Location: online with Blackbaud Australia

Topic: Social Change Anytime Everywhere: Best Practices to Build a Multichannel Campaign Plan

Description: From your website to social media, email to mobile messages, online to offline, multichannel strategies require coordination and creative thinking across teams and departments and a focus on the core of your work beyond any one specific call to action. Please join us as Allyson Kapin, Founding Partner of Rad Campaign, and Amy Sample Ward show you how to craft an online multichannel campaign plan to meet your mission and campaign goals, and how other organisations are successfully integrating multichannel efforts into their work

Related Links: Get the recording

Related Links:

• WWT Information
• Session slides
• Session recordings

Location: Online

Topic: Listening & Engaging: DIY Tools for Social Media Management

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 show you how to create a listening dashboard for your or your organization’s use. I will also provide an introduction for social media goal-setting and a template for tracking your social media engagement.

Related Links:

• Nonprofit Webinars
• Slides and notes
• Webinar recording

Strategic Data

I have done a few webinars and presentations about social media tracking and metrics and frequently used the phrase “actionable data.” After one of these presentations, a participant came up to me and pushed back a little on what I’d said, explaining that data was for evaluation and that seemed very passive. I responded that data, without action, isn’t worth our effort to track it. That’s what actionable means.

But then I realized, the reason people didn’t see action tied to their data was because they didn’t see how the data, or even the actions that data could indicate, were strategic. Data we don’t want to take action about is even worse. We need strategic data. And, as it turns out, that doesn’t just mean data from your programs and services, but from your social engagement, too.

Step 1: Linking Strategy to Goals

Most of us on this call probably have an elevator speech or even a few that we use to explain what it is we do as an organization, what our role in the organization is; maybe even why people would want to get involved or donate. That’s where we start. We can use that general or generic even mission statement to start putting our social media use into a strategic place.

If your organization has a strategic plan or even a Theory of Change, you are already equipped with even more deliberate language that can help you get started. Most strategic plans include program area or service area specifics and you can use those to help frame why you use social media.

Step 2: Linking Goals to Social

Now that we have identified some areas where social media fits with the overall purpose of the organization, we can start putting certain aspects of social engagement into goal areas. We want to be specific here about the why and less specific about the what. For example, our goals with social media should identify the influence or impact we want to make, but not necessarily say we will do it on facebook. You may, actually use facebook for part of your social media activity, but you want to form your goals so that they are impact-specific, and open to either multiple or changing platform use.

Step 3: Acting on Strategic Data

And the last part, identifying your metrics to track and really tracking it! When it comes to tracking, there are a few things I recommend:

 Get Started

You can use this template to get you started. Be sure to change the blue rows in the document to reflect your goals and align your various metrics underneath. Make a copy of the file for your own use (otherwise anyone on the web will see your data if you put it in my template), or download the file.

>> http://bit.ly/DIYmetrics

Slides & Video

You can review the slides below, or check out Nonprofit Webinars to watch the full recording!

Photo credit: Flickr myklroventine

Presentation

Do-It-Yourself

So often I find that we are too quick to say that because a website doesn’t have our domain, a tool is downloaded to our computer, or a platform doesn’t have our developers working on it that we can’t be responsible for measuring and analyzing the way we use it. It’s just not true! The do-it-yourself mentality that I hope to empower in those reading this post or that participated in the webinar is that if you are engaging there, then there’s opportunity to track it! YOU can do it!

Community Mapping

>> Get this template!

Step 1:  Identify all the groups within your community.

To start mapping the community we need to first identify which groups are within it. Do you have volunteers, interns, or adjunct staff? Maybe you work with schools so you have segments for teachers, administrators, parents, students, and then groups outside of the school. Here are some questions that can help get people talking to start sharing the groups they work with.

In my experience, the more diverse group you can get together to have this conversation and work through this planning together, the more complete a picture you can draw of your community. When people who work in services, programs, grant writing and fundraising, for example, all share their view of the groups in the community, not only can you start mapping the network but you can also have really rich discussions about the way different parts of your organization view the community.

Step 2: Define the goals that match each group.

There are two sets of goals to be discussed here: the first are the goals of that group – what do they want from you, why do they want to come to you, what do they get out of it? The second are the goals your organization has for that group – what are you hoping they will do, how will they contribute, what are you asking for from them? Again, this conversation can be really eye-opening as a part of building the community map, but also as far as encouraging dialogue within your organization and providing clarity around the organizational goals and the way they play out with the community engagement.

Step 3: Identify the tools.

This means identifying the spaces, platforms, and applications where each group congregates and where you can communicate with them. Even though much of these will be online social technologies, don’t forget about the offline spaces, too. Identifying the mechanisms you can use to communicate with each group can help you target your efforts, but in many cases illuminates areas where only one or a couple groups use a certain platform, while others use another – not only will this help you figure out where to say things, but can dramatically change what you say where.

Content Mapping

>> Get this template!

Step 1: Identify all the content.

Now, for this content map to be as valuable across your organization as possible, you want to be as specific as you can be with this section. I’ve listed some examples to get you started, but really think about all the various pieces of content you have. Instead of listing “blog posts,” instead, list what those blog posts are about: maybe job openings, volunteer opportunities, news about your work, examples of your services or people you have helped. New grants or new programs. There will probably be a lot of things to list. And that’s okay!

Step 2: Goals.

These goals should primarily come from the Community Map where you have two columns’ worth of goals and actions. There will be additional goals as well, but you do want to ensure that the goals you have already identified from the community map are included here. The additional goals could be things like, increase visibility, recruit new funders, find new staff or volunteers, etc.

Step 3: Identify all the possible outlets.

Again, you can draw a lot of these from the community map, but you will probably find that this is an opportunity to be really specific, more specific than you were in the community map. For example, the community map may have identified facebook as a platform that one group uses. And in the content map you may list a facebook page as well as facebook events as you can create an event that’s tied to your page but publicizes and manages RSVPs for a one-time event.

Metrics Tracking

>> Get this template!

Remember – Even if you’re using google alerts and google analytics, you may not really be able to look at data over time in a critical way. You will have a good sense of where things are going or how people respond to content and actions, but tracking it like this means you can point to specific data to support your case. This template, like the others, is available at that link as a public google doc that you can save and reuse. It is not intended to be an end-all-be-all template, but it is designed to show you just how much you can be tracking. And get you thinking about where you may have more data points to add in. You’ll notice there are tabs for various platforms so that you can concentrate each view to one platform and measure points over time.

You will have data points that become irrelevant, it’s okay. You will also have data points that emerge later on down the road, and that’s okay, too! The tracking documents you use can be living, evolving documents. Be sure to add things in if they seem worth tracking and see how it goes.

Reporting

There is no point tracking what you’re doing if you aren’t reporting it! On my team, we have A LOT of things that we track. And it would be silly to think that we would have monthly reporting that covers all of it. Why? Well if we wanted to talk about all of it we would just look at the tracking documents! Instead, we have monthly reports that are created for two areas: content and community. They each pull out a few items that are noteworthy – whether it’s a change, a marked increase, or something we can see reflected in other areas of our work. And from those two reports, I create a global report that touches on the items highlighted from content and community as well as our programs.  It can be shared with the CEOs in a way that is directly translated into their understanding of our work as well as into their conversations with other organizations or funders.  These are a few tips for internal and external reporting.

Internal reporting:

• Weekly metrics for various platforms •Add metrics as you go
• Look at long term, not just short term changes
• Monthly reporting of trends and insights

External reporting:

• Share when there is something worth sharing
• Reporting context, not just numbers
• Ask for input and feedback

Example reports broken down by community and content may look like this:

Content:

• This blog post was the most read post of the month
• Facebook activity was highest around this kind of topic/content
• Newsletter subscriber numbers are not growing

Community:

• Participation at the recent event was high at # of people
• Interest in our example program has grown with # of inquiry calls/emails
• Volunteer numbers are dropping consistently over the last 3 months

Example contextual report may look like this:

• We are seeing the most interest around content of this type/topic and hope to share more content like that in the newsletter to spur interest
• With high turn out at events, yet volunteer numbers dropping, we hope to highlight volunteer opportunities and stories of volunteers at the next few events to measure impact
• We are looking to feature more information about our example program on the blog to help with the number of people interested in it

Thanks to all those who joined the webinar and for the folks at Nonprofit Webinars for inviting me to participate in the series! I had a lot of fun and hope it was useful for everyone. If you have other questions, please don’t hesitate to ask; and if you have examples or resources to share, please post them in the comments for other readers!

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Photo credit: richardjingram on Flickr

Location: online with Nonprofit Webinars

Topic: Do-It-Yourself Community Metrics

Description:  Social media, online campaigns, and community engagement can be tricky things to dive into and do well without measuring, monitoring and evaluating. But what to measure? How to evaluate? This session talks about the importance of data and metrics to your work and offers how-to guidelines on ways to map and monitor your community and your work.

Related Links:

• Nonprofit Webinars website
• Slides and notes
• Blog post

Location: Online

Topic: Social Media Basics

Description:  Social media tools provide a lot of opportunities to make local, offline connections and build community. This webinar will introduce some best practices, strategies, and next steps for getting started with social media for you organization.

Related Links:

• Washington Access Fund,
• Slides,
• Blog post with slides and resources

Resources

There were lots of great questions on the call and I have lots of resources to share to help answer those questions, get people moving in the right direction, and know where to go to keep learning.

The Social by Social book has How-Tos, Case studies, Jargon Buster and much more: http://socialbysocial.com

To get started building your own website, I recommend checking out the following options, all of which build on or can include a blog, and all of which include information about integrate or link to other existing blogs or websites:

• WordPress hosted (this has more limited options but WordPress hosts the content for you) or self-hosted (fully customizable but this means you have a server or want to use a hosting service)
• Squarespace
• SnapPages
• Wix

For a step by step guide to setting up your listening dashboard, visit:
https://amysampleward.org/2009/10/27/how-to-create-a-listening-dashboard-for-your-organization/

If you want to explore Twitter chats, I suggest checking out what various hashtags mean and use this list for a directory of chats: http://bit.ly/ChatSchedule

For a presentation about blogging, facebook and twitter for blind or partially sighted people, visit: http://blv1016.wordpress.com/

Here are two DIY guides for content and community mapping, you can do by yourself or with your whole organization:
https://amysampleward.org/2010/11/15/how-to-diy-community-content-mapping/

Research and reports from NTEN that cover everything from the way fundraising tools are used to data integration, databases and vendors: http://www.nten.org/research And if you’re looking specifically for information about various database/CRMs.

There’s also options online for new approaches to the press release, including this social media press release platform: http://pressitt.com/

Anything else?
If you were part of the webinar today or you reviewed the slides and resources here and have additional questions, just let me know! Use the comments below to share your additional resources or recommendations as well.

Location: Readytalk

Topic: Tools and Options for Selecting Social Media for Your Organization

Description:  The hardest part of getting started with social media is figuring out what tools your organization should use. How do you work through all the possibilities, hype, and data to decide which channels actually make sense for your organization? Look no further than this webinar series, “The Social Media Decision-Maker’s Toolkit”, brought to you through an Idealware & NTEN partnership. Over the course of 5 trainings, we’ll take the mystery out of the process and walk you through the creation of your own social media strategy, step by step.  I’ll contribute to this webinar as a guest speaker weighing on tools and options.

Related Links:

• The Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide
• Event details and resources