GreenSmith Consulting

Note To Twitter Users: Please Stop Doing #FollowFriday Tweets

2009-07-15T03:00:00-07:00

Nothing anybody tells you to do on Twitter is an absolute. Nothing. How you use it is truly up to you. That is, of course, unless you're an avid spammer, in which case you'll be dropped off Twitter. Other then that, it's your party.

But if there's one thing I'm feeling more & more strong about, it's advocating that you stop doing #FollowFriday tweets. And #EcoMonday while you're at it too. Well, not stop, but stop using it mindlessly.

Let me back up.

For those of you unfamiliar, #FollowFriday and #EcoMonday are two examples of hashtags, words marked with a # sign to help easily gather and make searchable tweets on a certain subject. In this case, it's people that you recommend others follow, the former being anybody you know, the latter being green/enviro/sustainability oriented people.

Why would I recommend against such a friendly, helpful sounding practice?

Because in most cases, it's lost any significance and lasting value. Most people simply list a huge number of people, with a #followfriday or #ff at the end. Or even worse, they retweet what someone else has tweeted. Why bother? It shows little thought and that you're doing this as a chore, not for any real benefit for those you mention.

For some this may be just being efficient, but to me it's a sign they've not taken any time to really consider who you're recommending, or how to effectively do it.

While it can have some value in the short term - those you mention following back, returning the recommendation, other people possibly choosing to follow your reccomendations - the mass of #followfriday and #ecomonday tweets don't result in an appreciable increase in followers.

I'm not saying don't do this, but do it smarter, resulting in more benefit for those you recommend, and for yourself, showing you care more then to just drop a big scoop of names in people's timelines.

How can you do it smarter?

I tweet with just 3-4 people, each with a brief, informative, or funny blurb by their name. This does two things: Gives context and reduces overload on the part of the recipient, increasing the likelihood they'll actually follow up on your recommendation, resulting in a meaningful connection.

Want to do something even smarter?

If you aren't already, follow @MrTweet and wait for them to follow you back, giving you your unique account url. I can already hear some of your Twitter veterans, retorts at the ready, shooting down this service, which up until recently I would have agreed was in many ways a waste of time.

But now, it's improved in a few appreciable ways:

It allows you to recommend people you think others should follow, giving you the choice of ones it thinks you'd want to recommend, or allowing you to specify who you'd like to recommend. It does still seem to skew to the already popular for who it suggests, a problem I continue to have with it, as I'm more of the mind of recommending the lesser known and those that people might appreciate discovering.

If you don't agree with who Mr. Tweet is suggesting you recommend , you can either remove that account from your list, or at the bottom, you can rate how useful Mr. Tweet is to your needs, along with whatever specifics you'd like to share. Triple covering things, there is a Uservoice feedback tab on the side of the page, allowing you to suggest/vote for feature requests. A sign of a service that actually cares what you have to share.

Mr. Tweet makes it simple and quick to recommend others, with "I recommend Exampleperson because:" already set to go, plus the prompt "he/she is great in..." You just quickly jot down why you think people should follow them, it shows you what resulting message it will broadcast, and off you go, it's been tweeted (if you choose)

Now how is this different than doing a #FollowFriday or #EcoMonday tweet?

A crucial difference is this: Much like StumbleUpon, the more someone is recommended by others, the more Mr. Tweet will recommend them to others using Mr. Tweet. In fact, they say, "People with recommendations are 32x more likely to be suggested." On my account, it says I was suggested to 1936 people in 26 days!

Mr. Tweet's recommendations also give context from within your existing network, telling you who's retweeted them, who follows them now, and giving you the option to see more of each, plus what they've recently tweeted. Taken together, this is a powerful tool to quickly assess if you think following this person is a wise use of your time. Not something a grocery list of people's names followed by #followfriday can do.

So please, as I said at the beginning of this article, do as you see fit, use the resources and advise that work for you. But if you'd like to build your network and reputation capital, I'd highly encourage these practices.

Readers: What practices have worked for you in using Twitter that we could all learn from? What questions do you have that I might answer (or tweet to find out!) What other areas of social media are you using, considering, have questions about?

10 Ways to Support Charity Through Social Media

2009-07-14T09:00:00-07:00

This guest post is a collaboration between Mashable's Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser and Max Gladwell's "10 Ways" series. The post is being simultaneously published across more than 100 blogs. Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That's one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.

Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you'd like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days -- whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you're passionate about, you're helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.

Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here. You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.

2. Share Stories with Friends

Another way to spread awareness among your social graph is to share links to blog posts and news articles via sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, and even through email. Your network of friends is likely interested in what you have to say, so you have influence wherever you've gathered a social network. You'll be doing charities you support a great service when you share links to their campaigns, or to articles about causes you care about.

3. Follow Charities on Social Networks

In addition to sharing links to articles about issues you come across, you should also follow charities you support on the social networks where they are active. By increasing the size of their social graph, you're increasing the size of their reach.

When your charities tweet or post information about a campaign or a cause, statistics or a link to a good article, consider retweeting that post on Twitter, liking it on Facebook, or blogging about it. Following charities on social media sites is a great way to keep in the loop and get updates, and it's a great way to help the charity increase its reach by spreading information to your friends and followers. You can follow the Summer of Social Good Charities:

Oxfam America (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube) The Humane Society (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr) LIVESTRONG (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr) WWF (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr)

4. Support Causes on Awareness Hubs

Another way you can show your support for the charities you care about is to rally around them on awareness hubs like Change.org, Care2, or the Facebook Causes application. These are social networks or applications specifically built with non-profits in mind. They offer special tools and opportunities for charities to spread awareness of issues, take action, and raise money.

It's important to follow and support organizations on these sites because they're another point of access for you to gather information about a charity or cause, and because by supporting your charity you'll be increasing their overall reach. The more people they have following them and receiving their updates, the greater the chance that information they put out will spread virally.

5. Find Volunteer Opportunities

Using social media online can help connect you with volunteer opportunities offline, and according to web analytics firm Compete, traffic to volunteering sites is actually up sharply in 2009. Two of the biggest sites for locating volunteer opportunities are VolunteerMatch, which has almost 60,000 opportunities listed, and Idealist.org, which also lists paying jobs in the non-profit sector, in addition to maintaining databases of both volunteer jobs and willing volunteers.

For those who are interested in helping out when volunteers are urgently needed in crisis situations, check out HelpInDisaster.org, a site which helps register and educate those who want to help during disasters so that local resources are not tied up directing the calls of eager volunteers. Teenagers, meanwhile, should check out DoSomething.org, a site targeted at young adults seeking volunteer opportunities in their communities.

6. Embed a Widget on Your Site

Many charities offer embeddable widgets or badges that you can use on your social networking profiles or blogs to show your support. These badges generally serve one of two purposes (or both). They raise awareness of an issue and offer up a link or links to additional information. And very often they are used to raise money. Mashable's Summer of Social Good campaign, for example, has a widget that does both. The embeddable widget, which was custom built using Sprout (the creators of ChipIn), can both collect funds and offer information about the four charities the campaign supports.

7. Organize a Tweetup

You can use online social media tools to organize offline events, which are a great way to gather together like-minded people to raise awareness, raise money, or just discuss an issue that's important to you. Getting people together offline to learn about an important issue can really kick start the conversation and make supporting the cause seem more real. Be sure to check out Mashable's guide to organizing a tweetup to make sure yours goes off without a hitch, or check to see if there are any tweetups in your area to attend that are already organized.

8. Express Yourself Using Video

As mentioned, blog posts are great, but a picture really says a thousand words. The web has become a lot more visual in recent years and there are now a large number of social tools to help you express yourself using video. When you record a video plea or call to action about your issue or charity, you can make your message sound more authentic and real.

You can use sites like 12seconds.tv, Vimeo, and YouTube to easily record and spread your video message. Last week, the Summer of Social Good campaign encouraged people to use video to show support for charity. The #12forGood campaign challenged people to submit a 12 second video of themselves doing something for the Summer of Social Good.

That could be anything, from singing a song to reciting a poem to just dancing around like a maniac -- the idea was to use the power of video to spread awareness about the campaign and the charities it supports. If you're more into watching videos than recording them, Givzy.com enables you to raise funds for charities like Unicef and St. Jude's Children's Hospital by sharing viral videos by e-mail.

9. Sign or Start a Petition

There aren't many more powerful ways to support a cause than to sign your name to a petition. Petitions spread awareness and, when successfully carried out, can demonstrate massive support for an issue. By making petitions viral, the social web has arguably made them even more powerful tools for social change.

There are a large number of petition creation and hosting web sites out there. One of the biggest is The Petition Site, which is operated by the social awareness network Care2, or PetitionOnline.com, which has collected more than 79 million signatures over the years. Petitions are extremely powerful, because they can strike a chord, spread virally, and serve as a visual demonstration of the support that an issue has gathered.

Social media fans will want to check out a fairly new option for creating and spreading petitions: Twitition, an application that allows people to create, spread, and sign petitions via Twitter.

10. Organize an Online Event

Social media is a great way to organize offline, but you can also use online tools to organize effective online events. That can mean free form fund raising drives, like the Twitter-and-blog-powered campaign to raise money for a crisis center in Illinois last month that took in over $130,000 in just two weeks. Or it could mean an organized "tweet-a-thon" like the ones run by the 12for12k group, which aims to raise $12,000 each month for a different charity.

In March, 12for12k ran a 12-hour tweet-a-thon, in which any donation of at least $12 over a 12 hour period gained the person donating an entry into a drawing for prizes like an iPod Touch or a Nintendo Wii Fit. Last month, 12for12k took a different approach to an online event by holding a more ambitious 24-hour live video-a-thon, which included video interviews, music and sketch comedy performances, call-ins, and drawings for a large number of prizes given out to anyone who donated $12 or more.

11. Let Your Customers Decide Where you Donate Money

This recent development bears mentioning as well:

In these times when the public gets an increasing voice in so many matters, why not let them decide where you donate a portion of your revenue to? 3rdWhale, a green mobile app maker, decided to do this when they joined 1% For The Planet as the first mobile app developer member, committing to go even further, donating 25 cents for every app sold.

Using their Facebook Page as a platform, Twitter and blogging allies to get the word out, and some encouraging videos to egg on/encourage the proceedings, more than 600 people from around the world made their voices heard for a number of organizations, including Architecture For Humanity, Global Footprint Network, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Terralingua

The winners were Orangutan Outreach, Heart of the World Project, and WiserEarth.

In making the voting process public, people had a chance to learn about many organizations, both from what 3rdWhale found about them, and from what NGO staff and supporters wrote about them in the voting & nomination forums.

Bonus: Think Outside the Box

Social media provides almost limitless opportunity for being creative. You can think outside the box to come up with all sorts of innovative ways to raise money or awareness for a charity or cause. When Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer, for example, he created Blame Drew's Cancer, a campaign that encourages people to blow off steam by blaming his cancer for bad things in their lives using the Twitter hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer.

Over 16,000 things have been blamed on Drew's cancer, and he intends to find sponsors to turn those tweets into donations to LIVESTRONG once he beats the disease. Or check out Nathan Winters, who is biking across the United States and documenting the entire trip using social media tools, in order to raise money and awareness for The Nature Conservancy.

The number of innovative things you can do using social media to support a charity or spread information about an issue is nearly endless. Can you think of any others? Please share them in the comments below.

Special thanks to VPS.net

A special thanks to VPS.net, who are donating $100 to the Summer of Social Good for every signup they receive this week. Sign up at VPS.net and use the coupon code "SOSG"to receive 3 Months of FREE hosting on top of your purchased term. VPS.net honors a 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee so there's no risk.

About the "10 Ways" Series

The "10 Ways" Series was originated by Max Gladwell. This is the second simultaneous blog post in the series. The first ran on more than 80 blogs, including Mashable. Among other things, it is a social media experiment and the exploration of a new content distribution model. You can follow Max Gladwell on Twitter. This content was originally written by Mashable's Josh Catone.

Return of the GreenSmith

2009-07-09T03:00:00-07:00

It's time. Time for me to return. Return to my GreenSmith roots and to writing on this blog.

Since April it's been a wild ride, filled with new hats as Social Media Strategist at 3rdWhale Mobile, becoming a ghost writer for a major green company, getting the world knowing more about the toxic soup that is Neoprene (and what to do about it), and that energy efficiency can be funny. This, along with my existing gigs as a writer for Triple Pundit and Ecopreneurist.

Plus a side of social media rich Inbound Marketing Summit, organized chaos at Green Business Camp, and high level corporate green at Sustainable Brands.

All great and nourishing, but something was missing. This. I knew it was time to write in my own voice, for my own audience, once again. But coming back, my voice has changed. My knowledge broadened and deepened. My network enriched.

So what will I focus here on the newly revived GreenSmith blog?

Interesting companies whose ideas I think will inspire you. Untangling how your company might incorporate social media. Social media how tos. Useful tools I come across that you will benefit from. And whatever else in the realm of sustainable business, social media, and other areas I explore that I believe others should know about. The lesser known. The should be known. The questions yet to be asked. The forgotten gems that merit dusting off.

What's up first? One of those forgotten gems, Mr. Tweet. It's been around for some time, in Twitter years, and has recently become an extremely useful tool to both find and be found by other interesting people. It's time to stop being a sheep with your #FollowFridays, and do something truly useful.

Tune in next time for why I think so.

Meanwhile, what would you like to see me write about here? If you follow me on Twitter, you've probably had a few ideas that have come to mind based on what I've shared. Or perhaps there's sectors, companies, emerging ideas you haven't seen covered elsewhere, that you'd be interested in my take on? Let me know, below.

It's good to be back. I feel open, and yes, ready to take on more clients and projects. You can get a quick update on what I do, here.

image credit: Kevin Tuck

10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media

2009-05-12T11:00:00-07:00

We are honored to have our friend and fellow traveler of the intersection of social media and green, Max Gladwell grace our blog with a host of innovative ways for each of us, as individuals and collectively to make an impact. Citizen journalism, open government, status updates, community building, information sharing, crowdsourcing, and the election of a President are in the mix here.

Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They'll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They'll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. And they'll take for granted that a black man is or was President of the United States.

What's most profound is that these represent parts of a greater whole. They represent a shift in power from centralized institutions and organizations to the People they represent. It is the evolution of democracy by way of technology, and we are all better for it. For most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way. Collectively it is changing the world for good.

Given the pace of innovation and adoption, change has become a constant. Every so often we find the need to stop and reflect on its most recent and noteworthy developments, hence the following list. Please note this is not a top-10 list, nor are these listed in any particular order. It's also incomplete. So we ask that you add to this conversation in the comments. If you'd like to Retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Take Social Actions: The nonprofit organization Social Actions aggregates "opportunities to make a difference from over 50 online platforms" through its unique API. It recently held the Change the Web Challenge contest in order to inspire the most innovative applications for that API. The Social Actions Interactive Map won the $5,000 first prize.

The result is a virtual tour of the world through the lens of social action. "People are volunteering, donating, signing petitions, making loans and doing other social actions as we speak -- all over the world. To capture the context of the where, this project uses sophisticated techniques to extract location information from full text paragraphs." You can also join the Social Actions Community, which is powered by Ning...which now boasts more than one million individual social networks.

2. Twitter with a Purpose: This list could be exclusive to Twitter. The micro-blogging sensation was featured on our first two lists (a three-tweet), and it's certain to be a fixture. From Tweetsgiving, the virtual Thanksgiving feast, to the Twestival, which organized 202 off-line events around the world to benefit charity: water, it's become the de facto tool for organizing and taking action. Tweet Congress won the SXSW activism award, and celebrity Tweeps Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Rose Tweeted their two million followers about ending malaria. Max Gladwell recently initiated the #EcoMonday follow meme as a way to connect and organize the Green Twittersphere.

3. Visit White House 2.0: Inside of its first 100 days, the Obama administration has managed to set the historic benchmark for government transparency and accountability. The President's virtual town hall meeting used WhiteHouse.gov to crowdsource questions from his 300 million constituents, complete with voting to determine the ones he'd have to answer. All told, 97,937 people submitted 103,978 questions and cast 1,782,650 votes.

The White House continues to raise the bar with its official Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter channels. In so doing President Obama is not just setting the standard for state and local government in the U.S. He's establishing the world standard. The Obama administration is spreading democracy not by force but through example. Because you don't have to be an American citizen to be a friend or follower of White House 2.0.

4. Claim your Zumbox: What happens when all mail can be sent and delivered online to any street address in a paperless form? That's the big question for Zumbox, which has created an online mail system with a digital mailbox for every U.S. street address. And while the answer to that question remains to be seen, it promises to be as liberating as it is disruptive. A key quality for Zumbox is that it's closed system much like that of Facebook, only instead of true identity it's true address.

This will enable people to better connect with their communities including their neighbors, local businesses, and the mayor's office. The primary agent of change, though, might not be that this uses street addresses but that it enables direct and potentially viral feedback, which is a virtue that e-mail and the USPS do not offer. The first methods are to request exclusive paperless delivery and to block a sender, but others are certain to evolve such as real-time commenting and ways to share mail with friends, family, and colleagues. Welcome to Mail 2.0. (Disclosure: Zumbox is a client of Rob Reed, the founder of Max Gladwell.)

5. Host a Social Media Event: This is the year of the social media event. No meaningful gathering of people is complete without an interactive online audience, especially when it's so easy and cost effective to pull off. Essential tools include a broadband connection, laptop, video camera, projector, and screen. Add people and a purpose, such as entrepreneurship. Promote it through social media channels, and you have a social media event.

A recent example in the green world is the Evolution of Green, which was hosted by Creative Citizen, a green wiki community. It celebrated the launch of a new Web property, EcoMatters, while also establishing a new Twitter tag. By posing the question, "How can we go from green hype to green habit?" and including the #GreenQ hashtag, it sparked a conversation between attendees and the Twittersphere in real time. Thus was born a new mechanism for getting answers to green questions via Twitter.

6. Travel the World: More than anyone else, Tim O'Reilly knows the potential for social media to change the world. In his opening keynote at this year's Web 2.0 Expo, he called for a new ethic in which we do more with less and create more value than we capture. This provided the context for SalaamGarage founder Amanda Koster, whose presentation followed O'Reilly's. The idea is that social media has enabled each of us to have an audience.

Whether through Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, or a personal blog, each of us can have influence and reach. What's more, it can be used for good. SalaamGarage coordinates trips for citizen journalists (that means you) to places like India and Vietnam in conjunction with non-government organizations like Seattle-based Peace Trees. The destination is the story, as these humanitarian journalists report on the people they meet and discoveries they make. Their words, images, and video are posted to the social web to gain exposure and because these stories just need to be told.

7. Build It on Drupal: You may not have noticed, but the open-source Drupal content management system (CMS) has quickly become the dominant player on the social web. While we still prefer WordPress as a strict blogging application, Drupal has emerged as the go-to platform for building scalable, community-driven Web sites. It powers Recovery.gov, a key part of President Obama's commitment to transparency and accountability.

PopRule uses it as a social news platform for politics. And Drupal will soon become the platform for Causecast, a site where "media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose." This is especially significant because Causecast CEO Ryan Scott is transitioning the site off of Ruby on Rails because Drupal has proved more efficient, user friendly, and cost effective. (Disclosure: Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed is co-founder of PopRule.)

8. Green Your iPhone: Looking for an organic diner within biking distance that has a three-star green rating? There's a app for that. It's called 3rd Whale, and you can download it for free. (Except that the star rating is actually a whale rating.) Complete with Facebook Connect, this iPhone (and soon Google Android) app locates green products and businesses in 30 major North American cities. It uses the iPhone's dial function to select a category (food), sub-category (restaurants), and distance (walking, biking, or driving).

In Santa Monica, this might give you Swingers diner for its selection of veggie and vegan fare. You could then get directions from your current location using the iPhone's built-in Google map, rate your experience on the three-whale scale, and write up a quick review. 3rd Whale recently released a new feature that integrates green-living tips, which can show how much energy, waste, emissions and interestingly, money you'll save by taking a given action.

9. Unite the World Through Video: Matt's dancing around the world video inspired many to tears. Today, more than 20 million people have viewed his YouTube masterpiece, where he performs a kooky dance with the citizens of planet earth. The most recent example of this approach is Playing for Change, which connects the world through song. The project started in Santa Monica with a street performance of the classic Stand By Me and expanded to New Orleans, New Mexico, France, Brazil, Italy, Venezuela, South Africa, Spain, and The Netherlands. The project was superbly executed via social media, complete with a YouTube channel, MySpace, Facebook, and Blog. It's received tremendous mainstream media exposure and also benefits a foundation of the same name.

10. Rate a Company: The conversation about corporate social responsibility (CSR) takes place across the social web on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube, but a central hub for this information and opinion is still to be determined. SocialYell seeks to address this by building an online community around the CSR conversation, where users can submit reviews of companies together with nonprofit organizations and even public figures like Michelle Obama.

The major topics are the Environment, Health, Social Equity, Consumer Advocacy, and Charity. The reviews are voted and commented on by the community in a Reddit-like fashion with both up (Yell) and down (shhh) voting. The site is relatively new and still gaining traction, but there's no question that a resource like this is needed to shine a bright light on CSR and and other related issues.

11. Publish a collective, simultaneous blog post on a universal topic: As Nigel Tufnel might say, this list goes to eleven. Let the #10Ways conversation begin...

Final note: This is Max Gladwell's third list of "10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media." The first was posted a year ago today on Sustainablog.org, and the sequel followed five months later. If a single headline can capture the Max Gladwell raison d'etre, this is it.

Readers: What are additional ways you see changing the world via social media or by any other means? Comment here and as mentioned above, if you take it on Twitter or Friendfeed, use the hashtag #10ways if you want to add to what's likely to be a huge conversation as versions of this article are being published on dozens of blogs simultaneously today.

Conserve One of the Most Precious Resources - Trust

2009-04-27T05:00:00-07:00

April Fool's Day, for those that don't know, is a chance for you to play practical jokes on people. While the pranks can be quite amusing, one that I did got me thinking...

On April 1st my editor at Triple Pundit invited us to do April Fool's Day posts, the more absurd the better. I was reading the book Revolution in a Bottle by Terracycle CEO Tom Szaky at the time, to be reviewed the next week. Having soaked in all things Terracycle for the past week, I was full of facets of Terracycle to poke fun at.

So I wrote a piece, pleased at how over the top it was, how people would laugh and have a good time with it. This, along with GM becoming a bike company, American Airlines going into the zeppelin flight business, complete with bungee jumping. You get the idea.

Then something happened.

This piece, talking about them merging with Scotts Miracle Gro because of WUSS syndrome (Worm Under Supply Syndrome) going petroleum based because there's now a glut of "waste" oil due to a slower economy, and now being required to wear yellow and green uniforms was, with any measure of scrutiny, pure hogwash.

And yet, many people believed it. Terracycle got 4 emails and 3 calls by 9:30a their time, people concerned about this merger and the implications. Several more people commented on the article itself, to me via StumbleUpon, on Twitter, and through email, all distraught and disappointed.

Amusing as this was, I felt disturbed. Were these people just gullible exceptions, am I that trustworthy/clever a writer, or are people just not paying attention? My ego says option #2, but my gut says #3. Probably a mixture of all three.

While I've long known that people are predisposed to read very quickly when it comes to blog entries, and have geared my writing to match with that tendency, this was the clearest demonstration of that. And to know this, and see how easily people could be convinced of something so serious as the downfall of a major green company, made me acutely aware of the power that words and trust can have.

So why am I writing about this? My wish is that with this knowledge, you will not abuse people's trust, damaging the credibility of what we as green business people have built. You hear all the time of people becoming increasingly cynical when it comes to green claims. But I think people underneath are searching, wanting something, someone to believe in and trust.

I say earn it, deserve it, and use it for positive ends. Please.

How to Optimize Twitter Communications with your Facebook Friends

2009-04-06T12:15:26-07:00

I've recently been experiencing something that I imagine many of you are as well, and found an elegant solution to it.

I use both Twitter and Facebook, and began favoring Twitter more and more in the past year, for its simplicity, focus, ability to more easily connect with and learn from others. Yes, I'm seeing that Facebook has recently become more amenable and useful to businesses and I'm interested to see what possibilities that creates, but we're talking '08 to the present, at the moment.

Seeing how I blossomed on Twitter and how much people enjoyed what I shared on there, it seemed a blessing to learn that there was a Twitter/Facebook client, which allowed my tweets, or status updates, to also show up as my Facebook status updates, everything but those that began with @yourfriend'sname, which are clearly a reply to someone else on Twitter, and would be out of context to those on Facebook.

Great, thought I, now my Facebook friends will be as in the know as those on Twitter, and I don't have to waste time wading through zombie invitations and superpokes.

But it slowly began to make less and less sense to use it.

First it stopped prefacing Twitter generated statuses with "Paul tweeted," making it clear where it came from, and giving it some context. Then I noticed that with tweets that were replies to other Twitter users, but the @theirusername wasn't at the beginning of the tweet, still went to Facebook, probably causing confusion in my FB friends only on that end of the conversation.

Then it all came tumbling down with the recent changes in Facebook, defaulting to a view that, not unlike Twitter, was strictly people's status updates. Now, people who were Facebook only users began to grumble, some loudly, about how much of their home page my tweets now took up.

It was then that realized there is a fundamental difference in the culture of Facebook and Twitter: Whereas on Twitter the status updates are all about the back and forth, the generosity of sharing discoveries, information, tools, and news, Facebook users are accustomed to statuses being updated a few times a day, and being largely about things directly related to the person sharing them.

On Facebook, the "rest of the world" sharing happens elsewhere.

After asking for people's feedback, I decided to pull the plug on the Twitter to Facebook pipeline. Not being in the habit of updating Facebook manually, it just didn't happen. Friends and colleagues wrote, wondering where I was, and missing my updates. Other than cut and pasting specific tweets to Facebook, no simple solution seemed to exist.

Then I found it.

Selective Twitter Status is a Facebook app, created by @AndyY which gives you complete control of which tweets go to Facebook. To start, you enter your Twitter name at the link above, then it adds the STS app to your account. Back on Twitter, all you need do is make sure to end your tweets with #fb (making sure to leave a space between it and the previous word) and your tweet shows up in Facebook, minus that #fb character. Voila, you are now in complete control of what gets communicated on your profile in Facebook, finally making complete sense to your previously befuddled and overloaded Facebook friends.

It's time to unplug your Twitter Facebook app, and use Selective Twitter Status.

Readers: What's been your experience with Twitter/Facebook relations? Do your Facebook friends have no problem with your tweets, as is? Have you asked your Facebook friends about this? What other simple, elegant solutions to social media or other tech problems are you seeing out there? Comment below. You can follow me on Twitter here.

Energy Circle Shows How to Effectively Integrate Social Media Into Your Business

2009-04-03T12:13:53-07:00

I tend to consult with companies I like. As in I'd do business with them as a customer. Recommend them to friends. Respect what they represent. It's why when I recently worked with Ode Magazine, more then 50% of the blogs I contacted chose to write about them, with great enthusiasm, two even inviting me to write my own content on their sites. My genuine affinity with the businesses I choose to consult with generates better quality results.

Energy Circle, my most recent client, is a home energy efficiency focused business who knows well how to effectively use social media. They are a business I want you to get to know better. Not because they're my client, but because more than likely, they have several ways they can directly benefit you and those in your life, and in doing so, make a collective impact that is substantial. Their business model and how they execute may also be a source of inspiration for your own business.

Energy Circle is an ally to those seeking to make their home more energy efficient, and professionals helping people do it. During a time of constrained budgets, from personal to institutional, with a president actively in support of green collar jobs, particularly in terms of home energy efficiency, Energy Circle is a a case of right timing, with a compelling offer.

Solar and other renewables get a lot of press, but the smartest way to green your home is by starting with energy efficiency. Energy Circle is an excellent, assured, friendly resource for anybody to do it. Whereas Google's Powermeter and other technology is still in the works, they've got many "right now" solutions available, including this quick, ongoing, useful article demystifying how and who to go with for home energy audits. In a nod to the wisdom of their audience, they encourage them to continue filling in the blanks. And it's working.

In a wise business move, they smartly don't lead with green, they start with being money saving and energy efficient, something most anybody can agree on. EnergyCircle is made up of people who were much like those they serve - trying to make sense of how best to make their home more energy efficient. Now they show you how to do it, with the appropriate tools/components to do it right.

Plenty of sites/stores cater to the more hardcore DIY types/professionals, but few even try to reach out to your everyday person - The ones that, collectively, will make a much bigger impact, in energy reduction, smart use of materials when remodeling, and the broader awareness that comes when they talk about it to their friends.

They make quite effective use of social media tools, an active, nuanced participant on Twitter. Their three blogs take a logical progression: the first steps you through the basics, as in insulation and home energy audits. The second keeps you up on the latest news and developments in home energy efficiency, like the Aube Telephone Thermostat, a tool that allows you to change your thermostat by phone. Then the third is where real people get to share their stories, expertise, tips, mishaps.

Finally, rather than leading with their store, it's the last, extensive option.

One of their favorite products is emblematic of their philosophy of how to make your house energy efficient: The Energy Detective. As they put it, it's "a real-time home electricity monitor that is the equivalent of a digital stethoscope." When you're aware of your usage patterns and which thing uses how much, you can then make smarter choices, a knowledgeable base to start from. Rather then being merely a cool concept gadget to be released someday, it's here, right now, making an impact in today's world. This video on installing it makes even someone as tool foolish as me want to do it:

Their use of video is something to study as a business. Done with a light, assured touch, they make making your house a healthier, more affordable place to live a much less intimidating process.

Readers: What other businesses have you seen effectively integrating social media into their model? Where else have you seen the arcane made common sense? Do you have any feedback for Energy Circle as a consumer or business owner?

How to Amplify Microfinance Effectiveness: Don't Pay People Back!

2009-03-17T02:00:00-07:00

This week Twitter has been abuzz about the interactive, technology, social media focused component of the South By Southwest conference, or as it's tagged on Twitter, #sxsw. Mark Lovett of Global Patriot was particularly excited about a microfinance organization called OptINnow. Though I thought the name sounded more like a mailing list company, I was intrigued when Lovett said they took donations via cell phone. I'm glad I looked. Read on as we learn about an organization that on the one hand is the new kid on the block, and on the other, has been around for 37 years.

Sometimes being in the business that I am, I presume things to be common knowledge that I'm reminded are not, microfinance being one of them. For those not familiar with it, it's the facilitated process of making small loans, typically to people in developing countries, in order to help them create and grow their businesses, thereby better supporting themselves and their family.

OptINnow does it a differently then I've seen before, for example Kiva, where your loan a one time thing, benefiting one person/business. As in you lend money to a specific person, they repay it, and it gets repaid to you. End of story. You can of course choose to fund others, but the cycle ends should you choose not to lend any more money.

With OptINnow, the money gets repaid to the local partner bank, plus interest, then gets loaned back out to additional entrepreneurs. Hang on, it doesn't go back to you, the original lender? And they charge interest? That might be a hard sell for those used to the typical microfinance model made popular of late.

But then, looking at OptINnow's site and the FAQ, they aren't aiming for the same people. Whereas Kiva seems focused on targeting entrepreneurs interested in supporting people like themselves on the other side of the planet, OptINnow takes a plain spoken, direct approach that could, and from the looks of it, already is having a major impact on the world's poor. 1.1 million in 27 countries.

For instance, responding to why they charge interest on these loans, they say, "...collecting interest allows us to provide vital business training and mentoring services. For us these services are break-even expenses, but for those entrepreneurs we help, they are a blessing. They provide the vital tools that entrepreneurs need to work their way out of poverty once and for all. These services are a 'hand up' and not a 'hand out.'"

Addressing why most of the potential loan recipients on the site are women, they say, "...the income their businesses bring in is most often shared with children and extended family, thereby having greater impact. " And sharing something I'm guessing many of us here in the Western world aren't aware of, "A staggering 70% of all those living in extreme poverty are female. Women are often excluded from education and the workplace, from owning property, and from equal participation in politics. They produce one half of the world’s food, but own just one percent of its farmland."

Who are OptINnow?

My eyebrow cocked when I read that OptINnow is part of the Christian based Opportunity International, but there too they address this when, much like Habitat for Humanity, "We serve men and women of all faiths or no faith to join us in the important work of eliminating poverty around the world. "

And how do they do that? It's simple. And powerful. They loan to carefully screened people, then, in a measure that helps ensure good use of them and higher repayment rates, they have "Trust Groups." These are 15-40 loan recipients who meet weekly with a loan officer who trains them in effective techniques to run a business, and frequently other community beneficial things, such as HIV/AIDS prevention. In learning as a community, they teach each other and keep each other in check.

How do they convince people to lend money they won't get back?

By visually demonstrating the path it will likely take, on a scrolling image from person to person to people to school to...you get the picture. And they further elaborate on their How it works page, explaining in clear terms the "multiplier effect," a term common in financial circles but delingofied here: When an entrepreneur has powerful support that started with you, they help others in the community, whether by hiring them, or using their services through the money they've made at their business. This graphic makes it quite explicit:

Given all this, it does indeed seem OptINnow may indeed live up to their tagline of "End Poverty. Faster."

Readers: What other organizations do you see taking the complex and making it accessible? Have you invested in microloans? What's been your experience with it? Did you continue to do it? What other means do you see to effectively address poverty in the developing world?

Feedly: What Makes it the Best RSS Reader In Existence Today?

2009-03-03T02:00:00-08:00

Today I want to tell you about an amazing find I came across last week, helping greatly accelerate my ability to take in, make use of, and share information, while decreasing my stress about doing so.

Every day I look forward to reading my RSS feeds. Now, lest you think I'm an obsessive information freak, I was much like you: overwhelmed, mostly ignoring the thousands of unread articles, my feeds having become little more than another inbox to check. (Don't know what feeds are? Watch this quick video.)

Flock, the would be all in one social media friendly browser, remedied this to an extent, with its front page that includes a sampling of three each of the most recent articles from your feeds, good to graze on.

But I eventually became immune to it, it too becoming another speedbump to my other, "more important" tasks. But really, as a sustainable business consultant, what's more important than keeping abreast of what's going on in your field, and the many things it touches?

So I was really pleased to learn about Feedly. Why? It takes your feed content, you tell it which is your favorite most frequently read, and it lays it out beautifully (see popup pic, right), almost feeling like a highly polished blog or magazine itself, making manageable and attractive what could easily be a big info dump, as other RSS readers often treat it.

But Feedly is not just a pretty face on the same old same old.

It takes that information, and integrates several tools to do something with it, allowing you to take action directly from the article you're currently reading. For someone like me who's active on Twitter, I can quickly share an interesting find. I could email it to a colleague. I could share it with others who use Google Reader. My Facebook network or Friendfeed subscribers could quickly know about it. I could bookmark it in Delicious, having it handy for when it's useful for my clients. If I just want the link, Feedly is happy to oblige that too.

Now what if something looks interesting, but you don't have time now to read? Click a little + button next to the article title, and it gets saved for later. Nothing special, right? This is where the genius touches happen:

In your Digest front page, Feedly serves up 1-2 of your saved articles in the top most featured pieces. This prevents them from being forgotten relics gathering electronic dust, increasing the likelihood you'll actually read them.

Then, look down in the corner of your browser while on other non Feedly pages, and you see something like this:

The FF is for FriendFeed, the increasingly popular lifestreaming service. Click the button, and up pops the page with everybody on there who's noted, commented, linked to or otherwise added relevant commentary on their own site. And it doesn't need to be a blog page. Any will do.
The man with shovel icon is from Digg. pushing it takes you directly to the digg page related to the one you were just on.
Clicking the thumb button quickly posts it to both Feedly and Google Reader, for others that follow you to see.
You can also tweet (share it on Twitter) or email it rapidly.

A lot of action from a tiny piece of your screen real estate, eh?

Let's return to the Feedly page: For each article you look at, it weaves in the Friendfeed mentions/conversations, what's being said on Digg, and comments from the article itself. Are you a visual person? Feedly plucks which articles have video in them, and features those, clicking them leading you to the related article, where you're able to watch the video while still in Feedly.

The final feature I want you to know about is one that might otherwise get overlooked in the all the action happening below: Tucked in the top right corner is an discreet search box. Typing in Verterra, a leaf based plate company, gets you this (click to expand):

In one page, you can see where in the press, the blogs, Youtube, Twitter, Delicious, and Flickr your search has been mentioned. Brand monitoring/competition tracking anybody?

And the cherry on top of this is their support. Yes, support for a free Firefox add-on. On their Get Satisfaction page. You can give feedback, kudos, and most importantly, problems solved. Fast. They're frequently on there, ready to either make it work for you, or take into serious consideration your suggested new features.

Feedly is not perfect, but improving often, with noticeable improvements seeming to pop up every day, with no need to load a new version.

So, what are you waiting for? Give Feedly a spin. Tell me how your experience has been. Share other resources you've found effective at managing and sharing information. Comment below please.

Why is There a Disconnect Between Green Products and The Latino/Hispanic Market?

2009-02-23T16:02:09-08:00

I love Twitter. Why? Because of conversations like the one I had today. Laura Gomez, aka @lauraisgo, a self described, "latina geek who likes: the planet, food, films, languages, writing, fútbol, web 2.0, travel, riojas and music.....and has a crush on Hugh Laurie" reached out to me about a subject I can honestly say hadn't crossed my mind yet: Why haven't more green cleaning product companies reached out to the Latino market?

She said that in many places, it's they who are doing the cleaning, carwashing, and other blue collar service jobs. Is it a matter of companies presuming that their main market is white LOHAS people who shop at Whole Foods? Perhaps.

But in continuing the conversation, Gomez shared with me an interesting observation: Many Latinos, even well educated ones, don't see the relevance to their lives. She herself practices many green behaviors, and to some of her friends, it seems a bit extreme. I asked, putting it bluntly, do they see it as something white people do (and not them)? Yes.

So how do we shift it to something that people, no matter their background, do?

Part of it, it seems, is more information, discussion, and modeling of green behaviors en Espanol, online, on TV, wherever Latinos are best reached. And in the case of Gomez, whose mother cleans houses for a living, she personally tells others about her choices and why they're beneficial. I suggested that, Latino or not, well made, affordable products such as those made by Natural Value would do well in this current economy.

She also shared that the Obama campaign reached out younger Latinos with messages they could then share with their parents. This would seem a wise path to follow for this as well.

Another path I proposed was that outreach and marketing focus on family first, environment / planet second, if at all. As in making greener choices supports the health of you and your family, the hub of Latino life.

In an article called "Do Latinos or Hispanics Care About the Environment?" Gomez later sent me, a recent survey indicates, “more than 80 percent of Latino voters said that energy and environmental issues impact have ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ impact on the quality of life and health of their families.” So there seems to be disagreement between Gomez' experience and what this survey says.

Or perhaps not. They may see that there's an impact, but don't see how they can personally do something about it. Or perhaps they don't feel included in the conversation, so why participate? Organizations like Democracia U.S.A. are taking a proactive approach to shift that, together with the Green Jobs Now campaign.

Readers: What's been your experience in terms of Latino interest in/concern about the environment, and green buying decisions? How does it vary by region, income, education? How can/should green product makers reach out the the Latino market? What sort of education needs to take place? Is there existing channels of communication that could effectively include a greener message?