Jan

2012

26

Category:

Training Design

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6 Comments

Peeragogy: Self Organized Peer Learning in Networks

Photo by Aussiegal

As a trainer,  I’m intensely interested in creating learning experiences that integrate or about how to use the technology for nonprofits that engage and inspire people to put the ideas into practice.    I’ve been obsessed with peer learning and self-directed learning models in my own learning and the trainings I design and facilitate.

The term Peeragogy came fluttering through my network, like a butterfly, and it caught my interest.  It resonated.  When an idea or concept makes me want to scuplt it out of mash potatoes,   I pay attention.

Peeragogy comes from Howard Rheingold via his Social Media Classroom and he explains it here:

When I participated in the Change: Education, Learning, and Technology MOOC, I grew even more interested in the intersection of digital media/networks with self-directed learners and collaborative learning methods. I knew that I wasn’t the first person to explore this space, and I was fortunate that Charley Danoff was in my second cohort of online co-learners. Danoff, it turned out, had written a paper on “Paragogy” with Joe Corneli (who coined the term). When I started talking to people about this exciting idea, some of them inevitably mishear it as “peeragogy.” Although “paragogy” is a more rationally derived word that extends “pedagogy” (teaching children) and “androgogy” (teaching adults), I’ve started calling it peeragogy because many people get the point as soon as I use the word.

UC Berkeley Regents’ Lecture: Howard Rheingold (Presented by Berkeley Center for New Media) from Berkeley Center for New Media on Vimeo.

On Monday,  Rheingold delivered the UC’s Regents Lecture, “Social Media and Peer Learning: From Mediated Pedagogy to Peeragogy” prior to working with a group of students in a seminar and launching a process to  co-construct a peeragogy handbook/sourcebook.

Rheingold published this post as a backdrop to his Monday evening talk.   He talks about the powerful combination of social media and peer learning.    His post reflects on his years of “learning in action” on his instructional practice of  peer-to-peer, global learning via social web.   What struck me was his authentic co-learning process with his students.   He explains it better here:

In retrospect, I can see the coevolution of my learning journey: my first step was to shift from conventional lecture-discussion-test classroom techniques to lessons that incorporated social media, my second step gave students co-teaching power and responsibility, my third step was to elevate students to the status of co-learner. It began to dawn on me that the next step was to explore ways of instigating completely self-organized, peer-to-peer online learning.

The ultimate test of peer learning is to organize a course without the direction of an instructor. Although subject-matter experts and skilled learning facilitators are always a bonus, it is becoming clear that with today’s tools and some understanding of how to go about it, groups of self-directed learners can organize their own courses online.

Howard’s goal is to ignite a a peer-created guide to pure peer-to-peer learning. In preparation for this project,  one of his students has prepared  a peeragogy literature review, based on his links about paragogy.

My questions:

  • How can this idea be best adapted for learners in developing countries that may not enjoy the same level of internet access?
  • How can this idea be best adapted for professional development activities for nonprofit folks?

This should be a fascinating learning  journey.

Jan

2012

25

Category:

Fundraising, Networks

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16 Comments

What Do Facebook’s New Timeline Apps Mean for Nonprofits?

Source: developers.facebook.com via Beth on Pinterest

 

Remember last September when Facebook announced all those changes to individual profiles, including the timeline?    One of the changes  was that your friends and fans can do more than “Like” or “Comment”  on Facebook. Three new actions were announced at the time, including:  Read, Watch, Listen to  help people better understand what their friends are doing online.     Facebook called it the “Open Graph” and the pr people called “A revolution to the whole meaning of listening to music together or family T.V.”   You can read more about how it works from the Facebook developer notes.

You can install an app on your Facebook profile that shares an action and it goes out on your newsfeed and is shared with your friends.   In the example above, the cooking app lets a Facebook user share what they “cooked” with their friends.

Recently, some apps have been using the OpenGraph in innovate ways.   The one that caught my eye was the approach used by Ticketmaster.  They are mashing up apps,  figuring out what music you listen to on Spotify and offering up tickets that might be of interest. This is both interesting but a little scary to me.    I asked folks on my Facebook brand page what they thought.  My colleague, Devon Smith, pointed to a cool application called “Art Finder” that helps people discover their friends’ interests in fine arts.

The Open Graph and apps are becoming more and more critical for marketers given the Facebook changes.   Here’s a description from Social Media Examiner:

Last year, Facebook rolled out Open Graph, allowing brands to connect to a user’s Facebook social graph. This year, it rolled out significant changes, allowing app developers to create custom actions using any verb and object related to the activity taking place on the app.

These so-called “lightweight” activities can be defined by the app creator and pushed throughout the Facebook experience.

Here are the highlights, and how the actions affect Timeline:

  • The Open Graph integrates with the News Feed, Ticker and Timeline, making the app a key part of users’ and their friends’ Facebook experiences.
  • As users engage, the custom action appears on Facebook News Feed, and remains on the user’s Timeline; e.g., Jane cooked a recipe from Best Recipes app.

Changes to the structure of permissions allow a user to give permission one timefor an app to post about that user’s activity on the app thereafter.

This is how you’re seeing so many more postings about what your friends are listening to, for example, if they’re using a social sharing music app like Spotify. It even gets its own designated spot in the Timeline and displays a running list of what the user is listening to.

Debra Askanase has a post about Facebook Timeline Apps and profiles three fundraising vendors that have developed timeline apps.   Debra says the benefits to nonprofits are:

Timeline apps afford an opportunity for nonprofits to promote causes, activities and mission. I can envision apps that promote online campaigns, encourage people to interact with the organization in a certain way, encourage specific actions, track activity, and/or to raise brand awareness. A few ideas:

  • Support the nonprofit: “Jerry supports the Canadian Red Cross”
  • Activism: “Debra signed a petition to stop fracking” or “Eliana contacted a brand to ask about its slavery footprint via Slavery Footprint”
  • Play a game: “Adam has donated 2,173 grains of rice to the UN to date via Free Rice”
  • Donate: “Kylie has started a virtual food drive with Feeding America”
  • Support a campaign: “David is growing a mustache for Movember”

In my opinion, I think the greatest Timeline app benefit is in the information the nonprofit will gain about app users, and how committed a supporter is to the cause. Installing an app is a deeper commitment than passively Liking a Page, or joining conversation on a Facebook Page. App users should be the organization’s most committed online supporters.

When an app is installed, the developer knows a supporters’ email address, other Likes, and how the user is engaging with the application. Ultimately, the app both gathers supporter information that isn’t available from people who Like a Page, and spreads awareness about the organization/campaign/cause through the ticker.

I caught up with Matt Mahan from Causes for a quick interview about Causes use of the new timeline apps based on the Facebook Open Graph:

1.     Can you explain “Open Graph” for non-geeks and why it isimportant?  How would someone at a nonprofit explain to their seniormanagement or board?

Open Graph is a way of connecting any website to Facebook so that people using that website can opt-in to automatically share what they are doing in real time—listening to music, reading articles, shopping, supporting nonprofits, etc.—with their Facebook friends. If this tool becomes standard across the Internet, which I think it will, it will dramatically increase peer-to-peer sharing of social information, making it easier for people to discover what their friends are doing. Nonprofits, especially smaller ones, stand to benefit from these changes because they will reap the equivalent of free advertising as people engage with them online. Because most nonprofits cannot afford significant marketing budgets, their online “mindshare” is low relative to the degree to which people care about them (vis-à-vis companies and other organizations with greater marketing heft). All in all, Open Graph should help nonprofits become a larger part of the mass scale conversation taking place on Facebook every day.

2.    How has Causes integrated the Open Graph on Facebook?

Causes.com has hooked into Facebook’s Open Graph with a number of action types that will allow people to publish their social good accomplishments to Timeline and their friends’ news feed. These action types include: join, pledge, answer, sign, give and a range of other actions people can take to help their favorite nonprofits. As people take these actions they will be translated into Timeline stories that expose their friends to great organizations and timely action campaigns.

3.    What is the value or benefit to nonprofit users of Causes?

Open Graph is particularly exciting for those of us in the social good space because awareness-raising and advocacy are often core to the work we do. You can listen to a song and enjoy it all by yourself, but social change always requires collective action. Nonprofits and their supporters now have a much more powerful tool for spreading a message, via what is essentially digital-word-of-mouth, quickly and cheaply.

4.    What does this look like to potential users?

For potential users the change is minimal. We’ll ask our users to opt in to share the action they are taking on Causes.com with their Facebook friends. We believe that altruism is social and social change requires collective action, but we also respect that not everyone wants to share their cause with others.

5.    What do nonprofits need to do in terms of strategy and tactics to make it work for them?

The short answer is, invest in your grassroots organizing capacity. Over the next couple of weeks Causes.com is releasing a number of new “action campaigns”, including pledges, polls, quizzes, petitions and so forth, that will make it easy and free for even the smallest nonprofits and independent activists to publish great action campaigns, track action-taking, and translate loose online support into coordinated action. I think this is a particularly exciting opportunity for organizations that see awareness-raising and advocacy as core objectives in the coming year. We’re one of the only websites in the world to have fully integrated with Open Graph, so we recommend using Causes.com as a campaign hub for engaging various online audiences (Facebook, Twitter, website, email list, Causes) in deeper action-taking.

6.    How should they think about measurement of successful strategy?

Overall, the measure of success is how many people you can move to take action and how valuable that action ultimately ends up being for your organization or the population you serve. On Causes.com, our top-level metric of success is the amount of action we help our nonprofit partners generate from their supporters. We trust that those nonprofits are in the best position to determine how to best direct action-taking for real-world impact, whether it’s fundraising, awareness-raising, or advocacy action they are generating. Our goal is to build the world’s best platform for collection action-taking, so we measure (and will soon be able to share with our partners right on their causes) conversion rates from top-down promotion of campaigns via email and Facebook, on-site action-taking, and post-action peer-to-peer sharing, or what is often called “virality”. In a few months, nonprofits will be able to do this kind of measurement right on Causes.com at no cost, and those with larger tech teams will be able to do similar tracking on their own websites. Eventually we plan to power this kind of measurement and data analysis no matter where you run your campaigns.

7.    What are the best how-tos, resources for nonprofits to get started on this?

Definitive best practices are still emerging. We put together a quick overview on the Causes blog for our users, focused on what Open Graph means for their Facebook experience: . Our support team here at Causes is happy to answer questions related to our integration with Open Graph

Is your nonprofit or have you seen a nonprofit using the Facebook’s Open Graph in a creative and effective way?     What are your questions about leveraging Facebook’s Open Graph?

Jan

2012

24

Category:

Content

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17 Comments

What Comes First, Content Creation or Curation?

Flickr Photo by Carissa Marie

This is definitely not a chicken and egg question!   A debate in content marketing circles is whether or not you should simply focus on creating original content and forget content curation.   Let’s be clear as my fellow content curator, Jan Gordon, says:  There is no curation without original content.

I might qualify this a bit by saying, there is no curation with awesomely addictive social content!  And that means creating content – blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates, YouTube Videos – that is valuable and high quality.   Not sure if you have awesomely addictive content?   Noland Hoshino recently pointed to this excellent checklist from the Content Marketing Institute.

 

Source: contentmarketinginstitute.com via Beth on Pinterest

 

But, remember don’t think content creation vs curation or as  is an either/or.  It is a both/and.

I might also add:  There is not social content creation with content curation.     Content curation, the process of seeking and making sense of the best content on your topic or issue from other content creators,  can be the foundation of a content strategy.   It can not only help you create original content, but also helps you builds your audience or network.

There are many other benefits to content curation – it can help build your staff expertise in a topic area, build thought leadership,  reduce mindless information consumption, and inspire  high quality original content.     While content creation and content curation are two different activities, requiring different skill sets,  there are a couple of places where they overlap.

Curated Content Formats

We know that content curation is much more than slapping together links or engaging in “push button” sharing with your circle of friends.   Professional content curation is making sense of the topic by researching what’s out there.  I like to think of content curation is going the library to research sources for your term paper!

This post from Social Examiner called:  26 Tips for Writing Great Blog Content is an excellent example of a blog post that is curated from many resources.     I’m being a little ironic pointing out an example that includes lots of excellent resources and links to how to create awesomely addictive content for your blog.    If your organization is writing a blog,  this post is worth 30 minutes of your time to sit down and to explore with your team.  You’ll come away with some very useful tips for taking your blog content to the next level, from the technical stuff like SEO to getting into the writing zone.    (There’s a very simple and useful blog editorial template)

Newsjacking

Source: nonprofitmarketingguide.com via Beth on Pinterest

 

A big hat tip to Nancy Schwartz for curating on Pinterest this blog post from Kivi Leroux Miller summarizing David Meerman Scott’s e-book on Newsjacking which is well worth the $6.99.      Newsjacking is piggy-backing on timely news or Meerman points out “the second paragraph of a news story.”    It is done by creating original content that takes advantage of timely events that are getting mainstream media attention and providing your organization’s view or take on the topic and sharing it with your audience, including journalists.

Now, this is exactly what one does with curation on a day-to-day basis.   Once you discover related content, you describe giving it your point of view or relating it back to your organization’s programs.   A good curator will do with content that is not, at first glance, related to their subject (This skill is called “Transdisciplinarity,” or  ability to understand and translate concepts across multiple disciplines)

Kivi suggests making Newsjacking part of your staff meetings – because you have to be agile to be able to pounce on the news.  Leveraging current events as part of your content strategy – either by curating or creating original content – can also help your get more attention, but provide useful content for your network.

How are you creating awesomely addictive content for your organization’s strategy?   Is content curation or newsjacking part of your strategy?

Jan

2012

23

Category:

Mindfulness

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16 Comments

The Information Diet: Not Just A Book, A Movement For Conscious Consumption of Information

I’ve been curating resources and teaching workshops on the topic of information coping skills for a couple of years.   I first became interested in the topic after reading  David Shenk’s “Data Smog” in 1998 using the metaphor of environmental problems to talk about the dangers of having too much online information, primarily email.  This was in the era before Facebook and there was far less information available compared today.  (My favorite practical principle from Shenk was “Give A Hoot, Don’t Email Pollute” when talking about the need for developing will power in consuming and sharing digital information.)

Click Through to Amazon and Get This Book!

So when I heard about Clay Johnson’s  The Information Diet:  The Case for Conscious Consumption that uses the metaphor of the obesity epidemic and sustainable food production to frame and discuss how the problem impacts us today, 14 years later,  I immediately put the book on my plate!      As the author explains in the introduction,   what we know about food has a lot of teach us about how to have a healthy relationship with information.        He gives the history and context of the obesity problem and points out the similarities to information consumption problem.

The problem of “information overload” is nothing new and has been around for centuries.   All you have to do read Ann M. Blair’s  ” Too Much To Know:  Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age” and you’ll get a historical perspective of the problem.   Johnson reframes the problem in a modern age as “information consumption” suggesting the problem isn’t the amount of information we have at our disposal, but our mindless consumption of it.

In the six well-researched chapters in part 1, he takes through the economics of information and the biological consequences of our information consumption.    He references the leading thinkers,writers, and researchers in this area – from Linda Stone (email apenea), Roy Bautmeister/John Tierney (Will Power), and Nicolas Carr, (Internet Shallows).   Given he his background as founder of Blue State Digital and working with the Dean Campaign and Sunlight Foundation, he tells the story through the lens of political campaigns and movement building on the social web as well as a personal narrative. I love the chapter on “The Symptoms of Information Obesity” where he shares a persona based on his wife, Rosalyn Lemieux, that illustrates how too much information can warp our sense of time and other ways it can be toxic to our lives.

The second part of the book takes us from theory into practice where he offers his recommendations for the Information Diet.  Rather than take the philosophy of information overload community and productivity books that are aimed at helping  you get “everything done” and in the process help you continue to consume too much information, he provides some principles for taming our information gluttony.   If you’ve been through weight watchers, you’ll immediately make a connection to some of the techniques he suggests. For example,  keeping a journal of what you consume and taking incremental steps towards reducing it so it becomes a lifestyle change.  Here, he draws from the work of Howard Rheingold when talking about data literacy and attention fitness as well as others and lays out an information diet that is intended to help us change in our daily habits.     He doesn’t recommend quick fixes like “unplugging” which is the metaphorical equivalent to a crash diet because it doesn’t work.

His chapter on “Data Literacy” describes what  sounds a lot of good content curation skills minus the social sharing part.  The steps of intelligent seeking of information by having good filters and knowing your sources and making sense of the information or synthesis.  This is good, basic digital literacy principles that have been taught by educators and librarians taught in the early 2000′s and continue today.  I think the social sharing part is important because that is part of consumption habits and it takes having restraint – not mindlessly clicking a button.

His specific tips are geared for folks (like me) who because of their occupation, have a lot of screen time and are geeks.   His methods make use of some of the online software that helps you keep track of time.   Personally, I also believe in adding in other methods such as time for reflection and slowing down like those recommended by Bregman’s 18 Minutes Book.     His chapter on what to consume, gives us a suggested information intake that reduces the 11 hours a day we spend consuming information to 6 hours per day.    It might look something like this:

7-8 am:  Information consumption time (newspaper, social media feeds, etc)
11-12: Email
4-5: Email
8-10pm: Entertainment time – television, social media
10-11 pm:  Book Reading

He suggests filling in the reclaimed hours producing, rather than consuming.    This is what Harold Jarche has called “sense-making” as part of an elegant framework of seek-sense-share that has helped me curb my over consumption habits.    Johnson also engaging in other activities that sharpen the mind – like paper journal, writing, photography, or other synthesis activities that get you away from that stream.  I know for myself that a return to keeping visual journals on paper and drawing with magic markers has been incredibly useful in this area.

The most provocative ideas of the book are in the third part – a call to action.    As Johnson points, our information consumption patterns have a social consequence – it isn’t just about our individual habits.   There is also a social change role.   We have to break the insidious cycle that we create with bad information consumption habits – we have to consider the suppliers – and especially in light of another election coming around.   The author not only wants to change our habits, but start local campaigns to encourage our social connections to change as well.   He suggests these goals:

1.   To increase digital literacy of our communities with good digital literacy skills
2.  To encourage consumption of local information
3.  To reward good information provides and to provide economic consequence for those who provide affirmation over information

He is encouraging us to self-organize around this idea through his site, Information Diet to improve digital literacy in your community by organizing meet ups.   And, above all, to act.    In order to improve digital literacy in your community, you need to start with kids.   He suggests finding and funding nonprofits that teach children digital literacy skills in school or after school programs.   He also suggests sharing what we’ve learned in terms of taming our information overdoing it.

The ultimate goal of this book is for us to improve our collective information literacy and consumption skills so we have the greatest ability to understand the truth and make our communities and society a more just world.

Now, that’s inspiring!

See also this review in the Atlantic

Jan

2012

20

Category:

Measurement, Mobile

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4 Comments

Social Media and Cute Dogs Go Mobile And Other Cute Animal and Nonprofit Tales

The Cute Dog Theory or more precisely the Cute Animal Theory states that including cute animals in your social media content inspires more people to share the content.    If don’t believe that is true,  check out this YouTube video from VW of dogs barking the theme from Star Wars as a Superbowl Teaser.   In less than a day, it has over 1 million views.   The cute animal theory has not gone unnoticed by nonprofits, even those that are not animal welfare organizations,  zoos or aquariums are sharing content featuring cute animals on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

And now, mobile.

Best Friends has just launched a fun mobile app.   The app lets you take photos of yourself, and uses  facial recognition magic to find your dog match.   As Noland Hoshino pointed out, it works in a similar way to this app.  I showed the app to my kids and it was a huge hit!   Not only did they take repeated photos to see what breed of dog would match their photo,   they also started to ask if we could adopt a dog.

Source: bethkanter.org via Beth on Pinterest

 

This app will also allow you to save & share your photo matches with your friends across Twitter, Facebook or on Best Friend’s User Generated Content Dog Wall – that is part of its Invisible Dogs Campaign, a multi-channel social media campaign to spark the  Invisible Dogs grassroots movement with the ultimate goal of no more homeless pets.  The App also provides:  adoptable dog search by zip code,  simple giving to help homeless pets, and their  grassroots pledge to start seeing invisible dogs.  The dual purpose of the app is to raise awareness of the thousands of dogs waiting in shelters to be seen and adopted – and to have a little fun at the same time – perhaps a party or drinking game.

I asked Best Friends Marketing Coordinator Claudia Perrone how they were measuring success.    The ultimate KPI, of course, is dog adoptions.   But they are looking at associated metrics such as:  downloads, user comments, sharing, and google analytics to show dog searches… then data collection (emails and mobile optins), microdonations, and buzz via earned media.   Says Perrone, “We will also look at  app users who came into the BFAS fold over time (email database, do they keep giving, etc).  The bottom line is that it is a fun addition to our Invisible Dogs campaign and our first test into the mobile app world.”

The Android version is coming soon!

Update:  Ted Fickes wrote this terrific post about how cute animals also help fundraising appeals!

Even Cute Fictional Animal Characters Work

That’s what Michelle Berg, New Media and Events Manager, at the Second Harvest Food Bank in Silicon Valley discovered.  Michelle, was a participant in the Measuring Networked Nonprofit peer learning groups supported through my work as Visiting Scholar at the Packard Foundation.  Each participant organization designed and launched a measurement action learning project that used measurement to improve results for networked approaches and social media.

Michelle’s project was focused on measuring engagement through multiple channels, but especially Facebook.

Goal: Increase Facebook engagement to create a more educated online community that is ready for more tangible calls to action.

Specific measurable objectives  included:

Increase page likes to 12,000 by 12/31/2011 (achieved on 12/1/11)

Increase post feedback by 300% in September and by 200% in following months

Increase post sharability

Strategy:  Create more fun and sharable content and build atmosphere conducive to supporter-initiated posts.

Tactics:  Measure what content works, especially during Online Action Challenge, and implement throughout 2011 holiday season.  Use visuals to tell our story and reach friends of fans.

Primary measurement tool: Facebook Insights

In September, they ran their 3rd social media challenge, in this case, the Oracle Online Action Challenge.  Oracle made donations for all online actions (likes, comments, RTs, photos, etc) during Hunger Action Month, reaching a maximum donation of $25,000.  Creation of content and user interactions were considerably higher than in other time periods.  They used measurement data  from this month to guide efforts throughout the critical holiday season.

Michelle mentioned that this was their largest online donation action from a sponsor, but they had tested the idea with several smaller sponsors.   Says Michelle, “The key to your results so you can include this information for a larger sponsorship.”

Michelle set up an editorial calendar for all campaigns for all channels over the next several months and focused on testing and measuring different content formats and topics on their Facebook brand page to see what generated the most engagement.    Michelle knows her audience very well because she is also responsible for giving tours of the facility.     The Food Bank uses its donations to acquire fresh fruits and vegetables, and Michelle notes that people are often surprised when they these food donations.   “The perception,” says Michelle, is that Food Banks only give canned tuna or Mac and Cheese. ”    So, Michelle started a regular feature called “What’s in the Warehouse Wednesdays” that was effective generating conversations online.

One of the campaigns for the Oracle effort during Hunger Awareness Month was “Hunger: Put a Fork in It.”    At the Food Bank, they encouraged visitors to pose with the giant forks and upload their photos to their Facebook pages.   In addition, they began to notice fans posting their own versions of the photos and some included photographs of their pets with forks.    Those particular photos received higher interaction scores.    This gave Michelle and her team an idea:  What if they had a cute animal mascot for their holiday turkey donation drive?

They came up with “Perky the Turkey,” who was the mascot for their Thanksgiving Turkey Donation Drive.     They used Perky across channels to invite people to donate a Turkey for a Thanksgiving meal for Second Harvest to distribute.   On Facebook, Perky the Turkey asked their fans to tag themselves on Perky’s photo and let their friends know they donated a Thanksgiving meal.     While the ultimate metric was the number of turkeys donated, the Perky content was a hit with their fans.    And, Second Harvest made their goal of 12,000 donated turkeys one month a head of schedule.

Throughout the month of November and leading up to Thanksgiving, they used Perky the Turkey to promote food donation efforts.  They put sneakers on him to encourage fans and supporters to sign up for the annual fundraiser, a “Turkey Trot” – a run to raise awareness and dollars for the Food Bank.

Perky the Turkey’s popularity continued into December.  So he made an encore in the month of December, promoting Christmas food donations.

Now that the holiday season has ended, they will continue to consistently  measure online activities to create content that shares their story in an engaging way and inspires food donations.  Perky may become a year-round fixture or lead to another sharable ambassador for the Food Bank. As they reflected on the results of campaigns and the measurement data, some areas of  improvement will include formalization of cause marketing guidelines and continued testing of content that engages.

What have you learned from your measurement data that helped you plan and implement successful multi-channel campaigns?

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