Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

ArtsLabSF: Reflections About Social Learning With Social Media

ArtsLab SF

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Almost a year ago, I got a phone call from James Leventhal who follows me on Twitter.  He is Deputy Director for the Contemporary Jewish Museum,  and an expert in using social media in a museum setting.  He welcomed me to the Bay Area and asked if I would be interested in doing some trainings for the local arts community.  I said yes.

James pulled together a group of funding partners and Clay Lord from Theatre Bay Area.  One thing led to another and I designed a social media lab for arts organizations.  The inspiration was part The Lab Theater a place where you try out contemporary or experimental works before you bring them to the main stage and part peer learning program.

We had space for 25 organizations out of the 100 that applied.   The social media lab for arts organizations is a combination of face-to-face workshops, phone calls, and online support via a wiki and Twitter over several months.  Participants design and launch a social media experiment that helps them improve their practice and share learning with one another.  The last face-to-face session, in fact, is participants sharing the results of their experiments.

The curriculum is based on the workshops I've been leading for the past five years and includes the Social Media Game, Strategy Principles, Experimentation, and the practical and tactical.  

We were lucky enough to have a fabulous space for the workshop in the Contemporary Jewish Museum.  The space was large enough so we could have small group tables, space for food, and space to do full group and small group moving around exercises.   There was also excellent AV support and acoustics.   The configuration of the physical space definitely enhances learning.

We were welcomed by directors of two partner organizations, Connie Wolf, Director and CEO for the Contemporary Jewish Museum and Brad Erikson, Executive Director, Theatre Bay Area.  Both organizations have demonstrated leadership in embracing social media.   Claire Rice, from Theatre Bay Area, was live blogging the whole day and captured their opening remarks.

Here are some reflections on the instructional design:

1.   Put Your Learners on the Stage and Hand Them the Mic!

My teaching style has been influenced by constructivism in short - less "sage on the stage" and "more guide on the side" and that learners should be actively involved in their learning process.   I don't believe in the expert as one person, but more as a network.  I think this style is a better match for social media as well as social media training.

When I deliver content, I will use visual slides (to honor visual learners), but my preference is to also have a wireless mic and remote clicker and involve people in the conversation.    I think it makes the experience richer, although some people may feel uncomfortable because they are more used to sitting back and listening to experts speak and not engaging.

You may be wondering why some of the participants are wearing neon gangster hats.  For the social media game, I use the pre survey to do a bit of social engineering for the small group work so that each table includes someone with lots of social media expertise as well as someone with marketing expertise.   I ask certain questions to help identify these individuals. 

Most importantly, I need a good facilitator for each table.  So, I ask for volunteers who love leading meetings and making brief presentations.  It is always interesting to feel the a little bit of nervousness in the room, but then the leaders raise their hands!   These leaders are then given the meeting agenda (game instructions), keep the group on track, and volunteer to report out.

Photo by James Leventhal

In workshops, it is important to have a full group discussion about people's concerns about social media and a discussion about organizational readiness.  I have been using human spectra gram, a technique I learned from colleague Allen Gunn from Aspiration.  Colleague Kaliya Hamlin has this description.    I do agree/disagree to statements like "Social media is a waste of time" or I do a spectra gram based on personal comfort level and whether or not they feel social media is valuable for their organization.   I select what I questions I do based on answers in an online pre-survey.

When they are lined up by comfort level,  I have been doing a quick poll to see where generations appear along the line.  What has been interesting, is that social media comfort does not always play out along generational lines and it was true for the arts organizations in the room.

2.  Social Learning: Face-to-Face

Somewhat skeptical about the value of social media.

After hearing a story from a peer.

I do a lot of small group and share pair exercises.  It is important to vary your instructional delivery because the human brain -on average - can only concentrate for 12 minutes.   Varying the delivery improves retention.  With small groups, you, as the instructor, have to give away some control and see what happens.

I tend to bumble-bee around and listen in on selected conversations, but it is important for people to hear from their peers.  That has more influence sometimes than an "expert."   James Leventhal was sharing a table with two participants from SFGMC who were skeptical about Twitter.  James was able to search Twitter and show them a conversation happening online with other choruses about fundraising.  (We arranged for wifi in the room and asked participants to bring their laptops).  Later I asked them if they were still skeptical and they said not as much and posed for the above shots.

3.  The Power of Social Learning:  Online and Offline 

In every training that I am doing, I incorporate social media in ways that enhance learning and connection between participants in the room as well as those who are not in the room.   In other words, how can you make the learning more social before, during, and after the instruction?

Some may think that tweeting during a workshop may take away from learning or paying attention. But for some people, it can actually enhance their learning. If one is comfortable with using Twitter, it forces you to listen for key points and consolidate your insights into a couple of short (140 character) messages.

For this workshop, we had a hashtag - #Artslabsf and the wiki.  This helped us bring in people with knowledge who are not in the room.  TheatreBayArea did a fantastic job in engaging its members in the learning through social media.  They took live notes on their blog and invited others to participate, live tweeting the event, and engaging members on Facebook.

A week before our session, I posted a request to my broader Twitter network for arts and social media examples and asked people to add them to the wiki. That's where I learned about a Twitter hashtag called #2amt - a channel for theatre artistic professionals to discuss their craft and trade and support one another. They were able to join the discussion in our Twitter channel.

I do believe that social media as part of your training can enhance learning, help facilitate social learning. I'm interested in learning how to do this better, take it deeper, and perhaps begin to measure it. I would welcome your thoughts on how to do that.

Somethings to improve ...

There is plenty that I need to improve.  Here's a few thoughts.

(1)  Social Media Game:  I have used the the social media game at over 50 trainings during the past four years and many others have re-purposed and remixed it too.  Every 4-6 six months, I blow up the game and start from scratch.  This month I piloted a brand new version of it.   

• Give the new version of the people cards a joyful funeral if doing the game as part of the social media lab and there isn't enough time to cover the content.   I created a nonprofit version of Charelene Li's Social Graphics Framework.  Because of limited time, I did not cover these ideas as a full group, although the basic information was on the printed materials and the cards.   It is an advanced concept and it was difficult for this group to learn from discussing the information on the cards and print handouts. 

• Composite simulations work best, but there is value to the full report out.  I've experimented with using the game as a peer assist, fictional situations, and having groups make up a scenario.  What seems to work best are some composite scenarios based on the assessment form that groups fill out before the workshop.  The scenarios clearly outline the social media objective and audience definition.  In half-day workshop (4-5 hours),  I give more time for reports for each group.   With a larger group like this, it wasn't possible, although it may be possible to create a mechanism for each group to capture and document what they discussed so it can be shared. 

(2)  Capturing the Energy in the Room:   Part of the design is for each organization to implement a low-risk, thoughtful social media experiment that helps improve practice.  Based on the assessment of the group before the first workshop, I selected two different experiments (Twitter and Listening).  While it might be ideal to have participants select any experiment they want, that would have been a larger scope of work and I was concerned the learning would be lost.

I'm still trying to refine a method on how to best help participants make the leap from the strategy brainstorm and learning about the different options for tools to honing in a focused experiment to implement in between sessions.  The morning is high energy, but when we get to the afternoon and focusing in on the experiments there is a need for better connection.   The modules for the experiments include online tutorials, a worksheet that asks them to plan and implement their experiment, and the check-ins in between now and June. 

I think that it is impossible for everyone to leave the first session with an experiment fully planned without a lot front-end one-on-one consults or to break up the face-to-face workshops into two different half-day sessions (strategy/tactics) with time for people absorb in between. This would have increased the scope of the project, of course. 

Right now the goal is to have participants identify the experiment they want to do, think about it, and have questions ready for our first phone call.  The real learning is going to happen on the phone calls and stewarding the group.  And, of course, at the end, when participants share the results of their experiments.

I'm working on two social media labs right now, this one for arts organizations and another for Packard grantees.  I expect to learn a lot about to design effective peer learning that incorporates social media.

Reflections on the Social Media Lab Workshop

Packard socialmedia-lab-day 1-module 1

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As part of my work as Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation this year, I have been leading some peer trainings with grantees.   Over the years, I have developed and refined one-day or half-day workshops on social media strategy and tactics for nonprofits.   The curriculum and instructional design included "Principles of Effective Social Media for Nonprofits" and a version of the social media game created with David Wilcox.

Last week, we launched the first session of the "Social Media Lab," a social media peer group training with a small group of grantees from the Children, Families, Communities Program.  I was incredibly lucky to have a fantastic group of participants, all passionate about their work, very knowledgeable, and excited about integrating social media into their work.  I also was honored to work side-by-side with esteemed colleagues Shiree Teng, Cheryl Contee, Ashely Boyd, and Dan Cohen.

Here's some reflections:

Thoughtful, Intentional Experiments  

Thoughtful experimentation is setting up a low-risk experiment with metrics to figure out what is and isn't working is a social media best practice.  If we can be more intentional and disciplined in our experimentation,  that's how we gain insights about effective social media use.  It prevents us from falling prety to shiny objective syndrome.   

It is also a good technique to explore the possibilities of new tools and techniques before investing more time and energy in something that isn't right for our organizations. The add-on to my previous workshops were three "experiment in a box" modules which included Listening, Twitter, and Facebook Fan Pages.  The idea is that participants would learn some of the best practices for these social media tactics and then design and implement an experiment and share their results with one another.

There is one problem with this design:  Many of us  find experimenting difficult. Experiments require short-term losses for long-term gains. With limited time and resources, we are often hesitant to make that trade-off. It seems more direct to pay an expert to tell us what to do, not get a checklist for an experiment.  As a culture, we value answers over questions because answers allow us to take action faster, while asking questions makes us think.  That's hard work, but worth it because good questions and gathering evidence usually guides us to better results. 

 
Gift of Time: Real Time Learning

The problem with one-shot trainings is that you offer a lot of content and information, people get excited, and then they go back to the day-to-day reality of their busy work lives.   Where do you get the time to put some of what you've learned into practice?  And, when do you get the time to put your hands on the keyboard, shoulder to shoulder with a peer?

We included a big chunk of time for participants to work on their experiments while they were in the room.  This is the gift of time.  After each participant selected an experiment, we grouped them together and had them work together on setting it up.  I did floating consults.  This required setting up online curriculum that could step folks through set up and aid their planning and implementation.  I created these for Twitter, Facebook Fan Pages, and Listening. 

A New Definition of An Expert:  Your Network

I think this is particularly important to emphasize if you want to nurture any peer learning, but especially around technology skills.   I modeled that I don't know everything.  I didn't have the courage to do that when I was younger, but now I understand the power of knowing what you don't know.   I love not knowing because it encourages me to reach out to my network and find the answer.  I feel strongly that the new definition of a social media expert is someone who has a smart network.   

For example, during the lab session, we got a terrific question about bilingual Fan Pages on Facebook.  I didn't have direct experience to answer it, but I remembered that my colleague, Manny Hernandez, had extensive experience in social media and bilingual approaches did.  So, I demonstrated how to tag a person in a wall post and posted the question:

Manny Hernadez: Should an organization that serves both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking audience (and some only speak one language) have two different Fan Pages in the native language? What are your thoughts? How do you do it?

My tag or shout out also appeared on Manny's wall and it didn't take him long to reply with a link to his post about strategies for bilingual fan pages.  But even better, this question posted on my Fan Page wall generated 14 insightful comments with useful advice, including one from the Facebook developer who worked on some Facebook translation tools!

The short answer: One Fan Page with multiple languages using Facebook Targeting tools. 

Over the Shoulder Learning on Steroids:  Social Learning

Ten years ago, before my son Harry arrived, I volunteered as a mentor for the Computer Club House in Boston.  I wanted to get used to being around kids and what better way to do it than volunteer for a computer after school program.  One thing I immediately noticed, is how the kids huddled around together at the computer screens and quickly shared what they knew with each other or how different discoveries quickly travelled from one kid to the other.  There was a lot of what Nancy White calls "Over the Shoulder Learning." 

We can put shoulder-to-shoulder learning on steriods by integrating the use of social media to support learning.   If two minds are better than one, what about 100?    The wiki and our hashtag helps bring in other people into our learning and enrich it.

Learning Together Over Time

As participants go off and implement their experiments, they will not go alone.  We'll have check-in conference calls as well as use the wiki and hashtag to provide just-in-time learning.  The peer learning will culminate in having each participant present what they learned from their experiment.

Joyful Funerals

One of the participants was Ashley Boyd from Momsrising who has a significant amount of expertise as an early adopter of social media and genersously shared a lot of what they've learned.   Ashely shared a mini case study about their Pacifier Campaign.

Ashley shared a brilliant idea and technique avoid the stigma from failure.  She calls it "joyful funeral" -- that you quickly say this didn't work, reflect on why, and move on.  That way, on the front end, you acknowledge that since you're experimenting not everything is going to work perfectly - and that there is value in learning from those tactics that didn't work!

I anticipate that we'll probably have some joyful funerals as move through this process, including a few of my own.  I hope that we can take the flop out of failure and harness the learning.

Some things I might do differently next time around:

Making the Link To Smart Objective/Audience Identification:  

I used the social media game as a peer assist exercise for the first time.  In all previous versions of this game, I used simulations (a fictional example of an organization or situation that had a smart objective and audience already defined).   Simulations work better because participants can focus on applying the social media principles and picking tools than on defining an objective and identifying an audience. 

Next time, I will use simulations based on participants or if budget and time permits, include one-on-one coaching with participants prior to the first session.   While participants do complete an assessment form, I think participants might benefit from some one-on-one coaching.  It would also be great to have a bank of examples that show an organization's SMART objective, audience identification, and social media strategy.

Social Media Game

I've been using the game now for almost four years in many different versions and reiterations.  Many people have also remixed it.  When I use it with a large group, I do a fair amount of social engineering to ensure there is the right mix of technical experience, communications experience, and meeting facilitators.    Mostly that is done in the room.  I think this is still important for even a smaller group.

I also remixed the game recently to incorporate some of the latest tools such as mobile and location-based social networks.  And, as such, the game was a little bit more advanced than it needed to be.   And while this might have caused some confusion or even stress, I think it is good to expose people to the tools that the early adopters are playing with.  Just so they know the basic concept.

Over the weekend, on the heels of this session, I attended a "Playshop" by game designer Nicole Lazzaro.  I learned about the four keys of fun in game design as well as the role emotion plays in engaging people.  My next task is to begin to integrate this thinking into the game as well as the overall instructional design.  Stay tuned for that!

Growing My Instructional Chops

I've been delivering technology trainings as a one-woman band since 1994 when I facilitated workshops in how to use email or create web pages.   I've worked with a team to do my social media module, but I've never lead a team of training.   I'm learning how to scale when you collaborate with other trainers and how much you need plan or create formal lesson plans. 

A Few Reflections from SXSW Crowdsourcing Panel

Crowdsourcing

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I was honored to design and facilitate a panel at SXSW on Sunday called "Crowd Sourcing Innovative Social Change."  The panelists were Holly Ross, Amy Sample Ward, David Neff, and Kari Dunn Saratovsky. We were also very lucky that Claire Sale volunteered to be our Twitter advocate who monitored the Twitter stream and verbalized important points and insights.  

We addressed two content areas:

• The art and science of crowd sourcing for social change
• Next practices in integrating social media for program delivery that leads to social outcomes

We used a broad definition of crowd sourcing, simply stated as:

Getting ideas, content, volunteer tasks, money, or other things from a wide swath of people. And that’s good thing for solving complex social problems with innovative ideas.  During the session, it was pointed out that crowd sourcing is a way to people, organizations, and communities work together for mutual good, and without competing.

The second topic started percolating at last year's SXSW Social Media for Social Good BBQ and a question - so where are the good examples and techniques?  And, of course, crowd sourcing is a technique being used across the social sector for different goals.  So, we decided to "eat our own dog food" that is model the use of crowd sourcing to design and implement the panel.   Amy Sample Ward and Holly Ross came up with the "Social Media for Social Good Case Study Contest" and did all the heavy lifting to make it happen.

For the Case Study Contest, we used a submission form and then asked our networks and communities to participate by submitting examples of how they have integrated social media into program delivery.   We also asked the community to vote and rate the examples.  Then, we asked the panelists to pick a few to share during the panel.  These were (as captured by blogger Marcia Stephanek):

• Open Green Map, offered up by Holly Ross, helps communities map their eco-friendly spots, whether it's a bike rack or a solar-heated apartment complex or a public herb garden. Using this open source collaborative platform, the Manhattan-based nonprofit has so far engaged more than 600 communities in 55 countries in creating citizen maps to catalyze new environmental projects, large and small. The maps are made by community members. OGM helps.
  
  
• Seattle Free School, suggested by Amy Sample Ward, uses social media to organize classes and teach students. “The owners found each other via social media and the project was born from the interaction,” Ward said. “This is ‘for the community by the community’ education and engages the best local experts to share their knowledge and experience for free."
  
  
• Invisible People, an nonprofit that uses video storytelling to help de-stigmatize homeless people. "Our hope is that you'll get mad enough to do something," its Website reads. Invisible People uses crowd sourcing to select the best stories and interviews.

My goal for the session was to create a fusion between the traditional talking head panel, followed by Q&A and a core conversation.  I was also wanted to interject crowd sourcing from the audience in the room or via the hashtag on the Twitter (crowdx) in real time.   So, armed with an improvised mobile wireless mic, I used an Oprah style facilitation.  So after introducing the panelists and topic, I quickly left the platform/stage and roamed the audience to ask them questions or share stories related to the topic. 

So, for example, after our panelists briefly shared the above examples, I asked the audience for other examples.   A funny thing happened.   I knew a number of folks in the room and I was staring them down, hoping they would speak up first.  I think with Oprah style "person on the street" type interview - you want to begin with someone you already know, perhaps seed a few opening stories.  

I noticed  the brilliant Andy Carvin in the front row and looked him straight in the eye and he waved me off.  Then I asked Claire Sale if anyone had offered an example on Twitter.  Claire, who didn't know Andy, said "Someone named Andy Carvin mentioned that I asked each of the panelists to create an ignite style presentation cited Project NOAH. I told the audience that I was hoping he would speak and Andy shared a few more examples, captured here by Marcia Stepanek.

I was modeling crowd sourcing and my new definition of an expert:  Your expertise is in your network.  I wanted to make sure that the backchannel was less of a place for snark, but more a place to capture ideas, insights, and resources.   I kept encouraging people to add their urls or best resources into the stream, add insights, or make corrections.  

Ben Rigby, who was also in the room, was testing an awesome new twitter tool he created called "Tweet Notes" which helps you summarize the tweets, add the most tweeted links, and most frequent participants.  We had a total of 1500 tweets during our panel and this tool made it easy to sort through.   Peggy from Wiser Earth went through the resulting transcript and pulled out some of the key tweet points and users.  We were also lucky to have Sarah Davies live blogging notes as well.

In order to pull this off (and I think it worked out), it required some preparation before the session.  We had several phone calls and collaborated using a google document to capture notes and tasks.   The first layer of preparation was the content.  I created a script of conversation starters/questions about crowd sourcing and using social media for program delivery.  I asked each panelist to create an ignite style presentation to answer the questions briefly.  Amy Sample Ward shared her thoughts in a blog post along with her presentation.

Then I reviewed each slide deck and created a compilation (see above) and developed the final script.  The only rule I followed was that not every panelist had to answer every question.  I identified a person to kick off the answer.  I wanted to leave space to improvise question probes and pull in people from the audience or encourage people to put ideas into Twitter.  We had too much content, so next time I'd only prepare half as many questions. 

I also prepared a list of urls for the Twitter Advocate, Claire Sale, to share in the stream to model sharing of resources.   I also promoted the session to people in my network who were not attending SXSW to participate via the hashtag, an example of real time web.

What would I do differently for next time?

• Get a hand wireless mic
• Get to the room early and rearrange the furniture to accommodate better moving around during the discussion.  The seats were set up theatre style and 15 minutes before the panel, the room was packed.
• Have fewer discussion questions - focus on one topic, not two
• Have a brief over that lays out the definition and concept models
• Have a few "plants" people willing to share a story or resource or disagree with a panelist come early in the session
• Test Guy Kawasaki's 30% rule for Q&A and eye contact tip.

What I do the same?

• Have brilliant panelists like Amy, Holly, Kari, and David - they truly made it work!
• Have a brilliant audience
• Prepare enough to be able to improvise and riff but not  too much

My biggest regret is that I didn't get a chance to give shout outs to every single person in the room who had something to offer and particularly to those folks who I know and love and couldn't get to them because of the layout of the room.

Holly Ross created a page over at the WeAreMedia wiki summarizing the posts and links.   If you were in the room or not or have additional thoughts on crowd sourcing, please add them to the WeAreMedia Wiki. 

If you were in the session or participating through Twitter, I'd love to know how it could have been improved for next time?

Update: 

Paul Massey:  How Crowdsourcing Adds Value

What Gives:  Challenges, Tips, and Lessons from Crowdsourcing

Guest Post by Kira Marchenese: What Happened When We Introduced 350 Staff to Social Media

Find more photos like this on So You Think You Can Do Social Media

Note From Beth:  Since 2007,  I've been using, adapting, and remixing the Social Media Gamesocial media workshops for nonprofits.  In fact, just last month, I took it to India.  Last year, I facilitated a version of the Social Media Game for Packard Grantees as part of a convening on Network Effectiveness in Washington, DC.   Dave Witzel was a participant in the workshop and thought the game could be adapted as apart of training on social media at the staff retreat.  The big challenge with training is the challenge of transfer - after people go through a training - do they actually put the knowledge and skills into practice?  

Also, the game is licensed under creative commons - which means folks are welcomed to use as long as share and share like (with attribution).   EDF has embraced the spirit of this sharing - not only remixing a version of the game for their organization,but also sharing back the materials and what worked!  

That's why I invited Kira Marchenese, to write a guest post about has happened since the training last year.

Last fall, we marched all 350 or so Environmental Defense Fund staff through two days of a social media challenge.  Looking back, I’m happy to report that the experiment paid off.

Why did we do this?

We know that very soon, social media will no longer be optional. Already, some of our advocacy work is progressing in large part because of savvy use of social media (see our blog about chemicals and toxics).

We have a mix of staff who dived into social media long ago (see our business innovation blog and green business twitter feed), and others who have maybe sort of heard of Twitter. We wanted to give everyone a chance to get more familiar with the tools, and, more importantly, understand how social media is relevant to their goals.

What did we do?

We went all-out. EDF periodically brings our entire staff together for an in-person retreat. This year, the retreat theme was social media. We crafted a two-day challenge, mixing all-staff sessions with smaller group time. Here’s the overview:

EDF Staff Retreat - Intro to Social Media

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• Everyone attended a 90-minute presentation by Eric Schwartzman on what social media is and why we should pay attention. He’s energetic and knows his stuff, so it was a good start.

• A few EDF staffers joined Eric on stage to share what they’ve done with social media. This was really important – hearing colleagues talk about their posts being read by EPA officials or members of international negotiating teams made the point in a way no consultant could.

Then the hands-on part started:

• We broke into teams of 40 to 70 people, based on the type of work we do. For example, everyone who works on ocean issues was on the same team. Each team received a challenge in their field that they had to meet through social media.

• Each of the six large teams divided again into tables of 10. At the small tables, we played an EDF version of the social media game developed by Beth Kanter and David Wilcox.

• After each table developed a strategy, the large teams picked one strategy each to develop a pitch around. They spent the next 24 hours refining the pitch. And then the fun really started!

Each team pitched their idea to the full EDF staff. The pitches included costumes, music, video filmed on-site, mock-ups, and social media demos.

We all voted, and the winning team got budget money to fund their social media plan. How did it go?

People were extremely engaged. Every EDF staffer had to do this. Our biggest worry was that people would find it irrelevant to their work and would check out. Breaking up into small tables worked – I saw table after table of people leaning in, standing up, gathered around flip charts. I didn’t see anyone checking their Blackberry, which was pretty amazing. And people from assistants to VPs poured energy into crafting the pitches, you can see from the scene at t-minus 3 hours and t-minus 30 minutes.

And that made the presentations really good. Teams took ownership of their ideas and were revved up to show them off. They threw themselves into writing scripts and filming, gathering costume pieces, and otherwise doing much more in 24 hours than I would have thought possible. Even the teams that spent the least time preparing gave polished overviews.

The “game show” conceit made it all more fun. Our host, Rachel “Seacrest”, and the judges did a great job of moving things along and lacing the presentations with some clever silliness. The audio-visual crew did a top-notch job juggling all the video, countdown clocks, slides, props and miking, adding to the sense that this social media stuff is really big-time.

We could have refined the structure of the two days. Even with the tailored materials, and a dry run, there were many things I’d do differently next time. If you’re considering running this game yourself, definitely check out what we learned!

Lots of great ideas. EDF staff came up with some really interesting ideas. Not every table had a social media plan ready to execute (”handing out flyers” wasn’t one of the social media tools we encouraged!) but several of them are already being executed.

Did it make a difference?

Three months later, what do we have to show for it? Or, in other words, should other organizations consider doing this? Here’s what we’re seeing.

An explosion of EDF bloggers. We have a new transportation blog, Way2Go, and new participants in our international climate talks blog. The contributors to our blog about Texas energy re-tooled how they write and edit posts to make it more flexible and inclusive. And two more new blogs are on the way.

But I’m most pleased that EDF staff are evaluating how blogging will help achieve their goals, not just blogging for the sake of it. One of the best conversations we’ve had is with a department that decided to put off blogging for now, since it made sense to invest in other tactics first. I love seeing our staff make smart, well-informed choices.

Not just the usual suspects. We’ve always had a small but energetic group experimenting with social media. We’re now seeing both interest and confidence about social media from people who were never part of that experimental vanguard. Lauren Guite, our online team’s outreach coordinator, says that not only are these “unusual suspects” truly interested, but she’s impressed with their understanding of why the tools are important.

Plans to re-run the game. Three different groups have come to me asking for help re-running the game to generate ideas for specific projects. I can’t think of a better indicator that people found it useful.

(See more details on these results from EDF’s Social media challenge on my own blog.)

Biggest challenge now: How to find the time?

We had to cut staff last year, the economy remains rough, and the planet needs a lot of saving. When staff choose to engage in social media, they spend less time on something else. We’re seeing this play out in a cycle of enthusiasm and guilt. People get excited about something — tweeting, setting up Google Reader, signing up for Facebook. But other priorities get in the way, and it becomes just something else that’s still on their to-do list the next week. They feel bad when we check in with them and they haven’t gotten to it yet.

In the big picture, if people see results from social media, they’ll keep engaging, and if they don’t see results, they shouldn’t feel bad about stopping. But getting started requires a leap of faith that time spent trying social media is time well spent. And when there’s so much going on, it’s hard to make that leap.

The time we spent on this at the retreat definitely helped amp up the enthusiasm part of the cycle, pushing more people into making the leap of faith.

Kira Marchense is the Online communications director at Environmental Defense Fund.
 

Embedding A YouTube Video in Power Point

I'm knee deep in creating some new workshop curriculum. I like to use videos as part of the instruction to trigger discussion or something at the end as a group bonding mechanism.   Something that has eluded me is how to directly embed the YouTube Video.  I've always had an elegant solution - include a hyper link to the YouTube Page.

I just discovered a way to embed the video directly in a slide.  It isn't that hard to do and the above screencast will show you how.   You need Powerpoint 2007 and a live Internet connection in order to make it work.   This trick, along with being able to Tweet from Powerpoint   is definitely going into my Trainer's Bag of Social Media Tricks.

Nonprofit Social Media Strategy Map Workshop In Silicon Valley

Compasspoint

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Last November, I had the pleasure of leading a workshop for a 100 Silicon Valley nonprofit organizations in hosted by Compasspoint and generously supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The workshop was filled within 24 hours and there was a waiting list. So, we scheduled an encore today for 65 people on the waiting list.

This workshop is mostly small group work and this time I experimented with smaller sized groups - 6 participants versus 8-10.  It worked much better.

I tend to do a lot of "share pairs" where people get a chance to do a debrief with someone else in the room.  It helps people process what they are learning.   My biggest problem as a facilitator was transitioning from the share pair back to full group. I had been using chimes.  But even with the loud noise they made, it did not get everyone's attention.

Nelson Layag, who designs and delivers a lot of nonprofit trainings as part of his job at Compasspoint, shared a secret killer tip with me.   He suggested that you tell people at the beginning that if the group sees you raise your hand, to raise your hand.  This sweeps through the room - and gets people attention.  And it worked!

Another process piece that I experimented with to ask the group to do active listenings to the report outs from the game and identify good ideas they might adapt.  This idea came from Shiree Teng who I will have the honor of working with on an extended group training.

The major content theme was not "How do we find the time?," but a more subtle variation.  How do integrate social media into someone's job?  How do we manage it?

Here are some ideas:

Interns:  There are definitely pros and cons to using interns. The danger of course is to recruit an intern who is facile with the technology and simply dump the social media stuff on them.  This is a bad idea.   Jeremiah Owyang has some good suggestions on how to integrate the intern into the team so they understand the strategic big picture.  Also the intern can help the strategy people understand the team.  If you go the intern route, Kivi Leroux Miller has some tips for giving social media projects to interns . And, if you want steal a great job description for an intern and recruitment method, check this post out from the ACLU of Northern California.

Free Work:  Seth Godin wrote a post a while back about the difference between using interns and "free workers" people who are unemployed or underemployed who want to build their resumes.

Empower Your Fans: You can grow your social media team without making a new hires.  Andy Sernovitz tells you how.

Paid Staff: Not many nonprofits have a full-time staff person doing their social media.  While I haven't seen any industry wide nonprofit studies, there is some data on social media staffing for Theatres and orchestras.  For those organizations in a position to talent scout for social media expertise, here's some good advice from David Armano and what should go in a job description. What I see mostly is nonprofits looking at a particular job description and figuring out how to incorporate social media responsibilities into a job that includes other responsibilities.    

What resources or tips do you have to getting the social media job in your nonprofit organization?

The Dance Floor and The Balcony Social Media Training

OSI Workshop

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I just finished doing a training for Open Society Institute media and information coordinators on social media with colleague, David Sasaki, from Global Voices. I've known since 2005 and I realized that the last time I had seen him was in 2007 in Cambodia at the blogging conference and over an interesting dinner served by our hosts.

Our charge was to teach back-to-back simultaneous workshops covering social media strategy for NGOs and social media tools.    It made me think of the metaphor of the Dance Floor and the Balcony a phrase and exercise that I learned from a session that Eric Eugene Kim facilitated.  

The term comes from titled Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading with Marty Linsky and Ron Heifetz which is where Eugene Eric Kim borrowed the metaphor of The Dance Floor and the Balcony of his exercise.

The idea is the "balcony" is the strategic, big picture and the dance floor is when we're in the thick of operations or "in the weeds." Leaders need to shift between the two viewpoints to be effective. 

I used this metaphor to talk about the importance of having both the strategic view of social media as well as the hands-on experience of the tactical and tools.  It is important to shift between the tools and that strategic overview.  As one participant noted in the discussion, a big problem she observes with social media within nonprofits is that the leadership is "divorced" from the social media and tactics are delegated to the "young person on staff" without strategic insight.

I also pointed out the inherent tension we experience between strategy and tactics.  Strategy is analytical, reflective, and thinking - not much action.   Tactics is doing, moving, and acting.  So, the sessions we co-taught were geared to so both these perspectives.  We covered some strategy points, but also had the group tweeting.  

We opened with a plenary session providing an opportunity for participants to introduce themselves and do a couple of icebreakers.   I was also able to share the workshop wiki.  We also used a unique hashtag #OSITango.   (Participants were relieved that our icebreaker did not involve any tango dancing!).

Participants got to introduce themselves with "just three tags," picking three key words that describe them.  Some participants acknowledged that they "Twitter resisters."  We two more exercises to learn about their personal and organizational social media use - a stand up and sit down exercise.  

Next we did a human spectra gram, a technique that colleague Allen Gunn from Aspiration.  Colleague Kaliya Hamlin has this description:

This is an interactive whole group exercise that helps highlight the range of perspectives in a group. There is a tape on the floor with agree at one and disagree at the other:

agree |—————–|—————–| disagree.

The moderator asks a somewhat controversial question and directs participants to take a stand on the spectrum. The moderator then interviews people at different points on the spectrum about the opinions they hold. This process creates a shared experience while demonstrating the range of opinions in a community. It can serve as an anchor for additional conversations.

We asked this question:

Social media is a fad and a waste of time for nonprofit organizations
Social media can enhance fundraising for NGOs.

This generated a good discussion allowing for expression of different points of view.  David Sasaki has a terrific reflection on that here.  But, I'll quote:

I’ll admit, it wasn’t the easiest group to work with at the start (the average introduction was something like “Hi, my name is X and I think Twitter is a waste of time”), but by the end of the day I think we made some converts out of what were initially some pretty harsh critics:

David goes on to make some points about getting people's hands on the tools while also pointing out the strategic options:

But really, this is the thing about Twitter and many similar tools – they don’t make sense until you try them. And for most people they don’t make sense until you try them out for a couple weeks. You have to wait until you come across information that is relevant to you – information that you otherwise wouldn’t have come across – in order to appreciate the advantage of being part of the network.

There is also always an inherent power struggle in teaching networked technologies to people in positions of power. New technologies always take power away from one group and afford it to another. Individuals who are at the top of institutional hierarchies often grow frustrated when they come to understand that it’s increasingly not the position you have but rather the connections you have that lead to information awareness, and to power. Often times the workshops I give are full of people who have been working years – if not decades – to move up the institutional hierarchy to positions of power. They are comfortable being reported to by their team and reporting up to their director. But they are often – and understandably – resistant to enter a network where all that matters is how which connections you have and how well you are able to absorb and parse information.

We then did our respective workshops on strategy and tactics and then reconvened as a whole group to do a little bit of a reflection.  I think this process is important to make the final opening up happen. The last part of the day was focused on answering learning consolidation questions, ending with circle where we went around and shared the answer to:  "What one step can take to incorporate social media into your practice."

As David reflects on how attitudes change:

At the beginning of today’s workshop the majority of those attending were openly skeptical about social media. (Though they obviously had some interest or they wouldn’t have been there in the first place.) But once Beth and I walked them through how the tools actually work and how different activists and organizations have used those tools to their advantage, everyone in the room opened up to the idea of adopting the tools and techniques themselves. Like every other aspect in life, it’s difficult to really accept something until you understand it.

And now comes the challenge of transfer - with a one-day session where we teach to the "ah-ha" moment, share both strategy and actual hands-on activities - and some reflection on the next steps.  This is why I always create a wiki with resources, a leave behind - and be open to answer to any questions, especially on Twitter.

How have you witnessed social skeptics changing their minds?    What do think is required?

How To Make A Back Channel Light Up Like Clark Griswald's House

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to do a Webinar called "Social Media for Trainers: A Bag of Tricks" over at the Engage 365 Online Community site.  I blogged about the content last week.  I had sooo much fun creating and delivering it.  And, in looking over the evaluations and reviews, I think the participants did too.   I got an email from hosts Chris Uschan and Tony Veroeven who shared some numbers, "We had 190 attend and ask 140 questions in a back channel that looked like Clark Griswald's House at Christmas!"

I had to look up the Clark Griswald reference (National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation), but you might be scratching your head wondering what the heck is a back channel?   It's a live chat during a workshop or presentation and these days, it mostly taking place on Twitter.

Cliff Atkinson's new book, The Back Channel is a must read for anyone presenting at conferences or planning trainings in age of social media. In fact, we gave away a couple of free copies.

I've been experimenting with integrating social media into instruction for the past five years, so the webinar was a great opportunity to reflect on practice.  I covered these three topics:

• Why: Social media integrated into instruction - Pass or Fail?
• What: The art of social instructional design
• How: 6 Tools and Tips

If you didn't have a chance to participate, you'll find the slides, resource materials, and an archived recording over at the webinar wiki. But what's even better is that this wasn't an isolated training, it was part of an new online community called Engage365 which runs on a platform called "Conference 2.0"

This online community, Engage365, is a place to network and share knowledge about how to integrate the use of social media for events. It has 400 members.  The community is hosted by  Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer of SocialFish in collaboration with Omnipress

This is a lively community, mostly because of the expertise of people like Maddie, Lindy, and Tony who are skillful community managers.  However, the platform offers some excellent social features.  It integrates online community discussion forums, structured learning like webinars,  content, with participants' social profiles.   I like how it aggregate the social ant trails of the community.  And, how you click on your "friends" profiles and see their social streams. It isn't a walled garden.

Here's some reflections on the Webinar:

• Overcoming the Strawberry Jam Problem With Social Design
  

I emphasized the importance of knowing your audience.  In the presentation,  I showed folks how to easily survey the audience using google forms.   However, some webinar platforms have a real-time polling feature, the virtual equivalent of asking people to raise their hands if ...  The poll revealed that revealed 40% were beginners/novices and 60% intermediate or experts.  We had similar spread for those having experience designing and delivering trainings.

One participant described this as the "strawberry jam" problem that if the training is trying to cover too much content and too many different levels, than it gets spread too thin.   From my experience in doing technology trainings, no matter well you describe levels and content, you always get a range of experience, comfort, and skill. 

I think you can design around it.  How?  By having the whole group understand at the beginning that there are different levels and how they might react to the material.  Then, I encourage beginners to ask their questions and acknowledge that the content may feel fast-paced - and that's why I've included tutorials on the wiki.  For the intermediate users, I put them to work sharing their knowledge.  After all, teaching others improves retention and helps consolidates one's own knowledge.  Otherwise, more advanced people might get bored or start ask more detailed technical questions.  This is where a back channel like Twitter can be really useful.

Since the engage365 platform is very porous, when I tweeted about the webinar, a lot of colleagues joined.  And they have lots of wisdom to share, so the backchannel transcript had some gems. I was delighted to see that some of my colleagues were excited to try some of these ideas in their trainings and Kivi Leroux Miller suggested that we do a session at NTC this year called "Online Trainings That Don't Suck," so watch out.

• Social Instructional Design
  

I think I made up the term "social instructional design" which is how you integrate social media tools into your workshop AND how you plan for engagement during delivery.  What I wasn't able to find was any research that spoke to the pros and cons, in a scientific way, of integrating social media into instruction.  I was able to find some research and pieces about laptops in the classroom.  Know of any?

My own experience as a learner and teacher is that social tools deepen the learning.   But it is definitely a matter of personal learning styles and treating your participants as adults who can decide how they learn best.  As the instructor, there are clearly benefits - like being able to better read the room, getting really useful insights from participants, and improving your materials. 

• Key Instructional Concepts As Tweets

One piece of advice that I learned from Cliff Atkinson's book was to think about your presentation key points as tweets so people can retweet them.  The book has a cool worksheet to help you plan these out.   It's also good to look at your Twitter transcript so you can see what resonated with participants.  Here's a few points that I picked up that I will integrate into the next time I do this:

• Integrating social media into your instructional practice will change how your teach
• Be prepared to improvise more and drop the script if it isn't working with the audience
• Live in a tool for a month, and experiment with only one tool at time
• Learning the tools is like learning a music instrument, start slowly and work up speed and practice
• Don't hold all your questions until the end, take Twitter breaks and allow for questions

• Understand the art of repurposing your materials to save time

There were a lot of questions along the lines of "how much time does this take?"   Why create a wiki for each workshop.   I remembered some terrific blog posts that Kivi Leroux Miller wrote (here and here) about repurposing content and this definitely applies to instructional materials.  All I can say that if you design for repurposing, it takes less time.

When I design a workshop, I start with a simple framework.  Why, What, How.    The what usually has some sort of grid.  For this workshop, it was thinking about the trainer's tasks before, during, and after - and then how social media tool might enhance those tasks.

• The Place for the Nitty-Gritty How To Questions

There are always nitty gritty what button do I click questions or a specific question about whether a tool can do xyz.  If you are doing a webinar that is why, what, and little bit of how - there is not time for that.  One thing I do is include a list of links to the best how-to and tutorials.  It is also good to have people in the back channel who can answer those questions or do a follow up session.

For follow up sessions, these are best designed as "Ask the Expert" or get your questions answers.  I love the way NTEN does these sessions.  They're done on the phone and chat.  An NTEN staff person interviews the expert on a conference call line, while people listen and post questions in the back channel.  And then an NTEN moderator in the chat answers the questions or asks them outloud, selecting the questions in a logical order.

I could imagine a two-part session.   The why, what, and how and then a second ask the expert session.

Here's a few questions that were posted in the chat during the Webinar:

• What is Beth's delicious user name? (http://delicious.com/kanter)
• Can we get the full site for the twitter statistics?  (Yes check here)
• Can you add audio with slideshare? (yes)
• Are the three wiki tools listed free? (yes, pbwiki, wikispaces, and wetpaint have free versions)
• For webinars - do you have a favorite webinar tool? (I use what the host uses.  I like webinar software that facilitates learning between participants)
• How do you install the delicious tool to google chrome? (look here)
• Any advice about using Google Wave? (here's info about using it as backchannel)
• Have you ever used a wiki during webinar for interactivity? (once and it was disaster, best to use to supplement discussion in between phone calls)

• Extending the learning

I always ask reflective questions at the end of each training - these are 1)  What's one idea you'll put into practice?  2) What's one resource you need to move forward?   This is useful to ask just as the training is over, but even richer if you can ask again the next morning after everyone has had a good night's sleep.  

Learning gets richer when they marinate.   Unfortunately, we don't often have a whole day and half to connect with people we are training.   So, here is where social media -- tools like Twitter can help you connect again with your learners.

What are your thoughts about integrating social media into your trainings?  What have you learned that works or doesn't work?

Free Webinar: Sharing Trainer's Social Media Bag of Tricks and Secrets

Social Media Trainer's Bag of Tricks

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I've been involved with teaching and learning technology for nonprofits since 1993 when I worked for the New York Foundation for the Arts' online network for artists, Arts Wire.  My job was the network weaver.  I didn't know anything about UNIX, discussion forums, email, or any of the technology used.  And, many of our community members were just learning too. 

I was immediately thrown into a situation of dynamic teaching and learning.  I had to learn how to create web pages, manage email, modem escape codes, navigate the Internet, and whatever came along.  And then immediately create instructional materials and trainings for the community.  It developed into something called "SpiderSchool."

Later, as I developed workshops and content for strategic technology planning, I became obsessed with learning about technology professional development for nonprofits and designing effective trainings.  It was almost five years ago to the day, that I did a webinar for NTEN on the topic and have been integrating social media into teaching and learning experiences ever since.

When Maddie Grant at Social Fish invited me to do a FREE webinar over at the 365 Engage Community, I was thrilled to have an opportunity to reflect the practice of incorporating social media into instruction.  The Webinar will take place next Tuesday, January 26 at 9:00 - 10:00 am PST.  Here's the description:

Join Beth Kanter who has been teaching nonprofit technology workshops for over 15 years, both offline and online. For almost six years, she has been integrating social media tools and tricks into her instructional practice. She is going to share with you all her secrets, her tool bag, and other tips for using social media to create instructional materials, research your audience, deliver your workshop and follow up.


If this isn't enough, she'll be giving away three free copies of Cliff Atkinson's new book, The Back Channel, required reading for trainers. All workshop participants will receive a discount coupon for the book.

When I design a training, whether a one-hour webinar or an all-day face-to-face workshop,  I don't begin with the technology integration.  I begin with the instructional goals and finding out as much as possible about the audience.  Not unlike where you start for a communications or social media strategy, eh?

Learning Objectives:

• Understand why it is important to incorporate social media tools in your instructional practice for trainings
• How to think like a social instructional designer
• Introduction to six different social media tools and techniques for a planning, delivering, and evaluating a training session

When formulating learning objectives, this is typically done in consultation with your workshop host.  I also always review Bloom's Taxonomy and have found this diagram really useful.

I also think about what I'm not going to cover due to time constraints and communicate that upfront. I also try to scaffold Webinars - and give more overviews and point people to the presentation for links, resources, and more self-directed learning.  

I also try to identify a framework that will help me design the content.  My central thesis is that social media can enhance all phases of the instructional design, delivery, and evaluation process:  

 

Audience Research

Because I'm mostly teaching workshops about social media,  if the participants have a social media presence, I can easily find it, review before the workshop, and even incorporate a screencapture or two into the materials.  If I'm doing a Webinar, I might use the poll feature and do my research in real time.   It's the equivalent of asking the audience to raise their hands if ..

The big questions I want to know are related to the learning goals:

• What is the audience's level of experience?
• Are there any particular attitudes or opinions that the audience holds that may be a barrier or enhancement to reaching learning goals?

I use Google Forms, one of the tools I'll cover,  to collect this information

Because this is a webinar connected with an online community, I've been reading the threads on the site to understand attitudes better.  

I've also learned I always get a mixed group.   That's one advantage of the backchannel - is that you came your presentation top level - and encourage more advanced people to share what they know in the backchannel and then bring that into the conversation.  You can also encourage those who are less experienced to ask their questions.   This encourages interaction between participants and they can learn from one another.

Materials and Lesson Plan Development

The next step in design is the actual content and instructional delivery.  I also think about how I will engage participants, especially if it is a webinar.   I do this for myself by creating a detailed trainer's outline that includes timings, content, and process.  Sometimes I just use my powerpoint deck and add the process notes and timings in the notes section.

I always include a good list of resources, particularly how-to steps, videos, and screencasts.  I think it is ineffective to take a group of people through a step by step process all at once because people are different levels of understanding and comfort.   For me, it is better to show people the important concepts and principles, and then link to how-to steps for self-paced tutorials.   It takes practice to master tech steps. 

The part of the planning process always include research for good resources.  I use delicious, slideshare, and twitter.  When I'm ready to build materials, I start with me setting up a workshop wiki
It becomes a hub for all electronic materials.

The advantage of having all this detailed information on a wiki is two-fold. First, it saves a lot of paper. For face-to-face workshops, I try print only what is necessary and give people the URL of wiki if they want to go deeper. Second, you can refer detailed questions to a resource on the wiki or if you get a question about something that you haven't included a specific resource for, you can add it on the fly.  

The social media integration also includes setting up a #hashtag, uploading slides into slideshare, and living link lists on delicious.

The Topics

I'm going to how social media in your training can benefit both the instructor and learners,  the design process, and then provide some very practical information:

-Use Google Forms for Pre/Post Participant Evaluations
-Use Delicious To Research and Build Your Resource Link Lists
-Share Your PowerPoint Deck with SlideShare
-Use A Wiki For Electronic Handouts, Electronic Flip Chart, and Leave Behind
-Integrating Twitter as A BackChannel into Instruction
-Documenting Your Workshop With Photos and Videos

You can register for the webinar here.

Playing the Social Media Game with 100 Bay Area Nonprofits

Compasspoint Workshop Slides - Beta

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Last week, I had the opportunity facilitate a "Social Media Strategy Map" workshop for over 100 Bay Area nonprofits. The workshop was hosted by Compasspoint, with support from the Lucile and David Packard Foundation.  

I don't get an opportunity to do this workshop with a large group, so this was fabulous learning experience to work out some techniques to make it scale.   And they worked!    I wanted to capture a couple of reflections on the process as well as content learnings by way of this post.

 

Ant Trails As Learning Opportunities

One of the things that is essential to good instruction (or presentation) is knowing your audience.   Every time I present or facilitate a workshop, I review the web sites and social media ant trails (social media properties) of participants.  

This takes a lot of time because I'm not just browsing, but I'm doing a pattern analysis for best practices that I can incorporate into a presentation about social media principles and nonprofits.   I think people are more likely to pay attention if they know that they might in the presentation.  Also, it allows for a more interactive discussion because participants can share their knowledge.  It's a shift from sage on the stage instruction to honoring the learners for what they know.

A couple things I discovered by following participants' ant trails:

• The Bay Versus the Bay: This was an excellent example of how social media strategy can support behavior change or action.   Some really good design points.  For example, note their call to action right on the YouTube video.  They were able to share some insights about how they track the success of this effort.

• ACLU-Northern California:  They are recruiting for a social media intern on Facebook. They used "tagging" on Facebook to make people aware of the note.   The note itself is an excellent job description for a social media intern.   This prompted a thoughtful discussion about to effectively manage social media interns.

• The Valley Medical Foundation:   This organization provided an example of the personal versus organizational voice issue that social media often brings up.  They shared how they worked through this internally.

Robot Voice Disguiser for Large Group Facilitation

I was lucky enough to be working with good folks at Compasspoint (Nelson Layag, Sue Bennett, and Sierra Catcott) who are experienced facilitators and workshop leaders.  They brought along their chimes which are a great tool for getting people's attention when they are working in pairs or small groups.   My son lent me his Robot Voice Disguiser which was good for an opening laugh, but the chimes were preferable.   It makes me wonder about the various techniques for getting people to shift attention from small group to large group.

Photo by Nelson Layag

Social Engineering the Small Groups

I've done this game enough times to know that one key to success is making sure the small groups have people with knowledge of communications plans, hands-on experience with the tools, someone who can facilitate the discussion, and people with hands-on experience using the tools.   I've used a couple of techniques to accomplish this and they worked.

Using a google form,  I sent a pre-survey that asked detailed questions about social media experience, communications planning, budget size, and job role.  On the name tags, we indicated people with social media experience with a "T" and those with communications planning experience a "C."    We made sure that these folks were not all seated at the same table - having them spread their experience through the room so there was a C and T at each table.

I also created a stand up, sit down exercise.   One part included having people stand if they had a formal or informal communications plan/strategy (half the room) -and then had them sit down in waves to determine formal communications, Internet strategy, and social strategy.  There were only a handful of people who had a formal communications plan with a social media strategy. 

Next, to ensure that all the people who very comfortable with social media aren't seated at the same table, we did the spectra gram.  I learned this technique from Allen Gunn who uses it during Penguin Day.  I have people line up from "very comfortable" to "not so comfortable" and facilitate a conversation.   Then, had them count off by table numbers.

Integrating Social Media Into Instruction

Over the past four years, I've been incorporating the use of social media as an instructional aid for workshops and presentations.  (See the interview I did for Arrive Magazine, pages 34-37).  Some techniques I'm using for workshops that have become standard for me:

• Wikitation:  A wikitation  (word coined by Allan Levine, Cogdog Blog) is a wiki that you use to share you presentation slides and links.  I used the wiki to take notes and add resources on the fly that come up during Q/A.   The wiki becomes an electronic flip chart and resource collector.   What's nice is that allows you save paper and be a little bit green, although you do need a couple of key paper handouts (instructions/cards).   The wikitation for this workshop is here.
• What's the Hash Tag?  With more and more people tweeting, I announce at the beginning what the hashtag is and encourage workshop tweeting.  I've be using a tool called "What the Hash Tag"  that easily aggregates tweets into a transcript.  Monitoring the tag stream during the workshop provides a backchannel for people in the room and allows for remote participation.

Revising the Cards/Game Aspect

As my own learning and thinking about social media and nonprofits has evolved, so have the principles and strategies.  This has had an impact on the design of the cards, game instructions, etc.  I spent a lot of time last week tweaking the point system on the tool cards to guide better strategy decisions.  It worked, but the strategy framework itself needs to be rethought.  

The first iteration of the strategy cards consisted only of online approaches and was scaled based on amount of time (listening, participate, share story, generate buzz, and online community building).  The tools aligned to the components.   I've evolved this to engage/listen, social content, spreading buzz, movement building, and offline impact and more fluidity in choice of tools, also adding new ones.  A concept framework for strategy could be tweaked further and I have some ideas.

We had enough time so we could use the "life happens" cards where groups lose or win points based on a real life situation.  You know, resistance, staff turnover, lack of resources, etc.   The groups were thrilled to win points.  So, it is making me think that I need to revise the "life happens" to win points if they solve the problem in their strategy.

Report Out Technique

With such a large group, I thought ten reports using the same scenario would be deadly boring.  So, we had three scenarios and 3-4 tables working on each scenario.  I did the reports out for each scenario which worked really well.   People really got into the making up the context part.  For example, one of the organizations all of sudden had a famous rap star alumni who made YouTube videos for the organization's campaign.

I asked each to report out and I listened for three things: 

• What was a best practice or innovative idea and acknowledge it?
• Ask a strategy question about something that was missing? 
• What specific how to resource would be useful to know about?
• Is there a tactical tip to share?

We ended with a reflection about what they will take back to the organizations and, of course, I brought along some extra books I've been sent to do a big social media book giveaway (shared myself some postage costs!)

All in all - I can say that I learned a lot and hope participants did too!

PopTech Fellows Program: Reflections

 

PopTech Slides

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I have been near Camden, Maine for the past few days at the PopTech 2009 Fellows Program as part of the PopTech 2009 conference (streaming live), which starts on Wednesday.  PopTech is an amazing blend of people, ideas, and projects.

I was humbled to join the illustrious list of faculty members who have talents and wisdom in content areas that I only dance around of the edges of.  This includes leadership, social innovation, communications, branding, graphic facilitation, financial and funding models.   Even more inspiring was to learn more about the work that PopTech Fellows  are doing to change the world.

I taught a very brief workshop in strategic social media using the social media strategy game.  The game has a strong communications lens.   Ever since the SXSW blog discussion "What is the distinction between social media for charity and social media for social good" I've wanted to play the game with a critical mass of smart people who have a program and social change lens.  

I learned a lot about how to begin to adapt the game process for people with a program orientation.  Here are some thoughts about tweaking the instructional design:

Game Length and Instructional Context

Lately, I've had the experience of running the game as a 3-hour workshop as part of a second day of peer learning workshops on Network Effectiveness.  The social media strategy game is focused on how social media tools can be used for external communications.   All of the instruction is aligned to a network frame. 

In comparison, this was a shorter time amount of time, different instructional styles across faculty, and the overall frame was social innovation.  The game needs more time and if there is no time on the agenda, then a different design is needed.   

Graphic Facilitation Rocks

Peter Durand, Flickr Photo

Having graphic notes during the workshop was an asset. Peter Durand did the graphic recording (read his blog for more information about the process - AlphaChimp Studio)

The Audience As Part of the Presentation

Paula Kahumbu – WildlifeDirect
Nairobi, Kenya

One of the things that I do before I teach this workshop is look at the participant's social media ant trails by looking at their web sites, twitter streams, Facebook and YouTube.  I look for examples that match the principles for effective use and incorporate them into the presentation.   This gives an opportunity for the audience to share their story and their knowledge.

One of the benefits of taking this approach is that it shifts the instructional design from sage on the stage to learning in the community.    It also helped me discover an authentic example of social media for social good - WildlifeDirect. Through online diaries and blogs, WildlifeDirect brings supporters and conservationists together and enables individual donors around the world to communicate directly with the people that they are funding. The goal: a movement powerful enough to respond to any conservation emergency anywhere swiftly and efficiently, reverse the catastrophic loss of habitats and species and secure the future of wildlife in Africa, Asia and around the world.

Social Media Strategy As Design Process

Executive Creative Director of frog design, Robert Fabricant, leads multidisciplinary design teams, teaches at NYU’s Tisch School.  He taught a session on social design right before the social media strategy game at the end of the day.  A lot of his ideas connect to social media strategy best practices - for example the reiteration process and listen, learn, and adapt.

Adapting the Game from A Communications Lens to A Program Lens

Ideally this would happen from collaborating with social innovation subject matter experts to adapt and redesign the game cards and the simulation so that it matched a social innovation or social design framework.    The quick and dirty design framework might be a place to start - to examine how or where to incorporate the use of social media for each step.

I need to remind myself that when I bring social media instruction into a different context, I need to also learn as much as I can about the instructional content of other people on the team.   

In putting people into small groups to collaborate on a strategy, I've always made sure that there was at least one person in each group who had a lot of hands-on social media tool experience.   When you have a room with more people with a program lens, it is also important to spread the communications expertise as well.  Being comfortable or having experience using social media tools and communications expertise are two different mindsets.

The cards include a set of "people cards" which includes snippets of market research.  People with communications orientations work with research in different ways than program people.

Social Media Skepticism is Healthy

I hear a lot of social media skepticism.   It is important to have the conversation to unpack it. Otherwise, attitudes don't change.   What I have done in many workshops, is the spectragram where people line up according how their experience with social media tools and we have a conversation.  With more time, would have done a set of three looking experience/skill, comfort, and communications/program.

Making New Connections, Reinforcing Old Ones

It was great to see some familiar faces and make new connections.  Kristen Taylor is the Digital Content/Community Manager and writes the blog.  Poptech is lucky to have a talented social media guru on staff.  It was great to connect with Ory Okolloh – Ushahidi , who I have known for many years.  She is a lawyer, activist and blogger, and the co-founder and executive director of Ushahidi, a free, open source, Web mobile-based platform capable of crowd-sourcing, sharing and mapping information in near real time.  

I appreciated the facilitation provided by Mukara Meredith who integrates universal principles of healing into a new model of leadership called Matrixworks.   She created a wonderful closing ritual that helped the community form.

Finally, I would like to thank Andrew Zolli and the fellows staff Leetha Filderman and Ollie Wilder for all the hard work they did to create a world class training program.

Guest Post by Gordon Mayer: Playing Learning Games to Spread Nonprofit Social Media

Even at 4 p.m. on a gray day with drinks just 30 minutes away, philanthropic communicators enjoyed the social media game (photo by Thom Clark)

Note from Beth:  I'm at Pop!Tech in Maine where I did the beta version of the social media strategy game for Pop!Tech Fellows. (Reflections coming soon!)  Last week, Gordon used a version of the game at a conference in NYC. His reflections below. One thing I haven't been doing over the years is documenting the instructional design or lesson plan.  It's been in my head.   Some of the issues that Gordon describes below I've found creative ways to address those. (Ever hear of make it up as you go along?)  Another trainer is adapting the game for use in a large environmental organization will be creating a train the trainers guide and template and it will be added to the site.

At noon Friday with the annual conference over and done till next fall’s event (slated for Los Angeles, BTW), someone from the Boston-based Barr Foundation who participated in the Communications Network social media game tracked me down–to return the cards his group used during the game. “No, you keep them–if you want, take them back to your organization and try this at your office,” I said.

He was one of eight folks who left with sets of the game cards. (the presentation and handouts can be downloaded here and more on the game as originally conceived and developed by Beth and David Wilcox is here).

One of my main reflections on presenting the social media game at the conference is about diffusion of ideas across the nonprofit sector: given especially that we are somewhat limited in the channels available to communicate new ideas and practices across nonprofits and philanthropy, the generosity of Beth and David Wilcox in sharing this method and the key role of Creative Commons in providing a way to structure that kind of sharing is truly helping to build the sector.

We played with 6 groups of about 7 people each. Each group chose s scenario from a range of options. We started at 4 p.m., I made my way through about 25 minutes of introductory “teach” (ie, “talk” with some q and a) and then, right around the time that thoughts are usually turning to the bar… the crowd really got into it! All about the genius of the game and the value of learning from, or maybe that should be with, each other (see Beth’s post on social learning from last week).

A couple thoughts on how the game works, what appeared to be key learning moments for the group at the CommNetwork conference, and, per Christine Mulvin, 1 thing you’ve got to have to play it well:

It’s about strategy
One nice learning moment for the CommNet folks came when two groups chose to be an international arts organization. As the first of these groups presented their strategy, the people in the second group started laughing—they had made exactly the same choices. The fact that two groups with the same goal independently came to essentially the same strategy helped people to understand there could actually be, if not exactly right and wrong solutions, at least some solutions to a problem that are more effective than others.

We know how to make choices, even when we don’t have all the data:
Here was another learning moment and it’s one of the reasons why I like the social media game so much. Most people do not know about every single Web 2.0 tool out there. Let me rephrase that. Probably no human being knows about every Web 2.0 tool out there. Just too darn many. That’s overwhelming and intimidating, and it causes us to forget that what we’re really good at is not being walking encyclopedias, but making good choices.

The game throws people into a situation where they are forced to make choices. By the end, they are asking questions that really have nothing to do with the tools, but rather surface some of the other key barriers to greater social media implementation.

For example someone asked, during the debrief of the game, what policy to follow on using images of people, such as photographs of children. We discussed creative commons, of course, and some policy options and release forms and so forth—but then went on to point out that release forms is not a social media problem—it’s more human relations and logistical in nature.

A lot of the hidden barriers to social media adoption (hidden in the sense that they are not in the top 10 challenges list most folks reel off, but are laying in wait just one step ahead, after the workshop is over are just these kinds of problems. But helping people practice making choices with social media helps to ground all the new opportunities in what we already know and understand.

The Social Media Game Makes Us Draw on Our Experiences
As a side note, it’s wonderful how when people get into the game they bring their own experiences into it. After the session wrapped up, one of the participants added that his wife works at an arts organization; he told me he drew on what he knew about her work to help fill in the gaps in the story the objective cards had left. It’s another reason the game works—because it allows people to draw on their experiences of making choices in the past, tallying with what they already know how to do.

Social Media Game Note
That brings me to my last point, one that was raised by Christine Mulvin of Cincinnati. She noted that the game may not work for total beginners: if no-one at the table has any experience with social media tools, the short blurbs about each tool that are included on the cards just won’t be enough information to make good choices. So she recommends and I think she’s right that at least one person in each team has to be at least a bit conversant with Web 2.0. (no, that’s not a contradiction: you need to know something about Web 2.0 to be overwhelmed by the variety of tools out there, no?)

Hopefully many of the 40-odd folks at the workshop last week will go out and play more social media games, and those who participate in those sessions will lead the game on their own, after which the people in those workshops will play the game with still others, after which… well you get the idea!

Gordon Mayer is vice president of Community Media Workshop, a nonprofit that coaches and trains mostly Midwestern volunteer and staff nonprofit communicators on communications strategy, social media, media relations, and related topics. His hobbies inlcude playing with his kids and wondering what the hell will happen next to the news business.

The Art of Aligning Social Media Strategy With Communications Strategy

Remixing Social Media Strategy Game

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Over the summer,  Holly Minch, who is an expert at helping nonprofits and philanthropies unlock the potential of strategic communications for social change, suggested that I facilitate a workshop on social media strategy with a group of nonprofit and philanthropy communications folks.  

I'm so glad she did because for a while I've been wanting to better understand how a social media strategy can best align with overall communications strategies and where the nuances of implementation may different.  How does designing (and implementing) a social media strategy easily support and enhance the overall communications mix?  And where are the tensions?   How to resolve those?   

Last week, Holly's suggestion turned into a reality.  I had the honor of working with a group of really smart communications practitioners who have decades of experience working with nonprofits and/or foundations.   I learned a lot in terms of the content but also as a facilitator.

Aligning Social Media Strategy With Communications Strategy

I've facilitated many versions of the social media strategy game that I first co-taught with David Wilcox in the UK in January, 2007 and decided to create a new version for this group to get specific feedback on how to align the social strategy thinking process with the communications thinking process. 

Some overall observations and insights from the participants:

• Focus on audience, messaging, and theory of change.   The strategy discussions during the small group sessions were rich and focused on objectives.   There was, however, the tension between the tactical versus keeping it at higher level.  What's clear is the need for a very clear theory of change.

• Planning Time Frames Differ:  I kept reminding people that the strategy they came up didn't have to be finished or perfect.  That the learning was in the discussion, not necessarily the finished product.  This group shared that they usually have many meetings to focus on the message, objective, audience, and research.   I wondered about the Clay Shirky quote, "We spend more time trying to make something perfect, than we do if we just tried it and fixed it."  Social media requires a little bit of micro planning - those small tests and this could be a tension point for social media strategy mixing with communications.

• Listening is more than free market research:   With traditional communications planning, research is very important and there is a lot done on the front end.   With social media, listening needs to incorporated into the research phase at the beginning but must also be used as the social media strategy unfolds (real time monitoring) and as ongoing evaluation.

• Fluidity of the social media implementation process is a benefit:   The overall communications planning approach requires a lot of structure and discipline.  As one participant said, "You have your communications plan but it sometimes can prevent you from jumping on opportunities.  On the other hand, you need to have some framework to be able to jump on opportunities.  This causes a lot of anxiety.  But your social media strategy has this flexibility to react to issues and be adaptive."

• Experimentation and Metrics:   Experimenting and tweaking and refining social media must be pegged to particular metrics and it is helpful to have some method for experimentation to reap all the learning.  The important question is to ask, "to what end?

• Tool mastery may belong to younger people, but ..  Experience and seasoned communications people can provide guidance on strategy, time management, and other values.  

• Importance of Fast Failure:  That's a difficult one to negotiate because staff members (or consultants) don't get paid to fail.   It is important to define expectations, put mitigation plans into place, and embrace failures that will no doubt happen.

Some reflections I had on the materials:

• Situation:  This is the description of the organization or network the same group is developing a strategy for.   I've experimented with having very realistic and detailed scenarios, just a few sentences (the group makes up the rest), fictional scenarios that were fun, and not so detailed realistic scenarios.   I think key is to keep it simple, if a group gets stuck because some detail is missing, encourage them to make it up.

• Point System:   I need to rethink the point system based on the changes I've made the social media framework, especially some of the assumptions about social content. I need to revise the scoring system so it encourages the best social media strategic thinking.

• Cards:   Some really good suggestions about having a sub header on the cards that describes an outcome.   Also, include tip sheet that provides these tool is good for xyz, but not good for abc.  Right now the cards have questions and this group was asking for experiential advice on the cards.   I'm thinking a handout might work best because those evolving best practices tend to change quickly.

• Purpose Check:  The last part of the exercise should circle back to the objective and discussion that asks does the strategy we created help us reach our strategic goal or not?   List three reasons why this tool or tactic helps us reach our goal.  There was a request for another set of cards that might have some metrics.

• Next Modules:  This would include going in more depth on how to use the tools.  I see this as the perfect design, similar to the WeAreMedia workshops.   For example, deeper dives on the mechanics of listening, engaging, social networks, or social content.

Communications Network Social Media Game presentation

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Next week at the Communications Network Conference,  my colleague Gordon Meyer from Community Media Workshop in Chicago is doing a 90 minute version of the "Social Media Strategy Game."    I'll be curious to find out what they discover as I'll be doing a two-hour version of the game the week after next at PopTech.

Reflections on Network Effectiveness and Social Media Strategy Workshop

Social Media Strategy Game Workshop Final

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I was in Washington, DC on Tuesday and Wednesday for a two-day workshop is designed for Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights and Justice Leaders, who lead and manage networks or accomplish much of their work through networks.   The workshop was hosted by the Packard Foundation and Monitor Institute.  You can find the workshop materials here.

The workshop will be an opportunity for social change leaders to step back from their day-to-day responsibilities and develop strategic insight about their networks. Specifically, the workshop will be focused on:

• Introducing and applying network tools, frameworks, and case studies that can help network leaders assess their effectiveness and increase their impact
• Facilitating peer-learning and exchange
• Exploring what it means to work with a network mindset

I was part of a team that included

David Sawyer
Diana Scearce
Stephanie McAuliffe

My participation included:

• An interactive presentation on best practices for using social media for external communications
• Peer discussion on use of online tools for collaboration for bounded networks, exploring some of the concepts in Digital Habits (each participant got a copy)
• Half-Day Session: Social Media Strategy Game which included small group work for participants to come up with a strategy for both external communications and an internal learning network to share best practices.

Some reflections on the game:

• Many the networks in the room had a track record of working together and a number had deep social media expertise.   This made for a rich session for me because participants were sharing their wisdom.  The strategy presentations were some of the most detailed and creative I have heard to date - and after doing this workshop many times.  I got a glimpse of what doing this workshop with a room full of social media rock stars would be like.

• For the small group work to be an optimal learning exerpeince, it requires having at least one person with hands-on experience at each table.  I incorporated a human spectragram using very comfortable with social media and not very comfortable.  This gave me a visual of who had experience and asked them not to all sit at the same table.

• Since there was a strong sense of community and connection in the room, the spectragram discussion was really rich.   I asked the "very comfortable" people the following question:

What was your ah ha moment with social media, when you understood its power and benefit to your movement/network?   

Participants offered anecdotes from personal use. 

"I was able to organize my high school reunion in a half hour because I was friends with everyone on Facebook."

"My personal blog was getting more hits than our organization's web site."

"We also heard a couple of examples of organizational use that described mobilizing activists quickly on Facebook."

Then I asked the people who were standing at the other side of the room, what was it about social media that made them uncomfortable. I also pointed out that they were showing network leadership because they were comfortable with their discomfort.  One person shared that social media made them uncomfortable because they were an introverted and being 'out there' did not feel natural. 

Then, I asked the people on the comfortable side of the room if they ever felt this way when they first started to use social media.  Many did and shared their transition.

I asked the comfortable group if everyone in their organization was a comfortable as them or more like the other side of the room.  This prompted some great insights into adoption strategies.

• This was the first time I was able to weave the external communications piece with the internal bounded networks piece.  It worked well.  Aside from the brainstorm about tools, we heard some wonderful techniques that some participants were already using "blogging behind the firewall."  This points to how the social media strategist also functions as a network weaver or technology steward internally.

• This group was one that was comfortable learning in public and modeled it.  I decided to model it and take advantage to learn in public from talented co-facilitators to keep the energy up during the small group activity.  I learned some nuances in the share pair technique as well as a quick energizer when the level dropped during the small group.

• I revised the cards for the first time in a while to reflect some of the new content.  I also got a great idea: a set of cards for the facilitators of each group.

• Stephanie McAuliffe inspired to start keeping trainer's notes that focused on the process and now am adding these to the reflections.

 

Reflections on Social Media EPIP Workshop

EPIP Slides

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I feel really inspired!  I just finished up the Social Media Strategy Game workshop with EPIP Chapter leaders. EPIP stands for Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy. The organization's goal is to strengthen the next generation of grantmakers, in order to advance effective social justice philanthropy. They provide professional networking, professional development, leadership development and advocacy.

What I enjoyed most was the creative spirit that comes from a comfort level with technology. The game uses a deck of cards to help a group to brainstorm a social media strategy.  This prevents making tool-based decisions.   An example of this creative spirit was when one group created a new card on a napkin.  

I had a chance to listen in on other trainings, which included some techniques for creating a recruitment culture - where chapters can reach out to new members and draw them in - face-to-face networking.  The techniques of face-to-face networking strategies are very much transferable to online tools.  In fact, you need these skills to really reap the benefits of your professional online network.

I used the wiki a flip chart - so the leave behind is the slide deck, notes, and a few resources.

WeAreMedia Live Workshop: Reflections

Flickr Photo: Illustration of Participant's Learning Questions

Earlier this month, we piloted the first two-day workshop on social media strategy and tools for NTEN's WeAreMedia project.  I was pleased with workshop, even though it was the first time and that is always difficult because instruction improves with feedback from learners. 

Co-instructors included Holly Ross, Nina Simon, Rachel Weidinger, Britt Bravo, David Cohn, and John Kenyon.  In addition, we had expert knowledge in the room from JD Lasica, Paul Lamb 
JD Lasica, and Laura Novig.

This was workshop was based on the knowledge shared on the WeAreMedia wiki over the past year using Dave Cormier's Community as the Curriculum approach.

The content on the wiki has now organized into an instructional format as a two-day face-to-face workshop.  The next step is to see how people remix, improve, and share back the material (with attribution of course) - that is the true power of working wikily. 

My debrief of the two-day workshop.

We had a lot of content to cover in two days.  I wonder whether face-to-face workshop delivery is the best approach for ultimately helping people put a social media strategy into practice.   Therefore, the learning goals be more aligned with the base of Bloom's Taxonomy - more about exposure, understanding, and knowledge.   Being able to make decisions and evaluate are more appropriate for a learning experience delivered over time such as a semester long course or at least having some time and space in between sessions.

The learning objectives were:

• make decisions about how to effectively integrate social media into organization's overall web communications plan
• understand how to design and implement a social media experiment that enables listening, participation, content creation, or community building and is appropriate and realistic
• evaluate the results of your social media experiment and use the information to improve your next social media strategy experiment
• experience a variety of web tools that are essential in listening, participation, content creation, generating buzz, and community building tactical approaches

Participants were asked to set up blogs as their workshop notebooks. This was useful for the introduction and pre-workshop activity, homework, and reflections.  Many of the participants lived blogged the sessions and the notes created are good content for the wiki. 

On the evaluation survey, we asked people to identify their "aha magic learning moment."  Here's what participants said was most useful:

"There were so many good things I got from the We Are Media Workshop that it's hard to distill it down to just one magical moment, but I think sitting in the conference room and seeing how many of us were inspired to *listen* to our constituents and connectors was really powerful. Your workshop encouraged us to devise a strategy for using social media, and to tease out what these tools could really mean to our mission, vision, and constituencies -- rather than just, "hurry up and get your org up on Twitter!"

"Having the strategic planning for social media broken out into 5 steps and identifying what tools went with each section."

"Being in one space with over 50 people all coming together to learn about why/how they can each use different social media strategies to help their organization."

"The hands-on education on actually using tools was most helpful."

I'm always overly critical about instructional delivery, and rely on evaluations to help hone and refine it. One of the instructional design flaws was that we assumed that all participants would be ready to write a draft social strategy as homework for the first night.  A few participants completed the assignment as you can see from the workshop blog notebooks here, here, here,  here, here, here, and here.   Thinking through a strategy requires more reflection and discussion within the organization and some level of experience with the tools.  However, on our follow up survey, 71% of respondents said the workshop will help them craft a strategy in the future.

That threw off the morning of the second day which was going to focus on participants sharing their ideas and giving feedback on their strategies.    I think after the first day's focus on strategy, people were very much interested in getting into the techniques, tactics, and tools. We could have allocated more time for the hands-on tactical small groups.  The cross pollination would have worked better sharing tips and tactics learned from the tool breakout sessions.  One person noted, "Perhaps each tactical session could be slightly more condensed or focused so that there was time (and mental energy!) to take in two of the technical topics."

For the next version of a two-day workshop, I'd deliver the break out tactical and tool sessions on the afternoon of the first day and repeat them again in the morning the second day.  This way people could attend two.  I'd also allow some time for people to share what they learned as a group or in small groups before selecting the second session.  As one respondent on our survey noted, "I would have liked to be able to go to more than one tactical breakout, and then have an opportunity to talk to people who went to the other sessions to find out what they learned."

I'd use the social media game as culminating activity.  From reading the participant blogs, there were a lot of insights generated from the strategy game like this one.  I'd include the implementation/metrics at the end or as an extension of the game.

In addition to a by the numbers survey, I always do a reflection survey where I ask what people learned, what they will put into practice, what is still unclear, and remaining questions.   While some of the  questions were about the how to implement tactics, a number were focused on the challenge of transfer.

• What of all this “stuff” is truly relevant for me and my organization?
• Will having a good social media strategy make my organization more successful or just more busy?
• What kind of a time investment does it take, how can I frame/align/justify that investment relative to other expenditures and needed areas of focus?
• How do we avoid “shiny object” syndrome?
• When will social media pay off for us?
• How to sell executive director on a smaller, more informal pilot?
• How do you balance where the organization is today with the potential of social media?

Some tangible first steps that people plan to put into practice are:

• Listening strategy
• Setting up a blog
• Use the smart chart to get communications strategy in place first
• Finish the social media strategy map
• Refine strategy based on listening first
• Set up a Facebook Page
• Experiment with StumbleUpon
• Finish plan, get more expertise to help with implementation
• Set up RSS Reader, Start Commenting on blogs

How To Think Like A Nonprofit Social Marketing Genius: What's Your Brilliant Thought?

How To Think Like A Nonprofit Social Media Genius

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Here are my slides from the Convio "Social Media for Social Good" and you can down the presentation slides)   I will be co-presenting with Emily Riley, a senior analyst from Jupiter Research.   The webinar is sold out, but the folks at Convio are making the recording available if you sign up.  More information here.  

Given my right brained, non-linear and visual way of presenting ideas, I thought it might be helpful to write up a few notes about the above talk. 

Convio asked me to prepare something for organizations that are just getting ready to embrace social media.  So, you'll find these points fairly basic.   However, I know there is a lot of expertise and knowledge about social media and nonprofit use out there.  So, in the spirit of social media, share your brilliant thoughts in the comments.   What would you add to this list?

What the heck does Einstein have to do with Social Media?

This idea came to me from Twitter.  One thing I've come to appreciate about Twitter is that it allows me to read the thoughts, ideas, and musings of many smart people and thought leaders in many different disciplines.  And, if nothing else, Twitter can stimulate creative thinking.

I follow Tim O’Reilly (O'Reilly Radar) who coined the term Web 2.0.  His tweets reveal him as a renaissance thinker, not just a narrow-minded tech geek.  

His quote from Einstein was aha moment for me while I was thinking through some of the design for my NTC session and an upcoming webinar sponsored by NTEN and TechSoup in 2009.    I also use Flickr as a visual thinking tool and started to search with different key words like "Einstein Blackboard."   From this brainstorming, I discovered this image manipulation tool where you can make Einstein write things on his blackboard.

I brainstormed series of equations or theories that represent best practices that nonprofits are using to implement social media.  When I mentioned this on Twitter and I got some more ideas from folks I follow, plus Twitter connected me with an Einstein scholar who told me my equations were too simplistic to be described an Einsteinian. (if that's really a word)

However, she did point out that there is real a connection between Einstein and Social Media:

Social media is like a FIELD / SPACE where people 'meet'.  Now, after his work on Theory of Relativity Einstein spent many years developing a Unified Field Theory. It was not a success - at least not yet.  However, I think what he did say is very apt and important for your topic.  He said that things in the field happen in spaces between particles- the analogue is a conversation between people.  Social Media and social networks allow for the quantum effects, paired elements at a distance.  And another multiplier comes from Network Theory (not Einstein directly but building on physics and mathematics) which shows that a network strength is in its Weak ties / Loose connections.  The more Weak ties/ the stronger the network.  This is a real POWER RELATIONSHIP.  And it is counterintuitive. People think that it is the best to connect/follow/ have in your network those you know well = Strong ties.  Good but far from a breakthrough.  That is everyday stuff.  But, unexpected, far away, diverse links = Weak ties are what really produces value.

And, at that point you should play a violin piece!  Did you know, Einstein was a highly accomplished violin player and kept his vioin in the office so he could play whenever...

#1:  

New + Tech = Resistance
New + Tech + Education = Adoption

Think about the technology adoption curve.  You have early adopters and a big scary chasm before moving towards more mainstreamed adoption of the technology.  This pattern is the same no matter the technology. The simple fact is that “Technology Changes, Humans Don’t." 

Concerns about adopting social media will no doubt arise.  These may include:

• A worry that social media is less controlled than traditional communications - and a lack of trust in letting staff put unchecked material out in public.
• Fear about letting the public comment back "publicly"
• Fear that it will take staff time, there will be little return, and the return will not be as easily measurable as, say, a direct mail piece.   Especially in this economy.

The key to crossing the chasm to social media adoption is education, awareness, and discussion internally.   This can take place in a variety ways, including brown bag lunches "Facebook Friday," presenting examples from other organization's experiences, or sharing market research data about consumer trends and social media.   Think about how you've introduced technology change in your organization in the past and use what works.  The important thing is having the conversation.

You'll want to identify easy, simple first projects that flow from your organization’s Internet marketing plan.  The best way to think of it is as taking a little chunk of your Internet marketing plan and incorporate a social media piece.  You don’t want to create an extra program or extra work, it has to support your existing marketing goals.  It has to be focused and set up so you can measure and learn.   I’ve heard from lots of nonprofit social media users that their first step was to find a project, what Chris Brogan calls “Social Media Starters”

#2.   Use the Rule of Thirds:  (1/3 Web + 1/3 One Way + 1/3 Social) = Online Marketing Budget

The rule of thirds is not an Einstein theory, it is actually comes to us from the art world.   Applying the rule of thirds photographic composition makes them have more visual interest and impact.   You can use the rule of thirds to answer the question.   "What percentage of the Internet market budget pie should be allocated to Social Media?"  The inspiration for that equation came from Colin Delaney of ePolitics and Laura Quinn from a workshop presented at Craigslist Foundation Nonprofit Bootcamp by (Resource list and Powerpoint here).  

The idea is that you need to think about your organization's web presence, one-way communication like email marketing and search engine optimization and finally the social.   There is some debate about how to order these components.  My own feeling is that social media is not an either/or to email or search engine optimization.   That you need to have all three, but you need to take a look at what needs to be improved and try to look for incremental improvements.   If you're just starting out with social media, better to start and start small than play catch up later.   Don't ignore the other two areas and focus all your energy on social media.

I think NTEN is a terrific example of the rule of thirds.   Take a look at their web site (which integrates social media content like their blog and photos from flickr),  they have a well-tuned email newsletter they track closely with metrics and have used search engine optimization (and Google Ad Words campaigns) really well - and they have social media presences in specific networks where their members and potential members can be found. They have solidified their social work flow so they're efficient.  I hope they share a case study about all this!

#3.  Listen First

You can use social media for different objectives.  I like to think about this in terms of the amount of time per week (How much time per week does it take to do social media?) and what you can achieve.   The objectives below is a nonprofit remix of some of Chris Brogan's ideas and 50 Ways to Use Social Media Organized by Groundswell Objective from Jeremiah Owyang.  I like thinking about social media in this way a lot and we've used it for the WeAreMedia tactical modules.

• Listening: If you are new to social media, this should be the objective for your first experiment with social media. You can listen with google alerts, technorati, Twitter search, and RSS readers. The key skill is pattern analysis and of course, using what you find to inform decisions or actions.

• Participate: Once you know what the audience is saying, the next step is to engage in a conversation with them. There are many different tools to support this - from leaving comments on blogs or using twitter. You can also share the impact of your organization's programs through podcasts, sharing photos on Flickr, or videos on YouTube or other video sharing sites. Even better is getting your constituents to share their stories about your organization with others or “user generated content.”

• Share Your Story: You share the impact of your organization's programs through blogging, podcasting, sharing photos on Flickr, or YouTube or other video sharing site. Once you have content created through these methods, it can be easily shared using the buzz tools above through social networks. But even better is getting your constituents to share their stories about your organization with others (which takes more time) (15-20 per week depending on the type of content, number of different ways you're creating it, and skill)

• Generate Buzz: When you share your message with enthusiastic supporters, they in turn may choose to pass it to others with a similar interest in your organization or campaign. The key benefit is that drives traffic. But first, you have to build trust, credibility and -- most importantly -- a relationship with those who might interact with your posted content. Buzz tools include FriendFeed, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Digg - and of course you add many others to this category that are found in other categories.

• Community Building and Social Networking: If you want to build an online community for knowledge or skill sharing, using social network tools like Ning will help you get there. If you're looking to engage and inspire new supporters, setting up an organizational presence on one of the larger social networks like Facebook or MySpace is an option.

There are different tools and methods that you can use to listen, including free tools like google alerts, technorati, RSS readers, and even Twitter.  The important skill set of listening is knowing what key words to use.  Once your organization has mastered basic listening skills with free tools, you may consider some of the more advanced tools for listening like Radian 6 and others.

I shared the story about the American Stroke Association's use of Twitter as a listening tool.  You can find more stories and lots of tips and resources in the WeAreMedia Listening Module and a really basic primer from the NTEN Social Media Newsletter.

#4  The Right Six People

It’s about finding the right six or seven people – the key influencers in your topic area or discipline.   It is a different way of thinking than one to many or email marketing – which is something many are already good at.    If you’ve done your listening right, you will have not only have identified them, but started to build relationships with them. 

Ari Herzog has found an actual reference to Einstein and this principle in his post, "Why Einstein Matters in Social Networking" and just had to point that out.

I used a visual from one of David Wilcox's presentations to illustrate the principle.  The nonprofit story I'm using is from the Capital Area Foodbank in Austin, Texas.  If you want to hear the business perspective, the phrase "find the right six or seven people" came from a talk that David Meerman Scott did at the New Marketing Summit. (Check out his free e-book the New Rules of Viral Marketing). 

#5 Make Your Content Easy To Remix

This point is about user-generated content and the key to getting people to participate: Make it easy, fun, and simple.  (The inspiration comes from a combination of Mel Brooks and Staple's easy buttons.)  I point out two good examples, the Hunger is Unacceptable Campaign  (which uses the hold the sign meme -- the first one I ever did was in December 2005 for Netsquared) and the Humane Society's LOL Seals.  There are more tips for user-generated content here and lots of nonprofit examples and resources in the WeAreMedia "Share Your Story" module.

#6 Hours per week x number of weeks = results

The point is that social media takes time to see results and there isn't instant gratification.   I've pulled some examples from Danielle Brigidia's excellent slideshow about using social media to increase web traffic to illustrate this point.

#7 Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts

This is an actual quote from Einstein.    I'm not saying that you shouldn't use quantitative metrics.  What am saying is that you need to focus on the right metrics to use AND in addition to demonstrating impact, you need to use metrics to figure out what is working and what isn't and revise.  Also, sometimes qualitative information and intangible benefits can be valuable, although they can't necessarily be counted.

The example I'm using is an excerpt from a blog benchmarking process and presentation that I gave at e-metrics conference in October.   I contributed the chapter on ROI in the forthcoming Managing Technology for your Mission Book and over the next few months will doing workshops that extend these concepts and techniques to Social Media, so stay tuned.

Now it is your turn.  What's your brilliant nonprofit social marketing thought?

Update:  Questions that weren't answered during the Webinar, we wrote answers here.

My First Intergenerational Social Media: Learning from Gen Z's and Value of Different Points of View

Earlier this week, Leslie Poston invited me to participate on her podcast on Race and Social Media along with Shireen Mitchell, Liza Sabiter, and Rahsheen Porter.   One of the takeaways was, don't assume that everyone thinks like you do - and expose yourself to different points of view.   This week I put that into practice.

Yesterday, I facilitated a hot topic workshop at the Healthy Communities Annual Conference hosted by the Search Institute in Minneapolis.  Search Institute is an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide leadership, knowledge, and resources to promote healthy children, youth, and communities. 

When I've do social media and nonprofit trainings, the audience consists of staff, board members, or volunteers from nonprofit organizations.  The diversity comes from the different generations in the room, types of nonprofits, and budget size.   Nonetheless, there is a nonprofit perspective and my instructional materials and experience speak to that audience.

I've worked with other groups - small business, higher education, librarians, educators, and others, but never all mixed up.   This audience included representatives from all these groups -- including educators, school administrators, highers education, faith communities, youth-serving organizations, social-service organizations, and the public sector.  

And, best of all, I had young people in the workshop - all age 17 and under - the generation dubbed as "Generation Z.   The demographics of the room was 35% Gen Z, 10% Gen Y, 15% Gen X, and 40% babyboomers like me. 

It was a little challenging to remix a workshop that would be relevant to these different perspectives and age groups and have people leave the room having learned something.  So, remixed my slide deck to represent the different points of view.

I spent some time in the beginning asking questions and letting people share their experience and perspectives on social media.  As much as I could, if I got asked a question, I invited the younger folks in the room to answer and facilitated an inter-generational dialog.  It was eye opening.

I had intended to do the game simulation, but it was too nonprofit centric.  One lesson I learned early on as a trainer is not to be afraid to flush your lesson plan (at least the instructional delivery part) down the toilet if you sense it isn't right.  So, I changed delivery tactics and it worked!   We did mostly full room discussion, but I broke it up with some moving around exercises. (Note to self:  Need to have a back-up small group exercise that I could do when the game won't work).  Here's the full room exercises.

(1)  Audience Stand Up Poll:   Whenever I talk about social media and nonprofits, we talk about audience.  I've been using the Forrester Technographics as a framework.   Rather than me explaining it in detail and having people fall asleep.  I gave them a high level description and asked them stand - and then I interviewed them in front of the group about the social media habits, pointing out the different segments.

This breaks up the full room discussion format a bit.   But it also gave me an idea for a small group exercise or even an icebreaker where you might have people take a quiz or have the technographic profiles listed on butchblock sheets on the wall and have people stand in front of it.  Then have full room discussion and have them share "Three Things About Us".  Or you could break into small groups based on the technographic profile.  Then have the group work on coming up with those.

(2)  Walking the Line - Ready/Not Ready:   I used the spectragram ribbon and asked people to line up according to whether they felt ready or their organization's were ready to implement social media or not.  Then had a discussion having the ready folks give advice to the not ready. 

How can we use all this technology

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: nptech youth)

I revised a lot of the content to match the audience.  In the why it is important section,  I went through the social networking from birth to high school slides.   I asked the young people to share with us if they had used any of the social networks like Webkins, Penguin, Virtual Pets, etc.   This was fascinating to learn why and how they participate and how adults in their lives perceive these technologies.

I also always show a slide about the age demographics of email users.  When I talk to nonprofit professionals, this slide is always met with a high degree of skepticism.   But in this instance, we had an interesting discussion about generational differences in electronic communications preferences.

I took them through a remix of the cutedog theory - or how to think about it strategically.   In the policy section, I included the issue of cyberbullying and privacy issues.  The young people in the room are experts on privacy settings on social networks and definitely had formulated friending policy - while the concept of friending policies was very new to some of the boomers in the room.   The discussion was fantastic. 

One of the workshop participants, a librarian, had done a lot of work on social networks -- on a personal level - just to document how some of the security issues are overblown in the media and also to understand what to teach young people about responsible and safe use.   She shared some really useful resources.

While putting together the slideshow and thinking about social media staffing issues,  I recalled a service learning project for high schools students form over ten years ago called Nonprofit Prophets where high school students, trained in web development, worked with nonprofits.   I wondered whether there was a social networking version of that project today.

During the Q&A, a university researcher asked how they could get young people to fill out an online survey and whether or not they would do through a social networking.   I facilitated a multi-generational brainstorming session with the younger people sharing their impressions of whether or not they ignore a myspace profile or not based on certain design elements and what would motivate them to participate in the research.

After the session, a couple of the younger folks thanked me and told me that thinking about social media as it applies to nonprofits or for "professional use" is a great way to debunk some myths with the adults they know!

I wish I could do inter-generational professional development workshops all the time!  It's inspiring and energizing to get different points of view.  

Update:  Ashely pointed out that her experience is usually teens do not understand the issues.  I asked on twitter Coolcat Teacher - Vicky Davis's blog whether social networking security and privacy were taught in schools and she said no.  She pointed to this project.

What are your observations about the similarities or differences between nonprofit and social media across generations?  

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.

Message in A Box: New Toolkit from Tactical Technology Collective

Message in-a-box: Tools and tactics for communicating your cause is a new web resources that includes tactical guides to using a wide range communications tools for social change, packaged with some open source tools for creating media.  This resource is for small to midsized nonprofit organizations.

This guide is a one-stop place to find checklists, strategy tips, and how-to guides for creating everything in you need to implement a communications strategy - from quick guide for a print strategy to selecting a content management system.  It also includes tips and resources for developing an Internet Strategy
sharing content on mobile phones, and an email strategy.  

The guide incorporates some tutorials and how-to information social media strategy, most notably a Blogging guide for activists and campaigners for using blogs for grassroots organizing and citizen journalism written by Sokari Ekine who blogs at www.blacklooks.org.  There is also a rich section about how to incorporate the use of video -- from creating your own to using works created by others.

The tools section is an annotated directory of open source tools that describe the tool and include links to downloads, manuals, and tutorials.  

The content incorporates and points to materials created by others in the citizen journalism and activism fields and is packaged as self-paced tutorials and checklists.   There are a few content areas that I do not normally included in the other many similar guides available.  These include:

•  Quick Guide to Images:  Advice about how to incorporate images effectively in your campaign materials.
• A Simple Guide to Animation Creating short animations can be an effective way to communicate about your cause.  This short tutorial steps you through some easy ways to create animation.
• Primer on Search Engine Optimization A good primer for those just beginning to think through a search engine optimization strategy.
• A Guide To Open Content  This section explains creative commons licensing and open content in easy to understand terms.

Well, I'm off to add links in the appropriate places in WeAreMedia.

Social Media Game: Hawaiian Version - Beta - My Contribution to Hawaii Geek Week

Photo by Dan Zen

It's Hawaii Geek Week!   Here's my contribution. Part of the Hawaii Social Media Club Workshop. 

The Social Media Game

The goal of game:   There's no winners or losers.  The game is intended to help you think through a social media strategy and share tips and knowledge.

Instructions for Playing

1.    Introduction: Overview the key concepts in the game.  I need to create a very brief (10 minutes) high level overview of the tactical strategies, time, and potential resistance areas. I won't be going over the tools in detail as many will have been discussed during the early part of the day and they can ask one another in their small groups.  I will also give an overview of the rules.  I will hand out the tactical cards for reference.

2.   Objective: Divide into small groups.  Each group will be assigned an instructor/facilitator.   Each group will select one objective card at random. (5 minutes)

Here's an example:

Photo by Bitmask

TOURISM CAMPAIGN

You are a campaign team for a local tourist office and you want to get visitors to Hawaii to enjoy your local restaurants, hotels, and attractions. You would like to use social media to educate tourists who have select Hawaii as a destination to come off the beaten path. You also want to build relationships with people who have visited so they will return or tell others.

3.   Audience: Next, each group will get a set of "people" cards.  I created most of the cards using the social technographics model from Forrester that is described in detail in the book Groundswell by Josh Bernhoff and Charlene Li.  (I'm hoping that participants will have viewed or seen Chris Heuer's video interview with Charlene as part of the promotion of the workshop.  Participants will be asked to consider who the audience might be for the various scenarios and how they might learn more about what they are doing on the social web.   I've included a card that points to these other free research sources but will also warn folks from getting bogged down with too much research and not enough action.  (15 minutes)

4.  Tool Cards:  Each group will get a pack of tool cards and choose tools to implement the online strategy to reach their objective.  Each tool is worth a certain amount of points and each group can only have up to ten points.   (I might need to tweak the point value).    (15-20 minutes)

5. Real Situations:  When the group is done with their strategy,  they will pick a situation card at random.  The situations include resistance, staffing, budget, time, experimentation, and metrics.   Depending on the situation, they can gain or lose points.  Once they pick the situation card, they revise their strategy.   If time permits, will let groups pick another strategy card. (15-20 minutes)

6. Full Group Report:  Each group will present their strategy to the full group and get feedback.

Almost two years ago,  I did a workshop with David Wilcox in Birmingham for LASA. We created a new game version (Social Media Game) based on those Drew Mackie and he had developed over the past 10 years. (You can find David's training games here.)   He has reiterated this game over and over for different audiences and circumstances and I've remixed the game for filmmakers and even took it to Cambodia.  I set up a wiki where I've collected links to others who have remixed and was hoping to create some templates and source material for people to remix it.

Next week, I'm bringing the game to Hawaii Social Media Club Workshop.  I got an email from Demetrio Maguidgad explaining how he remixed the game, how it worked!  I've shared details on the wiki here.   Now, I've remixed to give it some Hawaiian Aloha spirit.  The audience is both nonprofits and small businesses.

I'm going to remix this again .. so suggestions welcomed.

Demetrio Maguigad Rocks the Social Media Game and My Remix Ideas

Demetrio Maguigad, New Media Manager
Community Media Workshop

Almost two years ago,  I did a workshop with David Wilcox in Birmingham for LASA. We created a new game version (Social Media Game) based on those Drew Mackie and he had developed over the past 10 years. (You can find David's training games here.)   He has reiterated this game over and over for different audiences and circumstances and I've remixed the game for filmmakers and even took it to Cambodia.  I set up a wiki where I've collected links to others who have remixed and was hoping to create some templates and source material for people to remix it.

Next week, I'm bringing the game to Hawaii Social Media Club Workshop and was hoping to mix in some Aloha spirit.  But wasn't sure if I was going to have the time given the packed schedule to be truly inventive.   That was until I got this email from Demetrio Maguidgad explaining how he remixed the game, how it worked, and the files!  I've shared them on the wiki here.

Here's what I really liked about how he remixed the game.

• Pre-Determined Scenarios:  He gave them made up scenarios or objectives that describes the organization's purpose and what they want the social media to accomplish.  I've done the game using this approach (see the workshop notes and reflections from Meyer Memorial Trust) and keeping open-ended an letting one person in the small group be the "client."   
• Use of Points When Selecting Tools:   He only gives participants a choice of 18 tools and it is a wide range (more technical tools like Drupal, Joombla, and Mashups), but they have a budget of 10 points - so this naturally leads to a discussion of priorities.   On the cards, he defines the tools, provides a question, and url.  I like the addition of the URL.  When I've used this exercise, I've tried to keep it focus on tools for either external communication or internal collaboration, although he does color code the outcomes (collaboratoin, media content/networking, etc.)
• Scenario Cards:  I love this twist - these are the real life examples that get at issues of adoption, information overload, loosing control, etc.  There are good and bad scenarios that might increase or descrease an .org's capacity to implement.

How I might remix this:

• I'm going to add a few things:   I set of cards that describes the audience based on culling a few ideas from here.  Alternately, you could add a sentence into the objective cards that describes the audience.

• I'm going to focus on external communications goals - and use the How Much Time Does It Take To Do Social Media? or the categories that I organized the WeAreMedia tactical track:  listening, participate, share your story, generating buzz, and social networking/community building. 

• There are two concepts missing from Demetrio's set of cards that I'd like to incorporate are metrics - How do you measure success?   And, of course, the idea of a low risk experiment.  Maybe this doesn't require a set of cards, but it is a task the group thinks about once they pick their strategy and tools.  My gut is to keep it simple though.

Well, off to remix  ... what do you think?

Digital Literacy SKills Redux

Seth Godin has a post called "The Growing Productivity Divide" where he lists some basic digital literacy skills that incorporate social media tools.    Digital or Internet literacy skills are nothing new - my first introduction was over ten years when Doug Johnson developed the Mankato Scale.  I used to teach "Digital Literacy Workshops" in 1997 to introduce Web 1.0 skills to artists and educators.  What might be differnt if you were teaching this class today?

E-Metrics Presentation: How ROI Thinking Can Help Expand Your Blog Community

Photo by Smitty42

IN two weeks, I will have the honor of presenting at the E-Metrics Conference with Jonathon Coleman, Nature Conservancy and Laura Lee Dooley. World Resources Institute - two of the savvy and smart nonprofit social media practitioners who are also metrics geeks.   What a combination!

Our session is on the social media metrics track and one of a few that are geared for nonprofit folks.

Followers, Friends, and Fans: Expanding Your Online Community
If you aren't on facebook, twitter, friendfeed, technorati, and delicious, should you be? And once you jump into social media, how do you track and measure success? Tips, tools and stories from the trenches from three people who focus on online engagement and have more links, friends and followers than some small countries have citizens.

It's a little bit intimidating to be in the presence of social media measurement gurus like KD Paine who session is earlier that day.

E-Metrics: Followers, Friends, and Fans - Expanding Your Online Community

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: blogging nptech)

I'm going to start the session with an overview of ROI thinking - mostly making the point about how measurement is more than math, but how it can help you figure out what is and what isn't working in social media.    I'm using my experience benchmarking my blog with key metrics.  I've decided rather than show how wonderful and perfect everything is - I'm going to drill down on how metrics can really help you improve results if you're not getting them at first and how to determine the return on investment.  I've done it with a lot of story telling and loads of humor. 

Laura and Jonathan will be sharing awesome case studies based on their experience.  Laura will focus on Twitter and measuring success.  Jonathan will focus on using Digg.   From what I've seen in the draft slides, their presentations will rock.

I suspect we may have several different types of people in our session:

• metrics measurement geeks in nonprofits and government - it's their full-time job
• measurement geeks that might work with nonprofits - understand it in a business context
• nonprofit and government folks who need to get more advice re: measurement in social media

For conference presentations, you can necessarily ask in advance what people's level of experience is with social media and measurement (beginner, intermediate, or expert).   So, if you are attending E-Metrics or were going to attend and come to our session, what would your burning question be?

Social Media Basic Literacy Skills In the Nonprofit Workplace

Source:  Pew Internet and America Life Project: "Networked Workers" Study

 

Michele Martin and Tony Karer have been blogging at the Work Literacy blog for several months now.  Work Literacy is a network of individuals, companies and organizations who are interested in learning, defining, mentoring, teaching and consulting on the frameworks, skills, methods and tools of modern knowledge work.  The topics they look at are what I might call social media literacy skills.

When I get out into the real world and come in contact with people who are no early adopters of Web 2.0 tools,  I find that there are still many people who haven't heard of many of these tools - blogging, tagging, RSS,  etc, let alone have incorporated them into their daily professional work practice.   Mostly they are aware,  but haven't experienced it.   

Fast forward ten years from now, and the nonprofit workplace - maybe it is only five years from now - but will social media basic literacy be on the list of basic job skills?

Marshall Kirkpatrick at the Read/Write Web has two recent posts, one that analyzes some research and a second providing some great tips for incorporating social media into your work life in a productive way that can enhance your work.

 

Survey: Most Workplace Internet Use Remains Rudimentary:  Marshall gives a good summary of what he thinks the implications are from this research.  I'll just quote him here:

The gist of the analysis is that people who use the internet at work also use it to do work at home; it makes them more efficient but also increases the demands on their time. Any of us who live that kind of life could have told you that - but what we find more interesting is the surprisingly low number of people who say they use certain technologies at work.

Greg Sterling at the excellent blog SearchEngineLand pulls out some of the most salient data points from the survey and we'll excerpt further from his post below. We question both the definition of "networked worker" in the survey and Sterling's perspective on it, though.

Reading Blogs at Work: How and Why You Should Do It:

This is a fantastic post that gives us the why - first mover advantage, something that Chris Brogan has talked about.  Marshall's tips for reading are all about listening. There's a few more strategy/tool ideas tools that I think are definitely worth incorporating into the WeAreMedia Listening for Nonprofits section.  And, it has given me some inspiration for social media listening step-by-steps projects.

When do you think social media basic literacy skills  -- reading blogs in an RSS reader and listening to what people are saying - will be come a standard part of the nonprofit job description - at least for someone doing marketing for the organization.