Use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest to Educate

Use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Why? 

The reasons vary and the main one, selling more stuff, fits with the relentless commercialization of the Web, yet social media, especially the four called out above, can be viewed as educational channels to use for personal and/or professional reasons in advancing a cause, educating our citizens,
or advancing champions and innovators.

For me social media is primarily for my work and self expression as an online video producer and curator with the objective in life of increasing sustainability awareness. The chief way I do this is to advance leaders from all fields who are advocating sustainability - the integration of planet, people, and prosperity into all decision-making.  Advancing leaders means making them more visible through organic search* (more likely to be found) and bringing to the fore not what they write or someone else writes about them, but what they say on video.

Social media helps me with my awareness objective.  However, in order to make use of it efficiently and effectively, the key is to link up {CONNECT} your social media so when you post to one, you post to the others.  And pick an entry point that best fists with how you use the Web most of the day so you're re-purposing your ideas and leveraging your influence.

I'll use my own experience to show what I mean.
My primary social media entry point, as a curator of online video, is YouTube.  YouTube from my perspective is a social network of video producers (it takes all kinds), rather than Facebook, which is mostly "friends."  Yet when  I post a new video or 'like' a video on YouTube it shows up on my Facebook timeline so my friends see my work and other videos I like.  Posting videos to YouTube and the other major platforms such as Vimeo and Blip.tv  is the most effective way to increase visibility and be found, especially posting to YouTube as it is also the second most popular search engine. Google likes to feature YouTube videos, as you may have noticed in search results, increasing page rankings, moving the result closer to the top.

YouTube +

I drive traffic to my videos on YouTube through a series of twitter accounts, depending on the subject, using the tool, Hootsuite.   I have five twitter accounts:  earthsayer (work/sustainability), pdxdowntowner (work/personal and local), mokiethecat (personal/fun), clevelandpics (personal and local), digitalsavvyite (work/marketing). I post to one or some or all and schedule them using Hootsuite.

Because the Pinterest world is a very visual, well educated group (audience infographic here) and it is easy to use I often "like" a video on YouTube and then "pin it." Again,  I'm doing this with an eye to advancing sustainability thought leaders by increasing their page rankings on Google and adding to their presence in the stream of consciousness.  I also pin videos from Websites I visit during the workday.

Here's my work in advancing the Canadian and Fine Art photographer Edward Burtynsky a sustainability advocate. For searches on his name he has good visibility already on the Web, some search traffic (12,000 per month), and ranks in the top three results on a place search, "Canadian photographers." He's been shortlisted for the Prix Pictet global award in photography and sustainability.  There are other less known, hardly visible artists and musicians that we are also advancing and connecting as we identify their video interviews and performances, get referred to them, or stumble across them. 

The Edward Burtynsky video on YouTube I curated and added to our site EarthSayers.tv, voices of sustainability. As a curator, this is what I spend most of my day doing - identifying, reviewing and adding to our database sustainability videos.

I "liked" the video on YouTube, then pinned it, using a button I added to my browser's tool bar.

I chose to pin it to the category, What is Sustainability? 

On Pinterest I have set up categories that reflect mostly my work as a sustainability advocate and which parallel many of the categories that are on our Website, EarthSayers.tv, voices of sustainability. Here are three:

Categories on Pinterest

Each category has its own "landing page" or board on Pinterest that you can link to in posts, articles, emails when you are educating and informing colleagues and clients. Click here to see landing page.


I've also set up Pinterest so that my pin is posted to my twitter @earthsayer and I have linked my @earthsayer twitter for my international audience to my @pdxdowntowner, for my Portland audience.  Pinners share which is how you attract followers and as you begin to follow like-minded people.  From this perspective, Pinterest is a social network too and for some it is more important than YouTube or Facebook. This might be your situation if you are connected to the visual arts.

I primarily share with my twitter followers, rather than Facebook.  Here's is example of seeding using a primary twitter account (EarthSayer) connected to another related one (pdxdowntowner) originating from a pin.

As seen on @earthsayer:

As seen on @pdxdowntowner:

Advancing leaders by making them more visible through organic search using social media is an important part of my awareness objective, but it is not the only way nor the primary method to achieve this objective.

 My blog, Sustainability Advocate, focuses on advancing leaders and seeds the Web:

You may not have time to blog, but opportunities to pin.

Of highest priority is our Website, EarthSayers.tv, a specialized search engine of all curated content, highlighting the voices of 1,300 leaders+ from all over the world. It is our major tool to seed the Web and overtime become like Wikipedia, ubiquitous, and on sustainability-related searches using Google and YouTube, the top two search engines.  You may have a Corporate Website that you can use more effectively to meet your visibility objectives such as offering visitors a white paper, how to booklet or embed a video interview from your company YouTube channel.  The more seeds the better.

Here are some examples of organic search results on Google the 'being found'  part of an awareness objective.

Keyword/phrase search, place oriented, Alberta Canada 

Tar Sands:

Search, person/subject oriented, Edward Burtynsky and Scale of It All:

Or search, subject and sustainability oriented, Arts and Sustainability:

This does look like a lot of work and I don't want to minimize that it takes time to seed the Web.  It's like gardening in many ways and we know how much time gardening can take, but the the rewards are great and measurable. If we are to educate and influence, the Web is where to connect with people active in the learning cycle.

If you see the advantages of growing your garden on the Web for purposes of education, both personal and professional, and appreciate the value of self expression, then there are ways to do it and tools available so that seeding leverages what you are already doing and produces measurable results for the objectives you set for yourself and your place in the world. 

Call me with your questions at (415) 377-1835.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Digital Marketing, July 1, 2013, Cleveland, Ohio.  

* A quick look at the importance of organic search (47%) in terms of Web traffic.