Refudiate Your Social Media Inhibitions

Sarah Palin made Twipples of snickers and depression today when, in a tweet defending her assault on the English language, she compared her "creativity" to Shakespeare's -- one wonders if an aide was dispatched to spell check that one.

Unfortunately, there may be people out there who revel in such audacity of dope. Unfortunately, some people place more importance on swagger than on substance. Finally, and, again, unfortunately, nonprofits and their supporters have something to learn from this: Social media is an arena that allows you to own your message. It's just that some people prefer more intelligent sounding messages than others.

“The 21st century is a really terrible time to be a control freak,” the State Department's Jared Cohen said recently in a New York Times article titled, "Digital Diplomacy." (NYT editors clearly don't have the audacity to call it like it is: Twiplomacy.) Indeed, even stodgy federal institutions are letting go of their messaging inhibitions to venture into the powerful marketplace of ideas and human bonds that is social media.

But it's important to recognize what really matters about social media -- the social (and if you happened to see Katya Andresen's recent tutorial on this, you know I totally just ripped her off). Take Twitter, for example. Viewed one way, Twitter is a closet full of shoes. When you're about to go to some tweet-frenzied technology conference, you put on your running shoes. When you tweet a news link from the New York Times during your Monday morning coffee fix, you're wearing business casual. But what matters at the end of your walk or run in Twitter shoes is the person in them.

Did your followers connect? Were they enlightened? What did you inspire them to do and how do you know they did it? Was it what you had hoped they would do? These are all very critical questions to consider when setting out on your Twitter strategy and owning your nonprofit's message and cause.

Today Jocelyn Harmon blogged about the 5 roles you need to fill when building an online community team, and added her own number 6: the "bridge builder," a brilliant idea in this age of increasing diversity. I hate to add another node on an already growing list, so maybe we can call this a sub-role, or something, but online communities need a Message Maker. Not to be mistaken with an editor, this role is the human bond in social media.

There is no clear formula for achieving this. It takes doing, and growing into things. For some, it might also take having a dictionary on hand, but we've beaten that horse enough.

Facebook: New changes you might not "Like"

This week, Facebook rolled out their new f8 platform. The changes have some organizations updating materials and some individuals worrying about privacy of their personal information.

To help you get up to speed, here's a list of the biggest changes you need to know about and resources to help you edit your privacy.

f8 changes you need to know about:

• Become a Fan buttons were renamed to Like (if your organization has language on your website or printed materials that say "become our fan", it's time to review and make updates so that constituents know to look for the Like buttons).
• The new Open Graph API simplifies how websites and Facebook share information about you online. If you've noted your favorite songs in your Facebook profile, then you'll very likely hear those playing next time you open Pandora... or if you've marked favorites on Pandora, your Facebook profile will be updated to include these song. Usage of personal information in this way may take many people by surprise.
• An individual's Instant Personalization privacy setting is automatically set to Allow. This means that you've already told Pandora they can grab your favorite songs. If you're not ready to let the instant personalization happen, be sure to edit your privacy settings to remove the instant allow. This means you can be selective for the sites/applications that have access to your personal information.

Resources to learn more about managing your personal settings:

• EFF: How to Opt Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization
• Gawker: How to restore your privacy on Facebook
• IanDouglas.com: HOW TO: protect yourself (as best you can) from Facebook’s F8 platform

So, are you and your organization ready for f8? Do you think your personal information is in danger of being abused or misused? Or is your organization already looking at ways to integrate the Open Graph API into your nonprofit website? Post your thoughts in the Comments.

Social Media Veterans at the 2010 NTEN Conference

Today Changing Our World's Interactive services team is blogging from the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference (10NTC) in Atlanta, which is pretty much the mother ship of all tech-minded nonprofit gatherings. The first session we attended was titled, "Social Media Veterans," (#smvets) which was moderated by the very energetic Rachel Weidinger, who successfully turned the packed ballroom into an offline Facebook fan page/Twitter feed.

Attendants gathered to share their tips, grievances and brilliant ideas on all things social media, from Ning to FourSquare. I had a chance to interview Estrella Rosenberg, whose campaign, 100x100, is using FourSquare to launch a lobbying campaign around legislation on heart defects.

"It's not exactly fundraising, but it will get supporters engaged and active, and therefore more likely to give at a later stage," she surmised.

Enjoy the video! (This article continues below.)

Estrella Rosenberg on FourSquare from CW Interactive Services on Vimeo.

At one point in the forum, Rachel took a show of hands for how many people had organizational and personal Twitter accounts; Facebook fan pages; a blog that was very active vs. not so active. Hands shot up -- these were social media veterans, after all -- and some embarrassed laughter over the blogging activity question. Rachel picked on one person -- "You with the awesome glasses!" -- who works with the Dr. Pepper Museum -- "Give us an example of how you use Twitter."

She replied that they apply strict practices of following & thanking people who retweet them, and that Twitter also becomes a useful tool for tourists within the museum.

Another person, whose nonprofit addresses a controversial political issue, has put together a crisis plan in the event they fall victim to a political attack. Rachel then asked how many people in the room had a social media crisis plan, and only three people responded.

One of the more interesting topics was volunteer management, particularly when it comes to striking a balance between controlling your messaging and granting autonomy to your volunteers. One attendant explained that her organization maintains a very rigorous application process and engages in frequent followups throughout the life cycle of the volunteer. Another organization member said they enlist autonomous volunteer teams that each have their own Twitter accounts.

The session ended with Rachel throwing business cards around the room, and asking for people to throw theirs back at her. "You, blog about this! You, blog about that!" It was chaos, lightening-paced yet somehow, everything made sense.

Charitivism: The Gloves are Off

This morning I was scanning my Tweetdeck stream for yesterday's Artez Interactive DC fundraising & networking conference and noticed this from Care2's Jocelyn Harmon (my favorite Frogloop blogger):

Still musing on @danpallotta talk at #artezdc. We R handicapping ourselves by perpetuating the myth that low overhead = effective charity.

Indeed, I think everyone was.

It would be unfair to say that Dan Pallotta's presentation, "Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential," stole the spotlight. It was bookended with talks by people like Katya Andresen, Ted Hart, Dharmesh Shah, Judy Chang (Principal Product Manager, PayPal) and Care2's Jocelyn and Eric Rardin, all of whom knocked the ball out of the park. (A few highlights: Ted set the tone by declaring that we have moved from the era of "direct marketing" to "direct influence," and to fundraise online effectively, we'd have to "stop fundraising and start communicating"; Katya gave her first live presentation of her must read ebook, Homer Simpson for Nonprofits, which she'll repeat at the NTEN conference next week; and Dharmesh probably converted everyone in the room into avid bloggers, SEO buffs and tweeters, if they weren't already.)

But Dan's presentation was definitively special. For those who don't know, Dan is the author of Uncharitable, a rather insurgent book which argues that "society’s nonprofit ethic undermines our ability to eradicate great problems, and, ironically, puts charity at a severe disadvantage to the for-profit sector at every level."

In his talk, Dan pointed to the flurry of warnings issued by media outlets and state attorneys general about donating to relief organizations in the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake, to highlight the erroneous assumption that people ought not donate to nonprofits that report high overhead costs. 

Stop and think about this.

How exactly is a Haiti relief organization supposed to implement solid programs without skilled staff, technology and organization? There is no doubt that some nonprofits are more or less efficient than others, but why are overhead costs the litmus test?

Put another way: You should not donate to the soup kitchen that reports 30% overhead expenses (don't bother to find out that it has highly professional facilities and staff, and serves healthy organic soup). You should donate to the soup kitchen that reports 5% overhead expenses (don't bother to discover that their facilities are dilapidated, their staff rude, and their soup bereft of nutritional value).

Dan believes this stigma hearkens back to our country's Puritanical belief system that rewards capitalist entrepreneurship and humbles charity to an almost parasitic level. That is, you're not doing your job if you're working on a Macbook Pro and have complimentary coffee in the office kitchen. You are expected to run highly sophisticated software on donated IBMs circa 2001 and call hospitals in Haiti from a shared rotary phone.

Meanwhile, corporations that want to sell sugar water to children and exploit lax labor laws in poor countries are rewarded with billions. Yes, something is certainly wrong with this picture.

Perhaps the worst consequence for the nonprofit industry is that this culture forces it to lie to itself. Dan cited the statistic that a third of nonprofits with a budget of $5 million had reported no fundraising expenses.

So how is the sector expected to become more efficient when our culture forces it into dishonesty?

Dan's answer to this problem is as common sense as it is profound. Replace words like "overhead" with "implementation," or, if it's not a stretch, "vision." He closed his presentation saying, "Revisit your great dreams and infuse them with courage, and the determination to make them real."

I later ran into Dan by the elevators as he was leaving and told him I planned to use his talking points in my own work with nonprofit organizations. "Do it," he said, "we've got to get this movement going." 

He meant every word, I thought.

You, The Citizen Philanthropist

Last night I attended the Citizen Effect: A New Approach to Philanthropy event at the swanky new U Street office of Affinity Lab, which is a brilliantly organized space for creative businesses, non-profits and start-ups — a geek commune done right.

In the tradition of Global Giving, Care2, Change.org and Facebook Causes, Citizen Effect is yet another attempt to connect socially concerned people with the cause of their choice. Or so I thought.

Citizen Effect's founder, Dan Morrison, opened his presentation with a story-telling Malcolm Gladwell charm (minus the hair), telling us about the people who inspired him, and moving into Citizen Effect's founding principles, which go something like this:

When you hear "philanthropy" you think of Bill Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the other titans of industry that set aside some of their riches to help solve the world's challenges. But when I hear "philanthropy" I think of high school students, young professionals, yoga instructors and accountants.

Ok, that was pretty much ripped from the MeetUp.com event description. But it mirrored, in a nutshell, Dan's build up to the Citizen Effect product. And what separates it from the better known crowd-sourcing philanthropic competitors is the way it centers the focus on the Citizen Philanthropist — you.

The notion of the Citizen Philanthropist (CP) is not new. It explains why there are so many small nonprofits devoted to specific areas of concern. Everyone has a friend who joined Peace Corps and returned to start a nonprofit to help some village in Zambia. Citizen Effect cuts to the chase, lining CP's up with their passions.

I applied to be a CP myself, and was most impressed with the application process.

As I ticked the boxes indicating my regional interests, the amount of money I want to raise and the number of lives I hope to impact, my wheels got turning: I don't have to end world hunger, I can help feed 300 people in India. I don't have to start a national campaign, I can throw a house party.

After you submit your application, you're encouraged to peruse Citizen Effect's searchable marketplace of nonprofit programs, which are broken down by region, focus area, lives impacted and fundraising target. Most ingeniously, each program has its own blog, events and announcements, so the CP can connect with others who are campaigning on the same project.

The projects themselves are administered by qualifying nonprofit organizations, who submit their own application to and are vetted by Citizen Effect.

I asked Dan how they cope with the demand among their nonprofit partners for unrestricted funds. After all, any savvy nonprofiteer understands the marketing value of specificity and personal stories, but every nonprofiteer wants control over how money is spent.

Dan told me that while his nonprofit partners are required to earmark much of their CP donations to an actual project, they may direct a portion to its implementation costs. "But we make sure they're very clear about this on our website," he added.

My wheels were turning again.

Of course, the best thing to do is check out Citizen Effect's website, become a CP, and learn how it all works.

Saying Thank You in a Social World

A donor, one big or small, makes a gift to your organization. Your backend office generates and (e)mails a thank you letter and/or reciept. If the gift size says "major donor", you might even call to say thank you.

But is that enough? Are you missing out on opportunities to show your appreciation in a more public way, especially one that would encourage *other people* to make a gift?

It's easy to tweet a "thanks to all of our donors" message or rely on Facebook Causes to display a list of donors. But have you named specific donors in a Wall status update that would be displayed outside of the Cause or tracked down a donor's Twitter account and acknowledged them in a tweet?

There's a reason why Facebook and Twitter display the number of friends, fans, and followers you have. And a reason why #followfriday is popular. And why Digg, Twitter and now Facebook can display the number of times a page has been shared. People are, well, a little bit vain. That's not to say all of social media is a popularity contest, but don't ignore the opportunities to call out a donor by posting a more personalized thank that would show up on their Facebook news feed or list of tweets mentioning their @username. Your public appreciation could bring you closer to a repeat gift or a viral appeal and hopefully your next donation.

Using the Social Media Snowball Formula

A staple read this week in the online nonprofit sphere was Brenna Holmes’ blog post on Community Organizer 2.0 about building the California State Parks Foundation’s (CSPF) Facebook Fan Page from 517 fans to 45,000 – a pretty big honking deal.

It’s especially remarkable given that CSPF’s four-day “Friend Get Friend” campaign nearly met its original goal of 5,000 fans, then surpassed it with 6,236 fans on the following day. The campaign brought CSPF considerable media attention and encouraged about 5,000 concerned Californians to visit state parks on a weekend in June and then post photos from their visits to CSPF’s Fan Page wall.

It’s the kind of online-to-offline-to-online success that would make any digital-savvy mother proud, and Brenna’s must be smiling.

Of course, any nonprofiteer who read this wants to know how to make this narrative her own. And absent a perfect villain like the anti-progressive, state park budget slashing Governator himself, and the fierce urgency of legislative deadlines, will CSPF’s Facebook formula of smart messaging be enough?

Before we go there, let’s assume that while your nonprofit addresses a noble and necessary social need, there are no foreseeable wars, hurricanes (though ‘tis the season), forest fires or sinister bands of ninjas out to undo your good work. 

The first question you should ask is whether you’ve taken full inventory of opportunities that do exist. For instance, are you aware of Twestival Local, and that your city and charity might qualify to benefit from it if you register by August 25th?

Moreover, are you on Twitter? Why not? (Don’t worry, CSPF didn’t get there until late last July.)

The next step is to realize that success isn’t all about fortunate externalities – although they do help. It begins instead with a combination of perspective, the right tools and a winning formula. And persistence, of course, but since you work for the cause that’s in your DNA.

To see what I mean about perspective, turn back to the CSPF example with a different mindset: State parks are always under the threat of budget cuts, that’s not unusual; compared to other Republicans, you could be facing much worse opponents than Governor Schwarzenegger.

If CSPF had this perspective, there would be no state parks east of the Rockies. The point is that there may be no impending ninja attack, but your job wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a threat to your cause. It’s up to you to reframe it, and apply the right online tools to communicate and make it viral.

Let’s begin with the tools. If your organization hasn’t already invested in email campaigns, you undoubtedly intend to. Next consider the two strongest social media applications in online organizing, Twitter and Facebook. Regardless of where your nonprofit lies on the spectrum of novice to advanced, everyone shares a common interest with these tools: growth. That is, followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook.

(A quick aside: There’s been great debate over the benefits of Facebook’s Causes vs. Fan Pages applications. Your correspondent is of the opinion that Fan Pages win this one. Causes are great but have trouble sustaining over time – once dormant, they’re hard to resuscitate. Fan Pages are like the vintage Mustang you take out on weekends – they’re more timeless. And with a Static FBML box, you can embed donate or email subscribe functionalities on your Fan Page.)

Finally, the Fan Page-Twitter cocktail is ideal because both applications create communities of potential donors; have email blast-like capabilities (in fact, many practitioners have found greater returns on tweeting take-action or donate links than they get from conventional email campaigns); provide a forum for activity, media sharing and conversation; and the online audience you’re not reaching on Twitter is probably active on Facebook.

Now for the winning formula, which goes something like this:

Goals → Urgency → Communications → Giving

 
The Snowball Formula, as I just decided to call it, earns its namesake because each element rolls into the next, making your campaign bigger and more formidable as it goes. Besides, snowballs grow, which is precisely what you want you campaign to do, not just with followers, but with generating a buzz and raising money.

Here’s how it breaks down:

Establish Goals: There’s nothing like clarity. Tell your supporters exactly what you’re trying to do. You want a million dollars, 10,000 fans/followers on Facebook and Twitter, and you need it all by this deadline. Promote this on your website (or, dare I say, a microsite?) and in email campaigns, and don’t forget to be creative: Tie your goal to a mission match (e.g. 10,000 fans for 10,000 blankets for the homeless) or donor match (e.g. 10,000 fans matched with $10,000 from ACME Co.).

Introduce Urgency: This step is best accommodated with robust communications coupled with timing. That is, constant vigilance for opportunities to exploit, such as hurricanes and marauding ninjas. More importantly, you need to sound convincing. As stated earlier, CSPF had several externalities working to its advantage. In their initial Friend Get Friend appeal last May (broadcast via Fan Page email notification), they articulated Schwarzenegger’s plan to halve the General Fund budget by July, and eliminate it by 2010. But the real urgency was introduced several sentences later when they said, “This year’s cuts are 10 times as bad so we need 10 times the fans on Facebook – 5,000 – by Friday to fight this newest proposal back.”  That’s it. No meticulous breakdown of cause and effect, no online grassroots feasibility metrics, just a few words that said, basically, you should really, really do this. Because we said so.

Sustain Communication: Your average dictator, cynic or communications consultant will tell you that power lies not in facts, but in controlling the story. Communications should remain consistent throughout your campaign while you optimize all channels of social media and email. Content is largely informed by external events, but some can be planned in advance, such as reminding your supporters about goal status (i.e. urging people to recruit more), and finding new ways to express urgency. There is also the matter of not-so-public communications: Along the way it helps to identify and enlist individuals with large online followings (it could be a Twitterphile celebrity like Ashton Kirchner, but any person with a zillion followers will do) to help contribute to the buzz you’re creating on Facebook and Twitter, especially if you decide to end your campaign with a big ask…

Get’em Giving: There’s nothing wrong with asking for money. And it actually improves your chances of reaching your supporter-growth goals if you orchestrate the giving into a singular fundraising event, such as a 24-hour offline-to-online Tweet-up event. This is because the days leading up to your fundraising day will be all about growing your supporter base. Treat it the way you would a fundraiser house party. Your friends will be happy to help you promote it, and on the party day itself, you have a captive audience that’s ready to give $20 here and $100 there. Several examples are worth mentioning, such as Charity: Water’s Twestival, Epic Change’s Tweetsgiving and PlayPumps International’s Aquathon.

There is, of course, much more to be said for social media outside of Twitter and Facebook, and even more regarding the 3rd party applications that support them. But if a strong, social media sensibility comes first, the tools will follow.

Nonprofits say YES to social media… and mostly to Facebook

We know there is some dispute over whether or not Facebook is good for fundraising. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.

But there’s no dispute over its popularity. In a recent NTEN survey, almost 1,000 nonprofit professionals answered questions about their organizations’ use of social media. And they said loud and clear that they’re using it.

Some highlights:

• 86% have a presence on commercial social networks in general, and 74% are on Facebook.
• 81% said their primary purpose for having a presence on these networks is marketing.
• 81% allocate at least one-quarter of a full time employee to the networks.
• The average Facebook community size is 1,369 (unless you leave in those big three organizations that skew the average to 5,391).
• The average Twitter following is 291, LinkedIn community is 286, and YouTube is 268. Oh, and MySpace, which comes in at 1,905 members.

Your constituents are on Facebook. Your competitors are on Facebook. And there’s a lot of marketing going on.

So it’s not always a question of the dollars coming in due to Facebook, but how well you are marketing your organization, and engaging new and loyal supporters.

Thanks to this NTEN study, you can measure your organization against industry benchmarks. And, you can prove your success and relevance in social media in other quantifiable ways. Track the numbers of Facebook Fans and their demographics (via improved Insights reporting on Facebook Pages), the number of Followers and @ mentions on Twitter, and the click trends of short URLs in tweets.

With donations dwindling in this tough economy, it’s important to keep supporters engaged, even with brief status updates of “what’s on your mind” and tweets about “what you’re doing.”

Ninety-five percent of nonprofits said they are either maintaining or increasing staffing resources given to social networks over the next year.

Indeed, everybody’s doing it.

Nonprofit Social Network Survey Report:
http://nonprofitsocialnetworksurvey.com

Does social media have to generate donations to be successful?

A recent Washington Post article reported that Facebook Causesamounted to next to nothing in terms of real donations for most charities. According to the article, less than 1% of the people on Facebook who've joined a Cause have ever made a donation and the majority of participating Cause charities have received no donations through the site.

I can't refute the stats but I can easily counter the overall sentiment that assumes Causes is something of a failure simply because it's not generating millions of dollars for millions of charities. I found this observation in the article very telling about the true nature of getting the most out of Causes:

The idea behind Causes was to take advantage of the vast circles of online friends connected through social networks to reach potential donors and volunteers on a more personal level. People will donate money, albeit in small amounts, to help a cause that a close friend or colleague supports, the application's developers say.

"People are much more altruistic if they get social credit for it," said Joe Green, one of the founders of Berkeley, Calif.-based Causes, who said the application has raised $7 million overall. "The social incentive is to show on your profile how many volunteers you've recruited or how much money you've raised."

For all the Causes I've been invited to, the ones that mean the the most to me, the ones I'm likely to join AND donate to are the ones that a good friend in my network sent to me. And we should all be honest, we all have friends in our social networks who would be better referred to as "that girl/guy I went to high school with and haven't seen for more than 15 years and I'll be your friend because we went to the same high school but I know we have nothing but our hometown in common these days" or the "colleague that I vaguely remember from 6 years ago and I should stay in touch with if even on Facebook because in this economy, I might need a reference or help with a job search". With these degrees of friends, it's unlikely that everyone is going to join or give to every Cause that comes their way.

Another angle on this aspect of the Causes design is that charities on Facebook asking constituents to give is simply never going to be as successful friends asking friends to give.

So really, is there any way for a nonprofit to really get something out of Causes? I say yes, definitely! But here's what you need to plan for:

• Set reasonable expectations. Is money the only thing you'll measure? Is there value in word-of-mouth marketing or growing awareness of your brand?

• Is this going to be your field of dreams? If you're only plan is to build it and think they will come, then you're going to be about as unsuccessful as putting a giant Donate button on your home page but never marketing your website. Do you have a plan to let your constituents know that you are on Facebook? Does your website utilize simple tools like a share bar?

• Who's making the ask? Do a little research. Find the influential people in your networks who have a following of friends and who will have a strong interest in your Cause. That dog lover with hundreds of friends who trade status comments about the need for a dog park is more likely to give to your animal cause and ask their friends to give than others rarely mentioning their family pet.

Keyword Madness Solved

These days, it seems everyone struggles with their keywords; they just seem to grasp at anything in their site's content that may have the slightest possibility of helping them generate traffic. I think people over thinking the problem, so I want to share one of my solutions for generating great keywords.

I use a site Keyword Spy which allows you to type in a site or keyword and get a large amount of relevant information that you can use to generate larger list and better target your audience through search engines.

If you type a keyword into the search box, the site will give you the number of search results for that keyword and the number of clicks a day it generates, along with the average cost per click on ppc campaigns, and the sites using that keyword in their ppc campaigns.

From there, you can dig deeper so you can look at the list of people advertising on that keyword and see what other keywords they are advertising on.  For example, I did a search on the keyword "water", which returned the results you can see in the image above.  Now looking down the list of those who pay for advertising on that word, we find several companies and nonprofits, so by clicking on one of those sites we can get information on just how that site is doing, its advertising items, including a list of the paid and organic keywords being used to generate traffic.

This is where is gets really handy, and where we answer the question which keywords to use. Keyword Spy will give you a list of the keywords combined with a rating for their return on investment, search ranking position, competition ranking, average clicks per day and the average cost per click for every keyword in the list.  This will help you determine exactly which keywords are going to help you more and which ones you are going to be competing a little more on.

Now for those using ppc campaigns to drive traffic to your site, you can even get a list of ad variations that articular site is using, which can help you get ideas for how to word your own ads.

Finally, it will let you export the list of keywords to either a text or Excel document so that you can save them and use them wherever you like, however you prefer.

Now Keyword Spy does have two levels of membership: the first is free, which is honestly all that I use since it gives you quite a bit of information there.  If you decide you need more, then upgrade to the Pro account, which is $139.95 a month.  But, for the average nonprofit just looking to drive more traffic and awareness, I think this is a bit extreme. Anyway, give it a try and let me know what you think. It has always worked well for me.