Get the full archive here!

Some of the highlights discussed for engaging your community included:

• In terms of participation from community, we welcome posts and mentions with positive affirmations. Thank you’s and encouragement.
• It is also important to not the difference between goals and norms of participating. The trick is in trying to keep them synced up.
• @FNHC is doing it with their hub initiates, in my opinion anyways. Its messier and more time consuming but worth in in end
• I find that its critical to step back and help the community let itself emerge. Even the language used to enage has to be carefully crafted to avoid priming and group think
• I think that every community needs goals. Yes, think about the Starbucks communities. You know they want to sell coffee at the end of the day but they do much more than that.

Read the full transcript from the June event, and check out previous CommBuild Chats – hope to have you participate and share next month!

Join the next #CommBuild chat:

• Date: Thursday, July 21st
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Topic: Community Building, of course!
• Location: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

About the CommBuild Chat:

These monthly chats originated out of the #4Change network and are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools. If you have a topic or question you’d like to explore in an upcoming chat, feel free to let me know anytime!

Hope to have you join us in July!

Get the full archive here!

Some of the tools discussed include:

• Hootsuite
• Bit.ly
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Owly and htly
• Tweetdeck
• TweetWhen
• and so many more!

Read the full transcript from the April event, and check out previous CommBuild Chats – hope to have you participate and share next month!

Join the next #CommBuild chat:

• Date: Thursday, May 19th
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Topic: Community Building, of course!
• Location: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

About the CommBuild Chat:

These monthly chats originated out of the #4Change network and are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools. If you have a topic or question you’d like to explore in an upcoming chat, feel free to let me know anytime!

Hope to have you join us in April!

Get the full archive here!

This month’s chat focused mainly on sharing lessons and examples from the 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference, which took place in Washington, DC, last week. Some of the topics from the chat include:

• Engaging specific ethnic groups/communities
• Using content to fuel community engagement
• Engagement for advocacy vs non-advocacy organizations
• Hyper-local communities
• Contests to encourage content sharing
• Social media in CRMs

It was a rich conversation, so I haven’t tried to pull out specific quotes. You can read through the full archive here.

Join the next #CommBuild chat:

• Date: Thursday, April 28th
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Topic: Community Building, of course!
• Location: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

About the CommBuild Chat:

These monthly chats originated out of the #4Change network and are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools. If you have a topic or question you’d like to explore in an upcoming chat, feel free to let me know anytime!

Hope to have you join us in April!

Get the chat archive!

The conversation in this month’s chat focused on these questions:

1. How to best stay motivated and motivate your community team. It’s important and not always discussed. The result is often community managers having to motivate themselves AND their community. Not a small feat. from @vrhinesmith
2. Question 2: How do we lower the barriers to entry for participation in our (our = whatever your community is) community? from Anna McDonnell
3. What are the best strategies for when your client/manager/boss doesn’t understand social media, or you have a different opinion about how to use it? from @kg

This month’s chat had so many great examples shared and here are just a few:

Laura Kimball: In regards to internal motivation – I try to recognize someone’s success — like share a screen shot of a comment they left that drove positive engagement, results, etc — to show what other people have done, their success, etc. Almost like an internal leader board to say “good job” and inspire someone else to do something similar.

kristy @kg: Saw this today/thought good way to encourage participation, while recognizing others >> Replied to comments from @calipidder @dubid0 & @mtsquirrel on my post about flow http://bit.ly/e8U9d0#climbing #sports #banfffilmfestival

Rabia @realize_ink: We’ve highlighted rockstar community members by creating a FB tab dedicated to them. Kind of like the posters we all made for child of the week in kindergarten. It was fun and done with their friends + fam, so it was a surprise for them, too. Great response from the community.

Sue_Anne: We also share “success stories” on our site and are trying to find ways to do this more — even little things community members are doing in their local area.

Debra Askanase: I know that my blogger colleague W. Ching Ya has a “member of the month” that she highlights on a custom FB tab. Here it is: http://www.facebook.com/#!/SocialBloggingTracker?sk=app_4949752878. Think it’s along @realize_ink’s idea

Claire Sale: When I worked for the Red Cross, we did a daily social media update to the comms dept, senior leadership, and anyone else who wanted to receive the info. The update included all of the social media mentions about the Red Cross (the good, the bad, and the ugly) that were relevant to our work. It really caught people’s eyes.

Get the chat archive!

The conversation in this month’s chat focused on these questions:

1. What are the best mechanisms for connecting online & offline communities? from @BonnieKoenig
2. How much communication with your online community is too much? from @ehon
3. our community has a handful of active posters creating most of the content – how do we encourage quieter members to contribute? from @anotheremma

Some of the highlights for me during our chat were the great, real examples shared of conversation starters and how to encourage new community members to engage. Are you looking for some new ideas to get conversation started with your community? Here are just a few of the ideas shared on the chat yesterday:

Kristy Graves @kg: Great one on Matador Travel’s facebook page, madlibs style: People should do more ____ and less _____.

@sueontheweb: Example of conversation starter: I shared one of my thanksgiving traditions with my cmty and asked members to share their traditions.

Claire Sale: I’ve seen some really great conversation starters by my local animal shelter – when the weather is good they ask “how do you get your pet to go out in the rain” and when the weather is good they ask “what is your favorite local place to take your pet out on a long walk” they also don’t hesitate to ask the same question twice (on two rainy days for instance)… not sure I’ve seen that before.

Get the chat archive!

Join the next #CommBuild chat:

• Date: Thursday, February 24th
• Time: 4 pm EST (1 hour)
• Topic: Community Building, of course!
• Location: Launch the chat here (not live until the chat starts)

Read the full transcript here!

Laura Norvig shared the guidelines used for their email listserv:

E-mail discussion lists hosted by the Resource Center are not moderated. Anyone who subscribes may post messages. The lists are supported with federal funding; therefore, messages that appear to be political in nature, partisan, lobbying, or in any way perceived as in violation of the law or against relevant government policy are prohibited. Other inappropriate postings include, but are not limited to, advertising of fee-based services or products, chain letters, jokes, petitions, resumes, and messages from individuals seeking employment. Job announcements are permitted only for positions at AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve America, and Senior Corps programs; at state commissions; with training and technical assistance providers; and at the Corporation. Announcements of member openings are also permitted. All other job announcements are to be posted elsewhere. Although the e-mail lists are not moderated, they are monitored. Subscribers who post inappropriate messages will be contacted and may be removed from the list if violations continue.

And Claire Sale shared the British Red Cross guidelines:

The British Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

Check out the full transcript as we also shared a lot of ideas around moderating and engaging with negative commenters. What are your best practices or great examples?

Join the January Chat!

For details of the January 20th chat and for full archives of previous chats, visit the CommBuild chat page.

When:

• Date: September 16th
• Time: 4 pm Eastern, 9 pm UK (duration: 1 hour)
• Visit: Launch the Chat (not active until the 16th)

Topics:

Thanks to the rich conversation in last month’s chat, we have our main questions selected already. But, you can still add thoughts ahead of time, or share more questions that we may get to or save for another upcoming chat. This time we will be addressing:

• Migrating a community from one platform to another
• Building a loop between online and offline community activities

Share your ideas ahead of time in the comments below, or on twitter using #4change and/or #commbuild – have an idea for a better hashtag for this chat? Please leave a comment with your idea!

Did you miss last month’s chat? That’s okay – you can still see the full transcript here!

In the future, these chats will have a topic and questions (generated from you!) posted ahead of time. As this is the very first one, I wanted to keep it open to focus on exploring what was most appropriate for this community in a few respects:

• Do we want to use a hashtag other than #4change?
• Does this time work or should the time shift (perhaps two times, so every other month it is time 1 or 2)?
• Who’s here and what are your passions?

Hopefully exploring those questions and responses leaves us with plenty of time to also ask questions that we are currently thinking about. So, join in!

We’ll be talking at 4 pm EST, 9 pm UK on August 19th, 2010. Use the link below to launch the chat!

#4Change Community Builder Chat – August 2010

Note on platform: During last week’s Twitter chat, not unlike previous chats, we dealt with some major issues around lag and load time.  What makes a Twitter chat different than a blog post, for example, is that the conversation is 1. real time, and 2. co-created.  A blog post has, like this, one person writing it and sharing it at the end for comments.  That’s not to say that conversation can’t be incredible – but even then it is probably still not real time. I’m a huge proponent of blogs (obviously) but didn’t want to give up on the chat when Twitter was misbehaving. So, I turned to CoverItLive as it was a tool I’d used before and knew I could launch quickly. I hope that in the future we don’t have to turn to a back up/alternative, but I’d love to hear your thoughts about the use of CoverItLive this time!

What’s the point in using “global” tools (social media) for local organizing?

From @amoration: I find we’re always both global & local, so many of us travel frequently that virtual organizing tools are essential even for “local” endeavors

From @cosechajusta: I think part of it is just getting a message out there in as many formats as possible, so you reach as broad an audience as possible. Plus, sending emails, mass texts, etc is much quicker than doorknocking or cold calling folks.

From @rootwork: Well, I think it’s about going where people/supporters/potential supporters are. And in each local place, people are on different types of social media, some of which are global in scope. But that doesn’t mean you appeal to everyone on the planet every time you post on Facebook — you target your use of social media.

From @winwinapps: The fact that social media is forming networks and connections allows local to have more global influence.  But for now local is still something I use a map and a tank of gas to determine the limits of.

Best Practices:

From @davidahood: Still strongly believe that there has to be an element of face to face/on the ground connection to any successful engagement and mobilisation of any community. At the very least the key central organisers need to have close ties to local organisers so that there is a robust and well understood vision and objectives.

From @neddotcom: one strategy: ease of participation, make it easy.

From @davidahood: agree with @neddotcom. People want to take action on things that they care about – whether it impacts them directly or not. Our “job” is to facilitate that action and make it easier for them to participate. Inspire, empower and facilitate to take action. Social media makes that much easier.

From @rootwork: Social media is inclined toward leadership development — it’s built around people posting, blogging, photographing, videoing, etc. — so it’s good to play to that advantage. Figure out how to bring enthusiastic social media participants into the “inner circle” of planning & organizing.

From @winwinapps: Make it fun. Make the goal easily quantifiable.

From @pelleaardema: I do believe you could draw an ‘engagement pyramid’ for social media too. Not everybody needs to stick with the easy actions, some volunteers may be interested to set up ‘their own’ soc med campaign for your cause

From @neddotom: recap 1. easy 2. fun 3. overall goal 4. action oriented 5. decentralized/open

Tools:

From @rootwork: Facebook has been pretty effective at creating a place for discussion/strategy between events or meetings. Like I mentioned earlier, we use Twitter for live updates from events, and that’s been very successful — lots of positive feedback that people can follow along even if they’re not there. It works really well for a) hearings (legislative or municipal) and b) rallies or direct action. We haven’t used it as much at social events because it’s less clear what to “report” on.

From @pelleaardema: we use twitter, facebook to share what’s happening in the online forums, post announcements, invitations, etc.

Metrics:

From @rootwork: We’re a pretty small organization, with a small staff and budget, so I admit to not doing as much measurement as we should because of lack of time and staff resources. Mostly we measure it in whether we get positive feedback from our supporters and whether they seem engaged (commenting on stuff on Facebook, Retweeting, etc.). However I just found this great how-to on integrating Google Analytics on a Facebook Page, and hope to do that soon. http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2010/google-analytics-for-facebook-fan-pages/

From @pelleaardema: # followers, # retweets, # clickthroughs (bit.ly). also measuring the number of clickthroughs from these sources to the main site (via Google Analytics).

From @neddotcom: WRT measurement, developed term CPA (with friend Andy Bourland (RIP) at first Interactive Advertising conference Monterey 1997. Cost per action. Action = money, sale, clickthrough, unique visitor, download, lead generation, email address, form fill out, questionnaire, etc. Working with Seth Godin at Yoyodyne, we defined measurement as 1) email participants then 2) continued/ongoing engagement

From @davidahood: We tend to track email opening and click through rates, what percentage of people take action from click through and growth in numbers of fans/followers/members. Personally still have a lot to learn about analytics and starting to use more – mostly google. But not everything is measureable….   mostly talking about level/quality of engagement via social media and feedback. will tend to summarise and record most common responses and also a few key ones that might be unexpected for assessment at end of a campaign or activity. if you couldn’t tell already, I’m big on conversation. So I value the interaction I have with people which isn’t always measureable but is undoubtedly invaluable in terms of engagement – expected or otherwise. The most engaged people will sometimes come up with the most amazing and creative ways to take action or influence. A great campaign is one in which people are so engaged it just takes a life of its own. That’s why its important to be clear on vision, objectives and values.

Roles:

From @amyrsward: think in organizing and community building there are always some roles, even if they vary from group to group in how they operate: guides/navigators, campaigners, day-to-day folks, content creators, share-ers etc

From @jonasthanatos: Can communicate effectively.. is persuasive, convincing, has charisma. I think all roles in community organizing have a bit of “willing to try to change the world” in them.

From @pelleaardema: thinking out loud: content creators/organizers, a positive spirit (definitely needed), guide/leader…. and i guess some positive criticism can help as well. Usually generates a lot of energy

From @davidahood: I’d say you need someone who knows the issue inside and out (campaigner), someone who is a media and communications specialist, someone great with web, social media and other technology and someone to organise events and coordinate volunteers and engage directly with members of the community one on one (community organiser?). also helps to have someone who can focus on fundraising. of course, in smaller organisations, this may have to be only two or three people

Successful and Unsuccessful Examples:

From @davidahood: Greenpeace internationally had great success recently with the Nestle campaign getting Nestle to end deforestation in Indonesia for palm oil. The campaign was active online and on the ground in over 22 countries – all with a focus on Nestle’s head office in Switzerland. Social media used to engage local supporters to act globally.

From @pelleaardema: Looking at the local communities I know: a lot of NABUUR communities use twitter to reach out, keep their supporters updated. HAve a look at @arrowwebhosp for example: a slum hospital in Nairobi

From @pelleaardema: we’ve tried to set up a twitter chat to answer concrete questions from local communities in a short timespan. That was not particularly successful. A lot of effort to get pple into the chat, then a lot of confusion, hard to manage the discussion and no concrete outcomes

From @rootwork: We tried to do some end-of-year fundraising through Facebook and Twitter. I think we got $20 But we didn’t plan it out very well, so I think it was more a failure of thinking through an effective strategy than an inability for those tools to enable such a thing.

From @pelleaardema: some NABUUR volunteers recently tried to fundraise for 400 malaria nets, via Twitter and betterplace.org. I think the lack of background on blog etc lead to them raising about 1/3 of the budget. Support info is very important. and good timing indeed

From @rootwork: The Media Mobilizing Project has done a lot here in Philly connecting community organizing to social media and especially video — community media trainings, organizing people to interview each other, etc. http://mediamobilizing.org/ VozMob is another great example of this, organizing immigrant communities in Los Angeles, using mobile phones, photos and video http://vozmob.net/en/about

From @neddotcom: Thomas Kriese as community manager of the now closed Omidyar.net was a great example of quite, decentralized leadership style helping guide a community to make real things happen in the world. Dozens and dozens of community lead projects happened around the world during the networks 3 years.

From @davidahood: San Francisco Zoo has done a wonderful job and engaging and supporting their community. http://www.sfzoo.org/openrosters/view_homepage.asp?orgkey=1859 It all started with one guy at the zoo (his name escapes me) who wanted to connect more meaningfully to all the people coming to see the animals. People now share videos and pics and are great ambassadors/advocates for the zoo and it’s program.

From @pelleaardema: A very small, local initiative: 3 community projects in Uganda, trying to conquer malaria http://twitter.com/TweetANet

Follow #4Change on Twitter or check out the #4Change blog to join the monthly conversations.