Archive for the ‘Tools and Tactics’ Category

Sep

2010

27

Category:

Content, Philanthropy, Tips, Tools and Tactics

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5 Comments

In Search of Bachelors and Philanthropy in Rural Alaska and Video Story Capture Tips

The Story

Last week,  my adventure in Alaska started with a meeting with representatives from community foundations around the state of Alaska hosted by the Alaska Community Foundation.   That’s where I met Joe Page from the Jessica Stevens Foundation who told me the amazing story about the Talkeetna Bachelor Society.

The Talkeetna Bachelor Society is a program of the Denali Arts Council, a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation. The Society’s fundraising activities benefit the Talkeetna Bachelor Society’s Fund for Women and Children in Crisis.  The main fundraising event is the Bachelor Auction, where ladies in attendance may purchase, at fair market value, a feisty bachelor to accompany them at the Bachelor Ball.   Anyone can purchase the “male order catalog” and the proceeds go to support the charity.

Quite a different charity auction ….

I couldn’t help but think – what if Joe Page or other community foundation board members had flip cameras, some video and story telling training and shared their stories on the Alaska Community Foundation Facebook page?

I was lucky enough to talk my host into driving me to Talkeetna so I could document this fabulous story.   So  I got into the car with Aliza Sherman who lives in Alaska who I’ve known since 1995 and with Cassandra Stalzer my host to take a drive up the highway to create this five minute documentary,  “The Hunt for a Talkeetna Bachelor”

After a few hours on the road, we ended up in the middle of this rural town that was the prototype for Northern Exposure.  We found our way to the local brew pub – Twister Creek and Denali Brewery at the foot of Denali.    Joe Page met us in town and we reviewed the Bachelor male order catalog looking for a good subject to interview.   After walking around town, we discovered that one of the bachelors, Todd Basilone, owner of Mountain High Pizza Pie, was at work.   So,  I did an ambush interview to ask him to share why community giving is important.    I hope you’ll take the five minutes to watch the clip.

Some Tips

I love capturing and sharing authentic stories with video – either with my iPhone (email to YouTube) or the Flip Camera.  No matter the technology,  the process of capturing and sharing a good story quickly is the same.  Here’s some thoughts:

From Nancy Duarte's new book, resonate

Don’t take a vacuum cleaner approach

With video, don’t try to capture everything.   I use a technique I learned from Jay Dedman called “Moment Capture” where you get the most enlightening snippet.    I usually reserve video capture for a special story or moment that absolutely can’t be told with text.  Sometimes this occurs as a video quote from someone who said something that was an Ah Ha moment for me or else it tracking down a story.

If the latter, I have a storyboard in my head and edit as I go.   What I have found extremely useful is Nancy Duarte’s new book, resonate: present visual stories that transform audiences.  While it is intended for storytelling with powerpoint,  I think the frameworks and templates she offers for narrative arcs are very valuable.  It is so helpful to have these templates as you capture the story.

Photo by Aliza Sherman

The Technical Stuff

There are only four things you need to remember while shooting your story.  I learned these back in 2006 from Robert Scoble.

1.  Don’t frame your subject’s eyes in the middle of the frame, use the rule of thirds
2.  Don’t shoot when you have backlight, your subject will be dark
3.  Avoid ambient noise, find a quiet spot to shoot
4.  Shoot close to your subject so the audio doesn’t suck especially when using a camera with built-in mic

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click to play

My colleague, Nick Booth, from the UK taught me a few tricks about doing on-camera interviews and capturing b-roll.  But to be honest,  I didn’t put those in practice until I had mastered Scoble’s tips with one-take video takes.   That was four years ago when I was shooting video with my inexpensive digital camera and using the free program in Windows, MovieMaker to create videos.   It’s much easier now with smart phones and the flip cameras.

Sharing the Story

Storytelling with social media, of course, is more than you and your subject with a camera.  Social media is a great way to involve the audience in the story as it unfolds.    Mark Horvath is a genius at doing this with his Invisible People TV site.    There are many tools you can use to share the story as it unfolds in video and photo as Aliza Sherman has documented here.

What has been your experience telling stories with social media?  What are your favorite sources, tips, and stories?

Aug

2010

20

Category:

Mobile, Networks, Tips, Tools and Tactics

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12 Comments

Facebook Place: Time To Check Into Your Facebook Privacy Settings

Source: Facebook Blog Post

Earlier this week, Facebook added  “where” to the list of personal information members share with the world.  There was much speculation what this feature might mean for FourSquare and the subsequent riddles, “What happens when you add Foursquare to Facebook? (Answer:  Facebook).

I’ve learned now that when Facebook announces a new feature, it is a signal for me to check into my settings and make sure that I’m happy with the way the default works.    Do I want the world to know my location (if I choose to use that new feature?)  Do I want to give my friends the ability to share my location with others?

These questions (and others) prompted a discussion about privacy concerns.   The San Francisco office of the American Civil Liberties Union asked whether Places has again left Facebook members open to privacy problems.    In article in the San Francisco Chronicle,  a privacy expert gives some good advice:

Parry Aftab, one of several Internet safety experts who Facebook helped develop Places as part of a volunteer advisory board, said the feature does include enough controls to protect privacy.

But Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.com, said people who use social networking and geo-location technologies need to learn what the controls are so they can protect themselves.

“If you’re going to play, it tells you what you need to do,” Aftab said. “If you don’t like it, you can turn it off. I won’t use it, but my guess is my daughter will. As we move forward and these things become more and more robust, the question is do you turn off new technologies that allow more interaction and sharing or do you make sure people are empowered to use them safely.”

I posted some resources and questions on my Facebook page asking for some how-to information and Debra Askanase shared this good tutorial link that she got from a tweet from Mari Smith.   Here’s how to turn it off:
1. Go to privacy settings
2. Go to “customize”
3. Scroll to “things others share”
4. Disable “friends can check me into places.”

Are you using the Facebook location feature or have you turned it off?

Facebook is doing a live stream at 11:00 am PST and you can find out more.

Jul

2010

23

Category:

Experimentation, Tips, Tools and Tactics, Training Design

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10 Comments

How To Make Social Media Experiments Fun!

Arts Council of Silicon Valley Staff

This year my work as Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation includes training, coaching, and facilitating peer learning sessions for grantees on using social media effectively, becoming a Networked Nonprofit.    It has been incredible laboratory to put the big ideas in the book in practice.

I’ve had the pleasure working with one of grantees in the Local Program, the Arts Council of Silicon Valley, to coach them in making the transition to being a Networked Nonprofit.     There is a wide range of comfort levels and experience using social media on staff, including the social media gurus who manage the Artsopolis which is focused on marketing the arts in SV.

This is an interesting process of spreading the expertise and way of working to all parts of the organization.   This is a fairly small staff, with limited resources.   As we discussed the challenges of culture shifts, many of the concerns were around lack of time.    The Arts Council’s leader, executive director Bruce Davis, came up a great idea.  “Let’s make the process of experimenting fun – let’s start with a Facebook Friday.”    Their experiment is going to be focused on deepening and improving their Facebook presence for the Arts Council and getting  everyone on staff to participate.   Stay tuned for more …

Sharing Some Facebook Friday Insights

I like to have fun experimenting and that’s just what I’m doing on my Facebook Page, a place for learning, and sharing insights about best practices in social media for networked nonprofits.     I learn so much from the conversation threads and people sharing what they do.  I’ve been remiss in summarizing some of the nuggets out here on the blog, so here goes.

Facebook Strategic Objectives

I asked folks on Facebook:  “What is your organization trying to accomplish on Facebook with its Fan Page?“   Here’s a few answers:

  • To disseminate short stories that are unique to the fan page, as well as to link to articles on our websites. We are much more successful when the stories come with a blurb than when they are simply automated RSS-feeds.
  • To keep up with our friends, to empower them to tell their stories to the world, to find out what they need from us, to introduce them to each other, to offer mission-related action items, and to have fun.

Techniques for More Engagement

Someone said to me during a workshop a few weeks back – it really sucks to log into Facebook and see a two-star post quality ranking.    This prompted me to post a question on my wall:  How many of you Facebook Page admins notice your post quality ranking every time you visit? What I learned is that “drive by” analysis of metrics is really a waste of time.  You need to grab the month’s worth of measures and look at them against your content.

Some folks have been puzzled by the Post Quality score which  is determined by the percentage of your fans that engage when you post content to your Page. (It is calculated on a rolling seven-day basis… See More. The number of stars depends on how your Post Quality compares to similar Pages (for example, Pages that have a similar number of fans.)

Holly Ross simply ignores it and track the number of comments and likes on individual posts.   Jon Dunn does something similar:  “I prefer to really try to key in to what days were successful in terms of content. Understand why we had more new fans on a certain day. What about a certain post created that big conversation. Rinse and repeat.”

That particular wall post had 31 comments and 15 likes, way higher than other types of posts.  Even better than the numbers was the knowledge nuggets shared.  And, ah, I found the secret sauce:   Simply Asking Questions That Allow People To Share Their Knowledge and Ideas sparks engagement!

Is there an App for that?

I have been wanting to test a poll app to see if having close-ended questions or running a poll might encourage engagement.   So I installed this app and set up a poll “Do you think polls increase engagement?  Yes or No?”   Of the 43 people who took the poll, 89% said yes.   Those who didn’t participate in the poll at all, but did on my wall asking for their feedback on polling apps said they didn’t like that the app asked for their personal information.

So, sometimes, the simple approaches work better.

A Couple of Useful Tools To Streamline Workflow

I asked an open-ended question “What are your Facebook administrator best practices?“  This produced a rich conversation on techniques.    This was the first time I noticed people posting on the wall taking to one another, not me.    The thread also includes some great nuggets about streamlining the content strategy as well as streamlining interactions with fans.

  • NutShell Mail is an software that aggregates comments and likes on your fan page and delivers it in one email.   Manny Hernandez shared this link to a post about it.
  • Spredfast is a listening/content distribution tool.  One feature that I like is that it will give you a list of the names of fans and how much a like/comment.
  • There is a way to link google analytics to FB insights.

A Couple of Good Facebook Links

I share about 2-3 really juicy how to links about Facebook a week.  Here’s a couple that got the most likes or comments over the past month or so:

How To Contact Facebook for Help: Directory of Help Forms

Ten Cool Status Update Tricks

Be Careful Not To Violate Facebook Promotional Guidelines With Contests

Four Proven Steps to Facebook Page Success

Top Six Social Media Mistakes and How To Fix Them

Creating a Custom Landing Tab

Facebook Book For Your Desk

Finally, Mari Smith has co-authored a book, “Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day” – if you want one book about Facebook best practices that combines tactical and strategic – this is it!

Jul

2010

09

Category:

Tips, Tools and Tactics

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15 Comments

Bridging Offline/Online: Tweetups

Networked Nonprofits know how to close the loop between social media and offline actions.  They understand that it is a scaffolded process.   Whatever channel they use, they’re building a bridge from online to onland.   They’re masters at meeting their audience where they’re at and bringing them further along the ladder of engagement.

Take Twitter for example.  Once a nonprofit has developed a presence  and a network – and has integrated regular and engaging tweeting into the work flow, the next step is to host a Tweet Up.   What’s A Tweet Up?  It is an in-person meeting of Twitter users.  It is also used to describe any in-person networking event that integrates social media.

There e are different types of Tweet Ups.  Some are spontaneous and informal.  Others are pre-scheduled events with activities and presentations or part of an existing event.  There is no right way to do them.

The benefits of hosting a Tweetup include deeper relationships,  lead generation, or more exposure.   It can also lead to memberships (see comment below)   It can be a good way to meet your Twitter followers or identify who in your existing audience is using Twitter.

Tweet Ups are perfectly suited for performing arts organizations that may have pre-concert Tweet Ups or a museum that is offering a “young professionals event.”     A quick search of museum tweet up show many results including the recent Hubble and Holst, with a private showing of the Hubble 3D IMAX at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences and a special performance by Houston Symphony musicians.

Some Tips:

Tweet Before the Tweet Up To Build Excitement

Before

Use a Unique HashTag: A hashtag is a keyword that opens up a public conversation on Twitter.  You’ll want to designate one for your event and use it before, during, and after the event.

Scope out the Location: Make sure it is networking friendly, so people can chat and exchange business cards.  Also, make sure there is decent wifi (or cell phone reception).

Use Social Media Event Software: Three of those resources are Meetup.com, Eventbrite and TwTvite.  They all have free elements to their service.   If your organization has a robust Facebook presence, you can also use a Facebook Event to promote the event.

Encourage Live Tweeting during the event and don't forget to encourage photos

During

Name Tags: Make sure you have name tags and if are you hosting, be a good host and introduce people.

Activities: If the event will be more than a networking event, have some structure activities or presentations.  Be creative.  Have fun.   Also encourage people to live tweet from the event.  If you have a projector and laptop available, you may want to stream the Twitter Feed during the event.

Keep in touch. Encourage them to participate in other programs.

After

Connect: Continue to engage with Twitter followers after the event and encourage them to participate in other organizational activities.  Don’t forget to have an email list sign up at the event.  The Dallas Art Museum ran an “arthunt” where they tweeted clues and those who answered correctly could win a prize, including a free membership.

Resources

How To Host Successful Tweetups

How Tweet Ups Can Benefit Your Marketing Strategy

What’s A Tweet Up?

Planning TweetUps

Nina Simon interviews Shelley Bernstein about Brooklyn Museum 1st Fans

What are your best tips for hosting Tweet Ups?  Have an amazing story?  Share it in the comments.

Jul

2010

08

Category:

Networked Nonprofit, Tips, Tools and Tactics

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9 Comments

Twitter Tip for Networked Nonprofits: Follow the Few To Get To the Many

Source: Valdis Krebs

For the past few years whenever I doing a training or speak about nonprofits and social media and more recently when we’ve presented about the book, The Networked Nonprofit, someone always raises this concern:   “Social media is a time suck.”

Networked Nonprofits are not only experts in using social media, but they know how to streamline their work flow often based on an understanding of applying network theory to their practice.  One of the best principles I learned was from Valdis Krebs  who suggests following fewer people to get to the many in his classic post  “So Many People, So Little Time.”

It isn’t about following thousands and thousands of friends on Twitter.  We don’t have the time or brain cells for that.    It’s about finding people who are connected to different social circles and following them.    Of course you have to be interested in what information or conversations they are sharing on Twitter.   Identifying these people or what Krebs calls “nodes” is core of social network analysis.

And you need to build some redundancy in your network so you have a few multiple paths to people and ideas of interest to you.

He explains why this approach is efficient:

For the time invested, I want maximum return. I use the redundancy of connections, between the many social circles I am interested in, to my advantage. I follow a select group of people that give me the same access as following someone in every group. Follow the few to reach the many!

Strategically I am building a small, yet efficient, group that reaches out into the many diverse information pools I am interested in. I know I am finding good people to follow on Twitter by the number of great exchanges that emerge on many topics. Think before you follow, use your time and ties wisely!

What if  you have been following people without thinking and now have an overloaded Twitter Stream?  Here are some tips that help you tame the Twitter lion.

What is most important to find and cultivate the connectors and weavers in communities or topics of interest.   There are some free tools that can help you visualize your Twitter network or do quasi social network analysis on Twitter.   Here’s a few that I’ve used.

Use Friend or Follow to download a spreadsheet of followers. Sort the information to find  people to get to know.  This works best if you have small network.

Mr. Tweet finds people in your network you should follow (use this after you have built up your following list).

Mailana can help you identify people who have strong affinity.   I wrote about an experiment I did last year using this tool.  One problem is that it doesn’t analyze your network in real time.  You submit the userid and then have to come back a few days later unless it is already in the database.

Twitalyzer is a terrific analytics tool that gives you some good benchmarking metrics for Twitter. Run the  impact report to help you identify influencers.

Twiangulate lets you analyze cross over between your Twitter network and another Twitter user.  This can be useful to find potential collaborators.

Klout lets you track the “influence” of specific Twitter users, including the growth of their network, who they influence, and who they are influenced by.

Mention Map helps you visualize who is interacting with you around which hashtags.  It shows nodes on your network.   There is not information about what exactly how the drawings are created though.

Once you’ve started to identify connectors and people to follow, you’ll need to manage it.  Twitter lists can help you create sub-groups of all your followers.

Create Twitter Lists of those accounts, organized by topic or community
Keep the lists small and manageable
Add these lists to your Twitter client and set up a schedule to monitor.   This makes the Twitter content feel more grounded, as opposed to just flying by.
Create Twitter searches for keywords to find additional sources. Follow them as needed
Tend to your lists regularly and unfollow people who don’t provide value to you, perhaps people who tweet about things you are not interested in.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, and could only follow 150 people, who would you follow?

Apply a little social networking theory and think before you follow.   Ask yourself, if you were stuck on desert island and could only follow 150 people, who would you choose?  How many people do you follow and why?  How do you manage it?

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