Organizational Social Relationship Models and Strategies

Flickr photo by Vidiot: Person Dressed Up Like ATM Machine

Maddie Grant from Social Fish sent me a link to their training 'Buzz2009 Social Media for Associations" on July 9th in Washington, DC featuring presenters Guy Kawasaki and Andy Sernovitz.   She asked me if I would write about it or Tweet it.   She included a handy "retweet" link.  (I asked how she did that and she pointed me over to these simple how-to instructions).

I get a lot of requests like this and I don't have the capacity blog or tweet them all.  However, I tweeted her message and now I'm blogging about it.  Why?  Because I have a relationship with Maddie.  We've gotten to know each other through our respective blogs, I follow her Twitter stream, we retweet each others links, we've met face-to-face and had drinks together.   She didn't just come out the blue and ask me to do something for her - and there's been a history reciprocity.

It's all about the relationships.  Person to person.

I think this was the point that Peter Deitz was making in his slide show "I am not an ATM Machine: Your Charity from the Donor Perspective."  I agree.  In fact, I've been yammering about the importance relationship building for years on this blog in countless posts (see below.)

What does this look like at an organizational level?

Allison Fine and I have been noodling with an evaluation  model that looks social media from an organizational perspective - from social networks to social capital (relationships) to action in the real world.   We've been calling it "Listening and Learning Loops."  We've placed relationships as an outcome or result using the techniques of listening, learning, reflection, micro-planning, and adapting.   Now I'm wondering where the techniques of engagement need to be incorporated. 

Listening is not just a one-way activity.  It eventually shifts to two-way conversation.  Dave Fleet shares a rubric of going from not listening to engaging in conversation to build a relationship.  It's called "Five Level of Social Media Response."    It's quite funny. 

True listening - active listening - involves more than just nodding your head at the right time. It means absorbing what people are saying, acting where appropriate, and letting people know when you’ve acted.

But these ideas about relationships and engagement are looking at from the point of view of marketing, fundraising, and advocacy.   How can we look at this from an networked organization perspective?

Charlene Li's "Tapping the Power of the Groundswell" offers some models on relationship building and engagement in a broader way and more as a strategy.

This slide shows the different type of relationships and shift in thinking.   How do you go from treating your donors like ATM machines and turn them into passionate, loyal, and constant supporters?  And,  that's the problem with how some online fundraising campaigns and applications are designed - they are transactional - vote for me, give me ten dollars, etc. 

 Charlene lays out four strategies. Learning is a combination of listening and learning.   The listening piece is the monitoring and tracking and Charlene Li points out that there is no one right approach to monitoring.  The big challenge is turning the river of noise into insight.   Charlene's model incorporates what Allison and I have been noodling around with and calling  "Micro-Planning" and what Charlene called "flexible, fast learning."  She makes some points about how to improve learning:

• Determine where fast, flexible learning is most needed to support business goals
• Figure out who you need to listen to, and where they are
• Find out who is best at listening to that audience
• Hint: It’s probably not Market Research

The dialog is the engagement piece, help is using these tools to provide customer service, and the innovate is the process of getting crowd sourced feedback to create new programs or products.

These points also make me think about an organizational listening/learning model.  The culture change in nonprofit organizations to embrace this is significant.  It is going to be harder for those organizations that haven't taken the first step. 

My questions: 

• What are the opportunity costs of not thinking of relationships and engagement on a holistic organizational level?
• Can organizations that are younger and have embraced the cloud-like way of working - will they have a better chance of survival in the longer term because they can more easily embrace these ways of working?

Beth's Other Ramblings on Relationships/Engagement in a Social World.

• Social Relationship Development
• Measuring the Return on Relationships
• Is Facebook Causes A One Night Stand?
• How Do Social Network Applications Incorporate the Ladder of Engagement
• Networked Relationship Building and Leveraging Social Capital
• Ladder of Social Engagement - Version 1
• Ladder of Social Engagement - Version 2
• Building Relationships:  Using Your Social Graph for Social Good
• Giving Good Poke

Also, very well worth reading "People First: The Key to Social Media Strategy" by David Nour

Comments

[Modbev]

Our philosophy has been "give-back first". I started to tweet pregnancy tips in 2007 and moved to babytips in 2008. We asked for nothing in the first year; but offered tips, answered questions and provided links to meaty content. It is primarily what we still do, not only through Twitter, but also through our blogs in English and Spanish. After building a following, we now include the occasional advocacy asks or light fundraising promotion.

[Ivan Boothe]

I really like your critique of traditional relationships between nonprofits and supporters as transactional. Whether it's for donations or signatures, I think it speaks to a deeper power shift inherent in embracing the social web.

The old model of nonprofit/social change theory is that the organization has the power. You sign up with an organization in order to have an impact; the organization mobilizes its supporters successfully based on their numbers but fundamentally the strategy is coming from the top.

The new model of social change embodied in the social web is the wisdom of the network. The power isn't inherent in the organization though they may act as the catalyst. In this case people become part of the organization as part of the process of having an impact. Indeed, many of the most effective supporters may be "outside" the organization on paper. The value comes from the network rather than the membership.

Great post, as always!

[Beth Kanter]

@modbev - wow, now I understand why your organization has been so successful with its online community and use of social media. I just read a post about the concept of Give before you try to receive
http://www.doshdosh.com/give-before-you-try-to-get/

[Napoleon]

Great points! Maybe online community should instead be thought of as "community online", the emphasis being on community and relationships first and foremost.

[Erica Goldman]

Wonderful post! A very thoughtful, nuanced examination of relationship-building. Lots to think about.

Regarding your first question – “What are the opportunity costs of not thinking of relationships and engagement on a holistic organizational level?” I would propose that the opportunity cost is as follows:

The organization misses the opportunity to build constituents’ perspectives, preferences, ideas and goals into the very fabric of the organization. Ideally, an organization’s strategy should not simply be defined solely by a small handful of people on the executive team or the board of directors (or the marketing team!), but rather defined by the people who support it, who share the organization’s passion and mission, and who make the organization viable by providing donations, advocating for the organization, volunteering to fulfill its mission, etc. Once these goals are defined, they should be reflected throughout the operations of the organization – including the program execution, partnerships, marketing communications, the donor relations, etc. I think this is a similar idea to those in your June 11th post on Listening Organizations.

As a side note: from my perspective as a marketer, this approach is no different than what a strong, strategic “traditional” marketing team should do for an organization – to engage constituents in meaningful dialogue, build relationships, and incorporate the resulting insights into the organization’s identity. Strategic marketing is much more than communications – it’s identity. As such, I like to see marketing teams working closely with all departments, to help them become as “customer-centric” as possible. (In this case, customers are defined broadly as all stakeholders, including donors, volunteers, etc.)

Social media is simply a (very!) powerful tool to facilitate the activities that the marketing team should already have been doing... and to make it easier for other departments to participate.

Interested in others’ thoughts!

[alice]

Nice article !...but.. I’m a new blogger and I'm confused u_u , all webpages talk about making money for hosting videos, but not all of them are good and I have a lot of ideas. My brother recommended me to visit www.vismomedia.com, he said I’ts a good webpage for bloggers. What’s your opinion ¿?

[Alex Steed]

Beth,

I read every day, and you know I've long been a fan. I think you've hit many nails on the head here, both in observation and constructive question asking.

I am really commenting because I wanted to note - and I hadn't when it had originally gone up - how much I enjoy the title: "Is Facebook Causes A One Night Stand?"

Amazing.