I had the lovely experience of presenting the keynote overview of social media at the Kishor Social Media Conference in Jerusalem, along with my colleague Talia Klein of Sparkeo.com. For the address, we were asked to create a presentation that would be appropriate for an audience unfamiliar with social media. However, we were told that half of the attendees would have a moderate level of familiarity with social media. In other words, make it for everyone. That’s pretty daunting. When you work in social media day in, day out, it’s hard to remember what you know that others don’t know. It’s even harder to figure out how to convey all that information through a graphically compelling presentation.

To prepare for the presentation, I asked friends and social media practitioners what they would want to know about social media. I also wanted to know what would help them to understand social media. Talia and I reviewed a few of the best social media presentations on slideshare.net, and considered what they hold in common. In the end, the presentation that Talia and I crafted embodied these basic principles of presenting social media to the public:

Presenting Social Media Publicly: A Few Ideas

1. Put it in historical perspective

It’s crazy to think about, but five years ago, how many of us had social media profiles? Or more than one profile? And how often did we use social media? How much time did we spend? Graphs or charts about the explosion of social media and current demographics relevant to the topic of the presentation convey powerful messages.  Final word on this from a colleague: “people love graphs and charts. You have to have those in any presentation. It’s a pretty picture.”

2. Talk about the future, too

Historical trends help your audience understand the big picture, sure, but what’s coming up in social media is even more important. Extend your graphs with informed thoughts about forthcoming trends and changes in your sector.

3.  ROI

You talk about social media without talking about the return nowadays. Whether it’s Return on Influence, Interest, or Engagement, people want to know “why.” Look at other campaigns, ROI case studies, and your own data. ROI depends on goals, and picking the right goals and the right metrics is critical to understanding ROI.

4. Tell it like a story

This isn’t unique to presentations about social media. Presentations should tell stories – and answer the question: why should I care? The very best presentations decks on slide share pull you in with great storytelling, and keep you interested until the end. Social media is a complex subject. Storytelling breaks it down and makes it accessible.

5. Offer case studies

Case studies make it real and bring it all together. If you’re talking about social network fundraising, walk your audience through a case study. If you’re talking about creating online communities, then look at a few niche online communities and what makes them successful. If you’re talking about engagement ROI, look at actions fans have taken for an organization.

Are there any other principles of presenting social media to the public that you think are critical to include in the list above?

Here’s the Kishor Social Media Overview – enjoy!

For reference, some great social media slide decks:

Social Media for Nonprofits

What the —- Is Social Media

Yes, I DO Mind the Gap

How To Think Like a Nonprofit Social Media Genius

Olivier Blanchard Basics of Social Media ROI

50 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits

Image courtesy of Jill Clardy

Nonprofit organizations can tell the best stories. Stories about the impact that a nonprofit has on people’s lives can engage, recruit and solidify donors and members. As ImpactMax writes so beautifully, tying individual stories to overall contextual problems and societal issues can really change policies. Anecdotely, I see a lot of blogs and Flickr photo streams, some YouTube and Vimeo use. Why limit yourself? There are so many other tools and platforms that are exciting, innovative, incredibly engaging, and beautiful. Here are my top digital storytelling platforms and tools for your nonprofit to try out in 2010:

POSTEROUS

Posterous is a publishing platform whereby you email your posts to your Posterous account, attach video/audio/photos and voila! Published.  Use it to quickly and easily upload a thought, photo, tweet, or idea. It’s wicked simple to use, and much less time consuming than a blog. It IS a blog, but more along the lines of a daily journal.

Why It’s Great: Less time commitment than blogging, easy publishing by email. More fun than traditional blogging. All the comment and social features of blogs.

WHRRL

Whrrl has been my favorite “under the radar” platform for at least six months. It is a combination slideshare-photo sharing-storytelling platform. If your organization wants to tell a story via photos, slides, and brief text, this is one of the most visually arresting platforms. Whrrl has recently added an entirely new “geotagging” feature that encourages checkins at different locales and belonging to social groups. Nonprofits could take advantage of this by hosting an event at a locale and asking folks to check in. However, just use it to tell stories. No check-in required!

Why It’s Great: It’s simple to create Whrrl stories, a great platform for storytelling, and has a social features. New geotagging feature (“check-ins”) and tagging with hashtags can potentially be used for fundraising, awareness, etc.

I first read about how a reporter used Whrrl to document homelessness in a tent city, and the story pulled me right in. The reporter is @hardlynormal. Here it is:

ANIMOTO

If you want to turn the photos into a video, adding words and text, along with a call to action, try Animoto. Incredibly simple to use, Animoto automatically integrates images, video clips, and music into videos. Nonprofit organizations can apply for a free professional account here. View sample videos from causes to see how other nonprofits are using it. I am personally mesmerized by the animoto videos.

Why It’s Great: Simple to create a fabulous video for a blog or website, or produce a DVD for donors using photos or short video clips. Videos are easy to share socially, and embed. I created a short 30-second animoto video for a nonprofit client of mine in about 20 minutes!

BLIP.TV

Blip.tv is gaining in exposure and use. It bills itself  as “the next generation TV network,” and that’s a real possibility. Forget cable access and YouTube; if you want to create a steady stream of stories using video, open a blip.tv channel and start broadcasting. It is designed for developing original web tv shows, and supports Creative Commons licensing.

Why It’s Great: Blip.tv will distribute your videos to all the major video platforms for you. Blip also enables RSS feeds for subscriptions. The video quality is spectacular, and they are building a loyal base of followers who want to see original programming. It’s also incredibly easy to share and embed.

One of my favorite blip.fm videos? How Alon Nir created and developed @thekotel, as presented at the 140 Conference, Tel Aviv. (Click on the icon for a pop-up video.)

Alon Nir of @thekotel at the 140 Conference TLV

If you want to see other great examples of digital storytelling, check out the entries at Tech Soup’s 2009 Digital Storytelling Challenge.

Do you use any of these storytelling platforms or tools? How? What are the other great tools that I missed?

Inspired to create a free resource for women who want to change the world through the web, Jasmin Tragas has just published the free eBook Worldshapers.

This is a story about the power of weak ties and one woman determined to make a difference. I met Jasmin Tragas online, and we have never met in person. She began to follow me on Twitter, we naturally shared ideas. I soon discovered her real passion is the crossroads of social media, women’s economic opportunities, and nonprofits – all of which interest me.  After a few months, Jasmin asked if she could profile me in an eBook that she was creating about the power of women to change the world through the social web. From a weak tie to an eBook…that’s the power of social media.

Jasmin believes in the power of social media to change the world. Her dream is to create a Trust Bank in the Philippines for a group of 15-30 women, where they will be given micro loans and training to grow their businesses in order to work their way out of poverty. In her role as a volunteer Opportunity Ambassador, she has pledged to raise $10,000 for Opportunity International Australia towards the Trust Bank in the Philippines. The obvious step for her was to utilize social media to raise those funds.

Inspired by the power of social media, she created WorldShapers, Extraordinary Women Making a Difference, a free eBook featuring the stories of 16 women using the web to make a difference. Jasmin writes, ” I created the eBook was to provide a free resource about women using the web for positive change. At the same time, I wanted to see if I could use this as an opportunity to raise funds for the microloan fund.” At the end of the book, she suggests that the readers can also change the world;  donate to Opportunity International, or any other worthy organization.

I am honored to be among the 16 women selected for the book. I asked Jasmin why she initiated the Worldshapers project, if it has raised her target amount, and the “lessons learned” from producing and distributing an eBook.

Why did you decide to create Worldshapers?

“There are some amazing women around the world who use the web as part of their work with nonprofits and communities. I thought it would be wonderful for their stories to be shared in a free eBook so that people could be encouraged by their example. Social media gives us the ability to create inspiring projects like this – so why not? I also wanted to promote and raise funds for a microfinance project.”

Why did you choose Opportunity International?

“Their microfinance program provides jobs for people living in poverty, mostly women. Their program also provides training, develops relationships in the community and helps women to work their way out of poverty – a long term, sustainable approach to poverty – not just charity.”

What is your experience of raising funds through this eBook?

“Sometimes you receive a donation from someone who lives on the other side of the world, someone you have never met, or a work colleague you have only ever chatted with online and you think ‘wow! How awesome that this person just contributed $20.’ You feel a real sense of us making a difference TOGETHER.”

It seems counter-intuitive to produce a free book to raise money. Has it worked?

“Although I could have asked for a small donation for each download, I decided I wanted to keep it free so these stories could be shared around the world. My instincts told me that people wouldn’t donate after downloading the book, about $200 was donated during this ‘semi-campaign’. I also put a link to my Chipin account in the eBook. I’m happy with the outcome – 1600 copies of the eBook downloaded raising $1300 – over 10% of my goal – but I’m still learning about fundraising using social media and wonder how much I could have raised if I charged for downloads.”

Which promotional efforts for the eBook have been successful? What has not worked?

“I try to keep things interesting, interactive and even a little challenging. In trying to raise money previously for Opportunity, I thought that a competition would be great, but it didn’t work as well as I hoped. It really helps when an influential blogger tweets about your project – a great way to create publicity and I’m grateful when it happens.”

What are the fundraising goals and how much have you raised?

“My goal is to raise AUD$10,000  by the end of this month, for a two year microfinance program. Currently $4,000 has been generously donated. Two companies made donations towards the eBook project (Incentive House and Seek Volunteer) so I was able to raise $1100 that way.  If I can raise half of my goal I can still partner with another Opportunity ambassador to create the Trust Group. But ultimately, I would love to see people around the world coming together to help raise the funds online. ” (To date, she has reached 50% of her goal.)

What would you do differently?

“I’m not sure I would do anything differently, even the events that didn’t work so well were wonderful experiences to be part of. I’ve met some lovely people along the way too. The most successful project was a blogging project – 13 bloggers wrote a blog post and Incentive House Donated $100 for each post. $1300 was raised in a matter of days!”

“Creating an eBook was a really rewarding experience and I would consider doing it again. Next time, perhaps I would ask for donations, in which case I think perhaps the content really needs to be more than just informative and inspirational. I think I would also need people with social media influence to help promote and endorse the book.”

Anything else you want to mention?

“Raising funds and creating awareness for Opportunity International Australia about microfinance has been such a great journey. I’m also very thankful for people like Gavin Heaton, Des Walsh and Matt Moore who provided social media advice at times.”

June 22 Update: Servant of Chaos has just created and uploaded a great slide show about Jasmin’s efforts to raise funds for her cause. The slide show details the many (and there are MANY) different social media platforms she has used and highlights her efforts on each.

Jasmin Tragas is a mother of three who works as a creative marketing and communications consultant for IBM in Melbourne, Australia. She writes a weblog about her experiences using social media for good, and another weblog about her role as a volunteer Ambassador with Opportunity International.

If you want to donate to this great cause, donate here.  Just a $4 donation (one cup of coffee) will make a huge difference.  Together, we can leverage social media to create economic opportunity.

Sometimes a really cool application comes along that can help an organization tell its story, and you just have to write about it. This one is a multimedia application for your website and blog called Apture. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I think it has enormous possibilities for engaging stakeholders, telling your organization’s story, conveying information visually, and keeping visitors on your site. I want to know how your organization will use Apture to its benefit.

What is it? I’ll begin by integrating Apture’s application right now:

It is an application that you install on your website or blog. Using Apture, hyperlinks pop up inside the website story or blog post. You may have already experienced Apture while reading one of the New York Times’ blogs. Besides visitors staying on-site, they will experience – right at the moment of clicking – what you are trying to convey. Apture integrates text, slideshows, maps, video, audio, photos, and the like into your story. Flightblogger conveys stories using Apture, and I think the application adds levels of understanding to each blog post.

The possibilities of using this application are limited only by one’s imagination, and I’d love to hear your ideas.

Here’s one example:

You are a community arts center. Your students are about to put on a show, so you post a news story on the website about the upcoming show and also write a blog post about the show. You link to photos of student artwork, audio and video of the teacher in action, a student’s video story about taking the class, and the news story about the show that was featured in the local paper. At the end of the story, you give the address of the show which pops up the location on Google maps. You’ve told a story, powerfully, about the impact your organization has had on the teacher, students and community, and asked them to act on it by attending the opening. And you’ve done it in one paragraph.

There is an art to storytelling, but I’m not here to write about that. What I want to know is – how will you tell your story differently using Apture?