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 ploforsky

Today, the New York Times published the article “MIT Taking Student Blogs to the Nth Degree,” an overview of student blogging at universities and colleges in America. It is astounding that MIT is willing to publish completely uncensored student blogging on its website. And inspiring. This represents, for me, the beginning of the uncensored corporate blog. Which is exactly what corporate and nonprofit blogging needs to be: open, honest, transparent and true.

I am a big advocate of uncensored corporate blogs. Most consumers don’t trust the traditional corporate blog. In fact, according to Forrester Research, only 16% of consumers trust corporate blogs. Why? Because we’re smarter than that. We know the bloggers are hand-picked to show the “sunny side” of the company – and not reveal the “real” experience of working at a company and producing a service or a product. Traditional corporate blogs are no better than website content written by a marketing communications team.

In the New York Time article both an MIT admissions officer and a dean of students admit that uncensored blogging is risky; students have written blog posts censuring housing policy, complaining that classes are boring and talking about the down side of student life. On the other hand, student blogs are overwhelmingly positive about the MIT experience and each of the blogs has created a community of followers interested in MIT. The payback for MIT is, I suspect, tremendous: a more informed incoming student body, a more informed admissions process, ability to reach and recruit high quality applicants, higher rate of current student satisfaction, and of course knowledge about MIT from the student’s perspective.

Open, uncensored blogging encourages customer and client loyalty in ways that corporate blogging will never achieve.

Sun Microsystems encourages all of its employees to blog, uncensored, without asking permission first.  Opera (the web browser and internet suite company) also encourages uncensored blogging in its policies.  Their policy of openness starts at the top, too. I follow the blog of Sun Microsystem’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz. I’ve written before about why his blog is inspiring in its transparency and willingness to discuss corporate direction, pitfalls and challenges.

I have heard the objections to uncensored stakeholder blogging and I think they’re just that – objections. At MIT, one student blogger expressed continual dissatisfaction with the resident housing system. It’s easy to take down a blog that makes the university look bad. It’s harder to admit that there might be a problem. MIT  maintained the student’s right to blog unfettered and allowed the housing system to offer an open rebuttal to her complaints on her blog. If MIT had shut down the blog, it would not have closed down her voice. That’s a fact about social media: she would have moved her complaints onto Twitter, others’ blogs, and possibly the sidewiki of MIT’s Housing web page, until she felt that her complaint was heard and addressed.

So here’s to open, uncensored blogging. Take a chance. Invite all employees, volunteers, and other relevant stakeholders to blog.

The benefits:

• Increased trust in your blog and company by the people you care most about – potential clients, stakeholders and customers
• More links pointing to your website, which help more people to find you
• Better understanding of the needs of your staff, company, clients and stakeholders.
• Improved staff performance – employees that blog are happier at work
• Engagement that leads to long-term loyalty

One last note- this isn’t just about blogging. It’s an important trend in corporate web communications. Companies like Best Buy and Zappos allow any verified employee to tweet – uncensored – as the employee. Zappos, in particular, is a customer-service oriented company that views corporate tweeting as an extension of customer service.

Is this the future of corporate blogging? Does your company have an open blogging policy? What do you think about uncensored employee – or even stakeholder – blogging? I would love to also know about nonprofit organizations that encourage open employee, or stakeholder blogging.

Please share your points of view here – I promise not to censor!

Update: another aspect to this blog post is using employees, and their personal brands, to extend your organization’s reach. For insight into how one company is doing this, read “Employee Personal Brands – Who Is Your Human?”

Additional Reference:

Breakdown: The Five Ways Companies Let Employees Participate in the Social Web , Jeremiah Owyang

Nonprofit organizations need to raise funds constantly. Fact. They also have programs, mission and special activities that must be funded. Fact. There’s all this trendy talk about leveraging social media to raise money – and the question I get asked most often is

When does social media lead to more money?

That’s not the right question. The right question is:

When does engagement lead to more money?

Annual reports do not create a relationship. Email updates do not create a relationship. Alerts do not create a relationship. These are all examples of one-way communication. Relationships are about two-way communication.

I’ve also seen a lot of nonprofit organizations using social media fail to create relationships using these tools. Automatically feeding blog posts through a twitter feed does not create a relationship. Using your organization’s official icon and not associating a person’s name (in either the description or title) to the twitter account cuts short the possibility of a relationship. Publishing a blog but not commenting on other blogs or responding to comments on your blog…does not create a relationship. Consistent Facebook wall posts that do not engage or ask questions…stop conversation.

These methods of using social media are, quite honestly, no better than the old newsletter and annual report. If you are going to commit time and energy to social media, pick one or two platforms that make sense for your organization and act as if you want to meet people and learn from them. They want to talk to you, and you should want to listen to them. That’s why your fans and followers online are following your organization, after all. So talk. Yes, publish your newsy updates, but ask questions and listen…learn…engage…and respond.

Engagement leads to donations – really, it does – but you have to put the time into creating the relationship first. Or re-creating the relationship with your stakeholders. Social media is a great tool for doing this, as social media tools are merely platforms for creating conversation.

When you are listening, responding, and engaging –

then asking for money to support this great relationship is a natural extension of the conversation.

Image by p_champie

Last week I gave an “introduction to social media” presentation to the Board of Directors of a multinational nonprofit organization.  This was the normal “what is social media” overview, a review and overview of the popular platforms (Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, blogs, etc.) and summary of how to get started in social media.  By the time I was 10 minutes into the presentation, I had heard three objections to using social media, and these objections kept coming at me throughout the entire time I presented. It has been a long time since I was in a room of people scared of social media. I’m going to take this opportunity to address their objections one at a time. At the end of this blog post, please tell me if you think I’ve satisfactorily addressed the concerns, and how you might add to these responses.

1. It’s not safe! What about the BU Craigslist killer? (someone REALLY asked this question in the presentation)

The”BU Craigslist killer” was actually Philip Markoff, a Boston University medical student who looked for massage ads on Craigslist and then attacked the women giving massages. In essence, how is this any different than if Mr. Markoff had responded to a newspaper print ad?  Did social media promote the massage ads? NO. Craigslist is not social media, but an online classified advertising site. In this instance, for massages. Is one of your nonprofit’s core services providing massages in hotel rooms? If yes, then you might have to worry. But if your core mission is about helping save the whales, or feed the homeless, or provide rehab services to veterans, then you really don’t need to worry.

When I asked my Twitter followers for their responses to this question, my personal favorite was from Teresa Boze, who wrote: “I’d tell them most household accidents happen in the bathroom… watch out for the toilet bowl monster.”

On a more serious note, if your organization promotes conversation on sites geared to teens, then you do have a responsibility to ensure that the conversation includes safeguards against teen predators. Just as in real life, if you bring teenagers together, there should always be a responsible adult present.

2. What if our biggest rival pretends to be us online?

Sheena T. Abraham responded (via Twitter) to this objection with “that’s why you have to build your own online credibility as much as you can, build trust with the online audience.” This is one great answer to the question! If an organization builds its own relationship online with its stakeholders, then this is what will likely happen when a rival impersonates the organization:

• the real organization’s stakeholders will notice and alert the real organization of the problem
• the phony organization will not have the ability to create a phony online profile because the real organization has already claimed its online profiles at KnowEm. The truth is that “it’s almost impossible to get your brand name or username back once it’s been taken” on a social media site, unlike buying back a website domain name, according to the KnowEm blog.

Secondly, listening for mentions of your organization online will alert you to this phenomenon, and your organization can quickly address the issue of the “phony brand name.” I cover this topic further in depth below.

Go get your social media online profile and begin to engage!

3. Social media means a lot of work and we don’t have the staff time to do that.

I hear that. I’ve worked at nonprofit organizations with two staff people, with 20, and everything in-between. No matter how many staff people your organization employs, they will always be overtaxed, overworked, with no time to do social media. This will never change. It is the nature of not-for-profit organizations. A good social media strategy takes into account how social media will help your organization better fulfill its mission (engage with stakeholders) and create real benefits to the organization  (listen to members, engage with stakeholders, vet new program ideas, measure responses, etc.) With that in mind, how do you not have the time? Amy Sample Ward writes on Twitter that “organizations want a person or department to “own” the task/responsibility instead of seeing it as a tool to aid all departments’ work.”

Carie Lewis from the Humane Society of the US (she’s their Brand Ambassador) holds a 9-minute staff meeting every day to inform each and every one of the HSUS employees about “what’s going on that day – PR, what people are talking about on Twitter, etc.”

Wendy Harman, of the American Red Cross, writes that “We distribute a daily social media update email that contains a sampling of most relevant mentions.” Everyone must be involved. No more silos.

If social media activities let your organization to grow, soar, and be more efficient, then determine your staff time and resources and create a social media strategy that will accommodate organizational limitations.

4. There is no place in our organization for social media.

Organizations are used to placing departments in silos. The organizing department…organizes the community. The fundraising department… raises money. The research department…researches. Where is the “social media department?” The organizations that implement social media most effectively include everyone in social media, whether it is merely apprising them of the latest activities or including them in the strategy sessions. Social media is the entire organization’s “new website”…its composite brand identity. Every department must be involved in some way.

Amy Sample Ward again writes (via Twitter) to those that argue “there is no ‘home’ for social media in any of the organization’s departments, obviously I would argue there is home in ALL of the departments for it.”

5. People will attack us online with negative critique.

I have news for you: if you are worried about this, then they are already attacking you online. If your organization is worried about negative critique, then the best thing that you can do is to be where your critics are…online. The dissatisfied clients/customers of your nonprofit organization will find a way to critique your organization no matter what – via Twitter, blog posts, commenting on forums and discussion boards, and many other places. The very best action your nonprofit organization can do is create a social media presence, listen for any and all organizational mentions online, and develop an online presence. By developing a loyal brand following online, your organization is positioned to respond quickly to all negative remarks, and leverage the loyalty of your followers to pass along your online responses. For more detailed suggestions on how to engage in proactive reputation management, see a prior post on this subject.

The final thought comes from Danielle Lanyard via Twitter: “nonprofits were built on an old corporate model where nonprofits are defined by differences from competition vs. a collaborative model which is social media.” Social media leverages the collaborative experience, knowledge and information of everyone online to fulfill the organization’s goals. The knowledge gained, productive collaborations, extended organizational reach, and increased stakeholder (and donor!) engagement should far outweigh fears about using social media.

Thanks for reading! Do you have other suggestions for overcoming objections to social media? Have you heard these objections before? Are there other objections that you want to add, and how you have addressed them? I welcome your participation in this conversation!

Please also visit Amy Sample Ward’s blog,  who continues this conversation by inviting her readers to contribute their own Comeback Lines to Social Media Objectors.

The slides embedded above stem from a presentation that I made this morning to a group of professional businessmen and women in Efrat, Israel. They wanted to know: how can I extend my network through social media? After I left the meeting, I began to think – why isn’t the CEO and Executive Director of every corporation personally engaging actively on at least one social media platform or network? Isn’t this the obvious way to extend the reach of the company? Social media is all about the personal connection – and all stakeholders crave that personal connection and engagement (and direct access!) with company decision-makers.

If you are the Executive Director of a nonprofit organization, or the CEO of a business, you shoud extend the reach of your company just by participating in social networks.  Think about Microsoft and Bill Gates, Virgin and Richard Branson, or Donald Trump and Trump Enterprises. These men built their businesses strategically, and leveraged their personal brands as well. Richard Branson knows that he represents his many Virgin holdings (record company, airline, etc) whenever he blogs, and he wants to extend himself online in order to further promote his business interests.
Your organization is no different. Your CEO, your Executive Director, is the face of the organization publicly. He or she represents your company at public events, on memos and letters, and on the streets of your town. The question is – why limit  your CEO’s presence just to the streets of your town?

• Businesses and organizations are no longer local
• Opportunities are no longer local
• Customers, stakeholders, donors are no longer local

Neither should your CEO be local. He or she should be actively engaging on social networks:  meeting potential collaborators, stakeholders, enthusiasts, donors, customers and connectors.

If your company or organization has a standard company profile on social networks such as Facebook (page) or Linkedin (company profile) or Twitter (company identity that tweets) or any of the many other social networks, that’s great. But now – ask yourself – shouldn’t the CEO or the Executive Director also be on those sites personally connecting and extending the company’s brand?

The answer is YES.

YES figure out who the company wants to reach.

YES the CEO should be active on at least two social networks

YES the CEO should consider blogging to create depth for the company’s brand.

If your CEO or Executive Director doesn’t know how to get started, I’ve created a very basic Powerpoint presentation at the top of this post for beginners.

When the CEO begins to actively engage with his/her stakeholders online, exciting and magical things happen: your stakeholders find and connect with you, they tell others, and the organization’s brand awareness grows. Not the least of all – the CEO connects directly to the people that care the most about the company. That’s priceless for customer relations and information-gathering.

Beth Kanter, social media strategist and thinker, has also recently written a blog post about nonprofit CEOs who tweet on Twitter. The list is growing as people add their names in the comments section. It’s an informative post about the specific benefits a CEO will gain from actively using Twitter, and reiterates several points made here.

If you’re just getting started, or your CEO hasn’t yet decided to start “friending” “tweeting” and “linking” – the slide show offers a few very simple tips and introductions to social networking for business and branding.

photo by Stussy2k

When I was a Business Consultant, I often taught business plan development classes. One of the highlights of the class was when I’d bring in a “serial entrepreneur” as a guest speaker. My favorite was Steve. He started his first business at 21, while still in college, and today is running his seventh business in as many different industries. When asked by students to what does he credit his success, he always said, “A great advisory board.” He advised entrepreneurs to throw away their inhibitions and invite the people they most admire to serve on their start-up advisory board, complete with “free pizza once every other month or some such thing.” As a rule, he said, ask those from outside your industry or field, and listen to their advice.

I was thinking about Steve yesterday and it occurred to me: what about a Social Media Advisory Board?

What Would An Advisory Board Do For You?

1. Give your social media strategy focus. Most organizations, especially non-profit ones, just don’t have a Social Media Guru on staff.  An Advisory Board can help you plan and implement your strategy effectively. Don’t forget that they can help determine the elusive benchmarks.
2. You don’t have to do it alone. Sometimes the thought of starting all those conversations can be intimidating. Your Board can talk you through it and possibly volunteer to take on some of the work.
3. Tell you what you’re doing right and wrong. As Steve said, you need to listen to their advice. They don’t just help you create your strategy, but they are there for you. Hold meetings regularly and don’t be afraid to hear their honest opinions about what your organization is doing. That’s what they are there for.
4. They will re-direct and HELP YOU. Every strategy hits a bump. Every online group has an agitator or flamer. Every blog gets bogged down. Your Board can give you advice on how to deal with all the bumps in the road.

Who Should You Recruit?

Intel formed an Insiders’ Social Media Advisory Team made of of “a diverse group of social media activists.” (The whole article is wonderful and thought-provoking.)  Entrepreneur Steve chose people from outside his industry. I always advise business owners to seek out missing expertise. Do you need a technophile on board to help you choose appropriate tools? Do you need the marketer’s perspective? Chris Brogan notes that you can ask intelligent people who you admire, or those with whom you’ve formed a relationship online and those who are professionally successful. These are great ideas. However, for the non-profit, I’d advocate this mix:

• a savvy technology expert (with the patience of a saint) who will certainly be called upon to advise in selecting the right mix of technology for implementing any social media strategy
• at least on PR professional. Consider both PR professionals who specialize in non-profit PR and traditional corporate PR companies. They have ties to media and a plethora of experience transmitting information to many channels and audiences.
• representatives from at least two user groups. In the non-profit world, these could be volunteers or clients or members or activists. Whomever you will target to be an end user of the social media should also be a player in creating the strategy.
• a fundraising professional. Let’s face it, in non-profit work, you want to find the money. A development professional will always give you that point of view and the development possibilities within your strategy.
• a maverick. You need someone who thinks outside the box and will come up with the totally wild (and and often great) ideas or critiques. Mavericks are the most interesting thinkers you will come across, and should not be written off.
• a social media user and professional in the field. This is the obvious one to find. Make sure your volunteer Advisor fits into the group and can work respectfully with others that may challenge his/her ideas.

How Would You Do This?

Ahhhh…there is the easy part: offer food! Don’t forget to set expectations: how often the Board will meet, what you expect them to do for the organization, how you want them to contribute, how often they will meet, and how long they are committed.

When you do this, I’d love to hear about it. What worked? Who did you invite?

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photo by Pingu1963

I came across an interesting slide show entitled “Non Profits and Social Media” by Ed Schipul, which he presented at the International PRSA (Public Relation Society of America) Conference this year.  The particular slide that caught my attention me was entitled “Personal vs. Non Profit Branding.”  I then flipped to his company’s website, Brandtobedetermined, and found the company’s Personal Branding page.

Personal branding within an organization has  huge potential for the non-profit sector. Most often, the organization fails to consider its staff as a connecting point for social media. This is where the idea of “personal branding with social media” could be helpful.

When non-profits jump into social media communication, they often initiate a blog,  foster a social network (creating or joining a Facebook-type group), and add social bookmarking tools to site (see the bottom of this post as an example).

The typical “About Our Staff” page on a non-profit website lists the employees, telephone or email and a short bio. But if your non-profit is trying to send the message to your stakeholders that it is engaging in social messaging, then why not update the “About Our Staff” to a “Personal Branding Page?”  A non-profit staff bio could also include offline professional networks, online social networks where he/she is active, the staff’s public social bookmarks, possibly a professional blog, and of course interesting links that reflect the employees’ point of view. There is so much more, of course, but it is framed by the employees’ personalities and time limitations.

To tie into the employee’s personal brand, what about re-creating the predictable business card?

Employees could give out a “social business card,” such as the ones SpinningSilk Media uses. I give credit to their Harmonious New Media blog for inspiring this connection. On the back of the business card, why not repeat some of the information from the Personal Brand page of the website? This sends a clear message to your stakeholders that the organizational culture has embraced social media and wants to advertise its many opportunities for engagement.

Here’s how my Personal Brand page might look:

DEBRA ASKANASE

(insert short bio. Shorter than the one for this blog!)

(A bit about my consulting work.)

You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and delicious. I engage in conversations on the the Social Media Mafia LinkedIn group, several yahoo groups and Digital Eve Israel. Some of my favorite bloggers are Beth Kanter, Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang and Floyd Norris (NYT). I am most inspired by those who are discovering their real potential!

Tell me what you think. How should it be tweaked? What are the obstacles?

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Two-way communication, photo by Jacob Botter

In my last post, I spoke about assessing your current communications strategy before you begin your social media strategy. I’d like to expand on that by sharing with you my own questionnaire that I use at the initial client meeting. I use this questionnaire to consider how the organization currently engages, listens and respects its stakeholders. I also look at the overall communications strategy that the organization uses (or lack thereof). My initial questionnaire is as follows:

1. Who are your stakeholders? Please describe each stakeholder group including their relationship to the organization, total numbers, demographics and activities with your organization.

2. What is your current communication strategy with each group? How do you communicate with them (by email, newsletters, reports, general meetings, proprietary closed online network discussion, surveys, etc)? How often?

3. What are the methods/tools that your stakeholders can use to easily communicate with you?

4. How do you integrate feedback from your stakeholder groups?

What I am looking for are the answers to these specific considerations:

• does the organization communicate regularly with its stakeholders groups (all of them!)?
• does the organization make it easy for the stakeholders to communicate with it?
• does the organization invite critique and ideas?
• does the organization integrate stakeholder feedback?
• does the organization have a communication strategy for each stakeholder group?

I then divide each organization into the following categories:

• Limited Communicators: those who do not engage in routine stakeholder communications and do not have an existing communication strategy.

• Hyper-focused Communicators: those who communicate regularly with just one or two stakeholder groups, but not all of them. This is usually the case of an organization that prioritizes communicating with funders or a membership base, but ignores regular communication with other stakeholder groups.

• Passive Communicators: those who create rote, one-way, regular, informative communications. Examples of these would include an annual report, announcements in the newspaper of the general meeting, email alerts in times of need, or publicity events.

• Tactical Communicators: these organizations have implementing many dynamic communication tools (blogs, yahoo member groups, facebook groups, etc) but have not elaborated their goals for the communication strategy.

Often, organizations are a combination of two types.  Categorizing organizations helps me to understand how they currently view their stakeholders and currently communicate, and whether or not they have a communication strategy.

Once I’ve assessed an organization, I work with them to elaborate specific strategic goals they they want to achieve with each stakeholder group. Once these realistic goals are set, then we create a cohesive communication strategy that integrates improving current communications and defining what (if any) social media strategies would meaningfully move the organization towards achieving its benchmarking goals for each stakeholder group.

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