Radian6 just published ROI of Social Media: Myths, Truths and How to Measure by Dr. Natalie L Petouhoff. Well written and compact (only 16 pages) it moves very quickly from what to measure to how to measure. I will address what to measure because that’s particularly hard to address with nonprofits.
Just as marketing at for-profits looks at increased sales, CFO’s at nonprofits look for increased donations. But with the increased participation of marketing, communications, public relations, development and programming in SM, the goals and objectives have grown and diversified. Chapter 4 lists eight SM business goals:

1. “Determine what customers and prospects are saying about your company via social media monitoring
2. Gather competitive intelligence
3. Engage with customers and prospects online
4. Build thought leadership through sharing relevant content
5. Maximize reach of content and messaging in social channels
6. Support existing sales and marketing campaigns
7. Support recruiting and retention efforts
8. Build customer community to provide support and advocacy”

Depending on the organization and its mission, different constituencies have different interests, they include:

• Advisory Committee(s)
• Board Members
• Chairman of the Board
• Customers
• Development
• Donors
• Executive Director
• Members
• Programming
• Prospects
• Staff in general
• Volunteers

And because nonprofit organizations are, to use de Toqueville’s description, voluntary associations, participants may change their role but retain their interest. So for every constituency there are several more, such as: prospective ____, high level ____, past _____, etc.

Ultimately everything matters to everybody. In my view, the most important goal is to “build … community to provide support and advocacy,” or to start the online conversation. And one essential step is to track the number of participants who are in a position to contribute. Having thousands of friends or followers can make a SM manager believe they are getting the word out, but if most are thousand of miles away, they are not adding value. One hundred contributors within the community can be more effective because they are in a better position to share ideas, suggestions, donations, time, referrals, and contacts.

Be prepared with goals and stats before the CFO comes knocking. It will allow you the opportunity to define the goals of SM, as opposed to having them defined for you.

The term ”crowdsourcing” was coined 5 years ago by Jeff Howe in a Wired magazine article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing.”  Wikipedia, a remarkable example of how powerful crowdsourcing can be, describes the term as “the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community (crowd) through an open call.”  Howe also authored THE book on the topic.

Now we learn that big firms are adopting the ideas behind crowdsourcing. The WSJ article describes how AOL evaluated executing a project by (1) developing software, (2) hiring temps and finally (3) crowdsourcing the effort. Crowdsourcing is generally “cheaper and faster” than hiring temps.

Nonprofits are poised to take advantage of volunteers  and donors eager to contribute to their cause.  Exemplars include the Red Cross and many religious organizations that perform an outstanding job of leveraging their volunteers.

When it comes to Social Media, nonprofits have been more timid because it requires both coordination (between and within their hundreds of affiliates) and management (including training, development, supervision, …)  It also requires “breaking the project down into tiny component tasks and farming those tasks out to the general public” and that requires strategy, planning and (above all) management support.

Volunteer
Working as a volunteer for nonprofit groups supports the cause, permits you to stretch in a new direction, and can yield benefits for business development.

A brief foray into local politics for the Roosevelt Island Residents Association led to media coverage and, in turn, a referral to Denise Shull, a Behavioral Finance specialist. Denise counsels hedge fund managers and traders and has a book in press. Now, she’s a client.

On the contact side, by serving on the Communications Committee for 100 Women in Hedge Funds I met hedge fund reporter Erin Arvedlund .

It was only natural that I introduced them and — you guessed it — their lively conversation led to a personal finance article in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Denise and the new book.

Where will you volunteer? You’re acquainted with neighborhood associations, the congregation where you worship, local historical societies, community arts groups, plus the area chapter of national cause-driven organizations.

You can also comb online databases to find opportunities that match your professional skills and interests. If your busy schedule keeps you tied to your desk, consider serving the greater good from your home computer, at night, in your pajamas. No meetings required.
Resources
These websites led me to local, national and international nonprofits:
www.VolunteerMatch.org
www.NYCService.org
www.CatchaFire.org
www.Idealist.org

You can also get started by joining the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service on Monday, January 16. Schools, the financial markets and government offices are closed. You can shop the sales after you do your part.

Volunteer: Do Good, Make Contacts, Get Clients in 2012.
Janet

www.janetlfalk.com
janet@janetlfalk.com
212.677.5770

A quick recap follows:

11 New Year’s Resolutions for Nonprofit Social Media Managers

JANUARY 3, 2012

1. Create a “Thank You” video(s) for your 2012 fundraising campaigns … to stand out from all the noise.

2. Learn basic HTML … to add social networking icons, a Donate Now button, or an e-newsletter subscribe link to your blog, default landing page on Facebook, or to Flickr … href=”http://www.diosacommunications.com/htmltipsheet.htm

3. Diversify your news sources.

4. View your nonprofit’s website on a tablet and smartphone browser ASAP!

5. Subscribe to receive text alerts from the early adopters in the nonprofit sector… in the United States … to receive text alerts from Nonprofit Tech 2.0, … text NONPROFITORGS to 27138.

6. Send handwritten notes to donors and supporters…. Buy some nice stationary (preferably on recycled paper) and send handwritten thank you notes to donors, volunteers, and even your most committed online activists.

7. Pay attention to Internet TV trend and consider launching your own TV station.

8. Wrap your head around the Cloud… a server/service where you can store your hard drive/database/documents/apps/software making it accessible any where at any time thus giving it mobility.

9. Closely monitor the possibility of mobile wallets being used for fundraising.

10. Make new friends (Google+) and keep the old (Myspace)… We might just discover that sometimes social networking communities simply go dormant and can brought back to life. I got my start on Myspace, so personally I would love to see the community revitalized.

11. Donate at least $10 monthly to your favorite (but different) nonprofits … and study the donation process.

The column identifies 7 actions to tackle your to-do list:

1. “Limit list to concrete tasks
2. Assign a priority to each task
3. Plan time in schedule for each task
4. Group tasks by where they’ll be performed
5. List only as many items as can be realistically accomplished (in a day, week, etc.)
6. Cross off or delete completed tasks
7. Start a new list”

As Community Manager of your organization, it’s easy to lose track of your day. This is especially true with nonprofits where management tends to jump from one emergency to another. But we know that building and sustaining a community is more than a full time project, and the larger the community, the greater the need and attention they require.

At minimum a Community Manager should focus on the CEO (Connect, Empower, Orchestrate) action steps:

GOAL:  Connect with your audience
TASKS: Target the audience, identify interests, triggers, grow the community

GOAL: Empower your community
TASKS: Identify volunteers, influencers, select tools, encourage participation

GOAL: Orchestrate the conversation
TASKS: Relate organizational mission to conversation, identify topics relevant to community, track contributors, …

For those more ambitious, here are more traditional approaches to identifying your goals and accomplishing your tasks (Wikipedia is a good resource):

Identify your Goals:

• Covey Quadrants: Distinguish between what’s important/not important and urgent/not urgent. Focus on important but not (yet) urgent. Responding to a member suggestion could be important and urgent, posting daily on Facebook may not be.
• SMART goals: Develop goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.
• 80/20 Rule: Focus on tasks that will give you the biggest bang for the buck — getting one new affiliate online every week can add many new members
• Backwards Planning: When setting up a goal (building up an online community), think about it’s component parts (identify community, discover interests and triggers, …) and which steps will help you build up to your goal.

Accomplish your tasks:

• Monotasking: Don’t try to work on more than one task at a time
• Checklists: Use lists to manage your day/week/ and goals/projects
• Big Rocks: Face up to the big challenges, don’t walk around them
• Eat the Frog: Perform unpleasant tasks first, your day will look brighter as they get done
• Time Boxing: Give yourself a deadline
• Batch Process: handle similar things at the same time — all emails, phone calls, etc
• Handle items only once: complete each task as you take it on

MyCustomer.com summarized key developments in social media (and my comments):
1. “Outsourcing social media is back in fashion” (only when #3, #5 and #6 are resolved)
2. “We’re moving into the age of collaboration” (hard to manage and coordinate)
3. “Many brands still need to learn how to respond to online criticism” (harder still)
4. “Social media monitoring and ‘socialytics’ are growing in prominence”
5. “We can measure social media ROI – if ROI means return on ignorance”
6. “Organisations are starting to consider a more holistic view – the social business” (hardest)

These topics will be addressed at the May 31 Social Business Strategy Summit 2012, “to discuss how firms are transforming internally and externally to support their connected stakeholders through the deployment of social business strategies and technologies”.

Sounds like time well spent.

Two key points:

1. “(Twitter) isn’t just another marketing channel … it’s more like a conversation they need to join or risk losing influence over how consumers view them or their brands”.

2. “(Twitter) has become a very public complaint line, and … caused plenty of embarrassment”. The column lists several examples, including the recent episode with Alec Baldwin and American Airlines.

The column then discusses how distinctly the companies are organized:

Southwest Airlines: 1.2 million followers. 10 people tweet from within the PR department but include customer relations training and expertise. They field “questions about lost baggage, delayed flights and misplaced drink coupons”.

Whole Foods: 2.1 million followers. One employee serves as Community Manager and monitors reputation and creates events.

Best Buy: 40 thousand followers. Three thousand employees participate. Tweets with problems are frequently asked to email their issues.

Our Take Away:

As social media matures it tends to specialize. Companies regarded Twitter as a new marketing channel, but are responding to their customers by incorporating customer relations. Adding a layer of tweeters (whether 1 @wholefoods, 10 @southwestair or 3000 @twelpforce) brings up organizational, communication, coordination, technical, monitoring and training issues.

It will be interesting to watch how companies will reconfigure the Social Media team(s) when new requirements and/or new mishaps emerge.

And:

Large nonprofits have a distinctive organizational structure that reflects their communities and fundraising strategies.  It will be interesting to watch how they use the many social media channels to engage with their various constituents: donors, staff, volunteers, members, …

John was hired by the Director of Communications, who reported to the Chief Marketing Officer. His title was Assistant to Communications Director. His responsibilities were fairly straightforward: take our direct mail pieces and press releases and convert them to the various SM channels, monitor ROI, help other chapters (there were 62 chapters nationwide) and train management on how to use facebook and twitter.

Natalie worked for a smaller organization (43 chapters worldwide) but seemed to have a freer hand in deploying social media. Her title was Associate Online Coordinator. She reported to the Chief Marketing Officer and was asked to “manage YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and make sure we are not embarrassed by some of the participants.” The Chairman was not pleased by typos in Facebook and the occasional inappropriate joke on Twitter.

John and Natalie had both been interns at a large international nonprofit, where they helped manage Twitter and Facebook accounts. During their internships, they often discussed “what should we post” and that discussion led them to “who are we addressing” which they researched by trying to categorize their followers and friends into different buckets: individuals, employees, directors and board members, other chapters, other organizations. The conversation generally whirled around how few individuals there were, and isn’t that our goal to “engage” with current and future donors. Then they got busy with specific announcements and creating the copy for their tweets and FB posts to get them approved before they were posted. It seemed that planning always took a backseat to deadlines.

The panel discussion they attended that morning was exciting: stories about how different nonprofits were using SM to grow the brand and message, raise online donations and engage members to “crowdsource” the mission. They were giddy to learn that such simple tools could accomplish soooo much.

After lunch, they both headed back to the auditorium, hoping the discussion would address their individual challenges: Natalie wanted to know how to work with the CMO to develop SM goals for her nonprofit, John was concerned about managing current and future participants in the different chapters.

Organizations are doing busywork without stepping back to ask the question, “how do we take advantage of social media to fulfill our goals?”

After graduation, Jeff moved to Pittsburgh to work at a nonprofit. The CMO asked Jeff to “set us up on Facebook, Twitter, Ning, MySpace, FourSquare and the rest of the bunch … and make sure you and Jim, the intern, get as many donors to start giving”. Jeff had not heard of Ning. On FourSquare, he was Mayor of Top Hat, the bar next to his apartment, but unsure how that would help and had assumed MySpace was no longer in operation.

Jim was enthusiastic and wanted to get started right away. Jeff was concerned about how to set it up on Facebook, and then what to do or say to get “donors to start giving.”

Jeff was not alone. Affiliates around the country had been directed to “become more proactive on Social Media” and use the “new generation to get online donations.” The 80 affiliates around the country had, so far, a nominal online presence, and the national headquarters, had many followers from the rank and file but little to show in terms of donors, board members, trustees or clients and their relatives.

Jeff emailed the national CTO in DC who was heading the Social Media effort on suggestions he might have.  The ping back was “use your best judgement … we are dealing with some data-base issues”.

Technically, both Jeff and Jim could easily set up an online profile.  Jeff used Facebook to connect with friends and family and a couple of non-profits he liked,  Twitter to stay in touch with his teams and bands, and  Foursquare for his buddies.  Could he find donors to follow each channel and would they be interested in the same things.

In Cleveland, Kathy in Marketing received different instructions: create a Facebook account.  Kathy was not comfortable with the PC .  She used email but still had a Rolodex and calendar for appointments.  With her assistant they set up a Facebook page and added content by copying text from their local website. Then Kathy moved on to work on the annual mailing campaign.

In Boston and San Francisco the affiliates had hired a dedicated staff to manage Facebook and Twitter.  In fact, those affiliates had more fans and followers than National in DC.  And those fans and followers were local individuals as opposed to National that essentially had many followers from affiliates across the map.

And so it goes.

Many organizations are jumping on the social media wagon before the horse is properly hitched. While social media was designed for individuals, organizations present unexpected challenges:

1. Controlling your message

2. Monitoring the conversation

3. Training & developing contributors

4. Managing time and resources

5. Communicating effectively across channels