Insights into what we learned about the 2nd Annual Nonprofit Digital Storytelling Challenge (#TSDigs) in January 2011.

1. TechSoup
DIGITAL STORYTELLING CHALLENGE 2011
#TSDigs
Metrics + Learnings

2. There was a Digital Storytelling Event held in January
2011, which involved various activities including 2
webinars, 3 live TwitterChats, a special storytelling
page and a contest for the best digital story.
The event was an extraordinary success in terms
of org involvement and participation; although the
impact on product donation and org registration was
more moderate. Here are the results:

3. Submissions
There were 104 submissions for the Digital Story Challenge. 27 of
these submissions were from organizations registered at TechSoup.
And 22 of the people that participated in the challenge attended one
of the storytelling webinars.
In relation to donations, 4 nonprofits that participated in the challenge
received a donation during the period of the event, and for 1 of them
it was the very first time receiving a donation.

4. Online Community
17 members of the Google group of Online Community participated in the
storytelling challenge. Overall, 33 members attended one of the storytelling
webinars.
Of the 175 registered organizations that are members of the Online
Community, 17 received a donation during the period of the event, and 9
received a donation from one of the featured programs of this event (Flip
Video, Flickr, Citrix, Adobe).

5. Webinars
There were 2 webinars dedicated to storytelling in January – ‘How to Tell Your
Digital Story’ and ‘Tools for Digital Storytelling’. They were a major success; in
fact, ‘How to Tell Your Digital Story’ set a new record of people attending a
webinar, with 702 attendees, and ‘Tools for Digital Storytelling’, with 561
attendees, became the second most attended webinar ever.
In terms of registered organizations, these 2 webinars also set a new high,
with the first webinar having 201 registered orgs attending, and the second
one, 203 orgs, a number 46% higher than the previous peak. In total, 321
distinct orgs attended either of the 2 webinars.
Of the orgs attending the webinars, 16 received donations during the time of
the storytelling event, and for 6 of them it was the first time ever they had
received a donation from us. Regarding donations from the programs featured
as part of the storytelling event, only 2 orgs ordered from these programs.

6. Storytelling Main Page
The main page for the Digital Storytelling Event was quite popular, being
highly visited during the time of the event. The page was viewed 2,763 times
between 1/13 and 1/31, which would put it in #3 if it were compared
against the top Learning Center articles.
Another way to see how highly viewed the Storytelling page was, is by
comparing it with the 15,000 views the Microsoft program page had in the
same time period – the storytelling page had 17% of the popularity of the
MS page, which is quite substantial given that MS represents 63% of total
income of the product donation program.
In terms of the specific contribution of the storytelling page in product
donations, this page was directly responsible for 6 orgs getting donations
from one of the featured programs of the event (Flip Video, Flickr, Citrix,
Adobe)
In February, despite the event being over, the digital storytelling page
attracted over 2,000 visits.

7. Summary
Overall 519 registered organizations were involved in the Storytelling Event,
either by attending a webinar, being part of the Online Community, receiving
a donation after visiting the Storytelling page, or by participating in the Digital
Story challenge.
54 of these orgs received a donation during the period of the event, and 20
received a donation (21 orders total) from one of the featured programs of
the event; for 14 of the 54, it was their first time ever receiving a donation
from Techsoup.
The storytelling event drove the registration of 5 organizations.

9. Social Media
Facebook + Twitter

10. Facebook
Screenshots + Insights

11. OVERVIEW
by the numbers
Facebook
Page Likes (Fans) ▲371 ▲56% / ▲9% *
Post Views 313, 867 ▲80%
Post Feedback 205 ▲141%
Comparisons from 1.1.11 - 2.28.11
*Up 56% increase from previous month, 9% increase overall

12. Views + Comments + Likes
Averages Daily Highs Date Event/Influence
News Story Views 5506 n/a n/a n/a
Interactions with 685 1,261 January 31 Entry Deadline
Page/Post
Page Views 60 115 January 31 Entry Deadline
Page Likes 6.5 16 January 11 1st TwitterChat & Launch
Week
Day After Webinar 1
Post Likes/
4 8 January 14 (How to tell Your Digital
Comments
Story)

13. Who + Where
Observations/Insights
• Team/staff located in Seattle & San Francisco
• Romania won viewers choice, yet number 6 on FB (engaged with off Facebook)
• Canada and UK have strong NetSquared communities, opportunity to engage more
• Opportunity to target Chicago, DC, and Atlanta more
• Pleasanton is far East Bay (SF), higher engagement than Oakland and Berkeley
(Opportunity to engage/increase East Bay participation next year.)
• Male/Female ratio pretty equal, and parallel Facebook and TechSoup user
demographic (Similar parallel demographic spread across ages)

14. Start with open question
Tag partners
Links to resources
Current/Timely TSDigs events

15. Personalize
Highlight (tag) individuals
Quote community members
Respond to comments

16. Include media (photo/video)
Tools/resources
Highlight sponsors and past
winners

17. To Recap
What worked well: Received most interactions/feedback
✓ Start with an open question
✓ Clear call to action (ie, Join, Read, Watch)
✓ Tagging parter organizations increases visibility because then shows up
in their feed
✓ Increased engagement with resources and links
✓ Increased engagement with TSDigs event content (ie, How to Tell Your
Story Webinar)
✓ Coordinated with other publicity - TwitterChats, Webinars, Launch of
event

18. Twitter
Screenshots + Insights

19. OVERVIEW
by the numbers
Twitter
Followers ▲812 ▲10%
#TSDigs mentions 371
@TechSoup Mentions 91
TechSoup Mentions 507
Comparisons from 1.1.11 - 2.28.11

20. Big Picture
Observations/Insights
• After Twitter Chats: Average gain 30 new Followers
• TwitterChat host: @AskDebra has large engaged following
• After webinars: Average gain 30 new Followers
• Higher number of RT’s and follows after first Webinar - combination of factors - timing
(first was also kickoff), content, speaker influence, number of webinar participants
(first webinar had double amount of registered)
• Highest number of RT’s when mentioned resources, included links, or urgency (ie,
“last call”)

21. ReTweets
Links to resources
Multiple tags
Invitation to participate
Reference to notable sources

22. Webinars + TwitterChats
provide opportunities for
others to be your voice

23. To Recap
What worked well: Received most interactions/feedback
✓ Educational resources received well and shared
✓ TwitterChats drive visibility on Twitter
✓ Audience of guest host can help influence participation and reach
✓ Tweets with urgency more likely to be RT’ed
✓ Direct messages and asking “Pls RT” increased likelihood of sharing
23

24. Other Numbers
Bit.ly Summary
Total Clicks Countries Highest Highest
Traffic Day Traffic Date
5600
Awards Screening 2005 17 1037 2/13/2011
Audience Choice 1216 21 381 2/9/2011
Awards
Delicious 476 8 184 1/10/2011
Video/YouTube Channel 423 6 183 1/10/2011
(Promo Vid)
Webinar: How To 712 27 171 1/9/2011
Webinar: Tools 768 27 169 1/9/2011

26. Key Takeaways
from Twitter + Facebook
➡ Photo + video are more engaging
content
➡ Shout outs personalize + open
conversation
➡ Simple call to action works best
➡ Urgency of deadline brings more
interest
➡ Email still number one driver of traffic -
make sure to point to all social media
channels (FB was missing)
➡ Leverage influencers

27. Future Considerations
Promote products offered by TS more deliberately
• Products are listed but they weren't really directed there. This might include one tweet
during the week saying “here are some products that will help you tell your digital story.”
List the products that winners used
• Some of these products might be offered and some of them might not which demonstrates
that you can use TS tools as well as free tools
Leverage newsletters more
• 27% of the traffic arrived through social media and around 12% from Newsletters. Our
newsletters have around 150,000 subscribers that may have been interested if we had
pinged them more than once.
Update TSDigs Content
• In March over 700 visits went to the digital storytelling page which is a drop off but is still a
decent amount of traffic.

28. From the Participant Survey
25 Responded (~25%)

29. How’d Hear About? Previous Involvement w/TechSoup?
Response Percentage
Email 43% Response Percentage
Facebook 0%
Twitter 4% Longtime member 32%
Blog 9%
New member 14%
SecondLife 4%
Friend 13% First experience with 36%
Google Group 0%
Have received donated
LinkedIn 0% 14%
product
Newsletter or Listserve 4%
Participated in events or 5%
Other, please specify: 9% webinars
Previous Digital Storytelling Experience Participate in TSDigs Educational
Programs?
Yes, a lot 23% Yes 59%
No, decided to do it
Yes, once or twice 36% 23%
on our own
No, this was our first 41% No, submitted pre- 18%
time existing digital story

30. Suggestions
Give more time after webinars to create digital story.
More lead time and different time of the year. January is a hard time to organize.
Sometimes difficult to get info, so perhaps a single challenge info site with links
might keep everyone in the loop.
Post-challenge workshop dialogue for feedback on what worked (or didn't) in
each video.
Maybe send a follow-up to organizations that weren't selected.

31. Props
We are very, very thankful for both the storytelling webinars.
Those were very helpful. Even with my dial up, I could follow.
Great initiative, nice prizes, catchy as an idea and hope to roll and grow big (lots
of participants and exposure). Thanks!
Best way to learn is to "just do it," so thank you, tech soup, for the nudge!
Good job. It was a challage for us that proved to be useful afterwards.
Our video is now used as an "icebreaker" at each and every event we take part
in. And the feedback is great.

32. Additional Insights, Questions,
Thoughts?

33. Note on the Metrics + Tools Used
• We found variance in the tools used, and had to do
some analysis manually
• There may have been differences in the actual
numbers, but found the trends and insights to be
similar/true across tools
• Some of tools used: TwitterCounter, TweetStats,
Bit.ly,Twitalyzer, SocialMention, Facebook Insights

34. Thank you!
TechSoup
DIGITAL STORYTELLING CHALLENGE 2011
#TSDigs