C-SPAN recently announced a partnership with Foursquare, the geo-location social media tool that really took off at SXSW this year.  From BrandChannel:

“Far from stodgy public access programming, C-SPAN has been embracing social media (and taking its shows on the road) as it pushes for greater public access through media coverage of the House and Senate and the Supreme Court.

“Now, Foursquare users who friend C-SPAN can, via Foursquare.com/cspan, access an abundance of C-SPAN content about U.S. public policy, politics, and government – a virtual tour guide to the inner workings of American democracy.

“If a user searches Foursquare for the U.S. Capitol, up comes a C-SPAN video with information about the Federal budget. Search for the White House, and view a C-SPAN interview with President Obama that was taped in the White House library.”

A partnership with C-SPAN solidifies the legitimacy of Foursquare and its potential in our increasingly digital and social world.  By linking relevant (and educational) content to locations, the act of checking-in becomes more valuable to the consumer.  And, C-SPAN is now exposing itself to a target viewer that might not otherwise have interacted with the media brand.

Unless you were hiding under a rock this morning, you are aware that USA beat Algeria in a World Cup game.  I didn’t have to watch the game, I could just listen to the yelling right outside my office (where I have the unfortunate luck of sitting right beside the TV that everyone crowded around this morning).  It was quite a victory and even I – not a sports fan – was excited.  However, to a geek like me, one of the most interesting things about the match this morning is what happened online (stats courtesy of Mashable):

• “In the minutes following Landon Donovan’s game winning goal in the 91st minute of action (which sent the US to the round of 16), traffic spiked to 11.2 million visitors per minute, which moves the event past the 2008 presidential election as the 2nd highest traffic spike of all-time.”
• “The plethora of World Cup breaking news briefly knocked Yahoo Sports offline.”
• “Tweets containing ‘USA’ spiked to 6% of total tweet volume.”
• Many Twitter users encountered the “Fail Whale” as a result of the traffic volume on Twitter during the game.

And, I think every status update on my Facebook news feed was related to the game.  Yes, soccer has the power of influence this month.  It will be interesting to see how that influence is capitalized on by marketers both immediately and in the coming months.  Some of the lucky ones advertising during the World Cup coverage are even getting some of the chatter; a favorite among those I have talked to:

Enjoy the games.

Historically, six degrees of separation has referred to the idea that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth.  However, according to recent data, Twitter has now shortened our “degrees of separation” from each other: “On average, Twitter users have five degrees of separation between each other – meaning nearly everyone within Twitter is only five steps away.”  Therefore, “on average, a Twitter user will encounter 83% of all other Twitter users by visiting everyone’s friends up to a distance of five steps.”  So, in theory, it does not take a great number of “retweets” for a message to reach a large and diverse audience.

This is great news for marketers looking to justify a larger investment in social media as communications tools.  The news is even better for those looking to communicate in local (i.e., smaller) circles: “if a user traces their friends, and their friends and so on, in 3.32 steps on average they will discover a follower of their own. This means there are many small, circular connections on Twitter.” At this point, it almost seems negligent of a brand to not have a presence on Twitter.

When looking to wade (or dive deeper) into the social media pool, take the five-degrees-of-separation fact with a grain of salt and remember these few tips:

• Don’t build it and assume they will come.  Seek out quality followers: those active on Twitter who are predisposed to like the brand.
• Content should be relevant and interesting to warrant any “retweet” activity.
• Monitoring with the resources for rapid response are absolutely necessary.  A negative message will usually be spread faster than a positive one will be shared.

Thank you to Roby Brock for inviting me on to his Talk Business program to talk about the increase in women in the workplace.  See the interview here:

And read the article on Talk Business here.

As Ms. Adverthinker, I feel compelled to direct you to this article in The Atlantic, titled “The End of Men.” A few highlights from the article:

“Earlier this year, for the first time in American history, the balance of the workforce tipped toward women, who now hold a majority of the nation’s jobs. The working class, which has long defined our notions of masculinity, is slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the home and women making all the decisions. Women dominate today’s colleges and professional schools—for every two men who will receive a B.A. this year, three women will do the same. Of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade in the U.S., all but two are occupied primarily by women.”

And:

“Men dominate just two of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most over the next decade: janitor and computer engineer. Women have everything else—nursing, home health assistance, child care, food preparation.”

And:

“But women are also starting to dominate middle management, and a surprising number of professional careers as well. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women now hold 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs—up from 26.1 percent in 1980. They make up 54 percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. About a third of America’s physicians are now women, as are 45 percent of associates in law firms—and both those percentages are rising fast. A white-collar economy values raw intellectual horsepower, which men and women have in equal amounts. It also requires communication skills and social intelligence, areas in which women, according to many studies, have a slight edge. Perhaps most important—for better or worse—it increasingly requires formal education credentials, which women are more prone to acquire, particularly early in adulthood.”

And:

“Only 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, and the number has never risen much above that.  But even the way this issue is now framed reveals that men’s hold on power in elite circles may be loosening. In business circles, the lack of women at the top is described as a “brain drain” and a crisis of “talent retention.” And while female CEOs may be rare in America’s largest companies, they are highly prized: last year, they outearned their male counterparts by 43 percent, on average, and received bigger raises.”

I have heard the argument made–as a rationale for highlighting men as future leaders of our state–that we have very few women in business in Arkansas.  I can only shake my head at this obvious oversight and antiquated way of thinking.  Even developing countries recognize the power of women:

“In 2006, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development devised the Gender, Institutions and Development Database, which measures the economic and political power of women in 162 countries. With few exceptions, the greater the power of women, the greater the country’s economic success.  Aid agencies have started to recognize this relationship and have pushed to institute political quotas in about 100 countries, essentially forcing women into power in an effort to improve those countries’ fortunes….Postgenocide Rwanda elected to heal itself by becoming the first country with a majority of women in parliament.”

Let’s have more discussion about the power and leadership of women in Arkansas.