Measure You Social Media Efforts

Businesses everywhere are still grappling with how to measure their social media efforts. So, 2Communicate have produced a short publication Measure Your Social Media Efforts to help businesses effectively measure their ROI and effectiveness of their social media efforts.

Overview 

Virtually every business today acknowledges how important social media is for business whether it be generating brand awareness, offering a customer service tool or keeping in touch with customers and particularly brand influencers. It is also all to familiar that many businesses acknowledge how difficult it is to measure its actual ROI and quantifying its effectiveness. According to a CMO survey in March 2012, social media spending by business is reaching new highs. As a matter of fact, in the next five years, marketers said they expect to spend almost 20% of their total budgets on social media. That’s triple the current level.  The business world understands it has to start to understand how to measure social media’s ROI and its effectiveness if it is to really embrace it as part of its Marketing strategy. With over 900 million users on Facebook, 100 million on Twitter, and LinkedIn approaching 120 million and Pinterest, became one of the top ten social media sites in less than a year. So looking at these stats businesses just can not afford to ignore the power of social media.

Give a Hen a Home

Here in the 2Communicate towers we are already thinking about Easter. Not just the chocolate eggs though…as one of our current campaigns is to help raise awareness of compassionate living, particularly for the benefit of farm animals on behalf of Compassionate Dorset. We want to try and encourage as many people as we can to go free range and rescue some hens in need of a loving free range home.

Above: Compassionate Tee ‘Chook’ in White

There are a huge number of farm animals needing our help and rescue from abuse, neglect, slaughter and abandonment every single day. The Farm Animal Sanctuary are one charity whom help rescue up to 600 farm animals from goats, pigs and sheep to hens. The Farm Animal Sanctuary provide these needy Farm Animals with a better home and safe haven so they can live the life they deserve. Reading the stories behind some of the rescued farm animals brought some of us to tears! Looking after farm animals can be a full time job and not for the faint hearted; it’s a lot of hard work and expense, but hens are a little easier… Hens require food, water, a clean coop, roaming area and a loving home, they can also be lots of fun! You will need enough outside space for a chicken coop or shed and an exercise space.

Did you know that the British Hen Welfare Trust save approximately 60,000 hens from slaughter and find them caring pet homes so that they can enjoy free range retirement. One very topical story at the moment is centred around the plight of hens, and Compassion in World Farming claim that some egg farmers in the UK are still using barren battery cages, despite assurances that the UK would be fully compliant with the ban on these cages when it came into force on 1st January 2012.

According to percentage figures issued by Defra, the illegal cages could contain as many as 300,000 hens. The British Hen Welfare Trust rehomes commercial laying hens and educates us all on how we can make a difference to hen welfare and encourage support for the British Egg Industry. We ask you to think next time you go to grab a box of eggs to make sure they are free range. Or you could have your own eggs waiting for you at the bottom of the garden, could you give a hen a home?

Did you know . . .

How are eggs made?

• An egg takes the hen 25 hours to make, so at most, a hen can lay 6 eggs per week.
• When hens are young, they lay small eggs; as they get older; the eggs get larger, and aren’t laid as frequently.
• The hen puts the shell on the egg just as it is laid. It takes about 10 seconds to harden.
• The hen always puts the same amount of calcium on her eggs, so small eggs have much thicker shells than large eggs – because the calcium doesn’t have to stretch as far.
• Eggs have a natural protective coating called the “bloom”, which gives the egg a slightly “matt” finish. Washing Grade A eggs before selling them to the public is illegal, as it removes this coating. In the 19th century in Ireland, a farmer could be put in jail for washing eggs.
• It isn’t necessary to have a cockerel; the hens lay eggs anyway, but they aren’t fertile.

In the kitchen . . .

• The fresher the egg, the harder it is to get the shell off after it is boiled. On the other hand, very fresh egg whites whip more quickly than older whites.
• When the Romans came to Britain, they were surprised to see people eating hen eggs.
• Eggs are actually a low fat food – an egg has only 5 grams of fat on average, and most of that is unsaturated. Eggs are one of the best sources of protein, as they contain all of the essential amino acids needed by the body.

So 2Communicate want to help raise awareness for all Farm Animals needing our help and we want to hear your farm animal rescue stories. Have you recently rehomed a hen? Or know of a brave and happy ending for a farm animal who may have been previously suffering?

We want to hear your story, with the winning story receiving a Fantastic FREE Compassionate T-shirt of your choice!

We have extended our competition and our closing date for all entries is to be in by 4pm Friday April 20^th. So get writing guys and you could be wearing one of these fantastic Compassionate Tees…