Listening Dashboard

Why create a listening dashboard?

• Save time looking for news
• Monitor multiple channels at once
• Track your organization and your cause
• Create a shared tracking space for your team or whole organization

How to get started:

• I suggest using Netvibes, you can also try iGoogle or even Google Reader
• Use this step-by-step guide for adding RSS feeds
• Refer to the slides below for examples

Content Map

Why create a content map?

• It provides an easy-to-access reference for everyone in the organization showing all content and outlets
• Supports cross-team collaboration as staff understand where their content is going
• Supports tracking and analysis for message and call to action response

How to get started:

• Use this template: http://bit.ly/DIYtemplate
• Follow this step-by-step guide for using the template
• Refer to the slides below for examples

Content Calendar

Why create a content calendar?

• Easy reference
• Coordinated messages
• Supports tracking and segmenting
• Ensure people receive appropriate amount of messages
• Create multiple touch-points
• ID traffic sources

How to get started:

• I prefer Google Calendar, though you can use any shared calendar you have in place in your organization – DivvyHQ is designed specifically for this purpose
• Create a format; ie: Message (STAFF) – Segments, Details
• Use color codes as possible
• Use all-day and timed events
• all-day for emails and blog posts
• timed events for social media posts

Here’s an example:

DIY Management Tools

For looking for a list of suggested tools, here’s a place to get started!

Free tools:

• Google Apps
• Tweetdeck, Hootsuite
• Bit.ly
• Netvibes
• Google Analytics
• Storify

Tool-Specific tools:

• Twitalyzer
• 14blocks
• booshaka
• EdgeRank
• Klout

Low-Cost tools:

• Hootsuite Pro
• CoTweet
• Small Act’s Thrive
• Spredfast
• Sprout Social

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For over a year now, I’ve been moderating and facilitating a monthly online discussion for people working as community builders and for those looking for feedback on community building efforts. It’s called the #CommBuild chat and was born out of a facilitated monthly Twitter chat called #4change. Often in these chats, participants discuss the online tools they are using and new platform functionality, all with the hope of finding ways to increase community engagement. For example, this month’s online chat, normally coordinated via the text chat platform CoverItLive, tried out a new platform, Google+ Hangout. This video chat application is part of Google+ and allows up to 10 video participants to come together—great for #CommBuild participants because they get real face time with each other.

So when Scoop.it, a new content curation platform, hit the web recently, the #CommBuild network seemed like the perfect place to try it out.

Whether you’re interested in community building, hot air ballooning, or the way robots work, you’re never going to be the only person talking about it online. In fact, the web is so full of information that many organizations are finding it useful to pull together topic-specific content on the web and make it available in one place. These can be useful internally and externally—you can share news with colleagues or create a dashboard of resources for your community. Scoop.it positions every user as a content curator. Unlike a blog, which positions us all as topic experts with a soapbox of our own, Scoop.it makes it possible to pull together media of all kinds—blogs, news, videos, etc.—from many different resources.

How it Works

Scoop.it has an impressively intuitive interface for just being in a beta launch. You pick your topic, add a description of the collection, then you can begin searching for relevant articles and other media to include. Scoop.it provides automated searches to match all the keywords you include on your topic—check out the image below to see automated searches on Digg, Twitter, and Youtube.

You can “scoop” content (add it to your topic page) from the Scoop.it dashboard. You can also browse the web and “scoop” up content about your topic using a bookmark (when you join, you can follow steps to add the Scoop.it button to your bookmarks bar). Once you’ve added information to your topic, you’ll want to share it. Every time you add a piece of content to your page, you have the option of sharing the link to your page via Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

For the CommBuild topic, I used Scoop.it’s built-in search feature to add news articles and blog posts to my page—they show up as suggested content, and you can click to dismiss or add to your page. Once I put a handful of items on my page, I clicked Share and tweeted that I’d created the topic to my network. Just like that, it was out there. I then opened Tweetdeck, a desktop application for managing Twitter and other social platforms, and watched the stream of content from Twitter flowing by. As I saw links of interest—especially ones shared by the #CommBuild community, I added them to the Scoop.it page by clicking on the bookmark/browser extension and scooping (saving) it! Almost immediately, people replied with links to related resources, creating a place where the #CommBuild chat could go to stay on top of news and posts related to community building.

Why Scoop.it is Worth a Try

We interact with articles and other media all day long, so pulling it together under a central topic should fit into that flow. Scoop.it makes it easy to collect and share the things you’re reading, talking about, and interested in without the feeling that you’re adding a whole new platform to your daily work. I’m excited to see organizations diving in to Scoop.it to organize news and information about their cause, neighborhood, or organization. One word of caution: A topic name (in my case, “CommBuild”) can only be used once, and your name may already be taken, just like unique URLs on Facebook and user names on Twitter. I think Scoop.it could become a very interesting space for real time data in situations of natural disaster and crisis communications. I would love to see Scoop.it allow for group use so that multiple people can collaborate to maintain a single space.

What do you think? How do you collect and share content now? How would you use a tool like this in your organization or work?

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Groupon Case Study: Jolkona’s Groupon Experiment | Community Organizer 2.0 – Check out this great interview by Debra Askanase with Laura Kimball, discussing their experiment using Groupon! "Jolkona ran a Groupon deal as an experiment to try to raise money for a specific campaign using Groupon. Jolkona partnered with the Seattle International Foundation (SIF), which pledged to match every donation, dollar for dollar, up to $25,000. Starting July 26th, Groupon Seattle’s G-Team allowed subscribers to join Jolkona and SIF in making an investment in women’s leadership by pledging support in increments of $10. For each $500 collected, Jolkona would fund one week of training for a woman leader to come to Seattle and participate in a 10-week fellowship program, run by iLEAP: The Center for Critical Service."
• Year-end appeals have you stumped? Four quick tips to get the ball rolling | Big Duck – "This is the time of year when most people I know are thinking about ‘back to school’ and beginning to plan their fall/winter holidays and vacations. Of course for us Ducks and most of you, this time of year is dominated by the ever-glorious year-end fundraising appeal. These days, the year-end giving season starts as early as October. In fact, as I write this (in mid-August), we’re already at work on several year-end campaigns. If you’re not quite there yet, here are a few quick tips I hope you’ll find useful to get your fundraising wheels in motion."
• When Communities Identify Their Own Poor, Aid Has The Most Effect | Fast Company – "When governments and NGOs plan on giving assistance to the most needy, how do they know who needs the most assistance? It's a question people are at great pains to answer, yet social welfare programs around the world are still plagued by error and abuse. That has not deterred the development of programs to help people escape extreme poverty. But because the poor–especially those earning less than $2 or $3 per day–typically hold informal jobs with no official records about their earnings, conventional ways to determine need are ineffective. MIT researchers in a recent study (PDF) looked at two alternative methods for establishing who needs assistance."
• 7 Things Nonprofits Can Talk About on Facebook Besides Themselves « – "Recently I met with a client who was sensitive about what they posted on Facebook, because they not only had privacy issues to be concerned with of their constituents, but they didn’t think that the other things they do would be applicable to their fans on Facebook. In other words they didn’t think that their fans on Facebook cared about what their organization was doing other than fundraising."
• Complex and Contradictory: A New Way to Think of Digital Activism | The Meta-Activism Project – "The effect of digital technology on political contention is neither good nor bad, it is both.  Yes, the Internet can help activists mobilize and re-frame public issues.  It can also distract citizens and feed apathy.  It can also help repressive governments watch and censor their citizens.  The sooner we accept digital technology’s complex and contradictory effect of political power dynamics, the sooner we can move forward to answering more interesting questions about those effects.  What contextual factors lead to these different outcomes?  Why does one factor win out over others when all three are in play?"
• 5 Reasons Social Media Measurement is Making You Lie to Yourself | social media measurement | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert – I love the comparision Jay makes here between Twitter and email, followers equals sends and actual Twitter reach (people reading and responding) equals open rate. Really changes the impact of those Twitter numbers! "Social media measurement causes unsavory (and ineffective) marketing behavior because unlike the rest of our marketing key performance indicators, social media metrics are out there for anyone to see."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Vivanista Hosts Question Session « Vivanista | Living Well. Doing Good. – "Have you ever wanted to ask a fundraising expert a question you just can’t get your arms around? Like ‘how many times can I invite my Facebook friends to a fundraising event before it’s considered spam?’ Or ‘do I really need spend the money for a back-up venue if my outdoor event falls on a date that it rarely rains?’ Well, now’s your chance! Starting  August 5th Layne Gray, Vivanista Founder, is going to answer 3 questions per week – submitted by you, and reply directly via video response. Ask her anything (it should probably relate in some way to fundraising or Vivanista, although she’ll most likely answer any questions about pugs whether you ask her or not). If she can’t answer it she’ll find an expert who can!"
• Facebook gets into texting game with Facebook Messenger — Tech News and Analysis – "Facebook has already started to supplant traditional email providers as a dominant way that people communicate online. And now the social networking giant is poised to delve even deeper into users’ messaging activity with a new mobile app with SMS-like functionality."
• KnowHow’s impact — Knowhow Nonprofit – Here's a great example of how you can reinvent the way your organization reports it's impact! And it doesn't have to cost a ton: this video is made with basic tools that are free to use. Have you made a video like this? Would love to see your other examples of annual reports that break the mold!
• Wikipedia Rolling Out Article Rating System – What Do You Think? – "Love it or hate it, you can't say Wikipedia is slow to innovate. The giant encyclopedia site announced this weekend that it will now roll-out site-wide an article rating system that allows page visitors to rate an entry on a scale of 1 to 5 on trustworthiness, objectivity, completeness and quality of writing. Article raters have the option of self-identifying as a subject matter expert for whatever article they rate."
• The Social Website: Integrating Social Media into Website Design and Function | NTEN – "If you're considering revamping your website to include social elements like the Facebook Like button, streaming from YouTube, or adding information from a social site through its API, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin. There are many ways to “get social,” and so many reasons for doing so. Primarily, it's about creating a fundamentally engaging experience for the website visitor that brings them closer to your organization."

Templates

• Community Map Template: http://bit.ly/DIYcommunity
• Content Map Template: http://bit.ly/DIYtemplate
• Metrics Template: http://bit.ly/DIYmetrics
• Listening Dashboard: https://amysampleward.org/2009/10/27/how-to-create-a-listening-dashboard-for-your-organization/

Books & Collections

• We Are Media
• Social by Social
• #SOCIALMEDIA NONPROFIT tweet Book01
• Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission
• Networked Nonprofit

Resources

• Tools and Apps to Energize Your Base
• 5 Steps to a Successful Social Media Strategy
• Google Analytics for Facebook Pages
• Google Analytics for Wikispaces
• List of Social Media Management Systems
• DIY Community Engagement Metrics
• Crowdsourcing vs Community Sourcing
• Slacktivism: Turning a Like into Social Change
• Sustainable Community Building
• Community Building: Landscaping for Gardening

Questions? Ideas? Examples you’d like to share? Drop any questions or things to add to the resource list in the comments here for others to check out!

Presentation

Resources

Community & Content

I’ve documented the community and content mapping processes before, you can use the slides above to see the process or review the blog post with instructions.

You can also use these links to get the templates:

• Community Mapping template
• Content Mapping template!
• Metrics Tracking template!

Analytics and Metrics

During the class, we talked about the importance of tracking and the possibilities that exist for tracking usage beyond just your organization’s website. Here are some of the resources to help get Google Analytics set up elsewhere and make the most of it:

• http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2010/google-analytics-for-facebook-fan-pages/
• http://blog.wikispaces.com/2008/07/google-analytics-for-your-wiki.htm
• http://mashable.com/2007/05/09/27-google-analytics-features/

We also talked about user testing and storytelling with data. Here are some links to help you get started:

• http://www.nten.org/research/lets-talk-how-open-apis-can-change-how-nonprofits-manage-data
• http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/awesome-free-tools-infographics
• http://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/archive/2010/05/25/make-your-own-infographic.aspx
• https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/splash?hl=en

Learning in Action

One of the case studies I used in our discussion was last year’s To Mama With Love campaign from Epic Change. Well, as of yesterday at noon, this year’s campaign is off and running! I shared my story and my heartspace on the blog yesterday, and would love to hear what you think of their campaign, if you’ve donated or contributed a story, and whether you think love can change the world. To Mama With Love is also completely open for anyone to participate in, so visit http://tomamawithlove.org and get started!

One more thank you to Laurel for inviting me to participate and to her class for the terrific discussion!

Location: New York, NY

Topic: Nonprofits & Social Media

Description: This class is part of the Master of Science in Public Relations and Corporate Communication program at NYU. I will join Laurel Hart’s class to discuss some of the key ways social media has impacted nonprofit organizations and the opportunities for the social impact sector to leverage the social technologies available today and in the future.

Resources

• Course page
• Notes and slides

Presentation

Do-It-Yourself

So often I find that we are too quick to say that because a website doesn’t have our domain, a tool is downloaded to our computer, or a platform doesn’t have our developers working on it that we can’t be responsible for measuring and analyzing the way we use it. It’s just not true! The do-it-yourself mentality that I hope to empower in those reading this post or that participated in the webinar is that if you are engaging there, then there’s opportunity to track it! YOU can do it!

Community Mapping

>> Get this template!

Step 1:  Identify all the groups within your community.

To start mapping the community we need to first identify which groups are within it. Do you have volunteers, interns, or adjunct staff? Maybe you work with schools so you have segments for teachers, administrators, parents, students, and then groups outside of the school. Here are some questions that can help get people talking to start sharing the groups they work with.

In my experience, the more diverse group you can get together to have this conversation and work through this planning together, the more complete a picture you can draw of your community. When people who work in services, programs, grant writing and fundraising, for example, all share their view of the groups in the community, not only can you start mapping the network but you can also have really rich discussions about the way different parts of your organization view the community.

Step 2: Define the goals that match each group.

There are two sets of goals to be discussed here: the first are the goals of that group – what do they want from you, why do they want to come to you, what do they get out of it? The second are the goals your organization has for that group – what are you hoping they will do, how will they contribute, what are you asking for from them? Again, this conversation can be really eye-opening as a part of building the community map, but also as far as encouraging dialogue within your organization and providing clarity around the organizational goals and the way they play out with the community engagement.

Step 3: Identify the tools.

This means identifying the spaces, platforms, and applications where each group congregates and where you can communicate with them. Even though much of these will be online social technologies, don’t forget about the offline spaces, too. Identifying the mechanisms you can use to communicate with each group can help you target your efforts, but in many cases illuminates areas where only one or a couple groups use a certain platform, while others use another – not only will this help you figure out where to say things, but can dramatically change what you say where.

Content Mapping

>> Get this template!

Step 1: Identify all the content.

Now, for this content map to be as valuable across your organization as possible, you want to be as specific as you can be with this section. I’ve listed some examples to get you started, but really think about all the various pieces of content you have. Instead of listing “blog posts,” instead, list what those blog posts are about: maybe job openings, volunteer opportunities, news about your work, examples of your services or people you have helped. New grants or new programs. There will probably be a lot of things to list. And that’s okay!

Step 2: Goals.

These goals should primarily come from the Community Map where you have two columns’ worth of goals and actions. There will be additional goals as well, but you do want to ensure that the goals you have already identified from the community map are included here. The additional goals could be things like, increase visibility, recruit new funders, find new staff or volunteers, etc.

Step 3: Identify all the possible outlets.

Again, you can draw a lot of these from the community map, but you will probably find that this is an opportunity to be really specific, more specific than you were in the community map. For example, the community map may have identified facebook as a platform that one group uses. And in the content map you may list a facebook page as well as facebook events as you can create an event that’s tied to your page but publicizes and manages RSVPs for a one-time event.

Metrics Tracking

>> Get this template!

Remember – Even if you’re using google alerts and google analytics, you may not really be able to look at data over time in a critical way. You will have a good sense of where things are going or how people respond to content and actions, but tracking it like this means you can point to specific data to support your case. This template, like the others, is available at that link as a public google doc that you can save and reuse. It is not intended to be an end-all-be-all template, but it is designed to show you just how much you can be tracking. And get you thinking about where you may have more data points to add in. You’ll notice there are tabs for various platforms so that you can concentrate each view to one platform and measure points over time.

You will have data points that become irrelevant, it’s okay. You will also have data points that emerge later on down the road, and that’s okay, too! The tracking documents you use can be living, evolving documents. Be sure to add things in if they seem worth tracking and see how it goes.

Reporting

There is no point tracking what you’re doing if you aren’t reporting it! On my team, we have A LOT of things that we track. And it would be silly to think that we would have monthly reporting that covers all of it. Why? Well if we wanted to talk about all of it we would just look at the tracking documents! Instead, we have monthly reports that are created for two areas: content and community. They each pull out a few items that are noteworthy – whether it’s a change, a marked increase, or something we can see reflected in other areas of our work. And from those two reports, I create a global report that touches on the items highlighted from content and community as well as our programs.  It can be shared with the CEOs in a way that is directly translated into their understanding of our work as well as into their conversations with other organizations or funders.  These are a few tips for internal and external reporting.

Internal reporting:

• Weekly metrics for various platforms •Add metrics as you go
• Look at long term, not just short term changes
• Monthly reporting of trends and insights

External reporting:

• Share when there is something worth sharing
• Reporting context, not just numbers
• Ask for input and feedback

Example reports broken down by community and content may look like this:

Content:

• This blog post was the most read post of the month
• Facebook activity was highest around this kind of topic/content
• Newsletter subscriber numbers are not growing

Community:

• Participation at the recent event was high at # of people
• Interest in our example program has grown with # of inquiry calls/emails
• Volunteer numbers are dropping consistently over the last 3 months

Example contextual report may look like this:

• We are seeing the most interest around content of this type/topic and hope to share more content like that in the newsletter to spur interest
• With high turn out at events, yet volunteer numbers dropping, we hope to highlight volunteer opportunities and stories of volunteers at the next few events to measure impact
• We are looking to feature more information about our example program on the blog to help with the number of people interested in it

Thanks to all those who joined the webinar and for the folks at Nonprofit Webinars for inviting me to participate in the series! I had a lot of fun and hope it was useful for everyone. If you have other questions, please don’t hesitate to ask; and if you have examples or resources to share, please post them in the comments for other readers!

—–

Photo credit: richardjingram on Flickr

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Social Networking Sites Move Into Charity World – NYTimes.com – "Crowdrise, Jumo, Causecast, Causes on Facebook and others try to use social networking and crowdsourcing to build interest in charities and causes, and to help them attract donations. … But to many in the nonprofit world, the value of the sites remains to be seen. For one thing, they hand partial control over charity brand names and trademarks to users who are often unknown to the nonprofit groups they support. And virtually all of them ask users to pay to donate."
• Target community for best return on social media efforts – My recent interview with the Nonprofit Business Advisor is out! I talked with Kelly Sullivan about some of the most common mistakes or myths nonprofits have about social media, as well as opportunities to get started strategically. Would love to hear your thoughts and additional pointers you share with nonprofit leaders looking to dive into social media!
• An Important New Foundation Blog | Tactical Philanthropy – Great post from Sean about a new blog from the Peery Foundation. Does your organization have a blog? I'm interested in what you think about the reflections Sean shares and what you've learned from running your blog. "The reason I’m excited about the Peery Foundation blog is because I think that Dave and Jessamyn get that social media is best understood as a conversation and a conversation is most interesting when you focus on listening and learning. They’re even willing to take listening to extremes, such as this recent post by Jessamyn in which she attempts to crowdsource her own annual review by asking readers who she has interacted with to give her feedback on how she’s doing. While she offers the option of emailing her the response, she encourages people to post their feedback as a public comment."
• Get Your Group On: Introducing Posterous Groups – The Official Posterous Posterous – "Today we’re announcing Posterous Groups, a new service for communicating privately with your friends, family and colleagues." I use Posterous for my personal blog and have found it to be a easy platform – curious if others are using it for their organization or community group and if the groups feature is something you'd like to try!
• Yes, Finds Pew Study, People Will (and Do) Pay For Digital Content – "For a long time – right or wrong – content on the Internet has been synonymous with "free." Free music. Free videos. Free access to your local newspaper. Free blogs. And so some have worried that people might be reluctant to actually spend money to buy digital content if they can already find it (or something similar) online without having to pay. But a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project should assuage some of those fears. In fact, almost two-thirds of Internet users have paid for digital content."