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On today’s show, I mentioned that I would share various sources for data on social platforms. Here’s a short list for posts that have both commentary and data:

• Facebook stats and leading brands
• Overview infographic for some of the leading social platforms
• Key data points to rethink your strategy from Fast Company
• Discussion on the changing demographics of Facebook (as mentioned on the show!)
• Interesting data on Facebook usage from Slate
• Data on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook

Join us in January to talk about emerging platforms like Instagram and Snapchat!

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I love data as much as the next person. Give me an interactive map, a pivot table, even a plain old pie chart and I’m happy. But, there’s more to being data-informed and more to what we should demand of our data, right? When it comes to focusing on the right data, I like to ask myself these two questions.

Is data helpful if you aren’t using it?

We collect a lot of data. People join or renew as members (when did they join, how many times have they renewed, what dues level did they pay, where are they based, who are they…), people get our messages (on which channels, do they open or click, do they share the message, who are they and when did they engage…), people do things with us (webinars, tech clubs, online groups, offline groups, conferences…) and all of those things have their own data sets.

You get my point; before we even start to layer on information from the wider sector or filters to subdivide topics and categories, we have A LOT of information to work with. But, does it matter if we don’t work with it? If we don’t set goals and then create regular opportunities to review the data, does it matter that we capture it?

We can’t forget that to be data-informed as an organization and as decision-makers, we have to actually be informed by that data (see what I did there?). Establishing regular meetings or processes for metrics review helps position us to learn from the data we’re collecting and be better positioned to identify opportunities to improve.

Is data helpful if you can’t change it?

Why are you measuring or tracking something that you can’t (or don’t want to) impact? A common example of this that I hear often is with volunteer engagement. An organization has, for example, 20 volunteers, and they want to track the hours contributed, the impact on programs, and so forth. And the highest level metric that they lead with is that they have 20 volunteers, and they have 20 every year. But what they fail to explain is that they only have 20 volunteer roles. Unless you are going to open up the volunteer opportunities, I question whether reporting that you have 20 volunteers, at least as your lead metric, is helpful at all.

When looking at all of your various metrics, be sure that you are measuring things you want to impact and that you are focused on the data points you can and will change.

These are the reminders I find helpful but I’d love to hear from you! When your boss or your board or your intern ask you what you’re tracking and why – how do you talk about data?

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• The Rise Of Women In Tech | MBA Online – “It’s time for the old adage that women neither like nor do well in math and science be put to rest …The benefits for women who enter tech are hard to deny. They experience smaller wage gaps due to gender than women in other industries. But the relationship between women and tech companies isn’t one-sided – the companies get some nice perks, too. Companies whose boards of directors contain 3 or more female members had higher returns on sales, returns on investments and returns on equity. The infographic below delves deeper into how the phenomenon of women in tech is on the rise.”
• Social Media for Social Good [Infographic] – “In our new Social Media for Social Good infographic, we profile several successful grassroots and nonprofit campaigns, explain tactics that increase the impact of a message, and explore emerging trends in charitable giving and volunteering.”
• A new study asks: Should the nonprofit and charitable sectors engage in political activity? : Bright+3 – “Should nonprofits engage in political activity on issues that broadly impact the nonprofit sector? That’s one question posed by a new study, Beyond The Cause: The Art and Science of Advocacy, and the conclusion is, well, inconclusive. It turns out that there just isn’t much consensus across the sector on this very basic – if difficult – question.”
• It’s official: News consumption is all about social and mobile — Tech News and Analysis – “New research from the Pew Center into news consumption habits shows that the impact of mobile and social continues to grow. Almost twice as many users got news from a mobile device compared with 2010, and almost three times as many got news from a social network.” Where do you get your news?
• ROI: How Infographics Can Help Your Business [Infographic] | Social Media Today – “With the infographic craze in full-swing, you might ask: Are infographics just a pretty way of displaying data, or will they actually benefit my business? Earlier this summer we published a Sensible Social Media Checklist for Business. The first version of the infographic was published on June 15th and included Facebook, Linked-In, and Twitter. The popularity of the graphic prompted us to publish a second version of the checklist to include even more social media channels – specifically Pinterest, YouTube, and Google+. The second version of our infographic went online on July 19th, and was even more successful! Hundreds of bloggers posted our checklist on their own blogs, and over 2000 people downloaded the checklist as a reference to use in their own social media strategy. To showcase our results, we decided to create an infographic to demonstrate the ROI (Return on Infographics) and results we experienced.”

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• How to Prepare Your Community for a Major Change « The Community Manager – "Change: it’s the one constant in life. Whether you’re introducing a change in ownership, new staff, policy change, technical update, or something else, community members sometimes resist change. Usually, they’re afraid of repercussions that could affect the community they care so much about—so, it comes from a “good place.” That being said, their fears and frustrations can create chaos, and part of your job as community manager is to make transitions as smooth and drama-free as possible. Follow these steps to turn your announcement from a sign of the apocalypse into a community-building win they thank you for."
• Interactive: How America Gives – How America Gives – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – The Chronicle of Philanthropy has launched a great new tool: an interactive map of giving data in the US. You can look at total contributions, contributions by household, discretionary income by household, and percentage of income given by household at the national, state, county, and local level.
• Survey says: Most noprofiteers blend their personal/professional brands | Big Duck – "Last week I had the joy of presenting a workshop with the fabulous Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation at the 7th Annual Bridge to Integrated Marketing & Fundraising Conference in Washington, DC. To gear up for our session on "Mixing Business and Pleasure: Managing Your Personal Brand in Social Media," we asked nonprofiteers (readers like you!) to respond to a quick survey about their own behaviors. We heard from 209 nonprofit staff, consultants, and the people who love us–and some of the results suprised us. While not scientific, the survey offers some interesting insights and we highlighted the key findings in our presentation (included in the slides below and online here). Here are some of those insights…"
• e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics » How a Twitter Rapid Response Campaign Helped Susan Sarandon ‘Get’ Paid Sick Days – "A coalition of diverse organizations in New York City has banded together to escalate the conversation regarding paid sick days for workers, with an emphasis on getting the NY City Council to pass legislation mandating paid sick days. So far, Council Speaker Christine Quinn has not called for a vote on this issue. But now, it just may happen — after the coaltion (with a little help from their friends) gave us an impromptu course in how to run online rapid response."
• Direct Energy | Direct Energy Contest | Reduce Your Use for GoodReduce Your Use – "Nonprofits, you know it: small changes can make a big difference. At Direct Energy, we’re committed to using our energy expertise to make a difference in people’s lives — so we’re donating up to $100,000 to nonprofits like you to help reduce energy use. Just make a short video of two minutes or less showing us the good work you do in your community. Acceptable submission formats include Windows Media, Quick Time and MPEG (files ending in .wmv, .avi, .mov, .mpg or .mp4). Be passionate. Be creative. Be concise. Tell us about your organization and its vision, how the small things you do make a big difference and why it’s so important that you continue your mission."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Salesforce Acquires Buddy Media for $689 Million – “Salesforce has entered an agreement to acquire social media marketing platform Buddy Media for approximately $689 million, the company has announced. The price is lower than the recently reported $800 million figure, but still a formidable investment from the enterprise software giant, which is on a seemingly never-ending acquisition spree. Salesforce had acquired collaboration tool company Stypi in May 2012, as well as social media monitoring platform Radian6 in March 2011.”
• 4 Results from Crowdsource Experiment at #12NTC: Nerd, Geek and Gear Herding « Sage Words – “At the 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#12NTC) in San Francisco, California, we led a session called Nerd, Geek, and Gear Herding 2.0. Building on last year’s session, we were pleased that this year we had the opportunity to introduce the “crowdsourcing” experiment to collectively solve our nonprofit technology problems.”
• Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings | Official Google Blog – “Search is a lot about discovery—the basic human need to learn and broaden your horizons. But searching still requires a lot of hard work by you, the user. So today I’m really excited to launch the Knowledge Graph, which will help you discover new information quickly and easily. Take a query like [taj mahal]. For more than four decades, search has essentially been about matching keywords to queries. To a search engine the words [taj mahal] have been just that—two words. But we all know that [taj mahal] has a much richer meaning. You might think of one of the world’s most beautiful monuments, or a Grammy Award-winning musician, or possibly even a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Or, depending on when you last ate, the nearest Indian restaurant. It’s why we’ve been working on an intelligent model—in geek-speak, a “graph”—that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings.”
• The Identity Spectrum – Identity Woman – I love this spectrum map of the various kinds of online identity! Such a great resource for understanding and planning for community engagement. “The Identity Spectrum gives a understanding of the different kinds of identity that are possible in digital systems. They are not exclusive – you can mix and match. I will define the terms below and discuss mixing and matching below.”
• Current.org | Evaluating social media efforts, May 2012 – “Now that most public media stations have become active on social networks — with some combination of Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, blogs and YouTube channels — staff members at many stations are struggling with the question: Are we getting the most bang for our social-media buck? After all, building and maintaining a meaningful social media presence requires a significant investment of time — and it’s not always easy to measure the return on that investment. What does social media success look like, anyway?”
• New Study: Donations Decline for Nonprofits – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – – “Of the different trend-spotting and benchmarking resources, few are as important and authoritative as the “donorCentrics Index of National Fundraising Performance” published quarterly by Target Analytics, a division of Blackbaud. Yesterday in Washington, DC, Target’s senior fundraising analyst Paige Grainger gave a terrific “state of the nonprofit industry” talk, which summarized key findings from Target’s latest, 2011 Index. The full report is here.  Paige spoke at a luncheon that Care2 sponsored of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW). Target’s data this year was drawn from 80 different nonprofit organizations, 38 million donors, 79 million gifts and $2.5 billion worth of donations revenue (although it excluded any donations worth $10,000 or more). Channels covered included online, direct mail, telemarketing and canvassing.”

FLOW: Field Level Operations Watch

FLOW is an on-site technology that broadcasts data instantaneously to the Water for People website/FLOW map providing important information about the operating status of WFP projects.

“Combining Android cell phone technology and Google Earth software, FLOW lets field workers, volunteers, our partners and others record data from tens of thousands of water points around the world. That information is then displayed on our online global map to signal whether a project is up and running, broken, or on the verge of disrepair and needs quick action.”

Accountability

Many organizations are working to find ways to show donors and supporters how their participation is transforming beneficiaries directly and as quickly as possible. With Water for People’s FLOW system, when they say a project is working, they can prove it to you! Just pick an area of the world and see for yourself!

I love to see projects that are focused on measuring and evaluating data about their work and progress. I love even more to see projects that make that data public so that everyone in the local community, in the organization, and around the world can measure and learn at the same time. I’m really excited to see what corollary projects or data sets can be incorporated into the FLOW system and map, too!

Sustainability

Two years ago, in Water for People’s strategic plan, they committed to at least ten years of post-project monitoring for every site to ensure that projects were successful and sustainable. “We will hold ourselves accountable for—and encourage our supporters and donors to hold us accountable for—making smart investments and data-driven decisions so that we can make a long-lasting impact.” I’m really encouraged about the potential to make life-saving and life-changing impact around the world when I see this kind of commitment from an organization, not just a philanthropic organization. Recognizing that as the direct service providers or project teams, we have the same level of responsibility to ensure our work actually works as we do to address issues in the first place is a major step in the right direction towards real change.

Read More

1. Check out the FLOW map: http://watermapmonitordev.appspot.com

2. Check out this great post from Water for People’s Senior Manager of Programmatic Data, Keri Kugler, on how they use FLOW to maintain accountability and allow communities to monitor their own water and sanitation published in National Geographic.

3. Visit the UN Water site for more information and resources about World Water Day, or see if there are events happening near you.

Fenton just released a terrific guide book focused on actionable metrics: “See, Say, Feel, Do: Social Media Metrics that Matter”.

It is tempting to imagine social media as its own communications island where Twitter Follower counts are valuable currency that can be exchanged for internal high-fives. In this scenario there is no way to exchange social media coins for broader communication or marketing dollars. But who cares when you can boast 50,000 likes on your Facebook Page.

This is the wrong approach for three reasons: 1) it doesn’t acknowledge the complete media consumption behavior of your target audiences; 2) it cuts off feedback loops that can be mined for insights that will improve engagement and returns and 3) it limits the reach and impact of your broader communications.

Fenton’s guide divides up the kinds of metrics you can focus on under the headings See, Say, Feel and Do. As I suggest in my Community Mapping approach, the actions and metrics should be mapped against the segments of the community doing them. I really appreciate that Fenton has included a similar recommendation. I also love that they include both a space for identifying and tracking the data, as well as a place to include the insights and actions associated with it. The best of the guide book, though, is the inclusion of an example reporting form and a template to use in your own organization.

Download “See, Say, Feel, Do: Social Media Metrics that Matter” here. 

What do you think? If you downloaded the report, did you find the template useful? What aspects of the do/see/say/feel metrics approach were you already using or do you plan to try out?

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Have you accepted online technology as your organizational savior? – Small Act – “When your leadership has Shiny Object Syndrome, you’ll often come to work to find newspaper clippings on your desk or links in your email all about the Next Big Thing. There will be a note attached that says, “Let’s do this!” You’ll sigh inwardly, instantly thinking of a dozen reasons why it probably won’t work or why you lack the time and energy to give it the best shot possible (mainly because you’re probably still wrestling with the previous Shiny Object du jour), but you’ve fought and lost enough battles of this type to know that you might as well suck it up and do what they’re asking. The problem with Shiny Object Syndrome is that it operates on the assumption that because something is “popular” (like, say, Foursquare), then simply using it will guarantee success for your organization. This isn’t always the case. In fact, it rarely is.”
• 10 Non-Profits Leveraging Pinterest for Social Good – “There’s no question that Pinterest is the hottest social network right now. From your friends and family to celebrities, athletes and designers, everyone’s pinning visually interesting content. But did you know that non-profit organizations are pinning, too?” Have you tried Pinterest? Do you think it would be valuable for your organization or a waste of time?
• Forget Generation Y: 18- to 34-Year-Olds Are Now ‘Generation C’ – Interesting inforgraphic about the “Connected Generation” – what do you think? “It’s hardly news that young adults are the most digitally connected, but now Nielsen has come up with a new name for this group based on their common behaviors: “Generation C.” The C stands for “connected,” and the group comprises Americans between 18 and 34 — who are defined by their digital connectivity, Nielsen and NM Incite’s U.S. Digital Consumer Report says. They consume media, socialize and share experiences through devices more than other age groups.”
• Infographic: Do people still trust the news during election season? – Very interesting new infographic helping dissect data from a national poll examining whether or not Americans trust the media during political peaks. “The survey revealed the dramatic lack of trust Americans hold for sources of election news of all mediums. Of the six media types explored in the survey (cable news stations, network news, newspapers, talk radio, internet news sites, and blogs and social media), ‘traditional’ news outlets scored highest in terms of perceived credibility compared to newer and less traditional mediums…”
• Business competitiveness is defined by social innovation | Guardian Sustainable Business | guardian.co.uk – “There are few companies that can afford to not label themselves as green and something similar is happening to the word social. From corporate social responsibility to social business to social investment, previously limited to charitable activities and workers’ rights, social is on the march to becoming the new green. As with any label, ubiquity is as much a measure of success as a sign of abuse. And as with green we have to smarten up and learn to ask the right questions. For social impact some judge by good intention, while others measure by human development indicators or complicated calculations on social rates of return.”
• Spring of Code – “The OccupyLondon tech team is pleased to invite Occupiers and friends from the Open Source software community all around the world to participate in the biggest series of global Occupy code sprints yet, the Spring of Code.”

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• This is What a Librarian Looks Like – I love this example of a Tumblr blog used for a perspective-changing campaign. It's a great case study of how individuals and start and drive a campaign and the way that a concept can translate across cultures and countries.
• 12 Digital Fundraising Trends for 2012 – "Back at the start of January I set myself the target of publishing twelve posts on trends I think are going to prove important to digital fundraisers this year – both as a means of kick-starting my own thinking after the holiday season and to help inform your planning considerations at this key time in the year." Check out the 12 Trends, from Personalized Video Thanking to Ebooks to Digital Fundraising Staffing!
• NTEN’s Technology Leadership Academy Returns for 2012 – "We're excited to announce that the Technology Leadership Academy is returning in 2012. Even better, thanks to the generous support of Google and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we're able to offer the Academy at no charge to qualifying organizations. The Academy gets at the very heart of what NTEN does. We believe that with improved tech leadership, nonprofits like yours will provide more and better programs, inspire more communities, and involve more volunteers to share their time." The deadline to apply for the next learning group is February 24th!
• Digital Storytelling Challenge from TechSoup – "TechSoup’s annual Digital Storytelling Challenge (TSDigs), powered by Lights. Camera. Help., combines professional instruction and friendly competition into a hands-on media-making project." Learn more about the various educational programs planned and how to submit either your one minute video or five photo presentation to the competition!
• INFOGRAPHIC: The Rise of the Planet of the Apps | App Annie – This infographic and accompanying data is a great overview of the changing landscape of mobile applications around the world. It's also a great example of how infographics can help illustrate data, but coupling them with more complete narrative can ensure readers really understand what the data is saying.
• 2011 Online Giving Report – “'2011 did not have the 35% year-over-year growth rate in online giving that happened in 2010, but online fundraising did not lose its mojo,' said Steve MacLaughlin, co-author of the Report and Blackbaud’s director of Internet solutions. 'Every sector in the analysis has had double-digit growth since 2009, but as with all large numbers, the bigger the overall percentage gets, the slower it tends to grow.'In 2011, online giving was up 13% on a year-over-year basis when large International Affairs organizations are removed from the analysis. International Affairs is the only sector that didn’t experience positive growth in 2011, due to the tremendous amount of online giving in 2010 in response to the Haiti earthquake. When these organizations are included in the analysis the overall online fundraising growth rate drops to 0.3%."