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Last year I used the metaphor of “gardening vs landscaping” to outline some of the key attributes I believe make for successful community building, on or offline. The basic idea:

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.

Lately, I have had the opportunity to chat with various colleagues like Bonnie Koenig, Debra Askanase and others about the topic of cross-platform community building. The way I look at it, the issues and best practices are just as clearly linked to the idea of gardening as other community building approaches are in my previous post. Here’s what I mean:

Cross-Platform Community Building :: Tending to Multiple Flowerbeds

The internet is huge, there are literally countless platforms where people are forming community. Your organization, whether it has an organizational presence there or not, has people interested in your services, programs, mission or cause talking about it and everything else all over the social web – from mainstream networks like Facebook and Twitter to niche communities on Ning or even forums (some branded, some not).  As much as the temptation may be to want to call out to everyone interested to join you in your place, the best thing you can do is recognize that not everyone flourishes and thrives in the same place, with the same treatment, and even the same amount of visibility. We should approach our community building work with the intention to create thrivable community on and offline, and in order to do that successfully we need to take time to recognize which elements contribute to various groups and segments of our community thriving.

Let’s look at the way a gardener can tend to multiple flowerbeds in one big backyard and the way that translates to our work of building community across the web:

Analysis and evaluation: the garden is visiting all of the flowerbeds or cultivated areas of the yard (and all the ground in between!) so has the best view to continually evaluate and analyze what’s working and what it isn’t, where things are dry or over-watered, where the weeds are cropping up and where the birds and bugs are hanging out. The garden can make decisions based on all this data to keep the whole yard in a thrivable place, but also recognizes the need to give part of that evaluation opportunity to the plants themselves by giving them a chance without assuming one can only grow in certain conditions or prefers being near only certain others.

Cross-pollinating: just like a bee, as the gardener goes from each bed to the other, she is helping cross-pollinate the plants; in our case, this means sharing conversations, ideas, and insights across the greater network. Highlighting opportunities, events, or conversations of interest across various platforms to prevent groups operating in silos when they may be interested in discussing the same/similar issues – the difference is the preference for where online to talk, not necessarily what to talk about.

Transplanting: as part of the analysis and cross-pollination, the gardener is also taking steps to ensure that if a plant is really not thriving in it’s current location, that it can have the chance to try out another place in the garden – maybe one with more or less sunshine, fewer or maybe even more plants nearby, anything to give it a new opportunity to grow. In our use of community building, this can be seen simply in sharing the links between platforms when sharing content or stories from one to another, or by highlighting the needs of users or groups to the larger network.

What do you think? What would you add about cross-platform community building? What issues is your organization facing or examples can you share?

Want to keep talking about community building across platforms? Join me for a monthly online chat!

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Kivi Leroux Miller helps small nonprofits and communications departments of one make a big impression with smart, savvy communications and marketing. She’s a blogger, trainer, coach, and consultant. Her new book, “The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause,” is part survival guide and part nitty-gritty how-to handbook for nonprofit communicators.

What’s your story; how did you get started with nonprofit marketing?
Ever since college (which is going on 20 years ago), I don’t think more than a couple of months have gone by where I wasn’t serving on a nonprofit board, funding nonprofits as a grantmaker, or working for nonprofits as staff or as a consultant. When I moved from California to Washington DC in 1998 to be with my then-boyfriend, now-husband, I decided to start my own consulting company, which originally focused on writing for environmental groups, thus EcoScribe Communications was born. In 2007 I started to transition away from consulting for a few clients at a time to more writing, online training, and public speaking, which lets me connect with thousands of nonprofits every year. I love it!

What kind of organizations have you worked with?
My degree is in environmental science, so I started with environmental groups and then branched out to other progressive causes like animal welfare and HIV/AIDS support organizations. I’ve always preferred to work with smaller organizations because I felt like my impact was always greater there. Now that I’m doing online training, I’ve had small nonprofits in all 50 U.S. states, in nearly every Canadian province/territory, and more than two dozen other countries participate in webinars. They represent every kind of nonprofit you can think of!

What’s the difference between online and offline marketing – or is there one?
I think they are more alike than many people think — at least the people who get tied up focusing on the tools, rather than what they are trying to do with the tools. Good nonprofit marketing is all about knowing who is on the other side of the conversation and talking with them about your cause in ways that are meaningful for them, regardless of whether that conversation is taking place in person or over email or social media.

What are the biggest obstacles organizations face when it comes to successful marketing?
If you put aside basic resource issues of time and money, I think fear is actually one of the biggest obstacles. Nonprofits seem to be more acutely concerned than small businesses, for example, about what someone might think or what someone might say about this or that, and it makes them too cautious and conservative in their marketing. It’s like they just want to quietly blend in, when what they really need to do with their marketing is stand out! I talk about several ways to deal with that kind of fear in the book.

We know storytelling is important for grant applications and fundraising appeals, how is it most useful in marketing?
Stories are the best way to bring to life for people what it is you do. So many nonprofits have long lists of programs and services that are laden with jargon, and after you read them, you still don’t really understand what happens day in and day out. Stories provide the examples and the context for what nonprofits are doing. They are essential from a marketing perspective, because they are so much easier to remember and to pass on to others than straight facts and figures. They also usually contain an emotional punch that grabs you and sticks with you. The staying power of stories is really underestimated.

In your book, you use the term “Attitude of Gratitude” – just what does that mean?
It means that you embed being thankful into your everyday approach to your work. It’s easy for all of us, in both our personal lives and in our professional lives, to take others for granted. We all get too busy; we all start to expect more from the people who are good to us than we really deserve to (yes, I’m speaking from experience!).

On a practical level, having an attitude of gratitude means putting higher priority on getting your fundraising thank you letters out to your donors than on producing a newsletter that goes to your entire list. It also means reciprocating the generosity of others, which you can do with something as simple as a retweet.

With so many options for tools, products, and channels today, how do organizations keep marketing to a reasonable budget (while still making a big splash)?
Online marketing is so affordable that managing the time budget is actually a bigger challenge than managing the money budget. It all goes back to focusing on specific groups of people who you need to reach and selecting the tools that make is easiest to connect with them. The book is full of cost-saving and time-saving tips because all of the groups I work with have very limited quantities of both!

How can readers learn more about your work, your book, and follow the conversation?
NonprofitMarketingGuide.com is the home base. From there, I write a weekly e-newsletter and I  blog a couple of times a week. You can also find me on our Facebook Page and I’m kivilm on Twitter and Slideshare.

The book is available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

Here are my slides:

If you want to dive into the speaker notes, simply click through to the Slideshare presentation here and use the “Notes on Slide” tab beneath the slides.

Some of the research data and other information can be found in detail here:

• http://nonprofitsocialnetworksurvey.com
• http://e-benchmarksstudy.com
• http://charities.justgiving.com
• http://www.communityorganizer20.com/2009/12/01/what-will-online-giving-look-like-next-year/

Last week I participated in NCVO’s ‘Ask the Expert’ leading up to the seminar and you can check out the Q/A here.