Photo by Steve Goodman
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You've heard the phrase - eating your own dog food? It means practicing what you preach.
Anyway, Chris Brogan has just launched Project DogFood. It’s a project where you’re invited to come talk about which social media elements a business should consider adopting.
And you know I would just love anything that has to do with dogs, social media, and adoption.
I thought this vacation message from Holly Ross was the best ever. But Thomas Taylor just forwarded me one that tops that ...
-----------------
Sorry, I missed your e-mail, but I am not in the office
due to an "emergency."
I received a call from MADONNA that she needed to see me
immediately. I assumed that she came to her senses and
wanted to hire me as one of her (18) dancers for
the "Sticky & Sweet Tour."
But instead, she took off to Kaballah Summer Camp and I am
babysitting the kids for a few days.
Ballet for Lourdes @ 10:00am, soccer practice for Rocco @
1:30pm & then poor David found out that Madonna once dated
Michael Jackson and we have a 4:00pm therapy
appointment....just to be proactive.
I will be back to my home stage on
Monday, July 21st and until then will have limited service
to e-mail. If you can wait for my return, I will contact
you on Tuesday.
Steve Bridger just posted a nice slideshow from a recent workshop.
I think of Facebook as a middle ground between business and pleasure, sort of MySpace for post-adolescents or LinkedIn for professional late adopters like me. - David Carr, NY Times
That quote made me think of Wendy Harman's Facebook Profile. Like many of us, Wendy uses her Facebook presence for both personally and professional reasons. As she notes on her profile in the "about me,"
I am the New Media Integrator for the American Red Cross. You'll see a lot of personal "lifestream" info here, but I'm also constantly searching around for Red Cross-related communities. Hints and suggestions welcome.
I read an interesting post in the Conversation Starter called "Why I'm Dropping You As A Facebook Friend" where Paul Michelman reports on his lack of success using his Facebook (and Twitter) profile as a personal/professional networking tool and has decided to keep it totally personal. For him, the discomfort of the collision of his professional and private lives outweighs the benefits of using Facebook (and Twitter) for professional reasons.
While the future of social networks may allow us to get more granular with our social networks (friends) and privacy settings so we can automate being strategic in with our postings and more selective in our friending, if you need to establish a profile as part of your work -- you have to figure out the best way to balance your personal versus private persona.
Facebook:How To Befriend The Boss On Facebook
What professional value has your Facebook profile brought you? If you have a presence on Facebook and need to professionally represent your nonprofit organization, how do you manage that? Do you have a "private/personal persona" and "professional" one?
Related Resources:
Mari Smith, Why Facebook Blog - Filled with practical tips for leveraging Facebook for professional use
Search Engine Watch, Social Networking and Employees (recommended by Zemanta)
Jesse Stay, I'm On Facebook Now What?
This week we started Module 5: Community Engagement Strategy and Skills of NTEN's WeAreMedia project which focuses on online engagement strategy and skills. (Six lucky wiki contributors to Module 5 between now and August 3rd will have an opportunity to get a free copy of either Media Rules and Mobilizing Generation 2.0.)
Today we're going to discuss community participation, but I wanted to first acknowledge some of the contributions. Wiki participants have been very busy bees! (Sorry couldn't resist)
The description has been modified based on Nancy White pointed out some nuances in the definition of online community. (Thanks Nancy) More importantly, Nancy suggested some questions about deciding whether an online community is what your organization really needs.
Kevin Martone has shared this case study about case study of Pinemere Camp utilizing Ning.com to build an online community of this overnight camp's alumni, campers, parents, and staff.
Let's get to the question at hand - how do you encourage participation?
Here's some tips and warnings from Wiki participants:
1. Give people a reason to come back, and in the community elements recruit one or two active posters to regularly discuss and comment on new material. - Alex Berger
2. Be wary of clique behavior. It always forms, and can be detrimental to community growth and health. It is paramount to your success that the old guard welcomes the new guard. - Alex Berger
3. The key is to get (as Connie Bensen mentions) alumni influencers involved. If you can get these influencers involved and participating, they will often bring along a number of others. Small colleges use this model as well for alumni relations/fundraising - volunteers from each class do most of the outreach to their peers. - Kevin Martone
What are your tips for encouraging community participation? There's still a chance to win a free book - so add your ideas today!
A few weeks ago, I presented a workshop at the Bay Area Video Coalition Nonprofit Institution. One of the participants was an organization named GroundSpark which has a project called "Respect for All," that facilitates the development of inclusive, bias-free schools and communities by providing media resources, support and training to youth, educators and service providers.
For example, they have a film called "That's A Family" takes a look at family diversity. (I am no stranger to family diversity having adopted two children and being of different cultures and races.) The film helps kids see and understand that families can different shapes today. (They were kind enough to send me a copy)
The nonprofits in this workshop, for the most part, deliver programs and services that address sensitive topics. So, when we talk about social media and being open and embracing the conversation, one of the most comment questions that comes up is:
To what extent do you need to moderate the discussion in a socnet space or blog so it isn't antithetical to your mission?
The are several answers to this question. If your nonprofit is using a blog and the subject matter isn't sensitive or you don't feel you need to "control" your messaging, it depends on the type of community you want to create. You moderate comments or leave it open. Most blogging software can accommodate whatever you decide. And, it will usually take a way to build up to a point where it more efficient to moderate than leave open and delete.
I'm not referring to comment spam, either. That's a different issue and you definitely need to use a spam filter. Again, your blogging platform will have this feature.
What I'm talking about deliberately are hateful comments by trolls that might happen if sensitive subject matter being discussed. This requires carefully thinking about comment moderation techniques and part of this includes articulating a clear policy about use of moderation.
This morning I left a comment on the Harvard Business School's Conversation Starter blog and noticed this response message about their comment moderation policy right after I commented. While I initially liked that they told me right at the time that I made the comment, I wondered if editing someone's comments and then posting could lead to any legal trouble.
If your nonprofit organization has a blog, do you moderate the comments? Why or why not? What does your comment moderation policy look like? What does your comment moderation work flow look like?
Related Articles selected by Beth
James Joyner, Outside the Beltway, Enforcing Civility in Blog Comments
Ross Douthat, Atlantic, Comment Moderation Policy Announcement
Guy Kawasaki, Why Blog: An Interview with Darren Rowse (covers two questions on comment moderation)
Wired Journalists Ning Site, What's Your Policy on Moderating and Editing Comments? by Ken Fischer
Wikis have been used for knowledge sharing, learning, conference coordination, and repositories - and curriculum as community.
Last week as part of ongoing reflection on working wikily, I titled as post "Establishing A Giving Culture on A Wiki" inspired by Dave Cormier's Connectivism Wiki or MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses). I wasn't talking about a wiki for fundraising - the literal meaning, but more the stated philosophy on Dave's wiki:
I'd suggest we follow the ADD DON'T TAKE AWAY model of wiki building. Just keep adding sections... if you don't agree with the content, mark your objections in the discussion area or underneath of the disagreeable topic with your opinion.
In the comments, George Noelke mentioned that he was experimenting with creating a giving culture using a new wiki for his Race for the Cure team. I asked him if the goal was to raise money or coordinate his team. His response:
The goal, ultimately, is to do both. I'm having to start from scratch as the concept is in its infancy. Each member of the team is encouraged to start their own page and use it to build and promote the team. My pages are intended, initially, to highlight the real life people that are on our team.
As we get closer to race day (Nov. 2) I'll be using it for coordination, as the team captain is responsible for a number of strategic decisions that impact key donations during race week, as well as coordinating basic operations such as where the team will meet during race day. (We have a 21,000+ race each year, so coordinating this is quite a feat!)
Very interesting. George, I'll look forward to hearing what you learn about this approach.
You’ll have to listen to the podcast that Matt Moore (Innotecture, Engineers Without Fears), Doug Cornelius (KM Space, Goodwin Procter) and Stewart Mader (wikipatterns) recorded last week to find out! I haven't yet listened to it so really interested in the answer. (Maybe Stewart will leave a comment with a summary of the answers ...)
A couple of teasers in the play by play that will make me definitely go and listen to the entire podcast with ear towards reflecting on any insights about working wikily:
And definitely as a great addition to my Cute Dog Theory personal learning space. (Hat tip to Reed Stockman who shared with NpTech Room on FriendFeed for the link.)
Anyone listen to the podcast and know the answer? Anyone who hasn't listened to the podcast and want to take a guess at the answer?
Yesterday, we started Module 5: Community Engagement Strategy and Skills of NTEN's WeAreMedia project which focuses on community engagement strategy and skills. Here's the description:
An online community is an interactive group of people who are joined together by a common interest. Whether your organization creates its own branded social networking site, connects with people on blogs or sets up a presence on a larger online social networking site like Facebook, Digg, or YouTube, a critical factor for success is having an online community engagement strategy. An engaged online community can help your organization attract more traffic, loyal supporters, more content, more links, and other values. But it requires investing the time to build relationships with members (yes, even one-on-one interaction) or what we call "network weaving skills." This module covers the key touch points for developing an online community strategy and a look at network weaving skills.
The discussion questions are: (and we're giving away free books to participants- details here)
Nancy White dropped a thought-provoking comment (in purple!) in the description -- simultaneously opening up some insights and modeling the "add don't take wiki" approach used by colleague, Dave Cormier.
(I feel compelled to put in a comment here -- feel free to delete after you consider it. I think it is important to distinguish between a community - where there is relationship and interaction over time, and a site where people can interact around a common interest. If relationship and a sense of group is desired, that will impact your strategies. There is a difference between an online community and a larger social network strategy. Sometimes you don't actually need or want a community - you want something else. )
Nancy also created another important discussion question:
Do you really need a community? Or something else?
There are tons of communities and networks out there. People only have so much time in their day to participate. So before you go about building an online community, consider if this is really what you need and what your constituents want.
- Are you constituents online? If not, why build an online community.
- Are your constituents members of many other social networks and communities? Will they join YET one more? If not, can you leverage connections into the communities and networks they already belong to?
- Are your constituents using mobile devices more than computer based devices? How will this impact participation in more "traditional" online communities?
- Do you really want a community, or are you simply looking for ways for people to access and create content, but they really don't need/want to interact with each other and form relationships while interacting over time around a topic of shared interest.
Nancy is making a distinction between "traditional" online communities where there are relationships between people in the community and people connecting together around specific interest area or a Tribe. This module has originally put these together under one definition of "community" with the latter being "loosely-coupled" communities. But thinking we need to re-think this a bit. Off to ponder "Are You in the Tribe?"
Maybe the focus on this module should be more "engagement" strategies - and the ways you can do this. If you have a group of people that you don't want to necessarily interact with one another, but want them to create content -- you'd still need an engagement strategy to encourage participation. It would, definitely, as Nancy suggests, impact where and how you might do this.
What do you think?
Congrats to Mazarine Treyz, Senior Development & Communications Officer, Urban League of Portland. She was the first one to contribute something to the WeAreMedia Module 5: Online Community Engagement Strategy and Skills.
The question was: How do you get prepared for an online community? What questions do you need ask as part of your planning?
The Brains On Fire blog tell us why it is so important to be prepared before you launch an online community effort:
Online communities are popping up everywhere. And I really can’t see the point behind most of them. Is it so the CMO can point to it and say, “Look! We’re part of Web 2.0, too!?!” And then there’s the numbers game. These companies want 10,000 people in the first week. So they have contests. Giveaways. Gimmicks out the wazoo. And the people come. But the don’t stick around. There’s no community there. It’s just another website. Another registration form. With no sticking power. No reason to come back. The community has no sense of community, because most CMOs see it as just another vehicle to push messages through.
So before you jump into the online community pool, there is a lot of heavy lifting to do up front. A lot of questions to be asked. And a lot of hard work to make sure you create something that’s long-term and sustainable instead of another flash in the pan. The first thing to keep in mind? Ninety-two percent of word of mouth happens offline. So make sure the online supports the offline and vise versa.
Otherwise you’ll have a nice, pretty site that ends up being another community ghost town.
Holly Ross talks about this in her post, "Are you a marketer or online community manager?" and Maddie Grant gives us the three top reasons why online communities fail.
Rob Cottingham and Alexandra Samuel have an excellent set of questions to ask before you launch an online community. Many will help you shift your perspective towards supporting your users needs, what good marketers do already. Other questions will help you get your organization on board.
Mazarine shared this tip:
In your next staff meeting, when discussing marketing,
a. Ask for a show of hands, who has heard of Myspace? Who has heard of Facebook? (You'll get some people who know.)
b. Show them social media = ROI, with who, when, and why. (kiva.org, prime example, mercycorps.org, another) (make printouts or use a projector)
c. Show them concrete examples of what is currently happening at your org (a monologue) and show them what is possible (a dialogue).
d. Ask them, "Would you rather have someone talk at you, or have a conversation?" -By Mazarine Treyz, Senior Development & Communications Officer, Urban League of Portland. (Urban League Facebook page)
We're so delighted that we decided to give away one more book! So congrats to Mazarine.
Six more lucky wiki contributors to Module 5 between now and August 3rd will have an opportunity to get a free copy of either Media Rules and Mobilizing Generation 2.0. Share a couple sentences about your experience from your nonprofit organization, or point to an excellent resource and add a sentence to describe it. Be sure to include your name with a link to your email or web site next to your contribution. We'll pick six contributors randomly to receive a copy of Ben or Brian's awesome books.
What are you waiting for? Jump in over at the wiki.
This week we are discussing and building Module 5: Online Community Engagement Strategy and Skills as part of NTEN's We Are Media: Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits project. Here's the description:
An online community is an interactive group of people who are joined together by a common interest. Whether your organization creates its own branded social networking site, connects with people on blogs or sets up a presence on a larger online social networking site like Facebook, Digg, or YouTube, a critical factor for success is having an online community engagement strategy. An engaged online community can help your organization attract more traffic, loyal supporters, more content, more links, and other values. But it requires investing the time to build relationships with members (yes, even one-on-one interaction) or what we call "network weaving skills." This module covers the key touch points for developing an online community strategy and a look at network weaving skills.
Some of the inspiration for this module comes from Alexandra Samuel and her Bringing Your Community To Life workshop. Alexandra suggests that you offer incentives for participation. So, thanks to NTEN, we are offering prizes for participation - six lucky wiki contributors to Module 5 between now and August 3rd will have an opportunity to get a free copy of either Media Rules and Mobilizing Generation 2.0.
So, what do you have to do to get a free book? Between now and Sunday, August 3rd, answer one of the key discussion questions at the wiki.
It is super easy to participate. Share a couple sentences about your experience from your nonprofit organization, or point to an excellent resource and add a sentence to describe it. Be sure to include your name with a link to your email or web site next to your contribution. We'll pick six contributors randomly to receive a copy of Ben or Brian's awesome books.
What are you waiting for?
Do you think that we (nonprofit and technology folks and beyond) can add to this fabulous list of 50 steps from Chris Brogan? Let's have at it.
If you have kids, you probably also read bedtime stories to them. In our house, we've read everything from Horton Hears a Who to Good Night Moon. Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree is also a popular request, despite the fact that it often makes me cry too. It is a story about a tree that gives everything to a young boy at every stage of his life.
I thought about that story when I saw Dave Cormier's Connectivism Wiki or MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses). The philosophy is:
I'd suggest we follow the ADD DON'T TAKE AWAY model of wiki building. Just keep adding sections... if you don't agree with the content, mark your objections in the discussion area or underneath of the disagreeable topic with your opinion.
So, I asked Dave via Twitter "Wow do you build a giving culture on a wiki?" He said that policy gives people a sense of freedom. He also pointed me to this reflection. I think it was point 3 that connects: Community learning, so that is what you call it!
Dave Cormier has been my critical friend as I write personal reflections on the community as curriculum process we're using to develop the content through the WeAreMedia Project. Dave shared his most recent observations through some reflections of his project. For the past two weeks, he has been teaching “educational technology and the adult learner." The course had no existing curriculum and it provided a real life laboratory for him to have the curriculum come out of the community interactions that were happening in the classroom. So, while we have different learners and different contexts, we are playing with the idea that the community is the curriculum.
He had three goals - all of which were to change the focus from ‘the material’ to the ‘experience’. I'd say that our goals are similar in that we're not just building content together, but informally learning together.
Dave goes on to explain the concept of "Reverse Curriculum"
Reverse curriculum tends to develop out of the interests that the students show during the course and they get to record and create the material as part of their daily practice. It is part creative zone, part class note record and part review space. The constant revisitation of the material for sorting, upkeep and improvement also serves to reinforce the material.
In one way, our processes slightly differ here in that community isn't necessarily revisiting and resorting the materials. Or at least that was not the formal expectation for participation. Some participants, like Jocelyn Harmon, have done so on their own initiative. Take for example this summary of the first module.
Another point about goals:
Community Literacies esp. Community commitment
Maybe the most important part of the of a course like this are the community literacies that are accumulated through a community enquiry into new material. The learners found that they could work together and rely on each other. They wrote nightly reflections and commented and helped each other with their work and reactions to the course. the sense of ‘competition’ between students evaporated. A sense of responsibility to the work at hand became stronger as the students found less and less direct guidance coming from the front of the room.
Our project is not organized as a "course" or learning experience for participants -- and there is much reflection -- sometimes that occurs in the comments or in the sharing of words of wisdom around links added to the wiki. Again, this is related to the difference in project intentions.
How to encourage a culture of giving and contributing on a deeper level beyond fixing typos or adding a link? How to engage people more deeply and deepen some of the community learning literacies? How to create a culture of giving? That may well be a question for a different project or a different community, but something that I'm curious about.
As his Twitter landing pages say, AJ Vaynerchuk "is a 21 year old blogger who also dabbles in social media, marketing, and SEO. He spends most of his time on twitter (follow him!)" I discovered him through a conversation with one of my twitter followers who retweeted something he said (can't remember exactly what).
He has written several excellent practical posts about using twitter - and his take is so refreshing. I learned a lot - thanks AJV.
1. The Art and Science of Retweeting for Twitteraholics
If you only tweet about your own material and reference your own material, it can get boring to your followers and perhaps even to yourself. It's like a person you meet at a cocktail party who only talks about what they do and never asks you a question about your work.
Retweeting is taking someone else's twitter message and rebroadcasting that same message to your followers. The article gives you a structure for this and explains why it adds value. All about relationship building.
2. The Art of Following People on Twitter
The number of people you follow is as important, if not more important than how people are following you. I often get asked this question, "What is the perfect number of people to follow on Twitter?" AJ's post answers that question. The answer is "it depends on you and what you want to do."
This is a wonderful post with lots of good tips on how to have an effective conversation in 140 characters or less. Great stuff.
I really enjoy AJ's twitter style because it is focused on his audience and he is constantly thinking about improvement.
In 2006 Sarah Bunting (Sars) from Tomato Nation said that she'd shave her head if her readers donated $30,000 to DonorsChoose.org. They did, so she did.
Gary Vaynerchuk has come up with a variation on this and he isn't shaving his head. He's calling out someone else to shave their head. In this case, it's Kevin Rose of digg fame.
Meanwhile, if you want to help out DonorsChoose.org and use wordpress, here's something that doesn't require you (or Kevin Rose) to shave. It is a wordpress plugin to installed - and cooked up by social actions.
I recently discovered a blogging work flow tool called Zemanta, that according to its web site will save you time and increase traffic. It works on a number of different blogging platforms, including the one I use, typepad. It recommends links and photos while you write. (Sarah Peretz, Read/Write Web has a more detailed description of how it works and the features.)
Bringing traffic and saving time were attractive enough lures to get me to install it. I took it out for a test drive, initially writing about Zemanta.
I found a few features annoying, most notably the lack of flexibility with the templates. I also didn't like the photos it recommended (and in fact one it suggested was all rights reserved). In some ways, I found using it counter-intuitive to my thinking and reflection process. I was about to ditch the whole experiment when Zemanta recommended two excellent posts by Chris Brogan, "A Sample Blogging Work Flow" and David Peralty on Organizing a Blog Post.
Ah, ha ... maybe it is suggesting that I should write a post about my blogging workflow! That way I can really understand if this tool would help me save time or bring traffic. I also wondered "Can a blogging work flow tool really help you improve the quality of your blogging?"
I created a mindmap of Peralty's step-by-step framework to help me reflect on my steps. I follow something very similar, although I am very reiterative about the process until I publish and similar to Chris Brogan - very organic about the first three steps.
For example, I might not start with a specific a topic in mind. I might instead read through some blog feeds or find interesting links from people I follow on FriendFeed or Twitter and then bookmark posts on topics (within my "beat") that I have an opinion about, something to add, or that I just find interesting. Sometimes I get an idea based on a pattern analysis or connecting several seemingly unconnected posts/ideas together. Many times ideas for topics come from reader comments. (thanks everyone!)
Sometimes I have a specific topic I want to write about and start there. That usually isn't the case. Maybe I should be more proactive in my topic selection and brainstorm a list of topics, pick one, and then go research it.
I also select a visual early on because it helps me think. I might spend a few minutes brainstorming on flickr by typing in combinations of keywords related to ideas to come up with a metaphor. (Usually while listening to Mozart) I guess this could be called research, but it is also idea generation.
After I've written the post, I may leave it in draft for a few days to marinate if I'm not happy with it. I have way too many posts in draft.
The call to action - asking a question at the end to generate discussion is a technique that is integrated into my writing process unless I am doing an interview - but that is a very good point to remember and a useful tip to share with new bloggers.
I think of the publishing and connecting step as what happens after I click the "publish button." If it is a post where I am hoping to get a lot of conversation, I might compose a question for Twitter, my Facebook or LinkedIn status line, add the link to flickr photo illustrating the post, and/or share in the appropriate room on FriendFeed.
How do you get your inspiration or ideas for blog? Do you follow a framework like this? Are you using Zemanta or similar tool? Why or why not?
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Photo by PixelFarmer - Zen Mutt (a rescue dog) - Title "Precision"
The NpTech Tag Summary went on hiatus to give some space to rethink, reinvent -- again. Conversations are getting more distributed and it is getting increasingly difficult to use tagging to discover, aggregate, and summarize them. I'm moving beyond monitoring the NpTech tagged items and meta feeds to incorporate nuggets from micro media sources, nptech bloggers, friend feeds, and networks.
The summaries will be briefer, focused on a social media theme or a social media question related to practice. I hope to go deeper on one theme rather than cover many resources superficially.
We are in the very early stages of how nonprofits and social activists can leverage social networking applications for good causes and just learning what works and what doesn't. I think there are a couple of things that need to be happen before we get to best practices and knowing precisely what works.
Nonprofits need to look at objectives and resources, target their audiences, and think about multi-channel efforts before jumping on the Let's Use Facebook bandwagon. (I think this applies to all social media - see the Cute Dog Theory for more) Activists need to better understand the psychology of Facebook apps and perhaps revise their campaign strategies. Facebook application developers who want to help change the world and work with nonprofits and activists need to better understand how Facebook culture and behavior meshes with activism and fundraising behaviors and workflow.
I raised a question about that last point in the FriendFeed NpTech Room. I may be way off. But as more and more FB apps developers approach nonprofits and nonprofits hone best practices -- I think more dialog and understanding will lead to more effective tools (and multi-channel strategies).
Photo by AllSpice1 (Can you tell how it has been photoshopped?)
In a post titled "Why Social Network Marketing Misses Out: Playing Solitaire at a Party" suggests a fourth reason -- not leveraging the networked effect.
Have you noticed that the card game solitaire doesn’t make for a good party game? It’s the same thing when it comes to social networks. Social networks are about self expression, communication, and networking and sharing with others –it’s more akin to social card games like poker, gin, or even mah jong. The core elements of these games encourage sharing, trading, communicating with other players of the party.
So, as you start to shop around for ideas to meet your objectives for your social marketing activities, remember that repurprosing the traditional microsites is missing out on the social behaviors that are native to social networks."
Geoff Livingston makes a good point about why some efforts using Facebook have not raised huge dollar amounts. He warns us about getting seduced by Shiney Object Syndrome, a common problem where one does not have a target the audience precisely or use a multi-channel strategy - and just sets up a Facebook Cause or Fan Page. Sort of a 2008 version of build it and they will come syndrome we saw in the 1990's ...
As Geoff points out:
What’s the secret sauce? Not buying into social media/Facebook hype .... Precision targeting with intelligent integrated outreach across diverse media yields results.
I totally agree with the point about multi-channel campaigns - it has been my experience too with Facebook and other social media tools (as documented in these case studies).
He also describes some issues with the interaction design of Causes:
In addition, the Social Cause app does not let non-profits a) access the contact information of members b) update members on the cause or c) even send them a receipt for donations, and of course, market again. Instead a third party handles all touches. This is a disaster for cause marketers who simply can’t follow up or integrate with other initiatives.
These insights are not new for nonprofits. Allan Benamer, of the Nonprofit Tech Blog points out that "It’s been suggested Causes has numerous problems in its business logic that seems to stem from a lack of understanding of the giving process. For one thing, it’s very difficult for nonprofits who are actually interested in engaging Causes users to engage that group. Causes doesn’t have a specific backend interface for would-be nonprofit administrators to deal with a Causes members list."
Dan Schultz makes a similar observation in his recent publication "Guide To Facebook Activism" published by Digiactive, a five-month-old site devoted to digital activism. He says, "Facebook may be free, but it has not been designed to suit your needs as an activist organizer. This means you will find that the site's functionality does not always match what you need. You will have to stretch what's there in order to be effective."
Let's also not forget that we have lots to learn about the next generation of donors and how we integrate strategies to reach them using social media.
What do you think gets in the way to "best practices"? Is it only shiny object syndrome? Could it be the interaction design and lack of precision of the tool? Could be not having a multi-channel strategy? Is missing out on how to leverage the networked effect? What do you think?
The NpTech Tag started as an experimental community tagging project in 2005. A loosely coupled group of nonprofit techies and social change activists decided to use the tag "NpTech" to identify web resources that would create an ongoing stream of information to promote and educate those working in nonprofit technology. Through TechSoup's Netsquared project, blogger Beth Kanter, was commissioned to write a weekly summary.
And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider subscribing for free.
On Thursday, a colleague, Rob Cottingham, asked me via Twitter "Are they real people being dropped? Or does Twitter do periodic sweeps for spammers and wipe 'em all at once?" It made wonder what happened to Mr. PharmacyMan who used to follow me on Twitter and seems to no longer be amongst my followers, along with 300 others.
CNET published this article reporting on two reasons why followers are going down. Apparently there was a database glitch where followers were dropped (that was fixed). The other "Twammers" are twitter spammers. Here's the official update from the Twitter Blog and more analysis from Read/Write Web.
In the NpTech FriendFeed Room, Marnie Webb pointed to and commented about this post about the recent Twitter issues, "Why Twitter Must Die." The post talks about how Twitter's loyal fans have stuck around through technical failures (like Fail Whale):
While this looks like simple codependence, Twitter’s users haven’t stuck around through the service’s flailings out of blind loyalty, brand attachment, or gratitude. They’ve hung on for something quite tangible: their commnities.
On Twitter, users create their own communities over time, choosing to follow or be followed by others. This is the secret sauce of social media. Each user’s community is different and unique to the service. In fact, to the user, community is the service.
Earlier this week, I participated as a guest on an NTEN Webinar by John Kenyon and when we discussed Twitter - there were questions about whether it is best to use Twitter as to distribute information about your organization's programs or as a conversation tool. That's a conversation happening in other nonprofit spaces on the Web.
I've analyzed my use of Twitter and its impact on my blog and I have found the latter approach to be far more effective in building an audience for my blog (RSS subscribers) and other efforts. But yet I worry about having a community linked to a platform.
So over the past few months, while I'm still using Twitter, I also do a lot over at FriendFeed. (Alltop recently created the Frienderati - the list of the 100 top users - if you're wondering who to follow) Jeremiah Owyang (who also wrote about the Twitter dropping followers issues) shared an insight about his own Twitter/FriendFeed patterns.
If you’re creating, or critiquing a lot of social content on the web (or are a creator/critic/collector/joiner), you’ve probably noticed that it’s disjointed – content is spread all over the place. If you are regularly creating, rating, ranking content on more than 5 social websites, you should also consider aggregating all of that on Friendfeed.
He goes on to point out the conversational or discussion orientation at FriendFeed -- the commenting on threads and rooms.
I've really been enjoying the FriendFeed NpTech Room (thanks Jcolman). Right now the noise level is lower than Twitter and there is more conversation around the intentional items shared. I'm also finding a few other rooms related to my interest of value.
As Chris Baskind points out in his post about Twitter, platform, and community:
There are plenty of great alternatives to Twitter these days, and more in the pipeline. Move your communities over. Create new ones. If you’re on more than one platform, all the better. But clinging to Twitter’s smoking ruin is both servile and counterproductive. You and your community deserve better. Our future communities on other services deserve better. Twitter must die.
Are you investing in community building on Twitter alternatives? Why or why not?
Photo from Scottish Libraries
This week we've been discussing and building Module 4: The Art of Storytelling as part of NTEN's We Are Media: Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits project. After putting together your nonprofit social media map and addressing internal resistance, you are now ready to consider how you will share your nonprofit's story. This module will cover why storytelling is an essential component of your strategy, how to compose effective stories, and look at excellent examples of nonprofit storytelling in a social media strategy.
We need YOUR examples of good storytelling in a social media strategy context. Maybe you've told the same story fifty different ways or like CogDog Blog used fifty different tools or had fifty different people tell your organization's story.
Think we can get 50 examples? Please add a link to your organization's best storytelling examples using social media whether it be on YouTube, your blogs, flickr, or wherever in the comments or even better on this page over at the WeAreMedia Wiki.
We've been discussing and building Module 4: The Art of Storytelling as part of NTEN's We Are Media: Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits project. After putting together your nonprofit's social media map and addressing internal resistance, you are now ready to consider how you will share your nonprofit's story. This module will cover why storytelling is an essential component of your strategy, how to compose effective stories, and look at excellent examples of nonprofit storytelling in a social media strategy.
We've already discussed why storytelling is important in any medium for nonprofits to use in their fundraising and marketing efforts. And in a social media strategy as Alanna points out, stories help build momentum, energize, and can help bring your organization's mission to live. As Stephen Downes mentions stories capture our attention and points to Jason Ohler's storytelling work in an educational context. Ohler says "good stories hypnotize us."
Agreed, but how? What is an easy, simple framework we can use to tell our organization's story's effectively?
From page 87 in Jason Ohler's excellent book - Digital StoryTelling in the Classroom
I found this resource by Jason Ohler on the art of storytelling. In particular, I like the Visual Portrait of Story for its simplicity. There's been a burst of activity over at the wiki from people offering resources and techniques about effective storytelling practice, including:
What's your favorite step-by-step approach to thinking through your story? What are some of the best resources, tutorials, or blog posts? Add them to the WeAreMedia wiki or in the comments.
Flickr Photo by Yeah It's fIxed (and hoping my roof problems are too)
I'm trying to take my mind off the rain. Via Stephen Downes I discover a post by Doug Johnson called Ten Commandments of Panel Discussions. Let me tell you, this isn't first time I discovered Doug Johnson. Almost ten years ago, I discovered Doug Johnson's book about internet literacy skills - which includes the mankato scale. Fast forward a few years, and someone posts a request on the NTEN list about digital literacy skills. I send a link about Doug Johnson's work. Rick Birmingham, whose Dad worked with Doug, offers to send me an autographed copy of his book!
Kismet ...
So, here in lies another act of Kismet ... Stephen Downes refers to a link that I mentioned in a post and links to Doug Johnson. I wonder if Stephen actually knew we were connected?
I'm so excited by this connection that I almost lost sight of the Doug's brilliant points ...
For conveners:
I. Thou shalt limit the session to a single question about a topic pertinent to the targeted attendees.
II. Thou shalt limit the number of panelists to not more than one per 15 minutes of presentation time allotted. For the math challenged, that means no more than four panelists per hour of session.
III. Thou shalt select panelists based on diversity of view, opinion and experience. Invite an outsider looking in, now and then.
IV. Thou shalt plan for at least one-half of allotted time for discussion based on attendee questions.It is a panel discussion, not sequential lectures, after all.
V. Thou shalt have a moderator who actually moderates - enforcing time limits and keeping panelists on topic. An electric cattle prod brandished now and then is advised.
For participants
VI. Thou shalt stay on topic. Period.
VII. Unless given a longer time to make opening remarks, thou shalt limit thy responses to less than three minutes per response. Wear a damn watch.
VIII. Thou shalt show the participants and fellow panelists respect by speaking directly to the question.
IX. Thou shalt not talk again until each panelist has replied. Heated back-and-forth dialogs are the exception.
X. Thou shalt understand and keep holy the right to remain silent on topics about which thou knows diddly-squat. As Honest Abe once said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
This is great advice as I have phone calls to discuss panel sessions at conferences over the next few months...
You might notice that I haven't been blogging at my usual frenetic pace, cranking out blog posts many times a day. You may also wondering why I have this YouTube music video from Parliament singing "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker."
In my high school days, Parliament was what my friends and I listened to. (I was a little weird in that I would alternated between "We Want the Bump" and Beethoven's 9th Symphony, but I'm getting distracted.) I was trying to find some image, some song, some metaphor to express what happened to me today that has disrupted my work flow ...
Let's just say that I live in an old house, it's been raining like crazy, and there appears to be a hole in the roof.
Let your imagination do the rest. Oh, no, gotta empty the buckets ...
What keeps me excited about social media is the ability to connect with people who you have never met and have a conversation about ideas you care about. But what happens when you go into the real world and attend conferences? Does the audience get a chance to have a conversation with you?
And, how can you facilitate that if you're speaking to a large group? What are some techniques and tools for interactive presenting?
A few months back, Jeremiah Owyang offered this meta synthesis where he raised a few good points about how social media may impact the way we interact in the real world. He wrote about the shift from Me to We and how conference panels are really important manifestation of this:
Speakers, Panelists, and Moderators must monitor back channel
Recently, I wrote a post that has been passed around many conferences on how to successfully moderate a panel. I’m now adding a section suggesting that the moderator first poll his community using some of these tools, and to also monitor the back channel in real time, while not all conferences will embrace a back channel, it’s safe to assume that Twitter will be found at many tech and marketing conferences
Back in 2005, I got a little obsessed with backchannel - after my experience at the London Global Voices Summit. Those were the days before twitter and when we used IRC to facilitate a chat discussion with both remote participants and people in the room. What Global Voices did that was particularly effective was to appoint a "Back Channel Advocate." I can't remember if it was pre-assigned or whether the moderator asked for a volunteer in the room - but that person monitored the back channel and moderator looped them in read out loud the comments or ask speakers questions.
There are different methods of incorporating audience feedback depending on the format of the panel or session. What are the best practices for blending face-to-face and online so it adds to the conversation in the room and doesn't cross the line to "rude" or "heckling"? And, if you want to present something in a instructional way, how can you incorporate interaction without it being a confusing learning experience?
During the NTC social media ROI Case Study Slam I asked the audience to @kanter me with questions. I had these directed to my cell phone. I didn't quite manage to juggle it well.
So, now comes this new toy called "Text The Mob" It lets you create a poll or discussion board and project it on the screen and have everyone send their input via their cell phones and see results instantly!
I'm presenting in August at a conference and I'm so going to test it out.
How do you incorporate audience interaction in a large room discussion format?
This week we'll be discussing and building Module 4: The Art of Storytelling as part of NTEN's We Are Media: Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits project. After putting together your nonprofit's social media map and addressing internal resistance, you are now ready to consider how you will share your nonprofit's story. This module will cover why storytelling is an essential component of your strategy, how to compose effective stories, and look at excellent examples of nonprofit storytelling in a social media strategy.
We know that people are more likely to engage with your organization's cause or contribute money if they hear the story about the impact of your organization's programs versus the dry statistics. Stories help build momentum, energize, and make a social media strategy come alive. Storytelling is an important and wonderful way to engage in a conversation with someone which is the heart and soul of social media.
Storytelling is a passion of mine and I could prattle on and on and write a detailed post answering all the questions. But, I'm more interested in what you think.
Why is storytelling so important for nonprofits and in the context of social media? What skills do you need for effective storytelling? What is an effective step-by-step process? What are the best of the best online resources and who are the best thinkers on this topic?
Tell us what you think over at the wiki or in the comments.
I'm just back from the red eye and really tired - and wanted to capture a few reflections about network effectiveness and resourcing.
Yesterday, I attended a retreat day for the Girl Geeks of the World Cafe at Juanita Brown's beautiful home in Marin County. This is a group of women who have been working/playing together to explore how technology can support the World Cafe global community. Two years ago when this group was meeting in California, Nancy White saw me online and skyped me. In a kismit way, the Fedex man rang the bell at the same time and delivered Juanita Brown's book. As I returned to the skype call, I got to hear Juanita's voice for the first time! Much of my connection has been facilitated by online technology so it was great to participate - finally - face-to-face.
The World Cafe is structured as a 501-c3, but it is really a network. One of the things we discussed was were strategies for resourcing the World Cafe. One of conversation threads was about how to make the story of how this network works more visible - and how a network goes about resourcing itself. We talked a lot about gift economies, storytelling, and some web2.0 tools that facilitate this.
Marnie Webb by JD Lasica
The session I did at Blogher was about tools for community fundraising (Marnie Webb set up a wiki with notes and links). My friend, David Cohn, attended. Dave founded “Spot Us,” a nonprofit that allows an individual or group to take control of news in their community by sharing the cost (crowdfunding) to commission freelance journalists to write important, or uncovered news stories. (Hmm ... here we have another nonprofit that is legally a nonprofit, but operates as a network)
Dave wrote a terrific piece called "Ten Tips for Journalists to Raise Money"
By the way, JD Lasica took some great photos of our session and at BlogHer - check them out.
It strikes that this type of fundraising - personally socially networked fundraising or crowdfunding - is something that a network will do to sustain itself. What are the best practices? What are the conditions that the network will do this for itself? How is this activity best guided?
