Your Two Minutes on our Survey Tell Us Where You Are in Social Media

Last week we opened our most recent Two Minute Survey where we wanted to know about the social media spaces you focus on and preferences for getting information from NMC.   (image credit: Flickr CC Licensed Photo by Matt Hamm)

In a week we collected 271 responses to the survey sent out through a variety of channels- our email announcement lists, stories on the NMC web site, and posts to our social media outlets on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can review the results below, but overall what we heard was not overly surprising in that the social media spaces our respondents focus their energy on are Facebook followed by twitter. People seem to want information coming to them in a variety of places, with email still the leading channel, but with strong indicating of wanting news to come through the popular social media places as well as via RSS feeds.

We are tuning into this as we refine our social media strategy, with already more effort placed on regular updates and resources shared to our Facebook fan page (where without too much trouble our friends responded to get us over the 1000 fan threshold to get a custom URL) and our twitter channel. While LinkedIn may not be a place of high attention for many people, we do see it as an important space for professional connection creation in our field.

Work is underway to build out our YouTube Channel, and to develop focused activities and gathering points around our flickr presence (where we have been active for many years). 

Here at the NMC we are aiming to use numerous ways to both communicate in and be part of the social media fabric-- for an interesting take on how these patterns are changing, we refer to Socialreporter's interview with Clay Shirky on how non-profits must become new-style conveners.

Our thanks to everyone who shared two minutes on our survey. Look for another one next month.

The Questions:

1. Please indicate the social media site in which you have put the most effort into managing a social presence.
2. Where would you most expect/want to see the NMC have a significant presence?
3. Where would you most like to see NMC news and announcements?

The Results (view full spreadsheet)

We recorded 271 people having completed this survey. 

For the first question, there is little surprise that Facebook was the leading response by more than half the respondents (55%) as the site where people have put the most effort into managing their social presence. Another quarter indicated their effort is placed in Twitter. Interestingly, the "professional" network, LinkedIn received a minority of responses (7%) but this may reflect its more utilitarian use as not a primary social networking destination.And MySpace failed to even register.

Among the 7% of "Other" responses were

• Blog (5)
• Second Life (5)
• Ning (4)
• email (1)
• Orkut (1)

When asked where people expected or wanted the NMC to have a presence, the answers pretty much mirrored the first question, with Facebook being the leading choice (45%) followed by Twitter (30%). Listed in the "Other" responses were:

• none (8) Comment: "Social networking is about connecting with people not providing another vector for institutional announcements."
• Second Life (6)
• Ning (4)
• NMC website (3) Comment: "Does a blog count as a social network? IMHO, I'd be most interested in reading semi-detailed posts about NMC's goings-on."
• All of the above (2)
• Academia.edu
• Ning or elgg
• Orkut
• Tough question!

When asked about preferences for where NMC announces our news and announcements, not surprisingly we see a broader mix of preferences, perhaps suggesting people want information in multiple channels. The leading choice is email (64%) followed by a group of responses with a similar range- Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, and the NMC web site.