It starts with listening

How can a really big, diverse organization “turn the ship” toward a meaningful and intentional social media strategy? The American Red Cross started by simply listening.

“Perhaps the biggest benefit and unexpected outcome of engaging in social media through listening first is that the Red Cross drove internal adoption of social media. Wendy says people are no longer afraid of negative comments or posts. “The opposite of hate is indifference, if someone bothers to post a negative comment it means they care.” Negative comments are now viewed by the organization as an opportunity to educate and improve what they are doing.”

You can learn more about the Red Cross philosophy for social media outreach here.

Twitter for the little guy

Beth Kantor has another great post about how even modest organizations that don’t have pots of gold can make social media work to accomplish for their own missions. Plus, she wants to hear about any good ideas out there form nonprofits using social media in new and exciting ways:

“And, if you are a small organization and have succeeded, I want to hear about it.

Leave a comment sharing how you're using social media to support your organization's work in a local community or regional effort and using a shoe string budget to do it. And, if you could win a copy of "Twitter for Dummies" that the good folks from Wiley just sent me.”

Doing something cool with Twitter? Facebook? Ning? Drop Beth a line.

The power of layering

According to this great post from Frogloop, the key to a successful campaign builds momentum both offline and online:

“The cardinal rule of offline campaigns is layering: multiple contacts on the doorstep and on the phone build on each other to create momentum. Neighborhoods that have had multiple passes of canvassing tend to deliver higher ROI on each successive pass - the second, third, and fourth contacts aren't "cold calls", they're follow-ups. Adding contacts through online advertising and content, social networks, email, text, mail, etc. can build momentum, too. The more times a voter, donor, or advocate sees, hears, reads, or experiences a message and call to action the more likely it is to penetrate the noise of every day life…”

Face Time

For nonprofits, engaging supporters online is becoming the norm. Emails fly and movements are building on social networks. But nothing will ever replace the power of real, live, human beings standing together for a cause. How do you get online activists not only to show up at real events – but to make those events truly awesome and effective?

Check out One Day, One Planet: A How-To Guide to Orchestrating a Global Day of Action on techpresident.com.

What does the future hold for democracy? For organizing around a cause? 350.org's Global Day of Action might give us a clue.

Recruitment: Turning Media Spikes Into Leads

Getting on the nightly news or in the local paper is one thing – turning that exposure into recruits is another. And your window of opportunity is short – 3-4 days at most to make the most of the exposure.

The blog over at Seachange Strategies is a great one to follow all the time, but this oldie-but-goodie post is a great read if you’re looking to grow your email list:

Seachange Strategies Blog

Are You Ready for the New Consumer?

Over at Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog, Katya is asking: What are supporters expecting of your organization? Three things to consider:

1. Personal relevance
2. Social benefits
3. Tribal benefits

Are you ready for the new consumer?

Publish Post

Flash Mobs for Fitness

Looking for a novel way to get communities fired up about tackling obesity? Consider a flash mob. What’s a ‘flash mob’? Well, for LiveWell Colorado it’s a creative way to draw much needed attention to the problem:

… the campaign kicked off with a flash mob in three cities across the state (see above). In Denver, Greeley and Grand Junction, more than 100 people stripped down to retro, 1980’s-inspired work out gear and performed aerobics, leaving passersby engaged and amused.

You can see video proof of the impromptu workouts here.

Tweet Congress

Are members of Congress hip to Twitter? You bet! The folks over at tweetcongress.org built their site to open up a direct line between twitterers and their elected officials in Washington. Their mantra:

We the Tweeple of the United States, in order to form a more perfect government, establish communication, and promote transparency do hereby tweet the Congress of the United States of America.

See how democracy is functioning in 140 characters or less (with nifty stats and charts, too).

How does your Facebook page compare?

How does your Facebook presence stack up to other nonprofits? How much staff time do other nonprofits dedicate to social network upkeep? Now many nonprofits are using Twitter?

Our friends at NTEN surveyed over 900 nonprofit professionals about how they’re using social networks and then compiled the results into an easy-to-read report. (Note that you have to provide some basic contact information to download the report, but it also signs you up for NTEN’s free newsletter, which is full of helpful tools and info. And don’t forget – you’re an NTEN member!)

Building Relationships with Lawmakers

"In reality, successful influencers are... methodical. They are humble. They are patient."

Check out this exerpt from Amy Showalter's book about how underdogs (us) can build relationships with the Big Dogs (lawmakers) they hope to influence. Interesting reading...

http://www.innovatetomotivate. com/reports/ASAEUnderdog809. pdf


This abridged excerpt was published by The American Society of Association Executives Associations Now magazine.

Twitter 101 for business

Despite all the talk and hype about Twitter, do you still feel like you missed the first day of class?

This link will take you to a great guide- provided by Twitter- about how businesses are using the tool and maximizing their relationships with customers. There are sections on getting started, learning the lingo and even best practices. Plenty of relevant information as we think about how we can effectively use Twitter to engage with advocates.

http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/

Getting the most out of your NTEN membership

First- did you realize you have an NTEN membership? You do! We have an AHA membership that extends to all our grassroots staff. You should have received a welcome message way back at the end of 2008. You'll need your email address as your log-in name, and you'll click 'forgot password' to get started. Contact Danielle Grooms if you need assistance getting up and running on the website.

If you do know about your membership... Do you take advantage of the many free or low-cost webinars and conference calls hosted for members? They're a great way to get and stay connected with others in the advocacy field- and to learn how they're using various technologies in their work. I love their 'Ask the Expert' series!

Visit http://www.nten.org/ right away to get acquainted with the Nonprofit Technology Network. You'll be glad you did!

Tabbloid Reading

Have trouble keeping up with all your favorite blogs? Do you run out of time or forget to visit some of them? This is a great resource!

Visit http://www.tabbloid.com/ to set up your own daily paper. You simply enter the urls, set the schedule and let the website do the work. They'll send you a daily paper that includes all the recent posts from your favorite blogs.

Check it out! No need to spend your entire morning clicking from site to site...

Bloggers on the Bus

This looks like an interesting presentation- To stream this event live, click here

A Conversation About Media and Politics in the Digital Age
July 16, 2009, 5:00pm – 6:30pm

Last November’s elections broke barriers and made history on a number of fronts, making it one of the most transformative elections our nation has ever seen. One of the most groundbreaking changes was in the way Americans received and processed vital information about the most pressing issues—for the first time in American history, blogs, social networking sites, and other web-based media were the primary sources of information for many voters. They helped shape individual opinions and the public discourse at large.

While the Internet has proven to be instrumental in disseminating intelligent, well-developed information on public policy, it has unfortunately also been a medium for disseminating hateful rhetoric and promoting the politics of fear. The progressive movement’s challenge moving forward is to not only help curtail the spread of this inaccurate information, but also seize this new media’s benefits to help promote a factual, intelligent, and broad progressive policy agenda.

Please join us for the Internet Advocacy Roundtable on Thursday, July 16 from 5:00-6:30 p.m. This month’s discussion will moderated by Media Matters founder and CEO David Brock and feature Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert and ThinkProgress.org Editor-in-Chief Faiz Shakir. They will discuss blogs and other new media’s impact on the public discourse, and how the progressive movement can use new media to help promote a broad policy agenda in 2009.

Twitter Just a Blip So Far

Someone recently shared this study with me, and I thought you might find it interesting as well! Interesting to note the very low percentage of people actually using Twitter...

Findings of the Online The Harris Poll, conducted between March 31 and April 1, 2009, show that 51% of Americans do not use Twitter or have a MySpace or Facebook account. 48% of adults have either a MySpace or Facebook page, with 16% of adults updating their page at least once a day. While the media may have found Twitter, only 5% of Americans are currently using it.

There are some substantial differences in who is and who isn't using these social networking sites, says the report:

• 74% of those aged 18-34 years old have a Facebook or MySpace account but this quickly drops off the older one gets. Only 24% of those 55 and older have an account


• 8% of 18-34 year olds use Twitter, 7% of those 35-44 use it, 4% of those aged45-54 and just 1% of those 55 and older


• Men and women use Twitter at the same levels (5% each), but women are more likely to have a Facebook or MySpace account (52% versus 45%)
• Two in five people with a high school degree or less have a Facebook or MySpace account compared to 55% of those with some college and 52% of those with at least a college degree.

There has been some discussion about whether these social networking sites may, at some point, become a threat to search engines such as Yahoo! or Google. Right now, that doesn't seem to be an issue, concludes the study, as 45% of adults believe the sites are popular, but they won't pose a real threat to the domination of search sites while just one in ten say they may become a threat. 46% of Americans are not at all sure. Even among the largest users of the social networking sites, 18-34 year olds, 62% say they will not become a real threat to the search engines.

Here's a link to the press release of the study:
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/pubs/Harris_Poll_2009_04_16.pdf

AHU Courses of Interest

American Heart University has just launched a series of five courses called “Dialogue with Decision Makers”- these can be found in the Volunteer Management and Engagement School in AHU. These courses focus on building the skill of staff in having effective discussions with key volunteer and corporate decision makers. The course of particular interest to us is focused on conversations with Leadership Volunteers.

Course content is customized to the AHA. Each course contains relevant content, followed by quizzes, and a role playing exercise at the end that is to be conducted with a supervisor. There are also ongoing coaching opportunities that we hope will reinforce new skills. The course takes about 40 minutes to complete

You can check out what the course looks like by taking a few minutes to review the teaser at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_GX2Shoa2g

If you’re interested in taking coursed through AHU, talk with your supervisor first. You can visit www.heartu.org to enroll.

A Note about Facebook 'Notes'

This blog has a great post about how to take advantage of the Facebook Notes section to drive traffic to your blog, providing you have an RSS feed. Check it out!
http://www.corporatedollar.org/2009/02/leverage-notes-application-facebook-traffic-blog/

If you give this a try, please share results with all of us by leaving a comment below.

DDC Tip: Formatting Your Emails

Before sending out any email to your advocates, you check to make sure the spelling is correct and you’ve hyperlinked and inserted the correct merge fields… but, have you formatted? The formatting features in the email toolbar help your email to appear clean and easy to read. It’s great to use when highlighting important aspects of a bill and informing advocates of key message points.

If you need to indent your text, you can use the “TAB” button or the “increase indent” on the toolbar. Using the spacebar will not guarantee your formatting will show up in an advocates’ inbox the way you’d like it to!

You can use bullets to spell out what provisions are in a bill you’re asking for their help on. Highlight the text you’d like to have bulleted and then click on the “Bullet” button on the toolbar.
Feel free to test out some of the features by emailing to yourself first! Happy formatting!

Twitter for Beginners

If you're new to Twitter, this site has some great information and resources to help you get started. Check it out at http://p2pt0.wetpaint.com/page/Twitter.

The #p2 wiki is part of site- Progressives 2.0- for progressives using social media. In addition to learning how you can get started with your own Twitter account, you can find a list of other organizations using Twitter, learn about associated tools like TweetDeck, and read about the benefits of hashtags.

With all these great resources, I just might be propelled into the world of Twitter myself. See you there!

Tweet, tweet

Some great information about using Twitter for business, I find a lot of it is relevant to our efforts as well. Check out this great internet marketing blog for lots of recent posts about Twitter.
A few to check out:

* Is 22 Tweets-Per-Day the Optimum?
* New Data on Top Twitter Applications and Usage
* Can Having a Twitter Bio Get You 8 Times as Many Followers?

Sharing Social Media lessons...

Today, Clarissa participated in a webinar presented by Harris Interactive and Virilion called the Power of Social Media: Impact on Healthcare Nonprofits and Charities. The data was based on survey results of non profit volunteers. Some highlights are included here, and you can access the complete slide presentation on the O drive at: O:\National Center\ADV\Grassroots\Let's Talk Grassroots- Blog Links\2-24-09.ppt

Clarissa wanted to share a few key learnings that impact our work in grassroots:
An increasing number of volunteers want the organization they work with to engage in social media forums. The demographics for who uses social media shows a fairly even split among men and women and the average age is mid 30s, college educated. The 50+ and 65+ plus generation’s adoption of social media has doubled just in the past quarter. Those using social media want to hear about organizational news, the organization’s view on politics, what you are doing to influence policy, as well as how to get involved. The messenger they prefer is a non staff voice, they would like to hear from fellow volunteers. The volunteer base would like to hear about the day to day work of the organization via social media tools. And Facebook remains the number one space people use with Twitter only accounting for 9% of usage.

*You can view a recording of the presentation at https://www323.livemeeting.com/cc/1100006390/view?id=M2NTHG

Paper Doll booklets- How's it going?

It's Go Red luncheon season, and we want to hear how YTC recruitment is going with the Paper Doll booklets and postcards. If you're having success, what's the secret? What's working well for you? We want to hear your challenges, too! If you are struggling to recruit with the booklets and postcards, tell us what's not working. What are the roadblocks to success?

Click comment and share your thoughts on this post. I'm looking forward to a robust conversation!

More from I2M conference...

Several of our colleagues recently attended the Innovate to Motivate conference, and they've been sharing feedback. Brian Bowser, Grassroots Coordinator for the South Central Affiliate, shared the following thoughts:

"One of the more interesting sessions focused on offline advocacy and the importance face to face interaction between advocates and decision makers. To me it seemed like common sense that an in-person visit is more meaningful than a fax, phone call, or email, but the session was still very insightful. The presenter was a professor from USC with a PhD in psychology and provided scientific evidence along with a case study to prove his point.

The basic premise was that as online communication tools become more popular and sophisticated the less effective they are. If everyone is able to deliver hundreds of emails to the capitol then the affect is essentially canceled out. In all cases is it advantageous to go back to what works….live meetings between real people. It is harder to say "no" to someone directly but it is also easier to read non verbal cues like apprehension or reluctance that isn't possible online.

With the new focus around offline goals this year and the activities we have already accomplished in our affiliate I see us as well positioned to be effective advocates moving forward. I also didn't interpret the presentation as saying we should abandon our online system, in fact we need to continue to build and improve on it, but at the same time not rely solely on it."

You can also check out the post below with Terri's lessons from the conference!

Combating Issue Fatigue

One of our colleagues, Betsy Vetter in NC, was quoted in this article by Amy Showalter. The article is a great look at issue fatigue- a problem so many of us face. I encourage you to check it out.

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/associationnews/200902/index.php?startid=28

Online Tip of the Month- Subject Line Best Practices

Subject lines are our “first impression” with advocates. Based largely on that simple sentence that appears in their inbox, they will make the choice to either open the message, or delete it. And considering we expend a considerable effort to effectively write our messages to persuade action, subject lines are a critical component to our online communications. Our hard work is in vain if no one sees the message.

When writing you subject lines, keep the following tips in mind:

• Less is more: Open rates are higher when subject lines are under 50 characters, so be brief and be bright. Use your MS Word word count tool to double check the length before sending.
• Remember the When and Why: The most effective subject lines are urgent, action-oriented, and specific. Use deadlines, embrace action verbs, and be concrete about the issue at hand.
• And Don’t forget the Who: Use the subject line to connect with the recipient and bring the message closer to home.
• Say “No” to SPAM: Some of the very same words that get your messages opened may also cause them to get caught in SPAM filters. Please refer to Quick Tips on Avoiding SPAM Filters for more information.
• Know Your Numbers: Watch the open rates of your messages. They will help you glean which subject lines work for your audience and which ones leave them cold.

Finally, the tips offered here will help you write more effective subject lines, but keep in mind that you will not be able to abide by ALL of the best practice principals at all times in the little space that you have- so choose a strategy to use and don’t get discouraged. For more details and examples of the tips provided above, see Subject Lines That Work.

Notes from I2M

Several of our colleagues are at the Innovate to Motivate (I2M) conference this week in New Orleans, LA. I2M is one of the largest annual grassroots conferences, and a wonderful source of information and networking with others in the grassroots industry.

Terri Broussard is among the participants, and has sent along some lessons from the conference. Her valuable insights are below.

• Social Media only works when you tie it to reality. You need a picture of it to believe it. If you’re at a rally, take a picture of your advocates, post it on facebook or you tube and have them tag themselves. They’ll want to follow you on twitter if you hand out your business cards with your twitter id
• Social Media engagement is not a 9 to 5 job. Volunteers engage after hours. Don’t be afraid to experience and it’s okay to lose control of your message from time to time; you have to be willing to experiment.
• Differences between facebook groups and fan pages (we’ve all been wondering). Groups were first on the scene. They tap out at 1k people. Fan pages are the way to go if you have to pick one. But if you can do both, do both. Fan pages allow you to do the same thing you can do with an actual facebook page. You can also get demographics on your fans after you have more than 10 people join.
• The #1 concern of a very experienced Grassroots Organizer, PAC manager and lobbyist is how to move online advocates to offline activities. The playing field has been leveled, most organizations have some kind of online advocacy capability, that advantage will likely level out over time as these technologies become more commonly used.
• A way to find key contacts: look up political contributors in the city, then check their voter records, cross check their professions and interview them.

Thanks, Terri!