MLK Day of Service 2011, Jersey Cares

Note: This is a guest post written by Sherry Lynn Fazio and Siobhan Tiernan, both of Jersey Cares. I met Sherry at the NYC Social Media for Nonprofits conference, where we serendipitously sat next to each other. She told me about how Jersey Cares had realized the power of Twitter for recruiting almost 1,000 volunteers to the Day of Service 2011, and felt passionately that any organization could do the same.

How can Twitter work for you? Do you need more volunteers? Jersey Cares recruited over 1,000 new volunteers using Twitter in just one month. Last year, Jersey Cares doubled our volunteer participation in MLK Day of Service with the extraordinary work of our AmeriCorps members. Four AmeriCorps members were each assigned a geographic area in New Jersey to fill specific projects. Many of these projects were occurring in cities designated as new service areas for the Jersey Cares volunteer pool. While the task may have seemed daunting, our determined AmeriCorps members were given marching orders and had contagious energy to divide and conquer. They used the following formula to make our goal a reality –

1.)   Create lists. The list feature in twitter enables you to separate out who you’re following and divided by the 21 counties in New Jersey.

2.)  Add to your lists. Who is your target audience? For our Americorps members, they found the twitter handles of the following to recruit new groups of volunteers:
o    Local newspapers
o    Town & city websites
o    Bars and restaurants
o    Local colleges and universities (including athletic teams, Greek organizations and service clubs)
o    Family groups and activity organizations
o    Churches & temples (JCC, Archdioceses, religious youth groups, Jesuit Volunteer Corps)
o    Secular service clubs (Boys & Girls Scout Troops, Kiwanis Clubs, Rotary Clubs, Key Clubs, Junior Leagues, Women Associations)
o    Athletic associations (bowling & soccer leagues, running clubs, football leagues)
o    Chambers of Commerce
o    Fire & police departments
o    55+ communities
o    MeetUp.com or other singles networks
o    Elected Officials (mayors, assemblymen, congressmen, state senators)
o    Educational centers (Princeton Review, Kaplan, Huntington)
o    Vocational Schools (cosmetology, massage therapy, auto repair)
o    High Schools (Circle K, Key Club, Rotary, Learning/Community service departments)
o    Universities & County colleges (specific departments to target service learning, Greek life and alumni organizations, athletic teams)
o    AmeriCorps chapters (AmeriCorps alums, Teach for America)
o    Libraries

3.)  Create targeted tweets. Once the lists had been made, our AmeriCorps volunteers were able to spring into “tweeting” action and started to craft targeted tweets towards these specific groups. Maybe the local high school service club is still in need of service hours? Maybe the bowling league is interested in an alternative to their Saturday morning practice? Maybe people in Morristown are looking specifically for projects in their area? Our AmeriCorps members focused on the group’s interests and shaped their message to match those of the group. This is a sample tweet that we sent out:

4.)  Include links.  Using Bitly.com, they created shortened links to take readers back to the Jersey Cares website to make sure interested volunteers could learn more about the organization and register for projects. Websites like bitly.com also enable you to track how many people are clicking on your links if you use an account to create your shortened links.

5.)  Share photos. Sharing a photo of previous volunteer projects to demonstrate how fun volunteering can be helpful to show people what their day could look like giving back.

6.)  Schedule tweets. It’s very helpful to schedule your tweets throughout the day to make sure you aren’t bombarding followers and keep variety throughout the days when you can’t be in front of a computer. We schedule all of our tweets through HootSuite.com (a website used to streamline an organization’s social media usage) which helped make sure our Twitter followers weren’t inundated with our tweets during a certain period of time.

As we inched closer and closer to MLK Day of Service, our registration continued to steadily increase – particularly in our new service areas that had been a focus for our AmeriCorps members’ tweeting. When MLK Day of Service finally arrived, Jersey Cares had a record turnout of over 2,000 volunteers – over 1,000 of which were new volunteers to the organization!

When our AmeriCorps members embarked on this volunteer recruitment adventure, we had no idea how successful Twitter would be in allowing Jersey Cares to connect with new groups, individuals, and other organizations to increase the community’s awareness of not only our MLK Day of Service, but of our organization as a whole. Before MLK Day 2011, we had around 800 Twitter followers, and we now have over 1,600 Twitter followers.

Twitter has helped revolutionize our means of external communication through an easy, informal way of getting the word out about the great volunteer opportunities that we make possible in New Jersey. We continue to use Twitter in a number of ways, including promoting other annual events, collection drives, specific volunteer projects on our monthly calendar, or other programs. Additionally, we use Twitter to highlight specific projects we are managing for corporate sponsors (e.g. a tweets such as @nbacares #volunteers are busy painting new murals with @JerseyCares in #JerseyCity) to provide them with a marketing opportunity around their corporate philanthropy and volunteer engagement.

Visit Jersey Cares on Twitter @jerseycares, and on Facebook at http://facebook.com/jerseycares.

Authors:

Sherry Lynn Fazio, Senior Director of External Affairs, Jersey Cares. Sherry has been with Jersey Cares for the past five years and has her Masters in Applied Social & Community Psychology. She manages all aspects of the agency’s fundraising, events and communications and is a member of the HandsOn Network’s Leadership Faculty.

Siobhan Tiernan is the Director of Corporate Service, Jersey Cares. has been with Jersey Cares for the past two years leading the Corporate Service team. She is an Ambassador for the Newark Regional Business Partnership and through her position at Jersey Cares spearheaded the formation of a Corporate Volunteer Council for the state of New Jersey.

Image courtesy of Wendi Gratz, Flickr Creative Commons

Note from Debra: Susan Perri (@wingrants) tweeted to me a few weeks ago that she was seeing a rise in self-promotional tweets on Twitter, and a lack of courtesy. I asked her to expand on what she was seeing, and what advice she might offer to those new to Twitter. Her advice may well make sense for all, whether you are new to Twitter, not yet using Twitter, or an old hand at Twitter. Twitter requires a two-way relationship to create engagement. In that spirit, Susan offers three basic Twitter etiquette tips.  What follows is Susan’s guest post:

Our social media experiences often boils down to one question: Do you want engagement? On Twitter, it’s going to require a two-way relationship, with communication that addresses questions and comments from your followers.

I should begin by acknowledging I do see lots of great folks sharing the compelling stories of their work, which is often interesting and sometimes even noble. I’m glad to hear those stories, and connect and engage. At its best, I believe this is what social media should be, and certainly these are my intentions for using my selected platforms and Twitter in particular. Lately though I’ve been noticing the sheer volume of self-promotion combined with a general lack of common courtesy I encounter on Twitter. Like any other social or community venue, not all folks have the same idea, which can lower the quality of the user experience for the rest of us. Just because you can self-promote on Twitter does not mean you should do solely that. While there are many ways to engage with others, some etiquette should apply. Fundraising blog Fundly and my fellow Twitterer Dave Boyce (@davidjboyce1) speaks about this issue via a great post titled “Spread the love with social media, but don’t forget to mind your manners.” In the post, Dave references the work of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. According to Carnegie, the best leaders improve relationships with every word and action on a daily basis, and this kindness is contagious.

Let’s have some more kindness, please! Our increasingly digital age need not corrode the basic tenets of social niceties. Perhaps I’m hopelessly old-fashioned, but here are the values I (still) believe in, and would urge us all to follow while making our way around the Twittersphere:

1. Walk Your Talk

I’m looking for the kinds of leaders on Twitter that Dale Carnegie wrote about, especially as they relate to my work.  In my particular line of work, I see a lot of Twitter users who promote themselves as nonprofit, communications and/or fundraising professionals. Some of them use self-aggrandizing synonyms for professional, like maven or guru or genius. Many with really large followings put themselves out there as specialists on engagement – donor engagement, social media engagement, building relationships and communities. Surprisingly, these folks have been the most challenging to connect with or get some return engagement back from. Here’s an example to the contrary. Social media whiz (my label, not his) Robert Caruso (@fondalo) really practices what he preaches. This guy has almost 24,000 followers, and he still finds it in his heart to respond to and acknowledge promptly each and every mention, DM, and personal shout out on Twitter. If you’re looking for a best practice for engagement and Netiquette Twitter style, check him out.

2. Remember Your Manners

Think about what your mother taught you. There are really basic, simple acts of kindness that don’t require anything of you but carry tremendous social return on investment. When someone follows you, give thanks. A simple “thank you” goes a long way. Consider following back if that user fits your criteria for doing so. When someone mentions you or references your work, acknowledge it. It’s the right thing to do, and it may just inspire them to do so again in the future.  Don’t be afraid to mention back. It generates goodwill. Irene Koehler (@IreneKoehler) has a great post about Twitter fails of this ilk titled “11 Sure-Fire Ways to Get Me to Unfollow You on Twitter.”

3. Don’t Be Too Full of Yourself

Fellow tweep Matthew Smith (@MatthewSm1th), well versed in social media and philanthropy, recently wrote about the difference between sharing information and “shameless self-promotion” via social media outlets. Self-promotion may be the most common reason for using social media, but I submit there is a balance between self-promotion and respectable engagement that need not be shameless. Let’s begin by the way we put ourselves  out there. Another Twitter connection, Ephraim Gopin (@fundraisinisfun), very smart about all things fundraising, recently ranted about the overuse of the self-administered “social media expert” label. Remember what I said earlier about “geniuses” and “gurus”? This practice of self-proclaimed mastery is indeed overdone, whatever the profession or service. For example, it’s enough call oneself savvy – you need not have a qualifier like “incredibly” or “super” or “amazingly” before it. Sometimes less really is more.

In this era where we are constantly creating new tools to connect, social media is an emerging and evolving platform for communication. Granted, we are learning as we go. We are increasingly interested with how we measure up, how many followers we can count, how much Klout we have. In the end, I think the old adage holds true – it’s quality, not quantity, and the same rules from your childhood playground still apply. Make friends, be nice, take turns, say please and thank you. Oh, yes, and have fun while you’re at it.

 Susan Perri is a grant writing specialist, philanthropic fundraiser & nonprofit social media strategist. She connects organizations with the resources they need to make a positive impact.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked with an organization quite like Epic Change. Founder Stacey Monk believes that “intention makes a powerful difference.” Epic Change is really all about intention: intention to build, fund, and support a school that literally changes children’s lives. Intention to listen. Intention to include everyone who wants to be part of the organization, and let everyone own this thing called Epic Change.

Epic Change is an example of an organization that really gets the idea of following its members, and intentional listening. Allison Fine recently wrote about this concept of “followership.” The bottom line, as Allison puts it is to “follow or become irrelevant.” If your organization isn’t willing to listen and include its followers, then it may well become irrelevant. As I have written before, Epic Change is anything but. Stacey and co-director Sanjay Patel invite anyone who is “heartfully-connected” (Stacey’s words) to become part of every online campaign, from planning through execution. They have three signature events: To Mama With Love, LalaLove, and now, Epic Thanks. Followers’ ideas are listened to seriously and included in the final product. In turn, Sanjay and Stacey also bounce their ideas off of the group and ask for feedback, always listening and always respectfully incorporating ideas. What is Epic Thanks is truly a result of great followership.

One example of followership is the gratitude dance idea. Sanjay Patel posted a video of the dance within the Epic Thanks planning group. Within minutes, the conversation within the planning group evolved from “I’m so not dancing” (me) to “what if we had a dance-off ?” (Stacey) to” let’s make a thank-you dance video if we hit our target amount!” And of course Stacey replies, “Let me see what we could build to host the video…may be able to get something up tomorrow…” Later that day, Stacey writes that she’s already filmed Leah, Gideon, and Mama Lucy (from the school) dancing…ready for their final thank-you dance video.

I cannot think of a better example of followership than Epic Change.

This Thanksgiving season, as in years past, Epic Change is raising money to support the Shepherds School in Arusha, Tanzania. The past three years, Epic Change has supported the school through a worldwide gratitude event called Tweetsgiving. It raised thousands of dollars to build and support the Shepherds Junior School, a primary school. Now the kids who had nowhere to go for an education are hoping that their dreams of becoming lawyers, doctors, and astronauts will continue with a secondary school education. The kids that started in 5th grade three years ago are ready for secondary school, but there is no secondary school in Arusha that will nurture and support these dreams. I met two of these students, Leah and Gideon, when they came to Boston two weeks ago with Mama Lucy (excuse the fuzzy photo of us at the bowling alley, but it’s the best image we have). If I do nothing else, I want them to have a chance to make their dreams come true.

So here’s my promise: I’ll dance if I reach my fundrasing goal of $100 for Epic Thanks. Please consider donating any amount, even $1 towards a worthwhile cause. And an organization that supports followership, intention, and children’s dreams.

I’m a terrible dancer, so this could get interesting… (But not as bad as Matt, apparently. See video below.)

Image by kodachrome65, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

What is your organization’s primary topic of conversation online? If you don’t know the answer to that, you may find that this is the thing crippling your online success. Without knowing and owning the online conversation topic, your organization is doomed to wander aimlessly about in the online desert. To get at this, I often ask this simple question: “What about your industry or issue is so interesting that you want to have a conversation about it?” Taking this simple question a step further, I’ll often ask: what topic of conversation is interesting to potential fans, can define your organization, but isn’t about the organization itself? Knowing your conversation, then owning it, offers a map through the online desert to real engagement, trust-building, and advocacy.

Community managers understand why “the conversation” is so important. If the online community manager mentioned the organization all day long, the community would soon leave. A great community manager understands what people want to talk about, knows the reason that they are there, and plans content accordingly. If you can figure out the conversation, and own it through offering great content and opportunities for the community to engage around it, you’re on your way to real engagement, real trust, real evangelists. The desert may be behind you.

You have to know the conversation first, then own it.

 The conversation is the strategy.

The three organizations below know their conversation areas, and they are working hard to own them. They’ve gone beyond news updates and random tweets, and have focused their updates  to encourage real conversations about topical areas. Read the updates from The March of Dimes, the Canadian Youth Business Foundation, and the New England Aquarium, and you’ll know they are in a conversation, and that conversation is extremely relevant to their supporters.

The March of Dimes‘ mission is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. The conversation on their twitter stream is very focused on supporting pregnant moms, especially around staying healthy during pregnancy. They constantly field questions from pregnant moms and support those who have children with birth defects and whose children were born prematurely. November is prematurity awareness month, and they are have planned a series of special twitter chats (#preemiechat). This week’s chat was with a NICU nurse, and the conversation was fast and furious. Their Facebook page currently features a custom tab about World Prematurity Day, November 17th, and the Twitter profile currently features this link as well. It’s easy to see how March of Dimes knows and really tries to own the conversation around premature babies and healthy pregnancy.

The Canadian Youth Business Foundation is a national Canadian charity, providing pre-launch coaching, resources, mentoring and start-up financing for youth ages 18-34. Their online conversation focuses on what it takes to be a small business, with a special emphasis on youth business. They work hard to own this conversation space in Canada. Their presence on Facebook and Twitter brings in a lot of inquiries from interested youth entrepreneurs, which is what they want.

One glance at the New England Aquarium’s Facebook page and it’s clear: their conversation is about how cool marine wildlife is and the relevance of marine conservation. They post videos of trainers working with seals, sea turtle rescue, blog reports about oil spill effects on marine life, and videos of deep underwater dives. You want to be part of this conversation because they bring you right into their animals’ lives, and the conversation about them is infinitely iterative. The important thing to note is that their “conversation” never strays from the aquarium’s educational mission. Updates are not just news, but opportunities for educational conversation and engagement.

What’s your conversation about?

Epic Change is one woman’s quest to change the world permanently…through gratitude. Stacey Monk is a changemaker, a fountain of gratitude, and an incredible connector. She founded Epic Change in 2007 to amplify the voices of grassroots changemakers and social entrepreneurs. Since then, Epic Change has been raising money through gratitude, one tweet at a time.

She did it all through the lens of gratitude. In 2008, Epic Change created Tweetsgiving, ecouraging the Twitterati to tweet what they are grateful for, and connect that to a donation for as little as $10 to build a boarding school in Tanzania. That raised $11,000 in 48 hours. Tweetsgiving 2009 raised $30,000 from 657 donors. This past Mother’s Day, Epic Change’s collaborative artspace, To Mama With Love, raised $16,000 from 329 online, spurred on by twitterers, bloggers, and facebook users.

Tweetsgiving 2010 is called Epic Thanks. The campaign utilizes gratitude cards, online evangelists, and community organizing.

Epic Thanks is also one of the great online fundraising campaigns of 2010.

Epic Thanks is a worldwide celebration of gratitude that began November 23. The idea is so simple it’s incredible: bring the thankfulness back to Thanksgiving. Show the gratitude in our hearts, share it, and transform the world. This Tweetsgiving, Epic Change has selected three changemaker organizations to recieve the donations: Mama Lucy’s school in Tanzania, Subhash Ghimire’s Peace School in Nepal, and Mike Halley’s Halley’s K-9s for Veterans.

You only have to visit www.epicthanks.org to see gratitude on display. This campaign site makes you smile, and it’s easy to express  gratitude on the site. Who doesn’t want to donate out of gratitude?

I personally love the Gratitude Cards. They are fun, beautifully designed, easily shareable, and a great donation incentive. Stacey explains: “This year, when you create one of these postcards on the site, you’ll be asked to give before you send the postcard. People can give from $10 to ‘a gajillion dollars.’ If someone wants to give a gajillion dollars, then we’ll figure out how to do that.”

Stacey tells me:

“In my dream world 10,000 people will create postcards and post them.”

To understand the mechanics of how Stacey Monk, Sanjay Patel and the incredible Epic Change volunteer team made this happen, you only have to understand Stacey:  that intersection of intention, determination, gratefulness, and community.

Early on, the Epic Change team reached out to almost 100 supporters personally, asking them to host a local Epic Thanks fundraiser, and/or become an online campaign evangelist. Every volunteer committed to completing at least one Epic Thanks activity, such as donating money, asking five friends to donate, writing blog posts, etc. (Disclosure – I completed the form and one of the things I agreed to do was write a blog post about Epic Thanks. Another was to donate.)

Volunteers were invited into a closed discussion group. Stacey got the group rolling by asking us to introduce ourselves and talk about what we are grateful for. As the event date grew nearer, we discussed what we are each doing to promote the event, encourage donations. Stacey is our cheerleader. Bringing supporters into the planning and implementation jump-started this year’s Epic Thanks right out of the door with abundant tweets and gratitude cards. That’s community organizing at its best.

Last year, I was also invited to participate in the online volunteer group, and I was curious what is different about this year’s group. Stacey answers:

“Our planning group this year is much bigger than previously and more geographically dispersed. We wanted people who are heartfully-connected rather than people who would lend us their name. Intention makes a powerful difference. Influencers are bombarded by a million different requests and don’t have the opportunity to get deeply connected to something that they are personally sharing. ” And that’s what this group really is – everyone is incredibly generous, and heartfully-connected to Epic Change.

As I write this, 118 grateful souls have invested $5,876 in the dreams of three incredible changemakers. Thus far #EpicThanks has been tweeted 1,483 times! Stacey Monk’s fundraising goal is $1 million. Let’s tweet gratitude and re-tweet it often.

Intention makes a powerful difference

I hope you’ll participate in Epic Thanks in one way or another, and donate. I have.

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?

image courtesy of Shawn Campbell

The single most frequent question that I get from nonprofit professionals and organizations that want to use Twitter is “how do I get started?” The bottom line: always follow The Twitter Rule.

The Twitter Rule: Less Broadcasting, More Conversation

It is not intuitive to barge into conversations. It is not intuitive to talk with strangers. It is not intuitive to create conversation when you are used to broadcasting. It is not intuitive to be the personal representation of an organization instead of the mouthpiece behind the logo. Twitter forces you out from behind your logo, into conversations with unknown persons, and to initiate conversation in order to create deeper engagement.

I presented a free webinar for Nonprofit Webinars this week about The Twitter Rule, but more than that, about how to make sense of Twitter. The webinar covered how to develop a Twitter strategy that utilizes The Twitter Rule for success. Delving deeper, the slide deck (at the bottom of this blog post) includes:

• An overview of engagement theories (social technographics, participation inequality, ladder of engagement)
• Mastering the @tweet (who sees what when you send an @message…and who doesn’t)
• Strategies for following the Twitter Rule
• The Twitter profile – in front of or behind the avatar, or a mashup on both?
• Engaging Twitter practices
• Twitter etiquette
• Researching Twitter influence and networks to help you find the right connections
  
• Resource sheet of Twitter tools

If you fall back on the traditional (intuitive) marketing style of broadcasting (Webinar today! Call your representative! Save the whales!), then your Twitter strategy will fail. If you build friendships, conversation and trust, you are building up social capital.

If you spend the time to create relationships through conversation and passing along trusted and useful information, your Twitter followers will happily retweet, respond, and act. Why? Because you’ve built up your social capital first, through conversation, before asking your followers to do something for you. Those are the results of The Twitter Rule in action.

For more about getting started with Twitter, you might find these other posts useful: How the Jewish Agency Uses Twitter to Meaningfully Connect, Why Do You Participate in Twitter Chats, and The Case of the 4,000 Twitter Followers who Don’t Care.

The Jewish Agency for Israel was founded in 1929 and was the pre-Israel government before there was a state. Following the founding of the State of Israel, the Jewish Agency was mandated with aliyah, or the immigration of Jews from around the world to Israel, as well as Jewish Zionist education. Today its mission is to:

Inspire Jews throughout the world to connect with their people, heritage and land, and empower them to build a thriving Jewish future and a strong Israel.

A little over a year ago the Jewish Agency for Israel launched its social media presence. At the time, the decision was to communicate our message aggressively and to reach out to a new audience by using the latest portals. When social media accounts were opened, it was a no-brainer to create a Facebook Page, YouTube channel, and a Flickr stream. Twitter was the wild card in the batch. How could anything important be communicated in 140 characters, essentially a tweet? It seemed a bit ridiculous.

Quickly I immersed myself in a new language of RTs, hashtags, URL shorteners, and the entire twitterverse! Originally, my name was not listed on the Twitter account but there was a disconnect. It seemed artificial for an entire organization to have one voice. There are just so many voices, personalities, and more. How could an organization have a voice? How could it engage an audience? How would we ever be able to keep up with all the different conversations going on? It seemed unnatural. Soon I updated the profile and attached my name to the account; I was finally able to project my professional self on behalf of the organization. It helped people to see that there was a voice behind the organization. Followers began addressing me by name and knew that I would respond to their questions about aliyah or anything else. I also took my virtual connection with the audience and made it real by attending Tweetups. It not only helped me put a face to the tweet, but strengthened our online relationship. Maya Norton’s New Jew blog about Jewish philanthropy has commented several times about our social media:

“I’ve been monitoring the Jewish Agency for Israel’s social media decisions for several years and am impressed with their strategic choices. Smart moves for a historic institution…[Their social media is] much better than most organizations. Even if there are some glitches, it’s certainly on the right track.”

Our Facebook Page has over 7000 fans and we have great traffic on YouTube and Flickr, but it is the Jewish Agency Twitter feed that has left its mark. It has successfully strengthened our brand, connected a younger demographic, and helped a broader audience better understand our mission. We have received this feedback from social media professionals, Jewish professionals, lay leaders, as well as from the “tweeple” themselves. In May 2009 the JTA named us the 7th most influential Jewish organization and a year later we are in 3rd and 4th on WeFollow.com for Israel-related and Jewish-related Twitter accounts respectively.

I have often been asked why I think the Twitter has feed been so successful? Frankly, I understood Twitter as a medium versus Facebook or another social media portal. Moreover, I understood that we had an audience who was just as invested in the Jewish Agency brand as we are. I listened to what they had to say and responded. Whether it was a question about aliyah or a Masa Israel program (the umbrella organization for long-term experience programs in Israel), I always ensure that followers receive the information they need in a timely matter and keep them in the loop about the status. Follow-up on Twitter is so critical because it is very much a customer service tool. True, it also is used for marketing, outreach, and other needs, but customer service is the number one reason that people remain our followers and have such a positive view about it. Charlie Kalech, one of our followers, turned to me about a year ago for assistance with aliyah cases. In his words:

“Florence has put a human face on the Jewish Agency. When I was helping potential immigrants who did not know where else to turn to get answers, I could send Florence a direct message on Twitter and get a direct response cutting through the bureaucracy which had previously rendered no satisfactory response. The Jewish agency’s presence on Twitter has given people like this someone to talk to.”

Now when people say, “Twitter? I don’t get it.” I laugh and respond, “Don’t underestimate the power of a tweet.” What a difference a year makes…

Florence Broder is the Social Media Manager for the Jewish Agency for Israel. In her position she has successfully launched a Facebook fan page for the Jewish Agency in February which now has over 4000 members and also launched a Twitter feed which today has over 2200 followers.

Image courtesy of wharman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ll leave the last word to Leora Wenger:

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

Resources:

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

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

Why is measuring reach important? The number of times an article is tweeted or shared on Facebook or dug on Digg represents the comparable value of the information to the public, your readers, and your target audience. It also represents potential engagement: if your target audience likes what you are publishing, they’ll come back.

Social sharing is the simplest form of public approval and feedback. Think of it as a feedback loop.

It’s incredibly easy to share an article on Twitter, “like” a Facebook article or link, or save an article to a social bookmarking or social news site. With a few analytics tools you also know exactly which type of information you are publishing that others value enough to share are save. And, most importantly, articles (or videos, podcasts, etc.) that are shared also expose your organization’s message to new audiences. Social sharing is a represents the feedback loop of potential reach, reaction, analytical feedback, and organizational learning.

It’s all the more important, then, to access analytical feedback in order to produce relevant content that extends your organization’s reach and message. Ideally, relevant content moves your readers to action!

Four “must have” analytical tools for your organization that offer social sharing insights:

1. Tweetmeme Widget and Analytics

Tweetmeme is a service that aggregates popular links on Twitter. It is also a widget with analytics. If you are publishing online content, and want to encourage your readers to share it on Twitter, the Tweetmeme button is just the powerful widget you need. The button can be displayed above or below the content, and offers a simple way for readers to tweet articles from  your website without leaving the website. (A pop up appears asking to allow Tweetmeme to access the user’s twitter and tweet the URL.) Most importantly, once you add the Tweetmeme button to your blog (or site), the Tweetmeme button publicly displays the number of times an article has been tweeted and you can see who has tweeted it.  Whoever tweets or retweets your organizaation’s content is a potential fan or stakeholder.

As an illustration, you can view my blog’s Tweetmeme button at the bottom of this post. Below is a sample screen shot illustrating who tweeted my blog post entitled “Is Bureaucracy the Enemy of Social Media?” You can view more at Tweetmeme.com.

2. Facebook Share Widget and Analytics

Facebook rolled out a share widget in late 2009 that counts shares and offers analytics. Not surprisingly, there is a WordPress plugin as well (which I added to this blog). The button works exactly like the Tweetmeme button: readers don’t leave the page, the widget uses permission-based Facebook sharing, and the it offers powerful analytics. In fact, the analytics are incredible: see below.  The only thing it does not show is who shared your article, liked it, or clicked on it.

Below is a screen shot of the Facebook analytics overview, as viewed in WordPress Plugin Settings:

3. Add This Share Button and Analytics

There are a lot of social sharing buttons around, but AddThis offers exceptional value. Each week, AddThis offers site administrators detailed sharing analytics about where readers shared your information, total number of shares, sharing trends, and geographical sharing by continent. I think that most interesting feature of AddThis is the different methods that readers used to share content. You can use it to look at trends and understand how your readership prefers to share. Be sure to incorporate this feedback into your website. For example, if the most frequent type of share from your site is via email, then be sure to offer an email subscription service and an RSS feed via email.

I changed my website’s sharing button to AddThis on January 21. Here is a screen shot of my AddThis sharing analytics from January 21 -30, 2010:

4. Google Analytics Firefox Extension

The Google Analytics Firefox Extension offers a number of additions to Google Analytics, including social media metrics. This extension integrates the shares from your website to Sphinn, Mixx, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Yahoo into your Google Analytics, displaying shares by content. I wish that it revealed shares to Twitter and Facebook, but the sharing widgets mentioned above more than make up for this.

One specific issue: I know that some of my blog posts have been “stumbled,” but have not shown up in here.  The extension displays StumbleUpon reviews, but not “likes” or “stumbles.” As far as I can tell, it’s the only fault with the extension: if a post is “stumbled” but not reviewed, it does not appear in this set of analytics.

How do you measure social media sharing? What other tools analyze online sharing activities? What have you learned from your use of them?