Image courtesy of wharman

Why do people participate in Twitter chats? I’ve been thinking about that question a lot. I posed the question “what Twitter chats do you participate in and why?” on Twitter and Facebook. What came back was pretty consistent: people participate to get information, ideas, contribute to a community, and meet new people.

Gauri Salokhe participates in the #kmchat (knowledge management) to network and learn, and it is well-organized:

Ed Nicholson participates in #agchat because the discussion and participants are diverse and contribute insights. Both Ed and Gauri noted great planning and moderation as a reason for continuing to join the chat.

Pamela Grow and Alison Rapping participate in the #NPCons chat for the people and insights:

Avi Kaplan loves the #4change chat because it is his community:

Leora Wenger participates in the #smallbizchat for the information and fellow contributors:

And me? I participate in the monthly #NPCons chat (nonprofit consultants). I keep coming back because it is thought-provoking, includes a very diverse group of smart people, introduces me to new tweeps, brings me into a community, and is incredibly well-moderated. I also consider it an important time for “professional development” every month – in other words, the content is strong.

I think people on twitter are craving community, not just individual engagement. Think about it: on Facebook you have Pages and Groups. On Linkedin there are Groups. On blogs, Buzz and YouTube we can follow conversations and watch them evolve. But on Twitter we are stuck with this clunky mechanism where we have to view conversations separately, and cannot even follow complete conversations. At 140 characters, most conversations die out after three exchanges -  maximum.

Twitter chats fills our craving for community. In a chat, we meet like-minded people and sharing knowledge in community. Twitter chats are the Groups of Twitter.

If I were to create a “recipe” for a Twitter chat, I’d start with the great information my colleagues offered:

• Organize it around a conversation, with endless topical ideas. For example: small business, being a great consultant, pitching to the media, working with volunteers, mommy blogging, etc.
• Create community. You could invite people personally to the chat (like Hildy Gottlieb does before every #NPCons chats – it works), retweet great comments during the chat, connect people together afterwards, etc.
• Think about what insights people want to gain and design conversations around that. Have great guests that can converse about the insights people want.
• Be consistent. “Same bat time, same bat hashtag” every month.
• Planning and good moderation are critical. How many moderators do you need? How will you moderate?
• Recruit diverse participants. Encourage a diverse participant base who will bring others into the community and who represent many different viewpoints.
  

I’ll leave the last word to Leora Wenger:

If you participate in a twitter chat, what keeps you coming back? If you host one, what makes it successful? What have been the challenges?

Resources:

The best compilation of Twitter chats is this Twitter chat schedule, compiled by Robert Swanwick.

How to Participate in a Twitter Chat, with tips and resources by Jeff Hurt.

]]> http://www.communityorganizer20.com/2010/07/27/why-do-you-participate-in-twitter-chats/feed/ 15 http://www.communityorganizer20.com/2010/07/27/why-do-you-participate-in-twitter-chats/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/communityorganizer20/OaNC/~3/1arznAfUyjs/ http://www.communityorganizer20.com/2010/07/20/why-you-cant-think-about-social-media-in-a-vacuum/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:47:33 +0000 Debra Askanase http://www.communityorganizer20.com/?p=2918

image courtesy of Dunechaser

Social media strategy and practice is so much richer when ideas are shared and commented upon. Beth Kanter famously sets up wikis to share and gather knowledge for almost all of her projects, and uses her official Facebook Page to source ideas and get feedback. Linkedin groups emphasize knowledge-sharing. Brands have marketing and project management teams that collectively think about their social media. We are all trying out social media in new ways, while dealing with a geometrically increasing amount of data and information, and staying on top of ever-evolving platforms and new channels.

We all need a social media support team.

Last week, I had the privilege of working with a nonprofit team to brainstorm for two days about their social media. Not only was it fun, but what came out of the two days was so much better than I could have developed on my own! I developed a draft strategy to present to the team. Using the strategy as a starting point, we created a much better social strategy together that what we began with. Why? Group dynamics, internal organizational knowledge, individual capabilities and strengths, and group energy. We were able to access the resources and knowledge within the group members. We all think differently. Most importantly, we all respect each other.

Even if you are the only person at your organization working on social media, you can still create an external informal (or formal) social media advisory team.

I have an informal team that I call upon to help me think through ideas. My team is both long-distance and local. My “team” includes a web developer, a PR professional, a marketing VP of a brand, an SEO expert, a fundraising expert, and a local social media implementer. I call upon them individually, as I see the need for their individual expertise, to bounce ideas off of them. I skype and share documents with another nonprofit social media consultant for feedback. Most importantly, there’s a strong element of trust – I trust that my teammates are unselfishly providing their best advice, and I in turn am ready to offer it to each of them at all times.

I think the ideal team would include these knowledge proficiencies:

• social media strategy
• social media implementation
• website design and programming
• Facebook development
• SEO expertise
• fundraising expertise
• marketing experience (corporate or nonprofit)
• other tech capacities as needed: software development, database development, etc.

I use Linkedin Groups (especially the Nonprofit Professionals Forum and Social Media for Nonprofit Organizations) to ask for help, ideas, and feedback as necessary. Twitter is also a great place to ask for feedback and input, as well. I blog at Idealware, and we created a private blogger’s group to discuss blog post ideas. I also use the Community Organizer 2.0 blog as a channel for ideas and feedback.

Most importantly, my clients are also part of my team. I’m not a “guru” that goes off and works on the mountain. I start with a concept, pass it through the client for feedback, develop it further, pass it back through the client for feedback, and so forth. Ideally, I would facilitate a brainstorming session like the one described above, which greatly enhances any idea. In other words, clients are important members of any social media team.

I can’t create social media strategy in a vacuum and neither should you.

Social media is about connection. The core of it is about connecting ideas, people and places, and organizations to actions. There are so many ways to create your social media team, and so may different types of teams. When you develop social media in a vacuum, the ideas are just half-finished.

Who is on your team?

image courtesy of dsevilla

Last week, I received an absolutely incredible press release; a vivid, kinetic preview of an event, the ROI Summit, entitled “The Future is Here.” The ROI social media press release (SMPR) included photos, a twitter pitch, recent news, online resource links, featured Summit participants, videos, and of course…the pitch.  Toby Dershowitz, of The Dershowitz Group, was kind enough to talk about how the company crafted the SMPR, best practices, how to measure the success of a SMPR, and predictions about the future of the social media press release.

What did you want to feature in the ROI social media press release?

We wanted to highlight three things:

1.    The vision of Lynn Schusterman, who has made the ROI Community her signature philanthropic project.
2.    The members of the ROI network — their ideas, their energy and idealism, and their achievements.
3.    Links that give you access to various parts of ROI’s online network.

What are the best practices in creating a social media press release?

Social media press releases are a few years old, but I have yet to see anything I’d deem best practices. What works best — and what doesn’t work at all — is rather fuzzy. SMPRs are still a work in progress.

That said, the general rule of thumb is to serve up the information, stories, and resources in a variety of appetizing ways. The standard press release, filled with useful links, serves as the spine of the SMPR. (Or, if you think like a blogger, it’s the main post, with comments at the bottom.) Sidebar layouts vary as much as blogs do: embedded videos, factoids, a Twitter pitch, resource links, Facebook buttons, and more. Contact info should obviously be in there too — and PitchEngine does a nice job of tucking those details up top, where a click initiates an elegant reveal.

But it’s hard to nail down best practices for a platform that hasn’t yet proven itself. As Mark Evans says: “In theory, I love the idea of the social media press release but in practice it hasn’t been a home run.”

Do you use a template of any kind? Do you modify it?

We used Pitchengine.com to build our SMPRs, mostly because they offered the best mix of functionality, design, and cost (free).  We didn’t modify the PitchEngine template because that’s not an option. Placement of the elements is also fixed.

My guess is two things will happen soon: Platforms like PitchEngine will offer more flexibility in layout and design; and lots of people will awaken to the fact that an SMPR is just a web page, and they’ll design a template for their own websites. That provides more control — and enables you to host it on your own domain.

Is there any rule of thumb as to which elements work the best to get the attention of writers and journalists to cover a story?

Our rule of thumb for an SMPR is the same as for any press release — or, for that matter, any form of communication: have something worth saying that your audience wants to hear. To that end, I’d argue that the title and the first few lines of the release are still key. Give people a reason to keep reading… and viewing… and clicking.

The media mix also matters. Diversifying your media allows for more diversity in your media coverage,  more quickly. A newspaper can lift text from the body of your SMPR, the evening news (or increasingly popular online TV) can grab and embed a video clip, a radio station can play a sound bite straight from the website, and a blogger can retweet whatever piece of information strikes her fancy.

What service do you recommend for the press release distribution? Any particular reason why you chose Pitchengine?

We chose PitchEngine for a few reasons. First, we liked the template. It was user-friendly both for us and for those to whom we’ve sent it. It was easy to upload video and photos. Essentially, It provides users access to more of the newsroom, not just the release. We’ve received great feedback so far, though I imagine some of that is the novelty (for most people). PitchEngine is also free.

Our goal is to encourage clients to host their own SMPRs as extensions of their own sites. Because that’s all they really are — web pages. Self-hosting has several benefits:

-    The SMPR will carry your own URL, which is better for SEO.
-    The template will be consistent with the rest of your site, which is better for branding.
-    You don’t make users go from (for example) an email with a traditional press release… to the PitchEngine site to view an enhanced, media-rich version (the SMPR)… to your site to access more resources. Every click you require is another hurdle which may prompt readers to go somewhere else.

Is there a way to calculate click-throughs or views of the social media elements?

PitchEngine has a page view counter. Unfortunately, it does not have individual analytics for all the various elements. Of course, if you send out the SMPR, and the videos which you host elsewhere suddenly see a spike in traffic, then it’s a safe bet that the SMPR had something to do with it.

To measure click-throughs — you could use a URL shortener such as bit.ly to measure which links are most popular (although that adds extra steps to setting up the page). As for the Twitter pitch, you can always search to see who Tweeted it. And by substituting your own URL shortener for the one PitchEngine automatically inserts, you can also track how many people found your SMPR through the Twitter pitch.

How could one measure the success of a SMPR?

I’d measure the success of an SMPR in these ways:
1.    How many people read it (or at least loaded the page)?
2.    How many click-throughs?
3.    How many retweets?
4.    But most importantly: Did the SMPR help you reach whatever strategic goal you (hopefully) established at the outset? Did you recruit more members? Raise more money? Get more exposure for our advertisers? Did you engage more people in your project?
In the end, the point is not simply to play all the SMPR’s bells & whistles. The point is to communicate more effectively, and achieve your long-term goals.

Anything else you want to add?

I’d reiterate the point I made earlier: SMPRs are very much a work in progress. And since most media on line is already “social,”  they may not be called SMPRs for much longer. Companies like PitchEngine will have to evolve from their current form, mostly because their value-added — a nicely designed template hosted on their servers— will soon be easy for people to configure and host on their own.

Remember the movie called Spellbound? Not the Hitchcock film, but the 2002 documentary about the National Spelling Bee. What was impressive was the filmmaker, who used relatively inexpensive video equipment (a few cameras and a Mac workstation) to produce a feature film that went into theatrical release. And he financed it (mostly) by maxing out his credit cards.

What’s the connection to SMPRs? The tools at his — and our — disposal seem to be multiplying every day. Countless new ways to communicate… new platforms… new formats… it’s dizzying, really. But pretty cool, too.

It’s as if we’re all painters, and we’ve suddenly been given a whole new spectrum of colors. But the challenge remains the same: What are we trying to communicate? What’s worth sharing? What’s your story?

Toby Dershowitz is President of The Dershowitz Group. She is the author of two “how to” manuals dealing with the press entitled “Communicating with the Media” and “Making Your Mark on the Media” and has worked for more than 25 years in Washington on domestic and foreign policy issues.  The Dershowitz Group specializes in high-end strategic communications, imaginative media and public affairs consulting, legislative strategy, crisis preparedness, policy initiatives and diplomatic event management. They are located in Washington, D.C.

Yesterday Molly Livingstone of Hebrew University and myself presented at the 140 Conference in Tel Aviv. (Disclaimer: Hebrew University is a client of mine.) Currently, the university maintains two Twitter accounts, @HebrewU (English) and @HebrewU_heb (Hebrew) with over 2,000 followers. Additionally, they have a Facebook Page with over 7,500 fans, and an educational YouTube channel with 740 subscribers. We’ve all learned a lot in a year. At the conference, Molly and I discussed lessons learned, the challenges of working within an established institution, the importance of social media cheerleaders, and what has succeeded. I thought I’d share some of them with you:

1. Cross-departmental teams more than double the assets

Hebrew University put together a cross-departmental team to implement its social media that is able to access language, culture, and departments throughout the University. The team itself consists of two staff from the Media Relations and two from the Development department. Between them, there are two native English speakers, two native Hebrew speakers, two native-born Israelis, one native-born American, and one is a native-born British citizen.The team represents the largest majority of the university’s target audiences, as well as language and cultural diversity.

Most importantly, the their combined reach includes the Spokesperson’s office (and therefore the Office of the President), the alumni department, multimedia (who controls the YouTube channel), the development department, the Friends of Hebrew University associations (over a dozen worldwide), and media relations. Over the past year, the social media team has needed all of these resources at some point to support, amplify and assist in the social media efforts.

2. Social Media Cheerleaders are vital to success

When working with a large institution, it is fair to say that not everyone thought social media was a worthwhile effort in the beginning. Largely in part to a small group of social media cheerleaders within one of the departments, social media came into being. An initial “social media trial run” of three months expanded into six, then a year. Now social media is regarded as a worthwhile financial and resource investment. It would not have been possible without a few people within the institution pitching it and believing that social media is important to the university’s success.

3. Determine the communications theme and stay on message, on every platform

We determined early on that these are the primary messaging themes: put a personal face on the university, promote it as a world-class institution, and emphasize its strength in research and innovation breakthroughs. The team ran monthly twitter chats about an interesting facet of the campus to put that personal face on the institution. They still use Twitter to respond personally to people talking online about the university, engage, and talk about the scientific breakthroughs and research that come out of the university.

On Facebook, the university hosts a monthly “Expert on the Spot” video Q&A with a researcher or scientist. The Expert on the Spot features an expert talking about his/her research and inviting questions about it. This accomplishes two things: it is a means for the university to engage personally, and it highlights the innovation happening on campus.

Most Facebook Fan Pages bring the visitor to the Wall. This is the equivalent of landing in the middle of a conversation. Wouldn’t it be better to open the door first with a special Welcome tab? Or offer an overview of what actions your organization is promoting now? Consider developing a custom Welcome tab to introduce the organization to its visitors, and convert fans to stakeholders.

Facebook Page administrators can choose any tab to be the landing tab. Most choose the Wall tab.  However, why not add a custom landing tab highlighting the value of Liking the Page? A custom landing (or Welcome) tab is designed for visitors to your Page who have not yet Liked it; once they become a fan, fans land on the Wall. The value of a custom-designed landing tab is that you can create the first impression, ask visitors to become a fan directly, ask visitors to take an action, and show the “at a glance” unique value of your cause. 

Pages with  custom landing tabs have a higher conversion rate to fans than Pages without them.

According to a May 2010 BrandGlue study, visitors to Pages with a landing tab converted to “people who like” the Page at a rate of 47%, while those without a custom landing tab converted at a rate of 23%. That’s a pretty compelling statistic. You can check these statistics for your own Page by looking at the Page Views in your Page Insights. What percentage of Page visitors currently convert to fans?

Another approach is to develop a custom landing tab with a special offer. Organizations could learn from Danny Brown’s recent experiment of offering an exclusive e-book, only available through his Facebook Page, and only available to people who  liked his fan page. Danny Brown found that, within a week of the offer via Facebook, the number of people who Liked his Page grew by 245% (from 190 fans to 466). And, importantly, there had been only seven unsubscribes – the vast majority remained fans. (Hat tip to @AskAaronLee for pointing me to this experiment.)

How could a nonprofit organization take advantage of this?

• Create a similar goods promotion, such as the WeCanEndThis.com t-shirt (given away for free at SXSW 2010)
  
• Offer an exclusive Facebook application, such as the facebook application for My Social Actions
• Download a free e-book, such as World Shapers: Extraordinary Women Making a Difference
• Download an iPhone app, like the iPhone app for The Extraordinaries

Nonprofit landing tabs come in all flavors: some offer a call to action, others highlight the latest projects, reveal special offers, ask for your email, or offer incentives for Liking the page. It is up to your organization to decide what makes the most sense. In the slide show below, I’ve highlighted 15 nonprofit Pages with custom landing tabs.

I also created a wiki exclusively for Facebook landing tabs. In the wiki, you will find the links to Facebook landing tabs in the slide presentation. I invite you to join and add other links, as well as include information about metrics related to custom landing/welcome tabs.

A few resources:

How to create a landing tab that converts visitors to fans (All Facebook)

Welcome Tab Facebook Application (create your own)

Facebook Landing Pages Wiki (add your landing page to this, discussions on usage and metrics)

You are a new organization or brand, and you want to build a Facebook presence. Pages are designed to most easily promote existing brands and organizations.  Pages cannot invite individuals to Like the Page – only individuals can invite other individuals to Like a Page. Pages cannot participate in Groups; only individual profiles can. Businesses cannot create an individual profile; doing so violates the Terms of Agreement with Facebook and subjects your company to being deleted and banned from Facebook.

You need at least 500 people to Like your Page so that it can begin to gain traction; 1,000 is even better. If you don’t have many customers, clients, or individuals familiar with your organization or brand, it’s difficult to gain traction  or buzz online because of limited interactions with your organization. How can a new brand or organization use the power of Facebook to attract people to its Page and gain fans? The bottom line: get creative, collaborative, and aggressive.

Here are some ideas to attract fans to a new organization’s Page:

1. Get Creative: Design the Page to retain fans and email addresses

Create a custom Welcome Tab as the default landing tab for your Facebook Page. You can design your own or try this free Welcome Tab application.  A few things to be sure and include:

Email capture. These are your most likely nonprofit fans! ONE.org has a great example of email capture in its Welcome Tab.

Why they should Like your Page. What value will your Page offer? A good example of this is EndCyberBulling’s Welcome Tab.

Latest call to action. Is your organization trying to encourage a specific action? Offer a special discount on classes? Create a box on your Welcome Tab that emphasizes how people who Like your page can get involved or take advantage of a good deal. The Human Rights Campaign asks for both your email address and that you take action today within their Welcome Tab.

Create an incentive for people to Like your page by offering special content. John Haydon came up with a great idea to offer free content only to people that Like the page. A hidden tab with the content appears once you click the Like button.

2. Use Internal Resources: Ask key staff and board members to build up their own Facebook accounts and promote the Page

Since only individuals can invite other individuals to Like a page, and your organization doesn’t have a large mailing list, the fan base begins with friends and family. Ask the Executive Director, Board members, staff, to begin collecting friends on Facebook, if they haven’t done so already.

Keep in mind that only up to 25% of  friends will Like the Page, if asked, so you need to invite a lot of friends!

If you have any mailing list contacts, send out an email asking people to Like the Page. If you haven’t yet built up an email list, then this is the time to start doing so.

3. Get Collaborative: It’s time for strategic alliances.

Who else can help you collect fans? Is there another nonprofit that you collaborate with or with which there is synchronicity? What groups exist out there that are naturally sympathetic to your cause? Some suggested actions:

Reach out to Facebook Groups. There may be existing Groups concerned about your issue. Join those groups, participate in the conversation, and reach out to the administrators of those groups personally. You may be able to become a co-administrator of the Group, or the Group admin may decide to add a link to your Facebook Page and post information on your organization’s behalf.

Don’t overlook Causes. Some fans may have gone to the effort to create personal Causes to benefit your organization. Again, don’t be afraid to reach out – these are “superfans” that are already interested in your cause – and ask for their help promoting and sending friends to your new Page.

Other Pages: If there are other Pages that could become natural collaborators, or of interest to your fans, add them to your Page’s “Favorite Pages.” You could also an @message in the status update letting another Page know you’ve added their Page as a favorite. Consider contacting the Page administrator personally and asking if he/she would post an update welcoming your organization’s Page to Facebook.

4. Get Aggressive: Promote your page with an Ad

Facebook Ads are an inexpensive way to attract new fans. You can create an ad for your Page and set the exact amount of money that you want to spend on the ad. You can target ads by different demographic groups, interest, likes, geography, and more.

5. Get Creative: Create a Marketing Campaign within Facebook to Attract Fans

Create a Facebook Contest using the Wildfire Application. Wildfire offers a very inexpensive option to create a photo contest, sweepstakes, coupons, trivia contest, quizzes and more. Pricing options are $5, $$25, or $250 plus a per-day charge.

Create your own event or contest within Facebook . Hebrew University created the “Einstein Birthday Celebration: Ask Albert” Event in celebration of Einstein’s birthday. The University’s Einstein scholar invited fans and non-fans alike to ask personal and professional questions of Albert Einstein himself. The most interesting questions were answered in a follow-up video. In order to generate traffic to the Event, Hebrew University asked several Einstein societies on Facebook to co-promote the event with them. The Event garnered 300 questions and a lot of new fans!

What other suggestions do you have for a new organization or brand trying to build a fan base within Facebook?  Can you share what has worked or not for your organization?

A few weeks ago, Linkedin began testing a new look for groups. The new features are an attempt to make Linkedin more interactive, and easier for users to connect with others. Most of the new features are in located within groups. If you are an active Linkedin user, you know that much of the benefit comes from participating in groups – the discussion, connections, information, and learning.

I’m a member of Non Profit Network – MojaLink, which is a beta testing group for Linkedin’s new groups features. My guess is that every group will become more like this one. I’ve tested it out a bit. What I find is that there are so many new features added that it i hard to concentrate on the discussions. I spent more time within each discussion (which is what I’m betting Linkedin wants me to do), but I also left a bit overwhelmed with the idea that my “safe space” for participating in discussions has now become a competitive zone for influence, followers, and actions.

Some people have a Linkedin strategy to become an area Expert or to have their answers selected as a “Best Answer” in the Answers section of Linkedin. These features have never been available to those who answer questions within groups. Groups have always felt more like a group of colleagues and friends trying to help each other work through a problem or answer a question. Now groups will become a competing zone for influence. I understand how this will benefit individuals wanting to pursue a branding or expertise strategy. However, I will mourn the loss of the camaraderie that I enjoy in Linkedin groups where I am actively participating.

New features:

1. Group managers can feature discussions, called “manager’s choice,” to appear on the group’s home page.

2. Individual influence and popularity plays a stronger role.

There are two ways that Linkedin will now reward your participation in the group. First. if you participate a lot, you could be featured on the home page and on the side of every discussion as a “top influencer.” (*NOTE: the Linkedin developer who worked on the new Groups feature explains how one becomes a top influencer in the comments to this blog post. Essentially, top influencers represent people who have influenced others to take action within the Group.)

Secondly, Linkedin has made it very easy to “follow” someone’s discussions and contributions on Linkedin. You do not actually have to be connected to this person to “follow” him/her. Right now, you are already “following” all of your connections. If you want to follow someone’s discussions that is not already a connection, then click “follow” next to his/her name.

All the people that you follow currently appear in a tab next to My Groups called Following. Now, why would I follow someone I’m not connected to already? To get to know him/her, comment on his/her discussions, form a relationship. It’s yet another way to build relationships and connections on Linkedin.

3. Discussions look very different – they are more like a marketplace of actions instead of a discussion.

You can “like” a discussion. (The ubiquitous like button pops up here, too – but it’s not the Facebook Like Button.) You can follow anyone involved in the discussion with a click. You see all the comments expanded. One think I don’t like is that you no longer can read someone’s title and short description underneath his or her name. It is counter to Linkedin’s attempt to further interconnect people when you can’t view the brief bio of someone underneath his/her avatar within the group.

This is how the current discussion format still appears within most groups:

This is how the discussion looks within the newer version of Linkedin groups:

In summary, this is what Linkedin tells you is new in Groups:

I think it’s really about highlighting individual contributions, making participation easy with the “like,” and making connections easier with the “follow” button. The question is, will new connections still be strong ones?

What do you think about Linkedin’s new look? Are you participating in a group that has it already – and how do you find that the new look affects your participation?

image courtesy of Ric e Ette

A wise person once told me that when I’m frustrated with someone or something, it’s most likely because there are missing steps. In social media, missing steps lead to frustration with using social media and sometimes complete disbelief in its use or good for the organization. More often than not, if the strategy isn’t working, there are missing steps. Most commonly, missing steps occur because of the organization’s rush to become involved in social media without thinking about the strategic goals, failing to research and identify online stakeholders, poor selection of appropriate social media channels to use, and developing tactics without considering how they will move the strategy forward. The biggest missing step is lack of a social media strategy.

When an organization is rushed to develop its strategy, the missing steps become apparent when questions like these arise:

• How can we get donations out of this group of fans and followers online?
• If we have 4,000 followers, how come no one is signing up for our (fill in the blank)?
• How do we get more people talking about us online?
• Why isn’t anyone talking to us in our online spaces?

Below are four slides that I created which represent stepping stones to developing a social media strategy. The entire slide show can be found on slideshare (or click the icon to the left of the link).

The first image, the Social Media Funnel, represents the fundamental belief that stakeholders must be really engaged (by your organization) in online spaces in order to take the next active role for your organization.

When you are creating your social media strategy, it’s 75% preparation.

The flip side of creating social media content and engagement is listening for opportunities. Listening is part of the preliminary research needed to create a social media strategy, but it is also an ongoing process essential to tweaking the strategy, finding opportunities and stakeholders, proactive reputation management, and engaging stakeholders. If you want to create a listening dashboard, read how the National Wildlife Federation creates and monitors its amazing (free) listening system here.

Your URL isn’t just your website anymore, but everywhere you are on the web. A social media strategy should tie official social media profiles to the organization’s website to create a goal-oriented comprehensive web presence.

I would love to improve upon the steps in the images above, with your bright ideas.

I’m also curious to know: has your organization experienced any missing steps? How does this affect your social media implementation? Are you trying to fill in the missing steps, or move forward in a different way?

(And, if you liked this post, you might want to read its related post, The Cornerstone of Social Media Is Clarity.)

Editor’s Note: When I met Estrella Rosenberg April 8 at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, she told me about the Foursquare 100×100 campaign to launch two days later. No one had used Foursquare in this way previously, and I immediately knew she was on to a breakthrough idea. I asked her to send me a writeup once it was over, and this is her guest post below.

When April 1st rolled around I had been investigating how non-profits use Foursquare and brainstorming how they could  use it for a couple of months. Although not a direct method of fundraising my thoughts were still along those lines…and then a question popped into my head. Could Foursquare be used for awareness and advocacy?

1 in 100 children are born with a heart defect. My two nonprofits Big Love Little Hearts and One Hundred Squared serve the Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) community. When was the 100th day of the year? It happened to be nine days later, April 10th. My next question was: “could I come up with a campaign in nine days, launch it and have it be successful?”  I had no idea but I’m not afraid of failure so I set out to create a Foursquare experiment.

The basic premise was this – we created a hashtag, #100X100, that stood for 1 in 100 on the 100th day of the year. I created a website, http://onehundredsquared.com to explain what it was, why it was important and to determine the actions we wanted supporters to take: spread awareness using the hashtag and call/write their representatives asking them to support the Congenital Heart Futures Act and Pulse-Ox screening of CHD to the National Newborn Screening Panel. We also created a Facebook fanpage and Twitter profile.

We recruited volunteers to commit to a guerrilla, grass-roots effort to use Foursquare to parlay our message. On the evening of April 9th a few dozen Big Love Little Hearts volunteers added the following as a “tip” to 600 Foursquare locations:  “1in100 children are born w/ a heart defect. Pulse-Ox screening saves lives – you can too! Check in with the hashtag #100X100.” We also embedded a link in the tip to the One Hundred Squared website. We chose what we thought would be the most checked-in locations on a Saturday: airports, Starbucks’, Target’s, gym’s, etc. in every major city.

One of the benefits of using Foursquare as an origin point is that most people who use it sync their check-ins to Twitter and Facebook. This meant that one person checking with #100X100 had the possibility of being viewed across three different platforms with three audiences. Talk about bang for your (time) buck!

Did it work? Better than I could have possibly imagined.  My goal was to see how social media worked for advocacy and awareness. However, something extraordinary happened: I began foursquaring/tweeting/facebooking about #100X100 at 12:01 am on April 10 and Big Love Little Hearts’ supporters followed.

At 7:30 am an angel who was following one of our followers on Twitter (but not us) noticed our hashtag. (She is an adult with a CHD who was not diagnosed at birth and who is alive today because she received lifesaving surgery.) Her passion for our work led her to call me and commit to donating $1 for every time someone used the #100X100 hashtag until midnight April 10th.

How much did we raise?  She gave me a cap of $25,000. I knew the moment she said it that as a not-quite ten month old organization we wouldn’t reach the cap. Much to my surprise our supporters were so engaged that we reached it by almost half.

At quarter to midnight the hashtag had been used 11,703 times across all three platforms. Our donor was so impressed that she committed all $25,000, which funded 12 surgeries in developing countries. Twelve lives saved in 24 hours.

That’s great (okay, FANTASTIC), but did it work for advocacy and awareness? YES! Less than two weeks after the 100th day of the year about 100 people from various CHD groups were to meet in Washington  for CHD Lobby Day. The One Hundred Squared website, as linked through Foursquare and the hashtag, asked people to contact their representatives. We wanted to plant a seed for anyone who used #100X100 on the 10th to call their Senator or Congressman and let them know that they supported measures that would greatly improve the lives of the 2 million people living with CHD in the states.

On the April 22 (CHD Lobby Day) we used the hashtag via Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare to remind our supporters to call their legislators. By noon more people had looked at the website than the entirety of April 10. I had seven appointments with Senators  & Congressman from Illinois that day. There wasn’t a single one I walked into where their aide didn’t inform me that constituents had been calling about this all day. People Lobby Day delegates from other states texted or called me to say the same. More than 500 people told me that they had contacted their representative, and 300 others contacted the Big Love office to do the same. 1800+ viewed the page and clicked through the link to find their representative. I cried with pride the entire day.

What was the benefit of using Foursquare as our social-media springboard? The tips we left are still there and will stay there perpetually. For several locations our tip is still the most recent. Did I mention that we have a link embedded in the tip?

A huge “thank you” to everyone who participated in #100X100 on April 10h and 22 – you made it such a success that the Big Love Little Hearts sister organization, 1 in 100, changed its name and expanded its mission. (Check back with http://onehundredsquared.com soon – or subscribe -for more details)!

One last nugget – all of this was FREE. We raised $25,000, saved 12 lives in the immediate and set the stage for millions of lives to be changed.

Estrella Rosenberg is the Founder and Director of Big Love Little Hearts, One Hundred Squared, Little Leo Foundation and The 4F Club. She writes about her love of non-profit work in her blog, Adventures In Philanthropy.

Big Love Little Hearts provides lifesaving surgery to children with congenital heart defects in developing countries. Almost one million children are born with a heart defect worldwide every year – half will need surgery to survive. Ninety percent will be born in countries where access to lifesaving measures is limited by economic status or lack of infrastructure. Follow them on Twitter. Follow One Hundred Squared on Twitter here.

Today, YouTube announced that every single YouTube channel now comes equipped with a moderator feature. It’s an incredibly exciting step to see YouTube becoming fully social. The moderator feature allows any channel to ask for ideas, questions, or suggestions from the community..right from your YouTube channel. Users may vote the crowdsourced ideas up or down. By integrating Google moderator, YouTube has brought real time engagement features into play and made it 100% more engaging.

Here is how it works: Every YouTube channel incorporates Google Moderator. All you have to do is enable moderator on the channel, and ask a question of your users. Here are some screen shots of how to enable moderator on your channel. First, click on the Modules tab of your channel.

After you’ve checked “Moderator,” a drop-down menu appears, as seen in this screen shot:

And here is an example of the feature at work on the Foodwishes channel. Foodwishes is running a contest asking users to submit a summer recipe they want to see to prepared on the channel. The recipe with the highest number of votes will be the chosen.

Basically, YouTube is giving its users the power to crowdsource ideas and suggestions, and use the wisdom of the crowd to vote for the top ideas. I think the voting feature is fantastic. This could be a very economical way for a nonprofit organization to run a contest, promotion, or campaign.

I also think that YouTube is giving Facebook a run for its money with this new feature. It’s always been difficult for Facebook Page administrators to crowdsource ideas using Facebook: if you ask for ideas using a wall post, then the ideas will come in over time, and aren’t collected in one place. If you want to run a crowdsourced contest or special offer on Facebook, you must create a custom landing tab and application.

Look out Facebook…here comes YouTube

If you are already using video, today’s announcement should encourage you to think about using YouTube as the new address to crowdsource for engagement and answers instead of Facebook.

Video is a personal medium. Involving someone through a personal request on video is much more compelling than writing a blog post about a need or creating a Cause. I can envision charity:water inviting stakeholders to ask questions when they drill for wells using YouTube’s moderator function, or Epic Change encouraging YouTube users to “nominate a favorite Mama” using this feature. Combine the moderator feature with the YouTube Nonprofit Program, and perhaps YouTube will become the favored action center instead of Facebook Causes.

I’ll wager that the YouTube moderator feature is a game changer. It will bring more nonprofit organizations into YouTube, enable organizations to reach and engage with new stakeholders, and become a platform to create interesting and exciting new social media campaigns. It’s simple, immediate (real time voting and interaction), personal, and most of all, engaging. It brings the bottom up and the stakeholders in.

Now, it’s up to you. How will you integrate this feature into your overall social media strategy?