Image courtesy of Daquella Manera, Flickr Creative Commons

My time is so stretched nowadays between personal life and professional life that when a new social platform such as today’s launch of Google+ comes around, I wonder: do I have time for yet another social network? Of course, I spent much of today hopping on and off of Google+ checking out what the other techies like me were doing with it, and exploring the Shiny New Platform. It really brought to mind how one decides which platform to dive deeply into and spend a lot of time on versus the platforms to skim or avoid. What we need is a well-defined decision tree for choosing where to dive deeply.

Every one of my experiences with a new social space involves at least these steps:

1. Think it’s the Next Big Thing so I have to

2. Sign up

3. Stumble around in the dark and try to understand the tool and whatever culture has been established

4. Pay attention to who is using it and how

5. Figure out the value to me (personally) and to nonprofit organizations (professionally), and dive deeper if need be

6. Think about the return on engagement

7. If I think that the return could be high, stick with it and create test scenarios

8. Evaluating the platform based on strategic objectives

Somewhere around step 6, I realized that I needed to create a decision tree.

Social Media Platform Decision Trees

It’s hard to know where to spend most of our limited time with social media. For now, Facebook is the “must be there” platform for nonprofit organizations, complemented by the use of it as the water cooler where friendships are made and maintained. But what about the next Shiny New Platform? It’s worthwhile to answer some gateway questions that will help you make the decision to dive deeper or not. Entry-level gateway decisions may include:

• Is this where your target audience meets and engages?

• Does the tool itself do what you need or want it to do?

• Will it serve the goals of your organization or project objectives?

If you’re answering yes to all three, I recommend diving deeper and staying within it until you decide a.) It’s not the right platform, or b.) You need more information and activity on the platform to know how to proceed. You’ll have to dive deep, initially, to understand its real value and know if it is the right channel for you to use.

Once you’ve decided that a platform might be right for your company, further decision refinement questions might include:

• How much time do I need to invest to see a return?
• Does my organization have the capacity to maintain our presence effectively?
• What metrics are built into the platform? If not, how would you begin to measure use, engagement, ROE?
• Who in the organization is the right person(s) to own this?
  

I’ve created a basic decision tree to illustrate some of these social media platform decisions:

I have to make the time for initial exploration on every Shiny New Platform. My goal is to try to understand its potential value and perceived value as quickly as possible. I’ll be doing this with Google+, and hope to publish my initial thoughts on it next week.

What is your decision tree? How would you refine this social media platform decision tree?

I’m always on the  lookout for good international data about the use of social media and social networks. Each year, I eagerly await the results of Universal McCann’s “Wave” study on social media. Since 2006, Universal McCann has been surveying active internet users worldwide about their use of the internet yearly. This year, 37,600 respondents from 53 countries told UM how they use the internet. The results, highlighting trends and changes from years past, show the domination and rise of both social networks and branded online social communities. So much so that this year’s report is entitled “Wave 5 – The Socialization of Brands.” The report, issued in October 2010, summarizes the latest Wave 5 survey data gathered in July 2010.

Here are some facts from the report that all organizations should take note of:

1. The Rise of the Social Network

According to the study, social network usage has risen from 52% to 70% by 25-34 year-olds worldwide. Three-quarters of active internet users worldwide have managed a social network profile. When asked the number of activities people use social networks for, that number has risen from 6.4 to eight activities since Wave 4 in 2009.

Wave 5 illustrates that social networks have broadened in the past several years to have effectively become the chosen online home of all your social media activities.

Looking at Figure 4 from the study, people prefer using a social network for almost every type of online experience. The one exception is that Message Boards top social networks when someone wants to “seek other people’s opinions.” This should serve to remind us of the power of a well-moderated, well-used message board, too!

All types of sharing are universally migrating to social networks. Looking more closely, uploading photos and videos to online sharing sites has leveled off but uploading photos and videos to social networking sits has grown over 200% in two years, as noted in Figure 11 from the study:

Additionally, while blogging has stabilized (or declined, in the case of reading personal blogs), writing a blog on a social network is the only form of blogging that has increased.

2. Twitter is not dead (at least not worldwide)

Ok, not actually a surprise. Though Twitter adoption has slowed in North America, it has jumped worldwide from 15% usage in July 2009 to almost 33% in July 2010. If you want to reach an international audience, use Twitter to reach new audiences and move people to care, and act.

3. Develop your branded online community

There is a BIG decline in the number of people who are visiting official brand websites. Contrary to that, Wave 5 notes the BIG rise in the number of people worldwide who have become an online fan of a brand. This would include a nonprofit organization’s Facebook Page, private online community, YouTube channel, etc. See Figure 21 from the Wave 5 study, below:

This study was not prepared with the nonprofit sector in mind, and was generalized across all segments of the population. That noted, over 50% of the respondents said that they affiliated with a branded online community in order to support a cause. I also found intriguing the other reasons listed for affiliating: to associate with something that is cool, to learn more about it, to get advance news on a product, and more. Think about these takeaways: If you run a youth-oriented nonprofit, how can you make it cool? If you offer nonprofit software, can you offer advance news about upcoming features and releases? Cross-apply Figure 24 with your organization’s audience to help focus your branded community.

4. When people join a brand community online, they feel more positive and loyal toward the brand

I’ve read this before, but it’s great to see it validated worldwide.

Clearly, online community supporters ARE your more loyal fans, they WILL visit the website from an online social network community, and they are a strong source for finding new online supporters. Treat them with respect, and grow your loyal fans into the online evangelists that they could become.

So much great data from Wave 5. What are your takeaways?

Now that your Place is claimed, what are the capabilities of Places and its potential uses? Most importantly, how does that functionality open up possibilities?

Since the launch of Facebook Places a few weeks ago, there have been some great blog posts about how to claim the space. Heather Mansfield wrote a comprehensive step-by-step on how to claim your organization’s Facebook Place. John Haydon created a very clear two-minute video guide on how to claim your Facebook Place (click on film icon and the video will pop up inside this blog post).

Understanding the functionality of Places is critical to thinking about the possibilities of Facebook Places.

First, some preliminaries of setting up the Page:

You can begin to set up your Place once you have received an official Place confirmation from Facebook. This is what it looks like:

It is important to note that a Facebook Place is a new Page.  Here is what you can do with your Places Page:

1. Populate it with a profile picture. Have fun with this – don’t assume you have to put your logo here. Is there a particular symbol on the exterior of your building that is identified with your organization? Make that your profile picture. You could also chose a fan that has checked in the most that month and make his/her photo your monthly Places profile picture as a reward (or surprise)!

2. Post status updates on the Places Page. Just like any other Page, people who Like this Place will see the updates. You can attach links, photos and video to it. (Screen shot below)

From an organizational perspective, if you have an event or a physical location that is used by your consumers/clients/customers (such as a food bank, career counseling location, etc.), the status update offers interesting opportunities. Some ideas are:

• offer special incentives, congratulations, and connections to those checking in
• connect and tag others, encouraging peer to peer connections
• creatively bridge a digital divide by checking people in at your site
• encourage a group conversation at an event
• crowdsource ideas about the place (Do we need more chairs or a bigger welcome area here? How is the wifi for you? How could we improve our space)
• Add photos and videos of the event, place, etc.

(John Haydon offers other nonprofit Places ideas here.)

3. Feature your organization’s Place Page on your website by adding a Facebook Page Badge (such as the Like box) to your website, blog, etc. I am not sure if you are able to add all the features of the Facebook Open Graph (such as the Like button) at this time, but it seems obvious to me that you will be able to do that at a later point. Again, if you have an upcoming fundraiser, event, or use your organization’s physical location, adding the Page Badge is a good way to publicize your Facebook Place.

4. Know who has checked into your Place. This is the unique feature. If a person checks into your Place, you can see them there. As an individual Facebook user, you can also check yourself into a Place, check others in (if they allow that feature on Facebook), or tag other using an @message just like tagging them on a status update). If you want to know more about how to actually check into a Place, read this article on the Facebook Blog.

From an organizational perspective, this is where it gets very interesting. You can view the people who have chosen to check into a Place, and who have added their friends to a Place, and can even begin to graph friend ties by noting people that check in together.

5. Add applications. You can add applications to your Page. At this point, I can only see that Facebook allows a Place Page to add static FBML, Discussions, Video, Links, Notes, Photos, and Discussion Boards. I haven’t seen this in action, but it indicates that Places will become incredibly robust geo-location spaces. For a nonprofit, I wouldn’t advise replicating the same applications that are on the official Page, but thinking instead about which applications make sense for those fans actually checking into your Place. Perhaps video, Notes, and photos make sense. I’d love to hear about how organizations are adding static FBML to Places.

6. Merge Places with Pages. It is possible to merge your Facebook Place with your official Page (but not if you have multiple Places). It appears that you have to be the administrator/owner of both types of Pages and then Facebook will prompt you to merge them. (I have not personally seen this prompt for the FirstGiving Place yet.) Further, if you merge Places with your Page, then Facebook allows you to target ads specifically to people who Like your place. The merge feature clearly indicates that Facebook is interested in bringing all user activities to a single, geo-located, merged space.

Which nonprofit organizations are using Places now? How are they taking advantage of the functionality in interesting ways?

Further reading:

Charlene Li’s article on how the Facebook Experience will change after Places.

Mashable’s Field Guide to Facebook Places.

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.

I was struck by this article that the brand itself is the second-most trusted source for information about a brand on a social networking site. Wow. Does that strike you as wild?

It does…and it doesn’t. While we know that, foremost, consumers trust online peers’ recommendations about brands and products (second only to friends and family), what strikes me about these survey results is the proven value of social media. Social network activities by an organization – when implemented well – create trust, enthusiasm, and credibility. That can translate into moving fans to action. That’s ROI.

While most brands initially hopped onto the social media bandwagon to generate sales, enough companies are communicating effectively and passionately using social media that they are creating a credibility scale for others to meet. You know who I’m talking about – the brands that are genuine, real connectors with stakeholders, and are transparent. These are the brands at the top of the credibility scale, and the ones that are still in it for a quick customer are at the bottom.

A report by Lightspeed Research about what US consumers want from brands online states that the top demand is “to improve their knowledge.” Specifically, consumers want brands to offer relevant news and analysis, new ideas and thinking, useful applications that consumers can download, and to create a space where consumers can interact directly with the company or staff. This type of content moves a company way up on the credibility scale.

Brand consumers want real value from social media, and real conversation.

This is what puts a brand or organization at the top of the credibility scale.

I imagine the credibility scale to look something like this (comments and improvements welcome!):

Nonprofit organizations: social network users are definitely looking to you for credible information about your organization and the cause. And they want to connect with your staff in an online space, in a real way. How can you reach the top of the credibility scale?

Here are a few ideas for nonprofits reaching for the top of the scale:

• More transparency about the successes, failure/challenges, and realities of the organization. Fans are looking to you for the real deal. Give it to them.
• Integrate more stakeholder content into the website, and the social media. Is there a way to vote or “thumb up” content? How can you use social voting to show how popular a concept or campaign is? How can you better integrate your social fans’ thoughts into your online spaces?
• Stream into the website how social media fans are referencing your work: create a social bookmarking feed of stakeholder-tagged content about organization, create a scroll of your tweets, showcase a Q&A on the website that comes directly from fan interaction on the social sites.
• Double-up your efforts to connect online with your fans: spend more time chatting with them, listening to them, and offering value to them.
• Ensure that the content you offer has value to your stakeholders, as mentioned above. Don’t think “here’s an article about what we just did.” Think “here’s an article about what we did, but we want to know how to improve it to better serve you.”
• Offer added value in the online spaces that you don’t offer elsewhere. Great examples: Seafood Watch offers added value with its iPhone app, BullyingUK displays user-created posters on Flickr, and Epic Change highlights the Twitter Kids’ tweetstream.

If there is an argument for social media improving brand credibility, which is a great ROI, then these survey results seem to verify to be the argument. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the brand credibility scale, and social network brand credibility in general.

Two new data sets about the value of social media came across my laptop recently: Idealware‘s “Using Social Media to Meet Nonprofit Goals” survey of nonprofit staffers using social media, and the State of Small Business report from Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service.

The results are so similar to the nonprofit survey results that the conclusion is hard to ignore: social media actually is an effective tool for customer retention and attraction.

Social media is actually perceived by those doing it to work! In particular, the top benefits are seen as reaching new audiences and enhancing existing customer/audience relationships.

Here are some highlights from the Idealware survey of 459 nonprofit staffers using social media:

1. Nonprofits believe that social media is helping them to enhance relations with their existing audience and reach new audiences through the top platforms.

Most organizations feel that most social media channels are effective for enhancing existing relationships and reaching new supporters. The least effective platforms are MySpace and Linkedin. Blogs, video-sharing, Twitter, and Facebook are felt to be the most effective tools.  The surprise to me is that video-sharing is perceived as highly effective for enhancing relationships.

2. Most nonprofits are using a combination of Facebook, Twitter, video-sharing and blogs to reach out and enrich relationships online. The data shows that there isn’t a relationship between the size of the organization and the number of channels it is using. The responses show that, in general, nonprofits are using and regularly updating one to three social media channels.

I’m not surprised that Facebook is the most popular channel used, but I am surprised that 56% of nonprofits are using Twitter and 80% of them  update Twitter regularly. Two other points to consider: the blog is not dead (45% of nonprofits have one) and video sharing sites once again prove to be popular (49% have them).

Conclusions: Nonprofits are finding value in Twitter, Facebook is widely adopted and “known to work.”  These platforms must be seen as engagement tools to be taken seriously at this point. The blog, though time consuming, is the long form to express your message and enhance relationships with existing supporters. Video-sharing is the crouching tiger. Regularly maintaining one to three platforms is an industry standard.

3. Nonprofits are not yet satisfied with the results of social network fundraising. I don’t think this is any big surprise, as both social network donors and donation strategies are still in their infancy. The survey reveals that, of all the social networks, 41% of respondants believe that Facebook is most effective for raising money. (And that is the highest percentage of approval of any network channel.)  I suspect respondents mention Facebook because it has an affiliated fundraising platform, Causes, that is simple to use and easily accessible. Let’s see what next year’s survey results bring: I’m guessing that they will bring higher satisfaction and a stronger sense of nonprofit social network fundraising effectiveness.

This is also the only platform where Linkedin is rated on par with Twitter, video-sharing, and blogging, at 30% effeciveness. The Idealware study remarks that this is surprising, but I don’t find it surprising at all: Linkedin is an incredibly effective channel for targeted donor research and deeper interaction with potential donors and foundations within Linkedin Groups.

Here’s one more set of similar survey results: the performance of social media tactics for US small businesses in December 2009.

According to “The State of Small Business” report, small businesses are also using social media to successfully attract new customers, increase awareness, and stay engaged with existing customers.

Two data sets, two different user groups, same results: social media is effective for reaching new customers and strengthening existing relationships. Irrefutable evidence of the power of engagement.

I read a fascinating blog post at The Community Roundtable entitled The Value of Community Management. The blog post considers the value, specifically the financial benefit, that community managers provide to managed social communities. Several readers who manage online communities wrote in to offer their data about the difference community managers make. Reading the discussion, I realize there are a number of points that are fully applicable to social networks such as Facebook Pages and Groups, Linkedin Groups, Google Groups, and others. They apply equally to for-profit and nonprofit-sponsored communities.

1. Active management of an online community creates real value for the organization

Tom Humbarger was the paid, active community manager until his position was eliminated. From that time forward, his company chose to manage the online community passively. Tom wrote a blog post about what the effects of active vs. passive community management. His data shows that growth, number of visits, number of page views, and time on site decreased dramatically during the absence of a community manager. The full article is well worth reading here.

As an example, this graph illustrates the dramatic drop-off in the number of site visits once active community management ceased.

2. Similarly, active management of a Facebook Page creates real value for the organization

I was the active manager of a corporate Facebook Page for a period of three months in 2009, until the company decided to eliminate all managed social media. From that time forward, the company decided to auto-fed blog posts to the Facebook Page, with no added interactions. During the time of active Facebook Page management, the Page grew at a rate of about 8 fans a week, had a post quality of 21, drove about 8 visits a day to the site,  but had a conversion rate from Facebook Page to website registration of almost 25%. Since the Page became inactive, the number of new fans/week has dropped to less than one, there are almost no website visits, zero conversions, and the post quality is zero.

Community Roundtable blog reader Maggie McGary also saw similar stats in her nonprofit’s Facebook Page: she writes in the comments that the number of visits from Facebook to her nonprofit organization’s website plunged during a one-month absence from active Facebook community management.

Community management, whether you define it as managing a private community, or a community on a social media platform, is critical to community growth and moving people from the managed community  towards organizational goals.

3. Active management also encourages relationship-building, which leads to loyalty and community growth

When I was a community organizer, we used to call this “relationship organizing.” Simply put, friends bring friends to organizations, and remain involved because of them. I used to try and map friendships, recruit influencers, and ask them to bring friends into the cause. In online communities, we develop cyber friends that influence us to participate and keep us active. I have started participating more actively in certain online groups because I have developed friendships with other members over time. I also recommend these groups to my friends, and feel increased loyalty to the sponsoring organization. I would never have created these online ties if the group wasn’t active and well-managed.

I asked Hildy Gottlieb, who managed the monthly twitter chat for consultants to community benefits organizations, if there are online ties between the participants of the monthly #npcons chat, and if these ties arose from the chats. She responded emphatically: “Oh goodness yes. There are many people who have met through these chats, who are now having some pretty engaged and higher level conversations throughout the month because they feel they know each other from that involvement.  It’s just like any other involvement or community- the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.”

Simply put, a well-manged online community leads to real value for both the members and the community sponsors. That’s a win-win situation.

Have you managed a social network? Can you add your data to this conversation?

Have you seen the effects of passive management on a social  community?

Should Dunbar’s number inform the way organizations act online?

As explained by Wikipedia, “Dunbar’s number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.” Within online social networks, Dunbar’s number is seen as the upper limit of the number of people with whom one will converse regularly and meaningfully – this could be daily, weekly, or more often. Taken very simply, it means that I can maintain real, meaningful, online relationships with a finite number of people. For me, that number is far less than 150 – it hovers around 75. For others, it can be as high as 290.

On a social network, a corporate entity or organization can create a profile and “act” as an individual. (There are exceptions, such as Linkedin.) The reach of the internet allows a freedom of interaction with customers that is difficult to create offline. Organizations have a duel purpose online: business objectives and creating loyal relationships. These can be in conflict. However, common wisdom holds that the engaged stakeholder will also act on behalf of the organization (volunteer/donate/take action).

Many nonprofits do a great job of creating personal relationships online with their fans, while others provide a fertile environment to allow their fans create relationships with each other online. In light of Dunbar’s limited number of meaningful relationships, which is the preferred approach to an organizational online presence?

Two noteworthy contributions:

In his book Trust Agents, Chris Brogan argues against mechanizing your online presence and instead giving back with personal gestures in order to create “cafe shaped experiences.”

Whitney Hoffman wrote an insightful post about Dunbar’s number that mentions two relevant points: it is hard to classify the degree of  friendship online, and the more connected a site becomes the less intimate the relationship becomes. Given that organizations want a large online following – and we want all of those fans to work for our organization enthusiastically (or at least give/act/volunteer/contribute) – the challenge seems to be scaling intimately.

So here are my questions for you:

• If organizational fans can only create a finite number of real relationships online, according to Dunbar’s number, does this change how we would approach creating an organizational presence on a social network?

• Can a fan have a stable, meaningful relationship with an organization?

• Do you want to be the organization that creates a community of fans and/or the organization that has a meaningful/personal relationship with its fans?

• Should it be an organizational goal to create a corporate presence that becomes part of someone’s inner circle of relationships – within the sacred 150 Dunbar’s number?

• How can an organization scale up its number of followers while still trying to be within each fan’s “inner Dunbar number?”

I look forward to your input and thoughts!

What if organizations took the time to create meaningful, strategic taglines?  Taglines help your organization clearly communicate its strategic goals, and if used properly, should inform all communications. A tagline is the clear, distilled mission: of the organization, or of a position within the organization.

Are taglines a replacement for who you are and your company’s mission statement? No. But, in this day and age of Facebook status updates, “what are you doing” Twitter updates and social networks, a tagline is the quick informational message about your company. A tagline is the shout out for what your company can do for others. It’s the “micro-mission,” if you will.

Can you translate your company’s tagline into short, powerful status updates that move your organization closer to its goals?

Taking this a step forward, why shouldn’t we think of status updates on our social media sites as a version of the tagline, but related to the immediate matter at hand. For instance, if your organization’s tagline is “Addiction can be overcome, one person at a time,” then a status update on Facebook might say “another person has joined our campaign to eradicate additctions!” or tweet “Good link to study about causes of addiction.”

Status Updates are not just throwaways. They are your strategic messages, in 140 characters or less.

Nancy Schwartz, host of the Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards writes: “a strong tagline does double-duty — working to extend your organization’s name and mission, while delivering a focused, memorable and repeatable message to your base.” She invites nonprofit organizations to submit their organization’s taglines in a competition each year. The 2008 GettingAttention.org survey showed that 72% of nonprofit organizations do not have a tagline, or believe that their tagline performs badly.  Based on this information, she created the Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Report to help nonprofits build their brand in “eight words or less.”

Why write “we do good things” or “our 25th anniversary year” on your website, name tag or blog headline? Does it move your strategy forward? Does it engage? Does it move people to act?

Taking this idea one step further, the personal tagline is also important.  It’s the “micro-mission” of each employee at your agency. When employees (or volunteers) attend an event, update social media sites or write a blog post, they should be thinking about their personal taglines – it focuses the conversation online and offline. At the Breakfast with Jeff Pulver that I attended yesterday in Tel Aviv, Jeff asked everyone to write their name on a name tag and add a personal tagline underneath it. Some taglines were great (“Everyone Needs an Editor”) and some were…not very compelling (“I Love Games.”) A tagline is more than a conversation starter; people will glance at a tagline and decide if they want to speak with you or not. Or possibly read your blog. Or interact with your organization. You have eight words to get your message across convincingly.

I’m not saying that every single status update, tweet and microblog update has to be strategic and goal-oriented. Remembering your company’s mission can and should inform your status updates – and help you get the most out of all of the 140 characters allotted. Remembering your personal tagline can and should make your networking more strategic and informative.

Thoughts?

The direct marketing agency Epsilon just released a new study by ROI Research revealing reasons why people most often unsubscribe from email lists, and the rates at which they unsubscribe. Not surprisingly, the most often-cited reason (67%) is irrelevancy of emails. The second highest reason (64%) was high frequency of emails, and the third most-cited reason (50%) was fear that their email addresses were being sold or shared. Conducted by ROI Research, the study is based on an April 2009 survey of over 4000 consumers in 13 countries.

Image courtesy of emarketer

Image courtesy of Online Media Daily

In essence, the reasons most email list subscribers unsubscribe boils down to:

• receiving messaging content that is irrelevant to the reader
• not understanding the needs of the customer
• mistrust of the company sending the email

If your company or organization uses email lists, then why not use social media to cut down those unsubscribe rates!

Social media platforms (Facebook, twitter, blogs, MySpace) create conversations, which tell you exactly what the readers want. Use the conversations with your customers/fans/clients/donors to inform the content of your email messaging.  Are certain blog posts shared frequently online, while others die the fate of the unseen post? Why is that? Do you receive lots of comments on certain topics or videos? Utilize the information you learn from your social media interactions so that email messaging won’t suffer from irrelevant content.

Social media relies on trust because it is incredibly transparent. Due to the nature of the medium, people search for information about you before following your blog, Facebook page, or joining your company’s social network. They’ll “out” you if your company’s activities are not completely transparent, and become your biggest fans if you are. Remember the controversy over the fact that some Twitter users have “ghost twitterers,” who post to Twitter under the actual user’s name? However, if they find value in the engagement, they will pass that value along and bring their friends to you as well.

Use social media to allay the fear, once and for all, that your organization will never, ever sell or share the names of its email list subscribers. Write a blog post about it. Create a conversation about why that isn’t your organization’s policies and how you value the privacy of all your subscribers. Refer to these conversations in your email messages and ask email subscribers to contact you directly online if they want to ask further questions about privacy.

Remember the “golden rules” of social media: Be Yourself. Be Transparent. Listen. Engage.

You can’t listen and engage in an email blast, but you can take the information from listening and engaging on social networks, and use that to make your email messaging relevant and valuable to your stakeholders.

Do you have other ideas about how social media can decrease email unsubscribe rates? Please share them in the comments!