GroupVine blog

Which of our customers are best suited for GroupVine's Interactive Email?

We’re asked this question all the time by agencies and other service providers who we work with.  Although we believe nearly all brands and organizations that consider email to be a core marketing and communication asset can achieve increased engagement and participation rates with GroupVine’s Interactive Email, there are some characteristics that can positively bias the results.  These are characteristics that apply to the brand or organization itself.  These characteristics may already be in place or may be something the organization recognizes as critical and is working towards.

1. Relationship Marketing and Customer Insights are highly valued.  It’s not just about achieving a short-term or transaction result, it’s also about long-term customer value.
2. Focus on people, not just brand.  Current eCommunications are “people-friendly” designed to give recipients the sense that they are connecting to real people involved with the brand or organization (as opposed to a brand, feature, etc.).  The organization understands that people engage with people, not brands or organizations.
3. Understand and want to talk about lifestyle.  They love to talk about ways their product, service, or brand are used in real life.
4. Prefer targeted and succinct email style rather than (or in addition to) the “email buffet” style of newsletters (ie. covering so many topics that there’s a virtual guarantee that every recipient will find something they like).  They prefer or are willing to experiment with “simple and focused” over “cluttered and busy”.
5. Value social marketing, but continue to believe that direct email marketing is driving the measurable results. They love the idea of pulling the upside of social marketing (social awareness, influence, and relationship-building) into email.  
6. Engage in real-time conversations with their customers in social channels so they have competence and resources that can carry those conversations over to email (even though they’re not used to real-time, frictionless conversations in email yet).
7. Would prefer to hear the customer’s voice more often than their own.  They are comfortable engaging with recipients in an open and transparent manner, or they would like to take baby steps in that direction.  
8. Can offer “organic” incentives for participation.  By organic we mean that the recipient’s experience will be shaped, influenced or somehow improved if they participate or engage (vs. a “10% off” kind of incentive).  For example, Raptor Ridge winery motivated their Flight Club members to tell them which wines are in their top 3 by hinting that their future shipments might be tailored based on their responses. Their response rate improved over 200% (even when compared to their attempt to offer free T-shirts!) and enabled their recipients to become more comfortable engaging with them via email.

Here's the example Engagement Widget that Raptor Ridge put into a recent email:

As we learn more we'll tweak and update this list.  In the meantime we're all ears if you've got other suggested additions for our list.

How about making the inbox more loveable?

For me, something was missing from the InboxLove conference...But first, let me show some love for the event!

The InboxLove conference - not your father's email conference. No, nothing like many of the other email marketing events happening on a daily basis.  This was a get-together of progressive thinkers around email who unanimously see a long life for email and want to make it work better.  For that reason alone you could feel the love for 500startups and the other sponsors of this event before it even got started.  There's a really great summary by Chris Nutall on the FTTechHub blog.

What I heard a lot of: Making it easier for us to manage our inbox overload and making the time we spend in our inbox more effective.  Good!  There's also a lot of effort by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and AOL going into making their various inbox applications harmonize with the rest of our online activities (possibly ridding us of the "ALT-tab" phenomenon that surfaced frequently).

What I didn't hear much of: How do we deal with the inneffective and time-sucking emails that are reaching our inbox in the first place?  This is a tough problem to solve because it can't be solved by technology alone.  It requires equal parts of innovation in technology and behavioral change on the part of all senders.  For example, kudos to these folks:

• Rapleaf - for putting the information into email marketers fingertips to send more targeted and relevant email from day 1.
• Shortmail - for forcing the question.
• Ramit Sethi - for steering the conversation away from email marketing tactics/tools and toward behavioral change.

So let's talk about email marketing.  There's so much left on the table for making email marketing more rewarding for recipients, and astronomical upside if you can get it right. Although you may not agree with Ramit's core value proposition, I think he was spot-on in saying:

• It's not about testing, it's about understanding behavioral psychology. Changing the behavior is the goal.
• Stop thinking like an expert. It's not about regurgitating information.
• Persuasion is written about and for people, not at people. The key is to get specific.
• The key question email recipients ask themselves: is it right for me? Show them people they can identify with who are receiving important benefits from your solution/service/product.

Here's a toast to this year's InboxLove!  What seemed to be missing?  Making the inbox more loveable.  I hope that next year we're able to applaud a lot more compelling success stories involving technology and marketing practices coming together to reduce the stream of ineffective, irrelevant, and time-wasting emails reaching our inbox.  

PS. My favorite quotes from the conference: Jeff Bonforte: "I want to huddle up by the fire with email. I want to make sweet love to email."  Dan Martell: "Most people SUCK at email marketing."  Ramit: "No one wants to receive a newsletter."  

PPS. Interactive Email - our company's attempt to facilitate changing the behavior of email marketers through innovation in technology:

• SlideShare overview 
• Video overview

A potpourri of topics last night at the SF Online Community MeetUp

The December rendition of the SF Online Community MeetUp featured Robyn Tippins (@duzins) who is currently the Sr. Community Manager at Current TV. You can check out more of her background and the agenda here and the Twitter stream at #octribe.  Robyn, Susan, and the rest of the TechSoup crowd planned a potpourri-like event that covered 3 diverse topics, so it moved fast and was a pretty cool event!

Topic 1: Sharing community management strategies and best practices 

Robin covered 3 community case studies from her experience at Yahoo: 1) Yahoo Merchant Summit, 2) Yahoo Developer Network Events, and 3) the Flickr community.  I suspect Robyn's slide content might be available somewhere, so I'll focus on what I captured as the lessons learned.

#1 Take it local and f2f. Even primarily online communities need Barcamps, MeetUps, hack events, etc. to build, sustain, and nurture relationships.  Local events can be great for increasing your social media content, pumping up evangelists, and creating a local love-fest which hopefully can include the media.

#2 Leverage local folks for your events. Robyn talked about how Yahoo would use their employees to have a bigger local impact. They trained them up thru internal tech talks where they could hone their public speaking chops.  They saved a bunch of money by not traveling to the events, but still had attendance - their local employees who become temporary "rock stars".  Yahoo also had a go-to person for each region.

#3 But my company isn't Yahoo! We don't have global presence and 1000's of employees. Try to focus on empowering your local community members or customers, especially the evangelists (but not the crazed zealots - you gotta vet them!).  Try to target top members and influencers to carry your messaging and possibly play a key local role by providing them any resources you can, expanded visibility, contests, even swag!

#4 Local community events can be done on a tight budget. Try to combine your events with other on-going events.  FInd unused local community centers.  Offer sponsorships in exchange for using their facility (Valley entrepreneur groups do this endlessly with local law firms).  Find sponsors.  Again, use local people to cut costs.

#5 Kit it up! Create a process for running local events to make it easier for the organizers.

#6 Who do we invite? Should it be exclusive? Not sure there was one answer on this one.  Certainly there are opportunities for exclusive events that feel like rewards for the top members.  But where does your revenue come from?  Does the top tier of members generate most of the community value and/or revenue, or does your community have a longer tail?  

#7 Be transparent - especially when you know you're gonna piss people off. It's inevitable that you'll be making some business decisions that the community doesn't like.  That's when it's most important to be honest and transparent. Make sure to create opportunities for the community to air their concerns and ask questions.

Topic 2: Outsourcing community moderation - good or bad idea?

Lots of vibrant discussion on this one.  I think the room had a general opposition to moderation which may have been voiced best by Susan Tenby who felt that "outsourcing moderation could be a crutch against building trust".  It might be better to empower your engaged members who have a lot invested in your community and (hopefully) the motivation to help.  But certain communities have REALLY engaged members who aren't always providing positive content and value, such as news-oriented sites and blogs.  On these sites it's common for the active members to flag each other as "offensive" which may not be appropriate.   You have to consider whether people are abusing the ability to flag abuse!

It seemed that one of the common threads in the discussion was that you can't risk losing touch with your community.  Can you outsource to folks who GET your community and brand without losing touch with your community.  If so, then it's probably worth considering.

What about pre vs. post moderation?  And should it be automated?  Current.tv reacts to any abuse flags but doesn't do any pre-moderation.  This seemed to be a common approach.  Reputation management systems were mentioned as a great way to prioritize bad content, but they can be very expensive.  

What about deleting content?  It seemed that a common approach was to "hide" inappropriate content and make sure to document why it was hidden.  I mentioned that I believe GetSatisfaction does a really nice job of providing sensible post-moderation tools, particularly allowing for hiding content with an explanation.  Much could probably be learned from their model which is used in 1000's of support communities.

Topic 3: HootSuite vs. CoTweet - a continuation of the info sharing in the online digest

What Robyn learned from the digest discussion: most big brands were using CoTweet.  TechSoup switched from HootSuite to CoTweet because of cost per user (which recently become a premium paid service at HootSuite), but still use HootSuite on a personal basis.  Common thread: everyone who had experience with both tools preferred HootSuite's UI, scheduling ability, assignment of Tweets, and analytics over CoTweet but felt that HootSuite's new pricing model overwhelmed all those "relatively minor" benefits.  For example, HootSuite now charges $5 for the first two users, and $15 for each additional user on a monthly basis (unverified!).  So a team of 5 people would pay $50 per month vs. $0 for CoTweet.

One major upside of CoTweet that was mentioned: it shows which user in a company actually posted a Tweet (but don't you have to be using CoTweet to see that extra info?).  Bottom line: if money is no object then the preference seems to be for HootSuite.  

Susan Tenby mentioned Sprout Social but no one was using it yet.  Perhaps someone can share their experience with Sprout Social if they check it out.  And one last "must-have" free tool if you're not already using it: NutshellMail.  It's a great daily summary of your social networking activity across a variety of social networks.  Perhaps one of the most important features of NutshellMail is seeing your quitters and having an immediate "unfollow" button available if you are currently following the quitter.  Bloggers note: that little button kinda feels good to press at times ;-)

Undoubtedly I missed a bunch of worthy ideas and content.  Please add them as comments here or into the #ocrtribe Twitter stream.  You can also reach me at @thecommunityguy with any comments or questions.  Thanks to all the organizers for another great event!

Leveraging authenticity around your brand

Gearing up for the Marketing to Moms conference in Chicago, I’ve been thinking about an interview of SheSpeaks’ Aliza Freud by Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst on how women use the internet to make purchase decisions.  A recurring theme for Aliza is authenticity.   Messaging "has to be authentic and it has to be organic. It can’t be that because I create some sort of content and put it in front of you, you’re going to run off and tell all your friends about it and share it."

Aliza points out:  "…there’s a huge opportunity for brands to create a more direct relationship. If I were a brand, I would want to have people engage with me directly and not really leave it up to a Facebook to be the intermediary.  ...Brands should be facilitating and owning an engagement with consumers."

Is there a disconnect between “controlling the experience” and keeping it “authentic and organic?"   Perhaps not.

GroupVine’s Interactive Email uses today’s most ubiquitous communication medium, email, to foster authentic, multi-way engagement.  Email with a social context.  According to Aliza, “Sometimes brands get very excited by content they’ve created and completely overlook the consumer’s desire to be a part of that content generation, as well as the authenticity.”  Interactive Email opens up the dialogue to enable consumers to build credibility in and around your message through immediate, real-time dialogue.

Say for example your favorite winery is launching a new wine and could put this in your inbox (in the context of their creative copy)...

Instead of reading and responding in isolation, you get to see what others are saying and join the conversation! 

Going back to Aliza and research performed by SheSpeaks: "The way a mom assesses which product is the right one to buy is very much based on the recommendations of her friends, because she feels that they have a lot stronger say in what is going to resonate with her."

We think Interactive Email provides brands with a new canvas that brings authentic social context into messaging, in the way that Aliza prescribes.  Do you agree or know of other innovations that deliver authentic influence to the familiar comfort zone of email?  Let us know here or you can connect to me on Twitter @thecommunityguy.

Butterflies, Social Relationships and Facilitators

What do these have to do with one another?  Butterflies are important to our ecosystem as they are agents of pollination.  Like our new social technologies, they act as facilitators for communication because they transfer and reproduce.

Take the example of what historically was a one way phone call, a letter or an email that could often take years to standardize, format and cultivate.  Now we can strategize about taking our existing database using new process and technology to become facilitators to reproduce our key messages, events, activities and/or outcomes.  Although it's only a single lavender bush, it's an important transfer and opportunity for the pollination that can create new entities, products and/or opportunities that you could not have imagined a few years ago.  Imagine moving beyond the noise and inviting in different segments of your business to engage with you in a new way that can transfer and transform into something new?

Take your OTO relationship and make it an OTM or MTM with interactive email. One simple example is how I've seen how a volunteer group that ran a raffle was able to quickly solicit donors using interactive email to invite volunteers and donors to bring along raffle prizes for a cause in a quick and efficient manner that allows a leader to focus their time on doing higher value for time activities. The group leader normally would spend 20 hours + on this activity, instead she is building out a youth leadership council, building toward a new future. Now that is powerful!

Expectations are shifting and changing, we all need to welcome these new expectations as invitations for discussion and who knows, perhaps new forms of management.

 

Architecting Participation is a Skill

Our guest writer, Jenny Ambrozek, SageNet, LLC helps organizations create value by facilitating strategic knowledge sharing inside, and beyond, the enterprise.  The following is an excerpt from Jenny’s recent contribution to The Vine. The Vine is a guided learning and collaboration space (built on  GroupVine) where big thinkers and doers alike are connecting and exploring how to create greater impact and engagement in our networks and communities.  Interested in joining the conversation on the The Vine?

 

"...the greatest challenge to successful collaboration is getting attention, driving engagement and contributions." In other words, "participation." 

J. Ambrozek 

 

Learning a Lesson in Participation
Earlier this year I gave a talk making the case for "Architecting Participation" being an essential 21st century skill.  Building from Tim O'Reilly's "architecture of participation", I explain "architecting participation" as "intentionally structuring and facilitating technology enabled people networks to emerge value-creating interactions in support of strategic goals."

I most recently confronted the realities of getting interest in, engagement with, and contribution to a collective intelligence initiative, starting a Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises project that has roots in The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook. The combination of i) a platform that not everybody found easy to use, ii) the time required to write quality structured profiles, iii) the realization of the range of stakeholders essential to success, and iv) oh yes, need for a business model, leaves the project in beta.

Participation Inspiration
A starting point for this week’s discussion is the Power Law of Participation that Ross Mayfield proposed in an April 2006 blog post.  Here is Ross’ graphic.

For me the value in Ross Mayfield's construct is highlighting the array of types of engagement that are essential for successful collaboration. What I see Ross's "Power Law" overlooks is the initial challenge of grabbing attention. In a world of abundant, and often overwhelming information streams, just getting potential participants to give time and focus is difficult. This notion is reflected in the following adapted Power Law of Participation graphic.

The lowest line in this graphic notes the degrees of engagement that start with: (1) attention and advances from (2) connection through (3) participation and (4) contribution to (5) value creation.

My seminal moment about the need to focus on "participation" came reading the following elegantly simple but profound sentences: 

"Organizations are webs of participation. Change the patterns of participation, and you change the organization. At the core of the 21st century company is the question of participation. At the heart of participation is the mind and spirit of the knowledge worker."

--John Seely Brown and Estee Solomon Gray

In 2007, colleagues Victoria Axelrod and Kiki Mulliner and I wrote an article "Learning through participation and connecting intelligence." During our research the following "nugget" emerged from a conversation with Nancy White:  "it is in the space between the tools where things happen."

 

Participation Happens in Networks
Social network analysis allows us to reveal patterns of participation and levels of engagement. My social network analysis studies started with Patti Anklam's "Emergent Learning Network" in 2003.  By 2008, in a talk titled "Architecting Participation: Structural Holes and Space Between the Tools", I was totally persuaded that knowledge from social network science provides answers to understanding the dynamics of engagement and contribution, and, equally important, to understanding how to drive those elements to achieve value.

 

Recently participating in Steve Borgatti's LINKS social network analysis workshop provided more reasons to apply social network analysis to understand social tool adoption dynamics.  For example, to understand the business benefits of Facebook, in 2008 colleagues and I convened the Facebook Groups in Business Investigation. To provide insight into the relationships between study participants, Patti Anklam conducted a network analysis. Seeing the before and after network maps (see graphic), confirmed my understanding of the potential network analysis has to first reveal, and then guide, the development of connections.

 

In Conclusion
Beyond believing that "getting attention, driving engagement and contribution" are keys to successful collaboration, I see architecting participation is an essential skill, and that social network science provides answers for how best to proceed.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

A window into new possibilities

Slow growing? Have you ever had an experience whether it’s on your urban back balcony or in a corn field that goes on for miles?  Well, either situation you can still often find growing lonely.

The urban jungle is often harsh, it can leave you feeling lost, but thanks to the internet and social technology platforms now more than ever you can use these tools to help you find your purpose, your source, and even rejuvenation. Whatever your needs may be, these new platforms don't need to feel like just more unsolicited chatter, but rather a way to extend your reach and foster meaningful connections. You really do not need to feel like this lone cornstalk out in the middle of the field.

Fortunately, we can now read emails that allow us to get pulled into stories, conversations and even connected with friends without having to click through to several websites,advertisements, or catch a virus. We can now stay safely within our preferred email platform navigates where WE want to go and/or connect with whom WE want to connect. During this process, we may find that we do feel that today is the day to reach out and do something with purpose, give our employer new ideas or simply talk with an old friend. If you are like me, I get tired of people telling me what to do, how to act, where to act and when. Which is why I like social email, it provides me with many options, but allows me to engage at my own pace.

 

Community Therapy

Today a few of us from the Groupvine are at the #ocu10 conference at the Community History Museum in Mountain View, California. It feels like we are in a community therapy session as we are amongst old and new friends and all able to talk candidly about our successes and struggles within the frame of community.
We are talking about approaches that work to building engaging communities. What is the secret sauce? It depends on the context of the community. For example, a few community managers are sharing that if you do on the internet they have personal safety issue for users that they have had to ‘ban’. Versus those folks that can use their corporate persona and allow that to provide more color to a conversation. It’s been interesting to listen to all these brilliant and dedicated employees, consultants and thought leaders.

Keys to the Kingdom

Functional requirements, lists upon lists and endless one off meetings can get old. What I’ve found that can work well is to be open, transparent and honest with all parties involved with what you are finding. Whether you work for a school district or a Fortune 500 company, there needs to be an open collaborative space that allows people to share thoughts, feedback and ideas.

I would propose you find out what tools your organization has in place for collaboration and try to use them and start small. Share them during a meeting you are at some diagram that you have constructed and ask them for feedback during the meeting and send the link to the content after the meeting. This is leading the horse to drink and could invite some great idea sourcing.

What we as functional or project leaders want is input that is balanced across the organization so that we can invest in features, functions and solutions that drive our organizational or business results. It’s not easy to do when you get 1,000s of individuals, but you can use technology in a way that can engage your client base so as to allow you to move forward and not feel like you are falling backward.

What I’ve found over time that is proven to work is give everyone permission to share , give feedback and document what they said. This allows them to have ‘keys to the kingdom’ – they now have opportunities to share your project to collect other input to validate their insights and/or provide other valuable information that can help ensure that you don’t leave out an important business process as you are evaluating making changes to support your organizational mission, strategy and technology needs.

Good Luck, it can be quite satisfying to let go – so just sit back and enjoy the ride!

People of the Link

People of the Link

One of our advisors, Estee Solomon Gray will be in San Francisco tonight connecting and exploring, as an example of one of her many gifts through a People of the Link lecture.

@Estee will be inviting us to reconsider how the experience and language of today’s social network technologies are impacting Jewish identity and education – and vice versa, which has been inspired by 15 years on the parallel frontlines of social technology and Jewish community building.

It was medieval Islam that first labeled the Jews a People of the Book, along with Christians and others. But the Jewish book was never singular and Jewish engagement with Jewish text was always as much about the links as the words. From covenant and community to commentary to conversation, the most basic acts of Jewish life are all forms of linking.

About Estee Solomon Gray

Since moving to Silicon Valley in 1980, Estee Solomon Gray has inhabited dozens of identities, among them tech strategist, marketing guru, Jewish community leader, mom, CEO and social entrepreneur.

In the 1980s, working with Regis McKenna, Estee helped bring the idea of "communities of practice" from the world of research into the business world just in time for the explosion of the knowledge economy. With Interwise, Estee helped pioneer the e-learning platform. Her innovations at the juncture between social technology and health took flight with B!, focusing on women over 35, and Within3, serving networks of physicians.

Estee has also been very active in the Jewish community, having served as president of the Hausner Jewish Day School; a catalyst for the Koret Taube Campus for Jewish Life; a key advocate for the integration of local Israelis into Bay Area Jewish institutional life; and a board member for the Kehillah Jewish High School, Hillel at Stanford, the progressive Zionist Ameinu and the trans-denominational Mussar Institute.

Estee holds an B.Sc. degree from Yale in biomechanics and neurophysiology, and MBA and MSEE degrees from Stanford. She is a two-time winner of the national JCCA's young leadership award and of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation’s Jim Brooks Leadership Award. She is Wexner Heritage Fellow, and was a visiting scholar at Stanford in social entrepreneurship as a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow.

Estee welcomes the arrival of Web 3.0.

 

Personal Reach, Community Tour Guide & Day Trippin’

 

How do you bring your supporters into a more personal reach with your organization, with your mission and with each other?  Bring them on a journey, through a virtual or physical visit, but let them in.  Be open, don’t have an iron grip on communication with your constituents, let it flow.  Sometimes dissention is really good – it awakens us, it allows us to be aware of the environment and get outside ourselves, our bubbles, and truly it makes you alive.   

The only way to allow people to understand your organizations mission is showing them, right?    Does your organization have a tour guide?  Do you think about providing a tour of your organization’s visions, mission and objectives?  No, not an excel spreadsheet, but really through pictures, stories, audio or perhaps even in the flesh.  Consider asking your community relationship manager to become a tour guide.  Ask them to write a job description of what a physical tour guide does in a community.  For example, we are building a home in Agua Blanca, Mexico, a pristine beach community outside of Todos Santos, Mexico where the contractor provides a ‘tour’ and allows you to be a part of the building journey so that although we live far away, we can be a part of the experience.  Soon this developer will allow all buyers to receive newsletters online through email and allow us to provide feedback on the building process so as to ensure that the customer has a positive building experience and real time feedback to influence those every day, minute to minute detailed decisions.  Now that is real time customer service and collaboration!

Day trips?  Can you think of ways in your day to day life to provide your constituents with day trips?  How are you allowing your community members to come along on your daily trips?  How are they being able to touch, see and walk the hallways so that they have an appreciation for what you are doing?  It’s hard today with all the media, with all the ideas to capture the attention of your supporters, but if you extend a personal reach in a new way that slowly builds into something that is immediate, see through and that transcends the current way of doing things– you will be sure to reap the benefits.

Good luck and do tell us about your experiences.

 

Missing Upside in Nonprofit Blogs

The keynote at the NTC conference this week was by Andrew Sullivan, blogger extraordinaire, who gets one million readers a month on his blog, The Daily Dish. Many of us felt it lacked a lot of relevant candy for the nonprofit technology community, but here's one area where I pepped up on the opportunity for nonprofit blogs, but also felt some upside is missing.  In his speech, Sullivan emphasized that a blog or online communication is a dynamic "broadcast" that has to change, at a brisk pace.  It moves or it dies.  And the faster it moves, the more new content and new ideas appear, the tighter the relationship is with readers.  They keep coming back looking for more.  And readers are not static consumers.  They engage, and they tell you what they think.

A good blog or online communication is initially about the content.  The validity and vibrancy of the content begin to build the bridge between author and audience.  But what eventually happens is that relationships emerge, out of the content.

The relationships grow exponentially.  The blogger becomes the trusted source readers seek out to offer context around issues they care about.  Readers’ comments and questions and criticisms get incorporated into the thinking and writing of the blogger.  And readers engage with each other, discussing and debating, and over time, they build relationships with each other.

The blog or online communication becomes a nexus for multiple, intertwining relationships – a nexus for community.

But what if...

A blog, while it may become a hub for a community, is a third space.  It is where the community goes, not where it lives.  And as responsive as a blogger might be, s/he is still the owner of that space and gets to decide what the topic of the day is and when the blog begins and ends.

What if the online forum, the community, moved to peoples’ email inboxes?  What if readers could stay “at home,” in their inboxes and engage with content and with each other and with a sponsoring nonprofit organization from their natural habitat.  Emailers (which we all are, no matter how proficient we might also be at other social media) engaging with each other in a way that is visible to other emailers who are part of the community become the dynamic drivers of content that is changing faster than any one blogger could keep up with.  Emailers generate the hot topics.  Leadership emerges from the emailer base and shifts in response to community impulses.  The blogger doesn’t decide, rather the community determines.

And if this level of community could organize around a nonprofit’s mission and could make its passions known and its talents available via interactive email channels – how valuable would this be to a resource constrained nonprofit?

This scenario is what our team at The Groupery is thinking about, constantly.  What do you think?

 

 

 

NTC Day of Service 2010

I provided blog advisory services with Carol Thompson, Executive Director of Heritage Sandy Springs during the NTEN Day of Service project.  Heritage Sandy Springs have an AMAZING story.  Can you believe over 25 years ago, they started as a grass roots effort to stop the development project on top of Sandy Springs?   Guess what, they fought the law (zoning) and Sandy Springs won.  In fact they won BIG!  They created a park site, which is 3.5 acres in the middle of the Sandy Springs business and have since added a house museum.

 

Carol wants to continue cultivation of her supporters while bringing in some new blood to infuse new energy and interest in her programs, events, and park site. The City owns the park site but Heritage Sandy Springs has a 30 year lease and they manage it.  People think they are the city, and perhaps that they don't need financial support, so there's is an opportunity (and a real need!) to build awareness through social media communications.  Historically they have veered toward special events such as renovating a building, but the museum and other aspects of what they do have suffered.  We agreed that their biggest asset is also something they need to market more aggressively: namely that HSS consists of passionate people - a place where people can give back to, and increase the value of, their community. Now they need to find ways to harness community goodwill, showcase their accomplishments, and attract the great social energy that their community has to ensure that the legacy and the park continue.

 

Upon further reflection as I'm connecting the dots during the NTC Conference and our day of service with HSS, I've realized that it's wasn't so much a discussion around social media tools, like a blog, or integrating segmented email lists with socialized content delivery, but that NPOs should invest time to listen and spend time thinking about taking another look at their marketing plans with an eye to leverage the power of social media.  An excellent example of the importance of listening is in Amy Ward's blog where she talks about "listen, engage, and repeat."

 

The question I then post out to my NTC colleagues, new and old friends alike, are we encouraging NPOs to put their best assets, people and their amazing stories to work and if so - how?  Are NPOs listening to their supporters enough to have stories to tell? Do share good examples?   Are they woven into NPO conversations on websites, blogs or emails?  In a formal sense, are they a part of your marketing and communication plans?

 

Here are some ideas I generated around storytelling, conversational eNewsletter and blogs.

 

·Publish a blog and copy the content into Constant Contact and send from there to the newsletter recipients.  At the top of the eNewsletter you'd have a link to your previous communications, including this one.  This helps with the issue of how to attract the HSS followers to their blog.

·Capture people into the specific interest areas: events, volunteer opportunities, history/museum, what's new at the garden.  Possibly later break down the events into the specific events.

·Quick and easy access to: event calendar, latest news, website.

·Offering access to master gardeners tips, ideas, what they are doing in the park.  Let the gardeners email the group x times per month.  Another possibility is the heritage people (curator).  Give the curator an outlet and a positive feedback loop.

·For the website and all communications: correlate and tell the story about events, outcomes, the people involved.  Tie them directly to what enabled it to happen?  Donations, volunteers, etc.  Sometimes do a direct appeal and ask.  But all the time, try to make a direct connection between the benefits and stories and what enabled it to be possible.

·Use the above as a way to direct appeal to corporate donors.  They can be visible in supporting the community where their employees lives.

·Interesting themes we discussed for HSS: "We're the heart of SS".  Action oriented: "Come to the heart of SS"

·Would TechBridge help out with a refresh?  Are there any other nonprofit tech providers in Atlanta (or virtual) who can help HSS?

·Typepad (or others) as a blog: $15/mn.  $30-50/mn on Constant Contact.

·When staff, volunteers, etc. write emails to a group, add a photo (head shot) of the person writing the email to the communication.  Make it more personal.  Make HSS communications more personal and conversational to clearly illustrate the people behind HSS.  Helps differentiate HSS from the city.

·Find the hidden assets and resources within your local community to help with: Marketing, Website, collaboration tools.  Ask.

·Consider using Google Forms (as a free tool) to ask the community for help and contribute, etc.  You can provide the link to the Google Form in your Constant Contact communications.  If the budget allows then move toward integrated email marketing, surveying, etc. tools like Constant Contact (+ surveys), The Groupery, Mail Chimp, etc.

I asked the NTC community on Twitter for suggestions to Carol on good blogs or example newsletters that are conversational.  So far I've heard from @dustinalexander: "www.oregonhumane.org and www.hssv.org both have great eNewsletters and HSSV has a great blog".  Would love to get more examples from the NTEN/NTC crowd.  What else can we do to help spur innovative thinking for Carol?

OTO OTM MTM - Which is the best communication approach? Blended!

 

People will often ask me questions about which communication methods are the best and there is no size that fits all!    Why, do you ask?  Because relationships have to been created, earned and cultivated.  They aren’t just something you can plug and play.  They require tending to like a garden; they need sun, water and pruning.  There are times when a one to one conversation is really important and then there are times when you are perfectly comfortable and seeking that one too many conversation.  Think about it – the bull horn is nice when you are at a rally to hear the politician’s speech, but there is a time when you would give anything to have 15 minutes with that same politician, to share your most personal story and/or passion.  Yet, we strive to also hear about what others are thinking and evolve our thinking together.  I find that it’s the blended approach that works the best and there tends to be a need to sequence them as well.  Depending on the current state or stage of the relationships, there is often a specific type of communication or relationship building that one can leverage.    Relationship cultivation plans become important to discuss and build out! 

Some groups activate groups through emails and need straight- forward technologies that are easy for users to navigate yet are a next step into social media.  For example, a community that uses a generic email discussion list, but seeks an approach to harness the social energy.   It then becomes a community smoothie!

We are really looking forward to continuing the conversation at NTC!  Here we go!

 

 

Building Trust in Social Networks

 

Much has been written about building trust in social networks. 

June Holley and Valdis Krebs wrote what I consider a seminal paper on Building Smart Communities through Network Weaving.  Beth Kanter's blog is a treasure chest of concepts and wisdom about building networks and using social media.

What more is there to add?  Many years ago I attended a program given by the Institute for the Future on outposts and communities.  Bob Johansen, then executive director of IFTF, said something that has stayed with me for over a decade.  "People come for resources but stay for relationships."  This phrase has the ring of being an essential truth, doesn't it?

To build trust with an entity like an organization or a community, people must first have something to attach to, some resource.  In the early stages, it's easier for people to connect with something inanimate, like content.  Making a direct connection with another person is more difficult.  That usually involves some degree of vulnerability (will I be accepted?  will I be smart enough?  will I get what I need?) coupled with a reason for connecting. 

Making a connection to a static resource like content is far more simple and more private.  But in order for the connection with content to be meaningful and to lead on to the next stage, the content needs to be reliable and intriguing.  It needs to be as truthful and honest about its biases as possible.  And it needs to offer ideas that stimulate some reaction, ideas that evoke in the reader a desire to get involved in a more prolonged exchange.  Dr. Martin Luther King's August 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech and President John Kennedy's 1961 inaugural speech ("ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country") are classic examples of content that magnetizes us and draws us into a deeper conversation, a deeper commitment.

Once the connection is established to content, that content can become a bridge to creating relationships.  Most serious blog writers do this every day.  They consistently provide irresistible content which readers come to trust.  Over time that trust shifts to the blogger, and eventually to others who comment regularly.  The group that surrounds the blog uses content (the blog owner's posts and each others' comments) to create what starts to feel like a community.  They begin to trust each other.

Person to person trust and person to group trust are hard to form.  These kinds of trust require two main elements:  purpose and reciprocity.  Purpose, a reason for engaging, establishes the motivation.  This person or this group share a common goal with you which can be anything -- save the planet, understanding the mechanisms of social networks, or brownie recipes.  Reciprocity -- a mutually satisfying exchange of benefits -- provides the glue that enables these relationships to persist over time.

Of course, building trust in social networks is not a smooth, direct line from resources to relationships.  There are lost of twists and turns that require skillful mediation.  And trust is not immutable.  It too shifts and requires attention.  But as a general principle -- "People come for resources, but stay for relationships" -- is not a bad adage to have in your back pocket.

Post was written by guest blogger:

Barbara Kivowitz
Senior Partner
im21:  Innovation/Measurement/21st Century
www.im21stcentury.com

A Network is not a Person

 

This may sound like belaboring the obvious.  Of course the network is not a person; yet how many of us have heard people say things like, "The community is passionate about XYZ," or "our network needs to be in closer communication," or "we can mobilize the network/community to overturn Proposition XYZ."

We speak of the network as if it had a single mind and a unified purpose; as if it were a single entity that could be steered and persuaded.  Perhaps this reductionism happens because, in truth, a network is highly complex and fluid and not at all easy to understand, much less maneuver.  It is easier to conceptualize and respond to a "one" rather than a "many."

The risk in doing so, however, is that one begins to absorb the language and to operate as if "network as person" were true.  How many emails have you received from organizations that want your support and money that you know are identical to the emails the organization sent to five thousand other people?  The organization assumes that if it is articulate enough, broad enough in its message, and offends no one in "the community," it will earn enough of the desired support.

This may be true.  But how much more effective could the organization be if it first understood that while the network or community has some properties (e.g. purpose, boundaries, members, etc.), it is an aggregate of individuals, each with her own unique order of interests and priorities, time availability, talent, and other sets of networks of which she is part.  One person may be swayed by personal interest stories, while another may hit the delete key immediately.  One person may be able to volunteer time right now, while another is booked solid for the next three months.  One person may have leadership abilities, while another prefers to be a good follower.

If the organization approaches this diverse, mutable, fluid, complex network with a one-size-fits-all approach, opportunities will be lost, and potential supporters will turn their attention elsewhere.  To work with a network, you have to pay attention to both the whole and the parts.  You need to be able to see overarching patterns, especially ones that relate to the health and vitality of the network,  while also keeping in close contact with individuals and understanding their preferences and challenges.

RELEVANCE AND CONNECTION

Moving from Audience to Engaged Community

Every presenter knows the value of popping a few quick questions prior to deliverying the message to see which “direction” will best engage their particular audience.   This ability to tailor the content and ensure relevance is lost in traditional communications such as newsletters and email blasts which are essentially “one-way broadcasts” into the atmosphere.  Not only is the communicator left wondering what part of the communication was most compelling (and to whom), but also, she/he wonders if any of it mattered to anyone.

 

Bonafide community engagement is a struggle!

the groupery is helping leaders transform passive, silent audiences into engaged, sustainable communities that add real value to the organization.  Through the groupery’s online tools, platform and “next practices” (developed in conjunction with hundred of volunteer leaders) volunteer leaders like Anne Siple of Vestavia Hills Elementary Liberty Park (VHELP) School and Kimberly Cook of Liberty Park Middle School (LPMS) have transformed their parent communities.  By providing a range of options through which parents in the community can connect and contribute to the goals and by making it easy and appealing for all parents to “jump in,” these two leaders have created high-value, sustainable communities.

 

At VHELP, 99% of the school’s parents participate in their online community via the groupery.  This community receives communications from the principal, parent leaders and the other parents via group emails and online newsletters.  Importantly, parents can control their involvement (what they want to “hear” about), ensuring that the communications they receive are relevant.   Group emails allow for dialogue and easy-participation so everyone “has a voice.”

 

According to Anne, “Quite simply, online communication and dialogue via the groupery is making people really happy.”  “People who don’t feel invited, don’t step up.  Everyone needs to feel like they’re needed, they’re invited and their participation and support will make a difference.”  VHELP’s online community directly and consistently supports the needs of the school.

 

At LPMS, 94% of the parent community has jumped into the online community.  According to parent leader Kimberly Cook, “As the parent community at LPMS began to receive consistent, reliable, relevant communication from the school, they became hooked.”  With Kimberly’s leadership and the groupery, parents know what’s going on, who to direct questions to and where resources are most needed. Kimberly no longer worries about adequate resources.  Whether it’s donations, volunteer time commitments or an unexpected volunteer need, the parent community is informed, engaged and willing to step up and contribute.   “the groupery has been phenomenal,” Kimberly says.  From volunteer recruitment to event planning to email lists designed to deliver global messages to the whole community or specific messages to the parents in a particular classroom,  the groupery has significantly increased parent participation by allowing visibility and reliable two-way communication throughout the community.  Not only has Kimberly noticed a significant increase in the diversity of volunteers – “not the same 10% who always show up” but also the increased percentage of parents who are active, engaged members.

 

Via the groupery, these volunteer leaders have created engaged, sustainable communities that provide valuable resources and directly contribute to the overall mission.

Give them what they want

In the back of my head is a little voice saying "this is obvious", but I'm going to tune it out and share some thoughts that have been seeded by a couple forums today.  The two forums are Beth Kanter's Can Small Nonprofits Reap Success With Social Media? blog post and NTEN's Ask the Experts webinar with Seth Godin and Beth Kanter.  The comments on Beth's page and the back-channel chat in the webinar are raising concerns of time-constraints pertaining to how (or if) NPO's should engage in social media:

• "I think non-profits are over-worked and under-staffed and that's why we're not using the tools enough or maybe properly."
• "Time is the #1 biggest problem I hear from small nonprofits about social media -- not so much fear of change, fear of much longer to-do lists when already overworked."
  
• "It really is a resource issue. They try but they only dip in their toes and get frustrated and retreat because they don't have the resources to maintain the effort and do it well."
  

So there's an obvious desire to be very focused and efficient, and despite Seth's claim that he's never known a NPO to make decisions based on ROI, I think ROI should be part of every decision on where to focus your precious time.  Regardless of which tools you use, I think the starting point for prioritizing your efforts has to start with an in-depth look at the groups of people around your organization (whether non-profit or not) and what shared affinity they have with your mission (or brand or products).  When you group people in terms of donors, volunteers, partners, recipients, and so on, you become aware that what drives them to connect with your organization's mission differs in very important ways. 

When you communicate with the different groups of supporters, are you giving them what they want?  Where does their affinity with your organization differ from one another?

Here's an example of what I mean.  In a recent discussion with James Otieno of Silicon Valley Education Foundation he identified teachers as the highest priority group in the SVEF network for them to reach effectively in order to realize SVEF's mission, although they also care a lot about donors, partners, parents, students, school district staff, etc.  James mentioned that teachers are frustrated by increasing standards requirements along with growing class sizes, but being given no tools to help them counteract these trends.  Is SVEF doing anything specific to cater to the needs of teachers in their communication framework and tools.  The answer is "not yet" - they receive the same eNewsletters, Facebook and Twitter posts, blog entries, and website updates that the rest of the SVEF community receives. 

By ignoring the specific affinity that people have with your organization's mission you are training them to tune out of your messaging.  If a donor to the Sierra Club cares specifically about the project to change logging practices to align with saving endangered owls in the Sierra Nevada, then you'll increase their loyalty and engagement to your organization by giving them access to information about that specific project and the people involved in it.

In the webinar someone asked "what's the special sauce needed to get people to interact?"  Beth responded "by asking good questions."  Have you asked what your most important supporters are looking for and focused your attention on addressing that need?  If not, then at best you're missing an important opportunity to increase their loyalty and engagement, and at worst, they may be ignoring you.

The next questions are:

• How do you add more communication channels and also simplify? 
• Which social media tools are best suited for aligning your communications with the specific affinity and interest of your most important supporters?
  

Baby steps in social media for nonprofit organizations

Last evening's Government and Non-Profits 2.0:Social Media-Best Practices event moderated by Alan Silberberg, and including Debra Bowen, Beth Kanter, and Gwyneth Galbraith covered a lot of ground in one hour.  But Lynne and I found the discussion surrounding how to get nonprofits to take baby steps toward social media to be of primary interest.  Beth listed the typical barriers (or excuses if you prefer) provided by nonprofits to avoid participating in social media.  She mentioned that nonprofits just don't have a culture for social media.  Some the top-level baby steps that were discussed included wallowing in the problem, creating a social media policy, and taking small yet comfortable steps toward embracing at least one tool, perhaps Facebook or Twitter for starters.

We have been openly wondering if a more comfortable baby step might exist - one that allows the organization to leverage existing tools and involves their existing community.  The goal would be to create a positive feedback loop, confidence, and a sliver of a social media culture before moving on to more open and uncontrollable pastures.  In other words, create a really nice entryway to your organization's landscape before tearing the fences down.

So what are the existing tools?  Our experience has been they consist of hard copy newsletters, eNewsletters, mailing lists, and maybe a blog.  Despite the fact that email is starting to feel like driving your grandfather's Buick, it's still the lowest common denominator for online communications.  So what if the existing publishing activities practiced by most nonprofits could result in push-pull engagement and participation by the community, rather than just pressing send and watching the Buick drive off into the sunset never to be seen again?  How can we better address the challenges of taking the baby steps, such as publishing in the right format, publishing to the right people, and tracking the impact?

As a concrete example, I'll turn to a recent example blog/eNewsletter created by Beth discussing network weaving.  I receive Beth's blog posts as an email compliments of Feedburner, but this could just as easily be a typical eNewsletter being sent by a nonprofit to their mailing list.  Beth wrote "My question: Is there a network of peers who do network weaving for nonprofits to support external communications?" 

Taking that question to the next level would be allowing the community to respond on the spot and share with the other members right within the context of the email or blog posting.

 
And a step further would be providing the option for people to see some comments from other readers to encourage their response.

 

Further into Beth's blog she writes "For starters, I'm going to ask Holly Ross at NTEN that we have a birds of a feather table at the NTC10 or if I get ambitious I will sign up to lead an affinity group meeting." 

This could be followed up with:

 
A yes response would place the person into a new group that could be leveraged as an immediate communications channel and collaboration point.  Beth's blog entry closes with some questions:

• Are you practicing network weaving skills in your nonprofit or network?
• What are you learning about network weaving?
• What inspires you about network weaving potential?

All of which could be replaced by a short survey in the email.

 

Now every email communication, no matter how formal or informal, could leverage best practices for encouraging participation, feedback, and more contextual dialogue.  Commenting on a blog has a few of the above capabilities, but is reliant on the reader filling in the context and doesn't provide for the option to show the results of what the rest of the community thinks in a nutshell.  For example:

 
The eNewsletter and the aggregation of results, comments, etc. at a single destination web page has an opportunity to provide evidence of a (hopefully) vibrant and caring community of supporters, donors, volunteers, and recipients.  The organization has taken a baby step using publishing-related activities with which they are comfortable and familiar. But after a few of these transactions, allowing for less controlled conversation and dialogue may start to creep into the organizational culture.  Not to mention that the dialogues are great initial content to point at when they do engage with Twitter, Facebook, and other social media channels.

If these tools existed in the way I've described then I'd be using them in this blog posting.  So I'm stuck asking for your comments here:

• Does it make sense to extend a nonprofit's existing publishing tools in this way (assuming it can be done without too much time and pain)?
• Are there any success stories out there where email is being used to bring polls, surveys, and conversation to the forefront in real time?  Maybe inserting a Google Form or other 3rd party survey into an email?
• Does this feel like a baby step that might be a good tool to add into a social media starter toolkit?

Non-Profits and Social Media - An Eruption in the Making

 

Alexandra Samuel, the CEO of Social Signal is onto something with her recent blog post.  

We too at the groupery are seeing great passion amongst volunteer leaders and non profits who today are primarily in synchronous client relationships hungry to take the social interactions into an asynchronous relationship.  They are interested in leveraging, reaching and extending their reach with social media.  They want to embrace these open technologies and often aren't sure where to start, who to have involved or scared that the task will require too much time and money.  It's unclear to many leaders what will really 'come off' the plate?  

Questions that arise are: Is it really secure?  How much time does it take to learn how to use it?  How will we ever be able to keep up with all the comments and feedback, etc.

We are talking with groups and leaders about shifting the conversation.  Spend time as teams to think through how to take an existing task off someone's plate to making space for social media.  Why not?   Consider making it as easy as this five step process:

Step One:  Talk in with volunteer teams about your where your customers live today in social media?

Step Two:  Discuss areas that are time intensive and involve communication, public relations, marketing and business development.

Step Three:  Converse around possible areas you would like to save time or resources from existing tasks or programs?

Step Four:  Consider taking small steps as group to practice internally "walk the talk" in a safe environment that builds everyone's confidence and experience. 

Step Five:  Launch one small social media program that allows you to be responsive to your customers, invite them into conversations and see the benefits of how adapting into this new environment can be fun, social and rewarding.

Hopefully in taking on these five easy steps, groups can see that social media does have its advantages and you can find the resources and time to commit.   We're particularly interested in the answers that NPO's and volunteer leaders arrive at for step one.  Do you believe you can reach and continue to engage your customers via Twitter and Facebook?  Or do your customers really live in eNewsletter land?  Do you have to pull them into conversations from their Inbox?  What's working for you?

Beth's Blog is another great resource for organizations at all stages of adopting social media.