According to the experts, Instagram is the most powerful social media tool in the world. Why? They have a smaller community, but a much more engaged community. Facebook, on the other hand, has a much bigger community, but people don't engage as much. And Twitter isn't going to live up to the hype, predict the experts. 

Want to have a big impact? Start taking photos and using Instagram. 

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UC ANR Instagram Accounts

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The following is a handy chart to use when citing social media posts. MLA refers to The Modern Language Association and APA Style^® is from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The Chicago Manual of Style does not yet have a comprehensive style guide for citing social media posts, but I will add when it becomes available. The graph was prepared by Techbytes. 

The above tweet that the “Internet today is like Ag Extension Service was,” was surely not meant to defame the good people currently working in cooperative extension, but if you heard the chirp of a canary I’m glad.

Cooperative Extension will celebrate it’s centennial in 2014. This is a fabulous opportunity to share our stories about the numerous problems we’ve solved that have helped California, the nation and the world, while discussing the new challenges that await us in a rapidly changing global society.

Currently, many of you are hard at work to bring the best science to bear solving problems related to climate change, malnutrition, invasive pests & diseases, and youth development amongst many others, all vitally necessary to creating a healthy community.

At the same time, millions of people are forgoing the hard work of data collection and analysis and simply setting up shop on the Internet hawking the worst possible ‘science’ as the answer to people’s problems. They’re the 21^st century version of the snake oil salesmen. 

And that’s a big problem for the average person attempting to wade through this morass of misinformation. Rather than too little information, there’s simply too much, and figuring out who to trust is next to impossible.

Well that’s not entirely correct. Research shows that people trust Cooperative Extension program representatives, advisors and specialists – they trust you.

Unfortunately, if you’re not on the Internet, utilizing the tools of social media to blog, Facebook, tweet, and make your knowledge available for the person desperately Googling nutrition at 2:00am after polishing off a bowl of ice cream, who knows what fad diet they’ll be attempting the next day? I can pretty much guarantee it won’t be what our nutrition advisors would recommend. 

So – here’s the plan to make the leap and commit to an hour a week of social media interaction.

1. Spend 30 minutes writing a blog post every Monday.
2. Spend 5 minutes on Twitter every morning. Send 1-2 Tweets, and respond to any replies or mentions.
3. Link your Twitter to your Facebook account.
4. Spend 5 minutes on Facebook every Friday afternoon and respond to any comments/likes.

Reposted from Ad Age Digital

Marketers, repeat after me: Vine isn't a tool. It's a destination.

I didn't realize this until recently. I was trying to figure out why water-cooler conversations are increasingly about the funniest Vines of the day, and our company's executive creative director stunned me. He said, "I spend 30 minutes a day watching Vines." That's a half hour that he's watching -- not making -- 300 six-second videos.

Get into a conversation with people like him who are spending time on Vine, and you'll hear about a new, heavily engaged subculture. Vine producers tend to play within certain genres and styles, generally in fast comedic situations, and a really good Vine creator has his or her own fingerprint. It's an important part of the draw. If you've seen enough clips, In a split second, you know whose work you're watching. Engagement rates are often ridiculously high.

At this point, as a marketer, the time you spend on Vine should be less for sharing short videos there and more for understanding what this subculture can teach you about reaching consumers.

On Facebook, it's impressive if 10% of your followers even see your post. On Vine, top users can get that kind of percentage of followers engaging with a post. Some posts generate even more interactions than the creator's number of followers. Here's an example of how the chain works: QPark (421,000 followers) re-Vined a post by Jerry Purpdrank (673,000 followers) starring rising Vine celeb Mirella (11,000 followers). Mirella has a number of posts with more than 1,000 likes.

The chain described above shows another important aspect of Vine: it's a community. Vine creators include each other in their Vines and routinely share their favorite Viners' posts. It's a collaborative environment. Remember when it was such a big deal for the cast of "Diff'rent Strokes" to appear on "The Facts of Life" in a crossover episode? On Vine, this happens all the time. Stars are constantly looking to boost their friends' ratings. They're all in this together. And not just during sweeps week.

Some brands have figured this out. For example, Warner's Bras has 4,200 followers on Vine. Yet its series branded with the hashtag #getcomfortable routinely features Vine stars to generate far more likes than the account's number of followers. The series is filmed by Vine celeb Meagan Cignoli (332,000 followers). One post with actor and model Jessica Cook (338,000 followers) wearing a series of bras has 17,000 likes, 2,800 re-Vines (or shares) and 900 comments. A post starring Jessi Smiles (1 million followers) and Curtis Lepore (1.1 million followers) has 85,000 likes, 24,000 shares and 1,300 comments. That's a pretty good interaction rate for a six-second spot.

All of this is hardly an endorsement of the quality of Vine content in general. Watch enough top Viners, and much of it starts feeling derivative. Some are just doing crazy antics to get a rise out of people. You'll see range of storytelling styles from high-brow (think of Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude") to low (think MTV's "Jackass"). Based on New York Magazine's approval matrix, most of it is at the low end, with the top Vines spread out along the despicable-to-brilliant axis.

With more stars passing the million-follower mark, and the likes and re-Vines keeping apace, Vine is serving as a cultural incubator. Many Vine celebrities will achieve fame far beyond Vine. Spend time there and get to know some of the famous faces. Or just follow Warner's Bras. You'll get ideas.