By: Laura Vandiver, Director of Research
I recently had the pleasure of conducting a research project with high school students throughout the state of Missouri. I visited both rural and urban schools, and had the chance to ask these kids about social media and how they use it. While some of their responses may have reflected [...]

When elected as the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis took on the role not only as religious leader, but as Communicator-in-Chief to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. Much like a role in politics, the Pope will be charged with getting the messages of the Catholic Church out to followers around the [...]

Twitter may be the newest battleground for big brands.  While these duels appear to be all in good fun, one can’t help but notice how much attention both sides are getting because of a little friendly brawl.  Ad Week highlights two conflicts between four very high profile brands.  Oreo recently got dunked by AMC Theatres [...]

This past Friday, Facebook released its initial public offering (IPO) at the morning bell on Wall Street. Starting at 9:30 a.m., investors could purchase a piece of the social media giant for $38 a share. This made Facebook, or FB as it’s now known in the NASDAQ market,  the highest tech IPO in history and [...]

The Vandiver Group, Inc. is constantly looking for new ways to use existing tools from our communications toolkit to help clients reach their goals. Social media is one of those tools. To share our expertise and insight in social media, our President and CEO, Donna Vandiver, participated in a panel discussion on social media and [...]

We wrote in an earlier blog post that Pinterest has become one of the highest drivers of blog traffic on the Internet. On the flip side, Pinterest also provides the opportunity to more easily gain the attention of bloggers you are trying to pitch. A recent article from PR Daily talks about some steps you [...]

Print media has its hands full trying to play catch up with the fast-paced evolution of technology. The general population has become accustomed to the idea of news at their fingertips in an instant.  This means a decline in readership for most print publications. To combat this trend, Next Issue Media is taking steps to [...]

Today’s the day, all organizations with a Facebook page will see it change over to the new Timeline format. After a month of allowing companies to voluntary change, Facebook makes the switch mandatory today. If you’re worried about the impact the new Timeline for Pages will have on your brand’s Facebook engagement level, never fear. [...]

Happy Friday! Check out some of the industry stories you might have missed this week.
Pinterest Passes Twitter in Blog Traffic
A recent study from Shareholic shows that Pinterest drove more traffic to blogs in February than Twitter. Women’s lifestyle, home décor and cooking outlets have been some of the largest beneficiaries of Pinterest’s growth. While the [...]

St. Louis is a health care town and we wanted to share some highlights from a recent article in the Academy of Health Care Management Journal, titled “Health Care and Social Media: Building Relationships Via Social Networks”, along with some ways local hospitals are using social media.
Health care providers are joining the social media wave [...]