Insights
2 min Read
August 17, 2012

Survey says: Most nonprofiteers blend their personal/professional brands

Last week I had the joy of presenting a workshop with the fabulous Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation at the 7th Annual Bridge to Integrated Marketing & Fundraising Conference in Washington, DC. To gear up for our session on “Mixing Business and Pleasure: Managing Your Personal Brand in Social Media,” we asked nonprofiteers (readers like you!) to respond to a quick survey about their own behaviors.  

We heard from 209 nonprofit staff, consultants, and the people who love us–and some of the results suprised us. While not scientific, the survey offers some interesting insights and we highlighted the key findings in our presentation (included in the slides below and online here). Here are some of those insights:

  • Most are mixing it up. 72% of the 209 respondents describe their approaches to personal/professional use of social media as either ‘blended’ or ‘segmented by channel’; only 22% keep them ‘totally separate’. 
  • Even when people ‘blend’, there is a tendency to use some channels more personally or professionally. The top three channels people use ‘personally’ are: Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest; the top three channels people use ‘professionally’ are Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Most people tend to favor using blogs and LinkedIn ‘professionally’ and Foursquare, Google+, and Instagram ‘personally’. 
  • Sharing news of friends, family, or other major life events and news/current affairs dominates Facebook posts. And work complaints? Well, 44% of repsondents never talk about the ins and outs of their job on Facebook.
  • More than half (51.2%) of respondents are NOT friends with their supervisor on Facebook, while approximately 10% limit what their boss can see through account settings.
  • The majority of respondents review their account settings in Facebook at least twice/year. About 1 out of 3 respondents (31.6%) check their settings monthly, while 1 out of 5 (17.7%) check it annually, and several people haven’t looked at their settings since they frist signed up.
  • Speaking of privacy, it all depends on the network. Most keep their tweets open (only 7.7% block their Twitter updates), but only 1 out of 3 (33.5%) like to share their location via Facebook, Foursquare, or other location-based network.
  • Almost everyone uses LinkedIn, but hardly anyone asks for recommendations with any regularity (despite the fact that your LinkedIn profile is one of the top results for your name in Google). 34.9% are too shy or humble to ask for recommendations and 38.3% rarely ask beause they ‘don’t want to bother people and/or have to write recommendations in return’.
  • A significant number admit to Googling themselves pretty regularly. 14.4% looked up the results of their name in Google within the past week, while 30.6% had checked within the past month, and 35.4% had checked at some point in 2012.
  • Beyond checking, almost half of the respondents monitor their brand using Klout, SocialMention, or other service.
  • Finally, time spent on social media (personally and professionally) is quite high:
    • 8.6% spend more than 40 hours/week;
    • 19.6% spend between 20-40 hours/week;
    • 27.8% spend between 10-20 hours/week;
    • 32.1% spend between 5-10 hours/week; and
    • 12.0% spend less than 5 hours/week.
What do you think of these survey results? Any surprise you? Take a look at the slides too and share your thoughts below.

 
P.S. Should you ever find yourself stuck at a conference being held at the Gaylord Hotel in National Harbor, Maryland (a popular destination these days), be sure to check out the PEEPS store. It’s quite an experience, and the perfect place to stope by before a presentation!