Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

Can Social Network Analysis Help You Improve Your Social Media Strategy?

2009 - Connected Action - Marc Smith - Social Media Network Analysis

View more presentations from Marc Smith.

In  our book, The Networked Nonprofit, co-authored with Allison Fine, we provide an overview of mapping your social network in Twitter and other sites using some of the social network analysis tools available.  

As someone who loves to play with analytics, visuals, maps, and other geekery, I've been wanting to explore in more depth the how-to and the techniques.   To take my learning deeper on  social network analysis and mapping techniques and how they can be applied them to a social media strategy, I took a workshop with Marc Smith.  He is a self-described "Internet Sociologist" and developer of NodeXL. The workshop was organized by colleague, Tatyana Kanzavelli

This FREE software works as an add-on template in Excel, allows you import data from Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Email and create social network analysis maps.  It doesn't require that you know a programming language, although you need to understand the basic vocabularly of social network analysis and how to translate this to your social media strategy.   After all, data is only as good as it is actionable!   Otherwise, you waste a lot of time creating meaningless, but cool maps.

What I liked best about this workshop and the instructor is that it wasn't on the software features. He gave context of social network analysis, explained the value proposition for using it to help you make social media strategy improvements, and walked us through some examples in the software.  I learned a lot but need to spend more time with the tool and terminology - and apply it to a real world situation.

What I'd love to see is a cheat sheet that maps out the technical social analysis terms with strategy tactics so you knew which analysis run to make what decisions.  Or, a guide to before/after maps so you could see how visualizing your network helped you improve strategy.  

I loved getting context in workshops and Marc didn't disappoint.  For example, I learned that the first ever social networking analysis map was created by Jacob Moreno. It looked at the relationships between players on a football team. Who liked each other, who didn't.  Apparently this team chemistry is important to winning.

My notes:

• People are using social media for social interaction and leaving what Eugene Eric Kim called "ant trails."  Social networking analysis can track those interactions (replies, commenting, like, etc) and help you make decisions with your strategy.

• Without social networking analysis, it's like a weatherman trying to predict a snowstorm without seeing a whole weather map.   It gives you a 10,000 view of your ecosystem.   Without this visualization, it's like three blind men touching the elephant.  There's too much unstructured data (comments, replies, likes, etc) - you need to see a picture or map.

• When you map your network, it tells you a story.  Who is connected to whom?  How are they interacting?  Where are the clusters?   Who are the influencers? Who are the bridge builders between clusters? Who is in the edges?  Who isn't connected? Who should I spend my time responding to and cultivating?   The analysis looks at frequency of interaction, relationship structure (two-way, one-way), and helps reveal structural similarities.

• An individual's online social behavior and connections can be looked at against social networking analysis characteristics and different profiles or roles are then created.  He showed an example of this in an online community SNA and pointed out the lurkers, conversation starters, trolls, based on particular patterns in the map. 

• He covered social network analysis 101 and key metrics including  centrality, cohesion, density, and betweeness.   That last one, "betweeness" describes how long the path is between people. There is great power and responsibility in the people have high betweeness.   To illustrate this, he showed a social network analysis based on voting record of senators.  Not surprisingly, it clusters into two groups, plus there a few senators who ranked high in "betweeness."  Can you guess who they are?

• Social network analysis help you figure out who, where, how much, and how people in your network are connected.   Seeing these relationships in aggregate helps you make decisions.

How are you using social network analysis concepts to help guide your decisions in social media strategy for external communications?   Have some examples? Share them in the comments.

Frank Barry, Guest Post: 4 Keys to Building a Successful Nonprofit Web Site

Courtesy of Frank Barry, moderator of NetWits Think Tank

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!

Check out:

• Google Analytics Maximized: Deeper Analysis, Higher ROI & You by Avinash Kaushik
  8 Great tips and the resources to educate you on each of them. Plan on spending some time on this and blow your boss away next time you bring her your web stats and action plan!
  
• How Thick is Your Head and How Long is Your Tail? by Avinash Kaushik
  Once you’ve digested this article check out the rest of his site. There’s loads of geeky data stuff here that will make you look like an analytics rock star!
  
• Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success by Avinash Kaushik
  You say you don’t have a blog, I say you should REALLY consider starting one. Either way, this post will give you things to think about.
  
• 17 statistics to monitor on your blog by Darren Rowse
  I know you may not have a blog, but the info still applies and there is a lot of useful information here.
  
• Get this Google Analytics FireFox extension – Great additions to what you can already do with Google Analytics.

2) Make Your Content Easy to Consume

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.

Not sure what RSS is? Check out a great video by Common Craft: RSS in Plain English

3) Make Your Content Easy to Share

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.

Not sure what Social Bookmarking is? Check out a great video by Common Craft: Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Why Add This? See some of the reasons here. or just think about their current usage:

"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."

4) Make Yourself Easy to Find on the Social Web

Sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube (know about the new nonprofit call to action), LinkedIn and Flickr are becoming exceedingly important to any nonprofits online presence. It’s likely your organization is already using one or more of these social networks to engage with supporters, spread your message or raise money. Chris Brogan likes to call these places “outposts”. Your main website should highlight your presence on these sites so that your readers can connect with you in social ways online – they want to get to know you and they want to see that you are doing creative things in fundraising.

Check out:

• Creating Social Media Outposts on Luis Grays blog by Mike Fruchter
• Social Media Outposts: Maintenance on Luis Grays blog by Mike Fruchter
• Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy by Chris Brogan
•  Home Bases and Outposts - How I use Social Media in My Blogging by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger

Bonus:

Use a URL Shortening Services!

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:

1. It’s easier for you to pass out in your newsletters, mailings and other printed publications
2. It’s easier for your readers to share
3. You get more statistics for analysis! (See #1 above).

From Read Write Web:

"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."

Check out:

• 5 reasons Why URL Shorteners Matter by Mashable
• Why URL Shorteners Might be Bad for the Web by Joshua Schachter founder of Delicious

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.

Frank Barry, Guest Post: 4 Facebook Tips for Nonprofit Success – See What Others are Doing

Courtesy of Frank Barry, Moderator of NetWits Think Tank

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:

• You get a friendly URL like http://www.facebook.com/your-nonprofit-name-here 
• 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.
• Integrate your blog/web site content via Blog RSS Feed Reader

Examples of Great Nonprofit Facebook Pages:

• Lance Armstrong Foundation
• Stand up 2 Cancer
• Prostate Cancer Foundation – Athletes for a Cure
• Red Cross Fan Page
• One Campaign
• Stanford University
• Athletes for a Cure (read about their social media strategy)

Excited to get started ... Create a page here

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.

See a sample of what the stats look like here

What is measured you ask? 

• 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):

• Nonprofits on Facebook by Facebook
• Facebook Pages FAQ by Facebook [Update: Added on 5.26.2009]
• Why You Need to have a Strategy before you make a Facebook Fan Page NOW! By Jeremiah Owyang
• Pages, Groups, and Causes: How are they different? by Facebook
• Facebook Groups and Pages – Features, Benefits And Killer Tips by John Haydon
• How To Create A Powerful And Engaging Facebook Page by John Haydon
• How To Develop A Facebook Page That Attracts Millions of Fans by All Facebook
• So You Want a Facebook Fan Page? by Beth Kanter
• How To Create and Promote Your Facebook Fan Page by Mari Smith
• Five Lessons Celebrities Can Teach Us About Facebook Fan Pages from Mashable

More on Social Media Strategy for Nonprofits:

• Social Media Strategy: LIVESTRONG and the Summer of Social Good
• Social Media Strategy: United Methodist Church and 10THOUSANDDOORS
• Social Media Strategy: 12for12k Challenge with Danny Brown
• Social Media Strategy: Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles
• Social Media Strategy: Athletes for a Cure

Flickr photo credit: metaweb20 by CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

This article was originally posted on NetWits Think Tank at http://www.netwitsthinktank.com/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=ifINKZOzFmG&b=4487123&content_id={EA4438F2-2529-4379-8A32-16EBD5D5BF90}&notoc=1 by Frank  Barry:

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.

Kivi Leroux Miller, Guest Post: Tips for giving social media projects to interns

Submitted by Kivi Leroux Miller, publisher of Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com

If you moan to 10 of your nonprofit colleagues about how you don’t have time to get your nonprofit on Facebook and other social media sites, I’d guess seven of them will tell you to get an intern to do it for you. (The other three? Two will just nod sympathetically and the other one will have no idea what you are talking about.)

If you are thinking about giving a social media project to an intern or a new employee who is a recent college grad, keep these four tips in mind. They’ll not only make your intern’s experience much better, but your organization will benefit too.

1. Make it a team effort, led by the intern. Social media is . . . well, social. And that’s why it holds so much promise for nonprofits. You can connect with friends of friends of friends you might never otherwise reach. But the organization needs to be at the center of this network, not some intern who is leaving in three months. The intern can lead the way and set everything up, but permanent staff, long-time volunteers and board members must be a part of it too.  The team approach also gives your intern valuable project and team management experience, so she isn’t just sitting alone in front of a computer.

2. Be clear about why you are doing it. “Getting on YouTube” is not a marketing goal. Who are you trying to reach and with what message? What do you want these new friends you’ll make to do? Why is getting on Facebook or YouTube the right tactic? Know the answers to these questions ahead of time so that your intern and the team can create a presence online that complements your existing communications work.

3. Make training a part of the assignment — and you get schooled. For your social media project to succeed, the senior management of your organization needs to understand it. Even if you as the executive director or development director don’t login everyday, you still need to understand the culture and vocabulary of the site, what people actually do there, and how your organization is being represented. Give your intern at least fifteen minutes every two weeks to show you and other senior managers what they are doing online and to give you some quick lessons on how you can do it yourself.

4. Open your mind. If the only way you can see your nonprofit getting on to social media sites is by asking a younger person to do it for you, there’s a good chance that you don’t fully understand what it’s all about and just why “everybody’s doing it” in the first place.

For example, you may not be entirely comfortable with the idea that other people (those friends of friends you covet) may be talking about your organization and your issues in their own words, ignoring your talking points and failing to keep all the facts straight.

This is where you have to remember that social media is not just about pushing information out, but also about conversations about that information and collaboration that grows out of those conversations. Relax and go with it. Gently correct when it’s really important to do so. Thank your new friends for caring. You may be pleasantly surprised at the new ideas and insights you discover.

Want more? Check out our February webinars on online marketing basics, blogging for nonprofits, and creating online evangelists.

This article was originally posted on Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com at http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/blog/2009/01/27/tips-for-giving-social-media-projects-to-interns/ by Kivi Leroux Miller:

Kivi is president of Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com, where she teaches a weekly webinar series for do-it-yourself nonprofit marketers.

Guest Post by Ivan Boothe: Social change takes more than social media

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

This article was originally posted on the Rootwork Blog at http://rootwork.org/blog/2009/05/social-change-takes-more-social-media by Ivan Boothe:

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.

Guest Post by Rebecca Leaman: Social Media for Non-Profits: 26 Great Slideshare Presentations You Can Use

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.

Social Media for Non-Profits: Succeeding in a Social World
Beeline Labs made this presentation to a United Way chapter in Boston: see especially the “10 Guiding Principles” and “Most Common Mistakes.”

Social Networking Strategy

How To Think Like A Nonprofit Social Media Genius
Beth Kanter breaks it down:

• Understand organizational change theory
• Use the Rule of Thirds (1/3 web presence, 1/3 one-way, 1/3 social)
• Listen first
• Build relationships with influencers
• Make it easy to re-mix your content
• No instant gratification — results require effort over time
• Use metrics to discover what works and what doesn’t

Creating Your Organization’s Social Media Strategy
Beth Kanter walks through the process of developing a non-profit social media strategy, with many practical examples.

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.

E-Metrics: Followers, Friends, and Fans: Expanding Your Online Community
Beth Kanter’s presentation advocates “ROI thinking” to help build a community around your blog: using measurements to tell you what works and what doesn’t.

Tips and Case Studies
Who’s Doing What, Where, and How?

• An Introduction to Facebook and Twitter for Nonprofits (Nathan Wright)
• A New Tool for Online Campaigns: How to Show, Tell, and Activate with a Video-centric Microsite (Michael Hoffman)
• Blogging for Nonprofits (Shirley Sexton)
• Energizing Word of Mouth through Social Media (Lee Aase / Mayo Clinic)
• Getting The Word Out About Your Cause With Blogs, Podcasts & Social Networks (Britt Bravo)
• Googe 101 for Nonprofits (Mike Heslin / Google)
• Practical Examples of Social Media for Non-Profits (Laura Lacy)
• ROI of Listening: America Red Cross Case Study (Beth Kanter)
• Sharing Your Story: Podcasting (Britt Bravo)
• Social Media and Social Change in New Zealand (Simon Young)
• Social Media for Non Profits - Tapping into the motivations of The People to change the world around us (Ed Schipul)
• Social Media for Social Good (Ian Schafer)
• Social Media Campaign Report: Tour de Kids (Sarah Allen)
• Social Media Marketing for Non-Profits (Laura Lacy)
• Twitter.org: What, why, who and how for Nonprofit Organizations using Twitter (Amy Sample Ward)
• Upgrading Your E-Newsletter (CanadaHelps.org)

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.

This article was originally posted on Wild Apricot at http://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/archive/2009/05/12/social-media-for-non-profits-26-great-slideshare-presentations-you-can-use.aspx by Rebecca Leaman:

Rebecca Leaman is the primary writer for Wild Apricot's non-profit technology blog.

Guest Post by Steve MacLaughlin: Creating a Social Networking Strategy (Part 0)

Submitted by Steve MacLaughlin, publisher of Connections

For a while now I've been talking with a lot of nonprofits about using social media and social networking in their organizations. I thought it would be useful to blog about how to create a strategy for using these channels.

Before starting to create a strategy it makes sense to set a baseline. Where are we today? What's going on? Haven't we seen this before? Why does any of this matter? This is Part 0. Phase 0. Let's go...

Déjà Vu All Over Again
Web 2.0 in 2009 reminds me of Web 1.0 in 1999. Lots of talk. Lots of uncertainty. Lots of buzzword bingo. Lots of new vendors. Lots of tools. Few experts. Few owners. Few results. Many of the same questions are being asked. Will people give online? Will people give through Facebook? How can we use email? How can we use Twitter? Who owns the website? Who owns the blog? I've seen this movie before and you probably have too. Don't use the same thinking, structures, or processes as you did with Web 1.0. Don't repeat the same mistakes. This is evolutionary ― not revolutionary.

Silo Syndrome
And just like with Web 1.0, many organizations are initially focusing on using social media as a communication and awareness tool. I recently had a chance to discuss social media strategies with members of our Target Analytics Customer Advisory Board. Many of them expressed concerns that there is not an organization-wide strategy for using social media, and that in the absence of ownership there are more data and interaction silos being created. Don't fall into the silo syndrome trap. Learn from the mistakes of the past. Ask questions about the total relationship with the supporter now. Is that MySpace friend an activist? Is that LinkedIn connection a donor? Is that Twitter follower also on the direct mail list? And don't invest in solutions that only create more islands.

The Illusion of Control
Web 1.0 was about controlling the one-way message. Web 2.0 is about engaging in two-way messages. The only remaining control is the illusion of control. You can avoid having a conversation. You can even pretend the conversations aren't happening elsewhere. Good luck with that approach. I'm sure it will work out just fine. This is just as true as when I first blogged it. If you want to succeed using Web 2.0, then you need to give up some control. Control of the message. Control of the messengers. Control of the control. Lose control. Find success.

Friendraising Not Fundraising
If the reason why you want to use social networks is just to raise money, then stop now. It doesn't work that way. An article in the Washington Post notes that "fewer than 1% of those who have joined a cause have actually donated money through [the Facebook Causes] application." The premise of the article misses the point and ignores a fundamental principle of fundraising ― you need to build to build relationships with people before you try and raise money from them. Later in this series I'll go into some reasons why the thinking and practice around these kinds of applications are flawed. Focus on friendraising first. If you do a good job, then the fundraising will follow.

Hope from the Hype
So why does social networking matter? It's not merely just another communication channel. It's the most human channel. In the book People to People Fundraising, I talked about the "Changing Nature of Community" and how "never before have people been able to transcend the physical boundaries of location, language, or other limitations to connect with one another in such powerful ways." Communities matter. Social networking matters. The other important aspect is that social media represents a cost effective way to engage potential new supporters in large numbers compared to traditional channels. And it is the lingua franca for dealing with Generation Y and younger-minded supporters. There is still a lot of hyper-hype, but the opportunity and potential is very real.

The First Step
Get a champion in the organization. They don't need to understand the latest techno widget or the nuances of StumbleUpon vs. Digg. They don't have to be social media butterflies, but they need to have influence and support in the organization. Your champion is going to make some of the choices and challenges ahead of you a lot easier to overcome. Who's your champion? Find one now before Part 1 begins.

This article was originally posted on Connections at http://forums.blackbaud.com/blogs/connections/archive/2009/04/22/creating-a-social-networking-strategy-part-0.aspx by Steve MacLaughlin:

Steve MacLaughlin is the Director of Internet Solutions at Blackbaud and is a frequent blogger, presenter, and writer about technology trends in the nonprofit industry.

New Twitter Tool Mailana Helps Me Visualize Strong Ties In My Network

To see Mailana live map

Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a piece called "The Inner Circles of 10 Geek Heros" using a tool developer Pete Warden's service Mailana.   The tool is quite fascinating because it combines a light weight social network analysis (see this page to learn more about the methodology) of your twitter friends with search.

Marshall's post will shows the top five people I'm having conversations with on Twitter and who respond to me:

1. Marnie Webb is the co-CEO at Compumentor/TechSoup. You should get to know Marnie; once you do you'll wonder why you waited so long.
2. Amy Gahran, see Jeffrey Levy's list above. Gahran has a lot of conversation with a lot of awesome people.
3. Jonathon D. Colman does SEO for REI.
4. Beth Dunn is a consultant and MBA candidate.
5. Dr. Mani is an Indian entrepreneur and heart surgeon.

I don't understand by @ntenhross (Holly Ross, Director of NTEN) and @amyrsward (Netsquared community builder) aren't in my cloud. I think it's because they're not in the malina database, but you should follow them.  There's lots of friends in my network that you explore.  Here's a mosaic:

Get your twitter mosaic here.

What's interesting to me is looking at my map and identifying sub-communities or spokes and hubs.  They identify different nooks and crannies of my network.  For example, I can clearly see the Aussies I met or connected with as part of my trip to teach there last year. (Those folks are:@silkcharm, @dnwallace, @edwardharran and @divabat).  I can see in this inner circle at least 8 or 9 hubs.

Speaking of Austraila, I also met Gary P Hayes after I session I attended at the Sydney Writers Festival.   He left a comment pointing to an excellent post called "Twitter Long Tail - Broadcastization & Pre-Twitter Reputation."  The post is chocked fulled of statistical anaylsis answering this questions:

Ever since I joined Twitter (GaryPHayes) I have been fascinated by the subtle ‘etiquette’ of being followed, following and timely updates (as well as the enormous growth and creative potential twitter now affords). It is also interesting watching those traditional media brands and celebrities with a non-twitter and web 2.0 online reputation enter into the fray. What effect do they have? Do they corrupt this young new channel before it has found it’s own feet or is the invasion of old brands and celebs part of its maturation?

I can also click on a map of someone in my network, KDPaine, for example, and see who her inner circle is.  I can also search by keyword and she who she talks to about that.  For example, I searched KD Paine's map on the word "metrics"  Presumbly, because these people are talking to KD Paine (and she is responding) and the tweets contain the word "metrics" - these might be people I'd want to connect with because I'm interested in this topic.

1.		jasonfalls
2.		kanter
3.		serena
4.		silkcharm
5.		curtmonash
6.		thornley
7.		mcp85
8.		dough
9.		andrewcherwenka

There's something just a little bit creepy about this.  While we've opted to have all these conversations in public, the tools let people track more granular information about you - who you talk to and what you talk about it.  

What's your takeaway from this tool?  How would you use it?  Do you think it raises some privacy and security concerns?

My First Grade Teacher Friended Me on Facebook

You're looking at my first grade class, circa 1964.  (Can you guess which one is me?)   I haven't kept in touch with most of my first grade classmates, although I remember all their names.   I hadn't thought about my first grade teacher, Mrs. Segal, in over 40 years until this weekend when she friended me on Facebook!

Do you remember the line --  "It's not what you know, it's who you know."  It means roughly that to get things done you need to build up social capital, not just knowledge.  When I first started my work in the nonprofit sector, I worked in the development office and this phrase was often used to describe what was needed to be an effective fundraiser.

Social network sites, like Facebook, are making it very easy for us to connect and build relationships with people we know, might want to know, or knew in the past.   Social networking site, like Facebook, are making it easier to accumulate and maintain our social capital.  Although it takes relationship building and other steps to actualize it.

I am thinking about the "Facebook Generation," those who have grown up with social networking sites.  They will have the potential to remain "connected" with everyone they have met growing up.   Think of it - they will have the opportunity to create a lifetime of social capital.

That thought makes me wonder about social networks will continue to change our lives and our work.   Will the nonprofit development officer of the future say,  "It's not who you know, but whether you're connected with them online."

Facebook Connect: The Portable Social Graph

Right after the election, I ordered some Obama stickers from MoveOn. When I went to their web site to complete the order, I was surprised to see the option of telling my Facebook friends about it the purchase as part of the transaction.  I installed Friends Connect and approved the information for my news feed.I  screen captured it for later reference. 

A few days ago, Facebook announced its Facebook Connect. It is being described as the next evolution of the Facebook platform that will allow the social activity that was happening inside of Facebook to be anywhere on the web.    It can pull personal data about visitors from Facebook - and send back activity reports to their news feeds.  It does this by having the user fill out a self-service application. It has been described by some as a "portable social graph." Google also implemented Google Friend Connect a few days ago - so the battle for access to your online identity and social graph is heating up.  (See Bryan Alexander's post.)

Some context first.  The term "social graph" may be unfamiliar. One of the best definitions that I came across was from Brad Fitzpatrick who defined it as  "the global mapping of everybody and how they're related."   (To better understand what a social graph is and why it is important, see this primer from the Read/Write Web.) 

In November, 2007, Google announced Open Social API.  I remember I was working two articles for TechSoup (Social Networking Options and Secrets To Effective Social Networking and considering how to one might explain open to their executive director.   At the time, the idea of ubiquitous social networks felt like it was a far from being a reality that might impact many nonprofits.  That has changed a bit in the past year as more nonprofits have started to incorporate social networks as part of their web strategies.

If you want a better understanding of what ubiquitous social networking is, read this indepth piece by Charlene Li  called "The Future of Social Networks" from March, 2007.   She says ubiquitous social networks will develop into the following: 1) Universal identities; 2) A single social graph; 3) Social context for activities; and 4) Social influence defining marketing value. 

Portable Social Graphs - Imagining their Potential

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: retail marketing)

Razor Fish created the above slide show to illustrate some of the potential for portable social graphs using Facebook Connect as the example.   Jeremiah Owyang points to this presentation identifies the following implications:

The social graph, when linked with traditional websites will radically change how we find, research, purchase, and support products.

Reviews, ratings, and critiques about products will become more relevant as you can start to get information from your own network.

Soon, social technologies will be pervasive and will impact every website –even if they choose not to participate

Brands, and their interactive marketing agencies, are starting to include social elements in all aspects of their marketing efforts.

Others in the social media technology industry don't necessarily think Facebook Connect is a step forward.  Marc Canter says, "Now over a year later we continue to see evidence that Zuckerberg and Facebook really think the web IS Facebook and that they would do everything they can to suck IN content and people INTO the black hole known as Facebook, and damn the rest of the web."   This is a view shared by Stephen Downes

Update:  Michelle  Murrain posted some thoughts about Facebook Connect - expressing the same opinion as Marc Canter and Stephen Downes:

What is most annoying to me is that Facebook Connect is proprietary, and it competes with an open standard, OpenID. They could have just as easily implemented the open standards - but they chose to go in a different direction. For most of the social networks except for Facebook, the walls of the gardens are coming tumbling down. But Facebook is basically just enlarging their walled garden.

What does this mean for most nonprofit organizations? Not a whole lot. This is going to take a long time to all of this to shake out, and only the most Web2.0 savvy nonprofits are going to be doing technology projects that will involve implementing either of these new toolsets.

For nonprofits that were early adopters on Facebook and have built up an network there, there may be some opportunities.  

Also this week, Scoble covered someting called PeopleBrowsr which is TweetDeck on steriods.   An application that lets you make groups of your contacts across social networks and see them visually.  It does a lot more, but it is pretty beta.  It's an interim step.

• Mark Zuckerberg's announcement
• Mashable Report
• Lost Remote
• Wired News

What do you think? 

NCVO and TAG Conference Presentations and Reflections

NCVO

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: information socialmedia)

The last couple of months have been busy with conferences, workshops, and travel. Right before Thanksgiving I ended up getting sick and have been behind in posting my conference slides and reflections.  With a whopper of cold/bronchitis, it is difficult to think clearly when you're congested.

On November 24th, I got up at 5:00 AM to skype into the NCVO Information Conference, focused on how organizations can make best use of recent developments in social media to meet the changing needs and expectations of their audiences.  I had the honor of presenting with Laura Whitehead and Amy Sample Ward who were on site.   The description of our panel that we did two times is here:

Could better knowledge sharing and closer communications inside your organisation create stronger relationships, efficiency, insight and effectiveness? In this workshop you will discover how the latest tools for online collaboration and sharing can offer opportunities to improve the way you work. Social Media tools such as wikis, social networking sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, using Tagging and RSS feeds can enable organisations of all sizes to best use and build on its existing collective wisdom and innovation.

 

Ways to collaborate and share knowledge using social media tools

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: km laurawhitehead)

Laura and Amy presented using the above slides while I Amy brought me in via Skype her computer to listen.  The wi-fi was a little flaky, so while Laura was presenting Amy and I were trouble shooting using Skype chat.   Our back up plan was to use the skype out to Laura's smartphone that had a speaker while Amy flipped my slides.  It was a little clumsy, but worked based on the tweets and emails I received following the session.

As a geekily recursive replay of our "who is video blogging whom?", Paul Henderson qiked the session.   

Amy and Laura did a terrific job of laying the groundwork, I was feeling a little geeky and futuristic.    I wanted to talk a little bit FriendFeed and how personal information sharing/consumption has changed due to the increasingly social web.   The idea:

The online social graph is the map being constructed by social networks of every person on the Internet and how they are connected.   The social graph is for people what hyperlinks are for web pages – that is, for organizing, filtering, and association.  Now that are computers and data can be connected via the Internet, we are witnessing a social layer – and it is challenging our assumptions of everything.

TAG Conference Presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: nonprofits socialmedia)

The week before I went from Boston to Miami to Romania and flew back to Boston via Miami to present at the TAG Conference.  Roberto Cremonini of the Barr Foundation had invited me to present on a panel about social networking.  I talked about why it is important, effective profesional networking, and organizational networking approaches.   Gavin Clabaugh was the moderator and Marc Osten who presented about the cultural change issues to adopt social networking.

The day before I had come in from Romania and attended the plenary session which provided an excellent primer and audience research. The session was called New Media and Philanthropy:  How Foundations Are Using Web 2.0.  The featured speakers: 

Nora Paul, Director of the Institute for New Media Studies
Gary Kebbel, Director of Journalism Program - John F. and James L. Knight Foundation
Scot Marken, President and CEO of Donors Forum of South Florida

I had actually just seen Gary on my earlier visit to Miami for the Knight News Challenge Screeners Meeting. The introduction/primer covered different Web 2.0 technologies using an audience poll comparing the TAG audience to an earlier study by conducted by Eric Matteson and Nora Barnes covering web 2.0 adoption in businesses and large nonprofits.  Using the clickers, they go instant polling results.

• 57% of people in the room said they were "very familiar" with social networking - meaning that as individuals they have set up a social networking and using it outside the office.   (What I want to know is how many feel they are using social networking and as a professional tool effectively?)
• 27% of people in the room said their organizations were using social networking.
• Barriers were not having a plan, people, or a good understanding of how to do it and why.  T Technology isn't the barrier, it's culture. 

Nora Paul made the comment as she set the question about social networking familiarity: "Social networking has become part and parcel of the way people are communicating."  That's part of the disconnect with culture - social networking is not viewed as an "organizational" activity. 

In part of her presentation, there was a screen capture of my blog and she asked if anyone read it.  I raised my hand and said I did.  I think she was taken aback to discover that it was my blog!

Gary Kebbel made some points about the cultural adoption issues.  He said much more elegantly than what I captured here, but I was still on Romanian time.

• Need someone at the top who can understand the value and be strong enough to be embarrassed.  Willing to say - if we're asking our grantees to do this, we need to do it.   The key is getting program, IT, and communications staff to talk about why they want to use web 2.0 at the big picture level.
• Need to avoid shiny object syndrome.  "We're doing this because everyone else is.  Do it because we want to improve the quality of applications.  It's for the sake of programmatic quality.
• How do you create a culture that allows you to implement it?  How do stay comfortable with what you are doing?

After hearing the session,  I decided not to lounge on the beach in Miami, but go back trash the presentation I had planned to give and revise accordingly.  Here's some take aways from Erika Bjune from the session.

I created a wiki for the slides along with some links, including the materials that Marc covered in his presentation and paper by Gavin called Web Two Oh.  And, of course, I qiked the SKYPE participation.

Professional Networking: Just for Fun or Part of Your Job Or Combination? Tips for managing multi-memberships in social networks?

Source: Facebook vs LinkedIn Traffic

The illustration above shows the overlap between people who use LinkedIn and Facebook.  What initially caught my eye was the demographic (age analysis) of LinkedIn VS Facebook users.  We know that  professional relationships are moving from the Rolodex to the social networks.  LinkedIn is designed for specifically for business professional networking, while Facebook is a bit more casual.  Yet, I do professional networking on Facebook and I'm noticing a number of colleagues are too.

While the demographics of Facebook are younger compared to LinkedIn, the Compete analysis shows that Facebook users are maturing.   In June of 2007, nearly over 35% of Facebook traffic came the 18-24 year old segment, compared to around 22% in June 2008.

Meanwhile my colleagues in education and communities of practice (Browyn Stuckey, Jeffrey Keefer, and others) hosted an online conference about Managing Multi Memberships in Social Networks.  I had wanted to participate, but my crazy travel schedule quickly made that goal unrealistic.  So,  I'm learning third hand through looking at the materials.

They started with a survey to examine people's experience using social networks.   There are two terrific refleciton questions which caught my eye:

1.  How do you use social networks?

just for fun
part of my degree work
personal learning (optional)   
professional development (required)
part of my job

2.  Which phrases best describe how you feel when coping with multi membership in your online networks?

drowning, feeling like quitting something
roller coaster, sometimes fun to look forward to, sometimes just anxiously holding on
situation under control, have strategies to manage
guilty that I am not more active in all my communities

They used discussion thread to discuss the issue:

This brings me Tony Karrer who has several posts about networking on  LinkedIn (and Twitter and Facebook) and friending policies:

I used to heed the advice that you should only connect with people who you know pretty well. And that's the way I've operated. However, that never seemed to work all that well, and I think I've figure it out.

I listened to a podcast that featured Christian Mayaud in which he described PAN CAN FAN.

An individual's social network (online or offline) is divided into three groups:

• PANs = Potentially Active Network
• CANs = Currently Active Network
• FANs = Formerly Active Network

The "CAN" and "FAN" are people you know pretty well.  The "PAN" are people you may know superficially.

I now think of my LinkedIn direct connections as also containing PANs who I only know in a superficial way. I've changed where I'm willing to link to anyone who I feel may be a good person to know in the future based on their profile and possibly a limited messaging exchange. This is more in line with what people call a LinkedIn LION (LinkedIn Open Networker). I'm not sure I'm quite going as far as most LIONs who seem to link with everyone. But, I've certainly changed to be very open to linking even if I don't really "know" you.

This is a good way to think about your network and as Tony suggests you may not want to link to everyone.  And you may have different approaches on networks.  Not too long ago, Charlene Li wrote about professional networking tips including friending policies if you are using these tools to support or enhance a professional network.   It made me think that I have slightly different approaches on different spaces. 

Facebook:  I will immediately approve a friend request on Facebook if I recognize them or know or have recently met them.  "CAN or FAN" as Tony describes above.   But, if someone I don't immediately recognize requests to be friends - then I will ask them why they want to be friends - time permitting.  What has been happening lately - because I get so many request s - I end up ignoring them.    If someone sends a personal message with some context about why they want to be friends, then I will friend them.  This inspired me to put a friending policy on my limited profile.

Twitter: My updates are unlocked.  This is my "loosest" network. 

LinkedIn:   I treat LinkedIn as my rolodex and tend to friend people who I know or have met.  I tend to use LinkedIn quite to network through my contacts to find people I'm specifically looking for.  Tony's post is making reconsider that.

Other posts

• Is A Social Media Friend Really A Friend? by Mark Dykeman
• How I Think About My Social Networks by Scott Monty
• No, I'm Not Ignoring You by Scott Monty
• Social Media Etiquette by Chris Brogan
• Can Facebook Replace Face to Face by Social Citizen Blog

How do you use social networking for professional networking?  Is it a part of your job or optional?  Do you have different networking strategies across networks?  How do you manage your mulit-memberships without going crazy?  What are your tips?

Your organization's social networking strategy doesn't have to be like mastercard - you don't have to be everywhere!

This is a screen from Ivan Boothe's slideshow.  The cartoon is from Rob Cottingham's Noise to Signal Cartoons.  I'm going to riff on Ivan's advice, "You Don't Have To Be Everywhere" (like Mastercard)

After an organization has identified an audience, objective, and strategy,  a question that often comes up:

• What social networks should we establish our presence on?
• How many social networks should we participate on?

The first question is answered by Rob's wonderful cartoon that makes the point that there are different cultures and different types of users across social networks.   Perhaps you need to look existing secondary research on demographics and characteristics of users (see this post for some places to start finding free information).   You need to do some listening first - after setting up an individual profile, the search feature is your best friend or you may consider paid research services.

• Are there groups, Causes, or Fan Pages where people are talking about your organization your issue?  Who set them up?  
• Do other organizations that work on the same issues have a presence?

The answer to "which social networks?" I agree you don't have to be everywhere.  But, it isn't a black and white question in my mind.   My rule now is that I set up a presence on different sites and have email forwarded if people want to contact me, but I go deep in only a couple of places.  Those places are the ones that provide most value - where the people I need to connect with are. And of course you need to have a strategy for managing multi-memberships.

Remember there is overlap -- people belong to more than one social network.  So, while you may have a light presence on some, people in your network may be more deeply engaged on other networks and spread the word of your organization's cause.  (That is if you've built relationships and identified influencers).   I've seen this first hand  -- I don't engage deeply on MySpace - yet some of my donors for the Cambodian campaign who heard about on Facebook and shared it with their friends on MySpace.  Jonathan Colman mentioned this say multiplier effect from a recent Digg campaign.

There are also other some reasons for setting up presence across sites, but only engaging deeply on a few.  Brian Solis points this out in terms of branding.   Recently, I read about twitter squatters.(Remember domain name squatting? --when a ten year old reserved Toys R Us domain in the early 1990s and sold it back to them for a bike).   Anyway, I like the tool that lets you check out a bunch of social networks at once to see if your name has been taken.

How do you choose which social networks your organization will have a presence on?  How do you decide which ones you will make a commitment to participate regularly?

Social Networks for Social Change: Ivan Boothe Knows What He Is Talking About!

Using Social Networks for Social Change: Facebook, MySpace and More

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: fundraising advocacy)

I was lucky enough to meet Ivan Boothe at the first (or maybe second) Netsquared Conference back in 2005 and have been following his work for years.   Ivan Boothe helped start the Genocide Intervention Network in 2004, and was  responsible for communications, web development and social networking strategy.  He has since  started doing freelance work on his own at rootwork.org.  So he cautioned me that some of the information might not be entirely up to date that he shared on listserv including a pointer to his awesome slide show with audio.

Ivan is one of a small number of nonprofit early adopters in social media and social networks - he has a couple of years of experience under his belt - so his wisdom is priceless.  

He describes how the Genocide Intervention Network uses social networking and in this description you'll find a great example of the first step in social media, listening, if you venture onto social networks.

We use it to go where people are already organizing against genocide, and give them tools to do so effectively. For instance, when we first started organizing on Facebook in 2005, we found many existing groups on campuses working to end the genocide in Darfur. So our role wasn't to try to convince people to become active, but to give them effective tools, like our congressional scorecard and 1-800-GENOCIDE hotline, to take action on a regular basis. Our long-term goal is to build an anti-genocide constituency, and social networks are a key part of that because it allows our members to speak for themselves -- we can cultivate leadership among our members by encouraging them to talk to their friends and submit content (such as photos on Flickr or videos on YouTube). For concrete examples see the Slideshare presentation above.

Ivan says their organization's social networking initiatives have been successful in building the "brand" of an anti-genocide constituency. Ivan notes, "Social networking is a long-term approach and using traditional metrics of advocacy or fundraising it may not look like much. But over a long period of time social networking is actually critical in building an effective, educated political constituency."

The senior management of the organization was very supportive of their social networking efforts.  And as Ivan notes, "They were often looking for creative ways to integrate social networking approaches into existing campaigns."     Although he doesn't say,  I suspect this happened through ongoing discussions and developing small proof of concept experiments and reiterating and reflecting on successes and not so successful efforts.

What I think is really key as Ivan points out is the lack of a generational divide in getting buy-in from the organization's leadership.  The Genocide Intervention Network is an organization founded and driven by younger people. 

Many of the original members were in their 20s and familiar with some aspects of social networking. We had seen it working for other organizations, as well as political campaigns (such as Dean, Obama and MyGOP). The only limit to our interest in doing social networking is staff time. We do critically analyze the best approach to social networking, but we rarely doubt that there is some effective approach we can take.

So, what is the right fit to use a social networking strategy?  Ivan suggests:

 Social networking is a natural fit for an organization that wants more than an ATM of donors or a list of petition-signers, but active and engaged political organizers.

I'm so glad that Ivan is adding his presentation and wisdom to the WeAreMedia wiki!  Thanks Ivan.

Advocacy 2.0 Guide: Cross-Posting

Global Voices Advocacy has released another guide in its Advocacy 2.0 series called "Cross-Posting" writting by Sami Ben Gbarbia. 

This one offers a brief introduction to how to use cross-posting for online advocacy campaign. It reviews different web 2.0 tools, highlights successful examples where cross-posting has been used for advocacy. The guide also includes the pros and cons of the cross-posting technique.

The guide highlights how to use RSS tools like Twitter Feed and Feedburner to automatically post content from your blog and other sources to Twitter and Facebook.  You may wonder why do this?  The guide explains why:

For some digital activists from countries with widespread Internet censorship use this tactic to automatically keep their audience updated about new "mirrors" to their blocked/censored website and blogs. So, instead of spending time sending emails and filling their subscribers' mailboxes with email updates, applications like Facebook, Twitter are doing the job of displaying the new URLs to their website, bypassing censors
and getting the message out.

Nonprofits Using Ning: An Interview with Community Media Workshop and Best Practices

Last week for WeAreMedia project, I put a call on Twitter  for case studies, best practices, and links about nonprofits using social networking sites, including Ning.   Ning, which lets you set up your own custom social network, has attracted attention for its ability to create communities that are more functional than those created through competing services from Google and Yahoo listservs. Nonprofits, support groups, and nonprofit professionals have found their homes on Ning.

LauraatNing was listening and just pinged me to point me over to this blog post about nonprofits that are using Ning with their donors and supporters.  She interviewed Manny Hernandez from Tu Diabetes and Es Tu Diabetes, and Ayumi Stubbs from the ASPCA Online Community. Combined, these networks have almost 20,000 members, a testament to the hard work (and networking expertise) of these two network creators. Here are their best tips and advice — whether you’re thinking of launching a network, or are already building up your member base for an already-launched network.

• Build off your existing brand
• It’s about more than raising money
• You don’t need to be established to start
• All about the Forums

But many nonprofits are using Ning for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and learning.  Take for example the Community Media Workshop's Ning Site which is used to complement their face-to-face training session.   Recently, Thom Clark, Gordon Mayer, and Demetrio Maguigad did an email interview with me. 

1.)   Tell me a little about your organization's social media strategy for its ning site?   What did set out to accomplish? Who were you trying to reach?

Community Media Workshop’s Ning site began as a way to solve a very practical solution—keeping workshop participants and trainers connected. During a social media workshop, trainers Demetrio Maguigad and Gordon Mayer covered a number of online tools with attendees. During the workshop, a number of participants requested that there be a place for them to stay connected and acquire additional materials for their work after the workshop. A Ning site was developed in order to answer this specific need.

For every online social network training we do, we actually present the ning site and demonstrate ways participants can create and customize profiles, syndicate RSS feeds, post blogs, photos and videos and more. We then invite participants to join. After the workshop, we post a discussion topic on the specific training with attached handout materials and links to further help participants of our training.

Other then this practical reason, we also syndicate headlines from our blogs, podcast, and videocast in order to pull them into the Workshops resources and eventually to our flagship website  to purchase our media guide, sign up for additional training, and subscribe to our electronic newsletter.

Every broadcast of our subscription based e-newsletter highlights headlines not only from our online broadcasts but also user generated posts and also a call to join the network.

Because both participants and trainers are members of our ning site, participants can continue discussions with trainers where they left off in the classroom and share the discussion with others.

2.)   Why did you choose Ning?

Ning is very intuitive and easy. Someone who has no html, CSS, JavaScript, or PHP experience can set up a site utilizing these features in less then 20 minutes and its free. Ning is also very flexible. Developers who are more experienced can create customized scripts and widgets on their site to accommodate the needs of their users.

Developers can also pay a premium fee to remove all Ning branding on their site, as well as remove advertisements. You can even use your own custom URL!   Compared to other “out of the box” social website apps, Ning seems to be the most flexible, the most affordable, and easy to use.  Ning also allows open API to work with other popular social networks like Flickr and Facebook. Users can import their Flickr photos from their account and promote their profile pages and widgets on Facebook.

3.)   How are you measuring your success with the site? 

Our Ning site currently has over one hundred members who post videos, start discussions and connect with others. Also, approximately 6% of visits to our main site is referred by visitors to our Ning.

The goal of our workshop is to provide media training for nonprofits, including training on using these new tools.  The Ning site provides a comfortable place for people ask their peers for advice and to experiment before they bring these tools back into their organizations.   For example, we had one participant who started a blog on the Ning site who told us they never would have started if it had not been due to the encouragement of peers.  This is what we were trying to reinforce with our workshops.

4.)   Tell me a couple of stories about how the project has delivered value to your organization?

Staff members have attended local face-to-face professional networking events and got to meet people face-to-face that they first "met" on the Ning site.   There was instant rapor.   The Ning site has given us the ability to connect different people with one another and keep them informed about happenings and campaigns they are working on.

5.)  How much time did take to launch and maintain?  Who on staff is the "community manager"? 

It took us about 20 minutes to set up the intial site, but has gone through a series of revisions based on the user experience and feedback. Our cmmunity manager was Maude Carroll our former Marketing Coordinator, who used the site to build personal relationships with our audiences.

6.)  What would you recommend to other nonprofits who are considering doing a similar project?

If others are to develop a Ning site, we suggest thinking of it  as a very specific tool that should support your main online goals or main wesbite. Audience and users should be identified and the site should be developed based on their needs and wants. Its worthwhile to consider psycho graphics or the general psychology of the user experience you want to convey. Take time to develop a theme or metaphor to keep users thinking of the site as fun and common place to meet but still get the resources they need.

Burning Problems With Social Networks: What do you think?

Photo by Leppre

Hat Tip Stephen Downes

I've been doing a content analysis of "burning questions" that were submitted as part of some pre-workshop information I collected from participants to help design an upcoming workshop.   One of the questions:

How to address concerns about privacy, security, and avoiding spam overload that comes with social media and social network sites?

Vladislav Chernyshov, a self-identified geek and masters student at Novosibirsk State Technical University (NSTU) in Novosibirsk, Russia and who is currently working on a next generation social network project called Genome  identifies five major "burning" problems with social networks. 

He points out these problems with current social networking practices.

(1) the lack of sufficient privacy protection

He is talking about the fact that we have different levels of intimacy with our social networks or social graph, but due to privacy issues we can't manage them.    Charlene Li called the problem a lack of granular social graphis in her keynote, Future of Social Networks,  at Graphing Social Patterns in March 2008

In his post, Chemyshov points to a  natural order of intimacy that reflects the richness of our human relationships and that social networking designs/technology must enable us to better manage this.

In a post  called "Linked In:You Tell Me"  by Monica Hamburg that Chernyshoy points to illustrate the problem, there's a comment by none other than Rob Cottingham who is his witty style gives us the kind of scaling of intimacy:

- Personal friend
- Family member
- Colleague
- Business friend
- Partner (you’ve done business together)
- Members of an organization
- Blogging buddy
- Creepy high school acquaintance
- Can’t remember, too embarrassed to admit it
- Got drunk together at conference, messed around, not sure how far it went
- Got drunk together at conference, messed around, absolutely horrifically certain how far it went
- Someone who was willing to Digg my blog post
- Frequent teammate in flame wars
- Let’s face it, I don’t know them… but they’d be one hell of a trophy friend

So, what can you do in the meantime until the next generation of social networks is born?  Understand how privacy controls work on social networks.   Here's an instructional video about how they work on Facebook along with some advice from Jeremiah Owyang.

(2) the overflowing of social messages

He is talking about the how easy it is to get distracted and overwhelmed by the amount of information that comes to you.  He points out that social networks do not have an efficient way to cut through the clutter to what matters built into the features.  Put another way, how do you efficiently deal with all the vampire invitations that your friends on Facebook send you? 

The way around this problem (on Facebook at least) is to use tools like  ignore all that allow you ignore all stupid invitation with a single click and Facebook's recently implemented "ignore requests from this friend" feature. 

(3) the low quality friendship maintenance

Here he is talking about the fact that social networks can allow you surpass the number of personal contacts (150) a human has the capacity to maintain or the so called Dunbar number. Chemyshov says that this “quantity over quality” trend is wrong because we completely loose all richness of in-person interactions and relationships. Or as Liz Strauss says: “The wider I go, the shallower I get”.

The Wall Street Journal's article "Is there a numerical cap on how many friends we can have?" says that new research suggests that social networking sites will help humans surpass this limit.  Last word from Prof. Dunbar: .."isn't sold on the idea that social networks make his number outdated. The research, he says, "made us realize people don't know what these wretched things called relationships are -- and that helps explain why we're so bad at them."

What's the workaround? Friend policies. 

Vicky Davis and Judy O'Connell offer educator's perspective on the whole question of friending and friend policies.  As Vicky noted on my Facebook profile a while back,

I just wonder this, Beth. In school we tell everyone, "Never add a friend of a friend, only add people you know." and many of us are building our network in this way. Aren't kids who add friends of a friend learning valuable networking skills? It is important to remember this, but also that we are creating a vast disconnect between what we tell students and what is going to make them successful in the future!

It is a good idea to set a friend policy.  The goal is not necessarily to collect the largest number of friends, but to build relationships. But there are different approaches. Well known blogger and social media guru, Robert Scoble adds all friends. Shel Israel prefers to establish a connection first.  (BTW, a huge big hat tip to Connie Reece who pointed me to the notes from her session on social networking at Blog Orlando awhile back.)

(4) the poor performance of advertisement filtering

He offers some good examples of the mismatch in targeting of ads.  There is more here.  This point doesn't bother me so much because I don't pay attention to the ads on Facebook.

(5) the lack of identity management

Here's his description of the problem:

Because Facebook owes your data, not you. You cannot save all your data on your computer. Basically, you cannot import or export your data.

So, let me enumerate all things you can’t do:

• You can’t import/export your data
• You can’t control who see what about you
• You can’t watch who know what about you
• You can’t ask some new web service to read your name, email, contacts ,etc. from your social networking site during sign-up
• I’m sure, you can continue this list by yourself

I don't think these reasons are enough to say no all together to social networks, but good to understand some of the challenges from a structural point of view.

Other Resources

Jan Chipchase,  Future Social
Dana Boyd, Facebook and TechCrunch the costs of technological determinism and configuring users

Tech Crunch, Facebook isn't a Social Network, Stop Trying to Make Friends There

From Social Media StarFish To Conversation Prism

Illustration by Brian Solis and Jess 3
(Click through to see the larger image)

Darren Barefoot created a visual called "social media starfish" in his book "Getting to First Base." It was a remix of  Scoble's white board.  Brian Solis has created the next reiteration - the conversation prism.  (Perhaps it  inspired this visualization of the Digg Community activity)
 

The conversation map is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.

I'm seeing a remix of the Social Media Game cards.  However, the existing "tool cards" have about 3/4 of the tools listed above - but people get so overwhelmed with choices.   The holy grail would be a grid that shows prism category, lists the tools, and column that describes possible applications or uses.   

WeAreMedia Module 5: Online Community Engagement Strategy and Skills - Participate and Win A Free Book!

Photo by FourDoxn

This week we are discussing and building Module 5: Online Community Engagement Strategy and Skills as part of NTEN's We Are Media: Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits project.   Here's the description:

An online community is an interactive group of people who are joined together by a common interest. Whether your organization creates its own branded social networking site, connects with people on blogs or sets up a presence on a larger online social networking site like Facebook, Digg, or YouTube, a critical factor for success is having an online community engagement strategy. An engaged online community can help your organization attract more traffic, loyal supporters, more content, more links, and other values. But it requires investing the time to build relationships with members (yes, even one-on-one interaction) or what we call "network weaving skills." This module covers the key touch points for developing an online community strategy and a look at network weaving skills.

Some of the inspiration for this module comes from Alexandra Samuel and her Bringing Your Community To Life workshop.  Alexandra suggests that you offer incentives for participation.  So, thanks to NTEN, we are offering prizes for participation - six lucky wiki contributors to Module 5 between now and August 3rd will have an opportunity to get a free copy of either Media Rules and Mobilizing Generation 2.0.

So, what do you have to do to get a free book?  Between now and Sunday, August 3rd, answer one of the key discussion questions at the wiki.   

• What questions do you need to ask to guide your online community building strategy?
• How do you encourage community participation?
• What are the best practices for network weaving (one-on-one interaction with your community members)?

It is super easy to participate.  Share a couple sentences about your experience from your nonprofit organization, or point to an excellent resource and add a sentence to describe it. Be sure to include your name with a link to your email or web site next to your contribution.   We'll pick six contributors randomly to receive a copy of Ben or Brian's awesome books.

What are you waiting for?

Making Media Connections: Ning Site

 

The Community Media Workshop is a media organization in Chicago that trains nonprofits to tell their stories to the media, tips sensitive journalists to the importance of these stories, and tries to create better relationships between the media and the diverse communities in Chicago.  It recently launched a ning site - a branded social network for its community of nonprofits.    Thom Clark, Gordon Mayer, and Demetrio Maguigad shared some of their learnings.

1.)   Tell me a little about your organization's social media strategy for its ning (branded social network) site?   What did set out to accomplish? Who were you trying to reach?

Community Media Workshop’s Ning online strategy began as a way to solve a very practical solution—keeping workshop participants and trainers connected. During a social media workshop, trainers Demetrio Maguigad and Gordon Mayer covered a number of online tools with attendees. During the workshop, a number of participants requested that there be a place for them to stay connected and acquire additional materials for their work after the workshop. A Ning site was developed in order to answer this specific need.

For every online social network training we do, we actually present the ning site and demonstrate ways participants can create and customize profiles, syndicate RSS feeds, post blogs, photos and videos and more. We then invite participants to join. After the workshop, we post a discussion topic on the specific training with attached handout materials and links to further help participants of our training.

Other then this practical reason, we also syndicate headlines from our blogs, podcast, and videocast in order to pull them into the Workshops resources and eventually to our flagship website www.newstips.org to purchase our media guide, sign up for additional training, and subscribe to our electronic newsletter.

Every broadcast of our subscription based e-newsletter highlights headlines not only from our online broadcasts but also user generated posts and also a call to join the network.

Because both participants and trainers are members of our ning site, participants can continue discussions with trainers where they left off in the classroom and share the discussion with others.


2.)  Why did you select ning?

Ning's development application is very intuitive and easy. Someone who has no html, CSS, JavaScript, or PHP experience can set up a site utilizing these features in less then 20 minutes and its free. Ning is also very flexible. Developers who are more experienced can create customized scripts and widgets on their site to accommodate the needs of their users.

Developers can also pay a premium fee to remove all ning branding on thier site, as well as remove advertisements. You can even use your own custom URL! Compared to other “out of the box” social website apps, Ning seems to be the most flexible, the most affordable (regarding ROI), and easy to use. Ning also allows open API to work with other popular social networks like Flickr and Facebook. Users can import their Flickr photos from their account and promote their profile pages and widgets on Facebook.

3.)   How are you measuring your success with the site?

Our ning site currently has over one hundred members who post videos, start discussions and connect with others. Although we currently do not have statistical information specifically from our ning sight, approximately 6% of visits to our newstips site is referred by Ning, which isn’t that bad.

4.)   Tell me a couple of stories about the project has delivered value to your organization?

I remember stepping into a Netsquared meet-up and meeting for the first time three people who I’ve chatted and consulted via the ning site. It was as if I’ve known them for a long time. The ning site has given us the ability to connect different networks with one another and keep these other networks informed about happenings and campaigns they are working on.

I also remember when a member posted their first blog post and them emailing me how they think they would have never have done it without the encouragement of others. To them is became a more practical things rather then a big obsticle, and this is what we were trying to reinforce with our workshops.


5.)  How much time did take to launch and maintain?  Who on staff is the "community manager"?

It took us about 20 minutes to set up the intial site, but has gone through a series of revisions based on the user experience and feedback. Our cmmunity manager was Maude Carroll our former Marketing Coordinator, who used the site to build personal relationships with our audiences.


6.)  What would you recommend to other nonprofits who are considering doing a similar project?


If others are to develop a Ning site, we suggest thinking of it  as a very specific tool that should support your main online goals or main wesbite. Audience and users should be identified and the site should be developed based on their needs and wants. Its worthwhile to consider psycho graphics or the general psychology of the user experience you want to convey. Take time to develop a theme or metaphor to keep users thinking of the site as fun and common place to meet but still get the resources they need.

Effective Online Networking: Network Weaving Skills

Flickr Photo by Picherthis

This week I am an online mentor on the topic of "Effective Online Networking" as part of the Networking for Success project at the the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre.   My opening post shared some ideas and tips. 

I've been musing about one effectively (dare I use the word efficiently) nurtures relationships their networks?  Amy B left a comment with a pointer to a terrific resource on how to build in networks.  It's called Network Weaving (see their blog).  What is network weaving?

A network weaver is someone who maintains the network linkages, in both the electronic and physical forms -whether for your own personal network or on behalf of an organization. (There are other roles in a network (see here).  In this definition, a network weaver users social network analysis tools or maps to:

1. Understand patterns in social networks
2. Consciously facilitate connections to help make those networks stronger

Today, Oluwatoyin Ajao-Dawodu left a comment that clearly illustrates network weaving in a personal network:

I really believe so much in the power of "Networking"  I have used networking to meet more people that share my feminism principle which has being a source of encouragement for me. I have used it to impact in people by sharing useful information that will help their career with them.

There's a wealth of wisdom in the comments and in other posts that I'd like to summarize:

Two fabulous women networkers here in the US -- Liz Strauss and Connie Bensen -- shared some very recent personal networking learnings.   Connie gave some new tips.  I particularly like the advice about getting out of your silo and exposing yourself to new fields, new ideas, and new people.   

Liz Strauss shared her networking gems in the comments.  My favorite "Meet friends by noticing people who have thoughts that intrigue you and begin by asking them to elaborate on what they said."  Back on her blog, Liz invites people to answer this question - and help change the world.  Karin added a tip about using your blog for personal networking. 

I'm participating in this project because of two awesome women network weavers in Africa - Ore Somolu and Sokari Ekine.   I met Sokari Ekine through her fantastic bridge blogging of the African blogosphere on Global Voices.  I was a mentor on Ore's Blog Mentoring Project in Africa as Joitske Hulsebosch  also writes about.  I also had a chance to work with Ore through Nancy White and KM4DEV Journal on Technology Stewardship. 

Ore Somolu, Executive Director of the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre, reflected on the importance of quality versus quantity in building a network.  That is most important to build it one relationship at a time.   This jogged my memory about some fabulous personal networking hacks that Chris Brogan shared almost two years ago.  (You'll find them summarized here along with some other resources suggested by Marnie Webb and others). 

Alana sent me a link to her blog post via Twitter, "What would I tell women in Africa?"  She offers her advice and also reaches out two people in her network Maggie (in Uganda) and Alan Clayton (recently back from a fairtrade tour) to check in and comment.

So, what are the soft skills for network weaving?   I found a Network Weaver checklist from June Holley, one of the Network Weaving blog's contributors.  What would you add to the list or how you adapt for personal networking?

Effective Online Networking: Nurturing Relationships

It's Harvest Time for Networking and Tomatoes by Beth Kanter

This week I am an online mentor on the topic of "Effective Online Networking" as part of the Networking for Success project at the the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre.   The project will teach women how to use Web 2.0 tools and other ICTs to effectively develop and advance their work.  Participants are learning how to use these tools to initiate and manage projects; as well as identify networking opportunities with others.

I started with a post with some thoughts about effective online networking. (And posted an invitation to others to participate on my blog).  Oreoluwa Somolu, Executive Director of the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre, left a thoughtful comment. 

I like how you point out that it’s the quality of the relationships that you build online that matters, not just how many people you meet. An analogy is when we attend conferences or other ‘live’ networking events and focus on collecting as many business cards as possible, without taking the time to have proper conversations with people (as well as you can in those settings) and following-up with them afterwards.

It made me think of that photo I took to illustrate this post.   That was almost two years ago.  I had this huge pile of business cards after a year of attending conferences.  I was also contemplating the first Boston PodCamp and improving my networking techniques. 

Chris Brogan shared some excellent post conference networking hacks.   I particularly liked this little trick:

I play “shuffle up and email” often. I take my cards from past events, and then send someone a random email (hopefully with value to what they’re doing, and mindful of what I’d want to do with them). The email is a “ping,” a chance to show them that I’m still out there, and that we might still have business. Further, it might just be the thing that gets someone thinking of me for another opportunity.   

I also thought of a post by Marnie Webb called "Networking Your Networked Network" where she points to a ChangeThis Manifesto called "Care and Feeding of Your Network" written by Bob Allard, an entrepreneur developing software tools for connectors and businesspeople (www.youshouldmeet.com / www.referralmonitor.com)  He offers five steps to greatness in Networking:

1. Know what he/she is working on.
2. Think creatively about how to help
3. Make a meaningful introduction
4. Follow up
5. Keep your network informed about what you are working on.

Connie Bensen left a comment on the other post with some more networking tips.   Connie's writing about networking is some of the best I've read!

This brings me back to the rest of Ore's comment:

I’ve met many people online, with some who I met only years later and who have now become good friends and important collaborators, who have helped me in some way professionally.But this would probably not have happened if I was so focused on what I would get out of the relationship and not bothering to nurture it properly.

Ore is talking about reciprocity which is an important principle in the nurturing of relationships in your network.   How do you nurture relationships?  How do you this effectively (dare I use the word efficiently) if you are doing this on behalf of your nonprofit?

 

Social Network Demographics: Is there a middle ground between email is for old folks, social networking sites are for young people?

Nick O'Neil found this video and used in a post called "Facebook for Grandparents."   I set up my eighty-something Dad on Facebook - and his reaction "Cognitive Overload!" -- Although when I posted videos of his grandchildren on his profile, he emailed me saying he enjoyed the video. 

A question I'm often asked is "What are the demographics of social networking users?"  and what is behind that question is the need for some information to decide what social media strategy is right for their organization's goals and audiences and further, social networking or not?  I keep a couple of my links to social network site audience data here, but it is a moving target.

For example, I recently came across some recent Facebook demographics posted by Ben Lorica at O'Reilly (Hat tip Ben Rigby).  Did you know that Facebook makes available demographic data through its advertising platform. Here you can obtain estimates for the number of Facebook users by age group, gender, education, country, and more.   (If you want some step-by-steps, follow the instructions on slide 3).  If you play around with this feature, you will learn that the majority of Facebook users (around 90%) are under age 35.

Source

This made me wonder about social networks and baby boomers. Less than one-quarter of US Internet users ages 40 and over use social networking Web sites, according to the JWT BOOM/ThirdAge "Boomers, Healthcare and Interactive Media" study conducted last month. The study groups baby boomers into categories by ten year increments and the analysis shows that with age, social networking site use drops sharply.

What's interesting is why they don't use social networks.  The study respondents said their main problems were: privacy, time and just not seeing the point.  The Social Media Optimization blog suggests there may be  opportunity to appeal to boomers through smaller niche social sites, like for AARP which has added a social networking section to its web site or this network for retirees.  Of course, one could also argue that if the bulk of your audience is from the baby boomer and older and you don't plan to reach out to younger people -- perhaps social networking sites are not the best Internet strategy for your organization.   

The question is when the baby boomers start dying off and the younger generation comes into its own, will they look like that those people in the video above?

How has your organization made a decision about social networking?  How do you consider demographic information in the decision?

Social Networking and Web Tools for Chicago Nonprofits

I'm live blogging this panel from the Making Media Connections Conference.  All live blogging disclaimers apply.

Social Networking and Web Tools for Chicago Nonprofits. You already know Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn et al–now hear from homegrown social networks and what they have to offer local nonprofits. Paul Baker, Webitects; Kara Carrell, 501 Tech Club Chicago/Interfaith Youth Core; Todd McMeen, CitizenPowered.org. Moderator: Justin Massa, MoveSmart.org.

The majority of the room had experience in social networking sites and tools, both personally and for their organization.

Each of the panelists shared a brief overview of the current social networking projects.

Paul Taylor gave an overview of their work.  He mentioned that they will be sharing the work process and issues around adoption of social media.

Kara Carrell shared her experience, much of based on her personal passion for social networking sites.   Described her organizational's first conversations - our audience is on Facebook and why aren't we there?  How can we communicate with them?  Struggled with issues around staffing, privacy, control, etc.    Her organization is a storytelling organization, so the goal is to get people to share and tell their stories.   A Different  Kind of Story.   Have also worked a lot in video because stories need a visual medium.  they have a YouTube Channel.   Facebook is also being used for internal communications - conversations between staff about how programs are going as well as cultivate the next generation of donors.

Todd McMeen did a project with the Mayor's Office.  People told them that they wanted more social capital.  How can we best support you?  They wanted a social networking platform - white label social networking site - called Citizen Powered.  They got feedback from users - wanted their own web sites on the platform.  Cost them about $1m in in-kind services.  Long term vision:  They think there are many more activists out there and the best way to connect and collaborate, but give them their own tools.  Rolling out widgets in next few weeks so community members can use them.  Goal is getting people to connect and collaborate.

Expectations:

Some better idea of what social networking sites and how to put them together.

• Once you start a network, how many hours a week do you need to keep it going?
• What is the best mix of content between social networking profiles and main web site page?  Is there a difference?  If there is what should it be?
• What technologies do you need to encourage user-generated content on video?
• What are the best examples of social networking use?
• How do increase internet literacy with communities?
• How do you decide which sites and tools are right for your audience?
• What are the specific social networking sites in Chicago?
• What is the connection between social networking and fundraising?
• How to keep this conversation going?

Content

• Before content, you need to know your audience.  Who am I talking to? There may be three or four audiences.  Where do they access the content?  What type of language should i use?  What will resonate with them (format and content)?

• Content can be crowd-sourced or user-contributed.  The power of a network increases as the network grows.  You can't just push your message out to the world.

• Spectrum - passive observer to active participants.  Best way to manage the content, is not to do it yourself.  Find ways for people to contribute.   

How do you managed user-generated content?  How much time does it take? How much staff?

• Managing the content so people don't inappropriate comments.  Not that much time.   The big time investment is getting people to contribute. 

• What happens when the public dialogs moves away from a public dialog?  How do you manage that conversation?  (Don't have anonymous posting).  Let the crowd remove the posts and flag in appropriate comments.

How you ever encountered problems related to your funding and what you're doing on the site?  How you moderate inappropriate behavior or conversation?

• Let your partners know that you will take down inappropriate comments.  We want dialog, not just hear from people who agree with us.

• User policies - a standard policy of user/community conduct is useful.

• If an appropriate comment, do you remove it?  You have a feature to flag something and you let the community flag - and the administrator can remove or you can program in an algorithm.   You don't want people to just take down anything. 

• The public is in direct conversation with you.  You have to learn how to let your message go on a certain level. 

What are some resources if you don't understand social networking?  What are some resources to help your constituents?

• Go where the people are - if they are offline - help them get connected.  Use this to communicate with your children. 

• References Lee LeFever's Common Craft Videos for basic introductions.  Kari sites down and asks about what tools they are using in their life.  Are you using your phone?  Are you going to certain web sites.  Understand where people are coming from and use simple English.

• Strategy question: Hire an expert.

What do you do when you have a younger staff and you have a board or executive director who don't understand the process?
Do introduction. Experiment.  Then showed the results.  Have patience.

• Sustainability - give and get.  People are motivated by their self-interest.  Go to your executive director and figure out what motivates them.
• Tools are very agile and can be used for different purposes.  Figure out how you meet your goals and demonstrate the power.
• We've a tipping point in the last two years. Organizations are changing.  The cultural gap isn't changing. 
• Don't ask permission, apologize.
• Don't want to be locked into a silo. Can you pull data in and data out easily. 

What are some specific tools you like?

• GapersBlock - great example.  Every community group should have a site like Obama.  You should be giving all your users to Facebook and interacting with Facebook and have your content syndicated on Facebook.
• Twitter - micro blogging tool.  Interesting to see how nonprofits start to use it.
• Mobile phones - text for social networking - particularly youth.  Next frontier.

Here's the summary of people using twitter for this conference.

Managing Your Social Networking Presence: What is the best skill set?

I'm in Chicago for the Making Media Connections Conference.  Today is a full menu of workshops before tomorrow's conference.  I'm sitting in Heather Mansfield's workshop on Social Networking Sites.  A lot of good practical information about setting up and managing your individual profile and groups (and Fan Pages) on Facebook, Myspace, Change.org, and YouTube.   In passing, Heather made a comment, "You need to have a person with the right skill set to manage your organization's social networking presence."   I asked what the specific skills were.  Her response:

• Someone who is on the Internet a lot
• A risk taker
• Someone who is tech savvy, or at least comfortable or self taught
• Someone who has grown up using the sites and really enjoys it
• Someone who takes a less regimented in communications - less formal - uses happy faces
• Someone who has a good online persona and personality
• Someone who enjoys it