Archive for the 'liveblogging' Category

Social Innovation Camp at MPS09

Published in challenge and liveblogging. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I’m capturing notes at the MyPublicServices event from PatientOpinion.  Use the tag #MPS09 to follow conversations and highlights from others at the event. This session is: Ideas, people and cold hard cash: why the way we make stuff happen is broken and how to fix it, from Anna Maybank at Social Innovation Camp.

Social Innovation Camp: the story so far.  Started with an idea two years ago that the web is important because it helps people organize for themselves and impacts how we make things work; but in order to make that happen you have to bring people together who are interested in making it real.  We are all about moving ideas into something that might work and do so by running competitions and weekend-long prototyping events.  Think about 5 things: what’s the problem, what technology you’ll use, design sustainability, how will people come to use it and how will you distribute it.  Award a prize to those that show most potential.  Have run 3 competitions so far with over 300 ideas submitted.

Note: the “I” in the following is my capture of Anna speaking.

What We’ve Learnt

1. From cliques to talent scouts

A great idea is nothing unless you have people to get it off the ground, and those people may be anyone with certain attributes:

  • people who can bring an insight
  • practical optimists, can see things being different in the future (have to go find them)

We need to move away from “social entrepreneurs” and “socail innovation” towards “solve problems” and “make stuff” so that it’s more accessible.  It took us a while to learn this!  The first competition we had a slick website and everything else and had barely any submissions.  So, we went to talk people about it.  We brought people together around the same kind of idea and the buzz in the room was incredible, people realized they didn’t have to just complain about something but about making things the way you want.  So, we learned from that and now are conversation driven.  Our competitions are talent scouted: we go out and talk to as many people as possible, run workshops and trainings and get people to think about what they might solve and then submit.  I think we pay a lot of lip service to “user centered design” and so on, but sometimes we are talking about many different worlds colliding and a number of them are very problem focused and then solution focused groups.  So, when you have top-down definition of what you’re interested in and then bottom up creation it doesn’t work.  Create a “tentacle-based” approach.

2. From paperwork to relationships

That’s a lot of work. Is it worth it to go talk to all of those people and so on?  What we are doing when we talent scout isn’t just about creating a pool of projects but about starting relationships.  Normal application processes are very good for people who are good at writing or following a system.  But, are proposal based approaches good for finding people who are going to start new things?  Instead, you start to build relationships with individuals – find interesting people and working with them in incremental ways and build trust. And then find people to support and fund; particularly important when funding entirely new things.  It’s hard for those people to say what their impact will be when it’s something so new, so it’s hard as a support organization to believe in the project.  But, as a support organization that knows you are an interesting implementer of good stuff, it’s easier to make the decision to support them.  We do this through scouting and in the weekends as they are high pressure and fund and collaborative so you can really, really see how people work.  I think the world works like this anyway, we just don’t admit it.  What we should be doing is appreciating that and design systems that take into consideration the ways humans work.  This is how the investment world works: based on relationships and trust.

3. From advisors to connectors

What’s next?  What do you need other than money?  We asked our prototype projects what else they need. The answer was they need advice.  Organizations that are trying to support people to do new things know this.  What I’m suggesting is 2 things: first, giving all the advice yourself is not efficient or entirely valuable, so you should grow a community around the ideas where they connect; and second, the advice you need as a radically new group/project is very different as there aren’t models or examples, so the only way these projects will work is by changing behavior… How comfortable we are with meeting people offline we only know online, how we share personal data, etc.  These changes will have to happen in order for these projects to work.  Rather than having standard business advice but a place where they can experiment.  The way we move from advisors to connectors is that at the weekends where we get the great ideas, we go out and try to find people who can help them and bring them there.  Building an audience around the 6 ideas for the weekend.  If you come to a weekend, you come out with a training experience.

4. From grants to venturing

How do we change the different ways we distribute money?  Not about finding people to give it to or the decision process, but the different financial instruments we could use.  Early stage ideas need early stage risk capital and there’s a gap in providing that.  Something to show that a really good radical idea has a good chance.  We also have to find new sustainable ways to fund projects. Fundraise, grant, spend – it’s not efficient.  Finally, a lot of new ideas, the newness is the business model.  It needs a different way to be funded.  Need finance that’s responsive to business models that aren’t charities or companies.

What might that look like?

What if we ran a larger SICamp process that formed small teams around packaged ideas and take teams of 2-3 people and choose 10 groups and each a 15,000 stipend wherein they come and work in a shared space for 3 months.  Set targets and help to accelerate project development and build community.  At the end of the 3 months we have a demo day with possible funders and we we take a finders fee and also pay-back for the 15,000 starter grant.  Potentially creating a sustainable way of starting projects and recycling your capital.  It already exists in projects like Y Combinator.  We think it would be interesting to start a Y Combinator for social projects here in the UK.

I don’t think that’s the answer to everything.  You have to design your support process around the people you are working with.  What can we do with groups like Kiva?  What if we used that system to find projects to fund?  Or what about KickStarter’s model with pledging/small contributions/crowdsourcing?  What if we applied that to the NHS?  4ip is already doing some of this stuff, too, and it’s really interesting.

This talk was inspired by lots of conversations with people who are looking for support for an idea AND interesting people and organizations looking for projects to support.  There has to be an opportunity there!

Published on November 26, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Harnessing and Nurturing Communities at MPS09

Published in community and liveblogging. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I’m capturing notes at the MyPublicServices event from PatientOpinion.  This session is lead by Holly Seddon from FreshNetworks and titled Harnessing and Nurturing Communities.  Use the tag #MPS09 to follow conversations and highlights from others at the event.

Head of Community Management at FreshNetworks, previously at iVillage, Daily Mail etc.; most proud of job at an adoption charity

What do we mean by “community” – question asked to the participants:

  • people
  • support
  • shared interest
  • label
  • conversations
  • reciprocity
  • belonging

When you think about “what is community?” do you think about online or offline? Do you think you are part of a community?

  • We mean people
  • we mean connections
  • we mean support
  • we mean similarity
  • we mean social group
  • we mean peers
  • we mean a group being ‘led’

Community confusion:

  • people rarely consider themselves part of communities offline
  • people are rarely members of just one community
  • communities can be physical and conceptual
  • they can be permanent or temporary

What is an online community?

  • it used to mean ‘message boards’ and not much more
  • for a while, people meant ‘facebook’ although that’s a social network of people you already know

What Twitter isn’t… Twitter isn’t a message board, or a social network of people you already know… So, is it a community?

What Twitter is… twitter is a platform, it’s about connections, it’s the direciton we’re heading in; it’s a micro-community that is different for every individual.

What Twitter gives us:

  • freedom
  • it’s blown away old rules
  • a boost to existing communities and content on the web
  • keeping people in touch and highlighting existing communities

One word to describe a good online community experience: nice, warm, friendly, friendship, welcoming, assistance, funny, reassurance, welcoming

People want warm and welcoming, but that it isn’t always what they get with online communities. So how?

Getting Started

Identify a community

  • who are you providing a platform for?
  • build it and they will come… doesn’t work
  • do these people want or need a space to communicate?
  • who are they?

What are the concerns of the community?

  • do they need to speak anonymously?
  • do they need to share images?
  • do they need to be protected?
  • do they have barriers to understanding technology?
  • do they have fractured interests?
  • are there opposing viewpoints and needs?

Sexy or quick?  there are 4 attributes to a good online community:

  • easy
  • safe
  • secure
  • sticky
  • sexy can wait!  it’s great if it has all the bells and whistles but that can come later, what’s most important is that it’s usable, meets community needs etc.

Vibrant, ugly: it’s okay if it’s not perfect to look at; between timely and perfect, choose timely.  An example: Criagslist.org

Where will you host your community?

  • do you have an online presence that can be enhanced?
  • do you need to build community elements into your next iteration?
  • do you have the budget and resources to build from scratch – and manage?
  • should you set up a space where your audience already is?
  • don’t automatically reject free tools like Ning.com
  • what about hiring someone to maintain and participate in that space as a community manager?

How do we keep our community safe?

What do you mean by safe?

  • safe from offensive material
  • safe from ‘trolls’ and trouble-makers
  • safe to chat without fear of personal attacks
  • safe from ‘real-life’ crossover
  • safe from spam attacks

Control – and lack of it: you cannot control people, but you can steer, guide and react; you must establish ground rules, and update them regularly.

  • no one is solely interested in one topic – nor should they be
  • single-issue parties don’t win elections; single-issue communities, don’t thrive – we don’t have only one interest
  • connections are what’s important, give people the freedom to connect – start small, only 3 or 4 sections or topics and then let the community drive the development
  • tools like CAPTCHA

Keeping your organization safe: if someone writes a lie about a celebrity on a community that you host, when are you liable?  The minute it goes up.  Mumsnet case study: some moms posted to Mumsnet that Gina Ford was too harsh with her practices, etc. and Gina took them to court.  Mumsnet said that they don’t moderate as there are too many message to handle and so on.  The best approach is to plan for that and have a take-down policy; encourage members to report malicious content and give them way to do so easily.

Who will keep your community safe…and vibrant?

  • moderation
  • welcoming members
  • stimulating discussion
  • removing spam and offensive content
  • who is liable? – If you use something like Ning does that platform share a part of the liability? Yes. If you make it explicit on your site in your terms of use that your site is not moderated then you are not liable, according to some.
  • “Can the receptionist do it?” – maybe, if they want to, but moderating and welcoming people and getting involved isn’t just for anyone; it takes someone that has the time and the interest to do.

Q&A

What’s been your biggest challenge in building a community? Launching the adoption community, it had a very intersted and active membership that communicated through local support groups and a buddy scheme but not online with many members anti-internet and people in the organization who were skeptical.  Had to prove that it was as well as, not instead of. That it could help people find the organization and provide easier access for people with limited mobility or other limitations who couldn’t get to the offline activities.  Now as a membership they see it core to the organization and have a stake in how it develops.

Have you any tips about how to deal with bad apples? sometimes turning good is the most important thing. if people are complaining and talking about how things should be use it as an opportunity to explain why you did things the way you did and ask for more ideas about how to make things better. some people are trying to get attention, often the way around that is to give them a little attention and encourage them to behave the way you’d like – engage and help, but don’t give in to what they are doing.  sometimes there’s spammers and rule breakers, so make sure you explain the rules they are breaking and explain your actions to moderate their behavior – give 3 strikes and you’re out.

Have you experience with usefulness with combining writing communication with video communication? depends on the set up, whether you are building communities in ning or drupal or from scratch, building in the ability for users to include video and so on is easier. but, other forms of communication might not be appropriate to the community.

Published on November 26, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

09NTC Nonprofit Radio: How to Make Podcasts That Promote Your Brand and Engage Supporters

Published in liveblogging. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

I’m here at the 09NTC in Corey Pudhorodsky and Chad Norman’s session on podcasting!

Session Description:
With portable music players, smart phones, and cheap bandwidth everywhere, more and more online marketers are turning to podcasting as a powerful way to extend the reach of their brands and engage supporters. We’ll discuss how to produce a podcasts using free tools and from scratch, including pre-production, recording, editing, processing, and rendering. Then, we’ll look at various ways to market your podcast via your own website, the social web, and the iTunes Music Store. And finally, we’ll learn from a few case studies and go over some production best practices. So, bring your iPods and earbuds, and let’s podcast!

Check out their postcasts:

We’re live… !

Who is your audience? existing and target

  • data from edison research from 2008 on podcasting listenership
  • general awareness at around 40%, though…
  • people don’t necessarily know they are consuming a podcast, audio embedded in rss etc.
  • about 50/50 male/female
  • well educated demographic, avg income over 100K
  • 36% of listeners are most likely to have made online transactions recently
  • fluent and engaged online
  • look at stats and compare to your audience to see if it is a fit

More importantly, think about the constituents you want to attract or already engage. Can determine your theme.  Maybe you just target your board members to keep them informed, etc.; maybe one just for employees as an internal stream for updates on work and projects.  Mabye just for your volunteers to update them on volunteer opportunities.  Poll your constituency to see what they are already listening to to find themes that are appealing etc.

Consider your story.

This is the one thing that will secure the success of your podcast more than anything else.  If there are a lot of others doing the same format or topic, could be harder to get an audience.  Also look at who is going to do it – hosted show vs curated show, etc.

Take dynamic speakers from your organization, put in front of the microphone, and help share their passion and stories.  With a podcast you can edit the content, take out the “ums” and “ahs” and craft a great story.

What are your goals?

Are you trying to drive supporters, find funders, or volunteers, etc.?  Make sure that you aren’t making a podcast just to have one. Create a strategy and production plan, a schedule for the topics, etc. Maybe you want it to be seasonal and only have 9 months when you have information to share, or you want it to be on a set schedule, etc.

Hardware

One of the biggest challenges for many people.  USB headset, dynamic or condenser mics, soundboard, mobile devices, video recording, etc.

You can start small – whatever you have, even just a web cam mic.  No reason to let the hardware hold you back.  Often the cheaper out of the box equipment will help a lot because the more advanced and expensive equipment is going to have a lot of settings and options that you’ll have to manage.  You’ll take a while before you find your legs – get started hearing your voice and get feedback before you launch into the field.

Mic – to go straight into your computer with a usb headset or mic; next step up is a dynamic or condenser mic.  a dynamic could be about $20-30, the condenser could be as low as $150.  Those will pick up vibrations and everything so you’ll want a stand or a boom to lift it off the desk where people are touching/moving.  Consider how you are recroding: if you are in a board room with many people you will want an omnidirectional mic to get everyone’s voices or if you are at your desk you want a unidirectional for just your voice.

Soundboards – definitely not necessary. they make digital soundboards that plug straight into your computer and record with various software options. if you are recroding with multiple people, you can record them to separate audio files so you can edit more easily.  allows you to backup the files by recording to multiple devices.

Mobile devices – if you are out in the field, etc. they are great for getting people wherever with minimal equpiment.  Can also use skype and record the call for bringing people together from wherever they are, etc.  Want one that recrods to mp3 or wav files (will be sending mp3 out for production eventually).  Great to have a lapel mic and ear phones (to monitor how the recording sounds).  Surfrider Foundation’s podcast often has interviews out in the field so you hear the ocean or birds and it adds to the recording.  Sometimes the ambient noise is good.

Video – Flip cameras are high quality, easy to use and cheap.  You can also use web cams for a video podcast.

Software

Audacity – open source and free, lots of community resources, have to download a separate mp3 encoder but they have links on their site.  Can import other sources well. Has multiple tracks, etc.  Almost always the first tool you are pointed to for podcasting.

Garage Band (mac) – many people use it on macs to edit, free on your mac

Sony Sound Forge – much like audacity but is single track. not free.

Adobe Audition – is robust but has a cost associated with it (check TechSoup from discounts for nonprofits!)

Levelator – free, from Conversations Network, takes the raw audio and does the compression and leveling for you to give you a better sound file – this means you are just editing out ums and ahs instead of also editing balance between speakers, etc.

Skype – you will need a 3rd party tool to record the call: pamela, hot recorder, audio hijack pro, quick time pro etc. they all have demo versions before you buy them to make sure they work on your machine.  they are all very cheap though.

When you are doing editing, you want to keep it in wav format because it is uncompressed.  Don’t convert it to mp3 until you are done editing.

Production

For every ten minutes of audio, it takes about an hour to edit and clean it up.

Export to mp3, things to consider:

Bit rate – indicator of the quality of the file. don’t want to go beneath 32 and 64 is even on the low end. with increased bandwidth, going with a higher bit rate is going to have a higher value, people are still able to stream it or download it, and store it. can split/switch from stero to mono channels or the other way around; most software can do it natively.

ID3 tags – can use itunes for this, drag album art and file over. let’s you listen to mp3 format before you upload it to be sure it sounds right, add tags, etc.  The tags let a program that is reading the file know what is on the file, so it’s more than the file name but the title, the time, genre, etc. it’s the metadata for the podcast episode. Title should have a form of date and podcast name so people can see if they have already listened to it already when skimming.

File size – length depends on the format of your show. there aren’t any rules really, so long as it is engaging! some are only one minute long and others are an hour or two even. you can have multiple formats where you have one a day that is really short and a less frequent longer one, be creative.

Itunes – you can get a link directly to your itunes listening to point people right there. Corey has about 1,000 downloads a week; but be careful of looking at downloads because they aren’t necessarily listening. Look at what the purpose of your podcast is and try to link metrics to the success of your goals, instead of downloads or listenership.

Show notes – want to make a summary of your show for both itunes, etc. but on your site to tell people what the show is about: who’s the guest, who is the host, what are the orgs or links mentioned.

Hosting Services

Can host your podcasts on your web servers, transfered through ftp, etc. but bandwidth can be an issue – with fees, etc. There are services to help podcasters by offering unlimited badwidth by limiting how much you can upload a month.

Liberated Syndication – great support services, great value, $5/month has 100 mg of upload. $10/month has 250 mg upload. other packages for video support.  Gives you good metrics for downloads, where people are coming from, etc.

OurMedia & Internet Archive – a bit more technical, archived forever, nonprofit organization, RSS and community building tools. upload to Internet Archive and use OurMedia to generate RSS feed, etc.

Amazone Web Services – for very cheap

Industry standard is not limiting bandwidth/downloads but only limit upload.  Bandwidth issues come in when you are putting it on your own website.

Pdocast Directories

iTunes – want to use their tags and categories, and get the direct link to your itunes listing. automatically downloads when people subscribe, etc.

Podcast Pickle & Podcast Alley & Odeo – good directory, has a good community forum, as well as embedable widget players for your website

Promoting

Blogging – if you blog about your sessions it helps Google pick it up; also gives people opportunity to comment and talk back

Social networking – use it to promote

Twitter – great/easy way to let people know when new episodes are out

Wordpress – has plugin to help with podcasts

RSS – the tool that lets people get the updates, just like with blog updates. the only difference is that there is an enclosure tag that points to the file. you can put mp3 files anywhere you want (that is where the badwidth cost is). the rss is the subscription and branding so will want that to be somewhere associated with your organization, etc. and not somewhere that will change really.

Cross Channel Promotion

  • website
  • email
  • newsletter
  • press release
  • advertisements
  • partners

Don’t let your podcast become an island from all the other communications you do.

Don’t think of podcasting being a direct revenue from advertising because it can dilute your brand and really not be worth very much (for example, maybe only a hundred dollars or so for every 1,000 listeners)

Yahoo has a great embed tool that doesn’t require any flash code, etc.

Start simple

BlogTalkRadio – call in, record your message, and as soon as you hang up you have your podcast in an mp3 (so you can’t edit it) with an RSS feed, etc. a great option for out in the field recording, it’s simple, etc. can start podcasting today, right now.

Growing

Invest in tools as you grow and as you want them, not up front.

Case Studies

Volunteer San Diego

  • interview volunteers, staff, directors
  • can see how integrated it is on their website
  • use the show notes well, point back to the blog, more information, etc.

The Nature Conservancy

  • very engaging
  • everything is on the website: itunes link, embed, show notes, etc.
  • really great content

Check out WeAreMedia.org for more resources and information on podcasting in nonprofits!

Published on April 28, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 4 Comments

09NTC How to Decide: IT Planning & Prioritizing

Published in liveblogging. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The internet connection may hold up a bit better this time around but I don’t want to risk it, so I’m going to do the same as the last session and just type up the notes in real time and post as soon as the session is over.  Hopefully tomorrow the connection will sustain some real live blogging with CoverItLive (my favorite live blogging tool).

Peter Campbell’s How to Decide session:

Nonprofits have limited resources, which usually means that we have to make tough choices about where to spend our time and money. Here. we cover best practices in planning for technology projects, providing tools to help you make smart decisions about where to invest those resources. From the forthcoming NTEN book: Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission. Takeaways: 1. Top to bottom outline of the nonprofit strategic planning process, incorporating balanced scorecards, multiple bottom lines and focusing on technology planning. 2. Sound advice on how to evaluate which tech projects need to be done the exact same way that a for-profit would and which ones can be done creatively, with a deep dive into what “creatively” means. 3. Direction as to how to develop of Technology Plan – what goes in it, how do you get it in there, how do you make it a document that others can understand and engage with.

Organizational Planning:

A unified strategic plan ties together the: strategic place, business plans, and budget by using balanced scorecards and business process maps to strictly tie actions and expenses to mission-servicing strategies.

Balanced scorecards: a balanced scorecard identifies four areas that your strategic plan should address: financial, consitutent, internal business processes, and employee learning and growth.

  • Financial, revenue focus
  • Constituent, starting a newsletter or services
  • Internal processes, putting in new phone system
  • Employee training and growth, bonuses, education, etc.

Example:  Supporting Criteria

  • Strategy: increase consitutuent awareness of our accompliments by distributing a monthly email newsletter
  • Area: constituents
  • Objectives: increase mission awareness, increase donations, increase communication
  • Measures: eCRM analytics, donations
  • Targets: 5% increase in new prospects, 7% increase in donations
  • Initiatives: start montly newsletter

Technology planning: you can’t budget effectively on a year to year basis; long term planning allows you to spread out recurring costs and space out larget projects in ways that even out the expense.

Elements of the plan: technology plans should have at least three components: strategy, support, actions.

A plan answers these questions: how will the actions laid out in the plan support the mission and organizational strategic plan? how will staff be resourced to use the technology? Does the organization have a coherent strategy for application support and training?

Comprehensive evaluation: SWOT analyses, technical and end-user assessments of options, clear understanding of business needs versus software assumptions, creativity.

Peter’s philosophy: we do not have money or staff the way most for profits do, so we need to understand where we need to act exactly like a forprofit and where we can do otherwise.

SWOT = Strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats

Conclusion: good planning requires that you understand who you are, what technology must do well for you, and where you can get away with it by doing things more creatively, etc.

Resources:

Further information and relevant links are at the Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission wiki:  http://www.meetyourmission.org

Contact me: Peter Campbell psc @ techcafeteria.com

Buy Peter’s book!  He’s got a whole chapter dedicated to this subject in NTEN’s new book: Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission!

Published on April 27, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Live Blogging: 09NTC Mapping Your Social Media Strategy

Published in events and liveblogging. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I’m here at NTEN’s 09NTC and am going to live blog Beth Kanter’s session on mapping your social media strategy to metrics.  Below is the live blog or the archive of the live blog.  Can’t wait!

The internet connection here is such that I don’t think a live blog portal will sustain itself.  So, I’m going to trouble shoot and just take some live notes here and post them as soon as possible.

Here goes…

Take aways:

  • How to use listening
  • The right metrics
  • Analytics tools

Panelists:

  • Wendy Harmon: social media manager, philosophy is to use social media to execute mission
  • Danielle Brigida: using social media to increase, reach, engagement and revenue
  • Qui Diaz:Livingston, recently did research for the Philanthropy 2.0 report
  • Sarah Granger: advise nonprofits on using social media for advocating and communicating

Themes that people want to learn:

  • new metrics structures can bubble up
  • funders of a 20th century mindset – what metrics speak to them
  • what things need to be measured
  • obama reach vs local reach
  • industry benchmarks
  • how to integrate tools without reinventing the wheel
  • success stories

List, Learn, Adapt – concept from David Armano: “Insight must before investment when implementing a social media project.”

Visualizing: number of months along the bottom, insight, return and dollars up the left

  • Listening: hearing what people are talking about your issue or sector
  • Learning: evaluating what is being said and what information is needed
  • Adapting: using the listening and learning to inform how you change

Listening

  • use monitoring tools
  • know your keywords
  • use your RSS reader
  • engage and monitor responses
  • engage internally

Discussion:

How/why does listening provide value?

  • at ARC, listening has been the core value of our last three year’s of social media (mentioned online over 400 times a day), learn what people want and expect from us
  • at NWF, listening has been the foundation of our social media movement, we are nothing unless someone thinks we are something
  • everything before lays the foundation, everything during and after helps you improve and change your strategy
  • listening has been to the community and to the quantitative results

How do you use a RSS feed like a rockstar?

  • pull in hashtags from Twitter into the RSS reader (pull in the RSS of a search.twitter.com result)
  • skim a lot, mark all as read liberally, don’t feel like i have to ingest everything

Listening based on location?

  • ARC does for blood drives, etc.

How do you share your data?

  • ARC – gather data every morning and share with organization via email; issues that seem sensitive or are newsworthy will contact subject matter experts to follow up
  • ARC – social media team evaluate/watch everything and then send summary and highlights to team
  • NWF – tag mentions in delicious with which programs or projects are mentioned, can share link to that tag on delicious with staff to see their section
  • Sarah – use google alerts and a page that we update with mentions
  • Qui – for clients that are larger, we set up media citation reports (like a word doc with titles and links and relevant info about the mentions and how they should respond)

How much time is spent listening?

  • ARC – 33,000 employees, budget is over a billion $, 2-3 hours of concentrated listening every morning and then ambient listening all day
  • NWF – 363 employees, budget is around 90 million, one hour every morning and then throughout the day (google alerts and rss every morning, then if there is something that happens throughout the day)
  • Livingston – encourage small nonprofits to have at least a half time person doing listening and response (10 hours a week)
  • Sarah – budget is 100,000s, 50% of the time we are listening, 15-20 hours a week personally listening

Listening tools:

  • Netvibes
  • Feed digest

Learning

  • Think like a rocket scientist, document or journal your learnings
  • Observe and sift through qualitative data like a primatologist or anthropologist

Beth’s learning process:

  • document on the fly
  • test and teweak
  • pick the right metrics
  • harvest insights
  • look at what other nonprofits are doing in the space
  • pause for reflection time before next reiteration: how to improve results?

Engagement metrics:

  • create
  • comment
  • click
  • collect
  • critic

Think about which things you really need to track and measure those, not everything you could possibly track.

Discussion:

What is your learning process from social media? How do you involve the org?

  • NWF – ad hoc, if you look at programs individually it is based on qualitative over quantitative, we adapt when we hear people saying i wish it was like this or i could do this
  • Livingston – listening is everyone’s job, might start with social media person or dept but eventually want to make sure everyone is out there and closing the feedback loop
  • Sarah – share by email because we are an online organization, can have a spreadsheet with stats and how they are growing, organization wide as well as campaigns, etc.

Examples:

  • Yammer for internal sharing, it’s a Twitter for groups
  • Delicious

What are some specific stories for using the right metrics:

  • ARC – the right metrics are those that help you identify if you have reached your goals, so if you have a goal to offer real time information to the public in times of disaster for example, the measurement is if peole get the info they need (not fundraising or anything else), so we do that by asking them and collecting metrics like how many people retweet information on Twitter, etc. over time have gotten other metrics and impact from working on this goal
  • NWF – focus on engagement, program called Wildlife Watch and is a space for people to share wildlife they see so asked people to use #nwf on twitter when they see wildlife, will track how many times the hashtag is used each day (hashtags.org) we use bit.ly and pop.url for tracking retweets (Check out Laura Lee Dooley’s URL shortener report!)
  • Livingston – corporate example, Network Solutions, negative perseption issues related to their brand (google your organization’s name and “sucks” and see what comes up!), assessed the conversation and they had a 58% negative blog/conversation ratio (used manual researching, icerocket, forumtracker, search.twitter, etc.), new that was the metric/goal to track and 6 months later there was only 18% negative ratio
  • Sarah – presidential commition on women in legisltation, legislator read our email wanted to do it and wrote a bill, so to raise awareness and support we asked people in membership what they wanted to see, asked them to come to us, gave qualitative feedback, had a tweetcast with feedback on Twitter, used facebook and tracking membership and

WeAreMedia Project (http://wearemedia.org/) has a listening toolbox!

Distinction between what you think they want to hear and what they want to know – can you address those separately?

  • Livingston – HHS, wanted evaluation of pandemic flu conversation online, point was to understand what they were saying about the government and so on to really know what to address as an organization to that community

Culture change:

  • NWF – social media is good for engagement but not always the engagement you expect, users on myspace and did a survey with all the members but only 400 responded and the boss wanted to discontinue social media work; don’t always need to hear what every person needs if you have that one person who will really tell  you useful things; there’s still community on myspace so we still update that blog and use the platform
  • Sarah – a lot of resistance to social media in political groups, the key is biting off small pieces and educating people one at a time, finding someone to train and working with them so that they can educate another person
  • organizational change is slow, you have to have patience, opinion starts to change once you find influencers within

Nonprofit staff are so overwhelmed, how many groups have someone to measure social media?

  • survey in room: most prevalent is 20 hours/week with other job duties

Co-creation Networks, look at the ladder of engagement and the number of use and the level of engagement – need all of them in your ecosystem

Clicking = good – a change in knowledge doesn’t equal a change in behavior; can you measure that?

  • NWF – greenhour.org so we share it with people in a newsletter and then see activity in a blog – we can’t see that they really did it in their home, it is hard to measure, but we are still seeing what seems to be real actions – don’t be afraid to ask!

Are there ways of catching offline datapoints?

  • NWF – every program we have has an offline component, i try to integrate a social media strategy that leverages and encourages the offline part; like #nwf wildlife watch, raises your awareness offline if you can see something and tweet it, etc.
  • ARC – it’s easier for us to suck in what people are already doing because we have found that it’s nearly 100% chance for people to give blood and then talk about it online if they have a space online
  • Livingston – if you don’t have their email, call them, keep asking questions but it is labor intensive

Adapt

Fail formally – protesting Wendy’s with a photo sharing with a protest sign but only got a few people doing it, heard so much about how hard it was for people to participate, etc. but didn’t stop doing photo contests; instead they adapted.  next, with LOLseals campaign, they made it as easy as possible for people to participate, used the Flickr API to allow people to upload from their website instead of going to Flickr, etc. this time they got 3,000 photos and 2,500 email address.  But don’t do it again just because it worked, keep evolving. Facebook app for spay day, upload a photo of your pet and then do fundraising for the Human Society with people voting on your pet’s animal. 13,000 installs of the facebook app, and $600,000 raised.

Discussion:

How have you reiterated?

  • Livingston – Network Solutions, free online video event, know who will send the most traffic second time around
  • NWF – we are still very new at this, there haven’t been a lot of programs, the photo contest is slowly moving online; we tweak all the time though, you can’t be satisfied because you can always make it better, like with #nwf as it got more participation we moved the stream onto our website
  • ARC – we have very few campaigns like Carrie’s at HSUS, but we tweak constantly, today everything is 100% different than a year ago but it was all very small tiny changes
  • HSUS – integrated it with everything else, email campaigns/newsletters, offline, etc.

Any resources to move from national to local?

  • ARC – we are set up similarly, Robin Parker does Oregon Trail chapter for example

How do you change around from failure?

  • NWF – there is no failure. everything can be taken to scale. you have to learn from everything, if it doesn’t work one time it could still work another time. have to decide if it is worth investing in.

Have you seen examples of your org changing?

  • NWF – initially i was the outcast, driving traffic but being sneaky; you need buy in to really do it. for some people it’s intuitive but others it isn’t. we had a COO who noticed social media was important and moved me to the education dept, if you are in marketing and someone says not to do it, keep doing it! i have changed my role a bit so that i serve as a consultant internally to get people started. i don’t want to force people, if they don’t want to do it, then they don’t have to.  if it isn’t natural then it won’t work.
  • Sarah – worked with a tech oriented nonprofit, had an old tech faction and the new tech faction; eventually we just got new people on and they wanted new, too so you just move on.
  • Beth – learning a lot from resisters now and strategies for it. have to have bottom up way of organizing social media but also evolve into a star fruit so that it goes all directions.

What is your ONE takeaway?

  • be more intentional
  • failure is adapting
  • tools in context
  • when you miss in battleship you take another shot
  • want to embrace failure
  • all about relationships
  • delicate balance between involvement and take over
  • take chances
  • they can’t control people when they are taking part
  • metrics spring from your goals
  • listen more
  • even one voice can give you great insight
  • if you are really interested in this stuff and you see the opportunity at your organization, just try it and see what happens
  • metrics bubble up
  • even if people say the same thing loudly doesn’t mean the minority isn’t speaking too
  • reminder to talk to eachother

Thanks!

Published on April 27, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 4 Comments

SXSW: Future of Social Networks

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Presentation by Charlene Li at SXSW.  You can see the session information here.

“Social networks will be like air.”
Yes, we’ve heard this before, but we can’t conceptualize “air.”

The people who “own” those relationships need to start working together to integrate the platforms.  ASW would argue that the platforms don’t own the relationships; the platforms do own the topic of conversation, or the point of interest—a point that should really be made explicit and especially viewed as actionable.

After all: your friends are your friends – you shouldn’t have to re-find them everywhere you go online.

3 things need to make social networks like air:

  1. Identity – who are you?
  2. Contacts – who you know?
  3. Activities – what do you do?

2 sets of rules/standards

  1. facebook/ facebook connect
  2. open stack

CL says there is not going to be a war between them. The standards are still being developed and it is still early.

Identity

  • professional v personal = two profiles
  • w/ openid you pick where to put your context and info

Contacts

  • friend management
  • pick your friends once – social networking fatigue
  • relationships are always changing
  • calendar, call, sms, facebook, twitter, address book = level of closeness of social data
  • treasure trove of data in your phone (emails, cal, etc.)
  • we have to put our trust in someone – is it google? facebook? isp? have to trust someone with your content, contacts and stream in order to get the kind of data back that you want/need
  • social algorithm will make privacy and permissions easier to manage – context makes content privacy easier, commnity based privacy
  • how do you get everyone to open up? money.

Activities

  • most social ads require explicit action
  • “fan” doesn’t mean “endorsement’
  • “network neighbor”
  • create maps of communication streams
  • personal cpm

How to Prepare for “like air”:

1. Evaluate where social makes sense

  • identify where social network data and content can/should be integrated in the experience
  • leverage existing identify and social graphs where your audience already is
  • get your privacy and permission policies and proceses aligned with an open strategy
  • find your tust agents

2. Get your backend data in order
3. Prepare to integrate social networks into your organization

  • where are customers or users “in” the organization chart (at the top?)

If social media is SO compelling, how it is SO hard for organizations to adopt it? Open networks will be the new norm, so consider how you will open your business or organization.

Published on March 14, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Successful Campaigns: Ideas from Chain Reaction

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I wanted to share with you some of the awesome advice that came out of the Campaigning for Social Change session today at Chain Reaction 2008.  Jonathan Ellis, Director of Policy at the Refugee Council, shared what he has experienced as the key attributes of a successful campaign for social change.

1. Make a positive connection: we often make a connection with people but the message depresses them.  Successful campaigns get people activated and energized.  The way to do that is to create a message that clearly defines the problem AND solution.

2. The elevator test: 15 seconds [in an elevator] to pitch your issue/campaign to the leader, politician, funder or whomever.  Using that message from number 1 above, the problem and solution needs to be able to be articulated in just 15 seconds.  (Yes, your campaign and issues needs more than 15 seconds, we know.  The elevator test is the core of the message.)

3. Work out who has the power: Who are you directing the campaign at?  How really has the power to realise the change you seek?  Campaigns are often launched at the wrong audience.  They have a great message, a great plan, a worthy cause – but are talking to the wrong people.  Is the president really the one to convince?

4. Use the right campaign tools:  It’s like being a general on the eve of battle and looking at all the troops before you: Research, lobbying, media, supporters, allies, etc.  Not every one needs to be used all the time.  But the right groups at the right times in the right ways.  Keep in mind that alliances and partnerships aren’t bad, especially when they are unconventional.  For example, Oxfam working with workers’ unions for the campaign around asylum seekers.

5. Plan for success:  What happens if/when you succeed?  Plan to be successful and plan where you are going once you get there (because you aren’t finished!).

6. Never stop campaigning: Things can be fickle!  Say you get a law passed that provides allotment of funds for the community services you campaigned for.  Then, two years later, those funds are reallocated.  Where are you?  Where is your campaign?  Are you still working, still activating your members, still participating in the arena in an influential way?

7. Your choice of message:  Campaign messages that are successful are those that motivate the audience with power, not the organizers.  Often, when we are building a campaign, it’s easy to identify what motivates us and what calls us to action, but that’s not necessarily the best motivating message for the audience you are reaching out to.  For example, a campaign about empty property that is directed at home owners with a message that compares the numbers of homeless people and the empty properties isn’t as effective as one that talks about the fact that empty housing devalues surrounding homes.

8. Enthusiasm:  it’s self-explanatory but often more difficult than you’d think.  I’m sure you can think of a time when you’ve talked to a campaigner who just doesn’t have his or her heart in it.  It makes a big difference if you’re enthusiastic, both about the campaign and the issue, or not.

9. Enjoy your campaign:  again, it’s self-explanatory but often overlooked.  Be passionate and enjoy it.

Lastly, be sure to include at the center of your campaign those who are/will be effected.  No one else can tell the story of a homeless person living on the street and dealing with health issues than someone who is.  No one can talk about the issues in public schools as well as those who are in them every day.  Give those you want to help the microphone, the spotlight, and let them tell their own story.

What are the key attributes to successful campaigns you’ve been a part of?  Has your organization used any of the above points?

Published on November 18, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 6 Comments

Technology for Social Change at Chain Reaction

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Live blogging can’t happen right now – SORRY! The wifi at the event has been quite troublesome for the social reporters so I’ll go what I would for the live blogging but then just publish this at the end, hopefully.

I’m in the Technology for Social Change session with lots of greats here at Chain Reaction 2008.

Simon from JustGiving

6.5 Million have used website
nearly 6,000 orgs using website
2009 will launch a new website: new focus on portability, want JG to be about other people’s sites than own, use the tools to fundraise that matter to them, plugging in to other social services
made lots of investment into the new site

–

network for social entrepreneurs to connect to community to make the most powerful difference
efforts are focused on building tools that have real world application
let’s social entrepreneurs share their work, advertise what they offer, change how they connect with each other
limited world research lab – allowing people to slice and dice data and build applications
allow people access to real time data

—-

tom with channel 4

publicly owned institution
26 years old, to bring voices into the mainstream
3 values: inspire change, whatever you do do it first, make trouble
channel 4 has realized that digital technologies need to be leveraged, especially for educational materials
project aiming at supporting websites, games, mobile apps that improve people’s lives
2 broad areas of scale: give people their first break at digital media, work with existing public institutions to make the most of digital media
many to many is the change from few to many
5 areas: tools to keep an eye on money and power; introducing people who need to know stuff to those who already know it; helping people discover stuff in the digital realm that they didn’t already know about or didn’t think they’d like; amplifying voices that media previously hasn’t reached; api layer – tools to make trouble, disrupt platforms for hte public.
submit ideas on their website

—-

dominic campbell with enabled by design

can i make local government cool? can i make assistive equpiment cool?
currently work with making social media in government – barnett council
building online community for users of assistive equipment to unleash frustration and ideas – bring together with designers to make better equipment

—-

anna maybank with sicamp

interested in how online world could make offline world better
internet lets people connect to scale in a new way
need to bring together two groups: people who build the technology, and those who have a need for it
gap in social enterprise incubation – what do you do if you have an early stage idea?
interested in bridging gap between idea and doing it
run a program with 3 parts: call for ideas of web based tool for social change; 6 are chosen to go to sicamp 2.5 day event with software designers and marketers etc.; give support to projects to continue
looking to develop further in the future, less than a year old
not just talking about technology using old things better, but about using technology as an enabler to do something entirely new and different

—-

gemini charity

webtools, building high end websites around engaging young people
reflections, teacher trainer tools with laptops and webcams etc.
rafiki, large online community of schools over 100 countries worldwide about curriculum in the real world
big challenges are about scale
x axis is long term impact, y axis is how many people and you really impact

—-

questions now…

how do you get regional/local support?
very hard if you’re not in the main cities; current regions are not representative of how people relate where they live, with digital media you can cater to any identity of region really
lots of organizations that can help with small amounts

what do you think about the obama campaign’s use of social media?
the campaign was remarkable – mobilizing a million organizers, walking the distance to the moon and back over 20 times
mybarakobama.com was so interesting because it empowered the individual users
why are you supporting him and why do you think people should vote
indicator of where social networks are going – has to be fueled by individuals
empowerment was a key point, as well as the use of social media to engage
attention to detail was incredible – applied science and got the best people
there is an israeli campaign just launched that copied obama’s site identically
the message was key – the way you can win is by ceeding control and letting people be themselves, having faith in your supporters to be part of the movement instead of scripting and controlling

lots of membership organizations around the country, with members that are aware of the issues, but most orgs don’t use the members but to give a magazine, etc. – how do you mobilze membership organizations?
it’s an interesting point, it always comes down to the small percentage of people who are doers and the influence they have over their networks
need to view members in a different way – if you donate money, you aren’t just a donor, you could give time or experience, etc.; about ceeding control of top down, also about different kind of leadership
membership orgs need to adapt to changing environment about where value comes from and what leadership means in digital age
you’ll know when the first membership org gets that right when they drop the membership fee but ask more of their members
look at political campaign, bring leverage to fundraise and give brand – obama did it without the party, fostered his own community
platform agnostic in obama campaign – proves there isn’t reason to build only your own community but to use other services
lowering the barriers to engagement and fractionalizing what it means to get involved, changing the world is huge but if you can give a tiny bit then it adds up
local government can really learn from it in getting people involved in small bits

how do you measure the impact of social media on social change?
pollcat.com
benchmarking, looking at perceptions
what you can measure, do measure – real activity, etc.
build the tools right and you can measure everwhere
mysociety does it really well – like writetothem.org asks you a couple of questions about other activities; once you give people a staisfactory experience then you can ask questions to measure
bbc gets a lot of traffic, but it doesn’t mean there are lots of value there – studied what the best value was – advocacy. how likely they were to recommend service to another user

the message isn’t about the charity, it’s why the messenger cares – network for good

Published on November 17, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Live Blogging Chain Reaction: Technology for Social Change

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Technology for Social Change session at Chain Reaction 2008 with Steve Moore, Anna Maybank, Tom Loosemore, Alberto Nardelli, Simon Doggett, Dominic Campbell, Dan McQuillan.  Click below to join the live blogging coverage (or to read the archived coverage).  This session takes place at 3 pm in London, UK.

Click Here

Published on November 17, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Live Blogging Chain Reaction: Involving People in Social Action

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Involving People in Social Action session at Chain Reaction 2008 with Emily Beardsmore, Rt Hon Hazel Blears MP, Nipun Mehta, Gib Bulloch and Jane Tewson.  Click below to start the live blog coverage (or archived coverage).  This session takes place at 11 am in London, Uk.

Click Here!

Published on November 17, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments