As social media tools like Twitter and Facebook become core components of nonprofit communication strategies, there is a corresponding need to assess how well programmatic messaging and organizational identity are propagating in those channels: “We Tweet; is anybody listening?”

In addition, nonprofits have an increasing need to know on what blogs, websites and other online venues they and their issues are being mentioned and discussed, both favorably and less favorably.

Our webinar defined the concept of a “social media listening dashboard”, describing how nonprofits can use free and low-cost services to track and stay notified about online communications that relate to their work and brand. We also discussed best practices for coordinating online communications  and specific how-to’s to provide participants with the information they need to get started in their online listening.

If you missed the webinar, that’s okay! Use these links to access the conversation:

• All webinar resources
• Presentation slides
• Audio recording
• Audio & video recording
• Links to tools & info

Were you on the webinar and have a question that wasn’t answered?  Did you review the links above and have ideas to share, other tools to recommend, or questions you want to ask?  Leave a comment!

Location: online via ReadyTalk

Topic: Social Media Listening Dashboards

Description: As social media tools like Twitter and Facebook become core components of nonprofit communication strategies, there is a corresponding need to assess how well programmatic messaging and organizational identity are propagating in those channels: “We Tweet; is anybody listening?” In addition, nonprofits have an increasing need to know on what blogs, websites and other online venues they and their issues are being mentioned and discussed, both favorably and less favorably.  This webinar will define the concept of a “social media listening dashboard”, describing how nonprofits can use free and low-cost services to track and stay notified about online communications that relate to their work and brand. Best practices for coordinating online communications will be addressed, and specific how-to’s will provide participants with the information they need to get started in their online listening.

Related Links:

• Blog post
• Notes, slides and recording

Who: Speakers: Susan Tenby | TechSoup Global; Janet Fouts; Kira Marchenese

What: An important part of your social media strategy should be listening for people and organizations who are talking about the issues you want to discuss.How do you know which networks will be most effective to reach your goals? Listen first and discover where the conversations are!

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Tools for listening:

Goodbyebuddy – find out when people aren’t listening to you any more. Learn what people want to hear.

Tweetdeck – add columns to listen and track conversations or watch mentions. Not just following mentions but also events – anything with hashtags, etc.

Google Alerts – remember that they aren’t always accurate or enough to find everything.

Mixed Reality events – conference going on in Second Life with a live streamed video into Second Life, it expands the audience exponentially. Conversations take place in both places separately and together.  Multi-channel conversations.

Flickr and YouTube – monitor and subscribe to activity around you, not just your own.

Lessons for Listening:

Don’t be afraid! Hold the reins: if you aren’t listening, paying attention, and diving in then the conversation can get so far away that you aren’t able to join in.  You can only have a real impact and “control” or influence over the public conversation about you, your organization or your programming if you are listening and engaging.

Where are the conversations?

• Blogs
• Linkedin
• Forums
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Communities
• Ning/Yahoo/Google

What to listen for:

• brand
• cxo names
• sponsors and donors
• supporters and evangelists
• industry and local news
• topics of corporate and/or personal interest

Find conversations quickly: check out Radian6, Biz360 and so on – a fairly expensive way to listen but comes with functionality to sort, track, etc.  Not about follower numbers, but about engagement and content.

Lazyfeed: use it for when you don’t have anything to say but want to say something. Set up keyword searches and it brings you relevant tweets and links. Allows you to be a thought-leader because you are on top of the conversations.

Twitter: even if you don’t want to engage on it, you need to be listening there. Set up alerts and so on.

Check out listening tools at: http://janetfouts.com/listen/

Listen, engage, repeat!

Follow #10ntc.listen on Twitter for links and conversation from this session.

This Wednesday, April 15th, you can participate in a free online event and webinar from TechSoup, Basics for Beginners: Getting Started with Social Media Tools.

So you’ve heard about Facebook, Twitter, and other online social networking sites. You know your organization should use social media, but you’re not sure where to start. If this sounds familiar, you won’t want to miss TechSoup’s free online event and webinar: Basics for Beginners: Getting Started with Social Media Tools.

Join hosts, John Haydon, social media coach for nonprofits, and blogger and internet marketing consultant, Chris Garrett, as they demonstrate how to get started with social media and the value this can bring your organization. They’ll explain the best first steps for getting started and help beginners understand how these emerging technologies can help libraries and nonprofits conduct outreach, raise funds, create community, and share ideas.

Register now for the live webinar, Wednesday, April 15th, 9 AM Pacific Standard Time.

Following the webinar, TechSoup will host a free, day-long online event, where you can post additional questions to the expert event hosts in the TechSoup Community forums:  http://www.techsoup.org/go/web2_basics. The forums event is asynchronous (not live) and no registration is required, just show up and post!

Dive into the discussion in the TechSoup online forums where we’ll discuss such topics as:

• How can you make the most of social media with very little resources (time, money, staff)?
• Smart ways to use social media to engage new and existing supporters
• How much time should you devote to social media each day?
• What is the best way to fundraise with social media?

This free event is ideal for beginners who are looking for simple steps they can take to effectively use social media to enhance their missions. Whether you’re brand new to Web 2.0 tools or looking to share your social media successes and lessons learned, please stop by and add your voice to the conversation: http://www.techsoup.org/go/web2_basic

Have any questions? Please email: community@techsoup.org.

About TechSoup.org
TechSoup.org is a trusted technology resource that offers a variety of information and services for the nonprofit sector. In addition to accessing articles and worksheets, social benefit organizations can connect with a lively online community of peers for hands-on help, or receive product donations from major vendors through its product philanthropy service. This popular program has enabled organizations to save over $1.2 billion in IT expenses as of September 2008. ]]> https://amysampleward.org/2009/01/21/building-blocks-of-social-media-webinar-slides-and-notes/ https://amysampleward.org/2009/01/21/building-blocks-of-social-media-webinar-slides-and-notes/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:14:14 +0000 http://www.amysampleward.org/?p=522 Continue readingBuilding Blocks of Social Media – Webinar slides and notes]]>

Today was the first webinar in the Storytelling & Social Media series from NTEN and TechSoup Global.  I’m happy to say that I had the great honor of serving as the speaker for the webinar and had a ton of fun.  It’s always a little weird to talk over the phone and not be able to hear or see those you are presenting to, but everyone was really great with comments and questions and responding online so I knew I wasn’t talking to myself!

If you want to check out the recording of the session or register for webinars that are still to come, check out the full line up.

Today’s webinar focused on the building blocks of social meda; things like tagging, RSS and how to get started finding the conversations taking place online.  Here’s my slide deck:

The questions folks asked at the end were terrific!  Some of them, along with my answers, include:

• How much time a day do you spend reading (RSS feeds)? I used to be quite worried about reading everything that came into my reader.  Until I finally “got it.”  Even if you don’t read the post that comes in your RSS Reader, that content isn’t lost and the knowledge is still at your footsteps.  You can search within your reader and find content that came through that you might be looking for, even if you didn’t read it the first time.
• How do you separate personal and professional contacts or content online? I share a lot of information online, but if it is something I really want to be personal, I take advantage of the settings in different applications and mark things as private or hidden.  Most all of the tools you’ll use online allow for you to show or hide different content for different users or groups.
• What’s the difference between Netvibes and Google Reader? Netvibes is a lot like an iGoogle home page and is designed to have many different widgets or boxes that are customizable.  You may have a weather widget next to an RSS feed of your organization’s blog, a calendar widget and a feed of Google Alerts, and so on.  Google Reader is designed to organize your feeds and let you share them with your contacts/the world – without having boxes and widgets.  I like to use Google Reader most of the time, but keep my Netvibes up-to-date for times when I want to narrow in on certain topics because of the way you can view the feeds.  You can see screen shots of both of these in the slide show above.
• How do you create a tag? If you are using Delicious, for example, you don’t need to create a list of tags or a taxonomy you have to stick to before you actually start saving bookmarks.  You can create a new tag every time you save something if you want to.  When you save the bookmark, you add the tags you want associated with it, and those can be new or ones you’ve used before.  That’s it; once you hit save that tag is created.

There were other questions and some good conversations.  If you were on the call and had a question that didn’t get answered feel free to ask it here in the comments or you can check out the Emerging Technologies forum in TechSoup to join the conversation.

Upcoming events in the series include podcasting, video creation, creating social buzz, and social media ROI.  Check them out and register here!

Download the recording of today’s webinar on Social Media Building Blocks.

Thanks to all those on the webinar today! It was a lot of fun talking with you and I’m happy to keep answering questions and discuss how we can all use social media better to more effectively and efficiently change the world for the better!

NTEN & TechSoup have teamed up to deliver a series of webinars on storytelling and social media – and I’m the presenter for the first one!

First, what’s a web-inar?

Wikipedia says:

A webinar is a neologism to describe a specific type of web conference. It is typically one-way,^[1] from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction, such as in a webcast. A webinar can be collaborative^[1] and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, pointing out information being presented on screen and the audience can respond over their own telephones…

Social Media Building Blocks

Is sharing really caring?  Well, it can at least boost your internal staff knowledge and your positioning as a resource in the community!

In this webinar we’ll discuss the fundamentals of sharing information with social media tools.  You don’t have to know how to do this already to take part—this is for those just starting out!  We’ll cover social bookmarking, tagging, RSS and more, plus the tools you can start using for free to do it all.

More Information and Register Now!

How you can join

I will be posting my slides on SlideShare and this blog after the event to continue the conversation started during the webinar.  I’m really looking forward to it and have already started putting together some slides and ideas.

If you have questions you want answered, ideas you want to discuss, or tools you want included, just let me know!

Click here for more information about the webinar and to register!

I have blogged before about ways nonprofits can use Flickr and it was a topic of great discussion when I have thought about social media implementation with folks at organizations like the Cendar Sinai Park here in Portland. It is a great tool for bringing in some smiling faces to your website, print materials, and connecting supporters online that attend events or volunteer for your organization.

Read more on TechSoup’s site to get additional details on qualifying!

TechSoup

The general increase of web 2.0 tools (social media / new media tools) is not surprising since there is a growing number of people and organizations providing support and education for those interested in getting started. But, there are a few things that I find interesting.

Survey respondents showed a 19% increase in use of RSS feed subscriptions. Using RSS both to distribute and to consume information online has been a topic at the new media training events I have helped put on for Meyer Memorial Trust and a topic that has always created a lot of conversation among the nonprofits I talk to. One great reference on RSS use is Marshall Kirkpatrick. RSS use will also be the topic for the Portland 501 Tech Club meeting on January 14th, with Marshall as our terrific presenter. (Let me know if you are interested in attending!)

50% said that they participated in an online event or training session related to work, which is an 11% increase from last year. I think it’s great that people are taking advantage of the great learning and engagement opportunities online, especially from organizations like NTEN.

What things have you increased your usage of in the past year? What things do you hope to increase your use of in the year to come? I’d love to hear about it!