Danielle Brigida has posted an excellent slide show about her work flow as the social media person for the NWF.
I like her point about listening is actionable! It isn't just about looking at the what people saying -- it's about doing some pattern analysis and linking it back to a decision - like what should we write about on our blog. In other words, your content reflects the community.
Maybe you saw this teaser over at the NTEN blog last week about the WeAreMedia project activites for the month of October wondered what the term fondle the hammer meant. The phrase comes from Jeremiah Owyang in a post titled 'Stop Fondling the Hammer and Focus on the House." It is a stern warning to avoid falling into the trap of playing with the tools first without thinking of strategic outcomes.
The NTEN WeAreMedia project has been hard at work over the last few months building the house so to speak -- focusing on how nonprofits can use social media effectively. We've addressed the strategic and tactical issues. So, now we've given ourselves permission to get our hands on the tools. Why? Because at some point, you need to learn how to use tools effectively and efficiently.
And, we've organized this inquiry into using the tools to match the strategic framework (see below) - so it isn't just random fondling the hammer. We're doing in a thoughtful way.
Starting October 6th and throughout the month of October (see schedule), WeAreMedia participants are going to unabashedly focus on the tools and collectively create the nonprofit social media tool box.
Now that we've laid the strategic framework in the other modules, we can have some fun. So come join us ... it will be easy and quick. And, we'll be awarding special prizes for participation.
Want your WeAreMedia T-Shirt? Help us build the toolbox!
We've organized the tools into different categories that are loosely based on the Conversation Prism from Brian Solis. This list isn't comprehensive, it does NOT include every possible social media tool or category known to mankind - there are literally hundreds, if not thousands. We've narrowed down the categories to the ones that many nonprofits are already using and organized them so they relate to key themes of the Tactical Track.
Listening:
Knowing what is being said online about your organization and the field
you work in.
Tools:
Participate:
Joining the conversation with your audience. By making a human connection with people online, you can influence their perception of your brand and help them find meaningful, relevant ways to support your
mission.
Tools:
(and yes, many of the tools that follow can be used to participate ...)
Share Your Story:
You share the impact of your organization's programs through blogging, podcasting, sharing photos on Flickr, or YouTube or other video sharing site.
Generate Buzz:
Your raising your organizations profile and spreading awareness of your organization's programs or campaigns. What happens is that you share your message with enthusiastic supporters and they in turn may choose to pass it to others with a similar a interest in your organization or campaign.
Community Building and Social Networking:
You build relationships online, nurture a community, engage people and inspire them to take an action, or raise money using social networks and apps.
During the month of October, we'll focus on a tool category per day. For each page in the tool box, we've broken down the tasks as follows:
Of course, if you want to spend more time and share your work flow with a particular or your power tips, please do.
Feel free to add, revise, or edit. Feel free to ignore our schedule and jump in where-ever you want whenever you want.
Don't want to work on the tool box? Check the top of the WeAreMedia wiki for places where we need some specific help.
Dan Schwabel's 5 Free Tools For Reputation Management introduced me to a new listening tool, backtype. It solves the problem of monitoring blog comments where people specifically mention you. People can make comments about you on other blogs and if you only track links from blog posts, you won't see it. BackType lets you find, follow and share comments from across the web. I gave it whirl and it turned up some interesting results.
You can also track other bloggers and see where they commented -- I might do this only to study how the masters do it. An old trick is to observe people who do social media really well and learn from observation. It's interesting to observe Chris Brogan's commenting activity.
Update: Based on a comment to this post, I'm adding some context to comment trackers.
These services let you track conversations that are important to your organization and issue. They also allow content creators to aggregate their online activity and expertise from across the social Web into one centralized, portable profile.
Questions To Ask Before You Dive In:
Why Commenting and Comment Tracking Is Important
Click to see larger image
This diagram, credited to the “New York Times via Ed Philp,” (original source)
illustrates the flow of comments on a blog. If you are reading many
blogs and entering in many conversations, how to track where you've
left comments? That's what this group of tools will help you do.
The Art of Commenting on Blogs
Comment Tracking Tools
(I found out about many of these tools from Brian Solis, Conversation Prism)
SezWho - a social platform that gives the community of readers the ability to not only comment on the post, but also rank the quality and insight of other commenters as well as the post in general. When commenting or voting, the service asks for your email address and then tracks your individual comments and your ranking history to provide interested visitors with an amalgamated representation of your views and aptitude.
Disqus - a comment and discussion plugin for websites, blogs, or applications. Pronounced "Discuss", the plugin makes commenting more interactive by creating a community of discussion across the web. It is a free service with no inline advertisements. Users create a profile and are able to track their comments across the web while creating their very own comment blog.
coComment - a Swiss based comment service attempting to create conversations based on web comments. The service notifies users when new comments are left, and allows the user to post new comments to his/her blog.
co.comments - tracks your comments, and it notifies me automatically by sending the comment to your Google Reader account.
IntenseDebate - attempts to enhance and encourage commenting on your existing blog by adding features like comment threading, reply-by-email, and importing/exporting of comments.
Tangler - Enables the embedding of portable, global conversations across the web, similar to the way YouTube videos are displayed in blogs and Web sites. One widget, one conversation with multiple access points.
General Resource
How To Become An Authority in Your Content Niche by Dosh Dosh
How to Comment Like King or Queen by Coolcat Teacher Blog
Strategic Blog Commenting A Screencast by Amy Gahran
Strategic Blog Commenting: Blog Post by Amy Gahran
Commenting by Alan Levine
Power of Comments by Chris Brogan
How To Add To Blogging Conversations by Darren Rowse
Specific About Tools
How To Effectively Track Your Comments on Other People's Blogs with Co.Comment by Sue Waters
Why Disqus is Winning the Web Comment Battle by Louis Gray
Cocomment: Annual Week of Comment Blogging by Alan Levine
Time Chart - See Flickr Discussion on Version 1
Wanna Remix it? Download it here
I'm getting ready to a workshop later this week, I did a simple pre-workshop assessment, asking folks about their level of experience/comfort and their burning questions. I usually do this in a room with a quick poll, but I wanted to push myself to create the content based on their questions.
Here's a question I get all the time:
How much time and resources does it take to implement social media?
In my presentations, I use a slide from Nina Simon's blog post called "How Much Time Does It Take To Do Web2.0 In A Museum?" I've been thinking about remixing that slide so it matches the framework I set up for WeAreMedia tactical modules.
So, how can you quantify - as close as possible - the amount of time it takes to put social media in practice with good results? It's so hard and you could cop out with "It depends ..." It does take more time in the beginning if you're just acquiring the skill with a particular tool. As soon as you have the workflow in memory and have routine, it will take less time than when you first started. But, there's the whole issue of being efficient - and if you have super human getting things dones with social media skills, then it will take you less time.
Also, it isn't matter of less or more time - it is also how you manage your online time. Are you staying on task and getting the workflow done for each specific strategy? It has nothing to do with the tools, have you avoided getting distracted from your to do list or work flow or too much multi-tasking-- social media can be ADD producing.
Also, the categories have overlap in terms of tools. For example, you can use Twitter as both a listening tool and for participation. (And for spreading buzz for that matter). Also, I wanted to lay this out in a sequential manner -- obviously you're not going to stop listening once you begin sharing your story.
So, here's a stab with lots of caveats.
Let me define the categories for you.
Listening:
Knowing what is being said online about your organization and the field
you work in. You can listen with google alerts, technorati, twitter,
and RSS readers. Key skill is pattern analysis. Link listening and
analysis to decisions or actions. About 5 hours a week once you learn
how to use the tools and make listening a daily habit. (5 hours per week)
Participate:
Is joining the conversation with your audience. By making a human
connection with people online, you can influence their perception of
your brand and help them find meaningful, relevant ways to support your
mission. Tools to help you participate are Twitter and Co-Comment. You
can also participate vicariously through bloggers by encouraging them
to write about your organization. (10 hours per week - also includes listening tasks as they go hand-in-hand)
Generate Buzz:
Your raising your organizations profile and spreading awareness of your
organization's programs or campaigns. What happens is that you share
your message with enthusiastic supporters and they in turn may choose
to pass it to others with a similar a interest in your organization or
campaign. But first, you have to build trust, credibility and -- most
importantly -- a relationship with those who might interact with your
posted content. Buzz tools include FriendFeed, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Digg - and of course you add many others to this category that are found in other categories. I'd also include your individual social networking profile which can be a great way to spread buzz (or spread yourself too thin.) (10-15 hours per week - also includes some listening tasks)
Share Your Story:
You share the impact of your organization's programs
through blogging, podcasting, sharing photos on Flickr, or YouTube or
other video sharing site. Once you have content created through these methods, it can be easily shared using the buzz tools above through social networks. But even better is getting your constituents
to share their stories about your organization with others (which takes
more time because it is more in the community building area) (15-20 per week depending on the type of content, number of different ways you're creating it, and skill)
Community Building and Social Networking:
You build relationships
online, nurture a community, engage people and inspire them to take an action, or
raise money using social networks and apps. If you want to build an
online community for knowledge or skill sharing, using social network
tools like Ning or LinkedIN will help you get there. If you're looking
to engage and inspire new supporters, setting up an organizational
presence on one of the larger social networks like Facebook or MySpace
is the best step. Finally, consider how you can mix in fundraising. Note, this step goes beyond just setting up your individual profile or creating a fan page or profile -- to get results in this category - it requires heavy lifting. I wouldn't advise an organization to start here ... (20 plus hours a week)
And of course, Einstein's theory of social media relativity. It takes a few months before you see results. People don't understand that -- you have to give it time. We're not talking about the immediate gratification of email blasts.
What's your best time estimate for investing in social media? How much time do you spend on these tools and tactics? Does equal with results?
This slide deck comes via Tim Wilson who I "met" in Twitter while he was getting information to organize this panel. He has a write up of his process and notes here. He experienced the all too familiar mixed levels of experience with social media that is typical when presenting for nonprofits (and probably other non-technical or non-industry gatherings.)
I've seen happen over the past 15 years of doing nonprofit technology training, no matter the tools. I wrote about some specific instructional techniques you can use here and here.
"Social Media: Getting the Word Out in the New Information Age” at the 2008 Crossroads Conference for Nonprofit Excellence in Austin. The panel featured case studies from David Neff , Heidi Adams.and Connie Reece. David Neff has more.
Tim kindly gave me permission to slice and dice the case studies and add them to WeAreMedia Module 5.
I first met Amy Fox when she de-lurked on the Museum Computer Network listserv. She describes herself as having a "unhealthy obsession with Twitter." Indeed, her first post summarized some observations from her research on how museums were using Twitter for her masters thesis.
1. Tell me about you
I am a University of Washington student currently writing my thesis to complete my MA in Museology. I'm fascinated by social networking and am interested in finding ways for museums to appeal to all types of people. Somehow that morphed into my thesis topic.
2. What is your thesis about?
Broadly, I'm researching how museums are using micro-blogging. This has been narrowed to a focus on Twitter since that is where the most activity is concentrated at the moment. The goal is to identify and analyze how museums are using Twitter and suggest best practices as well as some possibilities for the future. My research has been in three areas, first finding and following "official" museum Twitter accounts and tracking subscribers, followers, number of posts and other measurable data. The second part of my research has been analyzing updates, or tweets, and identifying categories. The final section of research is a survey completed by sixteen museum professionals involved in their museum's Twitter account. I have also been following public Twitter updates that include the key word museum using Twitter Alerts.
3. What are your best twitter tips for museums?
For anyone just starting out, first try Twitter for yourself. Then set up an account for your museum and follow a few other museums as well as people in your target market using a search for location or interest keywords. Decide what you want to accomplish with this account. Do you want to start conversations? Do you want to post updates about events? Trivia and information? Will it be another RSS feed? I suggest a mixture of all of these, but do whatever feels comfortable and whatever best fits into your mission. Then start to update. Try using the @username feature to start conversations with your audience.
I think using a mixture of types of tweets is a good strategy because sometimes the same type of message over and over can be monotonous. One example is simply turning a Twitter account into an RSS feed. If followers already subscribe to your blog and you only tweet blog posts, there is no reason for them to follow you on Twitter. Similarly, only updating with event reminders leaves little room for follower interaction. The more types of updates you mix in the more interesting the feed becomes.
The number one thing I think museums should remember about Twitter is that following works both ways. Many people don't follow their followers. For a popular bloggers or other celebrities, this is understandable, the volume is simply too large. But for museums and public institutions like libraries and other nonprofits, it is so important to subscribe to their followers and take a look at what they are saying. It's free insight into their follower's daily lives. I see a lot of museums following their colleagues and other museums. Sure, museums should follow other museums, it's a good way to see what their peers are doing and bring traffic over to their own page. But don't forget your target audience, followers/visitors.
Finally, make sure that your museum's full name is in your bio, especially if your username is an acronym. You might also consider throwing in some key words to make sure you show up in searches.
4. You have observed museums using Twitter in a variety of ways, can you give me some examples (with links to the actual tweet?)
The two most common tweets are event reminders and automatic RSS feed updates, but museums are also tweeting with podcast and video links, updates on exhibits or animals, fly on the wall observations from inside the galleries among others. Some examples that I found looking through the most recent pages of my Twitter feed include the Women's Museum asking followers for input, the Exploratorium linking to news that relates to their museum, The Pacific Science Center's Science Calendar trivia of the day, an animal update from Monterey Aquarium, and the San Francisco Zoo interacting with followers/visitors.
5. If I'm a museum staff person and want to connect with my peers on Twitter, what's the best way to do that?
Well, all I can suggest is my approach. Make sure your profile reveals that you are a real person interested in museums so when you start following people a quick glance at your profile explains why you are following them. Then start by searching for keywords such as "museum" and make note of both museums and individuals whose profiles look interesting. Look to see who follows these users and whom they follow and start adding people. I had an e-mail exchange with a museum staffer who started an account for their museum and began to follow 500 people in a manner of days. They had no updates of their own and no information in their profile, so unfortunately they were identified as a spammer and the account was suspended. So, I suppose the moral is to have a profile, be active with updating and to be selective when building your feed. I'm not very good at being active or interacting, so I have to remind myself to do both.
6. Who are the five most interesting Museum twitterers?
As cliché as this might sound, it was really difficult to choose five. My criteria are diversity of topics and frequency of updating, as well as the overall tone of tweets. Five museums that consistently provide interesting, varied content are Renton History Museum (@rentonhistory), the Exploratorium (@Exploratorium), The Women's Museum (@The WomensMuseum), Life and Science (@lifeandscience) and the San Francisco Zoo (@sfzoo).
7. What is the best of the best how-to advice out for using Twitter?
I like Mashable and Tweet Crunch for the latest news, ideas and applications. Nina Simon's Museum 2.0 has a couple good posts about Twitter and museums. And I recently discovered a collection of Twitter suggestions sprinkled around the web titled "Twittn' Secrets." I have not read all of them, there is some good advice in there, though some of the suggestions may not apply to museums. I am always discovering new resources, there is so much out there that it is difficult for one person to keep on top of everything.
Some additional Twitter Nonprofit and Social Change Resources
Cocktail Party Participation: Revisiting Twitter, Nina Simon
Twitter to Save the World (celebrates the release of Social Actions Twitterfeed)
Twitter Primer by Beth Kanter
Twitter 101 by Connie Bensen
Twitter Resources from Pistachio
Should there be a nonprofit and social change category on Digg? (Digg it here). That was the conversation in the nonprofit, nonprofit technology, and social change social media space. Here's a summary of the distributed conversations, some context, and some questions.
Back in the early days of Web 2.0, nonprofit technology thought leader Marnie Webb created the NpTech Tag as a way for nonprofit techies to share bookmarks on del.icio.us. Marshall Kirkpatrick, who was working with Netsquared, whipped up the NpTech Metafeed which allowed folks to aggregate items tagged by nonprofit techies from many distributed sources. As the volume of information increased, weekly summaries were added to the mix. The result of these ad hoc collaborations was a folksonomy of terms of nonprofit technology related news and a community of taggers.
Most recently, Marnie Webb created a Yahoo Pipe of the NpTech Feed and runing it through AideRSS to sort it by popularity. And Jonathon Colman created the NpTech FriendFeed Room.
And, of course, one of the community ad hoc collaborations incorporated Digg or a "Digg like" ability to crowdsource news items. Allan Benamer put together an NpTech version of Digg, using open source software called Pligg combined with a Yahoo Pipe of the Nptech feed. These early experiments were about how to crowd source, aggregate, and share nonprofit technology news using web 2.0 tools. To get a zeitgeist of nptech.
Recenty, on NTEN's WeAreMedia project, nonprofit technology folks have been exploring the another aspect of Digg - generating buzz. A number of nonprofit groups use Digg as a way to generate interest and traffic in their content - even it doesn't make to the top of the home page. That discussion generated some good tips for using Digg (as well as other tools)
Others who work in the nonprofit sector, perhaps mostly gen y, turn to Digg for news. Last week, Ashley Messick brought up the question, "Should there be a nonprofit and social actions category for Digg." She notes that she often is frustrarted because she can't find nonprofit news on Digg because there isn't a specific category.
Today, the Wild Apricot blog continued the discussion about "Should Digg Have A Nonprofit Category?," making the point that nonprofit news on Digg gets lost because a) demographics and b) site structure (no specific category.) Social Butterfly, back in June, also voiced this complaint which was echoed in the comments by her readers.
The question was also discussed over at Social Actions. While there was some consensus that a nonprofit and social actions category on Digg would be a good thing, Christine Egger wondered, whether having a nonprofit and social change category would create a silo that would prevent new people discovering nonprofits and social action news. As says in the comments:
The nonprofit community hasn't been served well at all by being lumped into a single category named for their legal structure. It completely obscures the contribution each organization makes uniquely to every single Digg category . . . Action category could make sense, but if the idea is to pepper all of our daily goings-on with opportunities to seamlessly take action so whatever issue we're impacting moves in a positive direction (regardless of whether that action is nonprofit-, CSR-, or especially "none of the above"-related) it might be cooler to 1) encourage Digg to display related ways to take action on things that have been Dugg, and 2) encourage Digg functionality on all of the campaigns created on social action platforms.
As noted on Wild Apricot, last week’s announcement of a $28.7 million investment in Digg is intended to fuel Digg’s plans for customizing the Digg experience, enhancing the recommendation system across other areas of the site, creating deeper category and topic content views and more ways to discover and organize content. This might bode well for a nonprofit and social category on Digg or other ways.
What's your take on how the nonprofit sector uses Digg? What's your take on how the nonprofit sector can use Digg? Should there be a nonprofit and social change category on Digg? (Digg it here).
The NpTech Tag started as an experimental community tagging project in 2005. A loosely coupled group of nonprofit techies and social change activists decided to use the tag "NpTech" to identify web resources that would create an ongoing stream of information to promote and educate those working in nonprofit technology. Through TechSoup's Netsquared project, blogger Beth Kanter, was commissioned to write a weekly summary.
And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider subscribing for free
A few months I created a workshop called "Be Prepared For Social Media." So, what came to mind? The Boy Scouts and Merit Badges. After wasting way too much time browsing Boy Scout badges, I put together the above slide show introduction. However, right before the workshop I got a list of participants and realized that it was not the right metaphor for some participants signed up for the workshop and might even be offensive. So, I ditched it.
My colleagues, Connie Bensen and Shashi Bellamkonda sent me this link to PopCorn Kids from a 10 year old cub scout who is selling PopCorn to help feed hungry kids through Feeding America. So, since I'm trying to raise little money myself for a food bank thought I'd blog this.
What advice would you offer this budding ten-year philanthropist? Is there a merit badge that needs to be on the list so your nonprofit can be prepared for social media?
Step back and look at the painting
Jay Cross is making a point (couldn't resist) about Twitter by referring to the art work of Georges Seurat who was a pointillist.
Twitter is like pointillism. Up close it can be meaningless. Back away and a pattern emerges. Your subconscious shapes an image of the person from the Tweets. The whole is a phase change from the sum of the parts.
Stepping back and seeing patterns is an important skill when you use Twitter, particularly as a listening tool. That's why I like to grab a search feed from Twitter for topics that I'm monitoring and then step back and see the patterns. I recently came across this tool called "TweetBeep" - which is described as google alerts for Twitter - it sends you emails when someone mentions you on Twitter.
I thought this might keep you from seeing the forest through the tweets - or get in the way of pattern analysis. But, if you wanted to be monitoring in real time and you lived in your email - then this would be a good tool for the job.
And while I'm on the topic of pattern analysis and stepping back, Chris Brogan has some advice about how to self-monitor your tweeting.
Post the occasional tweet about a particularly good blog post to Twitter. Do this at a rate of about 1:12, meaning one post about your stuff to any 12 tweets about other people’s stuff. This will keep people a bit more interested in your stream as something of value, versus a “mememememe” type of Twitter user.
Bryan Person has started the Twitter "MeNotMe" meme in which has analyze his last 100 tweets categorizing them into me (personal), not me, me (professional - about work). I think he needs to come up with a rating scale of egotism (see the definitions here).
NTEN's WeAreMedia project has been discussing and building six tactical modules on social media - the practical tips and resources you need before you start to focus on the tools. In the last four weeks, the community has shared tips, resources, and case studies to create four awesome tactical modules:
This week, we're talking about Module 5: Social Networks (and widgets) for Community Building, Taking Action and/or Fundraising. This module takes a look at ways that you can build an online community, engage people and inspire them to take an action, or raise money using social networks and fundraising tools. We looking for tips, examples, and resources.
I'm particularly excited about this module because we have a lot of expertise and knowledge in the WeAreMedia community.
Help build this module by visiting the wiki and share what you know! The module page is here.
