UKriders

The ComcastCares Twitter account is an example of how businesses are using Twitter and other social web tools for customer support and service.  You can read more about what they are doing at Valerie Maltoni's Conversation Agentor Chris Brogan. It made me wonder if any nonprofits have started to use Twitter in this way. This lead to me Alex Steed's write up about Robin Parker, Red Cross Portland. He mentions that they do a lot of listening - and sure enough once I scanned her twitter stream, I was able to find the above example. 

Is anyone using Twitter to provide answers or customer service to their audiences via Twitter (or even via a blog)?  I know this idea is probably not the right fit for a lot of nonprofits, but on the other hand maybe it might be working for some.    Please do share if your organization is using Twitter in this way or if you think it is the dumbest idea you've ever heard.

LinkedIn is a professional network for business and (and nonprofit professionals.)  It is often described as an online social network for job seekers.  Perhaps because initially your profile was structured like an online version of your  resume.  Let me tell you, LinkedIn can be a terrific place to develop professional contacts, grow your business, and promote your work and opportunities. There are many good reasons why nonprofit professionals use online professional networking sites liked LinkedIn.

Earlier this week LinkedIn announced its applications platform that includes a small number of well-chosen apps that can enhance your professional networking profile. You can add your blog content, slide shows, reading lists, files, business travel, and more. (Chris Brogan calls the addition of adding your business travel schedule "dog clever."  Since LinkedIn is primarily a professional networking site that can help you find job prospects, works prospects, and

For my profile, I added BlogLink (it posts my blog posts to my profile automatically) and SlideShare's Application.  (In the video above SlideShare's CEO Rashmi Sinha demonstrates the application.)

Meet Sarah on LinkedInView SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: app slideshare) After I installed my slideshare, I had this idea about doing a powerpoint to visually illustrate the text in my LinkedIn profile.  Then, I found this wonderful example.

What I like most about LinkedIn applications is that they are focused on professional use.  I also like that there aren't hundreds of them, and so far the two installed were not buggy.  Oh, did I mention that I like the way they look on my profile?   The best benefit of all is that installation process doesn't  suggest that I "invite my friends to install."   What that means is that I won't have to spend time on LinkedIn ignoring application invitations.

But applications alone don't make well designed and effective LinkedIn profile.   Here's some great advice from Chris Brogan who how make your LinkedIn profile support your professional goals. (more here)

Linked In How-Tos and Tips

Creating Conversations and Relationships Using LinkedIn SOBcon09 - Biz School For Bloggers
Guy Kawasaki's list of Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn and LinkedIn Profile Extreme Makeover.
Chris Brogan, Write Your LinkedIn Profile for Your Future
Chris Brogan, LinkedIn Profile Tips

Linked In Applications

Michele Martin, LinkedIn Applications
Chris Brogan, Drop Everything - Run To LinkedIn Now
Read/Write Web - LinkedIn Applications:  Your Resume Just Got More Dynamic
TechCrunch, Linked In Means Business With New Application Platform

What do you think of LinkedIn adding apps? Do you any value of using LinkedIn as a nonprofit professional?

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a Social Media Club workshop in Hawaii as part of Podcamp and WordCamp in Hawaii.  I asked folks who was doing interesting social change work with Aloha spirit.   Several people pointed to Cynthia Derosier, author of The Surfer Spirit Book and recently published The Survivor Spirit : The Beauty, Passion, and Power of Breast Cancer Survivors.   I was to track her down for an interview.

Cynthia is convinced surfing can help Hawaii's at-risk youth.  In partnership with Girls Court and The Surfrider Foundation's O'ahu Chapter, Derosier started The Spirit Sessions, a six-week program aimed to help at-risk teens redirect their lives in a positive way through surfing and other ocean-related activities.

1.  How did you get interested in surfing?

I grew up in Hawaii and always loved to ocean. I've always loved swimming and body surfing and paddling a canoe. In high school my friends and I decided to learn how to surf, but back then the boys were pretty territorial and short boards were the "in" thing so it was difficult to learn (we never really ever got good enough to stand up) and a lot of the boys would hassle us about getting in their way etc...it wasn't worth the stress considering we had so many other options, so we just dropped it and went back to all our other sports.

When I moved back home after living in NYC for 12 years I decided it was something I wanted to learn.  I got a group of friends together and we went down to Waikiki beach and learned how to long board like the beach boys.  The first time I stood up my world changed and I was hooked. There is no better feeling than standing on a wave and living purely in the moment.. Something inside me woke up. In retrospect it was the first time I realized I had a surfer spirit.

2.  What is the connection between surfing and healing?

There is a saying "only a surfer knows the feeling" and it's true. It's hard to describe, but I can tell you, anyone who has ever caught a wave, whether they surf throughout their life or only once, everyone remembers that first wave. I taught some Buddhist monks to surf and they told me that it is very much in the spirit of being a Buddhist because you must live in the moment.

Surfing keeps you in balance, physically, emotionally and spiritually. The physical part is obvious. The rest, becomes obvious the more you surf. It's the only sport I can think of where you play with nature. not on it, not in it, but with it. You sit in the right spot then wait for a wave, then it does what it wants with you. And if you are skilled you know how to respond to it in a way that works for you. And no two waves are ever the same. And no surf spot is ever static.

I see a lot of self-esteem enhancement with the kids in our surf program (The Spirit Sessions). Most don't think they can surf and we get them up and riding on their first lesson!  They get a great workout, learn a whole new sport and positive activity (vs some of their other less positive habits.   They also develop a whole new social circle. In addition they start to see the ocean and the environment differently and they start to ask us marine biology questions, which lead to general environmental education. For many of our kids its a chance to practice and reconnect to their Hawaiian culture. So there is also cultural healing as well.

The Hawaiians believe that the ocean itself is healing. He`e Nalu is the Hawaiian word for "surf" it literally means "to slide on churning water"...but "nalu" also refers to the amniotic fluid and He`e Nalu also implies being born. In many ways, surfing was regarded as a way to celebrate life and be cleansed. 

3.  You also created a surfing program for breast cancer survivors.  Can you tell me about that?

As part of Make A Difference Day, the kids from our Spirit Sessions Program
helped us teach some of the women who were breast cancer survivors to how to surf. It was a rainy and cold day, but a few of the women came down anyway. They had a blast and I think at least two of them are going to keep surfing! In exchange They gave the girls some life advice about being positive and never giving up when faced with life challenges and most of all continuing to celebrate life and enjoy what good there
is in the world, surfing being one of them!

4.  What is your new book about?

It's a celebration of spirit. I believe that everyone has a gift to bring to the world, and everyone has  a unique spirit, and that it is our obligation to find our light and share it with the world.. While we all have certain physical needs, we also need to pay attention to our spirit's needs, and if we honor and feed our unique spirit, we will be stronger, and our light shine brighter and we will all benefit. In my case, surfing keeps me in balance and focused. For the women in the book, they each had something that helped them endure their battle with cancer and made them stronger, better, brighter. As a result, EVERY woman I interviewed noted that her life is better now because of their experience with cancer! They each discovered something inside them they hadn't realized before.  Pretty powerful stuff!

5.  Wow, this makes want to go surfing.  Any tips?

The most important tip is to just try it!

Cross posted at BlogHer.

For novices just starting to explore social media, I recommend google alerts as the first listening step because they didn't have learn another application (RSS Readers) to get started. I use google alerts, but always wished they had an RSS option. I get way too email that I can barely keep up. So, I was so happy dancing to hear that they have added this option.

On Friday,  I got an invitation to "donate my status" on Facebook for a Get Out The Vote Rally on Facebook, a causes application.  When you install, it will give Facebook permission to automatically change your status line to one of several get out the vote messages.   When I installed there were 28,849 users on Facebook that had installed.  I just checked and there are like 72,000.

This type of interaction design is perfect on facebook - doesn't require donation, easy to install and spread.  And, I think once you've installed it, you don't get a million invitations - or at least I haven't yet.

If you want to know more about social media and the election, there's a compilation of examples of how social media is being used in the elections by Lauren-Glenn Davitian, CCTV Center for Media and Democracy. (You can read it here).  Lucy Bernholz offers some brilliant reflection questions on what philanthropy can learn from politics.

Well off to turn Twittter avatar into the logo for VoteReport.

Marshall Kirkpatrick has a great post over at Read/Write Web about keeping momentum.  In that post, he describes one technique - make yourself a public case study.  So, in that spirit,  I'm sharing my presentation from last week which is a case study of my blogging ROI.  My main point is that you just think of ROI as math, then you're missing the a lot of the value of doing an ROI analysis.

I had the honor of presenting on a panel at the eMetrics Conference with Jonathon Coleman, Nature Conservancy and Laura Lee Dooley. World Resources Institute - two of the most savvy and smart nonprofit social media practitioners who are also metrics geeks.   What a combination!  

Our session is on the social media metrics track and one of a few that are geared for nonprofit folks.

Followers, Friends, and Fans: Expanding Your Online Community
If you aren't on facebook, twitter, friendfeed, technorati, and delicious, should you be? And once you jump into social media, how do you track and measure success? Tips, tools and stories from the trenches from three people who focus on online engagement and have more links, friends and followers than some small countries have citizens.

I also wanted to blog both Laura's excellent Twitter Digg deck and Jon's concise and smart case study of Digg.   They follow below.

In addition, WebMetrics Guru and Search Marketing Gurus took awesome notes! A bonus is Laura's Twitter links in Del.icio.us.    If you want follow web metrics bloggers, check out this list form All Top.  Laura has also compiled a list of live blog posts done at the emetrics conference - a very valuable resource.

Geoff Livingston live blogged the Network Solutions Solutions Stars Video Conference -- by a team of Internet marketing and social media rock stars.  The advice is geared for small businesses, not nonprofits, but a lot of it relevant and translatable.   The topics addressed include:

• Building Web Presence
• The Social Opportunity
• Start with Listening
• Strategy Drives Outreach
• You Need Social Networks
• To Blog or Not to Blog
• Visibility Through Search
• Rising Above the Noise
• Time Demands

One of the messages that came through from this group of experts is that social media can give you a lot of return for your investment.  That investment is staff time as many of the tools are free.  Then again, time is one of the most valuable resources a nonprofit has ...   And, as Geoff points out social media does take time and it can take away from core operations - if you let it.   Geoff offers some time management techniques for social media strategists or what I'd like to call "Social Productivity" (I'm developing a workshop on that one ...)

So, if you incorporate social media - and allocate the time - and no matter how efficient you are - something will have to give.  Where does social media time/money fit within the overall web marketing budget?  What are the right proportions?

It just so happened that after reading Geoff's posts .. via my social network I stumbled upon colleague  Stephen Blyth musing about allocating money on a nonprofit web's strategy. Quoting some notes from a workshop presented at Craigslist Foundation Nonprofit Bootcamp by Colin Delaney of ePolitics and Laura Quinn.  (Resource list and Powerpoint Here)

Here's a screen capture of one of the slides that illustrates the structure they used:

They divided the pie into equal thirds as follows:

• Website (as a home base)
• Email Communication (to talk to your friends)
• Online Outreach (to reach new friends) (They included social media/networking, search engine optimization, etc)

They recommend that you allocate time and budget equally 1/3 between each.

This sounds good, but I wish that the sections were as clear cut as the illustration.  Are those categories mutually really exclusive?  I kept wanting to blend them ...

Especially after viewing this slide show and especially this slide ..

What do I know, maybe I'm drinking too much Koolaid, so here goes ..

Homebase: Home base is your website and it could also be your blog or both. Not everyone needs a web site and a blog - that age old question - to blog or not to blog?  Some organizations consolidate.   A blog is a form of social media and I wouldn't necessarily classify as "outreach."  I might also add some of the costs of content creation for videos/podcasts/photos that live on your site (or blog) and on other social networking sites.   And, of course, the cost ensuring that you have set up RSS feeds or what Chris Brogan classifies as "passports."

Outbound Communication:  I'd put together all the one-way or "talking to you" tactics here. This is mostly email marketing -- crafting and putting out solid email communications - your email newsletter and CRM.   Perhaps search engine optimization and search engine advertising costs.   Email will probably not become extinct - so it is important to continue to track its effectiveness.

Online Outreach and Relationship Building:  This would include time spent on setting up social networking profiles, uploading content on places like flickr or Youtube, etc.    It would also include the time spent listening, participating, and joining the conversation.   To prioritize your time, you might concentrate your activity on 1-3 sites, but there are some good reasons to at least set up a presence on many sites.

I've probably muddied the waters here.   How are you thinking about the integration of social media into your overall Internet marketing budget?  How are you making decisions about how you allocate your time and money on social media and in the context of your internet marketing budget?   If you incorporate social media, what are you letting go of or cutting back on?  Why?

• A N I M O T O creates animated videos from your images. very neat (tags: video tools slideshow cool)
• Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Platform Monetization is a Two Way Street: Lessons from Facebook and Sun Microsystems facebook's platform is turning out to be a revolution that didn't last (tags: strategy social-networking business facebook)

I was taking a trip down memory lane through my flickr stream and a search on the word "Halloween" and realized that 30 years ago today I had my first date with my husband! 

I also found this photo from 1964.  When I was kid, our folks let us collect candy, but I also remember those orange boxes and collecting money for Unicef.

So, here's the social media version of collecting money for charity on Halloween from FutureNow.

There are 2 goals for Trick or Tweet:

1. Connect lots of interesting people with other interesting people they didn’t know before.

2. Do some good with our Tricks (there is enough tricky things going on in our worlds).

Here are the rules:

1. Send a Tweet to someone and ask Trick or Tweet.

2. If they say Tweet then you must provide them with a couple of interesting people they should follow (these people should have less than 1000 followers currently). At the end of your tweet add #TrickorTweet. If you don’t provide them with someone new, then you owe a Trick.

3. If they say Trick then send them a link to this page { http://tinyurl.com/trick-o-tweet } where they will have to contribute using the Chipin widget below to charity. The maximum we ask anyone to donate is $20 for the day. Every cent we collect will be sent to charity. We’ll split the proceeds among three charities; Reading is Fundamental, The Center for Autism and the charity that is mentioned the most in the comments below from your suggestions. UPDATE: Chris and I will give our donations to our respective preferred charities, the money collected will go to the top 3 companies voted for in the comments below.

Let’s have fun, connect people and do good. Have a happy and safe Halloween.

And, hope you'll consider mentioning my favorite charity in the comments - The Sharing Foundation - helps Cambodian children.  Go leave a comment now!

And here's another social media halloween campaign to help kids with Cancer.