Getting Your Nonprofit Organization Ready To Listen

Flickr Photo by PaulGi

Your organization has identified a social media objective, audience, strategy, tools, measurement, and experiment.   You know your first step is listening, but before you jump into a river of conversations and keywords and even before you touch the tools, you need to be ready to listen.

Here's a few steps:

Why are you listening?

Here are a few conversation starters that you may want to have with your social media team on staff to help you prioritize your listening.

• What are people saying about our organization ("brand")? 
• Are there negative issues/complaints that we need to correct?
• Is there an articulated need that we can help fulfill?
• Are there insights we can gather than can help us improve a program?
• What do they like or dislike about your program or service?
• What ideas might they offer for new services or marketing/fundraising campaigns?
• Who are the influential voices in the social media space covering your issue area or topical domain?
• What communities have already formed on social media outposts around our organization, issue, or topic area?  Does it make sense for us to maintain a presence there?

List Five Ways You Plan To Use the Information

It is important to link your listening to actual decisions or action.   Next, have a brainstorm session with your team about how you will use what you learn.  

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Internal Process

There are many different ways that you can organize your listening.  

• Who in the organization will do the listening?
• Who is empowered to do the responding?
• What is your policy about responding?
• Do you have to respond to every comment?
• How much time will you allocate to listening every day?
• How will you share the information with your team?
• Not everyone has to do the deep dive or heavy lifting, how will you organize your team effort?
• How will you analyze the results of what you heard, analyze patterns, and share insights?
• How will we you know if listening has be useful?

Qui Diaz, The Big Dig: Online Listening and Research
Amy Naslund, How and Why of Listening
David Alston, Top Reasons To Listen
KD Paine, 27 Different Types of Conversations
Beth Kanter, Listening Literacy Skills
Beth Kanter How Listening Returns Value for Nonprofits

Comments

[David Alston]

Great list Beth, having this type of post provides a great how-to guide to get started with listening right away. Thanks for the link out to the Top 10 Reasons post. Hope it is helpful for your readers. Cheers. David

[Kobie]

Good post. Like 'Cheers' - where everyone knows your name.

What is the complaint about big companies and government - they don't hear me. What do we like about small local shops - they know and cator to me.

Philosophy. Paint is sold by many Home depot, Lows, SEARS, Wal*Mart, local hard ware store, etc. So why pick one over the other when they sell the same item? Service. People want someone to help. Here products are not the answer - it is listening and hearing.

Same for a disaster. The government, that big thing in the city of monumnets, started listening and accepting emails. Well one department called HHS did. People where civil, helpful and attentive.

Good comment.
Kobie
www.newfluwiki2.com
"A wise man has long ears, big eyes and a small mouth" - Russian proverb

[Walter]

Beth,

I have a question about listening with free tools in a nonprofit environment. Should employees charged with listening for an organization be using their own personal accounts to do so? For instance, if I am going to be using Google Reader to listen, should I have a separate Google account set up for this purpose? Or is it OK to use my personal account for work-related feeds as well as feeds set up for my own interest?

[Ari Herzog]

This is great advice for a full-time organization, but what about part-time ones? What about the organizations staffed by volunteers and which exist to further a mission of ideas?

For instance, the local Rotary Club can follow your above advice; the local high school PTO is more fluid and may not have the time or resources, unless individual members/officers choose to do it.

How do you tell the PTO act like the Rotary Club?

[Beth Kanter]

This advice is for any organization regardless of size that wants its listening to be effective. You have to understand why you are listening and what decisions you'll link it to.

In terms of time, you can get started using these tools - searching on your organization's name - and spending less than half hour day once your system is set up and you can do the work flow
http://www.wearemedia.org/Tool+Box+Monitoring+and+Tracking

[Adam]

Setting up a way to monitor and measure feedback is essential for success with social media. In my experience, organizations that have their own social media and social networks setup can interact directly with members to elicit feedback.

To monitor other social media, it's always a great idea to use free tools such as Twitter keyword monitoring or Techrigy's SM2.

[kristen williams]

hi im kristen williams i have an orginization called A PLACE IN THE SON i can never get any one to donate ,clothes or any thing if you are reading this blog please email.ktwilliams97@gmail.com,or call (919)359-0345]or (919)271-8549 any donations are accepted.We are looking for any thing for people who do not have any thing

thank you:kristen williams