May 6, 2011
Can You Guess the World’s Best and Worst Places To Be a Mother?
Originally published on HuffingtonPost.com on May 3, 2011
I love being an American mom, but guess what, being a mom is even better for women in 30 other countries around the world. In the world’s best place to be a mother, I could expect an extra year of life and I would have enjoyed a year of paid maternity leave after the birth of my children. My own daughter would be expected to complete an extra year of school — for a total of 18.
What is the top-ranked country I’m talking about, where 40 percent of national elected officials are women (as compared to 17 percent here) and maternal and child mortality rates are among the very lowest in the world?
If you guessed it’s somewhere in Scandinavia, you’d be right. According to the State of the World’s Mothers 2011 report, released today by Save the Children, Norway ranks as the world’s best place to be a mother.
On the other hand, in the world’s toughest place to be a mother, I would be far better off than the typical mother there. Frankly, there’s a good chance I’d be dead. I’ve already outlived this particular country’s female life expectancy of 45. And as the mother of four, it’s very likely that one of my kids would have died from a preventable cause, like pneumonia or diarrhea. One in five children there dies before turning five.
In this bottom-ranked country, girls only complete an average of five years of school, and access to the most basic health care is extremely limited. Imagine giving birth alone or with only a neighbor or relative at your side. In the country I’m talking about, 86 percent of mothers deliver this way. As a result, pregnancy complications kill one of every 11 women.
Any guesses where this country might be? Eight of the 10 worst places to be a mother in the rankings are in Africa, but not this one. It’s a country that’s been at war for almost a decade, and civilian casualties are rising. Even so, women in this country — Afghanistan — are 200 times more likely to die during childbirth than from bombs or bullets.
Here’s a snapshot of the 2011 rankings of 164 countries analyzed in the Mother’s Index:
Filed under: Events, Research and Evaluation
Tags: mother's day
April 17, 2011
The Weekend Worker Gets the Worm
Buddy Media recently released “Strategies For Effective Facebook Wall Posts: A Statistical Review.” As stated in their blog:
“We analyzed all Facebook Wall posts from the Buddy Media Platform by a sample size of more than 200 clients over a two week period: January 30, 2011 – February 12, 2011. “Likes” and comments made to these posts were also analyzed.
This sample size represents the world’s largest brands in the entertainment, media, retail, automotive, business and finance, fashion, food and beverage, healthcare and beauty and travel and hospitality industries.”
One of most interesting findings was that brands miss out on a lot of action by not posting on the weekends or after work hours. As stated in the report: “Brands that posted outside of normal business hours had 20% higher engagement rates on their posts.”
The question here is — are people more active at these times because that’s when they aren’t overwhelmed by brands? If all brands get hip to the weekend action could this change? Whatever the case, I say we should benefit from this new insight while we can.
In addition to posting on the weekends, the study found that posting near the end of the work week – Thursdays and Fridays – is also more effective. So don’t post your best content for the week on Monday, drop the big news later in the week, or Sunday, if the time peg allows.
Suddenly community managers’ hours are looking more like the service and entertainment industry, which makes sense. I know that scheduling posts may sound like a good solution here, but I think that’s not ideal. Because it’s engagement we are after, posting and then responding in real-time to those who engage is key.
Another interesting finding was that you need to ask for what you want. Imagine that! It sounds so obvious, but not a lot of people do it, including myself. So may I say now, like the Ad Council on Facebook, comment on this blog, follow us on Twitter, please and thank you!
Finally, I believe what could be the best way to pump-up engagement is to have more interactive opportunities on your Facebook page through developing custom pages. This is exactly what Buddy Media does. Recently Buddy Media has become a partner of the Ad Council and taken another step towards becoming an affordable tool for social marketers. So if enough of us get on board, the next report could give us specific results for nonprofits and the like. In this respect, I find Buddy Media to be the biggest finding.
Filed under: Research and Evaluation, Social Media
February 7, 2011
To Learn More…: Tips to boost URL and Hotline Recall
It is always nice when we can create a marketing campaign with a self-contained message that doesn’t require any further thought beyond what we are messaging in a TV or radio ad…
BUT…we are often in the business of selling our website or hotline number, where our audience can go for a breadth of information (that we can’t provide in a 30 or 60 second TV or radio spot). In fact, it’s pretty typical to find the following call-to-action at the end of a social marketing ad:
“To learn more, visit…”
“For more tips, visit…”
“Join us at…”
“To donate, call…”
Since we often rely so heavily on getting people to visit our website and/or call our hotline, I suggest that we dedicate a little more time and effort promoting our URLs and phone numbers. Here is a list of recommendations and examples that my colleagues here at the Ad Council have put together to boost URL and Hotline recall for TV and Radio ads.
- URLs should be catchy and easy to remember
- If you are tied to a URL that might be difficult to remember, provide a search phrase in place of/in addition to the URL (e.g. “Search __________ online”)
For TV ads:
- Expose URL/phone number for as long as possible (no less than :05 seconds)
- Make sure the URL/ phone number is prominent and easy to read
- When appropriate (if it doesn’t interfere with the creative execution) consider displaying the URL/phone number throughout the entire advertisement
- Consider a graphical treatment that integrates the URL or phone number into the action of the ad
For Radio ads:
- Consider repetition of URL/hotline ( 2 or more mentions per :60 ad)
Can you think of any campaigns that do a great job of promoting a website or phone number?
Filed under: Campaigns, Communications, Research and Evaluation, Uncategorized
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