There are different ways to close the loop between social media and offline action as we get better integrating social media into our overall marketing and communications plans. Think in both directions - offline to online and online to offline. And, remember it is important to track your tactics to see which ones work.
Offline to Online: Window Clings and Sandwich Boards
I was in Oakland, CA and discovered Fenton's Creamery, famous for its ice cream. The line was out the door.
Lines are good because you can contemplate that important decision: What flavor? While I was debating between chocolate chocolate chip and coconut pineapple 95% fat free flavors, I noticed a small sandwich board sign promoting Fenton's Facebook Page. I "liked it" from my iPhone.
I posted the above photo on my Facebook page, primarily to test how different content sparks interaction on my own Facebook page. But as a bonus, I learned from Facebook expert Mari Smith, that sandwich boards and window clings with Facebook and Twitter IDS are an effective technique to close the loop between offline and social media.
Nonprofits: Increasing Engagement
In the nonprofit world, we've been focusing on the online to offline connection, or more specifically how to turn Slacktivists into Activists with Social Media. This excellent post by my business partner, Geoff Livingston, provides some excellent tips for encouraging deeper engagement from your nonprofit's online social media friends and fans.
Creative Ways to Track
I've also been reading about tips
to track how your online social network activities are driving offline
actions. While these methods are geared for small business, they could
be easily used by nonprofits. They include:
#1: Use Google Voice Number on All Social Media Profiles and Track #2: Promote Offline Events On Social Media #3: Offer Coupons Exclusive to Social Media Channels #4: Host A Tweet Up #5: Connect Social Media and Email Campaigns
This year, we are seeing the twin trends of greater awareness from nonprofits for the need to integrate social media with existing marketing and communications plans while at the same time audiences are yearning for greater social media engagement from the charities and causes they love
most. This could be a win-win situation for your nonprofit organization if stop thinking of your social media channel in a silo.
A few questions:
What are you doing to encourage offline ---> online action and what are you doing to encourage online--> offline action?
I always start with an opportunity to learn a little bit about the audience. I started with a variation of of the human spectra gram, a technique I learned from colleague Allen Gunn from Aspiration. Colleague Kaliya Hamlin has this description. I do agree/disagree to statements like "Social media is a waste of time" or I do a spectra gram based on personal comfort level and whether or not they feel social media is valuable for their agency. I select what I do based on an online pre-survey.
For this group, I felt it was important to ask about personal comfort/experience and whether or not they felt social media had any value for their agency. We had an interesting discussion between those who had comfort and those who did not. Since the morning keynote was a session on nonprofit leadership by two of the co-authors of Working Across Generations, Frances Kunreuther and Helen Kim, while they were lined up, I did a quick poll by generation.
Not surprising, generations somewhat correlated with social media experience/comfort level with one exception. A veterans in the room were in the middle because "we have grandchildren who have helped us understand Facebook." We also had a conversation about - regardless of their personal comfort level, did they think social media was important for their agency to embrace. The group, for the most part, was curious.
Next I covered some points about how social media might be valuable to an agency whose mission is referral and discussing points of pain. For example, how many get excessive emails or phone calls requesting information and how could be reduced by adding a social channel? Next I covered some strategy points related to learning, capacity, and organizational culture.
Bryce Skofield presented a case study about how their agency was using social media. He shared some points about their internal use of social media - blogs - as a strategy to get people comfortable. He then talked about how they were using the various social media channels. He shared that they have decided to move forward with social strategy even though they also need a web site makeover - and that some of the listening on social channels will guide their redesign. He shared some great nuggets about easy starter points - for example adding their social media channel addresses to every print publication, business card, and web site.
Bryce shared a great analogy about the importance of a social media policy. "If you work for a YMCA, there might be a policy about not wearing your YMCA T-Shirt to local bar on a Saturday if you're going drinking off hours. There could potentially be a bad reflection back to the institution ... "
He shared some great wisdom about the agency's YouTube Channel. They have used the Flip Camera nonprofit pricing to purchase cameras for staff members, offered a little or not training, and encouraged them to make videos about the agency. In fact, they did a competition on staff on the lead up to the annual meeting. As part of his job, he's done staff training on video editing software for those that wanted it.
Even
at 4 p.m. on a gray day with drinks just 30 minutes away, philanthropic
communicators enjoyed the social media game (photo by Thom Clark)
Note from Beth: I'm at Pop!Tech in Maine where I did the beta version of the social media strategy game for Pop!Tech Fellows. (Reflections coming soon!) Last week, Gordon used a version of the game at a conference in NYC. His reflections below. One thing I haven't been doing over the years is documenting the instructional design or lesson plan. It's been in my head. Some of the issues that Gordon describes below I've found creative ways to address those. (Ever hear of make it up as you go along?) Another trainer is adapting the game for use in a large environmental organization will be creating a train the trainers guide and template and it will be added to the site.
At
noon Friday with the annual conference over and done till next fall’s
event (slated for Los Angeles, BTW), someone from the Boston-based Barr
Foundation who participated in the Communications Network
social media game tracked me down–to return the cards his group used
during the game. “No, you keep them–if you want, take them back to your
organization and try this at your office,” I said.
He was one of eight folks who left with sets of the game cards. (the presentation and handouts can be downloaded here and more on the game as originally conceived and developed by Beth and David Wilcox is here).
One of my main reflections on presenting the social media game at
the conference is about diffusion of ideas across the nonprofit sector:
given especially that we are somewhat limited in the channels available
to communicate new ideas and practices across nonprofits and
philanthropy, the generosity of Beth and David Wilcox in sharing this
method and the key role of Creative Commons in providing a way to structure that kind of sharing is truly helping to build the sector.
We played with 6 groups of about 7 people each. Each group chose s
scenario from a range of options. We started at 4 p.m., I made my way
through about 25 minutes of introductory “teach” (ie, “talk” with some
q and a) and then, right around the time that thoughts are usually
turning to the bar… the crowd really got into it! All about the genius
of the game and the value of learning from, or maybe that should be
with, each other (see Beth’s post on social learning from last week).
A couple thoughts on how the game works, what appeared to be key
learning moments for the group at the CommNetwork conference, and, per
Christine Mulvin, 1 thing you’ve got to have to play it well:
It’s about strategy
One nice learning moment for the CommNet folks came when two groups
chose to be an international arts organization. As the first of these
groups presented their strategy, the people in the second group started
laughing—they had made exactly the same choices. The fact that two
groups with the same goal independently came to essentially the same
strategy helped people to understand there could actually be, if not
exactly right and wrong solutions, at least some solutions to a problem
that are more effective than others.
We know how to make choices, even when we don’t have all the data:
Here was another learning moment and it’s one of the reasons why I like
the social media game so much. Most people do not know about every
single Web 2.0 tool out there. Let me rephrase that. Probably no human
being knows about every Web 2.0 tool out there. Just too darn many.
That’s overwhelming and intimidating, and it causes us to forget that
what we’re really good at is not being walking encyclopedias, but
making good choices.
The game throws people into a situation where they are forced to
make choices. By the end, they are asking questions that really have
nothing to do with the tools, but rather surface some of the other key
barriers to greater social media implementation.
For example someone asked, during the debrief of the game, what
policy to follow on using images of people, such as photographs of
children. We discussed creative commons, of course, and some policy
options and release forms and so forth—but then went on to point out
that release forms is not a social media problem—it’s more human
relations and logistical in nature.
A lot of the hidden barriers to social media adoption (hidden in the
sense that they are not in the top 10 challenges list most folks reel
off, but are laying in wait just one step ahead, after the workshop is
over are just these kinds of problems. But helping people practice
making choices with social media helps to ground all the new
opportunities in what we already know and understand.
The Social Media Game Makes Us Draw on Our Experiences
As a side note, it’s wonderful how when people get into the game they
bring their own experiences into it. After the session wrapped up, one
of the participants added that his wife works at an arts organization;
he told me he drew on what he knew about her work to help fill in the
gaps in the story the objective cards had left. It’s another reason the
game works—because it allows people to draw on their experiences of
making choices in the past, tallying with what they already know how to
do.
Social Media Game Note
That brings me to my last point, one that was raised by Christine
Mulvin of Cincinnati. She noted that the game may not work for total
beginners: if no-one at the table has any experience with social media
tools, the short blurbs about each tool that are included on the cards
just won’t be enough information to make good choices. So she
recommends and I think she’s right that at least one person in each
team has to be at least a bit conversant with Web 2.0. (no, that’s not
a contradiction: you need to know something about Web 2.0 to be
overwhelmed by the variety of tools out there, no?)
Hopefully many of the 40-odd folks at the workshop last week will go
out and play more social media games, and those who participate in
those sessions will lead the game on their own, after which the people
in those workshops will play the game with still others, after which… well you get the idea!
Gordon Mayer is vice president of Community Media Workshop, a nonprofit that coaches and trains mostly Midwestern volunteer and staff nonprofit communicators on communications strategy, social media, media relations, and related topics. His hobbies inlcude playing with his kids and wondering what the hell will happen next to the news business.
Peter Plastrik and Madeleine Taylor co-wrote "Net Gains," one of the first practical handbooks on building and working in networks for social change. Whether it is a network of organizations or individuals, this handbook provides a wealth of theory and practice on build, manage, and fine tune a network.
Peter is a president and co-founder of nuPOLIS is the Internet presence of the Innovation Network for Communities (INC), a national non-profit helping to develop and spread scalable innovations that transform the performance of community systems such as education, energy, land use, transportation and workforce development.
Madeleine is co-founder and principal of Arbor Consulting Partners, a research and consulting group led by senior social scientists.
We talked a lot about network practices. It was a fantastic opportunity to identify similarities and differences between building networks of organizations as well as individuals - and of course how to weave together the two. There are many parallels to the use of social networks like Facebook.
I was particularly interested in hearing their views on how to ignite a network - how it to get it started. For those who are working on social networks and looking at how to catalyze their crowds on places like Facebook or Twitter - the advice resonated. Do you know what the group's value proposition is? Do you know what the individual value propositions are? (What's the pork chop factor?) It's all about building trust and relationships. It reminds me of Eugene Eric Kim's point about networks - everybody is people.
Peter and Madeleine describe networks as "platforms for relationships." And the goal of those relationships can be learning, collaboration, policy, service delivery, advocacy, mobilizing or action. Peter is one of those people who likes to draw his ideas and at one point he got up and drew a grid on the whiteboard about the different types of networks and what interventions are needed for success. Later, I found the chart in Net Gains.
We also discussed the whole issue of network evaluation and the difficulty of measuring those relationships versus a specific impact. Also, the idea of faster tools like social network analysis that give us real time information and the need for someone who is embedded in the network as a real time evaluator. And, of course, what metrics to use.
Madeleine shared a copy of the network health scorecard, a diagnostic tool that networks can use to reflect on how to improve. She also discusses it in the video above.
During lunch, we discussed the field of network building for social change - what's needed to build this field? This is the drawing on the napkin that is described by Peter in the video.
Peter and Madeleine raised some interesting questions about the use of social media and support of network's work in a brief outline and I've pulled a couple of questions to chew on:
What are the hypotheses about the differences social media can make for achieving a network's goals - learning goals, policy advocacy goals, innovation goals, and others?
What patterns can social media use reveal that provide strategic insight for network?
How can social media be used to build high-quality connections, a motivating relationship between members and build trust and reciprocity?
One of the topics we discussed was about the skills and practices of
network weavers - whether they are working with networks of
organizations or supporting an organization's network of supporters on
Facebook. As Madeleine points out in the video above, a network weaver is looking at how people are connected and what value they are getting from being connected. A key skill of the network weaver is to pull out threads and pull people together.
As Madeleine notes, "it isn't about everyone being connected to everybody all the time."
A big part of the network weaver's job is pattern recognition and that requires a sort of scanning and watching - that takes time. I also pointed out that it uses a different part of your brain and there is a need to shift mindsets to get other types of work done.
I tend to map my "working the clouds" work in short, time boxed bursts. I tend to do it when my concentration is at a lower point. But, when I have to write or blog or think about something, I find more and more that I need to stop being social - not do Twitter, Facebook, or email. I also need to put classical music on my Ipod and concentrate in a different way. I've also found that I need to do something physical to transition between the two - like take a walk or simply walk around my desk.
Peter described an interesting framework for thinking about this use of time:
Activities that can be done while doing multiple tasks
Activities that require quiet and doing that one task
Activities that require several days of concentrating, creative immersion, and laser focus on that task
I was in Washington, DC on Tuesday and Wednesday for a two-day workshop is designed for Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights and Justice Leaders, who lead and manage networks or accomplish much of their work through networks. The workshop was hosted by the Packard Foundation and Monitor Institute. You can find the workshop materials here.
The workshop will be an opportunity for social change leaders to step back from their day-to-day responsibilities and develop strategic insight about their networks. Specifically, the workshop will be focused on:
Introducing and applying network tools, frameworks, and case studies that can help network leaders assess their effectiveness and increase their impact
Facilitating peer-learning and exchange
Exploring what it means to work with a network mindset
An interactive presentation on best practices for using social media for external communications
Peer discussion on use of online tools for collaboration for bounded networks, exploring some of the concepts in Digital Habits (each participant got a copy)
Half-Day Session: Social Media Strategy Game which included small group work for participants to come up with a strategy for both external communications and an internal learning network to share best practices.
Some reflections on the game:
Many the networks in the room had a track record of working together and a number had deep social media expertise. This made for a rich session for me because participants were sharing their wisdom. The strategy presentations were some of the most detailed and creative I have heard to date - and after doing this workshop many times. I got a glimpse of what doing this workshop with a room full of social media rock stars would be like.
For the small group work to be an optimal learning exerpeince, it requires having at least one person with hands-on experience at each table. I incorporated a human spectragram using very comfortable with social media and not very comfortable. This gave me a visual of who had experience and asked them not to all sit at the same table.
Since there was a strong sense of community and connection in the room, the spectragram discussion was really rich. I asked the "very comfortable" people the following question:
What was your ah ha moment with social media, when you understood its power and benefit to your movement/network?
Participants offered anecdotes from personal use.
"I was able to organize my high school reunion in a half hour because I was friends with everyone on Facebook."
"My personal blog was getting more hits than our organization's web site."
"We also heard a couple of examples of organizational use that described mobilizing activists quickly on Facebook."
Then I asked the people who were standing at the other side of the room, what was it about social media that made them uncomfortable. I also pointed out that they were showing network leadership because they were comfortable with their discomfort. One person shared that social media made them uncomfortable because they were an introverted and being 'out there' did not feel natural.
Then, I asked the people on the comfortable side of the room if they ever felt this way when they first started to use social media. Many did and shared their transition.
I asked the comfortable group if everyone in their organization was a comfortable as them or more like the other side of the room. This prompted some great insights into adoption strategies.
This was the first time I was able to weave the external communications piece with the internal bounded networks piece. It worked well. Aside from the brainstorm about tools, we heard some wonderful techniques that some participants were already using "blogging behind the firewall." This points to how the social media strategist also functions as a network weaver or technology steward internally.
This group was one that was comfortable learning in public and modeled it. I decided to model it and take advantage to learn in public from talented co-facilitators to keep the energy up during the small group activity. I learned some nuances in the share pair technique as well as a quick energizer when the level dropped during the small group.
I revised the cards for the first time in a while to reflect some of the new content. I also got a great idea: a set of cards for the facilitators of each group.
Stephanie McAuliffe inspired to start keeping trainer's notes that focused on the process and now am adding these to the reflections.
On Tuesday, September 29th, I'm participating in a social media tutorial hosted by the Case Foundation. It will be a live streamed event where folks can ask questions and get answers. Here's my guest post on their blog and the details. Meanwhile, I gotta go tidy up my office.
Last month, shortly after Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith was published, there was discussion on nonprofit blogs about how to apply some of the principles to a nonprofit context. Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Blog wrote a review of the book and offered a summary of the four principles in the book that she thought nonprofits could apply.
Frank Barry chimed in with a follow up post illustrating trust agent characteristics with nonprofit examples. I republished the post on my blog and offered a free copy to a nonprofit who left the best comment about how their organization is applying these principles. Bethany Deines and Besty Woods from the The Children's Medical Center of Dayton, Ohio were the lucky winners.
Here's an interview with them about how they using social media part of their hospital's patient relations and communications strategies.
1.) What is the objective your social media strategy?
Our objective is to engage and educate our stakeholders – influential moms (18-49+), donors, employees, volunteers, new moms, community leaders, etc – through an affordable medium that reaches a broad audience. Our social media strategy is an integral part of our overall marketing and public relations strategy. We always have to be thinking of new ways to connect to our stakeholders, communicate with them, then listen and respond. We are also looking for methods that are interactive and help us form trusting relationships with those various constituencies.
We (marketing and development) already knew the power of viral marketing through Twitter, FB and You Tube, but we had to back it up w/ research to prove it to our directors and senior management team.
We started using You Tube, FB and Twitter – saw the positive impact it had in getting our message out and then told senior management about it. They LOVED the idea and many of them joined social networks to see first hand what we were doing. Our organization has a culture of being able to try new things in low risk experiments. What we do is tell the story about how and why it’s working. That gets us further support to continue our efforts.
2.) How does your strategy support or enhance other communications/fundraising channels?
We post content (safety tips, flu tips, event information, etc.) that already exists on our website or are media stories from local media outlets on our social media channels like Facebook. Our ultimate goal is to drive traffic back to our website. Social media is just another avenue to tell our story and get the word out about what we do and educate the public (both locally and nationally). Social media brings attention to our fundraising campaigns to an audience we might not be able to reach otherwise. We very successfully used Twitter and Facebook during our Telethon to post updates. This increased our online giving significantly.
3.) How do you measure success?
Finding hard data in the ROI of social media is difficult. We measure success by the number of fans and followers we have but also by the quality of fans and followers (# of people that share our message, comment on a story, etc.). We also share comments from followers with other people on staff and often include quotes or mentions in our e-newsletters. We regularly share what people are saying about our organization with senior management or individual departments mentioned.
4.) Does your hospital have a social media policy?
Yes, we do. The only concern was potentially violating HIPPA laws. However, we were already mindful of HIPPA laws and have existing protocols and policies - so we just made sure we followed those in our social media use. I also researched other social media policies and read up on what others were including and advising people to do – again, Twitter was a GREAT resource for this to learn about what others were doing in the non-health care world. The risk manager had a concern that someone would write something negative about us. We had a discussion about how using social media was another form of providing excellent customer service and listening. Often times we find if someone says something negative about us, many fans/followers immediately respond about why the negative comment isn’t true and do our job for us.
5.) How do you build relationships and engage with your audience with social media?
We don't like to stream content on our Facebook Page or Twitter feed. There are two marketing staff members and one person in the development office who share the responsibility of interacting with our fans on Facebook and our followers on Twitter. We are known for putting a human face on our social media. Many fans and followers have told us that they recommend us to others based on our interaction with them on social networks. Social media can generate good word of mouth - if you take the time to build relationships.
It’s all about listening on social media and responding as a ‘real, live’ person. So many organizations have “ghost” tweeters or people that just send out a blast of information but you never hear anything in response. We (development and marketing) respond to questions, comments and thank people for their kind words or sharing their story. Social media is two-way communication. It’s not just putting messaging out there and hope it sticks. Messages should be relevant, timely and interesting to your audiences.
There’s a local mom from the Beavercreek, Ohio area on Twitter and she has followed us for a few months. She replied to a posting I put up about our new urgent care in Springboro and said how wonderful it was and how much she loved Dayton Children’s. I of course responded with a thank you and asked her where she lived and how many kids she had and what her experience had been at Dayton Children’s. She’s one of those “influencer moms” that you want – has a mommy blog, active on Facebook and Twitter and will tell everyone if her experience was great or horrible. We ended up meeting her and did an interview on video we produced for our "A Minute for Kids campaign." She has become a HUGE advocate for Dayton Children’s and will tell everyone she knows about us.
6.) If you were to offer some lessons learned to others just started off with social media, what would be your advice?
Sign up for Facebook and Twitter now and just start listening to people. Follow other similar organizations, find out what they are doing (what’s working, what’s not), talk to other marketing professionals, research and read articles on social media. Be willing to change and have a new outlook on marketing, public relations and fundraising. Be willing to try something new and don’t be afraid of failure. We, Dayton Children’s, knew we HAD to be involved with social media and just started doing it - that’s how you learn. Don’t be afraid of people that will say negative things about your organization – use social media as another tool to improve customer service. Negative comments is a matter of when, not if. It WILL happen, but if you respond and fix the problem, you will have obtained a very loyal fan/follower/customer, etc. Be willing to invest a certain amount of time daily in posting information. You can’t create a Facebook page, YouTube channel or Twitter account and them let it sit idle. Conversely, you can’t go overboard either and post so frequently that your audience begins to tune you out.
I'm getting ready for the WeAreMedia Webinar, a deeper dive on listening, and have been thinking about how you analyze what you hear and apply it. Also, how to avoid what Holly Hight at Project Bread last month - getting past command and control messaging.
I just happen to notice a Twitter follower, David Lipscomb, who retweeted this great find from the McKinssey. I browsed David's site and discovered his excellent communications planning templates and riffed over his social messenger framework.
So, the idea is that you do your listening and engage, but you think about how your engagement supports overall communications goals.
This can be done with direct replies @ on Twitter or hashtags. For example, take a look at what EDF has put together. It's a Twitter Guide to the Climate Bill Discussion. The guide points out the hashtags used by people who are supporting the bill or against. It also provides some "tweeting" points for advocates to use. All based on listening to what those who are against are tweeting.
Does your organization have an example of strategic tweeting that is social?
Note from Beth:I got a review copy. I read the book. It rocked. I was going to write a review and do a book giveaway, but I stumbled upon Wiser Earth blogger Angus Parker's excellent review. If you'd like to be eligible to win a free copy of Tamar's book, leave a comment explaining why your nonprofit's community rules and your secrets to success in marketing on the social web. And, if you want to participate in the Nonprofit Social Media community, WeAreMedia, there's a Webinar next week - more here.
We have read a lot of books over the last year that aimed to be the "go to" source for understanding Social Media. Finally, one stands out. Here we review, 'The New Community Rules' by Tamar Weinberg - probably the single most important book to read this year if you are involved in marketing your organization or cause on the web.
Practical, readable and accessible to those just getting starting out in this area, 'The New Community Rules' is sure to become the social media "bible". It starts off with a brief introduction to what social media is, follows with how to set goals, gets into the specifics of what to do, and finishes off with how to measure your results.
Tools touched on include: blogs, microblogging, social networks, social bookmarking, social news, Q&A websites, photography, video, and podcasting. At the end, there is a nice 'Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook' that spells out the dos and dont's of using some of the more popular social media sites. Some points specifically stood out for me. First, Tamar makes it clear that you need to pick and choose which tools to focus on based on your goals and target community - something strangely absent from many other social media books. Then she goes further by spotlighting niche sites that cater to specific audiences, making the point that you can get a lot more exposure with a lot less effort if you use them.
WiserEarth, for example, would fit into that category. Second, she goes into a lot of details on what she calls 'Informational Social Networks' like Wikipedia, Mahalo Answers, and Yahoo Answers which get a lot of traffic and can generate significant ongoing referrals. Finally, since I've never really been able to understand StumbleUpon, a social bookmarking service that we use to great effect at WiserEarth, it was a revelation to read the description in the book. If you have any feedback for Tamar about the book, she is collecting it on her blog: http://www.techipedia.com/contact. Also, you could just drop her a line to let her know how useful you found it. Besides this book, we recommend a number of other social media "must reads":
We Are Media - a community effort lead by Beth and NTEN to put together an online curriculum for nonprofits using social media. Since its a wiki and frequently updated it won't be obsolete like a book!
Mobilizing Generation 2.0 by Ben Rigby - a nice summary of social media tools with specifically tailored strategies for the activist / nonprofit community.
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky - an oldy (in social media terms) but a goodie, this book is filled with great stories that illustrate the power of social media. It's a helpful frame for starting you web 2.0 exploration.
Angus is the Program Director of WiserEarth. He blogs at http://blog.wiserearth.org on successful community building. WiserEarth serves the people who are transforming the world. It is a community directory and networking forum that maps and connects non-governmental organizations and individuals addressing the central issues of our day: climate change, poverty, the environment, peace, water, hunger, social justice, conservation, human rights and more.
Note from Beth:Last week, I wrote a reflection on a CNET article called "Crowded Roads Ahead for Charity 2.0," musing about the solution. A number folks offers some insights in the comments or on Twitter, including Amanda. I invited her to share her thoughts about cause fatigue and scaling as she launches the Twestival Local.
Cause fatigue is something I think about daily; particularly going into our second Twestival this September. I’ve felt a huge mix of pressure and enthusiasm to launch another one from previous organizers and cities who missed it the first time around. I didn’t feel like the Twitter community could handle another cause infused global campaign on the scale of Twestival so soon. My gut told me to think locally and use this international momentum and inspire people to shine a spotlight on a local cause, or a cause that a community would get behind. Where Twestival Global focused all of its energy on one cause, on one day; Twestival Local, taking place the weekend of 10-13 September 2009, has the potential to impact hundreds of causes.
Volunteers around the world feel empowered when asked to use their skills, not only to bring people together at an event, but contribute to something positive. Which is why Twestival Local hopes to challenge city organizers with two important questions with their selected cause:
(1) What will the not-for-profit do with the funds raised?
I think too many times people are raising money without a specific objective in mind. Sure $5,000 sounds like a fantastic fundraising goal, but what if I told you by meeting that target, a local cause would be able to launch an evening food program for the homeless, or make much needed repairs to a home for abandoned girls and boys. People are more likely to relate and give to something they can follow up on and social media allows causes and those supporting to do just that.
(2) In addition to fundraising, what are all the ways your city plans to work with the not-for-profit?
For me, Twestival is more than just about events in cities raising money for a cause. There is a huge opportunity here to bridge the gap between donors and volunteers. Twestival teams around the world are encouraged to think of other ways they can contribute to their selected cause; provide social media training, arrange for a local company to donate products and services, or leverage Twestival to strategize and create awareness.
You wouldn’t know it, but charity: water had very little Twitter presence before Twestival, compared to the way they use it now. Founder Scott Harrison was the only one on Twitter and I’m pretty sure he’d admit that he didn’t really ‘get it’. We sent in some social media heavy-hitters from the Twestival NYC team to give them some free training and now a running joke around the charity: water office is that even volunteers must go through a little Twitter initiation. Causes should recognize specific skills of volunteers as a valuable commodity, the same way it does with cash donations. After working with charity: water on Twestival, I now have a personal vested interest in seeing them meet their goals financial and otherwise.
I have always believed in the power of ‘the ripple effect’. I know that Twestival has inspired causes that otherwise wouldn’t have considered investing time in social media. It is my hope that with Twestival Local, even nominated causes which aren’t selected as a final recipient feel an impact in awareness.
So, can we have a Twestival every week? In my opinion, no. Twestival involves more than just tweeting; they are physical events happening around the world under short timescales. It is also not organized by a cause directly, but by volunteers who took it upon themselves to get involved.
Is the approach of Twestival sustainable? Absolutely. Eventually, the masses will come to realize that Twitter is just a great communications tool. The other fantastic thing about Twitter and certain other social media sites is this ability to develop an online community and empower them to evangelize for you, which can be extremely powerful. Hosting events for fundraising is nothing new. Communicating and engaging with potential donors and volunteers in a creative way is nothing new. To get it ‘right’ is another thing - but there are lessons learned from Twestival that can carry over to even the smallest of causes.
Recently, my best friend Alyson (www.alysonwoloshyn.com) was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. I mention this only because my life is now directly impacted by cancer in ways I could not have predicted a few months ago. I don’t have a Livestrong band on my Twitter avatar because it is the cool thing to do. I have it because it is something I believe in and have a reason to support. Ultimately people are going to support what resonates with them and how you use social media to reach out can make all the difference.
Causes thinking longer term with social media should recognize that there is no magic recipe, no guarantee of online global fundraisers raising over $250k like Twestival. But, what is exciting to consider and continues to keep me experimenting with social media is how it evens the playing field. Thanks to social media, causes can now have direct and personal impact with their audience in ways that were once costly and ineffective. This much I know for sure.
Amanda Rose is an entrepreneur and creative strategy consultant based in London. She is the architect behind Twestival and one of the only people in the world who can say they have a Masters in Twitter.
Note from Beth: I wrote several detailed posts about Twestival while it was unfolding and aggregated other posts as well. If you want to catch up in the stream, here's some links.
Courtesy of Debra Askanase, publisher of Community Organizer 2.0 There is so much more to photosharing than uploading images from the latest event!
Yes, everyone likes to see themselves online, but Flickr is so much more than uploading images from the latest event. Flickr combines the power of visual storytelling with the very nature of a social network - engagement and conversation. Three arts organizations (Houston Ballet, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Luce Foundation Center for American Art) are innovating ways to use Flickr creatively, and in the process offering backstage passes to the organization, amplifying programming, and engaging stakeholders in real decision-making.
1. The Houston Ballet: Giving Fans a “Backstage Pass”
The Houston Ballet uses Flickr to offer a “backstage pass“ to all of its fans. In particular, the ballet company offers its enthusiasts (and all Flickr browsers) visual insights into the organization’s activities and administration.
One of the more fanciful and wonderful Flickr photostreams comes from the Houston Ballet’s “Tour of Houston Ballet’s Warehouse.” What person doesn’t want to walk through the warehouse of the a famous production company? Here is one of the photos:
This boat hangs from the ceiling of the Houston Ballet's warehouse
As described on the Houston Ballet’s Flickr Photostream, “this is a photo tour of our warehouse in Houston’s 5th ward. We hope you enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at our productions’ ‘home away from home’ when they’re not in use at Wortham Theater Center.”
The Ballet also has another great “behind the scenes” photo shoot - making head casts for a scene in one of their ballet. Here is a screen shot of the Flickr photostream for the “Marie” head casts:
What does this do? It offers Houston Ballet fans added value for subscribing to the Ballet’s photostream. It makes them feel special, too. How often does one get to look into the closet of a major ballet theater, or learn how they put their sets together? The Ballet has made their photostream an unique web destination for exclusive “backstage” information.
2. MassMOCA: Adding Dimensions to Current Programming
The Mass Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMOCA) uses Flickr to crowdsource a set of images for the Flickr Finds section of its blog. MassMOCA asks readers to upload photos of a specific topical nature to the MassMOCA Flickr site. They post a roundup of the best photos on their monthly Flickr Finds blog post. The photos usually relate to one of the concurrent exhibits. It’s a great way to create excitement around a current exhibit or an organization.
Here is a screenshot of a Flickr MassMOCA group message:
The blog post Flickr Finds: Tree Logic features selected photos from uploaded Flickr images of the “upside down trees” outdoor sculpture exhibit. Here is an excerpt from the blog post:
What does this do? It adds another dimension to exhibitions and creates enthusiasm on the Flickr and blogging platforms. It also extends the life of exhibitions and creatively engages fans. Lastly, it offers added publicity for MassMOCA: every photo uploaded to the MassMOCA Flickr group also appears on the photographer’s photostream and is indexed and tagged on Flickr as MassMOCA!
3. The Luce Foundation Center for American Art: Using Flickr for Crowdsourcing Decisions
The Luce Foundation Center for American Art is “an open study/storage facility displaying about thirty-three hundred objects from the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Here, our visitors can see works that would otherwise not be on view due to space restraints in our main galleries.” The Luce Foundation Center occupies 20,400 square feet of the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum’s collection. According to the Smithsonian’s blog Eye Level, the Smithsonian American Art Museum lends work out, often for 12 months to other institutions, leaving gaps in the display units. They write: “for this reason, we decided to open up this process and ask our online communities for help. Using Flickr, we can share a photo of a case (in the Luce Foundation Center) that needs a replacement artwork, provide information about all of the other works in the case, and challenge people to search our collections in order to find an appropriate substitution.
What a wonderful way to engage stakeholders in the decision-making process and offer them a “backstage pass” to the art collection!
Here is an example of one of their photos from the Fickr photostream for Fill the Gap campaign:
Case 34B from Fill the Gap photostream
This is a screen shot of a part of the the comment stream related to this particular case (Case 34B):
In the end, a piece was selected by the Foundation from among the ideas submitted for Case 34B:
Case 34B - Gap Filled!
What does this do? It creates an interaction between static works of art and the fans who love the art. It makes everyone a “citizen curator,” and a stakeholder in the outcome of the Fill the Gap replacement selection. It creates enthusiasm and publicity for the collection of art. Most importantly, it utilizes the crowdsourcing aspect of social media to engage fans, create deeper connections between them and the organization, and…select art for exhibition.
Think about using Flickr to offer “backstage passes,” crowdsource ideas, extend the life of your programming, or engage stakeholders in real organizational decisions. What are you waiting for?
Debra Askanase is a former community organizer and executive director, and the founder and lead consultant at Community Organizer 2.0, a social media strategy firm for non-profit organizations and businesses.
I am asked almost weekly how to convince nonbelievers in an organization give social networking efforts a try. So I thought I’d answer that question here and as an upcoming guest post on Beth Kanter’s blog, since she’s likely given you many good ideas of how to use social media – and you’ve likely run into internal roadblocks on the road to Web 2.0.
1. Change the subject: If you’re having a debate over the value of social media, you’re having the wrong discussion. The discussion should be about your organization’s goals – with web 2.0 being the means, not the end (see #2).
2. Make it about what your boss already wants: Don’t position your web 2.0 idea as a social media initiative; frame it as your initiative to support your boss’s goals, in your boss’s language.
3. Make it about the audience: A good way to depersonalize the web 2.0 debate is to make it about your target audience’s preferences rather than a philosophical tug of war between you and said boss.
4. Sign your boss up to listen: Set up Google Alerts and TweetBeep for your boss, so she or he can see that there are already many discussions about your organization going on online. Once this apparent, two things are likely to happen. First, it will become clear that your organization no longer controls your message online – so worrying about social media causing a lack of control is not worth fearing. That day is already here. Second, it will be hard not to want to join those conversations online – which is what web 2.0 engagement is all about.
5. Set some ground rules: Set a social media policy for your organization, so it’s clear how to respond to what you’re hearing - and what types of initiatives have internal support.
6. Start clear and small: If you’re going to start an initiative, make it a small one with clear goals so you know how to measure success.
7. Report, report, report: Share every little bit of progress and give your boss credit for it!
Last – a word of caution. Don’t think you have all the answers. This isn’t a crusade, it’s a learning experience for everyone. You boss’s recalcitrance may be well founded. Make sure there IS a good case for your initiative and if it does fail, share and learn from what went wrong. There is no shame in gaining knowledge from mistakes – for you, or your boss.
We recently launched a new blog here at Blackbaud Internet Solutions. It’s been an exciting endeavor and given us a lot of insight into using social media for nonprofits and fundraising! Our main goal is to help you learn how to leverage our technology and the tools that make up social media. With that in mind I’d like to share 4 Keys to Building a Successful Web Site based on similar tactics we’ve deployed on this blog.
Before we go too far, let me start by saying, “Content is King.” Without great content, the following tactics and tools are limited at best. Focus on producing great content all the time. Put these tools in place. Then use what you learn from them to grow your site! Off we go.
1) Learn From Your Content
If you’re not learning you’re getting dumber! Use Google Analytics (GA) to see things like how many unique visitors you’re getting, what content is being viewed the most, what keywords or phrases people are using to find you and where people are coming from when finding you. This information is invaluable to your nonprofit – Giving you the ability become more effective with your online efforts. You may not know exactly what to do with this data all the time, but to be without it is to let opportunities slip through your fingers.
Think about how you could use Google Analytics – learn from the content you’re publishing to promote your nonprofit's fundraising event. What content is being viewed for the longest time? What content is producing the desired action of registering, donating or taking action? How can you optimize, modify and adapt?
This is only a glimpse into what you can do with analytics. For real meat check out some of the below posts by Avinash Kaushik – this dude will make you drool over the possibilities!
Remember, “Content is King” so provide an easy way for readers to subscribe to yours. More and more people are reading content, your content, via RSS through tools like Google Reader so make it easy to find on every page of your site.
Tip: Use Google FeedBurner which will allow people to subscribe via RSS or email. You will also get some great statistics which will help you with number one above.
Another Tip: Not sure how to get RSS from the Blackbaud Sphere CMS. Check out How to Use RSS in Sphere.
Use a social bookmarking plug-in like Add This so people who like your work can easily share with their network. Make sure to put this in an easily seen and easily accessed area of every piece of content. You don’t want to make it hard for your readers to share, do you? As with number one and two above you get additional statistics from Add This which further helps you to evaluate the impact of your web site and how you can continue improving.
"AddThis buttons can be found on hundreds of thousands of websites, and are currently viewed over 20 billion times a month by users all over the world, in over 20 languages."
New services such as bit.ly, tinyurl and budurl are emerging. They allow you to take any URL and shrink it! For example you can take the link to this page which is normally pretty long and shrink it to this http://bit.ly/4webways. A couple great things you will love:
It’s easier for you to pass out in your newsletters, mailings and other printed publications
It’s easier for your readers to share
You get more statistics for analysis! (See #1 above).
"We don't want to argue that Bit.ly is the next Google, but the technology it's brought to market could be very important in the indexing of the social web. Bit.ly shortens links so they are easier to share, like TinyURL. The service creates a redirect from a short Bit.ly link out to a longer link on any web page. Allong the way the service analyzes the page being linked to, pulls out the key concepts discussed on that page, and then provides real-time statistics about where the link is being shared and how many people are clicking on it."
These are 5 things that you can implement pretty simply. Don’t put them off. Have questions? Please ask below and I’ll do my best to help out.
What am I missing? I know you have some great tips to share with the community here so please take a minute and help us out.
This article was originally posted on NetWits Think Tank at http://bit.ly/HkGc2 by Frank Barry:
Frank is a Consulting Manager at Blackbaud Internet Solutions. At work he helps nonprofits with technology, social media & online strategy. He also spends some time speaking at industry conferences. The rest of the time he enjoys family, learning, sports, food, friends & movies.
Mobile. What do we do with this one word? We CAN do so much. Rather than go on, instead, I want to give some examples and highlight the cool factor of how mobile can add some out-of-the-box type thinking to an overall health and/or social marketing-related initiative.
(Granted, any initiative must go beyond cool, and must not be done solely for the cool factor. But, for creative juices, let’s show off some coolness.)
Cool Factor: Personal PSAs, 24 Hours, and Collaboration.
In one day, more than 20 students from 6 universities and five AIDS organizations hit the streets with only cellphone video cameras to produce 8 short video messages to encourage youth to be tested for HIV. (Personal PSAs are those shared via mobile and social networks, in addition to being user-generated.)
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Organization(s): University of Auckland Clinical Trials Research Unit and Healthphone Solutions Objective: Using Mobile SMS Technology to increase individual smoking cessation success.
Cool Factor: Txt2Quit. 480 Customized Text Messages. 26 Week Program.
This is a tested and research-based product produced to help individuals quit smoking. The program was presented at the Texting for Health Conference this past February, and hopes to provide the tool in multiple languages as well!
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Organization(s): The 2007 Live Earth Concerts, The Ethical Reputation Index and LightSpeed Research Objective: 1) Measure the effectiveness among 18-45 year olds of event sponsorship and advertising in real-time and 2) Measure this audience’s interest in green issues raised by the global concerts and sponsors.
The first example was using mobile to raise awareness and increase a call to action. The second example offered a product to those working to stop smoking. This example expands the uses of mobile by showing how it can be used as a medium to conduct research. In case your curious, the response rate was 20% and most notably, the research was done, fast, with results given that same day.
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Organization(s): The Fair & Lovely Foundation and Hindustan Unilever Limited Objective: Increase the visibilty and utilization of the Fair & Lovely Foundation’s scholarship program among women and girls in low-income groups in rural and urban India.
Cool Factor: Cost Effective. Wide Reaching. Full Approach.
All elements of mobile marketing were utilized in this campaign: an SMS Blast, SMS Shortcode (a code word/number individuals can respond to), interactive voice response, banner advertising, a microsite and the Lead Capturing Zone that induced the call to action for individuals to apply for the scholarship. As a result, over 44,000 student applied in 1.5 months and 2 million page impressions were gained from the banner advertising.
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Organization(s): Macmillan Cancer Support Objective: Provide an alternative route to collect donations for those not wanting to donate online via credit or debit card.
For this organization and through this campaign, SMS donations was the most successful mechanism with 59% of donations being made through text.
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Organization(s): Save the Children and Verizon Wireless Objective: Provide lifesaving assistance during the natural disasters that occurred in China and Myanmar.
Individuals could text 4SAVE with the word ‘quake’ to donate to earthquake relief or the keyword ‘cycloce’ to contribute to the cyclone relief. Upon texting, a reply asking for confirmation will be sent and a $5 donation will be added to the person’s phone bill.
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Organization(s): Major universities and colleges across the country. Objective: Implement an emergency notification system for all the University campus community.
Across the country, universities and colleges are implementing emergency alert systems through mobile and email technology to prevent another Virginia Tech tragedy. It’ll be interesting to see how other systems and institutions implement a similar strategy.
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Organization(s): mGive & Keep A Child Alive, mGive & the Washington Nationals, The MLB and the Children’s National Medical Center, mGive & The All-Star Game, Stand Up for Cancer, and Make a Wish Foundation Objective: mGive & Keep A Child Alive: Move people to donate during Alicia Key ‘As I Am’ tour; mGive & the Washington Nationals: When the Nationals play the Houston Astros, fans will be asked to donate to the Children’s National Medical Center to fight pediatric diabetes through a mobile/text campaign; mGive & The All-Star Game, Stand Up for Cancer, and Make a Wish Foundation: fans will be asked to donate to these two non-profits during the All-Star game through a mobile program.
Mobile giving is now becoming a trend. Through the Alicia Keys mobile campaign, over $40,000 was raised to support Keep a Child Alive. mGive itself is a social giving company that helps non-profits utilize mobile technology to increase their fundraising efforts. To see the latest campaigns (including combining broadcast television commercials with a mobile call to action), check out their blog. The Mobile Giving Foundation currently keeps a list of all 36 ongoing mobile giving campaigns.
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Organization(s): The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Objective: Provide a home site for of CDC’s mobile information about hurricane preparedness and the flu season.
Cool Factor: Government Goes Mobile.
Due to the increasing amount of dangerous hurricane like Katrina, Gustav and Ike, the CDC recently created a mobile Web site to further assist during times of emergency. I see this site growing as the use of mobile increases, but it’s a great first step and a good role model for other government agencies.
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Organization(s): Meir Panim (Network of Soup Kitchens in Israel) Objective: Increase donations for the soup kitchens, while also communicating an individual’s impact on the cause.
Cool Factor: Shows Impact on the Spot.
Meir Panim ran an interactive campaign with banner advertisements asking individuals to ‘SMS for Lunch‘ a promotional interactive campaign: On their website a boy was featured, facing an empty plate. The site encouraged donations and once the system received the SMS, the banner changed to show a full plate of food with the boy smiling. Talk about realtime impact!
Alex Rampy is a social marketing believer, blogger, practitioner, researcher and enthusiast who works and writes on social marketing, social change and social media initiatives.
Facebook is an ever growing force in the internet space and it looks like it will be for a while. With 200 Million users (and growing) it’s hard to ague otherwise. Facebook is also a great tool for nonprofits. It’s free, it gives you an immediate way to build a tribe and engage people in online community. Facebook also gives others the ability to share their affinity to you with their friends, family and co-workers. That said, you can’t just throw up a page and expect to be successful. You have to be thoughtful, strategic and knowledgeable. Four tips to help you get started.
1. Create a Page not a Group or Cause
Facebook pages give you a ton of great features that Groups and Causes do not. There is a place for each of the Facebook page types, but the generic “Facebook page” is the place to start. Here are a few reasons why:
People can find you via Google. More people can find out about your Nonprofit because your Facebook Page gets indexed and is searchable inside and outside (i.e. Google) of Facebook. Which also means you can boost your search engine rankings (SEO).
No limit on the number of people who can express their support for your nonprofit by becoming your fan
Pages Have Access to Users’ Feeds - When Facebook users become a “fan” of your nonprofit page, they will be notified of your status updates every time you make one! Then they can comment, share and/or like your wall posts which then shares it with all their friends – now that’s viral.
Communicate with your fans regularly just to stay in touch or with special news, offers and information.
All the great features of Facebook are available - writing on the Wall, uploading photos, and joining discussion groups.
Add applications to your Page and engage your users with videos (YouTube Box), photos (Flickr Box) reviews, flash content, and more.
2. Participate and be a community like the Lance Armstrong Foundation
Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) is doing a great job participating and building community with their Facebook page. If you take a look at their page you’ll notice that there are hundreds if not thousands of people interacting there (I’ve added an image to the right – notice the red box towards the bottom). It’s not just LAF “shouting out” or broadcasting to their fans. As a matter of fact you’ll notice that the LIVESTRONG representative is talking with the people, sharing things, commenting, liking wall posts and more. They are fully interacting.
So what’s that mean for you?
Be active daily. Share news, video, photos, stories and what ever else makes sense for your organization.
Engage with your fans. Comment on their wall posts. Like things they share. Help people connect with others.
3. Get folks to engage with you in more than one way like the ONE Campaign
Check out the ONE Campaign Facebook page. Did you see that? They set up their page to go to a custom tab where they show people how to engage with them beyond Facebook. They do this with compelling imagery, a simple form and the ability to get to their main web site. Very nice!
Why is this important? Because we know that email is still a HUGE way people like to be communicated with. According to the “eNonprofit Benchmarks Study” done by NTEN (shout out to Holly Ross) email is still the “killer app” that reaches the most people. Open rates and click-throughs are holding steady.
We also know that having a ‘home base’ is vital to internet longevity. Facebook is an outpost, but your main web site should provide people with added value and ways to connect with your organization.
4. Stats, stats, stats …
Facebook Pages give you stats!! Awesome, I know. Administrators have the ability to see how well their wall posts and content are engaging people through the recently updated “Insight Portal”. You may be thinking “why do stats matter?”
As I discussed in a recent post (see 4 Keys to Building a Successful Nonprofit Web Site) stats are key to helping you improve your web site or in this case your Facebook page. By understanding your activity and performance, fan response, trends and comparisons, you are better equipped to improve your presence on Facebook. Actually, this data will likely help you improve your overall web efforts! Use the stats to gain valuable insight into what your constituents like, what type of content they interact with the most, what they tend to share with their friends and, maybe most importantly, what they don’t like.
User exposure- Actions and overall behavior relating to your Facebook Page.
Total Interactions - The total interactions metric captures all of the feedback Pages receive from Facebook users. Including media consumption and interactions per post, as well as the number of fans who have hidden you from their stream.
This number measures the aggregate count of Wall posts, Likes, Discussion posts and comments on any content such as photos, videos, notes or links in the past 7 days.
The goal of the metric is to provide an updated snapshot into how fans are engaging with your Page’s content.
Demographic Information - The locale breakdown and demographic information offers you access to detailed data about your fan base in an effective way that isn’t available on any other site.
Post Quality Score - One of the most important new metrics to pay attention to is your post quality score. That score measures how engaging your posts have been to users in the last 7 days. Posts that generate a high number of interactions (such as comments or Likes) per fan will improve the post quality score. Posts that do not draw interactions from fans will lower the post quality score.
Facebook offers many more great features, but I believe these are critical for nonprofit success on Facebook. If you don’t get these things right chances are you will have less of an impact on the community of people you are trying to engage and impact.
More Resources (I’d go through them in this order):
Frank is a Managing Consultant at Blackbaud - Internet Solutions. He Blogs at http://www.netwitsthinktank.com, regularly speaks at nonprofit conferences and loves to see how technology helps nonprofits further their mission.
We have a family membership at an upstate New York sculpture center featuring outside exhibitions. It's a unique and beautiful place; one we can't visit that often (it's an hour away) but a venue we want to support. We joined for the first time this year.
The center has an incredible reputation -- because it's so unique and beautiful -- which has carried it far. So as a member, I expected to have the pleasure of a compelling series of communications, online and off. Didn't happen. Here's what did:
We received a thank you note for our membership (thumbs up) but it didn't mention any upcoming exhibits or events (where was the call to action, the opportunity to get involved at the next level?).
I went to the Web site but saw only an incomplete calendar of events for the next week (there are lots of concerts, tours, child projects there). The center is more than an hour away from the NY metro area, so most visitors have to plan ahead. It's not a drop-in experience. That's hard to do without advance notice.
So I emailed requesting to be put on the e-news list (didn't see where to subscribe online). But there's no e-news! Instead, I was told that they do have a twice-yearly print newsletter, the next issue coming in a few months but they'd be pleased to send me the last one.
Yet, the center has an active Facebook fan page (for those members and interested others who are even on Facebook), with 1,045 fans to date. I wonder how many members that includes; Storm King never told us about its Facebook page in any member communications.
Then we just received a full-color 16-page annual report, printed on heavy paper, featuring 10 pages of donors names. Expensive to produce and mail, but it has no value to me.
Even though we can assume every org has a range of target audiences, members have to be a priority for every arts and culture organization. For this one, we don't seem to be.
Here's what I recommend to the center:
List out the three or fewer target audiences you need to engage more effectively in order to meet the center's current goals. Members should be on the list. Then learn their habits and preferences (e.g. e-news vs. Facebook fan page).
Figure out how to engage current members so they become even more loyal. Make it easy for them (i.e. with advance notice of events) to become more involved. Make them/us want to be marketing messengers for the center.
Ensure your Web site and e-news (and despite the challenges of getting attention via email, you gotta have one) are tight, focused, timely and working for your organization...before you even stick a toe into social media waters.
Please share your suggestions for the center. What would you do if you were them? Tell us by clicking Comments below.
NOTE: Here are some brief guides to strengthening yourWeb siteande-news. For more, subscribe here to the Getting Attention e-update!
Nancy E. Schwartz helps nonprofits succeed through effective marketing and communications as the publisher of the Getting Attention blog and e-newsletter (www.gettingattention.org), and as President of New York City-based Nancy Schwartz & Company (NS&C)
During last week’s League of American Orchestras conference, I was following the session on social networking on Twitter. Mark Pemberton, who tweets @aborchestras, asked where the “business” is in social media. In a blog post on the League’s conference blog, he wrote:
I found today’s Social Networking session interesting up to a point. But Russell Jones was spot on in his cry of “what about the dollars?” The speakers kept talking about the “new business model.” But Facebook and Twitter have no business model! They have no means of generating income.
Here is an excerpt of what I commented on his post:
Social networking is not “a business model.” Social networking is a tactic or tool in your strategy. Most managers will want to see dollars coming in from social networking in the short term. But that is exactly the wrong approach. Social media is not a short term solution. To think so is short-sighted.
Going into social media with the objective to sell tickets is, in my opinion, wrong as well.
There is a lot of pressure in marketing and public relations departments of orchestras to sell tickets. Fewer subscriptions bought and more single tickets to sell means more and harder selling. It’s not surprising that a lot of managers look at social media as an addition to their marketing and sales efforts.
In these departments, it might almost seem that selling tickets is the organization’s mission statement. I was glad to see another post on the League’s conference blog. Alan Jordan posted the following:
A constituency session comment re-iterated a line shared with me a long time ago from a concert hall manager in Concord, NH who passed away from cancer a few years back: the official moniker for 501(c)3s is not “non-profit,” but “not for profit.” For profit firms are obligated to their shareholders to produce results. We are obligated to the public to produce results, and those results are not necessarily—and most beneficially—financial ones.
In my comment to Mark Pemberton, I continued:
Although nonprofits need to make money to operate, they are not here for profits. Social networking/media can help you in your core mission: bringing art and music to people. It can extend the life of a performance and engage and build communities. And that’s a goal or objective too.
If you approach ROI as a financial analysis only, you’re missing the point. An ROI process focuses on identifying and unpacking the benefits of efficiency and effectiveness and how these support your organization’s mission.
Well, what is your organization’s mission exactly? Let’s look at some of the mission statements from orchestras around the country:
New York
To maintain and foster an interest in the enjoyment of music and musical affairs, and to inculcate in its members in the community of New York city and the nation at large, an interest in symphony music and in order to foster such interest and the appreciation of music, among other things to cause the performance of symphonic and other musical performances in the concert and other halls, over the radio, television, by phonographic recordings, and in any other manner now known or hereafter to be.
Chicago
The central mission of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association is to present classical music through the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to Chicago, national and international audiences.
London
The LSO’s mission is to give the finest performances of music and make them available to the greatest number of people.
These statements speak of bringing art to communities and audiences the world over. While ticket sales and revenue are important for the financial stability of the organization, the statements do not mention financials.
Clearly, the New York Philharmonic’s statement was written decades ago—yet still pertinent—and I particularly like “in any other manner now known or hereafter to be.” Let’s add the Internet to the list.
Alexandra Samuel has an interesting article at the Harvard Business blog on why nonprofits are so good at social media. Although the article should have been more appropriately named why nonprofits are uniquely primed to be good at social media—because not many are so good—she does bring up a couple of excellent points. Alexandra writes that “in the nonprofit sector, relationships have always been the key currency.” How can social media build upon those relationships? She outlines five points, three of which I thought particularly noteworthy:
Engage your audience by speaking to their core concerns: What do your customers care about most, and how can you speak to those concerns?
Offer a mix of tangible and social benefits: What tangible benefits can you offer that will encourage their participation?
Innovate within the bounds of your core mission: What value or services do you offer that could be delivered through a social network or online community?
In the SWOT analysis found in my Orchestras and New Media e-book, I look at some of the market opportunities best suited to company strengths and capabilities: maintain strong relationships with patrons; extend the life of a performance; and open the door to other geographic and demographic markets. (Read the e-book for particular examples.)
Sure, it is okay to think about monetizing these market opportunities to strengthen your financial base, but more importantly, you should start thinking about how they can help your organization’s core mission of providing classical music to audiences in your community and around the world.
That’s your first order of business. Heck, that’s why you’re in business.
Dutch native Marc van Bree is a public relations practitioner in Chicago with more than 5 years of experience communicating—on and offline—in the nonprofit environment. Find him on Twitter @mcmvanbree
I was flattered when @PeterDeitz told me he was going to include Lend4Health in his keynote address at the Connecting Up Australia conference. And when I read his transcript and saw his slides, I was intrigued. Peter had analyzed my use of Twitter and shared at the conference that I use it to communicate, in small increments of time, with those who choose to follow my tweets (which, for today at least, is 1,284 people). Peter's analysis of my "method" made me stop and take a look at what my "method" really is because, certainly, it has not been strategically planned out or even really considered until now!
Twitter
I started using Twitter on September 24, 2008, and my first tweet was, "Working on two new loan requests on Lend4Health." I had no idea what Twitter was or what it was for, but I had heard of it in the traditional media channels. I actually joined Twitter because I had just submitted my entry into the Ideablob contest and there were links to share your entry on "social media" so I clicked on Twitter and that was that.
In the beginning of my Twitter usage, I became obsessed with reading tweets and the links therein. I "favorited" almost everything, and I basically used Twitter as a personalized library. I followed anybody who seemed knowledgeable and well respected in areas like social media, social entrepreneurship, health issues, autism, non-profit technology, philanthropy, micro-lending, and Islamic finance. It was amazing to me that I could get all this great, intelligent information and that, because I could choose to follow specific people, the stream was already "filtered" and oftentimes already "digested" for my specific needs and consumption. That stream was fast-running and wide, but I learned as much as I could, asked questions, and connected with people and ideas I would have never known otherwise.
After a while, Twitter became my "home away from home." Lend4Health.org was my home, my spot, my domain. It was comfy because it was mine, and the visitors were friendly because they liked what I was doing. On the other hand, Twitter was kind of like going to a different conference every day, but with many of the same attendees. I was challenged by the thoughts and ideas presented there, but since I was seeing the same attendees day after day, I became familiar with their styles and moods.
Facebook
At the same time, I had gotten onto Facebook, first to connect with old friends from elementary school, high school, and college, but then to connect a bit with some "autism friends" -- those who I knew from the Yahoo group I frequented. Interestingly, after I started a Lend4Health Group on Facebook and posted a blurb about it on the site, I noticed that "Lend4Health'ers" (loan recipients and lenders) started to join Facebook themselves. This was interesting to me -- that people joined the Facebook social networking site specifically because I (Lend4Health) was there. It also surprised me that Lend4Health loan recipients would get on Facebook and join the same group as their lenders. To me, this was humbling honesty and amazing transparency. For anybody who might fear that the loan recipients were scam artists or would run off with the money, this Lend4Health group on Facebook demonstrated that these people were real people. They were not ashamed to interact with those who lent money to them, and they were not running away incognito; rather, they were putting their faces and their profiles right there. You might not know in which house they lived on the planet, but you had access to them on Facebook.
Bridging Silos
At that point, even though there were Lend4Health'ers on the Facebook group, they weren't really my "friends" in the Facebook sense. At the time, I now realize, there were three very separate communities: (1) The Lend4Health community (the families and lenders with whom I mostly communicated via email); (2) my Twitter community (analysts, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, and bloggers); and (3) my Facebook community (family and friends).
At some magical point, these three worlds started to converge; these silos started to crumble, and bridges took their place. I remember around the beginning of 2009, when I started working on Lend4Health full-time, some of my Twitter followers made loans on Lend4Health. And some Lend4Health Group members on Facebook started to "friend" me and each other. And, very slowly at first, some Lend4Health'ers started to join Twitter.
This convergence is still happening, and it is still to be seen what this will mean for Lend4Health. What is happening right now is that this larger "Lend4Health community" is overlapping in very un-planned, very organic, and very exciting ways:
- My Twitter followers are starting to make loans, tweet about it, and re-tweet my updates.
- My Facebook friends are starting to inquire about my strange status updates, post Lend4Health links, and make loans.
- Lend4Health families are starting to join Facebook and/or Twitter.
- Lend4Health lenders and recipients are starting to follow each other on Twitter; friend each other on Facebook.
And while this is still a very new development in the Lend4Health Journey, I can feel the energy rumbling and coming closer when I put my ear to the ground and really listen.
Individuals Within the Crowd
Currently, I realize that, although these groups are converging, each individual member of a group has a preference for his/her communications. There are some who resonate best with email. There are some who are Facebook addicts and who have tried Twitter but didn't "get it." And there are those who live and breathe Twitter.
So, as somebody who is trying to keep this diverse community engaged, get messages out, and respond to their queries, I believe I have two options. (1) I could try to make them all form-fit into my preferred method of communication, or (2) I can make myself fluid, flexible, and resilient enough that I can be in all of these places. While option #1 would be easiest and most time-effective for me, I believe doing so would push some community members away, most likely never to return again. Certainly, I could pick up new supporters to take their places in number, but each one of these supporters is an "early adopter" to the Lend4Health concept, and as such I think of them as the most important community members. These early adopters are the ones who believed in Lend4Health in its infancy and awkward adolescence yet took a risk to participate, so these are the people who may later spread the word most passionately. As such, I have chosen option #2.
Everywhere
I engage with lenders, curious observers, and loan recipients wherever they are, and wherever they feel comfortable, whether it be Twitter, email, phone, Facebook, or in person. My business card (which I hand out in bulk at autism conferences) includes all the ways I can be found: web, email, Twitter, Facebook, and cell. My email signature (which I use when posting personal questions and comments on autism-related Yahoo groups) includes all of these channels as well.
Is there a risk involved with this? Emphatically, yes. I worry that I will miss a Facebook post from a potential loan recipient. I worry that I cannot successfully "archive" within a specific email folder, an important, relevant communication I receive in a fleeting tweet. I worry that I am so scattered across these tools that I am not present enough on any one of them.
Current Usage
I have recently started using Twitter and Facebook as integral pieces in my (as of yet un-strategic!) communications strategy. Whereas I used to update lenders via email when a loan repayment was made or when a family sent a progress update on their child, I now also post this information for the masses on Twitter and (easily via TweetDeck) on Facebook. The goal is different. For the lenders, my goal in communicating this information via email is to give them updates on their money and their investment, and to keep them engaged on a consistent (usually monthly), ongoing basis. However, when I post this information on Twitter and Facebook, my goal is to plant seeds repeatedly with potential new lenders, but also to communicate transparently and even to archive the process. So, instead of an annual report summarizing the activities of an entire previous year's work, I am giving these updates real-time, as they happen. I do not think that many of my Twitter followers are hanging on the edge of their seats to get these 140-character updates, but, when they are seen over time, I think they provide an underlying sense that Lend4Health is open and transparent with its process, and that there are several points of entry available for a person to ask a question, criticize, laud, or participate in Lend4Health.
Moving Forward
I am intrigued to see where this all goes as it relates to Lend4Health and other organizations. It seems that so much of the current thinking and teaching being done is aimed at already-established non-profits who need to learn how to use social media tools in order to keep up with the changing times. I believe it will be informative for many of these non-profits to watch as neonate "clouds" and "tribes" like The Extraordinaries, TuDiabetes, and Lend4Health develop hand-in-hand with, and even from within, social media technologies and applications.
There is no such thing as a local business anymore. Nor a local organization.
Consider the local mini mart, the most local of all types of stores. In general, people won’t walk more than 10 minutes or 1/2 mile to their local food mart. Why does the mini mart owner need to interact with his customers via social media? If people want something, they’ll just go there. It’s a fair question, easily answered by another:
What is Local?
I respond: Local is a Mindset. So is Social.
Local is You Talking. Social is Engagement and Conversation.
The local mini mart owner/manager is thinking old-school: bricks and mortar, customers searching for twinkies, chips and coffee, and lottery players seeking millions.Re-think your mindset out of Local and into Social about the same customer.
This time, the customer is sitting at home, wishing she had a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Does the local mini mart have it? Send an email or a Tweet. Can she swing by in her car, illegally park on the sidewalk (hey, they do it all the time in my neighborhood) and get out in 2 minutes? You betcha - IF - she could submit her order via Twitter with an approximate purchase time, and could be sure it would be ready when she arrives. What if she told her friends via Facebook that she was heading down to the local mini-mart for ice cream? She could take orders from them if they were also coming over to her house later. The Facebook update is free publicity for the online or email ordering feature at the local market. That is Social. Not Local.
A great example of a local shop using a Social mindset is Houston’s CoffeeGroundz, which created a Twitter account (@coffeegroundz) and unexpectedly realized that they could do a brisk business with Twitter takeout orders. You can read the whole story, in detail on Pistachio Consulting’s blog, here. CoffeeGroundz is a great example of Social, not Local.
Consider the PTO, the local Parent-Teacher Organization of the local elementary school, the most local of local organizations. A tired parent receives a note about his child, or an email from his child’s school, about the meeting. He goes. The typical meeting consists of parents talking about why the school isn’t doing something or that it should do something better. The PTO wants new ideas, wants to use them, and hopes to involve parents in school improvements. Maybe you attended, maybe not. Either way, you get an email update about what happened. Are you engaged? Are you ready to act? Nope, you’re happy eating mint chocolate chip ice cream and can’t be bothered. The PTO is too Local.
Now consider the Social PTO. The Social PTO is all about making it easier for you to engage, act and motivate others to create real changes in the school.
You receive the next PTO meeting invitation via one or more of these methods: email, a group text message on your mobile phone, a Facebook Event invitation, and/or a listing on the PTO’s chat group (such as a Yahoo or Google group). You are asked to contribute ideas to the agenda ahead of time via an online site. You are asked to invite others to the meeting through the Facebook share application, and you proudly display the meeting as a Facebook Event on your profile. If you can’t go, you can follow the meeting either via live web video, updates on the group site, a #hashtag on Twitter, or real time Facebook group updates. You are able to text your questions to the the vice-chair during the meeting with an assurance that they will be addressed. The meetings are more efficient with the use of pre-sent questions and agenda submissions. The PTO has created easy, potentially viral methods to further engage and recruit people and their ideas. You are engaged and ready to act. The PTO is Social, not Local.
Next time you are about to go to your neighborhood meeting, send a Tweet on Twitter asking if anyone wants anything from the local mini mart. I’ll take some mint choco chip ice cream, please.
Debra is a former community organizer and executive director, and the founder and lead consultant at Community Organizer 2.0, a social media strategy firm for non-profit organizations and businesses.
If you haven’t implemented sharing tools on your emails yet, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to engage existing advocates, recruit new ones, and drive substantial traffic to your website and campaigns.
Granted, this is no small feat. For us, it took 2 weeks for me to figure out how to rig the code so that it worked in our content management system and pulled the right information when posting to Facebook and Twitter. But the payoff was well worth it. Preliminary results showed that just in the first day of enabling sharing features on our email, we got 500 tweets and over 15,000 visits to the web version of our email from Twitter alone.
Now, that’s great, but it wasn’t perfect. As Beth has stated before, I’m a HUGE advocate for the listen, learn, adapt method and not afraid to fail before I succeed. It’s frustrating but I don’t give up; I learn from my mistakes and apply the lessons to future campaigns. This project was no different.
I was so excited that I got the sharing features to work properly that I didn’t even think about tracking. When we sent out the email (you can see it here.) and my boss asked me how it did, I blanked. He wanted to know how many people shared and viewed it per service, and how many people viewed the web version of the email.
I had no idea.
I could see in Tweetdeck that people were sharing it on Twitter, because I have keyword searches set up for our brand. That was really exciting to see all the activity, but I wanted actual numbers. I was able to scrounge some stats by using Tweetmeme and bit.ly for Twitter, but had no idea what the Facebook impact was or how many people viewed the page. We didn’t have a unique URL for Facebook, and we didn’t have Google Analytics tracking codes set up on the web version of the email. Oops.
So, for the next email we sent out, I used trackable URLs from Google Analytics for both Facebook and Twitter. The URL you shared on Facebook now looked like this:
Oh yeah, and I made sure the Google Analytics tracking code was installed on the web version of the email. Don’t forget that.
Now, I was able to see stats in Google Analytics for each separate medium. My predictions were correct; sharing on Facebook almost doubled that on Twitter. The numbers were significant, and when I shared them with my team, they were floored.
By adding this simple feature, we’re enabling and encouraging people to spread the word, and making it as easy as possible for them to do so. And we’re seeing how well its working by making sure we can track everything.
Here’s how to enable sharing for your emails:
For Facebook Share: Grab the code off the Share Partners page on Facebook, but take out any javascript. There’s also some great info on that page about how to configure your code to make sure Facebook pulls the right information into the title and description when sharing. Replace the URL with the web version of your email.
The trick: if the web version of your emails begins with “https”, you have to take off the “s”. Sharing functions are not fully compatible with secure pages just yet.
For Twitter, you can set someone’s status by using “http://twitter.com/home?status=check+out+this+link:+http://bit.ly/xxx”.
The trick: make sure you use the + signs in place of any spaces. Then, shorten the URL to the web version of your email using bit.ly or your favorite URL shortening service. We add “(via @humanesociety)” in there to give our Twitter account a little extra exposure.
Note: You might be wondering why we didn’t use an existing tool like AddThis or Share This. While those tools are great (we even use them on our website), they just didn’t do everything we needed for email.
Some best practices:
If you’re using a CMS like us you’ll need to make sure you’re using an email wrapper that pulls unique meta data into each email.
Take the time to tweak and customize your sharing code. By simply adding “via @humanesociety” anytime someone shares on Twitter, we’re giving our Twitter account huge visibility.
Make sure you use tracking codes from your stats program so you can track your success. Use unique URLs for Twitter and Facebook.
You’ll get better results if you ASK. Basic constituent engagement – if you ask, more will participate. We did a “PS” in our first sharing-enabled email asking people to share it.
If you’re sending out a big campaign email, set up keyword alerts with something like Tweetdeck or Tweetbeep. Some people like to customize the Tweets that they share, so you may not see it. For instance, when we sent out the first email, I started monitoring the keyword “Petland” so even if someone took out the “via @humanesociety” or changed the title, I still saw it.
Don’t be afraid to respond to people who aren’t following you when you come across something. I found many people talking about going to Petland and thinking of buying a dog there. I replied and introduced them to our campaign, asking them to consider adoption instead. Starts the conversation in hopes of educating and changing behavior.
Traditional Tell-a-Friend methods like email and web forms are not dead; but like any other emerging technology that’s out there, we have to recognize that people are sharing information in new and different ways than they always have. And we have to adapt by fitting these methods into our communications strategies or we’ll simply fall behind.
Has anyone else implemented sharing features on their emails? I’d love to see examples of how other organizations have made it happen and how it has worked for them.
Carie is the Internet Marketing Manager at The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and uses social media to make the world a better place for animals.
However I wanted to record, primarily for my own sake, while fresh in my mind a recap of the social media tools we used (and other related factors) for our conference. I resisted using the title of “report card”
For background, in the 3 previous NMC conferences I have been involved with since starting my job there in 2006- we’ve done mainly a “tag this conference” approach where we ask people to tag photos, web sites, blog posts e.g. 2006, 2007, 2008 where I cobbled together some summary pages using mainly my own Feed2JS code.
Those went okay, we always get a solid core of photographers tagging and posting pictures to flickr. And although we had some people tweeting from sessions, to me it seemed like we were missing an opportunity but not having a perhaps more organized approach to having our conference audience help “cover” or document the conference. A dream would be to know for sure there was one or more persons in each session blogging and sharing it so we had a record or artifact of all sessions.
So on to what we tried this year… (this is gonna be a long scroller)
Pathable- A Conference Social Network Site
Our conference planner told me earlier this year about Pathable a company that provides a social network site for your conference. It looked a little more comprehensive then just asking people to tag and then trying to aggregate (we also looked at other tools like CrowdVine which was very comparable, almost a coin flip).
So we signed up with Pathable and started in April building out the site with them which is at http://2009.nmc.org (it is hosted on their site- that’s just a redirect URL)
One feature I liked was that Pathable has an API for creating accounts, so I was able to roll that into our conference registration on our drupal site, and it populated their Pathable account with their organization, blog url, delicious url, flickr url, twitter url, etc (if they had added that to their drupal profile on NMC’s site). The key on Pathable is that we can ask them questions that they respond to with tags to describe themselves or interest:
This creates some interesting effects- you can find other people with common interests based on tags, and Pathable does a tag comparison to suggest other people you may want to get to know during the conference. And, the one I used a lot, you can communicate to sub grounds by using the Pathable messaging by tag.
But there was more- we were able to import the conference agenda, and people could then indicate which sessions they were planning to attend, so I might say, “I think I;ll go to this session because I always wanted to meet Barbara Sawhill” or “I’ll go to this one because Gardner Campbell is in the room”. By doing this, you also create your personal conference calendar, which was handy for the other big reason we went with Pathable- that have an iPhone version of the tools.
One piece we did not use that we could have gotten some leverage- Pathable can add a mini WetPaint wiki to each session listed in the calendar, so we could have asked people to share notes, links there.
We also had some back end tools that provided details on the usage and activity; for example out of 359 accounts set up, 177 actually made it to Pathable and did some activity (that is 49%)– and we have graphs!
And there was another bonus we found later, see the twitter section. Thanks Jordan S for working with us on this!
Tweet, tweet, tweet… Sweet!
Twitter was the biggest social media activity, absolutely no surprise. This is the #hastag year, and we recorded more than 1875 tweets tagged #nmc2009.
Actually, the twitter API only returns the last 1500 (I scrolled back as far as I could from the search tool). I also ran the tag through PrintYourTweets, which found also only the last 1500, but as a nice feature, included any TwitPics that people had posted- I assembled those into an unwieldy 33Mb PDF record.
Post conference, I also learned of TwapperKeepr and Roomatic as hashtag grouping tools.
Something that got a lot of attention (we did have it set up on a large plasma screen in the registration area) was the display of our nmc2009 conference tweets using VisibleTweets one of the best visualizer tools I’ve seen- here is the embedded version (well the cheat way of embedding with an iframe)
It’s simple to do cause it is just a link to a web site.
I mentioned that I was able to track only the last 1500; he replied and said that their tool actually archives all hashtagged tweets, which he was able to send me as a data file, which is how I got the 1874 total. I dusted off my weak Excel skills to determine that we had 173 different people use the #nmc2009 tag, and then did a count and sort to look at the frequency. Our gold medalist was @JoeAntonioli (124) just edging out our Silver Medal tweeter, @BryanAlexander (121):
Twitter is obviously then a way for people to easily send out highlights and link share; that was a lot of activity we saw; but also the generous back and forth from people at the conference and people remotely watching from afar.
Flickr the Conference
We are seeing a great stream of tagged flickr photos from the conference- more than 2400 at last peek. I really wish there was a way to find out hoe many individual people added to a tag (in previous years, I analyzed this by manually paging back, and writing on a piece of paper each flickr user name I saw– I am not going to do it again!):
You might see an over representation of Point Lobos- this is because of the pre-conference digital photography workshop a few of us (including me!) got to participate in; a 7 hour stint of shooting with the available expertise of Sports Illustrated photographer extraordinaire Bill Frakes and Don Henderson from Apple, Great Photographers with Giant Lenses
And you wil find a lot of local scenery in the flickr stream as people enjoyed the streets of Monterey.
I am a bit anal about wanting to post and caption my photos every day, which is hard to do at a conference, and I know others are still editing and processing, so I expect the photo count to go up.
For us giving three bloggers a special perch (and actually the table was cramped), electricity, and internet, we got amazing results. My dream would be next year to find a way to know that there is a blogger in every conference session!
This can be proverbial low hanging fruit (and why is that always a good thing?? what is wrong with high hanging fruit?) – and can extend beyond conference blogging; plenty of teachers do well by having students blog classes/lecture for not only the benefit of other students, but would, IMHO, provide an instructor an interesting insight into how their “audience” is getting the “message”.
We will definitely do this again. I am not sure we need the scribe (e.g. using CoverIt Live) to capture everything- I am more interested in the types of posts our Conference Bloggers created that had reflection and analysis (and criticism, we want that too?
Geotagging Photos
We’ve been very interested in geolocation technologies, especially in seeing how they are being integrated into devices like camers to automatically record the locations where photos are taken, whether it is a GPS device like Nikon has, or a tracker GPS that can then be synced to photos by matching the time of the photo to the recorded track, to just the iPhone camera which can automatically geocode.
We asked people who were tagging photos to also “map them” whether they had a tool as described above, or just by using the flickr map tools– and including Point Lobos in the vicinity, I see more than 700 geotagged flickr photos bearing the #nmc2009 tag.
Another related tool we found is lo.calize.us which provides a browser bookmark tool that allows you to add geolocation machine tags to any of your flickr photos, which in turn will show up on this map:
Upping the Tagging Ante to StoryMapping
This concept did not exactly pan out, but there is only so much you can throw at a crowd.
Maybe.
I thought it would be interesting for the photos that were tagged and geotagged, to ask people to do more that toss a photo named IMG9374.JPG on flickr, but to add to it in the caption a few sentences describing a special moment at the conference (adding one more tag of nmc2009story). If geotagged, we might end up with a storymap– did not get much takers, and most (including one of my own) seemed to miss the geotag part; still we have 4 examples in the tag link.
Participant Generated Conference Video
Another punted idea that I still want to come back to– each year we have a professional videographer that captures footage of the event and interviews with attendees so we have an official conference video (we send a DVD to all attendees, which also includes archives of all the keynote videos) e,g, here is the one from 2008.
Since we see many people carrying FlipCameras, mobile phones with video recording capability, etc, it seemed like it could be interesting to have people share footage of the conference from a participant perspective. I set up a drop.io site to collect these, but have only seen some form one person. I have some other footage I shot, and on disk that another attendee handed me, so there might be something to put together.
Live Video Streams
We initially planned to provide a small number of live streams of the main sessions, as our local conference host said they could broadcast to about 50 streams. A few weeks before the conference, we heard a lot of interest form among our community from people who could not attend the conference due to travel cuts, so less than 2 weeks out, I decided we would up the capability by hiring The Stream Guys to handle the distribution- we’ve had great luck with them previously on our March conference in Second Life.
We managed to get a medium quality Quicktime stream that we put into Second Life, and higher quality Flash video stream, that we made available on the web. We expected a decent Second Life audience, because on the opening day of the conference, Linden Lab offered to put a link on the main login screen that some 70,000 people might see.
The streams worked great– except for Alan’s goof of forgetting until about 2/3 the way in, to swap the script we use to push the URL to the 10 sims we had set up, so our SL audience was likely turned off. Still later in the conference we saw numbers of about 30-60 viewers in Second Life and over 100 on the live Flash stream.
I was glad to see our team eager to embrace a move to generating less print materials,a s part of our NMC Goes Green effort. First we made arrangements with CarbonFund to calculate the total carbon imprint of the conference, which was 234.4 metric tons – the equivalent to the annual emission of 43 cars. On our conference registration form, we offered each individual the opportunity to pay a carbon offset of $5.86 (this was a direct calculation of the total number of registrants divided by the cost of those 234.4 tons, we did not put any padding in).
I managed to write some custom PHP code to create a sidebar widget that gave a dynamic display of the carbon offsets, based on hitting the database to count the current number of total offsets paid. It is just some CSS based on Mike Cherin’s Donation gauge (well it did take some PHP monkeying to make it work for me).
We came in about 107 offset or 46% of the total. There were some issues with people being able to add extra fees to registration due to budget cutbacks (yes, even $5.86 was a problem for some people) and while we did offer a secondary way to pay, we need to rethink this part of the conference registration.
But the big part, for me, because it has been a long ongoing fetish for me, was our not giving out conference bags. Now I know (and di hear from) a few people who like them, or use them for grocery sacks, but c’mon, a lot of them end up in the trash. We eliminated the bags, water bottles, and all the printed stuff that previously went into them. We eliminated the t-shirts too.
As an alternative, we created a Cafe Press shop with many more kinds of t-shirts then we could normally provide, plus other goodies. Now I realize it is a shift to go from something we used to give out free to something we tell people to pay for– but the cultural shift is going from a situation where we give everyone a pile of stuff of one kind (one shirt style, one bag) that they may or may not want, to letting people decided if they want the swag.
I bet a few people still grumbled, that’s okay.
The other thing we cut out was the old paper based session evaluations. I always considered them skeptical, because people scribble down things on paper in the last 3 minutes of a session, when they would rather be doing something else. We replaced it with online evaluations, using Google Forms, so all we had to do was give out a daily URL that had all the sessions for the day. Not only does this save paper, it saved a lot of work for the poor office aide who had to decipher hand written comments and enter them in a spreadsheet.
So we cut out a lot of things, and in place we focused on producing what we think is a really dynamic format for a printed program:
The metallic looking cover is actually cardboard, and inside, we had fold outs for schedules and maps, but each page had a 1 or 3 session layout (for keynotes and breakout sessions, respectfully), with larger photos of each presenter, and on the facing page, a blank sheet for notes (we had some reminders on that page about tagging and the link to the online session evaluation. Our real dream was to make the blank pages for notes the dot paper used for the LiveScribe pen (you can print your own paper from a PDF they provide, but we could not get the form factor our program needed).
People seemed to really like the new program, that was a big success this year.
Conference Facility
The Portola Hotel and adjacent Monterey Conference Center were excellent facilities, but in many ways, fail on the needs a group like ours brings. The wireless network was spotty for many people. We had long conversations with the “IT Guy” ahead of time, who kept trying to re-assure us that their capacity was more than capable– he kept saying, “I see this all the time, less than 20% of conference attendees use the network at any one time”.
We kept trying to tell him– “not our folks” and sure enough there were times that people say no or poor connectivity (but at least it did not go black for long periods. We tried to ask people with mobiles to use their 3G connection, but that mostly confused a lot of them. I saw one colleague, Keene from UT Austin, had this little Verizon hub, that could share through wireless 4 network connections that fed from the mobile network.
I mostly used my Alltel mobile connection rather than the wireless network.
I fail to see why hotels fail so miserably in this regard (and charge you up the wazoo for poor connectivity) — any college campus is serving hundreds of people chewing up mega bandwidth without the kind of headaches you get at conference centers. Frankly, I think they throttle it to save costs. But it sucks.
The other lacking capacity is electricity. Breakout rooms with 4 outlets, and large lecture halls with maybe 6 public ones are a problem. I noted to the hotel staff on our walkthrough that in the general area where people congregate around the registration desk, for every chair, there would be a person wanting at least one outlet.
Did you know sometimes they charge conference planners like $50 to roll out a power strip? Geeeez.
There was a funny moment later when Barbara Sawhill told me she found a stash of powerstrips in a box under the table; I saw here and Brian Alexander carting one around to all the sessions they went to so they could “share the power”.
A Nice After the Conference Idea
After the great time many of is had in the pre-Conference Digital Photography Workshop, my colleague Rachel Smith had the awesome idea to create a VoiceThread, with one photo of every participant, so we could make an online giftbook of thanks to the workshop leaders, Bill Frakes and Don Henderson.
We just sent it out, but it is really great to have people provide feedback in audio, text, or video form. VoiceThread has so many ways you can creatively use it.
I dig speaking at nonprofit conferences and events, and one of my favorite topics to cover is the real-time use of social media. It's the perfect mix of emerging technologies, social media, communities, and the web - some of my favorite things.
The conversations inevitably get stymied around Twitter - which is no surprise, as every nonprofit is trying to figure out what the tool means for them. A channel for promoting your mission? A monitor for listening to chatter about your cause? A way to connect your org to your community? It's all of those things, but it's also something else: a real-time fundraising tool!
Tara Hunt calls it Whuffie. Chris Brogan calls it the Trust Economy. I call it the Deep Network. Real-time fundraising works because of social capital...because we tend to trust the people in our network. When an org sends an email, the open rate can be low - but when a person sends an email to friends, the open rate is 90%! This is because of trust, and works the same way with Twitter or any other people-based network. When we build up large, diverse networks consisting of supporters, friends, and peers, we are creating a bank of trust to draw upon when needed. When it comes time to ask your network for something, they will not need the time to interpret your motivation - because they know you and your org. And some will be ready to act...right then!
So use Twitter for listening, communicating, and promoting, but don't overlook the platform as a vehicle for real-time action. Build your network around mutual trust, a sense of community, and personal attention. If you've taken the time to cultivate a trusting, loyal, and engaged following, you should be able to turn that social capital into financial capital - and in a hurry if need be. After all, when you're among friends, it's never hard to ask!
Chad is an internet marketing, social web geeking, podcasting, skateboarding, family-oriented web guy running a green nonprofit at www.GoGreenCharleston.org/
Submitted by Ivan Boothe, publisher of the Rootwork Blog
Over at the NetSquared blog, Joe Solomon provided a great roundup of reasons people might be "jaded about social media for change" and ways they overcome it.
"I've been getting Twitter DMs from top players in the nonprofit tech and social media for change space -- sharing how they're unmotivated or jaded with using the web and social media for change. As if the phrase has lost its meaning somehow. Or a bubble had been burst. I know I've been feeling the same way. Perhaps you've been feeling it too -- or come across others with a similar vibe?"
Joe runs through some great responses from a whole bevy of social-media-for-change folks, including me.
One of the comments on Joe's blog post was from Texans Against Hunger. Here's what the author said:
"Funny, I clicked on this post from Twitter expecting a realistic conversation about the limitations of social media tools. Instead, it appears everyone took your question about being jaded to mean "How can I get un-jaded," and not, "Should I be jaded?"
The assumption of most twitters above seems to be that these tools work because they're cool OR they've built a career around them, so if you're feeling jaded due to lack of results or encouraging metrics, get over it and get back to your (disappointing) work.
IMO, social media tools are pretty poor at changing anything that takes more than one or two mouse-clicks. Sometimes that's all you need - making a donation, sending petitions, affecting website ratings, flooding online polls, etc.
Most change, unfortunately, doesn't happen at the end of a mouse-click. But in the long run, these tools also do a good job of hoovering up potential participants for offline actions that will make a difference.
Perhaps our jadedness comes from a disconnect between the revolutionary nature of the tool, and its less-than-mindblowing uses? If that's the case we'll be managing our own expectations, given enough time."
I thought the author made some good points, and ones "social change techies" would do well to keep in mind. I can see how the author might have gotten the impression that some or all of the folks in Joe's roundup are simply shiny-tech pushers. I won't try to speak for them, but I do think they aren't blindly following the latest tech hype and hoping it will change the world — many of them have clear social change strategies.
My own background is rooted in a) on-the-ground community organizing, including 100+ hours of training and many times that in actual organizing, and b) academic study of how nonviolent social change can be successful (my degree is in peace and conflict studies). I know "social change" can be kind of a squishy term (and even more so the strategy-free "social good," which Katrin Verclas has amply discussed), so I want to position myself as specifically interested in fundamental social change, at the political, social, economic and cultural levels. I don't see the challenges as being easily fixed, or short-term, or things that can be addressed with a few pieces of legislation or a few institutional reforms.
With that in mind, I think social media and social networking hasn't entirely matured as part of long-term social change. Where it has been getting integrated into social justice organizing, it's largely been outside the United States, in places like Colombia and Egypt. And even there, while we can see important strategic concessions, not enough time has really passed to see the extent to which social media helped advance social justice campaigns.
I entirely share the author's frustration with "tech for social change" discussions that fawn over the technology and don't engage on the level of strategic change. I saw this happening in particular during the Moldovan "Twitter revolution" discussion (which Joe linked to in his post). This "revolution" seemed to captivate a lot of armchair activists on Twitter, mostly because it involved Twitter. They seemed to miss the fact that a) Twitter wasn't actually a big part of the organizing strategy, and b) the campaign itself didn't end up seriously threatening the regime; at best it was a mild skirmish and it certainly wasn't a "revolution" of any kind. (Which is not to diminish the hard work of social justice organizers in Moldova. Mad props to them.)
The author's point about social media providing an outlet for people's activism that sucks away people's time for real social change is an excellent one. (A similar dynamic happens every two to four years in the US, when community organizers see their ranks cannibalized by electoral organizing.) Charles Lenchner has written brilliantly about this, using the principle "mission over membership."
Too many nonprofits orchestrate "petition drives" that aren't about advocating for anything other than larger membership rolls. Too many groups ask constituents to make calls to an elected official without even feigning an attempt at explaining how those calls will help achieve a goal or contribute to a longer-term campaign. The author is absolutely right that too many nonprofits have no social change theory at all; indeed they're more interested in self-perpetuation than winning (often referred to as the nonprofit industrial complex). And when those groups get their hands on social media, they do incredibly un-strategic things with them.
The fact that social media can be used unstrategically, however, doesn't mean it has to be. To pull a line from my earlier post on Twitter, political pamphlets, phone trees and jam-the-faxes must have seemed like strategies in and of themselves when each technology first came out. But smart social justice organizers recognized them as tactics, and such tactics were only effective when deployed as part of an overall strategy for social change.
Social media doesn't mean you do less organizing — it means you (can) do it better, or at least differently. You still have to use all the old skills of coalition-building, strategic planning, creative social action, managing relationships and preventing burnout. None of that goes away just because you're engaging with people on Facebook instead of in town halls.
So to get 'round to the original question — the reason I don't feel jaded when I look at all the unstrategic uses of social media is because I'm focused on the end goal, the social change. Social justice organizers are a pretty creative bunch. Throughout history, they've taken a wide variety of technologies and used them strategically to move their campaigns forward. I have no doubt social media has and will become one tool in many organizers' toolbelts. Image credit Flickr user foreversouls
Ivan works with nonprofits and social change groups, developing websites and doing online strategy around advocacy, fundraising and member engagement, putting to use the experience he gained co-founding the Genocide Intervention Network.
So much of social media and relationship marketing revolves around storytelling, and this is especially true for nonprofits. Using the internet and social media as a vehicle to tell stories is an approachable, inexpensive, and effective way to engage your audience (Check out NTEN's social media and storytelling web seminars series for the juicy details.)
Last week I was listening to some old school hip-hop - you know, Eric B and Rakim, Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, etc. These artists are all great examples of how media can be used for social change - as a vehicle for storytelling. At this phase in the evolution of hip-hop, artists were still explaining to listeners WHY they were picking up a microphone - meaning, they were trying to tell us about themselves...about their organization, and what they were trying to accomplish.
KRS1 was the brains behind Boogie Down Productions, and he was a master storyteller. He devoted a few songs on every album that told us about himself, his mission, and why he was speaking out. I think that's something all nonprofits can learn from. It's like selling yourself from the inside out. KRS1 would go on to become an expert at using music as a vehicle for social change (a whole other blog post), but early on it was all about telling his own story. And he did it well.
Here are 5 quotes from the Boogie Down Productions classic "My Philosophy" that provide lessons in storytelling that all nonprofits can benefit from:
"You're a philosopher? Yes, I think very deeply." Do you know you stuff? Oh yeah you do - and your audience wants to learn from you. Go deep, be honest, and be passionate. Tell your story from the roots up. Nobody knows your mission better than you, so every time you write, blog, podcast, and speak, tell your story proudly and your philosophy will get across.
"You gotta have style, and learn to be original" The best ideas may be stolen, but they're also the most common. Put yourself or your organization out there in a unique way that people can connect with. Be creative. Your story is yours, so give it a style and flair that reflects your culture and mission.
"I just produce, create, innovate on a higher level" There is no substitute for hard work, high standards, and constant scheming. Join every social network, community, directory, and affinity group you can to tell your story. Be prolific, type furiously, be emotional - all when appropriate, of course. Content will always be king, so if your story is creative and innovative, it will be heard by the desired audience.
"It's not about a salary, it's all about reality" A good story can connect with anyone, regardless of economic status. A well crafted, mission-focused message can impact an unemployed college graduate just as much as a Fortune 500 CEO. People are giving because of how they feel about reality, not their salary. The ask might be different when that time comes, but everyone loves a good story.
"This is just one style, out of many" Despite Kurt Vonnegut being my favorite author, I still search for opposing styles from other writers. Tell a good story, but don't forget to bring in new voices. Storytelling is very personal, and multiple authors will bring multiple styles. This can help you reach a wider audience. Find the storytellers in your organization, whether they are members, staff, donors, or board members, and give them the platform to tell your story.
So, are you ready to channel your inner old-school hip-hop master and start storytelling? Be sure to check out the last two sessions of NTEN's social media and storytelling web seminars series, and then visit the We Are Media Project for details on how to make it happen. Now let's hear your philosophy!
Submitted by Rebecca Leaman, publisher of Get your sanity back, Wild Apricot's non-profit technology blog
Great new presentations on social media are coming out almost daily, now that we're deep into conference season, and many are directed specifically to the needs of non-profits. If you've been thinking of launching or expanding your organization in social media, Slideshare is a good starting point for information and advice. But it can be time-consuming to pick through a wide range of slideshows to find those that are up-to-date, actionable, and appropriate to nonprofits.
Here's a hand-picked selection of presentations to get you started.
Some of these have become popuar standards, while others are new material that you may not have seen before. In fact, a few of these presentations were just made available in the past few days! And, as always, if you have a favorite social media presentation to recommend to other nonprofits, please tell us about it in the comments.
Social Media for Non-Profits: Overview What is social media, why should a non-profit care, and who has the time for it anyway? Beth Dunn’s presentation covers the basics, complete with case studies, and suggests Quick start and Advanced Quick Start tactics to launch your nonprofit into social media.
Social Media for Non Profits and Special Causes John Sheridan’s presentation at at Pod Camp Halifax 2009 gives an overview of social media and social networking, with plenty of non-profit examples.
Social Media for Non Profits Primal Media’s sideshow is loaded with information on trends, recent statistics, and examples of social media used by nonprofits.
Nonprofit Soc Media Overview Maren Hogan says “These are the things that I would do”: here’s a step-by-step overview of the basic tools and tactics of social media, starting with a website and blog.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Social Network Fundraising is a presentation by Justin Perkins, Director of Nonprofit Services at Care2.com, featuring research on Social Network Fundraising and use of new media for nonprofit marketing — and an excellent analysis of the ROI for nonprofit social networking campaigns.
Using Social Media to Increase Website Traffic A look at the return on investment (ROI) for using Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com to increase visitors to your website, using the National Wildlife Federation as a case study.
Tip: Whenever you view a slideshow at SlideShare, do scroll down below the presentation area to check for helpful notes on the slides and/or interesting information in the comments thread. And remember — SlideShare is a social networking site, itself, so take a few minutes to explore its features and consider signing up to connect, share, comment, or just to build a library of your own favorite presentations!
Can you add to this list of resources?
Does your nonprofit have a social media how-to or a case study presentation to share? Please tell us about it and leave a link in the comments.
