Feb

2012

22

Category:

Content

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3 Comments

Are You Content Creation Impaired? Here’s Some Tips and Resources

Source: Copyblogger

Compelling content (and a good measurement process) is the heart and soul of a successful integrated strategy.     But, for many nonprofits, creating a consistent stream of high quality content isn’t easy.       This excellent infographic, “22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have A Clue” and accompanying post is a lifesaver for people like me who are “content creation impaired.”       Occasionally, like today, I find myself stuck or lack inspiration for what to blog about or there is a hole in my editorial calendar.      So, I’m going to write a post using the first tip,  ”Curation:  Compile a List of Your Favorite Blog Posts From Other Blogs”  and to be a little meta, the list of posts is about content creation!

Content Marketing:  Overviews, Context,  and Frameworks

Joe Pulizzi, co-author of Managing Content Marketing, has a terrific post highlighting what it takes to excel at content marketing.  The post starts with a quick video giving you the history of content marketing.  He points to John Deere’s magazine, the Furrow, which debuted in the 1930s as one of the first stellar examples.    The post goes onto discuss barriers  (acceptance,  talent, and technology) and challenges (the capacity to create compelling content) and how to move past these.   The post includes links to studies and other material that make the case for why content marketing is the heart and soul of your digital strategy.

I have been using the “Crawl, Walk, Run, and Fly” Maturity of Practice model as a framework for over a year now to assess nonprofit social media practice.  The name references a Martin Luther King quote.   I shared  the framework on this wiki – and encouraged other nonprofit capacity builders to remix it.    I was thrilled to see this version (although not a nonprofit specific version) for content marketing from a report by Altimeter.   Here’s how they applied to content marketing:

1. Stand: This organization may have dabbled in social media or created a blog, but activity is infrequent and not generally viewed as important within the organization. The marketing department relies almost wholly on “push” communications such as email marketing, direct mail, and advertising.

2. Stretch, Taking the First Steps While Scanning the Horizon: An organization at the Stretch stage realizes the value of content marketing and begins to build the strategy and support necessary to create and publish content.Understanding develops that, while many of the tools and media are free, content requires an investment of resources. An executive sponsor is necessary to lead the program and communicate its value and reach to the organization. This executive sponsor is also tasked with identifying team members to engage with early channels, building basic forms of content, and evaluating potential agency relationships.

3. Walk, Ambition and Forward Momentum: In this stage, content creation and production get a solid strategic foundation organizationally. From channel specific (e.g. “we blog”), content begins to become channel agnostic and is distributed across a variety of channels and platforms. Processes are formalized. This is the stage at which a team begins to take shape, strategy is more fully refined and tweaked, and the team begins to establish governance to scale and shape content processes.

4. Jog, Sustainable, Meaningful and Scalable Content Initiatives: The organization’s strategy is clear, as well as communicated throughout the enterprise at this stage. Focus shifts toward expanding the team and its ability to create experiential, engaging content rather than simply create and publish simpler stories and informational pieces. The processes for producing content are also more fully developed and strategic. Content is created with a view toward being reusable or repurposed across multiple media platforms.

5. Run, Inspired and Inspirational: In this phase, a successful, real-time integration of content marketing and curation is part of the fabric of nearly all aspects of branding. The organization has become a bona fide media company, actually able to monetize innovative and highly polished content that is either branded and/or related to the brand proposition. Content is sold and licensed based on its standalone merit, with content divisions having separate P&L responsibility.

Where do you think your organization is in this matrix?

Techniques and Tools

When I hear nonprofits talk about content creation challenges, there are barriers:   organizing it and creating it.    Holly Minch wrote this guest post about how an editorial calendar can make organizing your content way more efficient, but she has also created and shared this amazing template in a google document that organization can use to organize their ideas for content marketing.     Here’s a terrific case study about how Compasspoint has used the editorial calendar as part of its content strategy.

You might think that organizing your ideas in this way may take out all the fun and spontaneity or that if your organization is a small shop, it is overkill.   Not true.  It takes away the stress from “not having a clue about what to write about” and that is useful for any organization no matter how large.   I’m a one-person shop and I use an editorial calendar for this blog.    Editorial calendars can also be useful beyond tracking and planning for blog posts as this useful post from Michele Linn points outs.

Double Your Content without Doubling Your Work

Once you have an editorial calendar, you need to plan out how you will create content and share through different channels.   This sounds overwhelming, but it isn’t really because you are not recreating new and original content for each content, you are simply remixing and recycling.    Don’t think of content creation as a once and done task like you would for a campaign.    Either think big and chop into smaller pieces or think small and aggregate.  There are other ways to repurpose: change titles, formats, revise introductions, or reorganize.

Creating Content for Nonprofits

But you will have to create some original content – this is the process of curating, writing, making videos, taking photos, etc.  Kivi Leroux Miller uses theanalogy of  cooking and having some easy to prepare recipes for quick meals on hand.   The mindshift is changing your lens from a campaign view to becoming a mini-news outlet or publication.   So, think of your broad content areas as:  breaking news, features, shorts, and how-tos.     Mix in some content curation and news jacking.   Add the ideas of your editorial calendar.

I also keep a brainstorm file of different ideas and use these posts to trigger ideas for “Ever Green Content,” content I post anytime.    I keep these ideas in a google document, but some folks swear by evernote.

50 Social Media Content Ideas from Convio
20 Different Formats by Pro Blogger
25 Basic Styles of Blogging, by Rohit Bargavda
Ten Tips for Creating Killer Content by Hubspot

Have Your Community Create Content or Invite Guests

Here’s a dirty little secret.  Your organization doesn’t have to create all the content.  You can  set up a guest series.  As a one-person shop,  I use  guest bloggers throughout the year, especially when I need to take a vacation!  You have to be a little organized – have guidelines, templates, and recruit guest posts in advance.    Through content curation is where I identify guest bloggers or once or twice a year I will host guest bloggers who are covering a conference.     You can also get your community to contribute content. Here’s a terrific case study from Holly Ross at NTEN about how they got their community to help with content creation.

I’m curating articles about the 3′cs of content: creation, coordination, and curation over at pinterest for more.

How does your organization create compelling content when you don’t have time, talent, or resources?   What are your best tips for content creation?



Feb

2012

17

Category:

Guest Post

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4 Comments

Reporting Social To Stakeholders

Flickr Photo by ESML

 

Note from Beth: This past year has been a deep exploration into how nonprofits can use measurement and reflection to improve their practices as a networked nonprofit and using social media.    As part of my work at the Packard Foundation,  I designed and facilitated several peer learning groups and exchanges.   It was a fantastic laboratory to explore the power of peer learning and the right mix.       One of the topics that constantly comes up is, “How do we stay on top of all this learning about technology when we don’t have time?”    I’ve been experimenting on how to do this with my peers so I can better understand how to design for this experience.     One of the participants, Meg Biallas, does this through her blog – using it to synthesize and share lessons learned.   She has also found that moderating panel discussions with peers useful for learning as well.    She agreed to write this post about what she learned from a panel presentation she and other nonprofit social media professionals gave at the Social Media Week in DC – several of whom have presented or participated at one of the Packard Foundation OE Program Peer Learning Exchanges I facilitated.

Reporting Social To Stakeholders: Guest Post by Meg Biallis

This week I moderated a panel of nonprofit professionals as part of Social Media Week DC. But it wasn’t just another “Facebook 101” or a chance to pontificate about Pinterest. These professionals came to talk about standardizing the reporting process – about integrating social media results into the traditional reporting procedure.

Here are the key takeaways from a discussion with Danielle Brigida (National Wildlife Federation), Carie Lewis (The Humane Society of the United States), Alison Carlman (Global Giving) and Alison McQuade (EMILY’s List).

Influence the decision makers.

Help leadership understand the impact of social media by turning them into users. This allows them to see, first-hand, the impact of social media communication.

Carie Lewis explained that the Humane Society worked often and early to build buy-in: “We wanted the upper management to speak the social language, we wanted to get them online. Sometimes our president tweets more than the organization!”

How does the leadership views social media? Does it have a history of trying new things? Carlman explained that Global Giving’s leadership was already web-savvy, so implementing social media was a no-brainer However, Carlman needed to do more convincing with organizations in previous roles.

Find someone who will go to bat for you. Lewis explained that one of the Humane Society’s board members used to work at AOL. “His digital background is great, and he’s really become like a mentor to me.”

Metrics should match the mission and goals.

Your metrics depend on your ultimate goal. For example, the Humane Society uses social media primarily for customer service, while Global Giving uses it to drive fundraising. Quantify what you’re looking for. Do you want 2,000 signatures? Do you need to raise $50,000 for a pledge drive? If that’s your goal, then demonstrate in your reporting how Facebook helped you achieve it.

Both Lewis and McQuade pointed out that they don’t measure direct number of likes, though sometimes stakeholders like to hear about impressive milestones (“We just reached 10,000 fans!”). McQuade encouraged other nonprofits to take some time to understand EdgeRank to find out who’s actually seeing your content.  That can help inform the content you post going forward. (This process is also called “After Action Reviews”).

Report regularly and you will be rewarded.

Brigida said there are two benefits of reporting metrics. First, by showing growth, you can advocate for more resources.

The Humane Society actually used Facebook to raise money for an additional staffperson – and they got one!

But secondly, reporting helps you learn how to do your job better. “There’s a lot to learn from your online community,” said Carlman. “We capture important conversations, and figure out how we can better communicate with our donors.”

Learning was key for Brigida at NWF. “We started examining where our mobile traffic was coming from, and found that a good amount was going to the kids section of our site. That gave us the idea to create youth-specific iPad apps.”

Final thoughts from the panelists: Social CRM, gatekeepers, and learning in public.

Brigida: “Social CRM is the future. I would be happy if we could connect publicly available data with our internal membership databases.”

Lewis: “Social media is everyone’s job, but you need one person to be the gatekeeper.  We do quarterly privacy trainings for our more than 100 administrators who manage our affiliated social media accounts.”

McQuade: “It’s possible there may be no way to standardize these processes. Sometimes it feels like there is no standardization in nonprofits at all. But the important thing is to be responsive, to be available. That’s just part of having good donor relations.”

Carlman: “Report on learning. Be okay with telling stories of failure. When testing out new social platforms, take some time to experiment and do it well before giving up on it.“

What’s your first step to standardizing social media? What’s one thing you can do help your management and stakeholders begin to embrace social?


Meg Biallas is a Communications Associate with Fight Crime: Invest in Kids in Washington, D.C. She blogs about social media  on herpersonal blog, Meg Goes To Washington. ). This post was originally published here.

Feb

2012

16

Category:

Content, Engagement, Measurement

Tags:

13 Comments

How To Use Facebook Metrics To Give Your Audience the Content They Want Most

Links to original infographic

This post covers some simple techniques to give your fans the content they want most and inspire more engagement.     Many times we’re on the hunt for the tips of what to do and when we find them, we just implement them.  But how do you know if those tips are producing results?    To get more impact, you need to do some measurement to help you continuously improve and get more ideas about what to try next.     This posts offers some tips on how to use measurement to share content on Facebook that your fans really, really want.     You’ll enjoy more visibility, more interaction, and more conversions.

I found this wonderful infographic that takes you through the process of setting goals, making them measurable, picking your metrics, and making decisions based on your data.  What caught my eye was that last step of looking at your data and figuring out if you have met your goal.      The infographic offers a yes/no decision tree that I think is an excellent analysis framework that can lead to improvement.

Facebook analytics programs like Insights, Edgerank Checker, and Simply Measured free reports give you tons of data points.  I only look at these:

Reach
Virility
Content Analysis of Comments on post and shares

I look at these on a per post basis.   I also pay attention to and test these variables:  Time of Day, Day of Week,  Content Type

Here’s some tips on providing powerful content for your Facebook channel that you can improve with measurement.

1.   Timely, Relevant, and Quality Content: I have found that using the technique of  ”news jacking” or piggy backing on breaking news that is relevant to your audience and giving it your spin, inspires more comments and shares.    For example, when I shared this cartoon about PR disasters during the Komen’s flap, received a high number of shares and comments compared to other content post in the last month.      I’ve learned by tracking my content against metrics that relevancy rules – and sharing relevant links with conversation starters produces interaction.

2.   A Picture Can Inspire Many Shares or Comments: Again the visuals have to be relevant to your audience.    I also know from tracking my metrics against content for years now that my Facebook audience responses to easily digestible practical information, especially tips expressed visually or relevant humor.     For example, this post illustrating some simple privacy tips received a high number of post shares and comments.    This post, testing the concept that babies and cute animal photos get shared more often, received a high number of likes and no shares.

3.    Variety of Content Adds Spice To Your Page: Want to claim a space in your fans’  News Feeds?    Vary the content you post.  Facebook’s Edgerrank, the score that determines what content gets into users newsfeeds, rewards variety.    Don’t just post links all the time.   Make sure your posts vary and include  photos, videos, polls, status updates, questions, and links.     When I’m sketching out my editorial plan for the month, I column for “type” to make sure I don’t get stuck in a content type rut.    I also look at the analytics for engagement by content type per post.

4.    Consistency is Not the Hobgoblin of Small Minds: Research has shown that if you have a consistent posting schedule of high quality content that your audience wants, they will come to you.      Dan Zarrella’s research suggests posting every other day is is optimal.   This is a general rule of thumb that you should test and adapt for your audience.    Watch for signs in your metrics that you’re posting too frequently.   I use this rule:  I don’t ever post content for the sake of posting content and if there is breaking news that I know from past data that my audience will love, I post more often.

Having a regular theme each week is also useful.    I discovered this by doing a content analysis on comments.   I posted this fun, but practical link to social media icons on a Friday.   In the comments, someone shared it with their network calling it a “Fun Friday Geeky Share.”   I started a regular post on Fridays to share a “Fun, Friday Geeky Share‘ which gets a high number of shares, likes, and comments.

5.   Short and Sweet: Research shows that posts of 80 characters long perform well.     But don’t be a slave to this rule.    As Mari Smith points out in her post about encouraging more shares, now that Facebook increased the maximum update size from 420 characters to 5,000 characters, experiment with “mini-blog post” as long as the content is timely, relevant and helpful, you stand a greater chance of getting lots of shares.

6.   Experiment With Timing: There are several research studies that look at averages for page likes and comments and have suggested that weekends and evenings are optimal times for posting – perhaps because there is less clutter in the newsfeed.   My takeaway is to make sure that I am posting when my audience is there to engage, not when it is convenient for me.    Again you need to test.     When I experimented on posting on Saturday,  I got the most ever shares on this post – but it is hard to say whether the timing was the critical factor or because it was a visual with practical information.

7.     Include a call to action: share, like, comment:    Many nonprofits have discovered that a simple, clear call to action to share some content results in their fans sharing content.  Of course,  the content itself has to be timely, high quality, and relevant.

8.     Celebrate milestones, share good news: Audiences love to celebrate victories no matter how small.     My Facebook Page recently welcomed its 10,000th Fan, so I posted an update to celebrate and thank everyone.   It generated a higher number of likes than other posts.

9.     Always be commenting: I had the pleasure of hearing Guy Kawasaki speak about his book “Enchantment” and one of his tips was “Always be commenting” was a big takeaway for me that I have tested and tested.  It works.   I always post content as my page administrator, but then I comment in the thread as an individual.   I don’t have to respond in real-time to comments, but part of my work flow is to respond to comments in batches in two ten minute spurts a day.    I use Nutshell Mail to make it manageable.

10.   Repeat proven stuff:    I don’t do cut and paste repeats.  I look for themes that work and repeat those.   If I repeat the same content,  I try to do it slightly differently – like just a visual versus the link.

The most important practice is the sense-making of comparing my content to metrics and getting ideas of what to test next.

What have you learned about what works best in using metrics to give your audience the content they want?

 

 

 

Feb

2012

15

Category:

Online Community

Tags:

5 Comments

How Do You Celebrate Reaching 10,000 Fans on Facebook?

This week my brand page on Facebook, Beth’s Blog Facebook Page, reached 10,000 fans when Kim Murray clicked the “like” button.      Inspired by the Humane Society celebration of reaching one million fans,  I couldn’t let benchmark go by without some commentary.    While numbers of fans isn’t the most important metric,  it is a milestone nonetheless.     My Facebook Page has been an important listening post to learn about what nonprofits are thinking and saying about social media.     My metric for success is that the dialogue inspires at least once insightful blog post per month and it has certainly over delivered.

What better to celebrate than with an interview with Kim Murray who became the 10,000th fan. .

1.   Tell us about yourself!

My name is Kim Murray. I’m a writer – currently working on a novel that explores the dangers of too much science/technology, especially in the realm of extreme religious fundamentalism. I don’t work with nonprofits currently; however I do have a project that I’m working on that will eventually (ideally) turn into one.

2.  How did you discover my FB page?

I attended a local unconference for nonprofits about two years ago with the intention of learning how I, as a blogger, could help local nonprofits… you & your blog were mentioned several times. I went home and immediately included your blog on my Google Reader, but somehow only just now got to clicking on your FB page.

3.   I noticed that you have been blogging for a couple of years.  How and why did you get started?  Any words of wisdom about blogging?

I started back in 2005, I’d graduated from college but hadn’t yet found a job. At the time, my husband was in medical school and I was going insane trying to keep myself occupied, so I started writing. I started my current blog in 2008 just after I gave birth to my first daughter. Words of wisdom about blogging? Know why you’re blogging and be real. There’s nothing uglier than a blogger with a sense of entitlement.

4.  I noticed that you had a badge to Share Our Strength on your blog.  Why is this cause important to you?

The fact that 1 in 4 children in the U.S. (the UNITED STATES !!!! – multiple exclamation point worthy) live in food insecure households just kills me! When I taught high school English, I saw first-hand the negative effects of hunger on children in school. I used to buy bags of Egg McMuffins on my way to work and, before school started, I’d hand them out to kids who stopped by my classroom.

5.  You call yourself activist, what are some causes or ideas that you are standing up for?

Just recently I’ve joined the MissRepresentation.org social action campaign as a local representative. Together with Girls Inc. of San Antonio, I’m organizing the very first meeting of MissRepresentation Social Action Reps in San Antonio to help champion for change locally in the way that media portrays women.

Thanks Kim and the 9999 other folks who liked my Facebook Page.   I learn something new from you everyday!

 

Feb

2012

14

Category:

Training Design

Tags:

13 Comments

Social Media Measurement and Learning Analytics: How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Count the Ways

I Love Social Media Measurement

View more presentations from Beth Kanter

Yesterday, I had the honor of kicking off Compasspoint’s Webinar Week, with a webinar on social media measurement 101 as part of my work as Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.     To mark Valentine’s Day, I took some inspiration from Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the vintage Valentine’s Day Cards pinterest board to create a presentation about social media measurement love.   I tested out the five phases of falling in love with measurement.    Given the topic was measurement,  I couldn’t help but go a little meta and play with incorporating learning analytics into the instruction.    This blog post shares some insights about those two somewhat disconnected ideas.

The Five Stages of  Social Media Measurement Love


It is always important to look at the challenges of adoption of improving organizational processes or individual skills, especially if they are new.    It should always accompany the tips and how tos.   That’s why I always start a webinar with a framework for learners to assess where they are and what change is needed (if anything) to embrace a new way of doing something.     I presented the five stages of falling in love with measurement.  These are:

1.  Denial: You can’t measure social media!
2.  Fear: What if we find out our social media didn’t perform well!
3.  Confusion: I don’t know what or how to measure social media.
4.  Delight: Check out these charts and graphs!
5.  Measurement Love: Connecting measurement to decision-making and getting better results

I did a quick user poll for folks to self-asses where they are and then we had a quick discussion in the chat to unpack what each stage looks like and what’s needed to get to the next stage.      I was surprised to hear from participants that while they have the practice of measuring other programs, they don’t know how to approach measuring social media.      The “fear” stage seems to also go hand in hand with fearing social media in general. Said one participant,  ”We are in the fear stage because our senior leaders fear social media and we’re not sure we get results with social media.”     Many admitted to being in the “delight” stage – that collect data but don’t know how to make sense of it.    Those that found themselves at measurement love – using data for decision-making said that it goes hand-in-hand with their organization’s learning culture.

Learning Analytics

I came across the term “Learning Analytics” in an NPR story about the effectiveness of college lectures and ways to make learning more interactive.      There are different definitions.   Elearning space defines it as: “Use of intelligent data, learner-produced data, and analysis models to discover information and social connections, and to predict and advise on learning.” I took the very simple approach of thinking of it as a data that can help you see the correlation between learning activities and learning outcomes.

The outcome for this webinar was:   To leave the webinar ready to take one small step towards improving social media measurement practice.

To do that, participants have to be able to implement that step without being encumbered by the denial, fear, confusion, or delight stages.      I took several polls throughout the webinar asking them about their relationship with measurement.  Specifically, I wanted to see if the needle moved from hate to love.      If I look at the pre and post tests, the “love” measurement increased.

 

I also used this poll after different sections of content.     The polling after the section of content about how to make goals measurable showed that the needled moved slightly in the other direction, towards hating measurement.  A follow up question revealed that a big challenge is making goals measurable.       This gives me some more insight about how to make teaching this concept more accessible.

This was just a first experiment in trying to use the concept of learning analytics to help improve instructional design.    It is something I want to explore in more depth – I know that I’m probably not asking the right questions or perhaps not stating them in the right way.    The next step is to formulate questions that relate to the content not learner attitudes.

Bonus:  Spreadsheet Appreciation

One of the most important measurement tools for nonprofits is the spreadsheet.     In this post, Mashable reviews five free awesome social media spreadsheets.   I tested each one.   The one I found most useful was #3 because it could be an easy way to compare or benchmark with other organizations.  However, the use of a pie chart is a little meaningless – I would change to a bar chart.

Do you think that understanding learner’s attitudes and their organizational context is important when designing instruction on new ways for nonprofits to work?    Do you think using learning analytics is of value to helping you improve instructional design?     Have you used learning analytics?   Please leave a comment.

 

 

 




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