Six steps to social media savvy

flickr/Sanctu

Here are my assumptions—you’ve got a great website and an effective email strategy, both of which are part of a robust strategic communications plan. Now you want to start dipping your toe into social media—figuring out what Web 2.0 tools might be effective for you, how they work, and how much staff time and expertise it will take to start using them. That’s where my six steps come in.

First, let me say—good for you. You’ve taken the most important step of all, not running away from these new media tools! They’re already an important part of the communications environment, as was proved by the recent national election. Want more proof?

Nearly 75% of the American population uses the Internet. Worldwide data show that 83% of those using the Internet watch videos and television online; 78% read blogs; 57% are members of social networks, nearly 40% subscribe to live feeds, nearly 50% listen to podcasts; and 31% have started their own blogs. With the popularity of these tools growing every day (they’re expecting 500 million people on facebook within two years), you at least need to consider how they might advance your organization’s communications efforts.

These six steps offer a non-threatening way for nonprofits and foundations to get acquainted with social media in stages. You get comfortable using a few of them, then you can decide to expand your toolkit as your needs and capacity dictate. The crucial thing is just to start, even if you start small.

STEP ONE: LISTEN

flickr/Chaval

Monitor your organization’s reputation, issues, and media relations through alerts and live feeds. Keep abreast of who’s talking about you and your issues, and track industry news, the activities of your competition, and response to your media relations efforts. At minimum you should set up alerts for your organization’s name, your executive director’s name, and any other high-profile staff members. As you launch media relations pushes, add temporary alerts for key words so you can see what worked and who’s covering your issues.

ALERTS: Free tools like Google Alerts allow you to ask for updates once a day, once a week, or as change happens.

LIVE FEEDS: You can receive all new posts on selected blogs and websites by subscribing to a free live RSS feed. All new posts will then show up in yor email. To subscribe, look for an RSS gadet or Subscribe option on the page.

TWEETSCAN: Tweet Scan searches Twitter for your username or other words and sends daily activity right to your email.

STEP TWO: SHARE

flickr/furiousgeorge81

Nonprofits and foundations have long talked about the importance of community building—here’s your chance to do it online! Sharing your resources is a way to market your knowledge base. Some of these sharing tools take very little time and few resources, others take more. Start with the simple ones. And once you have, be sure to create links to them on your website.

Research

Social bookmarking is only a few years old but already a widespread phenomenon that let’s people share their online research—whether it’s helpful blog posts, PDF articles about best practices, or a news article that relates to your field. These bookmarking sites allow you to access your favorite online information from any computer, and are a safeguard against loss if your personal computer crashes. And, because you can create your bookmarks as open sources if you want, anyone can access your list and vice versa. This kind of sharing means that online research just got a lot less time consuming—you can mine the research of others doing work in the same field.

The most popular online bookmarking site is probably del.icio.us, which is organized through a tag system that categorizes your resources for you and for others tracking the same topic or tag. Forget about that old “links” section of your website—instead put a del.icio.us widget or tag cloud on your site or blog. It’s richer and more interactive.

Photos

At first this might seem like an odd thing for a nonprofit to do, but think creatively. It might be a good way to engage certain audiences: you could use social or traditional media to invite photo submissions from an event or about an issue, then create a slideshow of the best ones and feature it on your website or blog. It might be a good way to start an open source, public access photo collection about the impact of your organization, field, or issue. Here’s an ambitious example: Edmonton, Canada’s food bank is asking people around the world to post a photo of them making a food bank donation to the organization’s flickr or Facebook group. Their aim is one million pictures of one million food bank donations!

One of the most popular photo sharing sites is flickr, an enormous, searchable collection of photos, many of which are available through Creative Commons agreements for nonprofit public use with attribution. Again, flickr uses tags to create categories, and allows individuals to start groups that aggregate photos on a particular subject from various flickr users. Maybe you need to start a flickr group on your issue or cause, and ask your partners who have flickr accounts to add their own shots. Past a certain storage capacity, flickr charges a fee—but the free capacity is pretty large. This is a great way to start an online photo album with your partners. (Make sure you have rights to the photos!)

Presentations

If your staff members make PowerPoint or Google presentations that would useful and interesting to others, upload them to SlideShare—a free media sharing resource that can increase the reach of your seminars, workshops, and other meetings (and maybe even help you cut down on your members’ travel budgets). You can even create specific presentations to meet communication goals. For instance, if you want to share insights on issue framing without calling a meeting–create a presentation, put it on SlideShare, and let people know about it. The site is searchable so it’s a treasure trove of information. You can also upload SlideShare presentations to your organization’s LinkedIn page if you want.

Documents

Scribd is to printed matter what SlideShare is to presentations. It’s a free way to make your most relevant publications and documents available to a wide readership. These uploads can then be embedded in blogs and on websites.

Videos

flickr/Hochhaus-Stadtteile

YouTube, a free video sharing site, is the most visited place on the Internet. It’s also a great place for nonprofits and foundations to connect with new audiences, both to show them your issues/campaigns and to ask their help. You can produce different types of videos that dovetail with your strategic plan and rally support for your causes.

Be sure to sign up for a Youtube account through their Nonprofit Program page—your account will be subject to approval, but you will have access to range of page design and branding tools that allow you to make your institutional page very professional looking. And be sure to post your video to the Nonprofits and Activism channel. Beyond linking to your video on your website and blog, don’t forget to create a fuller marketing plan—however humble—for letting people know about your YouTube video. Vimeo and Viddler are other free video sharing sites you can use.

Podcasts

Travel budgets are not what they used to be, so if you want to reach a larger audience with your special events and workshops, try creating a podcast. For my money, it’s best to hire a professional to put your podcast together, but for those who want to dive into this medium themselves and save money, try Podomatic, a site that offers free podcast hosting, recording, tips, and tools for noncommercial podcasts. For ideas on podcast subjects for nonprofits, try techsoup’s advice.

STEP THREE: COMMENT

flickr/choconancy1

Web 2.0 is not about lectures, ads, or shouting through a megaphone. It’s about conversations, give and take…with the emphasis on give. The best way to start getting in on those conversations is to join ones that are already under way on blogs.

There are now millions of blogs. Technorati alone tracks 112 million, and that doesn’t include blogs in many other countries. Many of these blogs can be very helpful to nonprofits. There are blogs that discuss best practices, offer free professional development opportunities, or provide commentary on the latest news in your field. There are also community blogs that invite audio, video, and commentary submissions. All of these blogs are two-way channels—as a reader you have the ability to give bloggers feedback, point out something they’ve missed, guide them to online resources, or voice an opinion about their content.

To find blogs of interest to you and your organization, use two blog search engines: BlogSearch, the fastest and the best at unearthing blogs directly related to specfic topics, and Technorati, the most established engine and one that delivers the greatest number of results.

Explore the top results that seem relevant—who’s talking about the same kinds of issues and projects as you are? Who’s talking about your organization? Once you’ve found three or four blogs you think are worth following and cultivating a relationship with, subscribe to their RSS feeds and get new posts delivered to your mailbox. Even better, set up a free account with GoogleReader and have all your blog feeds aggregated and delivered in one convenient package. (GoogleReader can also deliver all your Alerts.)

Follow these blogs for a while—get familiar with the opinions, interests, and followers of the blogger. Read the comments, and look for posts that you can comment on in a helpful way—directing people to the best online resources or relevant news, voicing an opinion that provides new data or sheds new light, etc. This is NOT the place for shameless self-promotion. That’s spam, and no one likes it. Your goal is always to enhance the conversation, which requires generosity. Blog comments are a place for you to draw attention to the work or resources of others, not just promote your own. A good rule of thumb is for every comment promoting your organization, you should make four comments that are not self-promoting. This is, after all, about building community.

STEP FOUR: BLOG

flickr/amanky

Once you’re familiar with blogs and have followed and interacted with some for a while, consider creating a blog for your nonprofit or foundation. I say consider because you have to make sure that a blog advances your communications strategy and that you can afford the cost and staff time in keeping it going. If you can’t blog at least once a week, this tool may not be for you. Keeping a fresh stream of content flowing is the heart of the medium.

There are a couple of reasons blogs are so desirable–first, they attract more attention from search engines; and second because they provide continuous engagement with your audiences, which makes them more likely to remain supporters.

Blogs can serve as a social media home base for you. Having this base will keep you from having to manage separate conversations on all of your social media sites, and it will give you a central location to manage content (updates on events, contact information, educational materials, etc.)

Treat it as your communications hub, like a cross between a website and a newsletter. Other social media tools—like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook —can then feed into your blog. Be sure your blog is on Technorati and StumbleUpon to increase traffic.

If you have no budget and want to build a blog yourself—use Blogspot. You can be blogging in a couple of hours. If you want more flexibility in design and aren’t afraid of learning a little html—use WordPress.com. You can create either for free, and they each offer lots of free widgets and features to add. I’ve seen great blogs on both sites. Or you can hire someone to create a blog for you—even locate it on your website.

Think about different types of blogs you might create—a story and pictures blog that conveys your organization’s human impact; a blog that follows news and developments on a particular issue; or a blog that features the opinions and writing of a key individual from your nonprofit–for instance, your executive director. CEO blogs are getting more common and can be pretty successful if the posts are are frequent, include useful links, use a personal voice, and express a point of view that reflects the individual (and the institution).

A good Minnesota example is the blog of Kate Barr, executive director of the Nonprofits Assistance Fund. The blog is embedded in the group’s website, which many organizations are choosing to do. Some executive bloggers even choose to comment on the content of other blogs—like Paul Brest, the president of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, who blogs about philanthropy on the Huffington Post. For CEOs, the beauty of blogging is that the posts are short and highly linked, and only take a couple of hours a week to do.

You blog should be branded but human. Its credibility will depend on how well you avoid focusing only on your organization. Think about what might advance the larger field and empower others working on the same issues. Demonstrate leadership through generosity and giving credit to others.

Two things to remember about blogging: 1) it’s a two-way street, following and responding to the comments are as important as posting; and 2) you will want to set up the comments so you can review them before they get posted. You want to maintain some control of what appears on your site and also to block spammers. But, don’t give in to the temptation to censor comments because they disagree with your opinions or offer criticism. The Web 2.0 world is about leveling the playing field—and that means opening the door for others to comment on your work. It feels risky, but it’s all part of the move to greater participation and transparency. If your institution can’t make a commitment to this kind of two-way communication, a blog probably isn’t for you.

STEP FIVE: JOIN

flickr/james_michael_hill

Social networking sites are the online hubs where you find your new friends and supporters. You used to have to send out 10,000 letters to find 100 friends. Now you can find ten friends who each have 100 friends who each have 100 friends—and they become your partners and emissaries. Their person-to-person recommendations are far more influential than any promotional brochure. Their friendship can make your stronger as an organization.

No, it doesn’t happen overnight. Give yourself a year to experiment before you start to try to evaluate the results from your participation in these networks. Make sure you put links to your online network pages on all your emails, and that they are linked to your website. Also stay tuned to here to keep up with case studies and best practices of how other nonprofits and foundations are using these tools to build support, raise funds, and change the world.

There are dozens of social networking opportunities, from Twitter to Ning. Be judicious about where you invest your time. Start small, and delve into user data (Quantcast is a great source) so you’re not wasting your time trying to reach baby boomers on sites that have young demographics. Also be aware that demographics are changing all the time, and many of the newest adopters are indeed 45 and over.

I’m only going to talk about three of the social networks that hold promise for nonprofits and foundations: LinkedIn, FaceBook, and Ning. Always remember to tie your social network experimentation to your strategic communications plan. You don’t want to spend time building a presence on these sites if you haven’t thought through how it will advance your organization. And remember to use these sites to link to your blog, website, and other online presences.

LinkedIn

flickr/daawn

Think of LinkedIn as the professional’s Facebook—it’s the place you connect with people related to your work life. The site’s been upgraded a lot in the past year and now offers much richer content and wider linkages. Consider establishing an online presence there in two ways: as a company and as a group.

Your company page can include your logo, a descriptive paragraph or two (focus on the human impact of what you do as well as describing what you do), a list of your employees, new hires, and recent promotions/changes (ideally, all of whom should be on LinkedIn as individuals as well), and information about related organizations, your geography, and key statistics.

You can use several applications to enrich the content on your company page…include a presentation, link to a blog, conduct a quick poll, start a shared reading list, use Huddle for internal networking, and even keep track of any Twitter comments about your company.

Your group page is where your friends come to join, participate in discussions, and track news, updates, and other members. You should include your logo, your website address, and a very brief description of your work–again, try to emphasize the impact of what you do. You want this short copy to be compelling.

Think of innovative ways that you can keep whoever joins your group interested, engaged, and feeling appreciated. These are your friends…who have friends who have friends. All of them can have your group badge on their individual LinkedIn pages, which is like free advertising. They are the core of your social media network and can help you get out word about issues and events, as well as reach new people.

But you have to offer them useful information, interesting discussions, and updates that are “sticky” enough to keep them coming back. Note: the administrator of a LinkedIn group has access to a downloaded list of members’ emails—that may help if you’re planning an email strategy.

Facebook

flickr/laughingsquid

Before you sit down and create a Facebook page for your nonprofit or foundation, think through what you want to achieve with it. Although all these social media tools are still experimental,  you do need goals.

This may be the place you try to reach new audiences who aren’t that familiar with your organization or work. This may be the place you try a little online organizing for a special project. Or it may be the place you undertake long-term cultivation of a whole new universe of supporters that may eventually be important to your fundraising.

There are two ways nonprofits and foundations can have a presence on Facebook—through pages or groups. A page is your official promotional site, and can only be started by your official representative. Pages are visible to everyone, are more engaging and can be tailored to specific campaigns or causes. They also allow you to track visitor stats. Groups—which can be started by anyone to support a cause—can be less exciting and don’t track visits, but do allow you to send bulk email invites to all group members. Groups can be open to anyone or open only to those approved by the group administrator. A good place to start on Facebook is with a page. See how that works and then, if you want the additional features offered by groups, start one.

To create a Facebook page for a nonprofit, start here and choose BRAND, then scroll down to choose nonprofit, put in the name of your organization and you’ve started. Be aware that only an official representative of your organization can create and maintain the Facebook page. Try to keep you page clean, focused, and lively—here’s a great example. Most features on pages are default: fans, discussion boards, events, notes, photos, video wall, etc. But try to brand your page as much as you can—even by the choices you make of what’s high and low, what photos are large, etc.   Keep content as fresh and rich as you can. And keep your messages simple, clear,  consistent, and focused on human impact. Here are some Facebook best practices to consider.

Once you’ve got your page, start scouting fans right away through Facebook’s search engine. Search for employees, members, supporters, volunteers, and even board members who have facebook pages, and request them to be your friend. Even a small group of fans is a good beginning—remember each of them has friends and they can help your fan base grow over time.

For 10 innovative ways for nonprofits to use Facebook in their strategic communications, check out this post on Wild Apricot.

Ning

If you want to start your own branded social media network around a specific topic or project, Ning might be for you.  It’s free (for the basic level of service), simple to use, and can get you up and running in less than an hour. It doesn’t include a fundraising feature, but it’s a great way to reach out to supporters and keep them engaged. In the past 20 months, there have been nearly 600,000 social networks created on Ning.

Here are two cool case studies to show you how Ning might help you reach your communications goals. First, learn how the Community Media Workshop’s Ning site  is used to build on their face-to-face training sessions. Then, check out how a teacher at South Mountain Community College uses Ning to build community among the students in her courses. Two inspirational examples that will spark your own ideas. The Nonprofit Roundtable in DC created a Ning site called Nonprofit 911 that’s trying to redefine the way the nonprofit sector operates (more collaborative fundraising) in light of the current economic crisis.

STEP SIX: WIKI

flickr/tbc

Again, use wiki only if it makes sense and advances your communication goals. But it’s a fun tool and almost as easy to do as wordprocessing. A wiki (wiki wiki means quickly in Hawaiian) is a website that can be quickly created and continuously added to and edited by an approved group of users. It’s a true product of collaboration. The biggest wiki effort to date is of course Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia with which many of you are familiar.

You need minimal skills to start and maintain a wiki, and the tool is very flexible—allowing you to embed links, documents, and multimedia. You can create your own free wiki at wikispaces or pbworks. Just follow the instructions. (It typically involves no involvement by the IT department!)

Wikis are used for knowledge sharing, document creation, event planning, and other kinds of collaborative efforts. Here are a few ways nonprofits are using wikis that can spur your imagination.

• One nonprofit  is setting up a wiki and a blog to support a learning community of practitioners who want to improve their skills and programs as they work with youth around issues of poverty and homelessness. The wiki will be the private area where they can share, accumulate stories; discuss best practices; evaluate progress, document learning, and receive feeback from peers on learning plans.

• A philanthropic and nonprofit center that was holding a conference to convene emerging nonprofit workers set up a wiki so the conference planning committee could collaborate with one another and access materials.

• A nonprofit neighborhood association in a troubled urban area started a wiki on the history of the neighborhood and all the resources it offers.

• An international nonprofit that promotes peace has members all over the world and chapters is several places. With so many people dispersed around the globe, the organization needed a way to communicate, centralize information, and ease collaboration. The solution—a wiki.

Thanks to all the nonprofit social media experts online who contributed to these six steps through the infinite wisdom on their blogs and the generosity of their spirits. Most are included on my Gurus and Gems page.

Thanks also to the wonderful photographers whose work is shown above. Here are the links to their Creative Commons pages: Sanctu, Chaval Brasil, Furiousgeorge81, Hochhaus Stadtteile, Choconancy1, Amanky, James_Michael_Hill, Daawn, Laughing Squid, and tbc.