Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

What about Pscyho Socialgraphics?

Sigmund Freud

I've been buried putting the final touches on some new curriculum for social media and nonprofit peer learning approaches.  It's the dance floor and the balcony - both strategy and tactics but deployed in a lab with focused experiments, measurement, reflection and learning from peers.  And, most importantly, designed for people to have fun doing it.  (I'm drawing my inspiration from 4th grade science experiments and science fair.)

To build an effective strategy, one needs to identify an objective that links to a communications goal or theory of change and, of course, identify the audience.

I've been translating different audience analysis frameworks to a nonprofit context.    These include:

• Audience Target Group Identification:   This is the most important question and may be informed by research or listening.  Who is target group you need to reach with your overall communications objective?  For this, I'm drawing on the Smart Chart of Kristen Grim and from working with a cadre of smart nonprofit communications folks who have remixed the social media game.

• Primary and Secondary Social Media Research:   Once the audience is defined, it is important to fill in the gaps with primary or secondary research.  The primary research includes surveys, interviews, and observation.  I've been collecting secondary research and stats on social media usage and typically share synthesis of the most recent information in every workshop.  

• Socialgraphics:  I have been using the Forrest Social Technographics framework, but it was developed a while ago and the environment has changed.  A few months ago, Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang, offered a free webinar about Socialgraphics or understanding your audiences' social behavior.  They presented a framework called "The Enagement Pyramid" which is based on Jake McKee's 90-1-9 rule and gave different corporate use cases for social behavior for each level.  I used the framework to analyze nonprofit examples. I also created some fun group exercises for folks to learn the concepts.

Pscyho Socialgraphics!!

In thinking about this, I felt there was something important missing.  But, then I stumbled across a post by my colleague Adrian Chan who is an expert in social interaction design and I've had the opportunity to get to know and talk shop with for hours.   His recent post Why User Competencies Matter in Social Design was a major breakthrough for me and circled me back to Jennifer Aaker's research.   

In designing for social participation, Adrian Chan urges us to consider user goals and needs — even interests, features, functionality, and adoption.   Best practices and popular ways of using social media guide us in our decisions.   What is also important to consider users psychological motivations and build that into your strategy.   Here's his suggestions:

Goals and rewards – Consider the kinds of goals you might set and the rewards that may be earned by users who reach them. These might be personal goals and rewards levels, tasks, challenges, or points. Or social goals and rewards, resulting in status, ranking, visibility, lists, features and spotlighting members.

Moods and feelings – Give expressive users ways in which to communicate their moods and feelings. For example, emoticons and gifts, or icons to be used and exchanged with friends or attached to messages and content. These small gestures, while small, can be curiously compelling.

Knowledge and learning – For users interested in research, information, bookmarking, and more search and browse-related activities, provide ways to share discoveries. Capture those learned moments and make them visible — perhaps surface and validate experts and top contributors.

Giving and receiving – For users who enjoy social transactions provide gifts and a means of passing them around privately and publicly. Gifting is a highly social form of communication, and besides being kind, engages a sense of reciprocity in most of us. So it’s naturally contagious.

Helping and assisting – Some users are just naturally good at paying attention to others, and enjoy helping and assisting those with needs or questions. Design ways to surface these needs and create channels by which helpers can pitch in.

Reviewing, recommending, and rating – Users equipped with opinions and a sense of taste can make valuable reviewers and recommenders. Design ways to capture their contributions as social content. This can be designed then into lists, favorite, trends, news and more.

Asking and answering – In a world of search, there are still many occasions when users want to ask questions and get personal answers. And in a world of search results, there are those who enjoy sharing their knowledge, expertise, and help. But questions disappear if they are not captured and paid attention to.

Announcing and sharing – There are users so on top of news that furnishing them with means to announce their discoveries makes for an easy and effective way to keep social content fresh and interaction active. Topical organization, along with trends, help users sort and filter what’s relevant to them.

What do you know about the target audience you are trying to reach with your social media strategy?

A Tale of Two Nonprofit and Social Media Adoption Surveys

Social Impact Nonprofit Social Media Survey

View more presentations from Weber Shandwick Social Impact.

The results of two new research studies about nonprofits and adoption of social media were released this week.  One focuses on telling nonprofits not to bother with social media, the other provides some strategic ways to move forward.

Weber Shandwick released the results of a survey of 200 nonprofit and foundation executives to explore how their organizations (range of budgets) are using social media and the value they derive from these efforts.   Here's the topline results:

• There is extensive experimentation with social media in the nonprofit sector, but only half (51%) surveyed are active users
• Most nonprofits (67%) say social media is changing how they communicate with broad external audiences, but not narrower categories of stakeholders
• Most nonprofits (52%) do not currently have the infrastructure, staff and expertise necessary to take full advantage of social media’s potential
• Nonprofit executives (83%) understand that social media makes it easier for supporters to organize independently – underscoring how critical it is for nonprofits to demonstrate their value and relevance to advocates
• Ultimately, for most nonprofit executives (79%), the true value of social media has yet to be determined for their organizations

The findings of this research offer insights into how nonprofits and foundations can optimize their use of social media in the future.

Successful nonprofit organizations will:

• Move from experimentation to implementation of strategic programs that drive digital engagement
• Focus on two-way conversations that build meaningful and sustainable connections with a range of priority audiences
• Invest in social media capacity as a means of achieving brand building, advocacy and fundraising goals
• Demonstrate their unique impact to underscore relevance to advocates
• Measure social media with key metrics for visibility, engagement and advocacy 

The other survey, implemented by Philanthropy Action, focuses on midsized nonprofits.  The headline is:  Social Network and Mid-Size Nonprofits:  What's The Use?

The survey looked at results and numbers and concludes that social media is not very effective and that midsize organizations should not waste time or effort.   The survey was implemented between July 2008 and March 2009 - and the results presented here are focused on impact metrics

In terms of fundraising and attracting volunteers, metrics that most nonprofit boards and executive directors highly value, the available evidence suggests that social media is not very effective. To be fair, that evidence is limited. To date, there are only two surveys that we know of, one which we conducted, that have sought to quantify the impact of social technologies in terms familiar to executive directors and boards. In both cases, the results show that social technologies are not delivering much in terms of fundraising or attracting volunteers. While advocates of social technologies rightly point out that these are not the only metrics by which social technologies should be judged, they are the metrics that the majority of respondents to our survey cited as driving their participation. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of respondents to our survey say they are going to increase their investment in the use of social networking.

Certainly there are different motivations of the sponsors of these surveys, different methodologies, and different conclusions. 

My opinion is that nonprofits should not ditch their efforts in social media.  It takes time to get results, like anything else.  You need to listen, engagement, develop relationships, scale within your organization, and have the capacity to implement strategically.  This takes time and social media for nonprofits is still in its infancy.  There are no silver bullets.  The results are in developing listeners and participants who may later become supporters.

It’s time to set realistic outcomes, look for strategic efficiencies, and define and share best practices. I don't think it is a good idea to simply dismiss social media.  I think it is important to have the conversation, but don't look at ROI in such a narrow - dollars only.   Look at the missed opportunity costs of not participating - as well as take it as an opportunity to look at everything you're doing and figure out what isn't working and try social media in its place.  It also important to keep measuring and improving.

What does your nonprofit think?   Social media forget about it or move forward but implement strategically?  Do you think social media is a waste of time for your organization or a technique in the early stages that needs more time to mature?

Update:  The researchers responded that their conclusion was that midsize nonprofits should not use social media for fundraising.  Sure didn't get that from the title.   Further clarification point:

I think the most interesting "alternative" view of the data we collected is how many orgs reported no success on the metrics that they initially cared about but that they were planning on investing more. There are two possibilities to explain that: 1) they are caught up in shiny object syndrome and thinking "the reason it's not working is we haven't invested enough", or 2) they are finding value other than what they expected and that value is enough to justify increased investment.

This is a point I make over and over again - use the right metrics.   Social media metrics - particularly in the early stages of use - are softer ones - like learning and adapting, and engagement.  Once you've engagement full measure, then start counting conversions.

 

Teens and Twitter: A Mini Focus Group with Teens

Earlier this week, I had an opportunity to run the social media strategy game with senior program staff at the Packard Foundation.  I used the same fictional organization, the Earth Worm Sustainability Network, as I used in the Network Effectiveness Grantee Convening back in May.  

This is the first time I ran it for people all from the same organization, with a limited amount of time, and mix of experience.   I am feeling an urge to tinker again with the cards and formats, more specifically to add cards for listening/engagement on social networks.  Using it an internal training, it is important to have someone with hands-on experience in each group and this spreads the organizational learning. 

I was also reminded by one very smart colleague that the Twitter audience card had out-of-date information.  It was from April, 2008!   At that time, the audience skewed younger.   In the last few months, Twitter has become more popular with old people.

The definition of "old people" is pretty broad and is often used to describe both the 35-54 age segment and over age 55 segment, particularly with studies that examine the increase of "older users" on social network sites.   I'm in the 35-54 segment, so after asking where my rocker is on twitter,  Howard Rheingold quipped, that he must be "very old," but would much prefer the label geezer.   I guess that makes me a pre-geezer.

Meanwhile, yesterday Mashable reported that "Tweets Don't Tweet"

If you’re under 25 and use Twitter, you’re not the source of the site’s tremendous growth. While we recently questioned the findings of a largely anecdotal report from Morgan Stanley written by a 15 year old, Nielsen has now produced figures that confirm the trend: young people don’t Tweet.

The Mashable blog raised the question, "Why don't they tweet?"   (Be sure to read Dannah Boyd's take on the research)

International Youth Conference

View more presentations from kanter.

 

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to ask about 100 teens attending the Asian Liver Center's Youth Leadership Conference on Asian and Pacific Islander Health this question directly.  The results are in the video above.  The majority of folks in the room were between the ages of 16-18 and it those who feel Twitter is creepy, lame, stupid, and a waste.  "Twitter is where the stalkers are."  They prefer Facebook because it is easier to make friends.    The college students in the room, however, disagreed.  They felt it was useful for keeping in touch with friends.   (See Zephoria's analysis of the "Teens Don't Tweet" research)

I was invited to present to this group about how nonprofits were using social media effectively.   These young people consist of the most talented and enthusiastic high school students from around the country who were brought together on the Stanford campus to learn about the figut against hepatitis B (HBV), scientific and epidemic aspects of the disease to strategies of outreach and education.   They were working together in teams to apply their knowledge to design an outreach event that also incorporated social media.

After the presentation, I got asked some terrific questions as these younger leaders of tommorrow grappled with adding social media to their outreach plan.  I invited them all to join my fan page or rather focus group so we could continue the conversation.  I got to meet some great folks like Amy Yu and Chrstine Li.

How does knowing more about the demographics of Twitter users shape your social media strategy?

Study Provides A Baseline for Nonprofit Use of Social Networks

During the NTC, ThePort Network, Inc, NTEN, and Common Knowledge released results of a survey that examines the use of social networking as a marketing and fundraising tool.  There was also a webinar presentation of the results.   The survey polled 978 nonprofit professionals about their organizations’ use of commercial social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), as well as their own hosted social networking communities.

Some definitions they used in the study:

"House Social Network" refers to a socialnetworking community built on a nonprofit's own web site. 

"Commercial Social Network" An online community platform owned and operated by a corporation such as Facebook.

Where do branded social networks like Ning sites fall? 

The survey provides us with a baseline of social network use by nonprofits.

Some highlights:

• Capacity:  Nonprofits are committing staff and budgets to support social network projects and presences, although budgets are small with four-fifths of respondents reporting at least one-quarter of a full-time staff person (10 hours per week) to social network strategy implementation. More than half of respondents expect their staffing or budgets to increase over the next 12 months. According to the survey, nonprofits are more likely to grow expertise from within than use outside help. 

• Strategy: Nonprofits prefer to use more traditional communications and marketing tactics to promote their social network presence – prioritizing web site, email list and events to get the word out about their online communities. 

• Policy: The communications and marketing departments are most likely to own the social network project, with fundraising and executive management the next most common boosters of the nonprofit’s social network projects.

• ROI: Very few nonprofit survey respondents are generating real revenue on commercial social networks like Facebook or branded social networks on their web sites. On Facebook, about 39.9% of respondents have raised money via fundraising, but 29.1% have raised $500 or less over the past 12 months.  On social networks on the organization’s web site, 25.2% of nonprofits survey respondents are fundraising and 1/3 of these fundraisers accumulated $10,000 or more over the last year.

Some thoughts

Capacity

A few months ago, I came up with a somewhat arbitrary framework to answer the age-old question, "How Much Time Does It Take To Do Social Media?" and contributed it to the WeAreMedia Wiki.   I laid it out in terms of type of project and minimum amount of time to accomplish.  I scaled the projects in terms of crawl, walk, run and fly.    For social networking projects which is all about online community management, I estimated 20 hours to get results.   (Those are flying projects)

Community management is more than blasting out messages to members of a Facebook group or posting or streaming content onto your house social network.  It's NOT about "Here's my crap and now let's talk about it."   The work flow is about relationship building.  I was quoted as saying that USAToday. That takes time and skills.

So, it isn't necessarily a function of how much staff time is allocated, although I believe 20 hours is probably the minimum.  It's how that time is being spent.  Is it spent deploying "traditional marketing tactics" or the hard work of community building one relationship at a time.  If not the latter, chances are the effort won't be as successful.

Strategy

My colleague, Allison Fine, in her analysis of the study wondered why groups would choose to set up a house social network rather than use a commercial site and what are the benefits and drawbacks of doing so?  There's a lot of advice available on how to make that decision (see slide 30), but there's a lot to be learned about the steps nonprofits are taking to develop their online community strategy on social networks or house social networks and a greater understanding of the life cycle of a nonprofit's social network community.

What isn't being discussed or described, except in self-organized pockets of the social web
is the overlap between communities and networks.  Remember self-organized networks of people coming together in a moment don't just happen all alone, as Clay Shirky reminded us - there's a core in the center.  

Another point on strategy is whether or not the social network (house or otherwise) is using more of a "cross-posting" strategy versus community building effort - and having an understanding of the pros/cons and potential results.


Policy

According to the survey, the communications and marketing departments are most likely to own the social network.  I wonder how or if  silo culture is or is not getting in the way of better results and the whole nonprofit organization owning its social networking effort.  We are seeing more and more nonprofits develop effective social networking policies that may pave the way for more higher returns if culture is considered.  


Metrics

At least the survey did not proclaim that lack of impressive dollar amounts raised as a failure of nonprofits using social networks.  There's a lot more learning -- especially around connecting social networking results to real change that needs to be happened.  And that won't happen because scarcity mindsets keep us focused on using social media for other objectives.

The survey asked which metrics respondents used in their definition of success for their “house social networks” (social networking community built on a nonprofit’s web site). Respondents indicated that they used number of members and the amount of user-generated content, with fundraising was a lowest ranked metric. What’s unclear is whether or not nonprofits in the survey are measuring engagement and return on relationships.  Of course, that would assume a broader use of networks than just fundraising and marketing, take for example this recent article about social networks and nonprofits from USAToday.

The study provides a great baseline for nonprofits and social networking activity from here forward.

Research Studies of Nonprofit and Social Media Adoption

Inside the Social Networking Nonprofit Study by Influential Marketing Blog

Overbook Foundation Web 2.0 Study by Allison Fine
Nonprofit Technology Survey from Robert Morris University (all technology, includes 1-2 questions for social media use)
Blogging for the Hearts of Donors by Eric Mattson
Social Media Adoption Study by Eric Mattson
Social Media for Social Causes Study

Marketers Are Getting Results With Social Media

Source: Marketing Charts

This chart and data comes from a study  on how marketers are using social media by Michael Stelzner, sponsored by the upcoming Social Media Success Summit 2009.

Where's the nonprofit version of this study?

Audience for Social Networks Is Aging: Growth in 35-49 Age Group Says New Nielson Report

According to a report released yesterday by Nielsen Online (download PDF). social networks and blogs have become the fourth most popular online destinations.   And, gasp, the report lists e-mail as No. 5 on the list of users' preferred online tools.  (Although this report from Hitwise finds that visits to gmail surpassed YouTube)

There's been growth in older segments, most notably the 35-49 segment:

As an entity moves from being niche to a major player the composition, or make-up, of its audience changes. Social networks online started out amongst the younger audience. However, as the networks have become more mainstream with the passage of time, it isn’t surprising to see the audience becoming broader and older. This shift has primarily been driven by Facebook, whose successful formula opened up the possibilities of social networking to a much wider audience.

In terms of sheer audience numbers, for example, the greatest growth for Facebook has come from people aged 35-49 years of age (+24.1 million).  Furthermore, Facebook has added almost twice as many 50-64 year olds visitors (+13.6 million) than it has added under 18 year old visitors (+7.3 million).

Consequently, people under 18 years old are making up less of the social network and blogging audience, whereas the 50+ age group are accounting for more of the audience.

In an article from CW, there is a quote from the study's author:

"Social networking isn't just growing rapidly, it's evolving -- both in terms of a broader audience and compelling new functionality."

For more reports on the aging of social networks, see "How Your Nonprofit Can Reach Babyboomers With Social Media"

What are the implications for your nonprofit organization's social networking strategy?

State of the Twittersphere: What It Means For Nonprofit Best Practices on Twitter

Source: State of the Twittersphere Report

I spend a lot of time listening on the social web using a radar that I've put together with a combination of free tools  and the Stradivarius Violin of listening tools, Radian 6.   One topic that I regularly track are research reports, including demographic, technographics, and overall numbers for social media sites.  I have a clipping file in a flickr set called Social Media Research Snippets.  

I like to track the data, but also think about what it means for nonprofits.

State of the Twittersphere

HubSpot has just shared the State of the Twittersphere report for Q4 2008.   It is based on real data pulled from a huge number of Twitter profiles of people who have used Twitter Grader.

Twitter grader is a measure of authority and reach of a Twitter user. My grade is 100 which means that my account scores higher than 100.0 percent of the 714018 users that have been graded. It is sort of like Technorati for Twitter.

Here's a summary of the data from the report:
- Twitter is dominated by newer users - 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008
- An estimated 5-10 thousand new accounts are opened per day
- 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers
- 9% of Twitter users follow no one at all
- There is a strong correlation between the number of followers you have and the number of people you follow

David Meerman Scott offers some thoughts about the implications of these numbers.   His main point is that Twitter is not an advertising tool or spam tool.  That nonprofits and companies should not set up a Twitter account to "prattle on about their products and services."  He is predicting a demise of inanimate objects as Twitter accounts or those who don't represent real people, just marketing vehicles for brands.

Nonprofit Best Practices on Twitter

I happen to catch the question above from the Idealist.   I found it because I have an RSS feed for a twitter search on the nptech tag.  I also track an ego feed on Twitter through Radian 6 and caught wind of this tweet about best practices and twitter. 

And then I remember answering a similar question during the Convio Webinar last week.  So, here's some quick points about how nonprofits should consider using Twitter if they want to be effective.

Twitter Is Not A Billboard and It's Not All About You

• Don't even think of Twitter as a billboard to post your message.  It doesn't work.  If you want learn the fine art of having a conversation on Twitter, follow and observe the masters.  Chris Brogan for starters.  Learn how to engage your followers.   Provide quick human answers to your followers, ask questions, direct people to great resources (not your own 1:20 ratio - point to one of your resources for every twenty resources), stay in touch without being intrusive, no when to direct message, be funny, etc.   Tara Hunt has a fabulous list of what to Tweet if you're just getting started.  And Be sure to avoid these mistakes.

Listen Before You Start Talking

• Don't jump in without listening to others in your space using Twitter.  Set up a Twitter listening post for your nonprofit as a first step.  Here's how.   Jumping in to talk or spread your message is a mistake.   It's like starting a blog without first following and commenting on others blog.

Personality Must Be Included, Forget The Boring Institutional Biolerplate

• On Twitter, your organization should have a personality. That's how some companies have been successful on Twitter- like Frank at Comcast or Lionel at Dell.   I like the way NTEN does it. Holly Ross's Twitter account is ntenhross - so it is branded as both her and her organization.  There is also a generic organization one - but a lot of NTEN conversations happen through Holly and other staff.

On Twitter, Everyone Should Know That You're A Human

• Make your profile human, warm, and inviting.  Not cold and institutional.  Here's some terrific tips about how your profile can attract more followers. Here's a neat tool to help you design your profile.  The worst thing you can do is not upload a photo or fill out the your profile.  Identify who you are and inc lude a link.  I link my profile to a Twitter Landing page.  I got the idea for a Twitter Landing  from Laura Fitton (@pistachio) a virtuoso Twitter user who I observed to learn best practices.

Respond to Followers

• The worst thing you can do is ignore people who ask you questions or share comments.  Respond.  If you use a tool like Tweetdeck, it will be easy for you reply to your @messages even if they don't mention you in the beginning.    This is part of my morning routine, to respond to replies.    Here's a guide to replies.

The image above is from a post by Rohit Bhargava that sums up the advice rather nicely.

Other posts

• Nonprofit Best Practices on Twitter
• How To Set Up A Nonprofit Listening Post on Twitter
• Twitter Handbook
• Twitter bookmarks on delicious.com
• Five Mistakes International NGOs make when using Twitter
• Get Started Right with Your Nonprofit on Twitter
• Laura Lee Dooley's Twitter Tools Bookmarks
  
• WeAreMedia Twitter Tool Box Link
• Brian Solis RoundupTwitter tools
• Make A Tweet Plan

What other nonprofit Twitter best practices would you add to the list?