Fenton just released a terrific guide book focused on actionable metrics: “See, Say, Feel, Do: Social Media Metrics that Matter”.

It is tempting to imagine social media as its own communications island where Twitter Follower counts are valuable currency that can be exchanged for internal high-fives. In this scenario there is no way to exchange social media coins for broader communication or marketing dollars. But who cares when you can boast 50,000 likes on your Facebook Page.

This is the wrong approach for three reasons: 1) it doesn’t acknowledge the complete media consumption behavior of your target audiences; 2) it cuts off feedback loops that can be mined for insights that will improve engagement and returns and 3) it limits the reach and impact of your broader communications.

Fenton’s guide divides up the kinds of metrics you can focus on under the headings See, Say, Feel and Do. As I suggest in my Community Mapping approach, the actions and metrics should be mapped against the segments of the community doing them. I really appreciate that Fenton has included a similar recommendation. I also love that they include both a space for identifying and tracking the data, as well as a place to include the insights and actions associated with it. The best of the guide book, though, is the inclusion of an example reporting form and a template to use in your own organization.

Download “See, Say, Feel, Do: Social Media Metrics that Matter” here. 

What do you think? If you downloaded the report, did you find the template useful? What aspects of the do/see/say/feel metrics approach were you already using or do you plan to try out?

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).

• Freakonomics » Ten Reasons Why I Would Never Donate to a Major Charity (How to Be a Superhero, Part 2) – "“Giving to Charity” is another myth we fervently uphold as part of the Great American Religion — just like “own a home” or “send your kids to college.” It’s time we stop blindly believing in mythology. I’m not saying don’t give. I’m not saying don’t be spiritual or don’t be good. But do it with thoughtfulness, with true spirit, with a true desire to help. More harm than good is done when you blindly throw money at most charities."
• eAdvocacy Readiness Assessment – A terrific round up of resources from Aspiration – if you're looking to get started with or ramp up your online engagement efforts, check out these tools first! "Welcome to the pre-release version of Aspiration's eAdvocacy Readiness Tools. Aspiration uses these tools to help organizations identify deficits and establish best practices in their eAdvocacy work. These tools are in beta-test phase and available to users like you to help us make them better and more useful to you. We invite you to let us know about any problems you encounter by emailing tools@answr.net. We'd also love to hear your suggestions about how to make the tools more useful for you."
• Are you writing the blog posts that people are looking for? | Natasha Judd – Great post from Natasha with tips for getting more targeted with your blog content! "Blog entries are a great way to bring people to your website. They provide fresh content related to your organisation or business – the type of fresh content that search engines love. Other bloggers are also more likely to link to your blog posts than the home page (or services page) of your website, and those links can bring both referred traffic and a higher ranking on search engines. So, how do you create the sort of content that people are looking for and linking to?"
• Facebook Flap Puts Girl Scouts In Center of Controversy – Social Philanthropy – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – The Chronicle has a great story covering an opportunity for organizations to learn from side-steps of others instead of repeating disaster: "Girl Scouts of the USA found itself at the center of a social-media controversy this month when the Rainforest Action Network, an environmental group, used Facebook to protest the group’s use of an ingredient in the cookies it sells to raise money."
• Videos Posted by Non-Profits on Facebook: Non-Profit Resource Center [HQ] – Looking for tips and resources for building up your organization's presence on facebook? Well, the folks at facebook have put it all in one place for you! A couple notes: there are PDF guides you can download and a "share your story" feature so you can highlight the way you use facebook and get attention for all your hard work. Check it out!

I recently caught up with Mazarine and asked her, “If there was one example or story you could share that exemplifies why you wrote this book, and a few examples of the kinds of content and resources included in the book, what would it be?” And here’s what she shared:

Mazarine Treyz, The Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising

When I was growing up, people loved to argue around the dinner table about how people could try to change the world, but every nonprofit was corrupt. (No one in my family has ever worked at a nonprofit, and we definitely don’t have a tradition of giving to causes in our family.) After I graduated from college, I thought about all of the conversations I heard back at home, about how there was just nothing you could do to stop injustices. That you just had to let things go. And I thought, “Wow, really?”

So, I moved to Asia, learned Indonesian, and volunteered at Yayasan Emmanuel, which had just started to run mobile health clinics in Jakarta’s poorest slums. My first day in the clinic, we picked up the doctors who were donating their time, and got to Tanjung Priok, a slum on the water in the center of Jakarta, in the early hours of the morning. The smell of garbage and burning hit my nose as I climbed out of the van. People were living in concrete boxes with only a door, no windows, and sleeping on pieces of cardboard. When the slum flooded, their houses got flooded too. People made a meager living picking garbage and selling what they could. I had all kinds of preconceived notions about what I would find in Jakarta, but nothing prepared me for the massive skin diseases, people with all of their skin flaking off, people who had leprosy so badly that most of their fingers and toes were gone, and their skin was so mottled it looked like it was sliding off their bodies. I didn’t know that you can get leprosy from having a cut on your foot and then stepping into some dirty water, but you can.

Standing far away, I had no idea what people needed. Being there, I realized that people clearly needed access to clean, fresh water. Now WatSan has helped people in Tanjung Priok get filters for creating fresh clean water, and they have started selling it to other slums, creating income, a cottage industry, and money for uniforms for their children to attend school, breaking the cycle of poverty. All from water.

It was an experience that changed me forever. I realized that I could help make people aware of these situations overseas by writing about them. When I returned to America I began my career as a nonprofit consultant. I co-founded a nonprofit called “The Moon Balloon Project” and worked for arts in healthcare nonprofits.

But what I found was that the books for getting started in making a difference with your writing were just DULL. I tried some courses at the Foundation Center, and looked at some books, but couldn’t really get into anything I read. All fired up from my time in Indonesia, I thought, “Changing the world is so exciting! Why do these fundraising books have to be so BORING?” So flash forward to seven years later, I’ve worked full time at nonprofits and consulted part time with nonprofits, and I’ve raised a lot of money. In 2010 I completed my book, the book that I wish I had had when i first started. This book is about every fundraising method, tip and trick that I’ve learned on the way, for people who would like useful fundraising advice written from a cheerful, fresh, graphically rich, interactive perspective that they can immediately apply to their cause.

Some examples of things you’ll find inside my book:

• a CD with 80 pages of templates, FAQs and more that you can open up and instantly customize for your fundraising office.
• a series of quizzes and worksheets for your board members designed to get them to help you fundraise
• a sponsorship letter that has generated hundreds of thousands of dollars for me in sponsorships. And it’s helped readers too! Example? Heather writes, “I customized your corporate sponsorship ask letter to put together a package for an event we have coming up, and I’ve already gotten two sponsorships.” -Heather Davis, The Telling Room”
• a cover letter that has generated many interviews for me and others who got nonprofit and government jobs.
• a chapter on how to manage conflict at your nonprofit, something I really wish I had learned in the beginning!

Free Book Giveaway

Want to have a chance at a free copy of The Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising? Simply leave a comment here sharing your biggest hurdle or burning question. Mazarine will be weighing in with the conversation and one commenter will be selected at random to receive the book. We will select a winner from the comments on March 7th.

Thanks to Mazarine for providing a free copy and for participating in this valuable conversation!

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).

• Shareable: The Open Source Guitar – So many good pieces to think on from this post (thanks for sharing it with me, Billy!) Here's just on that's got me thinking: "We're now beginning to experience a shift from a global-objective index of needs and providers to a personal-subjective one." Check it out and let me know which ideas get you thinking, what your reactions are, and what you want to do with this concept!
• Networks and Hierarchies: A Typology of Digital Activism Today | techPresident – "A few weeks ago, powerful corporations like Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal weren't very concerned with the hacktivists and pranksters on 4chan. Now, thanks to the tactical success of Operation Payback's DDoS attacks, they are. The U.S. government also has its own problems with networked activists. After massive leaks of documents on the Iraq and Afghan wars and diplomatic cables from around the world, Wikileaks has demonstrated that it is a formidable threat to American legitimacy and power. These are but two recent examples of how decentralized digital networks can have dramatic effects on centralized hierarchies. However, these two alternative structures of human organization can interact in a variety of ways, both mutually beneficial and destructive. Below is a typology of how networks affect hierarchies in the digital world. In their interactions with hierarchies, members of networks can act in the following roles."
• Facebook Privacy for Nonprofit Organizations | Idealware – "Facebook seems to generate a lot of discussion about the way it handles privacy and security, and not without reason—personal data protection is worth some scrutiny, and Facebook has a questionable track record in this area. However, these issues don’t apply in the same way to nonprofits who have an organizational presence on Facebook. Organizational data is, by definition, far less personal than the information an individual might trust to the site, so you’re much less likely to want to keep it private. But there are other privacy concerns for nonprofits that use Facebook—even if your own privacy isn’t a big concern, it’s important to think of your constituents’ privacy. What does that mean for you? We talked to a few experts and condensed their advice into this article. We’ll take a look at the issues you most need to be concerned about one at a time."
• Teach Parents Tech – I'm having so much fun playing with this new template from Google – it filters videos and other resources and pulls them together for the person you want to help get tailored tech support. And it's fun! Check it out – anyone you want to share it with?
• eCampaigning Ideas | Advocacy Online – "This year's edition of eCampaigning Ideas includes eight great case studies put forward by groups using our software in a number of countries worldwide. Each case study includes background information about the issue and the campaign, key learnings, benchmark numbers, and outcomes. We hope you will download the file, find some useful information, and be inspired!"

Location: Readytalk

Topic: Tools and Options for Selecting Social Media for Your Organization

Description:  The hardest part of getting started with social media is figuring out what tools your organization should use. How do you work through all the possibilities, hype, and data to decide which channels actually make sense for your organization? Look no further than this webinar series, “The Social Media Decision-Maker’s Toolkit”, brought to you through an Idealware & NTEN partnership. Over the course of 5 trainings, we’ll take the mystery out of the process and walk you through the creation of your own social media strategy, step by step.  I’ll contribute to this webinar as a guest speaker weighing on tools and options.

Related Links:

• The Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide
• Event details and resources

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).

• JustGiving blog: Seven-year-old Charlie raises more than £100,000 for Haiti! – Read this great case study from JustGiving about Charlie's bike ride to raise money for Haiti relief support. "Charlie was really upset by the television footage of the Haiti disaster, so, in conversation with his mum, he came up with idea of cycling around South Park near his home in Fulham, London as many times as possible. As Charlie puts on his JG page, ‘at least 10 laps, I hope!’. Charlie set himself a fundraising target of £500 for UNICEF – not an insubstantial amount for a seven-year-old."
• Why We're In the Age of the Citizen Philanthropist – There's a great post up on Mashable with quotes from Britt Bravo (Have Fun Do Good), Kari Dunn Saratovsky (Case Foundation), and Peter Panepento (Chronicle of Philanthropy). "Our new communications technologies have empowered the individual, and caused a disruptive effect on the non-profit sector. Here are five examples of the citizen philanthropist’s immediate impact."
• Footnotes: Online Outreach on a Budget – January Nonprofit Blog Carnival – "This month we spent some time collecting posts about nonprofit communications on a budget. Below you'll find a combination of great resources that were submitted, and information I've found useful in my own research on online outreach. So bookmark this post and take the time to apply this knowledge to marketing and communications at your organization – it's cheap (or free) and has worked for others!"
• Online Branded Communities: Misguided and Missing the Point – Marketing News Blog – This is an excellent review of best practices and case studies for online community management. Even though the authors (Kathy Baughman and Steve Hershberger) are focused on for-profit brands, the lessons ring true across sectors. "If you ask brand managers the purpose of online communities, the reply you’ll most often hear is “customer engagement.” Among marketers, this term is more prevalent than Frisbees at a dog beach. But the real question is this: Are brands providing meaningful and engaging experiences to their customers through their online communities? Our research on 135 online communities representing 45 major brands indicates that, with few exceptions, the answer is no."
• Idealware Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits by Laura Quinn in Computers & Internet – "What types of software should your nonprofit be using? It’s hard to even know even what types exist, let alone what might work for you. Through a friendly, easy-reference format, this book helps you pinpoint the types of software that can help your organization based on your needs and your level of technology savvy, and provides user-friendly summaries to demystify all the possible options.

  The 84-page Field Guide includes an overview of 35 different types of software, helping you to understand what each is, how it fits in with your needs, how much you might expect to pay, and some of the most common vendors in the area."

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).

• TakingITGlobal and Nabuur Launch New Action Guide on Online Volunteering | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – "TakingITGlobal (TIG), an organization that operates the world’s most popular online community for young leaders, and Nabuur, an online volunteering platform that links Neighbours (online volunteers) with Villages (local communities) in Africa, Asia and Latin America, announced today the release of a new Action Guide on Online Volunteering available for download on the TIG website." Check it out!
• Chase Community Giving Contest Ends With Yet More Controversy – Beth's Blog: How Nonprofit Organizations Can Use Social Media to Power Social Networks for Change – Beth Kanter has an excellent post chronicling and compiling many posts and resources, as well as commentary and criticism surrounding the Chase Community Giving contest that just finished. "This contest was the culmination of a two-part "vote for me" cause marketing strategy that started in November and has been rife with controversy. In some ways, it comes as no surprise that the race to the finish line ended with more allegations of dubious behavior by contest participants and those watching them compete. It's left some nonprofit professionals wondering whether these types of contests are a good idea." I strongly agree with Hildy Gottleib's comment at the end of the post and urge you to read both the post and the discussion in the comments.
• Online Fundraiser's Checklist – "FREE DOWNLOAD: The Online Fundraiser's Checklist. How Do You Ensure Fundraising Success This Year? Take advantage of Network for Good's handy new eGuide, The Online Fundraiser's Checklist, to ensure you don't miss a thing."
• 3 Powerful Social Good Trends in 2010 – Ben Rattray, the founder and CEO of Change.org, has a great piece on Mashable showcasing the three trends he sees coming in 2010 for the social change sector. "2009 saw a proliferation of online charity events, competitions, and “friendraisers” that spilled across Twitter (Twitter) and Facebook (Facebook) and filled email inboxes everywhere with more requests for money than any Nigerian prince could ever hope to make. And while it’s hard to argue that this is a bad thing — anytime someone gives money to feed the hungry instead of buying another digital potato seed in Farmville, global karma rises, if even just by a little — this focus on using the web as an ever-more elaborate means of getting people to fork over cash misses the much bigger opportunities just over the horizon."
• Try These Dynamic Digital Storytelling Platforms | Community Organizer 2.0 – "Nonprofit organizations can tell the best stories. Stories about the impact that a nonprofit has on people’s lives can engage, recruit and solidify donors and members. As ImpactMax writes so beautifully, tying individual stories to overall contextual problems and societal issues can really change policies. Anecdotely, I see a lot of blogs and Flickr photo streams, some YouTube and Vimeo use. Why limit yourself? There are so many other tools and platforms that are exciting, innovative, incredibly engaging, and beautiful. Here are my top digital storytelling platforms and tools for your nonprofit to try out in 2010."