• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

Michelle's blog

Food allergy and food intolerance, freefrom foods, electrosensitivity, this and that...

  • Home
  • Blog
  • About
  • FreeFrom Food Awards
  • Foods Matter
  • Walks & Gardens
  • Salon Music
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About
  • FreeFrom Food Awards
  • Foods Matter
  • Walks & Gardens
  • Salon Music

Brief musings on social media

06/01/2014 //  by Michelle Berridale Johnson//  Leave a Comment

Prompted partly by Alex’s round-up of 2013 ‘freefrom’ news (nearly all of which took place on Facebook, on Twitter or on someone’s blog) and partly by an article in the NY Times, I was mulling gently about how social media had totally subverted the way we work – and the way we promote our work.

The NY Times article (highlighted by a link from the new Latitudes website) tells about Renee Shutters’ battle with the Food and Drug Administration over artificial dyes in foods, especially in sweets such as M&Ms. Despite having testified before the FDA, her campaign to have artificial dyes removed from foods was going nowhere – until she joined forces with the Centre for Science in the Pubic Interest to set up an on line petition to which she now has over 140,000 signatories. And all of a sudden Mars, makers of M&Ms, is hinting that it may soon replace at least one of the petroleum based dyes with a natural alternative derived from seaweed.

And Mars are by no means the first to capitulate to online petitions or Twitter/Facebook campaigns. In the US, although they do not admit the direct connection, several major companies have effectively done what their on-line critics have demanded:  Cargill labelled the dreaded ‘pink slime’ in their ground beef; Pepsico replaced brominated vegetable oil on their Gatorade drink after a Change.org petition started by a 15 year old in Missouri. And those are just the instances mentioned in this article. Back home, I blogged a few months ago about  how both Pizza Express and Seabrook crisps had changed policy as a result of two bloggers’ campaigns.

But the crucial thing about all of these campaigns, as anyone who has ever signed an Avaaz or Change.org petition will know, is that they rely on you, the signatory, to promote their cause by encouraging you very heavily – and making it very easy for you –  to ‘share’ your support with your Twitter and Facebook followers and friends thus increasing the value of your support (to them) hundreds or even thousands-fold.

As a business, no matter how small, you are expected to have a Twitter/Facebook presence and I know of a number of quite significant size companies who use Facebook as an alternative to a website. Warburtons, for example, when they first launched their gluten-free range and for over a year afterwards only had a Facebook page. And although they now do a have a website, the Facebook page remains extremely active with almost daily posts and 31,000 Likes.

Even in our own freefrom world, while our websites’ viewings have remained relatively static over the year (pretty healthy at around half a million unique visitors a year, but relatively static), our Twitter followers have all but doubled (from just under 7,000 to over 13,000) as have our Facebook Likes (from 1380 to 2,700) – which far more accurately reflects the very much heightened interest in everything ‘freefrom’ that we have experienced this year.

Moving with the trend, as we saw it, we recruited Alex last year to manage our social media for us (so our doubling in followers/Likes is entirely down to him) and have already had to ask him to increase the hours that he spends on line for us. But, we have to ask ourselves whether Facebook and Twitter are enough? Do we need Pinterest boards, a Google Plus account, to join Bibo? We already know that  we need to be more active on Linked In – indeed I have just started Linked In groups for both the Freefrom Food and the Freefrom Eating Out Awards (please feel free to join right here). But how much time can we – should we – be spending on this?

Ah yes – well that is the $64,000 question, is it not? What is all this activity really worth to our causes, our campaigns, our businesses? Of course, like so much advertising and certainly so much PR, nobody really knows. Except in relatively rare and quite specific cases, there is really no way of quantifying the effects of having 13,000, or indeed 13,000,000, Twitter followers or untold Facebook  ‘Friends’ or ‘Likes’. Except, of course, that the buzz makes us feel good and important and influential. Maybe that, of itself, is enough. Feeling good about what you are doing does not just ‘feel good’ but it is generally also considered to significantly boost productivity…

 

Odd further thoughts:

Sam Waterfall at the Interview Doctor, gives excellent  advice on boosting your social media presence (he finally explained Linked In to me!!) as well as advising you how to spruce up your interview technique!

Seen in an Independent ’roundup’ last w/e:
There’s the English Defence League. And there’s the English Disco Lovers – the charming movement  established by four friends with the motto ‘One World, One Race, One Disco’ – to reclaim, as they saw it , the acronym EDL. ‘By subverting (the English Defence League’s’) hatred with humour, we aim to promote equality, respect and the Eutopian vision of Disco!’ Result? The English Defence League Facebook Likes: fewer than 25,000; the English Disco League; more than 60,000! 

Category: Big Business, Blogging/social media, Environmental IssuesTag: artificial dyes in M&Ms, brominated vegetable oil in Gatorade, Center for Science in the Public Interest, change.org petition over Gatorade, even small businesses need to be on Twitter, Facebook, Facebook as alternative to website, FDA refuses to act over artificial dyes in sweets, FreeFrom Eating Out Awards group on Linked In, FreeFrom food Awards group on Linked In, Google Plus, Latitudes, Linked IN, Mars to replace an artificial dye with seaweed, Newburn Bakehouse Facebook page, NY Times, pink slime, Pinterest, Pizza Express and gluten free, Renee Shutters, Seabrook crisps go gluten free, social media, Twitter, www.freefrommatters.com

Previous Post: « 2013 roundup!
Next Post: The blog moves house… »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Bioplastics – a solution or part of the problem?
  • FreeFrom Christmas Awards – the Winners
  • Do not extradite Julian Assange to the US
  • What to believe – applying critical thought
  • Could wireless monitoring devices be killing racehorses?

Search this blog

ARCHIVES

Blogroll

  • Allergy Insight
  • Better brains, naturally
  • For Ever FreeFrom
  • Free From (gluten)
  • Freefrom Food Awards
  • Gluten-free Mrs D
  • Natural Health Worldwide
  • Pure Health Clinic
  • Skins Matter
  • The Helminthic Therapy Wiki
  • Truly Gluten Free
  • What Allergy?

TOPICS

Could wireless monitoring devices be killing racehorses?

Regular readers may remember that back in August last year I alerted you to a posting on Arthur Firstenberg’s Cellphone Task Force site about phone masts and bird flu. Could there be a connection between the fact that the two wildlife sites in Holland and Northern France which had suffered catastrophic bird flu deaths were …

New distribution for Dr Joneja’s Histamine books

Dr  Janice Joneja is recognised as a world expert on histamine intolerance – or, to be more accurate, histamine excess. Although intolerance to histamine does exist it is extremely rare. Most of the 1% of the world’s population who are thought to experience histamine related symptoms are actually reacting to an excess of histamine in …

Can words heal?

Sticks and stones may break our bones but words can never hurt us. But is that true? Or, if words cannot literally hurt us, can they either help or hinder us in healing ourselves? This question was raised by a recent article in the Townsend Letter, an e-newsletter for doctors and laymen focusing on alternative …

Veg Power – making it fun

How come the food industry is so successful in persuading us – and our kids – to buy sweet, sugary, unhealthy food instead of healthy veg? Easy…. They are tapping in to the fact that our 10,000 year old DNA still believes that when we come across something sweet (ripe fruit in season, honey up …

Observing the speed limit

Rather grumpily, at 7.45am yesterday morning, I signed in to my on line ‘Speed Awareness Course’ – the alternative I had been offered instead of points and a fine. My crime? Doing 24mph on a 20mph road at 8.30 on a Sunday morning. The course was run by a group called TCC. Our ‘course leader’ …

Heavy Metal and chemical toxicity

Are you worried about the amount of metal and the number of chemicals that we come into contact with on a daily, indeed hourly, basis? Not all of them (at a rough estimate there are over 150,000 chemicals in constant circulation) are bad. Indeed, many are crucial to our daily lives. But many are bad, …

Site Footer

Signup for the latest news from the blog

Regular updates on Food – policy, allergy, intolerance – and other unrelated matters…

Thank you!

You have successfully joined our subscriber list.

.

Copyright © 2023 · Michelle's Blog · Michelle Berridale Johnson · Site design by DigitalJen·