Maybe you’ve noticed.  There’s something special going on at Mashable: The Summer of Social Good initiative. The uber technology and social media blog has created a charitable fund to benefit The Humane Society, LIVESTRONG, Oxfam America and WWF from June 1st until August 28th, 2009.  And while raising monies directly for these organizations, the media site has done more, already highlighting more than hundred voices and organizations in the social good movement.

Mashable Second in Command and COO Adam Hirsch took some time out of his busy schedule to interview with the Buzz Bin. Hirsch shed some light on this unusual and very special initiative.

GL: Why did Mashable host the Summer of Social Good initiative?

AH:  Mashable has always supported charitable movements in social media. Personally, I was very inspired by our CEO and Founder, Pete Cashmore’s birthday wish to donate money to Charity:Water. I felt there had to be a way to use Mashable’s social media influence directly to raise charitable contributions and awareness.

In February of 2009, after witnessing the Twestival growth, the idea for the Summer of Social Good was finalized and I began working on the many components and partners that you see today. We are also working on an educational event on August 28^th, 2009 that will take place in New York City. Our sponsors, Zappos and Mailchimp are covering the costs of the campaign and the event, so all donations and ticket sales go to the charitable fund.

GL: How does this differentiate you from other top tier social media/tech blogs?

AH: The Mashable team is a positive and enthusiastic group that feels strongly about using our social media influence to make a difference. I believe this attitude carries over in our editorial voice, operations and initiatives. Combined with strong editorial and resource content, forward and positive thinking, we have been able to emerge and separate ourselves from other blogs.

GL: What has your reader response been?

AH: The response has been fantastic overall. We are constantly receiving positive comments, notes and emails. The Summer of Social Good is not just a straight charitable campaign, it’s also an educational platform.

Every week, we are launching a new week-long engagement to interact and share some great stories, fun projects, and rewarding opportunities. Our audience is diverse and we aim to try and include everyone this summer in one way or another. Throughout the campaign our readers have been extremely helpful.

This is officially the first charitable campaign created and run by Mashable. We are certainly not experts in this field and we are trying to put our best foot forward, but sometimes we make mistakes. Many readers have come to me personally to offer advice and help to improve the campaign and create a better experience for our readers and the charities involved.

GL: Tell us about the wrap-up event in New York on August 28.  What do you hope it will do?

AH: Our wrap-up event at the 92nd Street Y in New York on August 28th will be both educational and celebratory. We plan to bring together industry leaders, representatives from a number of charities and organizations involved in the social media space, and members of our diverse audience for a day of learning and networking that we hope will lead to future collaborations and partnerships in the social media for good space.

Additionally, since 100% of ticket sales will be donated to our fund equally benefiting LIVESTRONG, The Humane Society, WWF, and Oxfam America, we hope to be able to add a large contribution to our ongoing online efforts.

GL: Midway through your effort, you’ve launched the #findthegood hashtag with the series.  What’s your goal there?

AH: #FindingTheGood was the theme for one of our week-long series that just concluded. The idea and goal behind it was to share, by using our influence, the other charitable projects out there that fit the theme of “Social Media for Social Good”.

Each day we shared a story about our charities involved (The Humane Society, LiveSTRONG, Oxfam America and WWF), and in addition we shared stories about other organizations’ and individuals’ initiatives and programs as well. However, this wasn’t just about Mashable’s coverage, it was about getting our communities involved and having them to share their “finds” as well. Although the “official” #FindingTheGood week has ended, we hope that this theme/concept and hashtag will live on.

GL: What will Mashable do in this space after the summer ends?

AH: We’ve always been great proponents of charitable organizations and projects using social media. This will not change. Through emails, comments and contacts, The Summer of Social Good has made us more aware of a huge spectrum of projects and organizations out there that previously were not on our radar. With the new audience and relationships in this space, we plan to become more involved.

GL: What has been the big takeaway from this initiative from your perspective?

AH: Thus far we’ve had two major takeaways: The first is that our community rocks! The second is that there is still a lot to learn and improve upon and I’m excited to do that.

About Adam Hirsch

Adam Hirsch, Chief Operations Officer, joined Mashable in Fall of 2007 as Community and Marketing Manager. Adam oversees Mashable’s business development, including marketing, partnerships, advertising and sponsorships, and events. His initiatives include the Open Web Awards and Summer of Social Good, as well as event series such as the Summer Mash Tour of 2008 and the 92YTribeca NextUp NYC educational series.

As Pete Cashmore’s “2nd in Command," Adam is always on the hunt for partnerships and opportunities to improve Mashable and connect with its dedicated readership. Adam is a New York City native and a graduate of Cornell University.

There’s been no greater use of social media during a crisis moment than GM”s use of these tools during the past week. GM’s head of social media Chris Barger took some time out of his incredibly busy week to answer some questions on GM’s efforts this week, and moving forward.

GL: You used social media as part of your larger integrated campaign to communicate through the bankruptcy. How did it work as a crisis tool?

CB: I think it was a critical piece of the strategy - because it was the one set of media where we could *respond* to people and answer questions, and listen to their thoughts. We had a lot of information to get out and we certainly used social media to help convey it, but the real value for us as a crisis tool was in the ability to interact, explain and go deeper with audiences.

I would like to think they got more out of interacting with us than they would have from just hearing the messages delivered through traditional media. I also think that there’s now an expectation — of companies in general, but especially those in our situation, accountable to the us taxpayer — that we should/will be engaged in social media conversations… Had we not been, i think it would have been deemed a failure — so some of the “crisis tool” value was actually in heading off potential other criticism.

GL: GM is used to the negative voices. I am sure you heard some positive, hopeful voices, too. Did the social web detract or empower GM employees this week?

CB: This was the most unexpected thing for me of the whole week — and was a wonderful surprise. I expected that we would get ‘killed’ out there and that in engaging in Twitter, FB, blogs, etc., I had my team set up to personally bear the brunt of people’s anger. Instead, we largely found the opposite to be true.

People seemed to like that we were out there trying to be genuine, trying to answer as honestly as we could; people seemed to respect the individual courage it took for our people to be out in the social web this week. Most people — even the ones who are really angry at gm or at what’s happening right now — were very kind to us, sent us public or private encouragement…

We in the social world always talk about how social humanizes an organization, but the converse also took place for us this week: it humanized the audience. The encouragement we received genuinely kept us going; when even many detractors were polite and even gracious about engaging with us, it really made everything easier to go through. This grace and courtesy we saw from 90% of the audience was the most wonderful and appreciated surprise.

GL: One thing that became apparent during the outreach was GM’s focus on team social media as opposed to a singular voice. How does that different approach empower GM?

CB: On a purely practical level it enabled us to better engage this week; there was no way that a singular voice or ‘brandividual’ could have taken part in all the conversations that we needed to be in. However, many conversations one person can be in at once, a team can engage exponentially.

More importantly, it avoids the concern of too-heavily associating your brand with an individual — and mitigates the danger of that individual leaving the company. Robert Scoble’s audience follows him wherever he goes; they didn’t automatically stay with Microsoft, for example. It is absolutely vital that gm be more human in our interactions, rather than ‘hiding behind a blue box’ logo. But we have more than one human, with more than one set of passions, more than one area of expertise. As much as my ego might enjoy being “Mr. GM in social media,” I think the company is better served in the long run by being represented by a platoon of voices, eventually even an army (It’s what I still admire about IBM’s approach.).

Most important of all, however, is this: the more pervasive a company’s use of these media, and the conversations and relationships that develop from them, the more genuinely responsive we become. All the learnings that i get from interactions online… Add my team and we multiply that benefit and those learnings by 6. Add in the extended team we built this week, and our learnings increase by 20x.

How much more responsive, customer-focused and better attuned could we be if we had 100 highly active people in social media? If we had 200? 500? 1000 or 5000? It would be an #epicfail on my part if i focused all those learnings and affinities on myself (or any single individual) and then relied on individuals’ power of persuasion and personality to imbue them in the organization; rather, i’d say that the more people gm plugs into conversation, the more genuinely connected and responsive we’ll be.

You can read Part II of this interview on the CRT/tanaka whatcanbe blog. Chris answers questions on whether detractors were correct, which social tools were best used in the crisis, and what’s next for GM on the social web.

I recently read a post that dubbed me a pioneer, something that made me uncomfortable as I have only been blogging now for three years (original photo taken this weekend at the Cherry Blossom Festival). There were many that came before me that are still doing it… True pioneers. Let’s highlight some of these bright communicators in what can only be called a very subjective list.

Toby Bloomberg (on Twitter):  The Diva marketing blogger was the first major blogger to shed some light on this blog.  She served as a blog mentor of sorts when I was getting started, and still delivers great content and insights five years into her effort.

Brian Solis (on Twitter): Brian is at the forefront of the PR 2.0 movement and can only be deemed an A-Lister these days.  But back before he hit it big time, he helped me out with a great interview and Now Is Gone.  Brian still writes great blog posts regularly!

Kami Huyse (on Twitter): A no nonsense communicator, Kami keeps it real, always focused on the profession of communicating, and then how these tools may impact us.  Kami is one sharp cookie, and she’s a mom of three, and she practices, too. A true winner in my book (and a great friend), Kami started when I did, but was influential for me right out of the gate.

John Moore (on Twitter): I finally met Brand Autopsy author John Moore at SxSW. I’ve been reading him for years now, and he’s just darn brilliant.  Always a good read, quirky, and definitely an old-school blogger. Lot’s of great insights and takes on marketing here.

Liz Strauss (on Twitter): Talk about an original blogger, does it get any more original than Liz Strauss, author of the Successful Outstanding Blog and founder of SOBCON. I think not. Again, another blogger who still stands and delivers, and in Liz’s case, more than most.

Richard Becker (on Twitter): This man is a great conversationalist, a great communicator, and quite frankly is not into the popularity game we see online. What I like about Richard is his challenging blog. He makes you think, he pushes the envelope, and like Kami, gets down to the business of communicating.

OK, there are many more, but you get the point.  There are many great bloggers who have been around for a long time – some popular, some not – all of them great in their own right, pioneering and shaping this blogger’s mind and outlook. My thanks to all of them for shining in their own special ways.

SXSW - What to say? It’s really a big get together and party featuring many folks in the industry that you already know. The sessions were OK, the business discussions alright, but really it’s an excuse for a big ole social jam. So in many ways, I’d rather show you SxSW rather than tell you about it. Here’s my SXSW portrait set on Flickr. And here are some of my favorite shots:

Shannon Paul

Chris Heuer

Jason Baer and Beth Harte

Doug Meacham

Kaitlyn Wilkens

Myself and Zena Weist

It was a pleasure seeing everyone there! Again, the full SXSW portrait set is on Flickr.

Well, it’s certainly a hot topic with some, err, interesting posts going up right now. One of my favorites is this Mark Drapeau “goverati” post, which encapsulates the phenomena of the social media public sector swooning that’s going on currently.

It seems like a little context is needed right about now, so I asked my old buddy Jimmy Baker, an expert on the topic of sales and marketing technology products and services to government, to do an interview. Jimmy recently published a book “How to Win Business From the Government (Jimmy shares the same publisher as me).”

Before we get into the interview, some background information on why everyone is so interested in the government marketplace — beyond the Obama factor. The US Federal Government is one of the largest purchasers of information technology in the world. In 2009, the Federal Government is budgeted to spend over $70B in the purchase of information technology goods and services. If you are interested in this market, I highly suggest Jimmy’s book as it will literally teach you a step by step approach to researching the government, figuring out where the funding for IT deals exist, and creating an unforgettable presentation about your offering to the federal buyer.

BB: We are really in a time of change right now. How has the business of government changed in the last eight years as we end era of W and the Obama Administration begins?

JB: Whether you love George Bush or hate him, he did a really great job of making IT spending and programs very transparent to the citizen. As the Clinton-Gore administration was ended, we saw big government contracting shops closing down and the government was moving towards a more efficient way to buy goods and services through GWACs.

When Bush took over he created something called the Quick Silver Initiatives which was changing and improving the way government did business. We began to see agency’s have their programs monitored at www.expectmore.gov Business cases (300s) were publically posted on an agency’s web site. The budget was getting tracked using good accounting practices through LOBs (lines of business). For anyone selling and marketing to government- this is huge (I go into far more detail in the book on this information).

As we embrace our new President, I think the Obama-Biden administration has a really good platform to build from. Like many of us in the business, I am studying the new economic stimulus package and trying to help my clients be “shovel ready”.

BB: What do you think of the Government 2.0 Expert that has arisen?

JB: This is a hard question to answer. We still have not really seen what 2.0 will do in government like it has in the commercial marketplace. Over the last few years, we have seen the rise of many government blogs to help better inform the citizen about the government.

Our new president has his own blog at www.whitehouse.gov Just a few days ago I joined GovLoop which is like Face Book for government people. Because of the nature of government, I think many agencies will need to be careful about how much their employees speak to the public. I am sometimes surprised at how many people I find from government on Face Book and My Space and how they represent themselves to the public.

The other area that is exciting right now is the ease of use of video. Many agencies are using You Tube to reach out to their citizens. We have a very progressive CIO here in Cali where I live (Teri Takai) that uses You Tube all the time in a very wise and tactful manner to communicate her opinion. Instead of waiting for the news groups to show her information, she goes right to the masses.

This past August I was down in San Diego and had a chance to speak with Dan Green of the Navy. Dan said that many agencies are using the concept of social networks in a secure (government only access) way to collaborate on different programs and challenges.

To get back to your question, we are in the infancy of social media / web 2.0 and the impact of government. As we see the merger of video, social groups, and instant contact to people on whatever device they have, I think government will adapt with more citizen centric applications. There is a company called iQuestions that I think has a really good handle on where the Internet and social networks are going. The format of their site www.iquestions.com I think is the wave of the future for government and social media.

BB: How can social media types who are unfamiliar with how government works come up to speed quickly?

JB: Although the way we market is changing, there are some underline “Old School” principles to remember for anyone tech company that wants to get in the social media game. Always know who and where your target market is and what you should be telling them. What we now have to be aware of in 2009 is that our target market is very, very diverse and segmented.

You may need to promote a campaign several different ways to get the results you want using social media / web 2.0. Many of the retiring baby boomers are used to going to a web site and downloading a white paper. People who are in our age group (30 – 45) are used to adapting to whatever the new technology is and how it works. People in their teens and twenties will communicate and access information differently than ever before.

When my clients starting coming to me about how to use some of the social sites, I read two books that really helped me understand how social media work. I recommend reading Now is Gone and Wikinomics. In my book I take several pages to discuss marketing and branding in the new social media market place.

BB: Give me a little history about you and how you got started with your career in selling to government?

JB: After I graduated the University of Maryland with a BA in Speech Communication, I got a job with the Gazette Newspapers. I was responsible for selling ads to churches. What is funny about this is during the early 90’s there was a famous TV evangelist named Jim Bakker who was having some trouble in his personal life, business, and ministry.

So imagine trying to sell churches ads with the same name of the publically known-very problemed pastor. I used to get so many “Tammy Faye” jokes it wasn’t funny. Anyway, I was able to take lemons and make lemonade. A good friend of the family was looking for some sales people for his technology company. He said if you can sell church ads with the name “Jim Baker” then you should have no problem selling computers to the feds. As Paul Harvey says “and that’s the rest of the story.”

BB: Why did you write this book?

JB: I simply wanted to help small businesses. I was giving one of my talks around the beltway and someone from the Executive Office of the President said you really need to take what you are doing and put it into a book because so many businesses really lack the research and sales skills to penetrate the government market. Shortly after this, I put in for a copy right and began putting the book together.

BB: How is this different from other government books on the market?

JB: This book is meaty, tactical, and based on real experiences from selling and marketing to government. To my knowledge, there is not another book like this on the market. There are a few books that talk about government marketing at a very high level. There are also some books on proposal writing.

I think Jim Flyzik, President, The Flyzik Group, former Government CIO and CIO Magazine Hall of Fame Inductee said it best, “Jimmy’s book is the first time I’ve encountered so much useful information put together in one place. He obviously “gets it” when talking about the importance of knowing the uniqueness of the government customer and all the necessary nuances of developing business in this sector. The book is not only a great learning experience but also a useful reference manual for business developers and sales representatives. A good investment for companies looking to gain competitive edge.”

I encourage your readers to go to www.governmentbusinessbook.biz and read some of the reviews of the book.

BB: What can the reader expect to walk a way with after buying your book?

JB: Literally, this book is a step by step guide how to create a sales pipeline, find money, and present to the government end user. The goal of this book is to teach four things to help your business change how it goes after business in the federal information technology market:

1. Critical Research Tactics to better understand your Federal Customer

2. Building a qualified sales pipeline and executing a call plan

3. Learning how to articulate your value proposition so the government wants to buy your services

4. Marketing and branding your company- Most campaigns are designed to fail because they leave out one very critical component in their marketing and sales approach to the government.

Contact Jimmy Baker here. Order his new book How to Win Business from Government today!

In the past two years I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with great minds like Brian Solis on my book, and later folks like Toby Bloomberg, Jason Falls, Amber Naslund and Beth Harte on blog posts. This week I collaborated with Joseph Jaffe for one of his Jaffe Juice podcasts; a fantastic discussion about how we as social media voices have the power to affect great change with our social networks (download here).

We often get stuck in the conversations about marketing and communications here, but social networks are about people. And we have a great opportunity to make a difference every day and affect change. There are many ways to do that, including fundraising, political activism, education, and much more. We in many ways have an obligation as members of larger communities to do this.

We discussed Dave Armano’s effort to help a victim of domestic abuse. For further information and analysis see Beth’s blog for a marketplace discussion of Armano’s effort.

We also talked about LComm’s project with Save Darfur, and were joined by Allyn Brooks, who talked about about Social Philanthropy and the Darfur crisis.

Our question to you, the social media consumer: What are you waiting for? Add your voice now: http://www.addyourvoice.org/ - send President Obama a postcard and play your part to Save Darfur. Or do something else and affect change within your network and the world… One person at a time.

The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect the natural ecosystems that plants and animals need to survive. With over a million members, The Nature Conservancy has protected more than 119 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of rivers worldwide.

Evan C. Parker, the Manager of Digital Membership at the Nature Conservancy, heads up the organization’s online communications efforts. For the past twelve years, Parker has specialized in mobilizing online audiences for nonprofit and political causes. Prior to joining the Conservancy in 2005, Evan led Congressman Bernie Sanders’ online outreach efforts.

BB: What was your biggest achievement on the social media front in 2008?

EP: Our social media efforts are really more about lots of small efforts over a wide area, as opposed to a deep dive in any one particular pool. As a result, our achievements tend to be targeted, and more distributed, as opposed to any one "big thing" to be singled out.

For example: this year we’ve past $100,000 and 50,000 friends on Facebook, our Flickr community saw it’s 100,000th picture posted, and we launched a really successful widget campaign through Plant A Billion Trees. They’re all great accomplishments, but they are built on a sturdy social media foundation that we’ve been developing — slow and steady — over the last three or four years.

BB: Tell us about your organization’s marketing/communications strategy for 2009. What big hairy audacious social media goals will help you achieve your objectives next year? Do you foresee any particularly enticing opportunities that can help nonprofits/causes reach their social media goals in 2009? Any advice for how to take advantage of related trends?

EP: It sounds so dull, but we are really looking for more of the same — we want to keep engaging our community of conservationists, on whatever networks/platforms that energize them. Obviously, that will mean a lot of work in the more traditional social media spaces — the Facebooks, the Flickrs — but we will certainly keep an ear to the ground for where our current/future supporters will be congregating next.

There seems to be a lot of real traction around online donation affinity programs lately, and that certainly looks promising to an organization like the Conservancy. People are looking for easy solutions to everyday problems, and that includes everyday ways they can support the causes that are most important to them.

BB: How do you plan to integrate your social media efforts with the rest of your marketing mix (e.g., direct mail, email marketing, mobile, media relations, etc.)?

EP: We’ve seen first hand that integrated marketing messages across channels is really a rising tide that lifts all boats. That being said, each element of a marketing mix appeals to a very specific audience, so the trick is all about figuring out which audiences can be best reached through which channels. So, as we kick off each marketing effort, we will think through the channels vs. the audiences, and roll our messages out to as many as we can.

BB: What is one challenge you face when executing new, social and/or digital media strategy? How are you overcoming this hurdle? What will be the final measure of success for your digital plans?

EP: In my mind, the biggest challenge in this space is always going to be time. Right now, our digital teams could easily put together a list of social media spaces that vastly outstrips the collective hours in our day, so we have to prioritize as best we can.

This, unfortunately, highlights the second biggest challenge inherent in social media, which is metrics. Unless we have good metrics, it’s impossible to gauge the success of social media efforts. Without success, it’s impossible to measure ROI. Without ROI, it’s impossible to figure out where we should be focusing our attentions.

It’s a bit of a vicious circle, but we will be focusing a lot of effort figuring out how we measure social media engagement, tie it back to traffic, and then track the long term value of our social media audiences over the next few years.

by Beth Harte (cross-posted on the Harte of Marketing) and Geoff Livingston

Our original post “Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert Is a Carpetbagger” was really meant as a silly riff in reaction to the sudden rush of folks offering social media services in the wake of the economic crisis. The post was never meant to be anything more than half rant/half humor, but the 180+ comments on both of our blogs indicate that we touched a much bigger nerve. Since it’s a prescient topic, we’d like to offer a more serious, positive post to help marketers make a good choice in consultants (image by tigermatt).

A couple of precursors. We’re just starting the list. Feel free to add, balk, or digress.

Secondly, not having a few of these isn’t a death sentence. Social media communications is still a really new industry, and there are no silver bullet experts or methodologies. To help separate the wheat from the chaff, we are sharing these general suggestions, but if many qualifiers are missing in your potential partner’s offering, as a marketer, PR or communications professional you should probably be concerned.

Lastly, we’ve cited examples. This is not an echo chamber or buddy list (sorry to our buddies not on the list, we only wanted to list one per qualifier). In some cases, we’ve never met said examples, but we know their work.

Finally, there are many qualified SM consultants/agencies. In the case of larger agencies, we can’t vouch for them, but can safely recommend individuals. It would be impossible to list all of the many qualified social media partners. Instead, we refer you to Charlene Li’s Altimeter Wiki as a starting place. We also invite you to give hat tips in the comments section.

OK, here we go again:

1) Believes in the generous web and practices cross-linking in their blog (example: Kami Huyse)

2) Highlights others’ work in their blog (example: Chris Brogan)

3) Integrates social media as part of larger marketing strategy(example: Razorfish)

4) Doesn’t pretend to be an expert in all things digital; instead simply focuses on what he/she/they do best (example: Common Craft)

5) Gives away best practices in an effort to educate, grow social media in general (example: Todd Defren/SHIFT Communications)

6) Understands that Radian6 and other monitoring tools are vastly superior tracking tools in comparison to Technorati (which really isn’t an indicator of much these days) (example: Fleishman’s Matt Dickman)

7) Will tell you that there is no magic bullet for determining social media ROI and that you need to go further to accurately monitor, measure and determine the effectiveness of social media. (example: K.D. Paine).

8) Understands that social media is an important part of the larger word of mouth marketing principles (example: Ogilvy’s John Bell)

9) Others cite this person/agency’s work (example: see the many here and here)

10) Realizes that search engine optimization represents an absolutely crucial part of social media (example: TopRank’s Lee Odden)

11) Understands that social media expands beyond search engine optimization tactics that lead to Diggs, Stumbles (StumbleUpon) and link baiting (example: Key Relevance’s Li Evans)

12) Integrates brick and mortar events with social media activity (example: Voce’s Josh Hallet)

13) Has and continues to work on notable social media projects (example: Andy Sernovitz)

14) Understands that conversations are the starting place and not the end game. And though ROI is critical, knows that without conversation you’re not going anywhere (example: Paul Chaney).

15) Understands that social networking and conversation is more than collecting followers and subscribers (example: Mack Collier)

16) Listens to you when you are discussing your challenges (example: Connie Reece)

17) Helps and guides clients so that they can understand the benefits of social media and implement it properly (themselves) (example: Amber Naslund)

18) Knows that social networking works best when they are conversing, sharing, and being human (i.e. doesn’t self-promote) (example: Jason Falls)

19) Educates clients on understanding that they no longer own or control their brand and educates them on how to create customer evangelists (example: Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba)

20) Won’t act as your social media ‘voice’ or ghostwrite for you (example: Laura Bergells)

21) Understands the difference between social media tools and communications strategy (example: Ogilvy’s Rohit Bhargarva)

22) They won’t recommend blogging as a first step into social media (example: David Armano) and when you are ready to begin they consult you on how to be successful (example: Drew McLellan)

23 Doesn’t allow clients to be affected by Shiny New Object syndrome (example: Beth Kanter)

24 Understands that social media is more than just creating and delivering content or regurgitating existing promotional copy Joseph Jaffe

25 Understands that social media isn’t the sole terrain of marketing or PR and helps clients educate internally to other departments
(example: Media Badger)

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy seeks to improve the lives and future prospects of children and families. The organization strives to ensure that these children are born into stable homes and raised by two-parent families. The National Campaign’s goal is to reduce the teen pregnancy rate and unplanned pregnancy among young adults.

Lawrence Swiader is the Director of Digital Media at The National Campaign and relays responsible values and messages to obtain their goal by using social media, games, mobile devices and the Web. Prior to The National Campaign, Lawrence worked at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for ten years where he established an award-winning Web presence for the Museum.

BB: What was your biggest achievement on the social media front in 2008?

LS: Having just joined The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy in October, 2008, my biggest achievements would have to be described as working on the small things. This included making sure that our blog, Pregnant Pause , was listed on all the right directories and that my colleagues felt ownership for writing into the blog.  In addition, a presence for The National Campaign was created in Twitter , Facebook , Delicious , YouTube and other important Web destinations.

BB: Tell us about your organization’s marketing/communications strategy for 2009.

LS: The National Campaign’s marketing strategy for 2009 emphasizes new outreach to young adults, 18 - 30, to prevent unplanned pregnancy.  Over half of all pregnancies in this age group are unplanned.  This is a big problem and a large, national group.  We believe that the way to reach our audience is to invest some time in a destination site, yes, but also to create small products (there are a lot of group producers out there) that can be marketed effectively via social networks.

BB: What big hairy audacious social media goals will help you achieve your objectives next year?

LS: Our biggest social media goals next year will be to leverage the tools to create an audience from scratch around some new audio and video series.  In addition, with a new administration, a big goal would be to affect new the health policy by including family planning issues.  Social networks can be used to bring some awareness to the issue.

Social media will also allow us to bring people together around sexual health and birth planning issues to allow the newly-formed community to learn from one another.

Bad reaction to a form of birth control?  Tell the community.  Someone has had that problem before.

You’re not alone.  What’s even better is that once people start sharing information, we can feed aggregate information back to the community to help it make better choices.

This kind of information sharing and data mining is why people like Facebook and how Google predicts when the flu might hit your area.  There is no telling what insights await us of we can just gain access to the information and think creatively about it.

BB: How do you plan to integrate your social media efforts with the rest of your marketing mix (e.g., direct mail, email marketing, mobile, media relations, etc.)?

LS: The little things help us to integrate our social media efforts with everything else we do.  For example, including a “follow me” link to our Twitter account on all correspondences,  inviting partners to guest blog, and doing stories in print and online publications about The National Campaign’s social media work are ways to “shuffle the deck.”  Instead of building a landing page where, in the past, we would have accepted comments via an invitation sent via an electronic newsletter, we will invite people to comment into a blog thereby raising awareness to that outlet and avoiding reinventing the wheel.

BB: What is one challenge you face when executing new, social and/or digital media strategy? How are you overcoming this hurdle?

LS: The main hurdle I see is that many people still don’t understand social technology though they believe we have to be involved in some way.  Social networking activities are not hard but they are complex and time consuming.  To post a good Tweet or blog entry, one has to be a decent writer, know the topic, and study what others say on the Internet.  Making the case for dedicated staff to “do social media” is not easy and needs to be done time and again.

BB: What will be the final measure of success for your digital plans?

LS: For The National Campaign, there will be various levels of success.  On one level, it will be measured in terms of eyeballs and ears as the first big challenge is to raise awareness.  A higher level will have us evaluating whether some information is imparted and kept via the various online initiatives.  Last, we aim to reduce the rate of unplanned pregnancies in young adults through better sex education, raising people’s ability to have good relationships, a commitment to personal responsibility, and good state and federal policies regarding family planning.

BB: Do you foresee any particularly enticing opportunities that can help nonprofits/causes reach their social media goals in 2009? Any advice for how to take advantage of related trends?

LS: For nonprofits, the opportunities abound.  Never before has it been so easy, without the help of a development team and/or the media gatekeepers, to get your message out and create a network of people that care about your issue.  A good example is Today’s Meet . Excellent for back channel conversations, it can be set up in seconds and serve as a space for conversations that two years ago just were not possible.

GlobalGiving connects you to the causes and community-based projects you care about through their online marketplace. Joan Ochi, the Director of Marketing Communications and Robert Dubois, a Marketing Associate who provides support to the organizations online social media strategy, share how GlobalGiving uses direct marketing to encourage people to donate to the causes they support.

Both Joan and Robert have experience in marketing-communications. Prior to GlobalGiving, Joan provided marketing support for clients such as Fannie Mae and HP. Robert worked at Burns Marketing, Colorado’s fifth-largest marketing-communications agency.

BB: What was your biggest achievement on the social media front in 2008?

GG: Being a part of America’s Giving Challenge - an initiative spearheaded by the Case Foundation earlier this year. The objective of America’s Giving Challenge was to inspire Americans to use online tools such as widgets to participate in a fundraising for a cause - either a project on GlobalGiving or an organization on Network for Good. The Challenge ran for about 6 weeks and attracted over 130 “fundraisers,” more than 13,000 donors, and generated approximately $364,000 in donations. Interestingly, many of the top fundraisers who participated in the Challenge relied not just on social media tools such as widgets and blogs, but used traditional outreach vehicles such as phone calls and email messages as well.

We continued to experiment with other social media tools (Facebook, our own blog, Second Life, etc) as well, and learned that every tools is not right for every organization. Participating in and maintaining a presence on social networks is time consuming and resource intensive, and we found that merely having a presence on social networks has for the most part not been effective in developing online communities or building relationships with new or potential donors.

BB: Tell us about your organization’s marketing/communications strategy for 2009.

GG: Going forward, we are focusing on both acquisition and retention by creating a more engaging website experience - one that will motivate people to return regularly to take advantage of and participate in the more community-oriented features on GlobalGiving. Some of the functionality under development include fundraising tools (which would allow individuals to come together to raise funds for a project in which they have a common interest), tell-a-friend features that enable viral marketing, online discussions between donors and project leaders, and enhanced donor profiles.

BB: What big hairy audacious social media goals will help you achieve your objectives next year?

GG: Once again, we feel that community – oriented features – the ability for donors to connect and interact with project leaders, as well as with other donors – are becoming increasingly important. For example, if I can see what projects my friends support, I might be more likely to support those projects, too. We want our donors to feel connected - with projects and the people that run them, with other donors, and with the broader GlobalGiving community in general. Today, we enable donors to add comments to reports posted by progress leaders - we’re working to make this more dynamic and hopefully turn this “back and forth” into interesting, lively, and educational conversations. And of course, we’ll continue to promote widgets and integrate more video and audio (e.g. podcasts) into our site.

BB: How do you plan to integrate your social media efforts with the rest of your marketing mix (e.g., direct mail, email marketing, mobile, media relations, etc.)?

GG: We typically use email communications to encourage individuals to visit gg.com and engage on our site. Traditional media/public relations also tends to be very effective in driving qualified visitors to our site. Our goal is to create a unified/consistent user experience, so we employ landing pages that are customized based on where the person may be coming from - e.g. if we place an ad, we’ll direct viewers of that ad to a specific landing page that might leverage the same look/feel/messaging, etc.

BB: What is one challenge you face when executing new, social and/or digital media strategy? How are you overcoming this hurdle?

GG: Being a small organization, we have limited resources and therefore a very long wish list of desired features and enhancements - and of course, we can never get these features in as quickly as we’d like - so prioritization is especially important. In addition, it’s hard to evaluate how much time and resources to put into a new (and perhaps unproven) social media tool. We have to ask ourselves “is this the next best thing, or something that may fizzle within the next six months?”

BB: What will be the final measure of success for your digital plans?

GG: Put simply - meeting and exceeding our goals, usually around donation volume as well as other more standard web metrics such as conversion, bounce rate, repeat visitors, etc. As we expand our community, we will implement goals related to community participation and engagement, referrals, etc.

BB: Do you foresee any particularly enticing opportunities that can help nonprofits/causes reach their social media goals in 2009? Any advice for how to take advantage of related trends?

GG: There’s so much out there that it’s tricky to stay on top of all the latest developments. Reading blogs like this one :-) and taking advantage of the myriad of opportunities out there - from Google applications and seminars, to resources like Progressive Exchange, Net Squared, TechSoup - and you’d be amazed of the tips we get from Twitter, too! It’s important not to try to use every social media tool at once - figure out what your organization’s needs are, and then identify the tools that you think would best meet your specific needs.

PS. Could 2009 be the year that mobile actually breaks through as a social media tool in the US in a big way???