Archive for the 'strategy' Category

Messages, Stories, and Conversations: Creating a Strategy for your organization and your supporters

Published in resources and strategy. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I have said it many, many times and so have lots of others—you’re probably tired of hearing about how social media is supposed to be “a conversation.”  And that’s okay!  Because it isn’t JUST a conversation!  There’s calls to action, story telling, questions and requests, and much more.  And, more importantly, some of the messages, the stories and the campaigns don’t even come from you!  They come from your supporters. 

How can you create a strategy for your messages and campaigns in social media that respect this fact?  Here’s how!

This process is great to do as a team or as an organization.  If you have a room where everyone can sit, and an hour or two to bring everyone together, I really recommend you use this topic as an opportunity to hear what each department identifies and shares when working through the process below as the conversations that come up can be another chance to break down silos inside your organization!

On a flip chart or whiteboard (or if you are working through this by yourself, just use a piece of paper or a spread sheet on your computer) draw 4 vertical lines, creating 5 columns.  You may want to turn the flip chart sideways or use separate sheets for each column.

#1: Who are “They”

This column is for identifying all of your audiences.  Be sure to really consider this as there are probably many different groups, supporters, collaborators, or other audiences that you may not list right away!  It’s a great opportunity to bring different departments together to create a complete view of the organization’s audiences.

#2: What we Want

This is where you can list actions, knowledge, messages or anything else you want to give to your audience or have them do.  List these next to each audience group from the first column.  Remember that there could be more than one What we Want item per audience.

#3: How it Happens

In column 3, list how you deliver these messages or requests.  Are they online: in email, website, social media platforms (which ones?), etc.  Are they offline: at events, in your office, elsewhere?

#4: What they Want

Now it’s time to list what your different audience groups want from you!  Do they want information, support, value or recognition; maybe they want to be included, give feedback, share their stories or campaign on your behalf.  Again, there can be more than one What they Want per audience group.

#5: How it Happens

Just like in column 3, this column lists how these requests or exchanges can happen.

Stand back!

You’ve just created a map of all your audiences and how you and all of them can be sharing, conversing and campaigning in an aligned way!  The two “How it Happens” columns are great opportunities for evaluating which social media tools you are using for different audiences, something I’ve talked about on this blog before.  You can also easily see which messages and audiences naturally go together and which are separate.  And, if you did it as a team or full organization you can feel like you are all on the same page (or at least closer to it) by working through the process together!

What do you think?

How have you mapped your conversations and messages at your organization? Do you have any tips or suggestions you can share?  I’d love to hear how you’ve done it!

Published on November 24, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 5 Comments

Twitter Lists for Nonprofits

Published in community and strategy. 10 Comments Tags: , , .

Lauren Cochrane has a great post today with ideas for lists organizations could create with Twitter’s new List function.  If you haven’t heard about Lists yet, you’re not behind! They have only been rolled out to around half of the users so far.  You can read more about Lists on the Twitter Blog here.

Lauren outlines 7 Lists that organizations may find useful, including:

  1. Your organisation’s chapters and campaigns.
  2. Related international organisations and campaigns.
  3. Organisations that are somewhat related to your organisation.
  4. Celebrities, politicians and others with a high profile.
  5. Media.
  6. Volunteers.
  7. Retweeters and people who have contacted you.

As I added to Lauren’s post in the comments, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for organizations to leverage the List functionality for boosting visibility of their work and finding new supporters.  Think about the way Facebook Fan pages work, the way we see when others add a Fan page and we may join as well, and so on.  This kind of visibility work taps people’s desire to be cause-related in self identity.

Here’s my idea for an organizational visibility campaign using Lists:

Create a list for Supporters. (Make sure it’s a public list, and link to it from your website and elsewhere.) Encourage people who want to be included on that list to publicly @reply to you and say why they support you. Then, add them to the list.

So, they’ve already publicly promoted you to their whole followers list and as a member of the list can feel a bit more connected with the organization (to retweet messages in the future, help promote campaigns or other projects, etc.).

What do you think?

Would love to hear if you have other ideas about using Lists for organizations. Do you already have the Lists function enabled on your account – have you used it yet?

Published on October 30, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 10 Comments

Managing Twitter, One Account at a Time

Published in resources, strategy and webtools. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

There are so may stats, reports, assumptions and speculations every day about who is using Twitter, let alone how and why.  I recently read a reflection on Twitter called How To Use Twitter When You Follow Several Thousand People.  And it got me thinking, not necessarily about how I filter through the stream and so forth, but how others who are filtering through their streams, find me!

I’m not the only one that is follow lots of interesting, valuable, fun people on Twitter – so are many of you!  So, how do I create ways for people to pick up on my content or shared learning in ways that is visible (and not just sucked into the stream)?  How do I ensure that the stream I’m creating, isn’t overwhelming as well?

With these questions in mind, I decided to start a second Twitter account – and I want to share with you my strategy and implementation steps – so you can see if something similar is right for you, too!

Why Create Two Accounts

My Twitter account is @AmyRSWard and I have, currently, over 3,000 followers.  I’m not one for popularity and don’t view follower counts as a reflection of such.  I think that at one time or another, those 3,000+ people found an interesting link I shared, read a blog post I wrote and wanted to get more, or connected with me in one way or another online, at a conference, or through email.  The way I see it, those 3,000 people are “following” the content or value I can add to their work, not necessarily my coolness.

But, I’m human! Not everything I say is smart, valuable, insightful or useful.  Sometimes I just want to say, “hi” to my mom on Twitter, and that’s okay.  But for people who don’t want to follow everything I say, and really just want real-time access to my shared brain, well, why not them have it!

Purpose of @AmySampleWard

As I explained above, the purpose of the second account, @AmySampleWard, is to provide a pipeline to valuable content.  I intend to use this second account for three main things:

  1. Sharing links to posts as they go up: Whenever a new post goes up on this blog, a tweet with the title and link will go out!
  2. Sharing links to interesting things I read: Whenever I tag something using Delicious that I think is of interest to you all, a tweet with the title and link will go out!
  3. Livetweeting and Twitter-chats: If I go to a conference or an event or am participating in a Twitter-based chat, I always think about the tweet-overload I create for people who follow me as my messages go from # of tweets per day, to # of tweets per hour or minute.  This way I will have a separate account to use for following a conference session or speaker, etc.

Set Up of @AmySampleWard

I have to give tons of credit to Joe Solomon, my friend and colleague and rockstar, for his help getting me set up.  I asked for his advise (he’s the man behind @nptechblogs among other Twitter mutations) as there are TONS of tools out there to choose from when setting up an account.  So, the steps below are generated from Joe’s smarts as well as my applications.

Sharing links from your blog:

I used TwitterFeed to set this up.  It’s really simple.  Just put in the RSS feed of your blog, and then use the Advanced Options to add a preface or suffix to your posts (this is where you could say, as I do, “New post:” or something).  As Joe advised, and I TOTALLY agree, be sure to select the option to show only the Title & Link – as including any more means a really jumbled tweet.

Sharing links you tag onling:

I use Delicious to tag content online instead of saving bookmarks locally to my computer – this way I can access things I’ve saved from any computer and can share content easily.  Using Twitter to share is just one more option!  If you do not already use Delicious, it’s easy to get started – visit the site for more. I used TwitterFeed again to coordinate auto-tweets of items I tag.  I used the RSS feed of a specific tag, because I didn’t necessarily want every single item I bookmark to be tweeted out.  This let’s me choose which items to share.

We’re in Business!

So, the new account is all set up! It’s already tweeting out blog posts, interesting links, and more. Follow it here!

What do you think? I’d love your feedback on my strategy and process – if you would have done things differently or if you have questions about how I’m making it work!

Published on September 15, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

5 Steps to a Successful Social Media Strategy

Published in socialmedia and strategy. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I have a guest post up on John Haydon’s blog!  You can visit his blog to read the post and join the conversation there.  The post is republished below.

I’m always weary of posts that claim to pronounce the 10 Best Things You Can Ever Do, or 7 Steps to Success, or any other lofty achievement wrapped up in just a number of items.  But, that doesn’t stop me from doing it myself!  Though, in these 5 steps, you’ll see there is a lot more to do, think about, and work on – no quick tick-off on this list!

Social media, as many have said time and again, is only part of your campaigning, part of your fundraising, and part of your communications.  It isn’t something that lives in its own department, nor does it have staff that are separate from the rest of the organization.  Just as the content distributed and conversations participated in are integrated into many different aspects of your organization’s work, so should the knowledge, access and responsibility to participate be integrated across your staff.

With all that being said, let’s dive in!

These 5 Steps are intended to help you create a successful social media strategy, but as you will see, they focus on your organization’s overall strategy!

1. Goals & Objectives

Evaluate your goals and objectives, as an organization.  You will not be able to identify tools and engagement methods for your organization online without knowing the bigger picture and without knowing it in concrete goals that will let you build and work towards them.  Hildy Gottlieb’s Pollyanna Principles are a great place to start if you want to learn more about how you can evaluate and identify your organizational goals (and larger view) in a way to successfully design projects, programs and even partnerships for real impact.

For more resources on goals & objectives:

2. Capacity

Before sitting down to work on your social media strategy, evaluate what kind of capacity you already have in your network.  Things to consider include: staff knowledge and experience with different tools as well as other internal knowledge or previous work experience.  It’s also a good idea to evaluate the capacity (especially if you think collaboration or partnership is an opportunity) of related organizations.  Lastly, consider what other organizations, companies or campaigns in your sector have already done!

For more resources on capacity evaluation:

3. Strategy

Now it’s time to focus in on the meat of this post, the actual “social media strategy” part—apologies for making you wait this long! :)   But, there’s a catch: it’s another 5 steps!

  1. Identify the audience or community you want to engage.
    This includes thinking about who you are already communicating with and how, as well as what groups you want to start communicating with who you currently aren’t including.  Who you want to talk to, listen to, and create a community with is the foundation for everything else you do with social media tools because it is what ultimately decides the success or failure of your other decisions—if you base your timing, tools, and process around those you want to be a part of your work, then you’ll be a lot more successful than if you pick tools you like when it’s convenient for you without considering the community you want to use them.
  2. Identify the resources currently available within your organization. Resources include staff knowledge and comfort with different tools, experience levels of staff working with supports, volunteers, and the public, staff with time available, staff with appropriate job duties to include social media, available budget for training or workshops, etc.  Often, we forget that because the actual application/software/tool may be free, really using it is not.  What we put into our social media engagement is what we get out of it, like everything else in life.  If you only have an hour a week to post to a blog, then it is unreasonable to expect a lively conversation and community emerging from it, at least not very quickly.  By evaluating what resources you already have on hand in the organization, you are much more prepared to fully examine your options.  And remember, sometimes you assumptions about social media use and your staff can be way off!  There is something out there for all of us, and more and more people around the world are engaging online, so don’t assume that it’s only your college intern who knows how to use these tools!
  3. Identify what success will look like. This is really helpful in order to evaluate the appropriate tools for your work.  If you want to create a space for volunteers and potential volunteers to share their knowledge and experiences with each other you are going to need very different tools than if you want to create a space for volunteers and potential volunteers to share that information with you.  It’s also important to remember that social media is a changing space, with tools and applications, even functionality, evolving every day.  So, your definition of success has to be flexible to the changing times and the changing needs of your audience.
  4. Identify what technologies are most appropriate. Now that you know who you want to communicate with, who and what you have to work with in your organization, and where you want to go with the relationships, you can identify some tools to start exploring.  There are lots of blogs, directories, and lists available online to help you get started picking tools that match your goals.  One great way to help guide you in the process of identifying and selecting the most appropriate technologies is to ask your community!  What are they using now?  How would they like to engage with your organization?  Explain what success looks like to you and ask how they would go about getting there!
  5. Identify what measures of success can be used. You know who and what, and you identified where you want to go, but before you dive in you also need to establish how you can measure and monitor activity from day 1 onward.  This includes things you are probably looking at already like the number of visitors to your website and subscribers of your emails; but, it also includes metrics based on the funcationality of the tools you choose and how you identified success.  If you are using a forum, then measuring the number of replies to post (or, if your forum allows voting, then the positive feedback on posts) could be appropriate, as well as the ratio of people signed up vs posting vs replying, etc.  It’s incredibly important for the success of your work to evaluate how things are going throughout.  If something isn’t working to the degree you had hoped, it’s okay!  Identify that issue, and correct it with either an alteration to the current tool or set up, or by shifting the group to a different, more appropriate tool.  Just be sure to openly communicate your evaluations, ask for feedback (”Do you see what we see?”), and explain any changes well ahead of time.

For more on building your social media strategy:

4. Feedback

Be sure that you create mechanisms for feedback and input throughout your process and throughout whatever you “build” or use (whether it’s a social networking space, a website, a blog or anything else).  You need to provide opportunities for your community, as well as your staff and any others participating on the “administrative” end of the operations to share ideas.  The best way to approach this is to create feedback opportunities that are “evergreen” or always available, like a contact form or address, a public forum, or commenting; and opportunities that are “seasonal” or based specifically on an event, idea, opportunity, etc. (like a blog post about possible functionality that could be added to the site, asking for feedback and ideas or even voting on the options).  Remember, though, that there is no point to asking for feedback and letting your community suggest their ideas if you aren’t going to listen.  More often than not, the community knows what it wants much more than you do, so listening is key!

For more on feedback and listening:

5. Evaluate

Just as part of the social media strategy process in step 3 above calls for evaluation, so does the overall process.  Evaluation in this step is focused on the higher level:  how have your networks grown or changed? are there new opportunities for partnerships or collaborations? are there new opportunities for empowering your community either in different roles within the social media/online space or in other areas of your organization?  do you have stories of volunteers, staff, community members, or those you serve that could be sharing their stories in new or different ways to highlight your impact? And more!

For more on evaluation:

Then…repeat!

As with most everything else, it’s all a cycle.  You will always be revisiting your goals, your community needs, the options for tools and how to evaluate your work.  Continuing to keep the cyclical process moving, though, means that you will ensure that you give your organization all the opportunities to possible to improve it’s work and further it’s impact.  This is one self-perpetuating cycle that’s good for you! :)

What do you think? What lessons have you learned from designing social media strategies in your organization? What did I miss?  Looking forward to your conversation!

Published on August 18, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 8 Comments

Online Community Building: Gardening vs Landscaping

Published in community and strategy. 15 Comments Tags: , , , , .

My latest post is up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review opinion blog.  You can read the full post and join the conversation on SSIR here. The post is copied below.

My current job title includes the term “Community Builder” and I get asked nearly every day just what that means: how do you build community? where is the community you want to build? how can I be a community builder online? Tips, secrets, ideas?!  I want to take a break from all the hard work building community (does that get a wink?) to share some of what I believe is the core of successful community building (on or offline).

“Community building” is about a lot of things.  Some people define it as organizing, especially around specific events, campaigns, legislation, or fundraising.  Others see it as specifically applying to online community spaces, like a social networking site.  I believe that community exists everywhere, really.  That the Internet is a huge community of people looking to connect with others like them to form smaller, more specific communities.  Those of us in positions to support those connections and collaborations are some of the luckiest people in the global network, acting as the email or Twitter post or blog reference that helps individuals make networked jumps to where they really want to be.

Gardening vs Landscaping

So, what’s the secret to successful community building? You guessed it: be a great gardener and avoid the temptation to landscape.  Here’s what that means:

  • A gardener only takes out the weeds; a landscaper takes out everything that isn’t part of the design.  Think about the number of beautiful plants or trees that have sprung up in parks, your yard, or even out in nature that weren’t “intended” to be there but quickly grew to be a valuable part of the ecosystem.
  • A gardener isn’t afraid to mix things around; a landscaper plans and plots and plants.  Sometimes you can’t know ahead of time just which plants will respond well or want more sun or shade so you need to be flexible.
  • When a storm hits, a gardener can remain open to planting anew and rejuvenating others; a landscaper may just order more of the same.  Sometimes it takes a storm to realize which plants just weren’t going to make it or which were able to stick it out.
  • When in doubt, a gardener will try more plants or kinds of plants and see which take root; a landscaper may default to less.  What about the plants you had never used before to know about and how they took root, flowered, and bolted up right before your eyes?

Clearly, this is all very metaphorical here with the back yard options.  It is, though, meant to paint a picture:

The Gardener creates an ecosystem open to change, available to new groups, and full of fresh opportunities to emerge naturally.  The approach is focused on organic collaboration and growth for the entire community.  The gardener is simply there to help, cultivate, and clear the weeds if/when they poke up.

The Landscaper creates an ecosystem that matches a preconceived design or pattern.  The approach is focused on executing a preconceived environment, regardless of how natural or organic it may be for the larger area.  The landscaper is there to ensure that everything stays just as planned.

Your Community

How can you apply these ideas to your community building? The first question I always ask myself when considering a new tool or functionality online, a new project or campaign, or even new partnerships or members is: “Is this something the Community wants or something I want?” It doesn’t matter what I want, really.  It matters what the Community wants.  And how do you know if or what they are interested in? ASK!  Be sure to always provide opportunities for your community members or those who come across your work to share their ideas about what they would like to see, how they’d like to connect with each other and how they would like to work with you.  And when considering anything new, ask for feedback and share your ideas and plans ahead of time.  You may be surprised, but your Community often has even better ideas than you!

What do you think? Do you have other ideas about successful community building? Have a great example or case study you want to share?  Looking forward to more!

You can read the full post and join the conversation on SSIR here.

Published on August 6, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 15 Comments

Wiring the Green Movement for Earth Day

Published in issues, socialchange and strategy. 11 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Happy Earth Day, everyone!  What are you doing today to celebrate the Earth?

I wanted to use today to focus in on a question recently posed by my good friend Joe Solomon on Twitter:

What are the nonprofit/orgs that are working 2 wire the green movement, like what @netsquared does 4 nonprofits, @sunfoundation for politics; which orgs are working to expose data, leverage soc media, connect the orgs together?

How is social media being deployed to connect the Green Movement?

The way I see it, there are many directions that technology is aiding social change work:

  • enabling data sharing, exchange and mapping
  • connecting organizations for shared knowledge, partnerships and coalitions
  • changing individual motions into a unified movement

It’s this last item I want to talk about right now.  The climate change/ clean energy/ environmental (or whatever other title you prefer) sector is not unique to the broader social change arena in that there is still along way to go to really harness the power of the web.  This GreenLiving article asks, “Have Facebook, Twitter and Web 2.0 Made Earth Day Every Day?” – I certainly hope not! Otherwise we have settled for low impact and disengaged motions; I’m after a real movement!

Facebook

Facebook has lots of applications, it’s true: whether they are specifically targeted at “green” efforts (like the lil green patch app) or not (like Causes).  But are Facebook apps really turning citizens into advocates, individuals into changemakers?  If the goal of your organization is to educate young people about the effects and causes of climate change and motivate/empower them to start making changes, Facebook could certainly be a part of your organizations strategy.  But what are you doing on Facebook? Simply “being there” isn’t going to cut it.

Facebook’s newest “renovations” have, as many people have already noticed, nearly relegated Groups as a thing of the past and pushed Pages onto the main stage.  As the numbers of users grow, so do your number of friends, and then in turn so does the frequnecy of news items, status updates, and general calls to action for your network.  So how do you cut through the noise, how do you sift through the hundreds of apps, how do you connect and engage? Good question.

The best answer I can give (without spending the entire brainstorming, strategizing, and working in person) is that Facebook is a place to connect, and round up supporters. The engagement takes place outside of Facebook.  You can make friends and call them into action, but those actions and real engagement will link to and live outside of the platform.

Twitter

There are TONS of climate activisits and organizations on Twitter – spreading news, policy alerts, new developments, and ideas.  We have seen awareness campaigns like World Wildlife Federation’s “wildlife watch” (next time you see wildlife, Tweet it with the hashtag #wwf!), and news streams like #earthtweet.  There is a lot of potential with Twitter to spread messages and calls to action from sources onto the Twitter stream, and then back again.  For example, using Social Actions (which aggregates actionable opportunities from across the web), you could pull all of the actions related to your organization’s specific environmental focus and push them out via Twitter or your website, and so on.  You can also use Social Actions’ Twitter mashups to pull and push actionable opportunities to your network.  So how do you cut through the noise, how do you sift through the random updates, how do you connect and engage?

It’s the same answer: connect on Twitter, grow your network, and make those calls; but the real engagement, the action, takes place outside of Twitter.  Don’t create a strategy or even expect to use Twitter for the actions. It’s not going to work.  Use the tool for what it is: a communications platform.  Target your communications, leverage mashups and applications that help you deliver information, updates and calls to action that are important to your work and your network, and then move those supporters into the movement taking place above Twitter.

Blogs

ItsGettingHotInHere is just one example of getting it right in the blogosphere – aggregation is key to really get content (read: messages) out and around the web, creating opportunities for more people to read and also more people to share.  The climate change movement has shown a lot of focus on helping people effected by climate change (everyone) share their story, voice their concerns.  This is excellent – something that many other sectors could learn from.  But it isn’t enough to only tell our story.  We need to couple real voices, with real opportunities to take action and get involved.

The power of blogs is the real-time documentation.  Something that can really help the climate change movement is documentation, shared between campaigns, organizations, and coalitions, about 1. what is happening and 2. lessons learned from the work.  Openly sharing strategies and what worked and didn’t work can help save time, money, and a lot of wasted efforts at reinventing the wheel.  Blogs are a great way to do this because of their immediacy, accessibility, and linkability.  So how do you cut through the noise, how do you sift through the random updates, how do you connect and engage?

Your Twitter or Facebook calls to action might bring people to your blog, or your website. But the action is still taking place beyond the blog.  It’s a cop-out, I know, to say all of this, but it’s true.  And I feel like I have to say it to remind us that living and working and concentrating soley on social media is not going to change the world.  It’s what we do with social media to find and collect supporters, education them, empower them, and provide real opportunities to go out and make the changes that really matter.  Some of that work may still be online, and in fact much of it may be, but no Facebook application is going to install solar panels on my roof – though I could fundraise for those panels in the same space.

What do you think?

This post is really to start a conversation.  And I really, really, REALLY want to hear what you think.  Here are some things to help get the conversation started if the above didn’t already give you something to say.  These are just questions to get you thinking, and talking. I’d love for you to share your ideas, answers, questions, and thoughts below – but if you have the conversation offline, in your organization, and with your friends, well, that works for me, too!

FiredUpMedia wants to create a platform for youth effected by climate change to share their story and create news articles that can be cynidated throughout college radio/news networks and beyond.  This is a great example of providing a real, authentic voice to a global issue.  But how do you wish the platform would work? How could the platform also integrate policy items as well as education and action items to get people involved?

TakingItGlobal is an online community for youth interested in global issues that provides tools and resources for members to enagage and collaborate on issues they care about.  How can a youth-targeted platform like this bridge the sector to connect the stories, voices, action items and projects underway with those in other groups (whether those are geographic, cultural, racial, or religious groups) working on climate change, too?

Change.org’s Climate Change cause area has over 23,000 members.  How do you want to see these supporters engaged?  Is there a way you would want your organization’s community or membership to interact with the content or actions distributed through the Change.org platform?

Earth Day Network has a great website to help get people involved in celebrating and protecting the planet.  Should EDN be an aggregator for the sector, pulling in news and reports, information and so on?  How could EDN, or similar projects like Focus The Nation, move from a specific date-based event to a 365-day movement?

TechSoup Global’s GreenTech project has launched a campaign to education people about steps to “green” their work.  What are the most immediate actions a global organization like TSG could advocate for?  How could TSG integrate the GreenTech work with their international work of providing discounted technology projects to nonprofit organizations?

Happy Earth Day everyone!  I’m really excited about this conversation, about pushing the climate change movement forward, and about what we can all do, regardless of our position, skills, or location, to make a difference.  Can’t wait to hear what you think!

Published on April 22, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 11 Comments

The 45 Social by Social Propositions

Published in resources, socialmedia and strategy. 25 Comments Tags: , , , .

Over the last few months, I’ve been collaborating with Andy Gibson and David Wilcox, and Clive Holtham and Nigel Courtney from Cass Business School, on a book about using new technologies for social benefit projects.  It’s going to be called Social by Social: a practical guide to using new technologies to deliver social impact and it should be published and distributed by NESTA next month.  I’ll be sure to post links to the book, online version, and so forth when it’s out!

The book is full of interviews, case studies, how-tos and more.  At the core of the book is a set of fundamental principles to follow to help make a social technology project successful. Below, you can find the 45 Social by Social Propositions.  We are sharing them with you now so we can hopefully get your feedback before publication.  Really looking forward to this conversation!  Let us know what you think by leaving comments below.

The 45 Social by Social Propositions

A set of principles and guidelines which we believe underpin the most successful ‘social by social’ projects.

  1. People want control. If you give them tools for taking more control of their lives, they will pay you back in attention, support and even hard cash.
  2. Empowerment is unconditional. Telling people what they can and can’t do with your platform is like an electricity company restricting what its power can be used for.
  3. People make technology work. Think about mindset, language and skills before you think about tools, features and screen designs.
  4. Know your limits. Technology can solve information problems, organise communities and publish behaviours, but they can’t deliver food or care for the sick.
  5. You can’t learn to fly by watching the pilot. If you want to understand new technologies, start using them. Dive in.
  6. Start at the top. Get the boss blogging or talking on YouTube.
  7. Don’t jump for the tool. Be clear on who your target audience are and what you will do for them. Choosing technology is the last thing you should do.
  8. Start small. It’s always better to build too little than too much. Beware of specifying costly systems until you are absolutely familiar with the tools and know how people would use them.
  9. Planning ahead is hard. Find cheap, easy ways to try your ideas out with real people in real situations before committing lots of resources.
  10. Expect the unexpected. Be prepared to develop tactically, evolving as you go, and learn to maximise possibilities.
  11. Give up on the illusion of control. In a networked world, organisations can no longer control what people think or say about their products and services. If you’re worried, get involved.
  12. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The more you open things up, the less risk there is of damage to your reputation. And restricting access can severely reduce usage and innovation.
  13. Keep it messy. Design to support conversations, relationships, stories – not to organise documents. If everything’s neat and tidy, it’s because no-one’s there.
  14. In user-centred design, everyone is right. Evolve any tools and systems with the people who will use them, and respect their complaints. Bring them in and let them help you.
  15. Never assume, always ask. You can’t know what your community wants from you without asking and they are waiting for you to ask. Be specific, define the issue, problem or idea, and let the answers pour in. but be transparent about your next moves and highlight the answers that informed your next steps.
  16. Design for real people. Tailor your offering to the real skills and characteristics of your users, not how you’d like them to be.
  17. Keep it simple. Every time you add a feature to your toolset, you make the existing features harder to use.
  18. Don’t centralise, aggregate. Do you really need data centralisation? Well do you? Use lots of different, disconnected tools and then pull the content together into a central location.
  19. Be a pirate. Don’t make things yourself; make use of what others have already shared.
  20. Empty rooms are easier to redecorate. Be fast and loose with evolving your platform in the early stages, but be cautious of changing things once people start using them.
  21. Build it and they may well not come. Build relationships and they probably will.
  22. The world is a noisy place. Getting people’s attention means offering them something valuable.
  23. Go where people are. Experienced users have plenty of existing places already, and newcomers are difficult to recruit. Go to see them and say hello.
  24. Learn to listen before you start talking. Good conversations require good listeners more than good talkers. Learn how to say things that people want to hear.
  25. Be consistent. Whatever you say in public, remember you are talking to everyone, all the time, so stay true to your principles.
  26. You can’t force people to volunteer. Contributing content and spreading the word are voluntary activities, so learn how to create good invitations and actionable opportunities.
  27. Respect how people choose to communicate. Some will write, others take pictures or make movies. Most people will just listen and view, and maybe comment.
  28. Enthusiasts are more important than experts. Attitude beats ability when tools are cheap and easy.
  29. Be realistic about who will create content. It’s about the same proportion as put their hands up at question time.
  30. Put your energy where their energy is. Support the early adopters rather than chasing the sceptics, and they will become your evangelists.
  31. All energy is good energy. If people are taking the time to criticise you, they are engaged. Don’t waste that.
  32. Throw a good party. Make it fun and sociable as well as worthwhile to get more commitment.
  33. Be a good host. Make people comfortable and then get out of the way.
  34. Don’t forget the tables and chairs. If you want people to communicate or collaborate online, bring them together face-to-face too.
  35. Keep your powder dry. Set aside as much money for design, copy and user testing, and for marketing and community engagement, as you do for software and hardware.
  36. A marathon, not a sprint. Launching the service is just the beginning; the hard work starts once you have something for people to engage with.
  37. Content is king. Providing great content, whether it’s resources, information, connections or conversations, means new users will find you and others will stick with you. Give people the means to share this content too, freely and openly.
  38. Eat your own dogfood. If you aren’t using your own services, why would anyone else? And you can’t influence the community if you aren’t in it.
  39. Your users own the platform. If they feel own it, they will trust it, help sustain it, and find ways to use and improve the tools; if they aren’t interested, no amount of pushing will help.
  40. Let people solve their own problems. As the amount of work grows, so does the number of workers.
  41. Someone has to pay. Although many online tools are free, everything has costs of time if not money. If possible, make sure the money comes from the core purpose of the project.
  42. Don’t confuse money with value. Look at the other assets you have in your community, like skills, volunteers and goodwill, and put them to use in sustaining it.
  43. No-one knows anything. The only thing worth watching is what your users are actually doing.
  44. Failure is useful. If you want to know what works, look at what didn’t. Fail often, fail usefully.
  45. Say thank you in public. People don’t need to have something hand-written on headed paper to feel recognized. Use your tools to acknowledge the people who helped make them in a visible way.

These propositions are a starting point for a new conversation about using technology to improve the world we live in. So, would you sign up to them? We may be wrong. And that’s fine. Let us know your thoughts, share them with other people you think may be interested, and we’ll be putting them out more widely for discussion, additions and edits once we’ve figured out the right format. You can also add your links, articles and comments on the School of Everything Scrapbook for Social by Social too.

And stay tuned for announcements on the book launch, I’ll keep you posted here.

socialforsocialUpdate: Rob Allen offered this great visualization of the 45 Propositions.  I think it is a terrific way of noting the most important aspects of these guidelines.  Notice that “People” is huge; when working with social technologies to connect with and engage your supporters, members, donors and volunteers you have to remember: the tools, the messages, the actions are all based on the people.

Thanks, Rob!

Published on April 7, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 25 Comments

Spring Cleaning: Taking Inventory of your Social Media Tools

Published in strategy. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Today is April Fools, but instead of giving into temptation to play any tricks, I thoughts I’d focus in on the other April activity: Spring cleaning!  When it comes to a big, deep clean in your office, going through files, recycling lots of random print outs, returning long-borrowed manuals, and finding that secret stash of blue pens in the back of your desk drawer are all on the list.  But what about taking an inventory of your social media tools?  Here are a few ways to get you diving in:

Twitter

Mr. Tweet
Want to find new followers and receive useful statistics to improve your Twitter usage? Well, that’s what Mr. Tweet was designed to do!  It’s easy to use: all you have to do is follow the Mr. Tweet twitter account and messages will be sent to you via DM.  Try it out yourself!

Twitter Karma
If you have been using Twitter for a bit of time now, you’ve probably come to the same realization that many others have—that it sure would be nice to be able to see your follows and those that follow you in any way that lets you really understand and visualize the network.  Twitter Karma is a great tool to use if you want to inventory your Twitter community, clean up any nonreciprocal followers, or simply evaluate your lists.  You can sort by users’ follower counts, mutual friends, and so forth.  Give it a try!

Facebook

Groups & Pages
Do you have a group or use a fan page to create a community space for your organization on Facebook?  There have been quite a few changes to Facebook over the last few months (hey, even days!), so it’s a good idea to log in and see if you are using the applications as best as you can be.  Here are a few things to consider:

  • are you listing organization or sector-related events within the group or fan page?
  • are you keeping the recent news, discussions, and links sections up to date? (an easy way to approach this is by updating information in the group/fan page every time you send out an enewsletter or action alert)
  • do you link to your group/fan page from your website?

Causes
Facebook Causes offers a few different ways for individuals to show their affinity for nonprofits, fundraise for them, and spread the word about the work they do.  These are people who may not be on your newsletter or in your Facebook group, they may not follow you on Twitter or even be in your database, but they like what you are doing and want to show it to their friends.  If you work for the Red Cross, as an example, you can search in Causes for “red cross” and find groups that are focused on the Red Cross but also those focused on specific disaster relief efforts and international projects.  Searching for “blood” lets you find groups working on blood donation efforts and local programs – could be great, connected, passionate advocates to connect with!

Listening

Google Alerts
Spring cleaning definitely applies to your Google Alerts!  Have your key public-facing staff members changed?  Do you have any new partners or programs?  What about legislative or policy concerns?  Be sure to update your Google Alerts to include:

  • the names of staff members who may be in the news or lead your programs (like your Executive Director, Communications Director, Fundraising/Development Director, any program-related staff, and so forth)
  • the names of your organization and programs/projects
  • the titles of bills, policies or other political items affecting your organization
  • the key words for your sector (like “blood drive” and “disaster relief” if you are the Red Cross)

Delicious / Bookmarks
Check in on your tags and see if there isn’t any cleaning you can do!  If you use Delicious, the social bookmarking tool, you can view all of your tags and how many items have been bookmarked to each of them.  Some of the most common issues that people like to periodically clean up include:

  • pluralizations (tag for “blooddrive” and “blooddrives”)
  • dashes (tags for “blooddrive” and “blood-drive”)
  • numbers (tags for “district10″ and “districtten”)
  • names (tags for “amy-speaking” and “asw-speaking”)

Communities

Social Actions
Social Actions is an aggregator of 50+ social action-related sources across the web.  Much like searching on Facebook Causes to find groups who are interested in your work, searching on Social Actions can help you find indivudals and passionate communities working on similar issues around the world.  You can use the advanced search to find specific actions (like petitions) or key words.  Happy searching!

Ning
Ning is a platform that allows individuals or organizations to create branded social networks.  As part of your Spring Cleaning, visit Ning.com and search for your organization’s area of interest—you may be surprised to find communities taking shape without you!  If it is an open network, go ahead and join and see if you can contirbute to the conversation and information exchange.

That’s just to get you started; there’s always so much more you can do with all the options and tools out there.  Have you already started your Spring Cleaning?  What tips or tricks do you have that you can share?  We’d love to hear them!

photo by Collin Anderson

Published on April 1, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Five Steps to Finding ROI

Published in case studies, roi and strategy. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Many organizations struggle with the idea of ROI and metrics when it comes to social media because so much of it feels, well, untouchable.  It’s soft and maliable and relative, pretty much all of the time.  So, how do identify if you are succeeding or evaluate if you are improving?  Here are some steps that you can walk through either as an individual looking at this process, or as a team in a workshop setting.

First, let’s settle on an example we can use to walk through all 5 steps:  you work for a small nonprofit that focuses on early childhood education, so you have lots of services for parents and partnerships with hospitals, child care facilities, and doctors offices.  You also have a volunteer program for middle and high school students to work with the children in after-school time in lieu of child care, but find that the current partners you have in the community don’t work for attracting new volunteers to participate.

1. Problem

We are usually pretty quick to highlight problems, so this is probably the easiest step!  Be sure to focus in on the problems you plan to address with your social media strategies (we all want to change the world, but that’s not a specific).  In our example, our problem is that we don’t currently reach those who could participate in our volunteer program.  Our partnerships and current communication streams aren’t ones that would easily get the attention of or shared by that group of middle and high school students.

2. Strategy

The next step is highlighting the strategies that specifically address the problem.  These 5 steps assume that your organization has already used a process to evaluate your audience and your goals and chosen tools and strategies that match the audience and organizational goals.  Assuming our fictional organization has done this, let’s say that they chose to create a blog that the middle and high school students who volunteer in the after school program author, with stories form their work, things they are thinking about, events, friendships, and so on.

3. Benefit

The benefits? These are both tangible and intangible.  It’s also important to remember that there will probably be benefits to your work that you can’t identify know or foresee!  Some of the benefits of the strategy in our example could be: opportunities for volunteers to share their stories, more word of mouth advertising, and more shared learning about the program both amongst the volunteers as well as between the volunteers and the organization.

4. Value

If we were drawing our five steps out on a white board or piece of paper, our next column would be for the values related to the strategy and benefits.  In our example we could identify a core value of connections and “community” growing around the volunteer program.

5. Metrics

So now, finally, we get to the metrics.  By charting out the problems, strategies, benefits, and values first, we give ourselves a better picture to pull out metrics. Given the answers to 1-4 of our example, some of the metrics we could use to measure our success and ROI include: volunteer participation, online “chatter,” and program growth.  So, how do we measure those items?  We can look at the number of middle and high school students applying for the volunteer positions.  We can measure how many people are reading the blog and sharing the information across the web.  We can also look at other online mentions that talk about the organization as a whole, or other programs of the organization that also link to the new blog.

In this example, we are using a blog.  Whether it’s a Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, or whatever, you have access to built-in web analytics or the option to use Google Analytics.  There are lots of resources online that shed light on the different terms and tricks to diving into your web analytics.  But, even a beginner can identify the number of unique visitors to the site.  Setting up Google Alerts for the blog address and title will help you catch whenever other bloggers or organizations mention the blog on their sites.  Tracking how many of your volunteers participate by posting to the blog and commenting on each other’s posts + other online mentions + increase in inquiries and volunteers, etc. combines both online and offline measurement and values so can help you more thoroughly evaluate both the strategy and how to address the original problem.

Remember, your strategies should be integrated online and offline, and so should your metrics.

Published on March 2, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

5-Part Social Media Process

Published in strategy. 18 Comments Tags: , , , .

There are a TON of lists out there that identify the top _# of things to do for really anything you want to explore (whether it’s building a model or building an organization).  I’ve been thinking about these lists in terms of adopting social media tools and think that most of the lists are hitting on the same exact things.  So, why recreate the wheel over and over when the core theory is the same?

Here’s my list that I think hits at the core of all the other lists for social media strategy.

5-Part Social Media Strategy Process

Audience

Identify the audience or community you want to engage. This includes thinking about who you are already communicating with and how, as well as what groups you want to start communicating with who you currently aren’t including.  Who you want to talk to, listen to, and create a community with is the foundation for everything else you do with social media tools because it is what ultimately decides the success or failure of your other decisions—if you base your timing, tools, and process around those you want to be a part of your work, then you’ll be a lot more successful than if you pick tools you like when it’s convenient for you without considering the community you want to use them.

Resources

Identify the resources currently available within your organization. Resources include staff knowledge and comfort with different tools, experience levels of staff working with supports, volunteers, and the public, staff with time available, staff with appropriate job duties to include social media, available budget for training or workshops, etc.  Often, we forget that because the actual application/software/tool may be free, really using it is not.  What we put into our social media engagement is what we get out of it, like everything else in life.  If you only have an hour a week to post to a blog, then it is unreasonable to expect a lively conversation and community emerging from it, at least not very quickly.  By evaluating what resources you already have on hand in the organization, you are much more prepared to fully examine your options.  And remember, sometimes you assumptions about social media use and your staff can be way off!  There is something out there for all of us, and more and more people around the world are engaging online, so don’t assume that it’s only your college intern who knows how to use these tools!

Success

Identify what success will look like. This is really helpful in order to evaluate the appropriate tools for your work.  If you want to create a space for volunteers and potential volunteers to share their knowledge and experiences with each other you are going to need very different tools than if you want to create a space for volunteers and potential volunteers to share that information with you.  It’s also important to remember that social media is a changing space, with tools and applications, even functionality, evolving every day.  So, your definition of success has to be flexible to the changing times and the changing needs of your audience.

Technology

Identify what technologies are most appropriate. Now that you know who you want to communicate with, who and what you have to work with in your organization, and where you want to go with the relationships, you can identify some tools to start exploring.  There are lots of blogs, directories, and lists available online to help you get started picking tools that match your goals.  One great way to help guide you in the process of identifying and selecting the most appropriate technologies is to ask your community!  What are they using now?  How would they like to engage with your organization?  Explain what success looks like to you and ask how they would go about getting there!

Evaluation

Identify what measures of success can be used.  You know who and what, and you identified where you want to go, but before you dive in you also need to establish how you can measure and monitor activity from day 1 onward.  This includes things you are probably looking at already like the number of visitors to your website and subscribers of your emails; but, it also includes metrics based on the funcationality of the tools you choose and how you identified success.  If you are using a forum, then measuring the number of replies to post (or, if your forum allows voting, then the positive feedback on posts) could be appropriate, as well as the ratio of people signed up vs posting vs replying, etc.  It’s incredibly important for the success of your work to evaluate how things are going throughout.  If something isn’t working to the degree you had hoped, it’s okay!  Identify that issue, and correct it with either an alteration to the current tool or set up, or by shifting the group to a different, more approriate tool.  Just be sure to openly communicate your evaluations, ask for feedback (“Do you see what we see?”), and explain any changes well ahead of time.

So, get going!

Of course, the hardest part isn’t getting to day 1, but all that comes after day 1.  Creating a successful startegy for using social media isn’t completely new – you are creating strategies for your communications, fundraising, outreach, volunteer recruitment, and more.  What’s great about so many social media tools is that all of those other areas can be integrated into your work/presence online!

What part of the 5-step process above was the hardest part for your organization to tackle? Which was the easiest?  Is the process missing anything – what would you add?

Published on January 2, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 18 Comments