Social media can be more than “a means”. It can be “a goal” too.

The story of a dream, a nightmare and a wish…

A few weeks ago, I was privileged to coordinate the social media outreach at an international conference, called GCARD2 (The 2nd Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development). From the start we did not want to limit ourselves to the “standard” advocacy and social reporting. We wanted to assemble a group of young professionals to work together, using social media, to voice their opinions, and to report from the conference.

The project showed how social media, often used as a “means”, can be a “goal” too: You can bring young people together with a set of social media tools, teach them how to use these tools well, and… the rest will come by itself.

Here is the story of this project, which started with “a dream, a nightmare and a wish” two years ago, and ended up with being invited to meet the President of Uruguay…

The dream

by Enrica Porcari,
GCARD2 Communications coordinator

As we planned communication activities for GCARD2, we wanted more than ‘ tell a story’. We wanted to advocate the cause of agriculture, we wanted to include people in the process, before, during, after, and we dreamed of building capacities along the way.

We chose a new way of communicating. Blending traditional and social media and putting young people at the center. Already back in 2010, with colleagues from GFAR, we dreamed about using GCARD as a vehicle to demonstrate the enthusiasm of young researchers and extension agents alike, of students and young graduates, … We dreamed about creating a platform where the youth could have a voice to shape the future they will be living in, where they could demonstrate their work, we wanted to give them “their space on the stage”, and at the same time enrich the GCARD process as a whole.

At GCARD2, we made this dream come true…

The nightmare

by Peter Casier,
GCARD2 Social Media coordinator

In 2011, I stood in a field, talking to Kumal, a farmer in Bihar, India. With a sad look in his eyes, he said: “I went to school, but could not find a job, so now, I am just farming my land. I hope for my children to have a better future, to get a job in the city, in construction, or as a cleaner or a desk clerk. Anything, really, except doing as I had to do: farm the land.”
I realized none of the farmers I interviewed in Africa and Asia, actually saw agriculture as a viable future for their children.

This became my nightmare: The biggest challenges “to feed the world” in the near future might not only be solved by helping farmers adapt to shifting weather patterns, not only by breeding drought tolerant maize varieties or flood-prone rice. The biggest challenge for a food-secure world might not only lay in promoting more nutrient-rich crops, drop irrigation and micro-fertilizing… My nightmare was: soon, we might have no farmers left. If farming, agriculture research, extension services are no longer seen as a viable professional future for our kids, then “who will grow the crops that will feed the world”?

“Making agriculture cool again”, could very well be one of the biggest opportunities we have. GCARD2, we found one way to show how cool agriculture really is and engage the youth!

The wish

by Michael Hoevel and Liz Sharma,
GCARD2 Traditional Media coordinators

For years now, we have been working with clients in the agricultural sector. As professional media people, we have seen how the mainstream media got interested again in issues like food security, agricultural research, “how to grow more food without wrecking the planet”. For us, that made GCARD2 an ideal platform to approach the press, showcasing the excellent work done on agricultural development and research. And the press was eager to learn more.

But our wish for our media outreach at GCARD2, was from the beginning: how to blend the “traditional media” like newspapers, TV, radio and magazines more with the social media outreach. And to do so, we wished from the start we had good sources for “stories from the ground”. Our group of young agricultural professionals provided those sources..

In GCARD2, one of our wishes came true.

The reality

When we drew the plans for GCARD2′s communication outreach, we combined the dream, the nightmare and the wish into a one-of-a-kind approach: We would blend “traditional” and “social media” for our advocacy campaign – the first pillar of our media strategy.

Meerim, one of our GCARD2 social reporters

But we wanted to go beyond and use the new social media tools as a way to engage the young professionals. We would teach them how to use the plethora of tools like Twitter, Facebook, blogging, vlogging and podcasts to report from a conference, like GCARD2, and more so, as a way to showcase their work, and reach communities they had not reached before. “Building the capacity amongst young professionals” became the second pillars of our GCARD2 media strategy.

Engaging a larger group of young people, to report from GCARD2, also allowed us to include more people into the conference and the GCARD process: combining the young and social media we could reach out beyond “those physically present at the conference”. As it turned out, far more people “joined” the conference “virtually” than “physically”. This became our media strategy’s third pillar: “Inclusion“.

From the moment we started our GCARD media project, we seemed to have hit “a winner”: The GFAR Secretariat championed a strong social media and outreach component throughout. The GCARD Organizing Committee supported us by taking the risk of exploring and backing this novel and radical approach. A group of experienced media people from CGIAR agreed to steer the process. And YPARD, the network of Young Professionals working in Agricultural Research for Development, caught fire with just the idea of mobilizing their community of youngsters.

In just a few weeks, we assembled 136 young people, from all over the world, working on the social media outreach. Together, we prepared the technical tools, our detailed strategy, and got familiar with the actual contents of GCARD2. By the time we arrived at GCARD2, the team was ready: We had 35 onsite social reporters (12 international trainees, 7 Uruguayan trainees joined by another 16 young reporters from research centers, NGOs and farmers’ organisations) and 101 offsite support staff. All worked as volunteers with one goal: using social media to report from GCARD2.

The spark

Peter on his soapbox,
at the GCARD2 social media training

The process and the dynamic within a team of 136 volunteers was something unique to experience. For many of us, even just working, physically and virtually, in a group of 44 nationalities, became something to remember for the rest of our lives.

Just before GCARD2, the young reporters were trained on social media tools for two days: the technical tips and tricks, how to use those to report from a conference and for their own work. Once the conference started, we had the group ready. And boy, did they light the fire!

If we just look objectively at the results of the combined mainstream and social media efforts, it is clear this group did not just do well.. They excelled. Check out these figure (updated to Nov 11):

The proof

Mai Touma from Syria, our Middle East “Social Correspondent”

Mainstream media: 63 mainstream articles (from VOA, Financial Times, BBC, to Onda Rural – a network of rural radios in South America) were published, with another 88 articles in the Uruguayan press. All press clips were collected on Storify and Delicious.

The GCARD Blog: The team published 152 blogposts, almost all original content written by our social reporters. From Sept 1 to Nov 11, the blog was visited 16,026 times from 149 countries.
During this period, the blog received 99 comments, showing a very active engagement from the online community.

The GCARD website: From Sept 1 to Nov 11 the GCARD website was visited by 14,719 different people from 181 different countries, who read 104,212 pages.

Twitter: During the conference, we sent out more than 1,500 live Twitter updates PER DAY, reaching an average of 100,000 individual people each day. On the peak day, Oct 29th, we reached 353,623 individual people through Twitter.

Facebook: We posted over 300 updates on Facebook: blogposts, videos, podcasts, press clips and input documents etc.. The Facebook updates were read 20,127 times, and shared 127 times.

Webcast: (online via the EGFAR website) The live webcast was viewed 1,494 times by a total of 1,046 individual people. This effectively doubled the amount of GCARD participants.
During the interactive sessions, questions from the audience watching the webcast, were forwarded to the panels, actively engaging the online audience into the onsite discussions.

YouTube Videos: All webcast sessions were uploaded onto Youtube. We also posted 16 video interviews made by our social reporters. The GCARD videos were viewed 1,471 times to date.
We also promoted the GCARD2010 farmer videos, which were viewed 2,017 times.

Slideshare: 137 input documents and presentations were uploaded to Slideshare. The presentations were viewed 4,551 times. The input documents were viewed 3,561 times.

Flickr Pictures: 820 pictures were uploaded during the conference, another 90 GCARD pictures were uploaded from other accounts. They were viewed 200 times.

Podcasts: 15 podcast interviews were uploaded. These were visited 167 times. Several of these were distributed and broadcasted over the network of rural radios in South America.

Linkedin: A new LinkedIn group was created, on which we posted 84 updates (blogposts and other social media updates). The group now has 41 members.

And there was more: Each day, a digest of previous day’s social media updates was distributed by email to all participants. On Storify, an online daily digest (including the Tweets, blogposts and videos) was published online. A total of 188 GCARD2 articles were published and crossposted on other blogs and online media (check out the list on Storify).

More than “a flash in the pan”

President of Uruguay and Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries meet with the GCARD2 social reporters

Those statistics and figures are one way to show the results. It is also worth noting that the Uruguayan Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries personally gave our young reporters their training certificate, and the Uruguayan president insisted on a press conference, not with the main stream media, but with our social reporting team.

But what is even more rewarding, and more important, is to see how our group of “young reporters” continued with their engagement. Some examples given by our team members:

Meerim Shakirova (Kyrgystan): “CGARD2 helped me to realize my potential in making a global impact, mobilizing youth from all over the world and inspiring global action. We created a Facebook page where we are raising an environmental activism and sustainable living lifestyle through the social media tools.”

Keron Bascombe (Trinidad and Tobago): “GCARD2 made me decide to upgrade my blog about technologies, techniques and methods which can be applied to agriculture. I think, for me, GCARD2 lead the way towards a career in agricultural journalism and communications. I see success in my future and a positive impact upon the agri-sectors.”

Victoria Pereira (Uruguay): “GCARD2 helped me to pay more attention and be more specific about giving my opinion as communicator about agriculture, climate change and all related issues. I now talk more often about these topics in my daily radio program.”

Olawale Ojo (Nigeria): “My experience at the GCARD2 enabled me to use social media tools to spread the word about new initiatives like our “Cool to Farm” workshops via Facebook and Twitter.”

Mai Touma (Syria): “GCARD2 has enabled me to learn more, share, and now perform as a social media reporter: I have now my own blog to write about agricultural development & research at ICARDA, the center where I work. I’m tweeting, Facebooking, knowledge sharing, and setting up a big social media campaign to spread ICARDA worldwide. I do this as a volunteer and show my colleagues these powerful social media can do!”

Noelia de los Santos (Uruguay): “GCARD 2 opened my mind about the power of social media and taught me a lot about how spread the word in different way.”

Caity Peterson (Colombia): “I’m now covering Agriculture Day at COP18 through blogposts, Twitter and Facebook!”

Dinesh Panday (Nepal): “It enhanced my confidence as a messenger and I am continuously sharing to the Nepalese agriculture students in the way of AR4D through YPARD.”

Swathi Sridharan (Zimbabwe): “Participating in GCARD2 remotely from Zimbabwe, I was able to follow instantly what was taking place and, unlike the traditional media stories, really appreciated the informal, chatty, thought provoking opinions of those who were there. It felt more like being part of a large circle of friends at a party, talking and milling around together sharing ideas than the usual way we follow a conference’s ‘outputs’ and ‘outcomes’.”

Nawsheen Hosenally (Mauritius): “I am applying what I have learnt from GCARD2 in my work, focusing on youth in Agriculture and Rural Development. If we want to make a change in Agricultural Research for Development, we cannot ignore the youth and social media!”

Federico Sancho (Costa Rica): “The new role of active communications became clear to me. I am preaching social media everywhere I go.”

Rivaldo Kpadonou (Burkina Faso): “GCARD boosted my interest for blogging for development and non profit causes. Twitter now became my favorite social media channel.”

Msekiwa Matsimbe (Malawi): “GCARD2 made me realize how powerful social media is in making agricultural initiatives visible with zero advertising cost! We started a blog for the NEPAD fish node.”

Myriam Pérez Dumoulin (Spain): “My GCARD2 experience enabled me to have the access to a new job inside my organisation: I’m now starting in the “employability team” where I’ll develop my mission by showing graduates how to use social media in networking and finding job opportunities. I’ll give advice to our students on how to make a “professional-useful-efficient” use of social media. A new horizon for me!”

Codrin Paveliuc-Olariu (Romania): “GCARD2 has shown me new ways in which social media can touch the lives of millions of people around the world involved in the fight against global hunger. I started a new blog on food policy mainly, and am now using Twitter on a daily basis. I also started using additional social networks for my professional goals such as YPLD, research on food security etc.”

Idowu Ejere (Nigeria): “Through GCARD2 I have become more involved with other youth in ARD activities. I am also now spearheading the proposal for a Youth-day at the 6th African Agricultural Science Week next year.”

Marina Cherbonnier (France): “The GCARD2 Social Reporting experience inspired YPARD to carry on soliciting Young Professionals in agriculture to raise their voice through social media, and social reporting of key international events. We are moving on mobilizing “YPs in Agriculture” to integrate COP18 discussions online!”

Alejandra Bentancur (Uruguay): “GCARD2 allowed me to learn how to use social media tools in a coordinated way, with a goal and a defined strategy and how to make a group to organize themselves. In February 2013 we will start a blog for our organisation. The training at GCARD made us use the social media tools even better.”

Machteld Schoolenberg (Netherlands): “At GCARD2 I became very passionate about reporting, and especially through ‘the new media’. Also, GCARD2 confirmed my passion for Agricultural Research for Development (ARD). This realisation was so strong that in the weeks following the conference, I made several appointments to steer my trainee-ship towards a career in ARD and land conservation! yeah! I look forward to keep up the rock and roll with my young social media colleagues for COP18 and more..!”

Engage! Engage! Engage!

The social reporters team at GCARD2. Missing: 3 reporters busy interviewing llamas, and 101 members of our remote support team.

As a group, they are now engaging through social media, in two events focusing on food security at COP18, the UNFCCC climate change conference in Doha: The Agriculture, Landscapes and Livelihood Day and the Forest Day.

This continued engagement shows that social reporting from GCARD2, was more than a single event, it was the start of a new beginning, a renewed engagement of our young professionals in agriculture. And that is the most important reward for us, a wish and a dream come true, and a nightmare which might not.

 
Blogpost by Peter Casier (a.k.a. “Grandpa”)
- GCARD2 Social Media Coordinator -

Pictures by the GCARD2 social media team.

More and more Twitter accounts are sending out unsolicited spam tweets without the owner even noticing it. These tweets are sent either as “replies” or as “direct messages” to the account’s followers.

The spam tweets look like this:

• exactly what are you doing on that video clip  + link
• some real nasty stuff said about you here + link
• this guy is saying some bad things about you + link
• …

All links go to spam sites, or malware sites. A nuissance for all, and a guaranteed way to loose Twitter followers fast.

The sad thing is: unless if you monitor your account, or if someone complains, you would not even know.  At this moment, e.g. the European Union’s ECHO Twitter account sends out spam, and I bet you they have not even noticed.
So.. have you checked your outgoing replies and direct messages lately?

If your Twitter account is sending out spam…

If you see your account sends out spam by itself, the first thing to do, is to change your Twitter password.

BUT that is not enough. If your account is spamming others, the culprit might be using one of the applications you have authorized to access your Twitter account. Those might be desktop apps, mobile apps, web apps, sharing apps.., anything which you authorized over the years, to use your account, or to send from your account. And those can be quite a few, if you are an active Twitter user!

The strange thing is: even if you change the password on your Twitter account, those applications do NOT have to be re-authorized. So changing your password won’t stop your account from spamming others, if any of the authorized applications is the culprit sending spam.

To solve this, you need to revoke the access to all apps via this (difficult to find) link. (I bet you will be surprised to see how many apps are authorized to use your account!)

Without hesitation, revoke access to ALL apps. You can easily re-authorize all apps, once you use them. For most apps, that is a simple “click” when starting up the application.

Picture courtesy My Social Agency.

I coordinate the social media outreach for two events at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP18) in Qatar next week: ALL-5 (Agriculture, Landscapes and Livelihoods Day – Dec 3) and ForestDay-6 (Dec 2).

Our social media outreach does not only concentrate on the “standard” advocacy mechanics (webcasting, spread of links and content, video interviews etc..): As we assemble an onsite social reporting team with over twenty experienced people, we also want to reach out to young professionals and teach them how to use the new online media tools.
On Dec 1, we will give a one day crash-training (at the venue of the ALL-5/FD6 events: Renaissance Doha City Center Hotel in Doha) on social media mechanics and social reporting specifically. After that, we will integrate the trainees into our social reporting team, reporting live from both the Forestday and ALL-5 day. During both, they will be guided by our own social reporting team.

This way, we hope to also leave “more lasting heritage” behind, other than “we came, we presented, we reported, and we left”.

So I wanted to reach out to anyone who attends COP18, to join our group of young trainees,  follow the social media training, and do a 2 days’ social reporting exercise from FD-6 and ALL-5. No need to say that the training is for free, of course.

I just came back from Uruguay, where we did a similar exercise: 26 young reporters from all over the world were matched with another 10 experienced social reporters. They were trained and reported live from the 2nd Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2). The whole exercise became so popular that the President of Uruguay got to know about it, and sat with our group of social reporters for over one hour. – Check out these pictures on the president’s office website!

Our criteria for trainees are very simple: as long as they are enthusiastic on “the cause” (climate change, the role of food security, agriculture and agroforestry in a changing world) and are good enthused writers, we can take them on.

Interested in joining up? Leave a comment here, or send me a mail via peter (at) blogtips.org

Also, take a glimpse of our social media activity: check out all Twitter traffic with the #ALLforest tag and follow our main Twitter accounts: @agricultureday, @CIFOR_forests, @CGIAR and @CGIARclimate.

At the Consortium of Agricultural Research Centers (CGIAR), we’re looking for some advice from Facebook API-gurus. We would like you to tell us if this crazy idea is possible, and how to go about developing it:

Here’s the story: Simply said, CGIAR is a group of nonprofit agricultural research centers and projects. Many of these individual entities have their own social media presence, including their own Facebook pages.

On the “central” CGIAR website, we want to make a single page, aggregating the latest Facebook posts from all Facebook pages, from all centers and research programs, and allow people to interact with that “set” of posts.

This would pretty much be the same as what the Twitter-lists widget does: (using the @CGIAR/CGIAR-on-twitter list as an example):

That Twitter widget shows, in real time, the incoming Tweets from all CGIAR centers and programs. When you hover over a post, some buttons appear, and you can “retweet”, “favour”, or “reply”…

Well… we’d like the same for Facebook: showing all incoming posts from all CGIAR Facebook pages. The visitor can hover over a post, and “like”, “comment”, “share” onto their own Facebook account.

Would that not be cool? From one central page, you’d actually be able to see and interact with “the world of agricultural research on Facebook”?!

So, Facebook API gurus: What do you think? Is this feasible? Which API’s to use in our application? How would you go about building this app?
Please leave a comment, or email me via peter (at) blogtips (dot) org.

Picture courtesy Facebook-Likes

I have been fortunate to coordinate the social media team for the 2012 Agriculture and Rural Development Day (ARDD), one of the side events of Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro.

The ARDD is organised by a consortium of a dozen organisations working on sustainable agriculture and food security. On the day itself, June 18, the conference gathered about 600 people at a conference center in Rio. Social media was used to extend the reach of the ARDD’s messages beyond the day itself, and beyond the 600 participants “in the room”.

Before the event

About two months before the ARDD event itself, we gathered the social media coordinators for each organisation in a virtual team. We used Google Groups as a discussion forum, and set up a Google Site as a central repository for all useful data.

Early on, we agreed to use Facebook and Twitter as the main social media venues to spread our message. Both had already been used in previous ARDD events, but they had a date in the name. Did you know, you can’t rename a Facebook page, nor its title if you have more than 200 “likes”? There were complications for the Twitter account too, so we decided to rebuild both from scratch. Date-less, this time: @AgricultureDay and facebook.com/AgricultureDay. As the main Twitter tag for Rio+20 (#Rioplus20) was used for many purposes already, we started a dedicated tag: #Rio4Ag (Rio for Agriculture).

To build up a “following”, as well as a momentum for our cause, we collected links to content related to Rio+20 from each organisation: publications, blogposts, videos,… We fed these through the Facebook and Twitter streams, and encouraged all participating organisations, and our social media support team, to retweet the links. The momentum built gradually, from a few #Rio4Ag tweets per day at the beginning, to a couple of hundreds per day in the two weeks before the event.

As the momentum grew, we gradually switched to spreading content directly related to the ARDD-event itself: the program, the different sub-events, the speakers, the online registration form, the input papers, factoids about food security and agriculture,…

Social Reporting from the event

While the momentum-building was ongoing, we prepared the social media outreach for the event itself: the social reporting. We knew on forehand only six social media folks were to attend the event itself. We divided the onsite work:

• Ensure every session was covered with a live blog and live tweeting
• Collecting the presentations and speeches, and posting them on Slideshare during the event
• Taking pictures, and posting them on Flickr, as much as possible, during the event

As the event was physically limited to 600 people, we decided to incorporate webcasting into our online strategy. This would enable us to involve way more people than those at the event itself.

This was slightly easier said than done: For a big room like we had, you need good quality video input, and even better audio. You also needed the bandwidth to upload the video stream. And to make it even more complicated, we decided to incorporate a Facebook and Twitter chat-feature on our webcast page.

Luckily we had an excellent logistics team on the ground. They contracted a video/audio company to deliver mixed audio (mixing audio from the live roaming microphones, panel microphones and audio from the interpreters) and video stream. A 2nd contractor, ISAT, the webcast company would mix the video with the presentation slides, encode and upload the final stream. We used Watershed (the commercial version of Ustream) for the actual webstream broadcast. Oh and there was a 3rd company involved, who brought in 6x 1mbps lines, of which we used 4, for the webcasting (one live line, one back, in each of the two locations we would webcast from).

As we had little time to make a Facebook/Twitter chat feature, so we asked our colleagues from IFAD, to prepare a nonstyle page on their site, mixing the Facebook/Twitter chat channels and the webcast. We embedded that all with an iframe, on our page, with the proper headers and styling.

For the event itself, we dedicated one person to monitor and moderate the Twitter and Facebook chatter, and to reach out to all relevant networks i.e. “spin the content”.. This person also encouraged online discussions via Twitter and Facebook, and handed over question from the “online” public, to the panel on the stage.

During the event, we uploaded our social media content. Here are our live blogs (with the press coverage), with more on the CGIAR website. Here are our Flickr pictures, Slideshare presentations, and the recorded webcast sessions on Youtube.

For two weeks after the event, we kept on “spinning” content on Twitter and Facebook: press clips, blogs, pictures and videos, all links we collected from the media team, or content we discovered ourselves.

Was it worth it? The social media reach

It was clear that our strategy in building momentum worked: At the climax, the day of the event, more than 1,500 tweets with the tag #Rio4Ag went out (our statistics cut off at 1,500, so in reality there were more), reaching 598,035 followers with total of 3 million impressions (“copies” in newspaper terms). Those were live tweets, as well as commentary and discussions about the live sessions. We also reached 6,000 people via Facebook.

A total of 610 people watched the webcast, which means we effectively doubled our event’s “attendance”.

At the same time, I think it was important the social media team assembled and published all “event material”: the presentations, blogposts, videos… This type of content will survive the event itself, as well as the volatility of Twitter and Facebook, carrying the messages from the event much further than what “a single day” event could do.

So was it worth it? You bet!

A selection of the live tweets from the Agriculture and Rural Development Day:

The introduction video and recorded webcast sessions:

With thanks to our ARDD social media team, and a big thumbs up for our core team: Vanessa Meadu, Cecilia Schubert, Lisen Stenberg, Denise Martinez, Michael Hoevel, Liz Sharma, Dominik Mallek, Ratih “Vita” Septivita, Misha Wolsgaard-Iversen, Torben Timmermann, Nathan Russell and Enrica Porcari.
A special thanks to Roxy Samii, Marcello Barnaba, Saverio Palmieri, Antonella Pastore and Michael Marus for the webcast and chat interface

Picture courtesy Cecilia Schubert/CCAFS

Read our tutorial on social reporting from events

Click on image to enlarge

In the first part, we refined our generic communications strategy, identifying our key messages, target groups and the communications tools we have at our disposal. We also adapted our messages and tools for each target audience.

Based on this overall communications strategy, we zoomed into our online communications. In the second part of our case study, we looked at our core online content: What content do we have, what do we need? How can we ensure visitors actually find this content?

Step 3: The practical planning

Now it is time to get into the practical work: plan who will do what, how do we measure our progress both in “reach” and “impact”. How can we mitigate potential risks and ensure a good quality control over our online communications?

Step 3.1: Define your workplans

Now, we have to define who will make this content: List the content needed, and put names in the to-do list. Keep in mind that some content might be auto-generated from other sources, e.g. by importing RSS feeds from your data repositories or blogs.

Identify also the update frequency: how many items for each content type do you need per week, per month?

 
Work is needed, not only to generate core content, but we will also need to allocate time and efforts for the online media tools, as identified in Step 1. These tools will help us either to “generate” or to “spread” our core content:

Step 3.2: Measure progress, reach and impact

Because of the amount of work, and the number of people involved, tt is important to keep track of your progress. The performance and output of your online communications will be a good benchmark, AND a good encouragement for yourself, your communications team, your management, and all staff involved in the content-generation process staff.

We can write multiple blogposts about how to set targets and track progress. At this point, though, I encourage you not to concentrate too much on “statistics” for “the sake of statistics”. Make a clear distinction between “reach” and “impact”: “Reach” is the amount of people who read (or potentially read) your content. Pure “Impact” can be defined as “the direct relation between single communications efforts and the fundamental changes it instigates”. This is difficult (if not, even nearly impossible) to measure for online communications tools.

At this point, the closest and easiest to measure is “how many people from your target audience, actually read your core content, which carries your key messages”. And then we hope “the reading” would somehow translate into “action” by your target audience.

For CPWF, our partners in the workshop on which we base this case study, we defined a set of simple, easy to track, metrics, both for reach and impact. We’d track those figures on a weekly basis, making it easy to follow progress with simple graphs.

Step 3.3: Define quality control and risk mitigation

At this point, it is well advised to assess the potential risks, and mitigate them.

There is also a “quality” versus “quantity” issue to address: When one professional communications officer produces one article per week, we can easily ensure a good quality. When, however, 20 project staff, each with a different technical expertise, different mother tongues and a limited knowledge of communications and web-stuff, start generating online content, we have to monitor the quality.

Concluding

If you reached this part of our case study in one piece, well then: congratulations! We have now defined our online communications plan.

We started from our overall communications strategy: defining our key messages, our target audience, and the tools at our disposal. We looked which tools we could use for which audience, and adapted our key messages for each of our target audiences (Step 1)

We then zoomed into our online media strategy. We looked at our core content, identifying what content we have, and what we need. We also made sure that our core content could be found on our websites, improving its usability. (Step 2)

In the last part, we made a communications workplan, involving everyone in the process: from content generators, publishers to those staff helping to spread the messages using social media tools. We defined the metrics to track progress both in reach and impact, and mitigated risks to ensure the highest possible quality for our online process. (Step 3 – as described in this post)

Once again my usual disclaimer: I am not rewriting the Bible here, nor do I pretend to hold the one and only Holy Truth: this case study is only one example of a process in defining an online communications strategy. I do believe however that these simple steps will help to put structure in your communications efforts. It will help rationalizing and targeting your messages, aiming at a wider reach and a higher impact.

After all, in the nonprofit sector as in the commercial sector, the same rule applies: you can do the best possible job, but if no-one knows about it, your efforts are in vain. Our colleagues do their best to deliver a quality product or service, and as communications people, it is our task to spread the message about their work.

Click on image to enlarge

Let’s move onto your online strategy and its corner stone: your online core content.

Step 2: Identify and improve your core content

Now we will zoom from your “general” communications strategy into your “online” strategy, concentrating on what and how you publish on the web.

This is also the time to look at web usability: your core content might be stored in your website, your online repository, your blogs,.. but how easily can a visitor find that content? After all, you might have the finest core content, but if people can’t find it, the effort is pretty useless.

Step 2.1: Identify existing and needed core content

In this process, defining your core content is crucial: with all of the online tools you have, what is the “terminus”, the “end station” for the train on which you put your target audience? All tools will be geared to bring your target audience to that core content.

This step will take into account the work in step 1: we will not only identify core content (both what we have already, and what we still need to generate), but at the same time, we will identify which core content we can use for each of the target audiences defined in the previous step.

Step 2.2: Improving web usability

The most tricky part is “usability”: coming onto your site, as a “representative” from one of your target audiences, how easy is it to find content which you have for me (the core content we defined for each target audience), and does it contribute in conveying your key messages?

Also remember the slogan: “Show my your website, and I will tell you what organisation you run”: Your website is your business card, the online representation of your organisation.

 
In the next and final step of this case study, we will dive into the practical work: defining the workplans, performance metrics and risk mitigation measures.

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Step 1: Define your general communications strategy

In this first part, we will define the basis, the first steps of a communications strategy. These steps can be applied to any type of media such as printed matter, promotional events,…

In the second step, we will zoom from the general communications strategy into the online communications strategy.

Step 1.1: Identify your key messages

This discussion often touches on the core being of any organisation: Why is your work important? What makes you different from other organisations? What is your contribution to the “greater good”?

The art is to distill a limited set of clear messages around which your communications strategy will be structured. These will be the foundations of your communications outreach: all your communications efforts should be geared – directly or indirectly – to convey one or more of these messages.

Step 1.2: Identify your target groups

At this point, we only want key target groups. In the next step, we will customize our overall messages and tools, for these target groups. Think also why you want these as your target audience. Are each of these really your target, or “a means to get to your target” (as the “media” target group would be, for instance)?

Step 1.3: Identify your communications tools

These might be conventional tools like press releases and brochures, but we also want to make optimal use of your online presence: your website, your social media tools.
At this point, it might also be worth to check also our social media strategy case study for inspiration.

Step 1.4: Identify your messages and tools for each target group

Concurrently, taking your plethora of tools at your disposal (Step 1.3), which are the best suited to reach each target group (Step 1.2), either to convey your messages, or to stir up interactions, discussions, get feedback?

 
In the second part of this case study, we will zoom from the general into the online communications strategy.

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CPWF’s research concentrates on “How to manage water more equitably, efficiently and sustainably”.

We locked ourselves up for a week, to realign the organisation’s key communications messages and tools, and to integrate an online communications strategy, as a key component of a strategic communication approach.

This case study summarizes the process we followed, from a redefinition of an overall communications strategy, into the online web presence, and further down to practical workplans, reach/impact measurement and risk mitigation.

Each part gives a generic summary of “the theory” with an example how we translated this “theory” in practical terms.
Click on each step for more details.

Step 1: Define your general communications strategy

    1.1: Identify your key messages
    1.2: Identify your target groups
    1.3: Identify your communications tools
    1.4: Identify your messages and tools for each target group

Step 2: Identify and improve your core content

    2.1: Identify existing and needed core content
    2.2: Improving web usability

Step 3: The practical planning

    3.1: Define your workplans
    3.2: Measure progress, reach and impact
    3.3: Define quality control and risk mitigation

While this case study is, of course, geared to the work of CPWF, the process we followed can be used in many other cases.

Could not resist posting this.

Video courtesy How It Should Have Ended