Book Review: Measuring the Networked Nonprofit

By BylineAmy Sample Ward on

I recently got my copy of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit by Beth Kanter and Katie Delahaye Paine. In the foreward, Beth and Katie say that “measurement is the secret sauce; we provide the recipe.” And that they do!

It doesn’t matter what event I am speaking at, or who the participants are in the room, I can’t think of a single time I’ve spoken about nonprofit technology topics and not had at least one hand raised in the audience to ask about the number of Facebook fans an organization “should” have, or the “best” time of day to tweet, or even the frequency of posting videos on YouTube. In the book, Beth and Katie identify a number of themes. One that really speaks to me is the point that “measurement helps nonprofits understand and improve their social networks.” Often, nonprofit leaders and staff think of data as something that helps us decide on something new (a new program, a new service, a new engagement opportunity); unfortunately, we don’t always remember that data also helps us make decisions about what we are already doing. Here’s a case study of my own!

To Link or Not to Link

Before I worked at NTEN, I managed the NetSquared program at TechSoup Global. As part of that role, I was in charge of our various social media channels, including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. At that time, most of NetSquared’s content came from the community blog, where anyone working at the intersection of technology and social impact could create a profile and contribute to the blog with stories, case studies, and more. The content strategy was to reflect the same community focus on the blog onto our other channels, both highlighting community members’ content as well as creating a space where people could continue sharing on their platform of choice. All of that translated to tweeting out links to blog posts all the time.

Watching the metrics every week, though, it was clear we weren’t looking just for traffic to the blog. We were looking to build the same kind of group sharing on social platforms that we were seeing on the blog. We also saw that retweets as a total or an average really varied. So, we dug deeper. In an attempt to ensure that we connected the “why” of whether something was successful or not to the “what” of the content itself, I started splitting apart our metrics. Instead of watching the average or total retweets for the week, I was looking at the number of tweets that went out with a link and the number that went out without a link, and the corresponding rewteets.

Wow, that’s when things got interesting! I started to see that the more I posted without a link or retweeted someone else’s link, the more response and engagement I built within the channel (in this case, Twitter). But when I tried to push people off of Twitter and over to the blog posts, there was much less of a response. Having a better understanding of what was going on, I could make a decision about our current strategy (not just a new one for later). To ensure that our content stayed balanced, I made sure that our metrics tracking documents separated % of posts with a link from those without a link and set goals for the weekly post balance.

Get your copy!

I am giving away a copy of Beth and Katie’s book to be sure that I do my part to spread the knowledge and share the insights. But, I don’t just want to mail it someone, I want to use this as an opportunity to catalyze some peer sharing! Please leave a comment below about how you’ve used data to help make a decision about the social channels you were already using. Just getting started? Share what you’d like to try! I’ll select a comment at random to win the book and we can all win by learning from each other. (I’ll pick someone on Friday, December 7th – so hurry!)

Why the dog photo? Well, that’s my dog and he’s pretty cute, but Beth and Katie are also running a dog vs cat photo contest.

39 thoughts on “Book Review: Measuring the Networked Nonprofit”

  2. This work is so important. Thank you. Having worked for 20 years in nonprofit communications I am always amazed at how this kind of “connecting the dots” (and seizing on the goodwill of relationships and results gathering)…how these practices are overlooked. Simple adjustments in how nonprofits do things can make such a big difference.

  3. I can’t wait to read the book. I haven’t done much with data to have impact in social channels, otherwise I’ve been using social networks to have impact in my home town, I’ve been encouraging  people to do something about to stop pollution, something like use a bike as a sustainable transportation, talk about the benefits and the huge impact it has in the planet. Also I have use twitter to get connected with people around the would who as me is really concern about the environmental change. 

  4. I’m trying out an online fundraising site (Razoo) to help raise funds for the Windcall Institute (an amazing residency program for organizers and social justice activists). In addition to sending emails, I’ve posted on Facebook and LinkedIn and tweeted about it. A very unscientific study with a small sample size, but interesting to see where donors will come from. 

  5. We’re trying to learn why some of our Facebook posts at On Earth Peace get lots of response relative to other posts — kind of like a social genome of our users. Of course, it was the dog that hooked me!

  6. LOVE that the non-profit world is talking results as it relates to Social Media. 

    We have not had a focused social media strategy with clearly articulated objectives.  It is something our organization is working on for the new year which will include meaningful measurement to better understand how to interact with our constituents to create stronger engagement!

  7. I’m interested in how Facebook postings can increase traffic to physical sites like our local non-profit museum gallery cafe wine centre and a our local farmers market. See Copping convict and colonial collection and Bream Creek Farmers Market (both on Facebook). We would really appreciate learning more about how to use social media channels from Beth et al’s book. Now I have to enter the dog/cat comp.

  8. We’ve found our followers have different interests on Facebook and Twitter. Our Twitter followers seem to be more interactive for policy/advocacy issues, whereas our Facebook followers seem to be more interested in the community building side of our organization. We’re trying to slightly shift posts/updates accordingly and see what happens. 

  9. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to get a copy of this book as I will be teaching a social media class next fall and I am already planning on adopting the Networked Nonprofit in the course. That was such a great book that I imagine this book will add more richness to the overall learning experience. Of course it would be great to have before hand to read and review 😀 
    Thanks,
    J.

  11. Trying an experiment with FB Promoted Posts … I promoted a FB post on my brand page this morning at around 7 am  — so new comments as of this morning, curious how you heard or saw this post?  

  12. My organization shares blog posts as well. We were thrilled to see a growing number of likes and comments on Facebook when we tapped into the use of photos to “please EdgeRank” to promote the posts. However, it seemed through Google Analytics and Feedburner that our activity on the blog itself was down. So…we went back to posting a direct link to the blog. We decided we’d prefer more traffic on our website than likes on our Facebook page, and things seem to be running smoothly.

    We are tracking engagement scores, # of messages received, # of stories created, etc. in a monthly dashboard. However, I know there is so much more we can do to dig in deeply and build a strategy for content based on data. I would love to win this book!

    1. Great example, Jessica – and there are so many tricks and apps to help make sure you always have an image with a link on FB. Better to beat the EdgeRank with!

  14. After a decade in the field, it is encouraging to see this topic addressed, and by people who really know what they are talking about!  Thank you for giving us solid information that isn’t impossible to navigate and implement!

  15. I’d like to look at more detailed demographics of the people who ‘like’ us on Facebook to see how to better target the message of posts we’re putting on our timeline

  17. Catherine – thank you for adding a photo with your dog! And thank you for sharing some of the resources you’ve been using; hopefully others will test them out, too.

    1. Happy to! Thanks for your comment. I am excited to learn about social media measurement and capturing the value and impact of social engagement with nonprofit organizations and their work on social networks. I’m looking forward to reading others’ comments as well and continuing to share ideas! 

  18. beth kanter helps those of us patching together our own tiny non-profits approach our work in new and creative ways. i was very inspired by a workshop she led at the foundation center and am eager to check out her new book, which my tiny crew will use as a handbook in the year ahead to take our work further. thanks for your voice in this conversation!

  20. Wow.  OK, I am new to much of this – have been following Beth K for a while now, she is great – so I don’t have any tips to share YET but I know that were I to get this book and learn enough to start doing things which would lead me to be able to give advice in the future –  well, then I would be here in a flash sharing tips for your NEXT giveaway, promise!

  21. It’s essential for our future use of social media to have a better understanding of our audience, our metrics and how to set up goals for social media measurement in facebook and twitter. Beth has always inspired me to do better, and even if the book doesn’t come my way from you, I’ll get a copy!

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