Beth’s Blog

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.

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?

QR Codes, Electronic Devices,Nonprofits, and Concert Etiquette

QR Codes (Quick Response) is a bar code that can be scanned by your mobile phone (with a free app) and are currently being used with print media (or t-shirt media) to point people to more information online.   The information embedded can be a URL, a link to a download, text, phone number, or SMS.

According this post by Gina Trapani, many geeks think QR codes are gimmicky, clumsy, not used well or enough, or that they’re “a solution looking for a problem.   That’s no surprise given there  are many free QR code creators online, and it  is easy to make create one without a real purpose.  I made the one above and if you scan it, it is the URL to my blog.

There  are a couple of useful business applications such as  airplane boarding passes.   Also, they’re being used in books.  For example, Jay Baer’s and Amber Nashlund’s new book, The Now Revolution, uses Microsoft’s version of QR codes called Tag technology, so readers can scan pages and get additional bonus materials on their phones.

Gina’s post suggests that  QR codes could be just a fad–unless Facebook introduces them to a mainstream audience.

Leaked screenshots indicate Facebook’s experimenting with profile or status QR code generation on fan pages, according to TechCrunch. Imagine a QR code that instantly makes the person scanning it a fan of a brand, company, or personality on Facebook without ever typing a URL.

NTEN has published a useful quick “What’s This? piece and there a number of  “Scanning for Good” posts on nonprofit technology blogs that offer tips and use cases.  Nonprofit Tech2.0 blog  offers a laundry list of possible ways to use this new technology.

Chad Norman shares a post of some interesting nonprofit examples, including one from the South Carolina Aquarium that created the Be Rare Contest, which used QR codes as the focus of a city-wide scavenger hunt.    Joe Waters shares an example used for Cause Marketing.   QR codes are popping up in school lesson plans, like this arts lesson plan.

QR codes hold potential for arts organizations.   Museums have been using them to enhance the visitor experience and have been early adopters of the technology.

While preparing for the “Leveraging Social Media Masterclass“,  I reviewed social media presences of over 260 arts organizations looking for interesting “living case studies.”   I discovered how the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus is using QR codes to encourage audiences to download program books onto their mobile phones.

As SFGMC continues to “go green,” we have for the first time made our concert program available on line pre-show. With over 2,100 of you coming on Thursday (!), this will save on printing costs and reduce waste. Scan the QR code below to download the program to your mobile device, or visit http://www.sfgmc.org/media/SFGMC_Words_program.pdf to view it on line. Of course, standard print programs will still be available at Davies on Thursday.

The announcement prompted some discussion in the comments about the use of electronics during concerts.   While the norm has been to “turn off” all electronic devices,  the Gay Men’s Chorus encourages the use of electronics during their “Social Media Moments” throughout the concert.    They want audience members to post mini reviews at intermission or photos during the concert.

While there are some tactical points to keep in mind when using QR codes,  nonprofits should consider these design principles:

• Can you use QR codes to encourage audiences to get more information online?
• Can you embed game design or make it fun?
• Does the use of QR codes help save your organization printing costs?

Of course, a bigger question is about strategy – how the use of this tactic enhances a campaign and whether or not your target audience has a QR reader on their mobile phone and uses it.

What are some of the best examples of QR codes for nonprofits?

A Better Way to Produce Nonprofit Annual Reports

Note from Beth: I facilitated a panel about Mobile Integrated strategy at the Innogive Conference earlier this month and have shared the notes here.   The panelists offered advice to nonprofits about integrating mobile into the nonprofit toolbox.  My main takeaway was that nonprofits need to think differently about content.  There are  different media forms  that mandate different types of content  — and nonprofits must consider this as part of the online content strategy.   People who reading content on their smartphones or tablets will not be consuming text heavy information – it has to brief text and visual or videos.   What how to make that efficient?   Michael’s guest post explains more:

A Better Way to Produce Reports Nonprofit Annual Reports, guest post by Michael Hoffman,  See3 Communications

Treesaver is a new open source web platform for publishing that uses the new HTML5 standard to create narrative experiences—with text, pictures and video. Treesaver divides content into pages, automatically adjusting to the size of any screen. With Treesaver you can create content once and publish it everywhere.

It works on any device that has a web browser. The same design and the same code works on PCs, Macs and Linux desktop computers  or Apple, Android, and Blackberry smart phones and tablets like iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab. While many organizations are running to develop iPhone and Android apps, with a Treesaver dynamic publication, you skip the hassle and cost of making separate apps for every target device.

Treesaver is significant for nonprofits because it combines important trends – open source software, web standards and mobile applications. While Treesaver has been designed for media publishers by magazine design guru Roger Black, we at See3 believe it has real significance for nonprofits.

The Nonprofit Report

Many nonprofit organizations produce reports. These reports could be annual reports that sum up their work during the year or reports about subjects where the organization has expertise. The report is often an important piece of research designed to show leadership on an issue and attract the attention of the press and governments to affect social change.

For example, CREW –Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington just released a report about
how payday lenders have increased payments to lobbyists. Feeding America has a national hunger study. Amnesty International has a report about housing and water rights for the Roma community in Slovenia, among dozens of others. The Alliance for Biking and Walking has a benchmark report about the levels of biking and walking in the US. These reports, and others like them, represent a critical part of the work of social change organizations, think tanks and foundations.

The Death of the PDF

While reports such as foundation annual reports are still printed and mailed, today many reports are
found on websites in the form of a PDF.

What PDF’s do well is prepare a document for printing. But people are less and less likely to need
printing. They are more likely to want to read that report on their computer, their iPad – some
researchers suggest Apple could sell 25 million units in 2011 — or even their smart phone. The PDF is
actually a terrible way to put content on the web. Why are PDFs so bad? Let me count the ways:

1. They are slow to load
2. They are in a fixed size, no matter on which screen you are looking at them
3. They aren’t built for mobile devices
4. You can’t link to a specific page inside the document – if you want to share one page on Facebook the best you can do is link to the whole document, and when your friend clicks and realizes it’s a 30 page PDF they hate you.

Don’t Build That App

Nonprofit Executive Director: “We need an iPhone app. And an iPad app.”

Nonprofit Tech Person: “We do?”

Nonprofit Executive Director: “Yes. You see, I have an iPad now and it’s very cool and we should have
something on here.”

Nonprofit Tech Person: “OK, but you know it will cost around $30,000 to build an app for the iPhone.
And we might want to optimize it for the Ipad. Oh, and we should build an Android app as well, which
will be another $30,000. Not to mention Blackberry users and all these new tablet computers.”

Nonprofit Executive Director: “That’s a lot of money.”

Nonprofit Tech Person: “Yes it is. And there is another problem here also. Who’s going to download that
app or even know it’s there? And… social media has become a very important way for us to tell people
about our content, and you can’t send people to specific content inside an app. When they click on our
link on Facebook they will hit a wall asking them to download something, which almost no one will do.”

Conversations like this one are happening all over nonprofit executive offices these days. And
unfortunately, many of these organizations proceed to build their apps, spend their money, only to find
that no one is paying attention.

Treesaver offers nonprofits a way to publish content that is native to an iPhone or iPad without having
to develop anything different. The content will look great on the computer or on any device. And
because it’s open source, there are no license fees, just the work on design and content.

At See3, we think this is like the launch of Drupal or WordPress – two content management systems that
have become very popular with nonprofits. It’s a significant event and you should pay attention.

We tested out Treesaver by telling one of our own stories. Have a look here to see how it works. http://
egypt.see3.net/

Michael Hoffman is the CEO of See3 Communications. You can learn more about online video and the work of See3 at http://see3.net/

Innogive Conference: Panel Integrated Mobile/Social Strategy for Nonprofits

Text Poll App from MobileCause

I’m at the  Innogive 2011 Conference today.   The focus is on Mobile Giving.   The format is a mix of Ted style presentations and interactive panel discussions.  I just finished moderating a panel on the topic of social and mobile integration.  Here’s the description:

Where and how do mobile and social strategy intersect. How do you combine mobile with the grassroots power of social media to successfully engage donors. Can mobile drive volunteers activists, to engage across other media channels? What is the key to a viral campaign which combines these outreach tools.

The panelists included my business partner at Zoetica, Geoff Livingston;  Allyson Kapin, RAD Campaign; and Stephen Wright Grameen Foundation.    Here’s a summary of the highlights of the conversation:

Before I dive into the content,  I had the pleasure of experimenting with a text polling app to find out the composition of the audience and their experience with the panel topic.  In this case, we were talking about how to integrate the use of mobile technology into multi-channel campaigns with an emphasis on social.

It was powerful to watch the poll results come in live on the screen.   One thing I learned is that there is a bit of delay so you can’t announce the final results until everyone has texted.  We had a 50% response rate.    So, while we were waiting,  I asked the panelists to take bets.

We started off with the question of why nonprofits must attention to mobile and integrate it into their communications tool box.  I asked the panelists how they would justify mobile to an executive director if they were the a staff member at nonprofit.

Already that morning, keynotes had give some powerful adoption statistics.   For example, 13% of handhelds are smartphones, but account for 78% of data traffic and there are 180 billion text messages monthly.   Geoff Livingston gave an overview of mobile trends, mentioning that the adoption rate of mobile phones and tablets are higher than Twitter now and mobile is now part of our lives.  Allyson Kapin shared some stats about the use of email on mobile devices.

Geoff Livingston recommended that in addition nonprofits  look at their web site analytics, google analytics for example can tell the percentage of referral traffic.   If you have more than 20%, you need to think about making your site mobile friendly.

Steve Wright spoke about the need to make the argument to senior leadership and help them explore and get their hands on the mobile technology.   He also added that you need to demonstrate the usefulness.   If all else fails,  the message should be that the organization risks being irrelevant to its stakeholders.   As the morning keynote presenter Major George Hood, Salvation Army said,  “Everything will happen in the palm of your hand.  Mobile is where you need to be.”

Steve Wright, a self-confessed obsessive user of the smart phone, emphasized that mobile is now part of the consumer landscape.   He observed that he engages with causes he cares about via his phone through Causes and Facebook, but many nonprofit web sites are not yet “mobile ready.” According to this recent nonprofits and mobile survey summarized on the NTEN Blog, only 16% of the surveyed nonprofits plan on having mobile websites in 2011 compared to 90% of surveyed nonprofits use email marketing and social media in their engagement strategies.

Danny Bu, American Cancer Society Took Some Notes and Let Me Photograph Them

We discussed nonprofit readiness for integrating a mobile strategy.    Nonprofits need two things:  engagement strategy and to think differently about content.  Geoff Livingston emphasized that different media forms mandate different types of content  — and nonprofits must consider this as part of the online content strategy.   People who reading content on their smartphones or tablets will not be consuming text heavy information – it has to brief text and visual or videos.

Panelists recommend that if your web site is due for a redesign,  it is a good idea to think through a mobile version or content in the process.   Depending on the scale and amount of content on your organization’s site, you may also need to take an incremental approach and prioritized particular sections.    Again, understanding how your current audience is using your web site and what they are most likely to consume on their mobile phones can guide phasing.

Both Allyson and Geoff emphasized the importance of collecting cell phone numbers on all contact and sign up forms.  Geoff added that there will be challenges, particularly monetization will be difficult because stakeholders are not going to be willing to hand over their mobile numbers as easily as they would their email addresses.

Allyson Kapin further emphasized the importance of integrating mobile into all channels of nonprofit advocacy, communication, and fundraising campaigns.     Expanding on the points made by both Geoff and Steve on the importance of making your organization’s mobile friendly, she emphasized the critical importance of having sign up, action, and donation pages being mobile friendly.    Also, action alerts need to be mobile mail and not to forget to add a field on sign up forms for cell phone numbers.

Panelists shared a couple of success stories about organizations effectively integrating mobile into their communications strategy, including the Humane Society,  Seafood Watch, and Central Park.

Allyson noted that the Humane Society experienced an increased response rate of 77% during their year-end fundraising drive by texting an appeal to their donors with mobile numbers 24 hours before an appeal hit their email boxes.    Allyson added that the organization’s list must be big enough to reap the benefit and, of course, the campaign was done 24 hours before the end of the year-end giving season – so there was urgency in the message.

Geoff Livingston noted that more and more organizations  are adding staff as mobile specialists outside of social according to a Forrester study.

The panelists offered these recommendations on best practices for nonprofits and integrating mobile:

1.)   A well designed web site that recognizes a mobile browser and shifts content accordingly. Making your web site readable on a mobile phone can be as easy as picking low hanging fruit, especially for blogs using WP platform.

2.)   Content strategy must incorporate “hybridized” content – for both mobile and stationary sites.   Also for your email messaging.

3.)   Distinguish between portable and mobile.  Tablets let you do more than mobile phones, but they are tactile centric, not text.  Visual design is necessary now.

4.)   Remember you can engage with mobile, not just one-way communication.

5.)   Don’t chase “me too” iPhone apps.  Design apps based on what your audience needs.

6.)  Understand the process of text to donate campaigns if your goal is fundraising.

7.)  Don’t go mobile for the sake of going mobile.  Have a strategy that is integrated with all your communications channels and supports your objectives.

8.) Start collecting cell phone numbers now!

And, of course, I had to ask about what was the cool stuff on the horizon for mobile:

1.)   Tablets are going to be huge.   The challenge will be how social networks migrate to “tactile” media.

2.)   QR codes via mobile

3.)   Data ecosystems – integrating client data into mobile phones as the “last mile” for delivery

The principles for effective social media and technology adoption apply to integrated mobile campaigns.   All in all, the 45 minute discussion just flew by.