These are a few of the things I took away from Tuesday's MadTech: Social Media Strategy & Implementation for Nonprofits and Cause Marketers workshop lead by Bryan Bliss. A lot of things were covered, but I enjoy focusing on a few things that can be done or explored immediately. To that regard, my focus was split thinking about tools and tactics & attitudes and actions.
Attitude & Actions
Let's start with Attitude & Actions. I consider attitudes and actions things that can be pondered, played with, but also used immediately. In general, I'm a pragmatic person, but I greatly value impulse. Not the fool heartedness generally associated with impulsiveness, but the mechanics of motion, momentum, the force, will and or desire to change things. Impulse gets things done; and I like ideas that are readily converted to impulse.
The idea and concept of being generous, as well as the ideas around participate and adapt are two that stood out for me. They're worth exploring, thinking about, and spending time testing them; but they are also impulsive.
Be GenerousIf you've participated in any social media workshop you've probably heard this message before. But I frequently hear people who don't quite understand what it means. When you're thinking, "I need to gain followers. We need more people to like us. We need donations for our annual appeal." It's very hard to think about anything other than how your giving will get you closer to your current needs. It's hard, but think of your two biggest goals or reasons for using social media, and sit them on table. It's a form of letting go. You know they are there, but you need to lesson your focus on them.
Let's just say it, "It's hard to be generous, when your every thought is focused on will this get me a new follower? donor? fan?" So sit it on the table. Let it go, but keep it where its visible and easy to revisit. Interact with your social media friends, fans, and followers, the way you would with the smiling stranger who you met when coming out of a coffee shop, on a gorgeous sunny day and after that first sip of coffee or tea. Smile and say, "Hi" or "Good Morning" or "Gorgeous Day".
Being generous in social media space is the same as being generous in real life. A smile and a nod, is generous but minimal. A smile and a verbal response, "Good Morning" is the next level of generosity; and so on. So start simple. If you're on Twitter or Facebook give a greeting. "Happy Tuesday folks! Today I'm hoping to…" This is a basic level of generosity. This is just an announcement to the world. But at least once a day, also try to be generous to a specific individual. It doesn't matter who, but greet someone specifically. Comment on a post or just tell them you enjoy their posts in general. This is another level of generosity, and if practiced daily becomes easy and spills over into your regular life. I only see good in that.
The next level of generosity can also be a big boon for increasing your posting frequency—share. Link, retweet, comment, share. It's pretty simple, are you reading an article in the New York Times or Wisconsin State Journal that you like, dislike, it says something interesting? Link to it. Tell people about it. These things can be quick and to the point
I'm reading about road risk for Madison bicyclists online at CapTimes [shortlink]. I agree with suggestions.
This type of sharing, eventually gets you to a point where being generous becomes normal. You start thinking, "others might be interest". They may want to know. You become a resource, because now when you consume information, you're also thinking about giving that information to others who might find it useful.
This is generosity. Not only are you become a resource of information, but your quietly promoting other services or brands and those people, organizations, brands will start to take notice. Did you ever notice that generally when you smile at someone, they smile back? It's almost reflex. And that's true with generosity. Stop thinking about what you can say to gain followers and just be generous of yourself. The followers and fans will follow. Obviously, there's still things you can do to specifically focus on growth. But mostly they should be used infrequently, because they can cause fatigue or distrust. But generosity can be used all the time. Greet the day. Speak to someone. Share things that interest you. Three basic levels of generosity that are easy to do, and can be used daily.
So go ahead, "Smile." online.
Participate and Adapt
An interesting idea and one that I think requires further consideration from nonprofits and cause marketers is the idea of adaptation. Adaptation is not co-opting a movement or activity, it's thinking of creative ways to support a cause or action, that also works to benefit your organization. For example, in the workshop we talked about the recent National Coming Out Day, 11 October 2010. For the day, the Human Rights Campaign had a campaign running on Facebook that had people posting status updates that read like:
My Name is a straight ally/gay/lesbian and today is National Coming Out Day. I'm coming out for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality because it's 2010 and you can still be fired from your job in 29 states for being lesbian, gay or bisexual and in 38 states for being transgender. Donate your status and join me by clicking here:
http://bit.ly/9oFuF9
I have no idea how successful the campaign was for HRC, but it seemed highly visible to me on Facebook. The question asked was is it possible to use a potentially viral campaign as such to gain visibility for your organization. In this case, we discussed Madison's Outreach. The HRC campaign was great, but its a national campaign and doesn't tie people back into local resources. One of the ideas was for Outreach to encourage friends and supporters to participate in the campaign, but slightly modify the message. For example, the new message might say something like this:
My Name is a straight ally/gay/lesbian and today is National Coming Out Day. I'm coming out for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality; support equality locally learn more about local resources through Madison Outreach. Donate your status and join me by clicking here:
http://bit.ly/9oFuF9
The message keeps the primary components of the campaign, but adds a local component. Things like this can benefit both the national campaign, by adding participant numbers, while helping increase visibility of a local organization, service or event.
I like this. I procrastinate to the full extent allowable by law, rent, and or friends—not necessarily in that order; but I like 'doing things'. I'm a big believer in learning through doing, and feel that if you want to learn how to get people active and participating in things, well then you need to be active and participating in things. Following that philosophy, then the idea is when you participate in a viral campaign like the HRC National Coming Out Day campaign, there are things for you to learn.
Participation can be casual or lead to action. Just look at the two examples above. The first is basic participation, which is a great accomplishment within itself. But the second is action. Converting impulse to action is still just as magical today as it was when the combustion engine was invented; and in many ways so much harder.
Participation in the HRC campaign can be impulsive. The campaign was designed to go viral, and therefore makes it easy to participate. You click a button and you've donated your status blanket message. Spend an extra second and you can customize the message for your gender and sexual orientation. The message itself encourages other and provides the link back to the main site for you. Impulse.
But adapting this campaign for local benefit, requires action that takes advantage of the impulse to participate. I find the 'adapt' component particularly intriguing. You can try to recreate the campaign locally (probably not a great idea). But there are many avenues or options to navigate. You want the momentum of the impulsive click to remain, but you want to get a pause in there. Asking too much will get you a 'stop' and not benefit you and may even deter people from the original campaign. So its about identifying things that fit in a very small sweet spot. Adapting the message or adding a comment.
Adapting the message is quick and easy, but you need to be care to keep the original intent, and promote the original campaign. Adding a comment could be easier, but sticks people with there choice of message (oddly enough, a massive STOP sign on the impulsive behavior road. Don't make them think.) There's a range of exploration and playing around that can happen here, and the more online campaigns you participate in, the faster or more clearly you can spot the opportunities that they might offer.
Tools & Tactics
I admit I was hoping to get more tool examples. I think HootSuite is a good tool, but I don't use it. I also refuse to install AdobeAIR on my computer which rules out Market Samurai one of the other good tools mentioned in the workshop.
In general some of the tools of the trade include:
Social Media Dashboards
This New york Times article provides a nice summary of some of the more popular dashboards:
Then these tools can also be considered for potential use.
- Ping.fm
- HelloTxt
- HootSuite
- NetVibes
I mentioned that I don't use HootSuite and won't use Market Samurai due to Adobe AIR, but in general I have nothing against either tool. I personally think it comes down to methodology. There seems to be two primary classes of social interaction: a) the far and wide class; and b) the targeted class. I'm part of the later and obviously that influences tool selection.
Far & Wide Social Media Class
The basic ideology is that you can and should hit as many of the various social media sites as possible. Managing 10, 15, or 30 social media accounts isn't all that different than managing 2 or 3, if you have the proper tools. This works well for dissemination, but I think is less successful at strengthening ties. It can be fine if you have a social media team or even if you are the social media person.
Targeted Social Media Class
Pick a few tools or a few 'outlets' and stick with them is the basic ideology here. But if you do social media as part of your 'real' position, then it can become overwhelming. That's where a more targeted approach can be beneficial.
I'm the executive director of our nonprofit. I'm also one of those hands on E.D. I didn't get into nonprofit technology to spend all day thinking about fundraising or project administration. I got into nonprofit technology so I could think, do, and talk about the intersection of nonprofits with technology. I love databases, websites, playing with software, hardware, learning new tools, and coming up with new ideas to explore how technology can benefit nonprofits. This means, social media is just one of about 20 plus things per day that I think about. I select a few tools, then select which I'll stick with. What makes a tool like Facebook or Twitter 'sticky' to me is my ability to integrate it into my life—both work and play.
Other Tools
- URL Shorteners: Bit.ly, Sn.im, Ow.ly, Tiny.url etc.
- Analytics: Google Analytics, AdWords
- AdWords: Google Grants for Nonprofits
- Twitter Search
- Search (Google, Bing, Yahoo)
Analytics/Metrics
Metrics are important, not just for your boss and your funders, but for you. It's great if your being generous and sending out links and sharing items. But if your Twitter account or Facebook page is growing at 2 or 3 fans per month, its a bit daunting and can be dispiriting in the early stages of your growth and mastery of these new tools. Challenging yourself to do better is great, but sometime you need to know that maybe you're using the WRONG metrics.
If you are on Twitter and have 300 followers and you post a link and get not a single @mention, then you don't know if the link was of interest or not. You can be despondent over the lack of @mentions or you can think about what metrics are you missing—clicks. A URL Shortening service, almost any of them, will allow you to know that, that link on Flooding got 30 clicks, but your link on H1N1 got 3. Just knowing that people are clicking is important psychological, but can also present new opportunities for you to challenge yourself.
You can try to increase the average number of clicks per link. Not all links are created the same, but if you've collected link click data for a month or even a couple of weeks, you can challenge yourself to move from n to (n+x). If your average number of clicks is 10 per link, ~3%, then challenge yourself to get to 5% (15 clicks per link on average). Then challenge yourself again from 5% to 10%. Then mix it up. 10% average click though on links, and one retweet. Retweets can be hard, start playing with ways to make them happen.
Sometimes a simple ask works. End the tweet with 'Please Retweet" and it just might happen. Other times timing maybe important. Like your early morning followers are more likely to retweet than your evening followers, so make sure the message hits both crowds.
Don't be ashamed to double post the important things—this includes link. If you posted at 7am, try posting it again at 3pm.
There are a number of ways to get feedback about your performance, which is basically what metrics are. So track clicks, track follows, track retweets, even pay attention to @mentions (are people talking to you? why not?).
Bryan also mentioned
Twitter Search. This isn't the search that's right on your Twitter page. Twitter Search is located at
http://search.twitter.com and its a fabulous tool. It can be used to find information, measure conversations, follow conversations, and more.
Google Analytics. First off, if your nonprofit has a website it should have Google Analytics tied to it. It's free and provides a impressive battery of information, most that you'll probably never have the time to fully explore. That's good. It's good because it means if there is information that you need in the future, it's probably already there in Google Analytics.
Most people start with Visits and PageViews when using a web analytics application. That's good, but challenge yourself to explore one new feature or function per week or month. Move from views and visits, to Bounce Rate and Average Time on site. These items can be incredibly beneficial in improving your website. If your Bounce Rate is high (over 90%), then you know that people come to your site and then they leave. This is even worse if you have a very low 'average time on site.' I mean, really, even if your sites getting 1,000 hits per month, how successful is it, if 98% of the people leave within a minute of landing?
Google Analytics can also tell you what keywords people are currently using to get to your site, what articles people are finding, and where people are finding you at.
Metrics can be hard. There are a lot of measures. But you can always start easy. Measure clicks instead of follows. Than once you've hit some click goals, take a look at follows again. Somethings follow naturally. The more clicks your links receive, WILL have a direct effect on people following you. Same with retweets. If you reduce your Bounce Rate on your website, you'll see improvements in average time spent on site and number of visits.
Conclusion
There was a lot more to be had at the workshop, but these were my take aways and my brain is still spinning with ideas. And one of the acknowledgements was even though this was an intermediate level workshop, it may have still been too advance for some people. I definitely saw eyes glaze at terms like metrics, ROI, Cost Per Click, etc. So we will work on making sure you can better identify if a workshop will fit your skill levels.
But thanks to everyone who came, and if I have more thoughts. I'll post those as well.
