Using social media to build community & measure impact
1. Using social media
to build community
& measure impact
JD Lasica
Founder, Socialbrite.org
jd@socialbrite.org
June 27, 2012
2. Who is this guy anyway?
Chief strategist, Socialbrite
Spoken at the UN, Harvard, Stanford,
MIT, Cannes Film Festival and at
events in Paris, Milan and Seoul.
Named one of the Top 40 Silicon
Valley Influencers, one of the Top 100
Social Media Influencers and one of
Top 100 Media Bloggers.
Co-founded Ourmedia.org, the first
free video hosting site (before YouTube)
About 17,000 followers on Twitter at @jdlasica
3. What we’ll cover today
Lay the foundation
Create a strategy
Facebook
Twitter
Storytelling
Build community
Mobile
Metrics: Goals, SEO & keywords, Google
Analytics, Facebook Insights
Q&A, hugs, tearful goodbyes
4. Relax!
http://socialbrite.org/etr
(Your homework assignment!)
Creative Commons
BY photo on Flickr
by Tom@HK
5. THE ECOSYSTEM
Types of social media
Blogs
Social networks
Microblogs (Twitter)
Online video
Curation (Pinterest)
Widgets
Photo sharing
Podcasts
Virtual worlds
Wikis
Social bookmarking
Forums
Presentation sharing
6. Staggering growth
150 million active blogs; 1 million blog posts created per day
YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, VEVO, Twitter are among top
sites in world
Facebook: 900+ million active members
Twitter: 150 million active users, 250 million+ tweets per day
Google+: On track to 400 million users
YouTube: 3 billion videos watched per day
8 trillion text messages sent in 2011
8. P R E P W O R K : E S TA B L I S H B U S I N E S S G O A L S
How can nonprofits use social media?
1. Raise public awareness of your mission or cause
2. Raise funds for a cause or campaign
3. Reach new constituents or supporters
4. Build a community of champions
5. Recruit volunteers
6. Get people to take real-world actions
7. Enhance existing communications programs
8. Involve the community in decision-making
9. Advance your organization’s mission in other ways
10. Have fun!
9. L AY T H E G R O U N D W O R K
Before you plunge in ...
Social media is a marathon, not a sprint
Do you have buy-in from top management?
Do you have a social media policy or guidelines?
Do you have a Strategic Plan in place?
Have you researched your audiences/community?
Have you identified & trained your team members?
Do you have an idea worth spreading?
Have you built a program before you turn to a campaign?
10. Have you defined a clear theme?
Boil down your cause to a strong, single sentence
Vittana:
Help anyone go to college
Alter Eco:
Support fair trade
ActBlue:
Elect progressive candidates
DonorsChoose:
Support public classrooms in need
12. Elements of a Strategic Plan
360° assessment of social
media capabilities
Spell out business goals
Identify online community
Proposed use of social tools
& platforms
Recommendations on
expanded capabilities
Lay out metrics program
Competitive/peer analysis
14. FACEBOOK
Facebook: The social network
900 million members worldwide —
70% of Americans on Facebook use it every day
900
600
300
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009 0
2010
2011
Today
Facebook’s global growth rate, 2004-2012, in millions
15. FACEBOOK
Get into those news feeds!
edgerankchecker.com
Article: http://bit.ly/edgerank-checker
16. FACEBOOK TIPS
How to get more engagement
Keep your posts short
& simple
Post visually appealing
content
Include calls to action,
including Shares
Ask questions the right way
Use fill-in-the-blank posts
Be topical & relevant
Make it easy to share outside of Facebook
20. TWITTER
Make Twitter work for you
Staff should be trained on how to use Twitter.
Not a broadcasting medium to just distribute press releases or
your headlines.
Start by listening & observing.
Be yourself, be conversational, lose
the marketing jargon.
Use it for outreach, soliciting ideas,
customer support, to announce events,
to recommend articles, to identify experts.
#1 traffic driver: retweets. Use ‘Please RT’ strategically.
Tweets with a URL are 3x more likely to be retweeted.
Twitter drives 4%+ of traffic to NY Times, 10% to AOL, MSN.
21. JD’s 60-30-10 Twitter rule
60% retweets, pointing to
value, sharing other voices
30% responding, connecting
10% promoting, announcing
30. Use personal storytelling
Find emotional core, use videos or photos to make us feel
invisiblepeople.tv
31. USE YOUR COMMUNITY
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”
32. Don’t do all the heavy lifting
Creative Commons
photo on Flickr by
Jason Means
Don’t be like this guy!
34. Find your champions!
Find the big kahunas in your sector by using your 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.
36. 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
Free software & platforms! Club
WordPress & its plug-ins
Open Office, Google docs
Drupal, Joomla
37. flickr.com/creativecommons
Creativecommons.org
• Rich source of free
commercial & noncommercial
images
• Flickr: 228 million
Attribution, Noncommercial,
No Derivatives & ShareAlike
licenses
• Use them for your blog,
website, email or print
newsletter, presentations, etc.
• Don’t just take. Share!
39. EXERCISE
Create a mobile calling card
Text 'jdlasica' to 50500
Create your own at http://contxts.com
40. Is your site mobile-ready?
WPtouch Pro & UppSite for mobile phones, Onswipe for iPad
41. PA RT 2 : M E T R I C S
Why measure?
Because ‘data is better than gut’
Photos on Flickr by Emran Kassim, left, and Vee Dub (CC-BY)
42. For internal & external reasons
Internal purposes:
Inform decision-making about your brand or cause
Testing messages or products before launch
Market research into constituents, supporters, volunteers
Data about supporters’ giving habits
External purposes:
charity: water
43. THE METRICS PROCESS SIMPLIFIED
INFORMATION
INSIGHTS
KPIs
Who, how, why
Funnel ACTION
of love
44. SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS
Map metrics to goals
Business goals/objectives Things to measure
Grow our list of supporters # newsletter, RSS subscribers
Get more volunteers # of volunteers & volunteer hours
Hit fundraising target # new, online donors, $ raised
Increase positive mentions mentions or pick-ups in blogs
of organization or cause & social networks
Increase # of people served # constituents contacted, helped
Make our content more viral # of shares, # of comments/post
Get people to take action # of petition signatures
Get people to attend event # of registrants, year over year
Increase website visibility increase in traffic or linkback #s
45. 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. (Watch her evolve
from Chief Metrics Guru to Number-Crunching Superstar.)
7. Spend time analyzing the data & drawing conclusions
8. Refine and fine-tune
48. HANDS-ON DEMO
What does your site rank for?
Search your site’s keyword juju
on semrush.com & spyfu.com
(Hint: 'etr' and 'ccap')
49. K E Y W O R D S T R AT E G Y
Focus on 1- to 4-word phrases
Average global search phrase length:
1 word (24%)
2 words (23%)
3 words (21%)
4 words (14%)
5 words (8%)
6 words (4%)
7 words (2%)
8+ words (4%)
0 10 20 30
Source: Experian Hitwise
53. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
Start with the big picture
Visitors Overview
54. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
What countries?
Audience > Demographics > Location
55. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
What states?
Audience > Demographics > Location > click on USA
56. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
What cities?
Audience > Demographics > Location > click on a state
57. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
Traffic sources
Traffic Sources > Overview
Search traffic: traffic you get from search
engines
Referral traffic: traffic you get from other sites
Direct traffic: visitors coming by tying in your
url or through bookmarks
58. G O O N D E -A N A D Y T IO S
HAGLS ON LEM C
Social referral traffic
Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals
59. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
What content is most popular?
Content > Overview
68. Twitter analytics
bit.ly tracks who’s clicking on your links in Twitter. (Add
“+” to end of your bit.ly url to see the stats.)
Twitter Counter lets you count registrations and
comments on a particular campaign you’re running.
Klout, Tweet Grader & Twitaholic assess your impact.
Twittorati tracks tweets from high-profile bloggers.
tweetreach offers reach metrics, statistics and analysis
for marketing and PR pros.
Retweetrank measures how often you get retweeted.
Tweeteffect determines which tweets make you lose or
gain followers.
69. GOOGLE PLUS
Google+ to increase visibility
• Private or public Hangouts
• Share photos & campaign information
• Set up targeted circles
• Give your content a search boost
70. LINKEDIN
LinkedIn for nonprofits
http://learn.linkedin.com/nonprofits/
Get found in Google search. Integrate keywords into your
organization profile.
Recruit staff or board members.
Host fundraising events.
Create community vibrancy.
Generate viral awareness.
Find connections & expert advice through Groups.
72. SOCIAL MEDIA DASHBOARDS
Pace yourself, don’t stress!
HootSuite Buffer
Tweetdeck Spredfast
Crowdbooster ThinkUp
http://bit.ly/smdash
73. 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
74. Key takeaways
Begin with an Aligned Strategy,
not with the tools.
Tell your stories
Use your community — your
biggest resource: your supporters!
Measure, measure, measure!
Evaluate, iterate, relaunch.
75. And spur real-world action!
Turn supporters into champions
Photo on Flickr by 350.org
76. Don’t settle for the status quo
If you do not change
direction, you may
end up where you
are heading.
— Lao Tse
77. Thank you, let’s talk!
JD Lasica, founder
Socialbrite: Social media consulting for nonprofits
email: jd@socialbrite.org
Twitter: @jdlasica
@socialbrite
http://socialbrite.org/etr/