day and 180 million unique visitors come to the site every month. Twitter gets a total of 3 billion requests a day via its API and Twitter users are, in total, tweeting an average of 55 million tweets a day. Twitter's search engine receives around 600 million search queries per day.

A hashtag is a tag used to categorize posts on Twitter (tweets) according to topics. With millions of tweets each minute, hashtags enable users to zero in on others with similar interests. Along with attracting followers, hashtags are great for pulling together Tweets of people attending a live event and to create a feed of people Tweeting about your business.

Use hashtags composed of relevant key words, examples of good hashtags are #greenstream for green news and #earthtweet for tips on living green. EarthTweet is a tweet-a-thon organized by BrighterPlanet that encourages Twitter users to do good things for the planet. Another good hashtag for finding green oriented individuals and groups to follow is #ecomonday.

Other green oriented hashtags include: #waterwednesday, #climate or #climateaction or #climatechange, #green, #greenliving, #ecofriendly, #environment, #econews, #sustainability, #sustainable, #energy, #cleanenergy, #solar, #solarenergy, #windenergy, #renewableenergy, #cleantech, #energyefficiency, #greenjobs, #recycle, #reuse, #endangered #animals, #greenbiz, #greenbusiness, #CSR, #socap, social capital. You can also ask a question on Twitter by including the #GreenQ.

Twitter Search, TweetGrid and TweetChat are services that can search and monitor hashtag use.

Twitter can be used for events with an environmental theme. This involves participating, promoting or even creating Twestivals. A green Twestival is a twitter-based global event that promotes green ideas and solutions. A great example of a successful Twestival is the "Charity: Water" event. On 12 February 2009, over 200 international cities hosted a Twestival to bring Twitter communities together to raise money for Charity: Water. With over 1,300,000 followers on twitter, the Twestival raised $250,000 and brought worldwide public awareness to the global water crisis.

The Go Green Twitter Sweepstakes was another campaign especially created for 2010’s Earth Day. Developed by Create the Good and the AARP, the campaign consisted of users tweeting examples of environmental action at @createthegood by using the #gogreen hash tag. They offered a zero-emission trip to Washington, DC for the official 2010 Earth Day celebration. Over 150,000 people participated in this campaign and its twitter feed has more than 6,000 followers.

For a comprehensive list of green feeds or to register your green Twitter feed see the Green Twitter Directory from Green Upgrader.

© 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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Solutions to the World Water Crisis

Despite the devastating water issues that plague our planet, there are solutions that can help address the water crisis.

Many organizations are leading the charge by bringing fresh water to communities in the developing world. Your donations can help support organizations that provide clean drinking water to those in need. Among these organizations is Charity: Water, which allows you to create a fundraising page to raise money to build wells in Africa. You can also directly donate through Water.org, an organization co-founded by Matt Damon. Just $25 provides clean water for a lifetime for one person.

There are also things that everyone can do in their homes and businesses. It starts with water conservation initiatives.

HOME

Here are some helpful tips for water conservation as well as tools that help individuals monitor and manage their water usage at home.

Take shorter showers and save up to 25 gallons of water a day by cutting 5 minutes off your shower time.

Turn off the tap while you’re brushing your teeth or shaving can save about 8 gallons a day.

Use a broom rather than hose down your driveway or sidewalk.

Landscaping using climate-appropriate plants need significantly less water.

Replacing showerheads with low-flow models and putting inexpensive aerators on faucets can cut water use by up to 20 percent.

Conservation Starts at Home: The average person uses 465 liters of water per day, this link helps you determine how much water you use.

Keeping Rivers Clean: Small steps to help keep pollution out of our rivers and streams.

Drop the Bottle: Communities around the world are taking steps to reduce water bottle waste by eliminating bottled water.

Technology for Good: An App that calculates the amount of water it took to make a given food.

BUSINESS

Green Biz has put together an excellent resource page for businesses looking to conserve water. They also include several resources to help businesses use water more efficiently.

Business for Social Responsibility has several online research reports on water conservation, including several case studies.

Water Conservation Tips: A 10-Step Approach for Your Business was prepared by the Long Beach Water Department for commercial and industrial businesses.

WaterSense This voluntary program is offered to manufacturers, retailers, distributors, nonprofits, trade associations, utilities and landscape irrigation professionals to bring water-efficient products to market. Website also offers water-saving resources. Contact: watersense@epa.gov or (866) 987-7367.

Waterwiser Website lists providers of water conservation products and services in a searchable database.

Forty-nine tips for saving water, can be applied to the office or home.

Cleaner Water Through Conservation is a US Environmental Protection Agency document that provides an overview of water conservation and provides action steps.

"Building the Way to Water Efficiency" is a feature story that describes how facility managers, municipalities and innovative companies are working together to make water conservation easier and more effective.

Another water management resource is the Water Sustainability Tool: This tool is designed to help individual companies build a business water strategy.


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