Archive for the ‘Listening’ Category

Sep

2010

07

Category:

Engagement, Experimentation, Listening, Measurement, Networked Nonprofit

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8 Comments

How Networked Nonprofits Use Facebook

How Networked Nonprofits Use Facebook
View more presentations from Beth Kanter.
Introduction

One of the very first bloggers I started reading and having conversations with about social media was Alan Levine (aka CogDog Blog).     Over the years, we have supported each other’s professional work and personal fundraisers before ever meeting in person.   Last year, Alan invited me to keynote the New Media Consortium‘s virtual conference to talk about the future of social and nonprofits.  It was my most memorable virtual presentation as my avatar was June Jetson and I made a flying entrance into the auditorium to the tune of  the Jetson’s theme song.

This year, Alan invited me to present a webinar for participants in the Marcus Institute Digital Education for the Arts on how Networked Nonprofits use Facebook.  This was a fun opportunity to pull together some of my Facebook action learning curriculum and summarize much of the wisdom being shared over on at my Facebook Page.  And, of course, to revisit my Cute Dog Theory and see how it applies to Networked Nonprofits.

This post reflections on the training design as well as my content notes.

Social Learning In Webinars

I’ve been exploring how to integrate social media into instruction at face-to-face workshops and as well as webinars.  The concept of before, during, and after is an important way to plot out your instruction,  getting a good understanding of the audience, and modeling.

Before the session,   I spent some time reviewing Museum Facebook Pages – luckily the MIDEA project has them organized into this handy list.  My goal was to find examples of some if the concepts I was going to share from the group itself.    This helps spark peer conversations and indeed a quick check of the chat transcript shows it to be case.

I had hoped to find a good example of a museum or an arts organization with a custom landing tab.  I struck out.   So, I posted a request on my Facebook Page and participants offered up some great examples.    If you want to encourage social learning through social media, you have to model the model.  So, I shared with participants how I discovered relevant examples.

Having the traces of the discussion unfold via social media channels is important both during the event as well as after the event for learning capture.   I set up a wiki page that includes my slides, a link to a rowfeeder spreadsheet for the hashtag (#midea), and the archived recording of the session.

The MIDEA Institute has a nice model of networked learning that allows for a larger network of people with “looser ties”  to join while the smaller group of Institute members can continue the peer learning conversations.     The content presented in Webinars by “experts” will help leverage these conversations through “Round Ups.”   The conversations between institute participants are happening across social media channels – I imagine the role of a network weaver here will be vital to the learning.   I’ll look forward to read any reflections from Alan on how this worked.

Content

I gave a quick overview of the  Networked Nonprofit and how the concepts in the book relate to museums.     I covered the following points with lots of examples from museums as well as pointers to some of the best thinking on Facebook best practices.

  • Networked Nonprofits that use Facebook effectively have a social culture that allows them to scale to have everyone using Facebook.

Networked Nonprofits or museum have leaders that aren’t afraid to deconstruct their fear of letting go or being transparent.  That make having everyone on Facebook a culture norm through professional development and learning for everyone on staff.    They have codified a social culture and make it easy for other departments to have a presence and to empower all  stakeholders to spread the organization’s mission on social networks.   They also understand how to leverage and work with free agents or groups that may create “unofficial pages.”

  • Networked Nonprofits know how to listen, engage, and build relationships on Facebook that allow them to reach their goals.

Aliza Sherman's "Birth of A Superfan" as it applies to Facebook and Museums

They  scan for conversations about their museums on Facebook, but more importantly use tools like NutshellMail to monitor and join in conversations happening on their wall.  Their status updates are not all about them or always asking their stakeholders to do something.    And, they take the time to get to know their fans and transform them into brand ambassadors.

Based on Aliza Sherman's "How To Know A Good Fan"

  • Networked Nonprofits know how to use simplicity to do more with less.

They have made the mindshift from scarcity to the abundance that networks offer and know how leverage their networks.    They make use of Facebook tagging feature in wall posts and have encouraged other users and fan pages with similar audiences to do the same – they don’t see it as a competition.

  • Networked Nonprofits have articulated SMART objectives and a target audience for their Facebook page.

Networked Nonprofits know exactly what they want to accomplish on Facebook and who they want to target.   This helps them easily understand whether they need one Facebook page or several or how to rebrand a single page for different campaigns.  They also know how to make use of a customized landing tab – articulating value at a glance and a call to action that ladders up to the objective.  Take for example the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland or Yerba Buena Center.

Right now it is fairly easy to create a custom landing tab using FBML and tools like Pagemodo,  Facebook recently announced that it will no longer support new installations for FBML for custom landing tabs (although existing installations will be supported).

  • Networked Nonprofits have a solid and aligned content strategy for Facebook and other channels where they link, distribute and co-create.

Networked Nonprofits know how to creatively give themselves some link love on Facebook.  They have a carefully crafted content plan to cross distribute content via Facebook, email channels, and on the web that takes into account frequency, style, and format.    The Metropolitan Museum of Art “Art of the Day” on Facebook and Web site is an excellent example.   Their content creation strategy also includes opportunities for their fans to co-create content with them.

  • Networked Nonprofits practice deep engagement techniques on Facebook.

They ask their fans their opinions, test their knowledge, pair promotions w/content, and say thank you. Here’s some examples and tips.  They use fun conversation starters.  Engagement conversations revolve around getting people to look and discuss the art or may encourage them to participate in a gallery activity inside the museum.  They run contests, but they are sure to follow Facebook Guidelines. ( See these two posts for more explanation.)

  • Networked Nonprofits promote their Facebook presence through all channels.

Whether it is texting or promoting offline,  they experiment with many ways to increase their fan base.

  • Network Nonprofits use measurement to learn and improve their Facebook strategy and presence.

They use an approach called Spreadsheet Aerobics.

How else do Networked Nonprofits use Facebook?

Additional resources

Aug

2010

31

Category:

Engagement, Listening, Measurement

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13 Comments

What Tools Are You Using for Listening, Engaging, and Social Media Management?

Based on the discussion threads in my Facebook page,  I’ve updated my mega list of tools in my social media listening and engaging instructional wiki.   In reflecting over the past three years,  the definition of listening tools has broadened beyond “monitoring” or “research” to include several categories:   social media engagement management,  analytics, influencer identification, and social network analysis.

Here’s a couple of new tools I’ve been exploring:

RowFeeder should be in your spreadsheet aerobics routine.   It searches Twitter and Facebook for phrases or hashtags and dumps them into a google doc spreadsheet.  Saves a lot of cut and paste time and great for analysis.   The basic version is free, but you can add on data like Klout scores for a minimal fee.   It’s particularly useful for aggregating hashtags from events or trainings.

NutshellMail:   About a month or so ago, Manny Hernandez mentioned this free tool as a social media time saver. It grabs all your “bacn“  from social networks and aggregates into a single email.  The sources include Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  You need to customize which updates (wall posts, friend requests, Twitter lists, etc.) to make it useful for your needs.   I’m testing it with Facebook because it grabs both my personal profile stuff as well as from Facebook pages that I am an administrator of.

You can also customized the delivery time and frequency.  That means it can arrive in your email box when you’ve scheduled to work on it.    The email that arrives links you to the places you to respond. This seems like a good tool for those starting out and and with small followings.  Saves you time logging in and checking or getting separate notices in email from the social network site.

My colleague, Devon Smith, mentioned another tool, Postling, which aggregates your social networks into a single dashboard online and is also free, although it lacks the robust features of paid tools like Spredfast or SmallAct.

I’d like to update my listening/engaging tools list.

What tools you are using for listening, engaging, social media management, and finding influencers on your social media outposts?

Aug

2010

16

Category:

Content, Listening, Measurement, Mindfulness

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8 Comments

What Tools Do You Use for Making Your Nonprofit’s Social Media Use Efficient?

Flickr Photo by Roberto Ferrari - Creative Commons License Some Rights Reserved

Note from Beth: Social media is not a waste a time, but there are ways to waste your time.   On Saturday, I had the honor of presenting at Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp and one of the burning questions was about efficiency.   So, I’m going to explore this theme over the coming weeks.

A  few weeks ago,  I started a thread on my blog’s Facebook Page,  “What are the best tips and tools for saving time managing your nonprofit’s Facebook Page?”   I summarized the tips shared in this earlier post. Managing your organization’s Facebook page, particularly tracking, content, and engagement can be a time suck, particularly as your network grows.     For example,  we know that identifying and engaging with super fans/influencers on our Facebook presence is important.   But keeping a spreadsheet of the names of people who “like” and comment on threads involves a lot of cut and paste.   Is there a tool that can automate this someone asked on my blog’s Facebook page?  (unfortunately, FB Insights doesn’t do this)

Or what about a tool that helps you plan out your content strategy for the week and even schedule posts on days when you can’t?  What if you want to aggregate and look at all the comments and responses to threads before responding?

There is an evolving category of tools (some free, some not) that can help make the tasks associated with content strategy, engagement, and tracking less onerous.   On the free side, Manny Hernandez mentioned NutShell Mail, software that aggregates comments and likes on your fan page and delivers it in one email.   James Young mentioned SpredFast (he works for them now) and he offered to write a post about how he manages him time.    And while this guest post is about one particular tool, remember when looking for a technology tool solution, think carefully about what pain point is it solving and whether it can truly work for your situation.   If you know of other tools (or tips) that make you more efficient managing content, engagement, and tracking on social media, please share them in the comments.

Guest Post by James Young,  SpredFast

And as a marketer like you, who has added social media to the mix, I struggled with the same issues you face with being efficient with my and showing the results.    Here’s how I use Spredfast to help me with these challenges.

So Many Social Networks, So Little Time

Doing social media right takes time. We engage in multiple social networks, some that you probably also use: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare, our own blog, and a few other networks.

Aggregating Conversations

Conversing with people in all of these places, and creating interesting, value-add content for each is a time consuming business.  It gets worse when you consider that you have to duplicate efforts across different social networks.  With Spredfast, I can do two things that make this so much more efficient.  First, I can pull in all of the conversation taking place across all of the networks into one place, read through it, and participate where I want to. Each and every day, I look for all of the people who have mentioned us or retweeted our tweets, and I thank them. I can do it easily right from my listening dashboard.

Planning Content on Weekly Basis

Second, I can plan out the content I want to publish, schedule it out for the next few weeks, create the content (or, one day when we grow, assign it to someone to create), choose the social network or networks I want each piece to go to, and save it.  Spredfast will publish it on the schedule I’ve set. Typically, I will get a week’s worth of content ready to go ahead of time, and then spend the majority of my remaining time just engaging with individuals.

Tracking for Insights and Value

Like all activity within a good company or organization, I have to create some value. To prove I’m doing that, I need data.  Some of the social networks provide a lot of good data, others not so much. Regardless, it used to take a lot of time to go into each network and gather the data I needed, pull it back into my master spreadsheet, and then do some crunching.

Spredfast makes that a lot easier for me, because it gathers two types of data into one dashboard. First, all of the content that I send out (both planned communication as well as off the cuff conversations I engage in) is tracked. For example, for each tweet I send, I can see how many times it was retweeted, by whom, what they said, how many people could have seen the retweet, and if I included a link I can see how many times the link was clicked. For every post to my Facebook Page, I can see when someone comments, who they are, what they said, how many times the post was liked and how many times the link in my post was clicked. The list goes on across a wide variety of social networks and kinds of interaction people can have.

Second, I can see data that relates to my social media account (as opposed to my content), like number of friends, fans and followers. I can also see the volume of the conversation about my brand, like mentions in Twitter, references in blogs, etc.

The big deal is that all of this data is in one dashboard, so I can jump straight to analysis, making my weekly report a whole lot easier to produce. I just create a graph or report in Spredfast, or I export the data and use Excel and PowerPoint.

It is important track conversions and Spredfast can be integrated with my  integrated my Google Analytics account, and I tag all the links I send out in conversations.  Spredfast does some cool stuff like creating unique shortened links for each content piece (including separate links for the same post sent into both Facebook and Twitter, for example), so when I look at my web funnel data, I can actually track a conversion all the way back to the individual tweet or post. Literally, I can tell my boss how many subscriptions came from social media activity, from each social network, from each account and from each individual content piece I published.

Now, I know that not all value is measured in conversions. So, all of those other things that are valuable, like engagement levels and reach, are available too, using the data in my dashboard. We have some internal, soft values we attach to that data, and ultimately arrive at a total value comprised of soft and hard (conversion) values for my activity this week, month, or quarter.

Scaling Engagement

I know many organizations are worried about giving a lot of staff and volunteers access to the organization Twitter or Facebook accounts. This has some serious consequences. First, it usually limits the number of people empowered to engage in social media. Consequently, it decreases the quality of the social media engagement that does happen. How? Let’s face it, we don’t all have an unlimited supply of time, patience and creativity.  Having more people involved raises the quantity of engagement, time to response and content variety.

Spredfast makes this easier too, because the many authors you may have are not logging into your Twitter account directly. They’re logging into Spredfast, creating content and then publishing it to that Twitter account. One trusted person has already come in and connected Spredfast to the Twitter account.  Spredfast also has “draft” function which is particularly useful is you’re working side-by-side a social media intern.

Best practices in social media is listening, engaging, identifying influences, and tracking.    Spredfast can help your nonprofit be efficient with these tasks.  

Questions from Beth:

What tools and techniques are you using to make your social media content, engagement, and tracking more efficient?  Spredfast is one, but are there others?   What has your experience been?   At what point does it make sense to move to a paid tool for content strategy, engagement, and tracking?

Jul

2010

04

Category:

Listening, Mindfulness, Organizational Culture

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1 Comment

Social Media Listening: You Don’t Have To Be Joey Chestnut on the 4th of July!

Wendy Harman from the Red Cross wished me a Happy Fourth of July with a Joey Chestnut reference which reminded of a post I wrote almost a year ago.  Let me explain.

Joey Chestnut won the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest in 2008.   His total for the day was 64 hot dogs.    In 2009, he won again, beating his own record by consuming 68 hot dogs. The thought of consuming 68 hot dogs makes me feel a little uncomfortable.  No downright sick in the stomach.  It’s the same sort of discomfort that some people feel about approaching the task of listening for learning using the social web.

Doesn’t listening require plowing through mountains and mountains of unstructured information?   Won’t it make you dizzy and uncomfortable?  Don’t you have to be Joey Chestnut to be successful?

No!

Networked Nonprofits understand this.  They know how to use social media to engage people inside and outside the organization to improve programs, services, or reach communications goals.  Everyone in the organization understands that social media is more than an external communications tool, and they use it adroitly for their professional learning and even their personal lives.   Networked Nonprofits spell this out in their organization’s social media  strategy handbook and policy guidelines and encourage personal exploration and learning.

It’s one thing to have it written in a social media policy.  It’s quite another to put it into practice.   It does require that someone inside of the organization can help with one-on-one coaching, answer questions, provide support, and do this without loosing their enthusiasm.

It is harder to convince people who aren’t already social media users to use it in their personal lives.   One strategy is to use it as a professional learning tool.  This can be put practice by using listening (and engaging techniques) for program development.

Three Tips for Getting Started

1.  Think of Professional Learning As A Gift To Yourself

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Professional learning is and should be a part of staff’s job and honored by the culture. That you feel it is okay to spend some of your work day investing in your knowledge and you gather wisdom from your professional networks via social media channels.

Jeremiah Owyang wrote a great post two years ago called “Pay Yourself First.”   In a nutshell: “Every morning, for about 2 hours, I pay myself first by researching, reading, and writing blog posts…before I dive into email hell.” Many of us in nonprofits can’t afford to spend two hours in professional learning through listening, but maybe we could spare 30 minutes during the day to get started?

I put a sticky note on my computer that reminds to “pay myself first.”   I try (when not traveling) to do my professional learning at the same time each day.    I spend 15-30 minutes reading RSS feeds or Tweets and 15 minutes thinking about something I learned.  Sometimes that happens by writing a blog post which take me 30 minutes.

2. Make It Part of Your Routine

Photo by Salon De Maria

You don’t need to necessarily carve out additional time for professional learning because you’re probably doing it already through other channels.  The challenge is adding it your routine. It is difficult because you have to shift gears from your Outlook calendar, answering emails, meetings, or getting tasks done.   It’s a shift from a getting things done sort of productivity to social productivity. Or rather it is finding your social productivity sweet spot.

Ask yourself how time you can allocate to listening for professional learning.   Is it a half-hour a day, an hour a day, or is an hour or two a week? The point is to get started, block out that time, and start paying yourself.

Think about your current routine.   When does it make sense to integrate something new?    I do my social media listening for professional learning before email and after I’ve created my 3 things I must do today list.  I do it in the morning.  I know other people who do it right after lunch.

3.  Cut Up The Salami Into Smaller Pieces

Cut Up The Salami Into Smaller Pieces (Photo by TalkoftheTomatoes)

It can be difficult to get started.  Some people think they are so far behind and there is so much to do – so they just stay with their current routine and habit.   They also need to get past the concern about information overload and too much unstructured information.  Attending to your professional learning using social media and networks requires making sense out of the leaves rather than being presented a knowledge tree.  The initial dip into the leaves can be overwhelming and unpleasant at first, but you will get past it if you keep calm and carry on for a couple of days.

Pick one small step and get started.  Just do that one thing everyday until it becomes comfortable.

Here are some steps to get started with listening for professional learning via social media.  The bigger questions is – are you ready make the shift?

Jun

2010

28

Category:

Conferences, Free Agent, Listening

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9 Comments

Nonprofit 2.0 Reflections: Sharing Practices Around Listening and Free Agents

I attend a lot of conferences, but mostly as a keynote speaker, workshop leader, or panelist. I don’t often get a chance to listen and learn.  That was the gift of attending Nonprofit 2.0 Conference, especially the “unconference sessions“  in Washington, DC on Friday.  A big thank you conference organizers!

Keynote Presentation

We kicked off the conference with an interview style keynote about the Networked Nonprofit, moderated by fabulous Shireen Mitchell (aka digitalsista).    The best part is when the audience joins the conversation.  Shireen did a fabulous job of bringing in their voices.

Rosetta Thurman

Rosetta Thurman

Many in the audience were colleagues that I have met through my blog over years and have helped me with Cambodian fundraising, like Roger Carr.  Rosetta Thurman, who writes about nonprofits and leadership issues from a Gen Y blogger  perspective, shared some thoughts about the generations, nonprofits, and  social media.   Her blog is a must-read and I hope someday that she writes a book.

Wendy Harman from the Red Cross

Wendy Harman from the Red Cross was the next keynote.   Wendy has let me shadow her work for the past five years and share her wisdom in many blog posts.   She shared some insights about the Red Cross’s social media work leading up to Haiti.

She made great points about what they had in place the day before the earthquake in Haiti struck:

  • Robust listening program where staff skims and responds.  Over 1,000 mentions a day.  This gives the capacity to pay attention to what people are saying and be nimble in responding.
  • They do not view social media as fundraising strategy.  The objective is to empower to  stakeholders to make their mission to be more efficient.
  • They have a social media policy and handbook that provides the rule book for volunteers, staff, and affiliates to participate on social media channels effectively.
  • Wendy has been working an internal social media capacity builder.  She trains, coaches, and evangelizes internally on how to use social media.   She has also been training staff in the disaster response department who in turn used tools like Twitter on the ground from Haiti.
  • They had social content.  It’s a mix of serious and fun content.    When not in a disaster, you might see LOLcats doing CPR.
  • A lot of practice on how to move quickly when a disaster strikes.  For example, they immediately start updating their Facebook page letting people know what information is available and they are there.

Wendy’s keynote drove two points home for me:

Don’t give up in the middle:   Many nonprofits embrace social media with over-inflated expectations.   They get  midway through an experiment, view it as a failure and give up.  Everything looks like a failure in the middle as Rosabeth Moss Kanter likes to say.   Don’t give up!

Networks Ebb and Flow Like the Ocean:   Networks have different stages of development and functioning.  And they ebb and flow according to need.  If you’ve built your network, like the Red Cross, they will be there for you.

I participated in two unconference sessions.  Here are my notes.

I’ve Found My Free Agents, Now What?

Here’s a couple of takeaways, but expect some more practical, how-to posts in the next few weeks.

  • Look for Free Agents who already know about your work. Look to your in-house lists for potential free agents.  They may already know about you and just need to be empowered.  Care2 has a social media tracker tool that can analyze your list to see who is on social networks and how many friends.
  • Scan Social Networks for Free Agents. I shared some of my special sauce about how I identify free agents as well as from my perspective of being one.  There are Free Agents with huge networks like Shawn Admed, but don’t over look those that may have smaller networks – they’re just as valuable.
  • Getting to Know and Cultivating Free Agents: Here’s my best advice on this.   It comes down to do a little bit everyday and treating people like people.

Listening in Practice

Wendy Harman was the inspiration for workshop curriculum on social media listening skills.   So we offered to co-lead a session on listening in practice.   Wendy is a real team player and made the session a lot of fun!     We explored people’s listening routines, perceptions about the value of listening, and specific tools and techniques.

Listening to the participants in our session talk about listening, I realized there are three different models:

Actionable Listening:  This is the first step that many nonprofits take for listening.  When social media isn’t successful, it is because they skipped this.  This is the type of listening akin to changing a flat tire on a moving car.  It’s very practical and used to identify influencers, new ideas, and monitor brand.    You can set up a comprehensive listening post or do “quick and dirty” simply set up one alert on your organization’s name.   No matter the approach, it is useful to have a structured approach and track trends over time.

Forensic Listening: Chris Abraham shared this method and is primarily for those who haven’t yet started.  This approach, uses tools like SM2 to do a content scan during a particular past time period.   Think of it as another channel of research for campaign.

Showing Results: This method is for those have been applying listening techniques and want to track results.  One metric that is used is “Share of Conversation” or how much people are talking about your brand.    One method is to compare before/after a campaign to determine how much conversation social media strategy has been generated.

Thank you Geoff, Allyson, and Shireen for organizing an inspiring conference!

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