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 mdezemery, Flickr Creative Commons

(The blog post appeared previously on the ComMetrics blog. You can read it there, or read below for the full post.)

Google+ rolled out its Ripples feature on October 27, with just a hint of data potential within Google+ for marketing and engagement. Google+ Ripples is really the first set of metrics we’ve seen from Google around Google+. It’s not enough, of course, but worth parsing because it hints at what is to come from Google. It also offers Google+ users relevant information about the use of circles, G+ influence, and how data is spread.

What is Ripples?

Ripples are the data visualization over time of how your posts are shared: when, by whom, and to whom. Once a post has been shared even once, an option to view the Ripple will appear in the drop-down menu to the right of the post. Google adds a time stamp video to Ripples that visually shows the spread of a post over time. Quite simply, it shows the “ripple effect” of the content that you post.

Why is it important? It’s all about moving people to action.

1. Know Your Influencers

Whether you work for a nonprofit or a brand, you want to know how your social media activities can move supporters, followers, and fans to action. Ripples tells you who amongst your followers has real influence that moves people to act. This is especially important when thinking about campaigns and audience segmentation.

For example, I posted a link to a ComMetrics story about Google+ brand pages to my Google+ profile. It was shared six times (five public shares and one private or limited share).

Visually, Ripples shows that Janet Fouts was the most influential sharer of this post, since she influenced three other shares. What does that tell me? It tells me that Janet is interested in this type of information, that she can influence others to share, and that she may be influential within other social networks as well. If I were a running an organization, I’d find out more about my strongest Ripple influencers, create new circles for influencers, and further segment influencers by their areas of interest. (For a view of an incredible Ripple, check out a Ripple started by the Dalai Lama.)

2. Find New Influencers

If you know who your audience is, use Ripples to find new fans and supporters. Start with your known “superfans,” those that love you and share your information on other social media channels or platforms. Look at who is sharing your superfans’ posts, find those influencers, and circle them. Cultivate those “friends of friends” by thanking them, mentioning them in posts, and asking for comments.

Is there someone you are trying to reach? Find them on Google+ and find out who influences them by looking at their re-shares. Are you trying to find new fans? Search for a hashtag on Google+ and look for posts that have a lot of shares. Also, don’t be afraid to tag Google+ users in a post, if you really want to engage them. Social media is all about engagement, so find those you want to know, circle them, and engage them in a real way through conversation and sharing of their posts.

3. Know What People Want To Share: Content Feedback Loop

Knowing what people want to share is highly valuable information. What news resonates deeply with your stakeholders? What posts will spread more awareness about your cause, brand, or products? What types of posts appeal to which audiences? This information will help you further segment your marketing, identify niches, and refine your messaging.

Be aware, however, that Ripples illustrates only one aspect of content feedback: what people want to share publicly. Ripples will not show what people want to talk about, either. A post may have 23 comments but no shares. Another post may have 15 shares, but they are private or limited shares which are not viewable as Ripples. If your organization deals with sensitive issues, the latter may be the case. If your SMART goal is deep follower and fan engagement, then your strategy is to generate more comments than shares.

4. Look to a Future Google+ Search Algorithm

On Facebook, highly shared content is a significant part of EdgeRank, the algorithm Facebook uses to determine how prominently posts will be seen within fans’ individual newsfeeds. At this time, the Google+ news stream algorithm is real-time. However, I wouldn’t rule out a similar algorithm to Facebook’s in the future. I also wouldn’t rule out how high your post shows up within a Google+ search or a Google search in the future.

5. Don’t Forget The Power of Clicks

Google+ is an important part of Google’s SEO strategy, affecting the future of search. According to Google+ Ad guy Christian Oestlien, 77 percent of brand-centered content is being shared by users and not brands. Moreover, clickthrough rates on a search result actually go up when users can see their friends’ faces next to a search result. If your strategy involves driving your fans to a website, then shares of your content must be an integral part of your overall social media strategy. Google+ posts appear in Google’s social search results, and those influential faces next to them will certainly influence clicks.

 Resources – great posts about Google+:

How to use Google+ for your nonprofit by Shelly Kramer

Google+ for nonprofits curated Scoop.it topic

You finally have a Google+ business page…now what? by John Haydon

My earlier posts: Summarizing Google+ Pages: the good, the bad, the possible and A Google+ fundraising story

Rob Goldfarb, Development Director at Camp Laurelwood

I presented at this year’s Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthropy’s annual conference November 13-14 in Springfield, MA, and walked away impressed with some of interesting things that camps are doing with technology. Kevin Martone, the Institute’s Technology Program Manger, wrote this guest post highlighting how three camps used technology creatively to meet their goals: online/offline relationship building through blogging and Facebook, engaging current families with an unique iPad/iPhone app, and social fundraising through livestreaming a phone-a-thon.

As Kevin writes, “These camps evoke incredibly strong emotions in their alumni, campers, and parents. They need to use the tools available to harness these emotions and connect them to the real world.” Kevin’s guest post follows.

The Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthropy’s annual conference brought together over 400 leaders from Jewish camps and schools to learn best practices in fundraising, strategic planning, governance, and technology. A program of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation in Western Massachusetts, the Grinspoon Institute was created to help camps with deteriorating facilities embrace fundraising as a means to ensure their long-term sustainability. A team of Mentors consults year-round with the camps to help professional staff and board leadership in the areas of fundraising, strategic planning, and governance. In addition, two of us on the Technology Program team support this work by providing the camps with technology advice and assistance to support these efforts. This year’s conference provided a forum for the camps to share their own experiences with each other. As the Heath Brothers discuss in the book Switch, we searched for those camps providing “Bright Spots” of innovation and effectiveness that they could share with the other camps in attendance.

Building online to offline relationships through the blog and Facebook page

Camp Laurelwood in North Madison, CT has done a wonderful job trying to leverage their online community to build off-line relationships. On Mother’s Day this year, the camp asked their Facebook (and Blog) community about their favorite Camp Mother experience. The Camp Mother basically dispensed hugs and support to homesick kids and other children needing some non-medical care. The blog post was their most popular ever and both Facebook and the blog received numerous comments.

They utilized a holiday-related question to engage their audience, but they didn’t stop there. Their Development Director, Rob Goldfarb, noticed that one name came up frequently – Rita Levine. He found her phone number and called Rita at home, reading the stories that were written about her. She was touched and responded by sending Rob a picture of her at camp and some of her own memories from camp. Camp Laurelwood reposted this content both on Facebook and the blog. In the end, the camp utilized this personal engagement to help solicit two major gifts toward a new Infirmary and the return of the Camp Mother position.

iPad app deepens camp engagement

Other camps are trying new technologies to reach their goals. Camp Morasha in Lakewood, PA implemented an iPad/iPhone app this year with a focus on engaging their current campers and families. Most content is automatically updated from their other online spaces (blog, Facebook), so it doesn’t create much more day-to-day work for the staff. The app was an immediate hit. 300 people downloaded it within the first 24 hours, and this number has continued to grow. Camp Director Jeremy Joszef, who designed the app, has reported a large percentage of their emails and blog posts being read via the app. Camp Morasha will be adding new features and functionality to engage alumni and respond to feedback.

Check out the snappy 45-second promotional video for the iPad app, below!

Livestreaming the phone-a-thon to increase donations

URJ Camp Eisner in Great Barrington, MA put a new spin on the traditional phone-a-thon by streaming it live on their website using UStream and Twitter. They also made it easy for their donors to post that they gave to the campaign on Facebook, including a large DonateNow button that linked to the central phone-a-thon page on their website. Their Development Director, Corey Cutler, reported that website visits TRIPLED the day of the phone-a-thon. Livestream viewers watched an average of 24 minutes each. Ultimately, the livestream experiment was successful: the number of donors increased by 20% from the previous year.

Bright spots like these highlighted the key messages we provide throughout the year in helping our participating camps reach their goals:

•    Be strategic – Consider your audience and your goals to determine how best to leverage your limited resources to maximize outreach and connectedness.
•    Be effective – Use tools to make these efforts more effective: donor databases to track and support fundraising and outreach efforts; Hootsuite, CoTweet, or other tools to schedule social media updates in advance; Google Reader, Google Alerts, and other tools to filter the firehose of information and collect the most pertinent information; etc. URJ Camp Eisner leveraged free tools like UStream, Twitter, and Facebook to vastly increase the reach of their annual phone-a-thon campaign.
•    Be planful – Prepare an annual communications plan (including online and offline channels) to ensure communications are consistent across channels; different audience segments are being well taken care of; and that resources are available to carry out expected plans all year long.
•    Be measured – Review your social media (and other channel) efforts regularly against your goal to make sure you are having a measurable impact. Before putting more effort into their iPad app, Camp Morasha made sure it was being used regularly and was actually meeting their audience’s needs. Review and refine your tactics as needed.
•    Be real – Never forget to connect your online messaging to real-world relationship-building. As Camp Laurelwood realized, in the end these tools are simply a conduit to build real relationships with your constituents. These camps evoke incredibly strong emotions in their alumni, campers, and parents. They need to use the tools available to harness these emotions and connect them to the real world.

As the Technology Program Manager for the Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthropy, Kevin Martone focuses on how organizations can effectively use technology for fundraising and outreach. He has more than 15 years of experience helping organizations utilize technology solutions to meet their goals.

“Last year, we had two competing goals, one did very well, one not as well. This year, we had one aligned goal: participation.”

Every November leading up to World Diabetes Day on Nov. 14,  the Diabetes Hands Foundation, (DHF) runs an online campaign, called the Big Blue Test. People with diabetes are encouraged to do the Big Blue Test any day between November 1 and November 14 by testing their blood sugar, getting active, testing again, and sharing the results online at bigbluetest.org.

For two years in a row, Roche Diabetes Care (the sponsor of Big Blue Test) has also made a donation in conjunction with participation in the program. This year, they donated $50,000 to help support the work of five nonprofit organizations focused on helping underserved areas with a high incidence of diabetes in the United States, and $25,000 to underwrite the work in Latin America by the International Diabetes Federation’s Life for a Child Program.

The donations by Roche were tied to the number of Big Blue Test entries received and DHF set this year’s goal at 8,000. By November 15th, they had reached their goal and leveraged the $75,000 Roche donation.  I spoke with Manny Hernandez, President of DHF, to understand how he leveraged the DHF community and social media in this online campaign, and what made the 2012 Big Blue Test the most successful yet.

Don’t be afraid to rethink participation paths, readjust and re-envision strategy.

In 2010, Roche tied its donation to the number of video views, so taking the Big Blue Test was a secondary call to action. This year’s campaign was squarely focused on changing behavior.  Manny Hernandez explains, “The reason for moving from video views to Big Blue Test participation is that we wanted the incentive for the Roche donation to be tied to the Big Blue Test program, so that the program would grow and the donations would also take place. We dropped the idea of the pledge because it was a complicated set of steps: pledge, message to do the test, follow-up, etc. We decided that the video should be the promotion, not the donation driver.”

The new strategy paid off; this year’s Big Blue Test was the most successful ever. About 25% of the people that did the test came back and did it more than once. Manny observes: “that speaks of their commitment to making this happen. They see the benefit of exercise.” 4,003 participants without diabetes and 4,119 participants with diabetes completed the test, which equals 20% of all visitors. As Manny explains, “last year, the charities won, and the people who participated by watching the video won. However, only 1500 people completed last year’s test and entered their data. If you only count people with diabetes who completed this year’s test, it’s about 3X that amount. The goal of growing the program was accomplished.” You can read the many participant stories uploaded to the Big Blue Test website which speak to the impact of Big Blue Test: 223 in English and 125 in Spanish.

Motivate Your Online Community

Manny leveraged participation from two Ning communities run by DHF (TuDiabetes.org, EsTuDiabetes.org) and their Facebook Page with nearly 40,000 fans combined, many of whom are quite active. In order to keep them engaged, Manny used the group’s weekly update to talk about the Big Blue Test and motivate community members to participate.

Additionally, from November 11 through 14, all visitors to EsTuDiabetes and TuDiabetes were presented with a “takeover page” about the Big Blue Test before entering the community. For four days, DHF showed this special video and takeover page (screen shot below). As a result, about 5% of total traffic to Big Blue Test came from the communities. More than 1/3 of the people that clicked over from the takeover page did the Big Blue Test.

Experiment with Twibbon

One of the most pleasant surprises this year was the success of Twibbon, a service that overlays a small icon onto supporters’ online profile images. Manny created a diabetes Twibbon a few years ago, and decided to experiment with using a Twibbon campaign this year.

When you sync a campaign with Twibbon, you can direct people to your Facebook Page or Twitter after they have added the Twibbon. As World Diabetes Day approached, a lot of people organically added the Twibbon without being directed to it. As a result, Twibbon adds increased the number of DHF Facebook page Likes by 2,000, a 25% increase in Likes. These were very qualified Likes, as Facebook was the biggest driver of traffic to Big Blue Test outside of direct visits. As Manny states, “the potential for this tool is huge. When you add the Twibbon, a tweet goes out with hashtags, further amplifying the campaign.” This is a great example of evaluating existing assets and leveraging them. Given how successful Twibbon was, Manny says he will consider using Twibbon as a promotional resource again.

The Biggest Driver of Referred Traffic: Facebook

Facebook proved to be the biggest driver of referred traffic, and one of the most qualified. “We relied very heavily on regular Facebook updates and we saw similar impact from Facebook as last year,” states Manny. DHF consistently updated its community about the campaign through Facebook. Below is one example of a fan using the Twibbon avatar and posting his test results to the Page.

Diabetes Hands Foundation is one of the nimblest online organizations around. They are not afraid to experiment with social media, as I’ve written about previously. The success of Big Blue Test speaks to their belief in the potential of social media as much more than tools for socializing. They have time and time again leveraged Facebook, Twitter, Ning and YouTube to help people with diabetes connect with others like themselves, raise diabetes awareness and lately…help others in the process. All of this is possible when you align goals with participation paths, and you are not afraid to try new things.

“People really saw, for the first time, that doing this would have this kind of impact. This really helped people,” says Manny. As Manny told me last year when I interviewed him, “Believe the commitment of the people that are part of your community.”

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.)

Google+ launched Pages this week, a move many of us have been looking forward to since the launch of Google+ itself. Within days, stories of unintentional G+ personal posting, problems sharing admin oversight, and issues with merged profiles were shared on the web. However, during that same time frame, hundreds of nonprofit organizations worldwide created and launched Google+ brand pages.

Google+ Pages are little SEO beacon lights.

Two nonprofit motivations are apparent. A primary motivation seems to be related to search engine optimization: Google is the largest search engine by far, and Google Pages will certainly benefit from Google’s search algorithm (see why here). I wrote that Google’s+1 button will change search, and so will Google+ Pages. The second motivation seems to be that everyone wants to get in on Google+ Pages early enough to start figuring out the medium. And maybe get a head start.

I think two things may be missing from nonprofit Google+ Pages: strategy and people.

Strategy: think strategically about what the conversation should be about on Google+, how you might use Google+ to meet your SMART goals, and how it will help your organization further its mission. In her blog post, Beth Kanter suggests that nonprofits might want to think about strategic ways to use their Google+ Pages, such as for community cultivation or as a focus group. Are you a resource-driven organization? Make your page the “go-to” resource. Are you an advocacy organization? Engage with your G+ Page fans, find out why they are so passionate about your nonprofit or a cause, and move them to action. Are you a volunteer organization? Make this the place where people share volunteer opportunities and experiences. Have fun thinking about Google+ features, your own objectives, and how you can use those to meet your goals!

People: who’s on Google+ now? Seven of the top ten professions on Google+ are computer-related and most users are men, according to this infographic. Keeping in mind that G+ is not widely used (yet), think about whether or not your stakeholders are there. Does it make sense to be there now? Do you want to spend resources on it at this time?  It may make sense to be there to experiment and learn about the platform, or it may not. For Social Capital, Inc., opening a G+ Page makes a lot of sense because it integrates technology into its programming. For others, waiting a bit longer may make the most sense.

I curated a series of blog posts and articles about the new Google+ Pages, including thoughts about the pros, cons, and considerations around using G+ Pages (see below). You may also view this directly on Storify.

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?

I had the pleasure of presenting a workshop entitled “Data Driven Leadership” at the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network/AGM annual conference last week, along with colleagues Marc Baizman and Steve Backman. The question we addressed in the workshop was: what online data does a leader want in order to make informed decisions around programming, advocacy, fundraising, and advocacy?  Marc, Steve, and I have expertise in analyzing Google Analytics, understanding customer segmentation and databases, and identifying social media metrics, respectively. Each of us thought about how the data from our respective area of expertise could address this question, and demonstrated where to find those answers during the session. The hardest part was choosing what to eliminate from our presentation, as we only had one hour to cover this enormous topic!

Getting started

We created a DIY worksheet for the session entitled, “Make Your Data Work for You: A DIY Worksheet.” It offers sample questions to get you started thinking in the areas of marketing, programs and services, development, and volunteers and advocacy. For every sample question, it asks you to set the priority level, consider what data you’ll need to answer that question, and where you can find the answer. There are a lot of spaces for you to customize the worksheet to your needs. You can read and download the worksheet here.

We had a great time creating this workshop, and presenting it. However, the real challenge was trying to determine how to organize and prioritize all the data available. For every leader, thinking about the real organizational questions that the data could offer is the place to begin.

Below are summaries of our segments of the presentation, written individually by each of us.

Facebook Insights: Debra Askanase

I focused on four questions that have implications for advocacy, programming, and fundraising:

• How many people care about the organization, and how deeply?
• What do fans care about the most, and how deeply?
• What is the organization doing that reaches the most people?
• What do you know about who cares about the organization?

Facebook has made answering the question of how many people care about the organization, and how deeply, very simple: look at the “People Are Talking About” metric on the organization’s Facebook fan page. Facebook Insights is all about fan engagement now, and helping page administrators understand what content fans want to engage with the most.  For a deeper dive into the newest version of Facebook Insights, take a look at this post.

To understand the power of page post metrics, I highlighted a news story republished by Hebrew University that questioned of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Looking at the per-post measurements, this wall post had higher engagement than the general PATA metric, and was shared by so many fans that it had tremendous viral lift. By looking for patterns in per-post engagement, we can also see that similar news and science stories are popular with fans of The Hebrew University’s page. Knowing what fans are most interested in hearing about from the organization should guide future alumni communications and fundraising.

Lastly, thinking about demographics also offers programming, advocacy, and fundraising guidance. Facebook Insights break down the demographics of your fans as well as the demographics of who is talking about you (that PATA metric). In some cases, who is talking about your page, “the super-engaged,” may have different demographic characteristics than page fans.

Web Analytics: Marc Baizman

Marc focused on Web Analytics. Web analytics can be a great tool for you to use, but you need to clearly define what indicators are important to your organization, and then you need to take action based on the what the data tells you!  Marc focused on asking several simple questions which web analytics can help answer, such as:

• How many people look at our site?
• How do people find our website?
• What are people looking at?
• What do we want people to do, and are they actually doing those things?

While he offered these sample questions, you should formulate your own questions based on what’s important to you.  Remember that although Google Analytics is free, your staff’s time isn’t, so get help if you need to.  A good place to get FREE help is the Analysis Exchange, http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/ae/ae-business.asp

Smart Segmentation: Steve Backman

Steve focused on “smart segmentation.” Segmentation often comes across at first as an alien, corporate marketing concept. Steve discussed how any organization, large or small, with the best of contact management software or a collection of spreadsheets, can begin to benefit from a smart segmentation framework. In order to reach the largest possible audience, in the most effective way, you need to understand and operate from your organization’s constituent groups.

Organizations make take satisfaction in how their monthly email stats rise and fall, or overall response rates to a fund appeal, advocacy campaign, or event. To go deeper, you need to look proactively at how you characterize your contacts. You need to work through how to connect critical data from these separate connections and activities to generate a full picture. Steve encouraged data managers to have more passion in understanding their organization’s constituency and putting the available data at the service of organizational goals. He used quick examples from Constant Contact stats and Salesforce reporting to stress an overall framework: find indicators that support you goal and measures you can collect.

I love the new Facebook Insights. Unlike so many other changes that Facebook has sprung unexpectedly on us, the new Insights is a welcome change. I think it is such a significant change that it is a game-changer in the social media space. If I sound gushy, well, I am. With the new Insights metrics, Facebook is boldly telling the Facebook community and its competitors that the most important social network metric is real online engagement. As I’ve written before, if your page cannot ultimately move people to take action, then your organization is wasting its time with Facebook. Online engagement is how it begins.

Facebook believes that you need to know how engaging your content really is. And they want you to do something about that.

Everything about the new Facebook Insights is focused on helping page administrators understand how well their page’s content is being received, shared, and talked about within Facebook. No longer do we have to count up Likes, fan posts to walls, and comments on posts, and pull together the online engagement percentage. And what’s more, we can dive deep, very deep, by post. By who is seeing the posts, and where. By how the content is being shared, and what type of content is being shared. That’s just the beginning. The Facebook metric that matters now is engagement. Here are but three examples of how Facebook is highlighting engagement.

Likes vs. PATA

Think about thee bold statement Facebook is making when it shows this publicly on every Facebook page, for all to note:

In one glance, which number is more important? With simplicity and sharpness, Facebook turned the Like numbers game into an “how many really care” numbers game. Brilliant.

Engagement by post

You can also drill down by post. New Insights is designed to help you understand which posts created the most Reach (impressions, who saw it), or highest number of Engaged Users (who clicked on it), or highest number of those who Talked About This (Liked, shared it, commented on a post). The old Insights offered a blanket number of impressions and feedback percentage by wall post, which merely offered a sense of reach and interest. A post like this one (below), which 2,200+ Facebook users could have seen, only had 56 clicks on it and 9 users who commented or Liked the post. The real engagement metric on this post is 56. And nine people who were really engaged.

What types of posts are the most engaging? Figure that out and improve your PATA score. Go get’em!

How you reached people: understanding how content engages

I also love that you can tell which of the wall posts took off due to either organic, paid or viral traffic. Look at those posts, figure out what happened there, and create more content like that. Understand the difference between the posts that “go viral” and those that are seen because of organic traffic. Greater reach ultimately will attract new Fans and people Talking About your page and posts.

So this is the future of measurement. Thanks goodness. Facebook has made the first move in this direction. It’s is a great start.

Twitter, YouTube, Google+, you’re next.

This week I’m launching a regular blog feature called “New and Improved on the Social Web.” The social media landscape continually iterates, and it’s hard to keep up with all the changes. Platforms and apps I know and love suddenly have new capabilities, add-ons, and changes. In this regular roundup, I’ll be highlighting some of the latest changes and iterations to social media platforms, apps and tools, and commenting on their implications. This week, I’m discussing changes to delicious (social bookmarking) and Facebook.

Delicious stacks

Delicious, the social bookmarking site, just rolled out a completely new web interface as well as a new product, delicious stacks. The new interface is fun and updated, and brings the brand experience in line with today’s web experience and expectations. While delicious has always enabled users to bookmark, tag, and publicly share bookmarked URLs and tags, users were not been able to compile sharable topic areas. The new feature, Stacks, is delicious’ version of publicly curated content streams. Any delicious user may create a topic (called a stack) and add links from around the web to that create a stack of the topic. Delicious users can follow stacks, share stacks with others, and save individual links within others’ stacks.

With the stacks rollout, delicious is clearly trying to be a player in the content curation trend. If this succeeds, stacks could easily compete with other curation tools such as Google Reader, scoop.it and Pearltrees.

Changes to Facebook Pages

Facebook announced a lot of upcoming changes to Facebook at their F8 developer conference in September. Some of those changes are rolling out now, with implications for your page.

Open commenting allowed on page walls and posts

One of the more significant changes to your page is that any Facebook user can Like or comment on your page’s posts and post to its wall, without Liking the your page first. Just as you had previously managed your settings to allow fans to write or post content to your Facebook wall, the new permission allows “users” to do so. One note: this is an automatic “opt-out” change – if you allowed fans to post, the new settings automatically allow any Facebook user to post.

Potentially more people will post to your page and Like its content because they can interact with it more easily. Ideally, more Facebook users will see your content because the increased commenting will appear in users’ newsfeeds (now called “tickers.”) A user still has to Like a page for that specific page’s updates to show up in his/her ticker. On the other hand, there is less incentive to Like a page if a user just wants to post or comment. The largest implication I see is that page admins now have an even better incentive to create engaging and sharable content.

“People are Talking About”(PATA) metric and new Insights

The new metric appears below your page’s Likes, on the left-hand side of the wall. It is Facebook’s attempt to benchmark and reveal how engaging your page’s content is. The PATA metric includes people who “have created a story about your post,” and creating a “story” includes people who:

- like, share, or comment on a post either on the wall
- answer a Question on your page
- mention your page or tag it or a photo of yours
- like or share a check-in deal, or check-in in at your Facebook Place

The new Facebook Insights offers a more subtle breakdown of engagement by individual post than the old Insights. The previous individual Post Impressions metric has been replaced with multiple engagement metrics: Reach, Engaged Users, Talking About This, and Virality.

According to Search Engine Land’s comprehensive summary of the new Insights:

“The goal of Pages insights for Page admins is to understand what drives that number and how they can best engage their advocates, so that they can get a sense of how to optimize their Page content to increase the people they’re reaching with their messages.  Which means that no matter the size of your Page’s audience, you can really get a good sense for which posts spread and get shared with others.”

I believe the new Insights will offer admins a more accurate sense of how engaging their pages’ content is with fans. If nonprofits are using social media to move online fans to take action, and to help the organization further its mission of changing the world, then creating more online engagement is a critical step in that path.

Recommended reading list for information about Facebook’s recent changes

Demystifying Facebook’s “People Are Talking About This” Metric from Search Engine Land

Is The New Facebook “People Are Talking About” Metric Useless? from Beth Kanter

Notes from Mari Smith’s Facebook Changes Webinar from Mari Smith via Beth Kanter

Five Recent Upgrades to Facebook Pages Your Nonprofit May Not Know About from Nonprofitorgs

Seven Ways Facebook’s Subscribe Button Could Be A Game Changer from John Haydon