You Need A Strategy, Dammit, Not A Twitter Account
1. You need a strategy,
dammit, not a Twitter account
JD Lasica & Carla A. Schlemminger
Socialbrite.org
team@socialbrite.org
April 5, 2012
2. Today’s hashtag
Tweet this preso! Hashtag: #12NTCdammit
Creative Commons
photo on Flickr
by Prakhar
handles: @jdlasica & @carlainsf
3. Relax!
Creative Commons
BY photo on Flickr
by Tom@HK
http://socialbrite.org/NTC
4. What we’ll cover today
Look at the landscape
1. Lay the groundwork
2. Meaningful metrics
3. Content: Storytelling &
production processes
4. Use your community
5. Integrate your efforts
Q&A, hugs, tearful goodbyes
7. THE ECOSYSTEM
Social media a game-changer
• Blogs
• Social networks
• Microblogs (Twitter)
• Online video (YouTube,
Vimeo, Dailymotion)
• Widgets
• Photo sharing (Flickr,
Photobucket, etc.)
• Podcasts
• Virtual worlds
• Wikis
• Social bookmarking
• Forums
• Presentation sharing
8. Staggering growth
• 77% US adults are frequent social media users.*
• 150 million active blogs; 1 million blog posts created per day
• 6 of top 10 websites in US are social sites (YouTube,
Facebook, Wikipedia, Blogger, Craigslist, Twitter)
• Twitter: 100+ million active users, 250 million tweets per day
• Flickr: 35 million people, 4 billion-plus photos
• YouTube: 3 billion videos watched per day
• 8 trillion text messages sent in 2011
*source: Nielsen Online, spring 2010
9. Facebook: The social network
850 million members worldwide —
76% of US Internet users are on Facebook
900
600
300
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009 0
2010
2011
Today
Facebook’s global growth rate, 2004-2012, in millions
10. 1 . L AY T H E G R O U N D W O R K
Big picture reality check
Before we talk tools, technology or campaigns, do a
self-assessment with your team.
Why are you doing this?
What core values drive your
organization?
What change would you like
to see in the world?
Is there clarity about what your
organization is trying to achieve?
Why should people care?
Do you have an idea worth spreading?
11. Before you plunge in ...
• Understand that social media is a series of stages: crawl,
walk, run, fly
• Do you have buy-in from top management?
• Do you have a social media policy or guidelines?
• Do you have a Strategic Social Media Plan in place?
• Have you defined a clear theme or call to action?
• Are you listening to your constituents & community?
• Have you built a program before you turn to a campaign?
• Have you identified and trained your team members?
12. Have you defined a clear theme?
Boil down your mission to a strong phrase or sentence
Vittana:
Help anyone go to college
Alter Eco:
Support fair trade
ActBlue:
Elect progressive candidates
DonorsChoose:
Support public classrooms in need
14. Elements of a Strategic Plan
• 360 assessment of social
media capabilities
• Spell out goals
• Identify online community
• Proposed use of social
tools & platforms
• Recommendations on
expanded capabilities
• Lay out metrics program
• Competitive/peer analysis
15. CASE STUDY
Bread for World’s SM goals
bread.org
1. Expand and strengthen
Bread’s advocacy work for
poor and hungry people
2. Expand our membership
3. Better communicate with
existing members and target
audiences
4. Strengthen our relationships
with our members
5. Fulfill our mission to end
hunger here and abroad
16. E S TA B L I S H G O A L S
How can you use social media?
• Raise public awareness of your mission or cause
• Raise funds for a cause or campaign
• Reach new constituents & supporters
• Build a community of champions
• Recruit volunteers
• Get people to take real-world actions
• Enhance existing communications programs
• Involve the community in decision-making
• Advance your organization’s mission
17. 2. MEANINGFUL METRICS
Before you start, measure!
‘Data is better than gut’: Gather, analyze, act
Photos on Flickr by Emran Kassim, left, and Vee Dub (CC-BY)
18. THE METRICS PROCESS
INFORMATION
INSIGHTS
KPIs
Who, how, why
Funnel ACTION
of love
19. Map metrics to goals
Business goals KPIs to measure
• Grow email list # newsletter subscribers
• SEO: Increase online visibility increase in traffic or linkback #s
• Increase comments on blog avg. # comments/post
• Increase positive mentions of mentions or pick-ups in blogs
organization or program & social networks
• Have visitors stick around stick rate, bounce rate
• Make our content more viral # of shares
• Get people to take action # of petition signatures
• Get people to attend event # of registrants, year over year
20. New metrics of engagement
Beyond page views
"We don't really care about
page views as much as we care
about comments. If we get
1,000 video views, that is good.
The comments are a focus
group with our influencers. If
they like it, they'll spread it and
that helps get us to our
objectives."
- Jake Brewer, PowerShift
21. GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL
Why long tail keywords matter
https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer
22. EXERCISE
What does your site rank for?
Search your own site’s keyword juju
on semrush.com & spyfu.com
23. Set up a metrics program
1. Get buy-in at the top
2. Identify a Chief Metrics Guru
& give him or her support
3. Interview stakeholders across depts.
to identify key goals & target audiences
4. Create internal document that ties these
goals to specific KPIs you can track
5. Identify tools to use and begin tracking
6. Print out monthly reports, circulate among key execs and
managers. Make this a part of someone’s job.
7. Spend time analyzing the data & drawing conclusions
8. Refine and fine-tune
30. Find your internal storytellers
• List staffers’ skills
• Who’s good at photos?
• Video?
• Writing?
• Facebook or Twitter?
• Create a Blog Squad
• Who’s good at campaigns?
• Open your blog to guest posts
34. 4. USE YOUR COMMUNITY
Don’t do all the heavy lifting!
Creative Commons
photo on Flickr by
Jason Means
Don’t be like this guy!
35. Build community, not eyeballs
here’s an amazing
difference between building
an audience and building a
community. An audience
will watch you fall on a
sword. A community will fall
on a sword for you.
— Chris Brogan
Author, “Trust Agents”
37. Find your champions!
• Find the big kahunas in your sector by using a listening post.
Then, influence the influencers. Post on their blogs & retweet.
• Establish a rapport and only then reach out to try to convert
them into evangelists & ambassadors for your cause.
• Scope out Twitter Lists that intersect with your organization
or social cause.
• Useful tools: Klout, SocialMention, Google Analytics.
39. Enable friction-free conversations
Make sure your site is
conversation-enabled!
Lower the barriers to people
talking about your cause by using
third-party authentication services.
Left: SpokenWord.org with
multiple log-in options.
40. CASE STUDY
Make your cause tangible
http://charitywater.org/projects/map/
Average mycharitywater campaigner raises $1,000
41. Meet up in the real world
Meetups, Tweet-ups, concerts, fund-raisers to deepen ties
43. EXERCISE
Create a mobile calling card
Text 'jdlasica' to 50500
Create your own at http://contxts.com
44. CASE STUDIES
Much more than Text2Give
The Cove campaign: Text DOLPHIN to 44144
Start & grow a mobile list
• Calls to action
• Alerts
• Feedback loop
• Reaches new constituents
Text HELPME
to 30644
45. Is your site mobile-ready?
WPtouch Pro for mobile phones, Onswipe for iPad
46. The awesome power of free
Free content! Free resources!
• Free photos • Socialbrite.org/sharing-center
• Free videos (eg, TED talks) • Creativecommons.org
• Free music & audio • Techsoup
Free services! Free expertise!
• Google Grants • BarCamp
• YouTube for Nonprofits • PodCamp
• Google Earth for Nonprofits • WordCamp
• Social Media Club
Free software & platforms!
• WordPress & its plug-ins
• Open Office, Google docs
• Drupal, Joomla
47. flickr.com/creativecommons
Creativecommons.org
• Rich source of free
commercial & noncommercial
images
• Flickr: 210 million licenses
• Use them for your blog,
website, email or print
newsletter, presentations, etc.
• Don’t just take. Share!
48. 5 . I N T E G R AT E Y O U R E F F O R T S
Is your strategy aligned?
Case study: thehopeinstitute.us
Moving from tactics to strategy: Direct mail, events marketing
& social media working as an integrated ecosystem
49. Integrate social into the culture
• Create teams of participants.
• Knock down the silos.
• Get people using the tools.
Use ‘reverse mentoring.’
• Share monthly metrics reports.
Photo on Flickr by lanuiop
• Provide evidence of how social
media moved the needle.
• Shine a light on examples of
employees doing social media
well — reward best practices. Convert the skeptics
50. RESOURCES
Productivity tools
• Google docs
• LibreOffice
• Google groups
• Private group on
Facebook
• Project management
(Huddle.net, SharePoint)
• Skype
51. SOCIAL MEDIA DASHBOARDS
Pace yourself, don’t stress!
HootSuite ThinkUp
Tweetdeck Spredfast
Crowdbooster Netvibes
http://bit.ly/smdash
52. Key takeaways
• Begin with an aligned strategy,
not with the tools.
• Measure, measure, measure.
Evaluate, iterate, relaunch.
• Tell your stories!
• Use your community — your
biggest resource: your supporters!
53. Don’t settle for the status quo
If you do not change
direction, you may
end up where you
are heading.
— Lao Tse
55. Evaluate this session
Each entry has a chance to win
an NTEN-engraved iPad!
3 OPTIONS:
1. Text #12NTCdammit to
69866
2. Scan this QR code
3. Go online to nten.org/
ntc/eval
