Georgetown University: Social Media for Social Good

Apr 13 2009

Thoughts on Measurement

April 13, 2009 – 9:53 am

Our final post for Georgetown’s Social Media for Social Good class is on measurement. I like what K.D. Paine (our guest lecturer) wrote last week on the topic, that measurement allows you to model the future (image: feed store scale by whiskeytango).

Measurement has always been positioned as a benchmarking tool to prove results. And in social media right now that’s important because folks seem to be struggling to demonstrate results. Yet in the midst of a campaign, measurement can show you what’s working, what’s not, and how the effort will play out. This gives cause communicators the opportunity to change course midstream — if necessary — to affect a different result. So K.D.’s point is prescient for the communications strategist: Good generalship demands that you do more than just report results.

Much of the dialogue around measurement deals with what to measure. People always want to affix a hard number on something like page views or number of impressions. And that’s a good start, but does it tell you anything substantive? Good measurement involves a quality benchmark as well as quantity.

In reality, if someone has architected a strong strategy with a desired outcome then the measurement benchmark should be fairly easy to determine. So instead of impressions, a social cause may want to change perceptions of green cars with a more favorable impression of hydrogen fueled cars versus fuel cells. Would you just measure hydrogen fuel posts? Or would you measure posts that mentioned both technologies as well as tonality? You would also want to see tonality at the start as well as throughout the campaign to determine progress, course corrections and future direction.

There are so many things a non-profit can measure:

Donations resulting from social media relationships
Number of attendees who decided to attend an event and engage beyond the socnet/blog
Increased volunteer base
The development of self identified community members who serve as an activism core
Political action as a result of campaign
Changed societal behavior (lower carbon emissions, safer school zones, reduction in speeding incidents, etc.)
Number of people who have volunteered for a deeper interaction with the organization (via email, volunteering or some other activity)
Heightened awareness of the organization (simply put, branding) as a thought leader in space
Increased conversations on a matter (Earth Hour, for example)

The list can go on ad infinitum.

There are many, many tools you can use for measurement. Free ones like Google Analytics to paid ones like Radian6 offer a variety of different quantitative to qualitative factors. But don’t let numbers drive the measurement. It’s not enough to site page views, unique visitors, or even simply positive or negative posts. Analysis of the numbers in context with the original goals should be provided.

Social media measurement is really not that hard. What is hard is having the discipline to incorporate measurement from the beginning, and then to follow through on using it. What are your thoughts on measurement?

Mar 31 2009

Ignition Ready. Fire!

March 31, 2009 – 11:21 am

Allison Fine’s Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age is our final reading for Georgetown’s Social Media for Social Change class. And what a fitting book to end our reading with… This book stands the test of time, and sits above the tools to provide great analysis of the issues and impact social media brings to those trying to affect change (image: Army Cluster Fight by jurvetson).

The crux of Momentum: Change, not society (well, yes society), but really ourselves as activists. The time of needing to raise more money; running from accountability; attempting to discern what society needs behind closed doors; locking out donors and networks; and, being cowered into a weak sibling status compared to conventional business is over. Or it can be.

We can use these tools to dramatically change the way nonprofits do business and affect change. Instead of achieving missions we can build movements.

Becoming a Connected Activist requires an internal shift, an acceptance of the mantle of change agent – within the nonprofit sector and organization. The frontline is the executive suite and their communicators. Using these tools, we have an opportunity not to just have a conversation, but to change the business of philanthropy by tearing down silos and embracing our stakeholders in the very process of educating, determining direction, fundraising, activism, etc.

As practitioners we get so stuck on the tools. Even in this class we’ve executed a deep dive into best practices, focusing hard on positioning and strategy, on when to pick up tools and how to communicate in two-way environments. But now it’s time to go back to our original start.

Social media for social good asks you to do something beyond simply engaging a smart marketing communications program. It means affect change. What are you going to do with these tools? What are the measurements?

Momentum raises a lot of issues, including important chapters on fundraising and privacy. But the most important point for every Georgetown communicator – and I dare say any communicator in the nonprofit industry – what will your social media efforts achieve for your particular cause?

Yes, we need ROI; yes, we can build quantitative goals into our programs. But are we changing our individual worlds for the better? Have we embraced the edge and built movements throughout our networks? Or have we just hit a financial goal and successfully proved that social media works?

Think about it. When you press “send” it’s more than firing off a “message.” You are attempting to ignite something. Maybe that’s opening up a silo a little today and using social media for more than just a two-way conversation. Build something that will impact your mission, and change the course of history.

Mar 23 2009

Influencers: A Discussion about the Law of the Few

March 23, 2009 – 12:26 am

Above image and analysis: David Armano

This week’s Social Media for Social Good reading is Malcolm Gladwell’s the Tipping Point, which is a great starting place to discuss influencer relations. From a strategic standpoint, there’s no question: Online word of mouth or grassroots marketing requires the community embracing and spreading the message.

The days of build it and they shall come passed somewhere between the publishing of Naked Conversations and Groundswell. Without connectivity to the community and it’s influencers, a social media communications effort will likely fail.

There’s lots of hub-bub about influencer (or blogger) relations and best tactical practices. I highly suggest reading Toby Bloomberg, Todd Defren, Susan Getgood and Brian Solis’s past writings on the topic. But this post is primarily about strategy, and which influentials to target and how. Thus, let’s begin with Gladwell’s Tipping Point.

The book breaks viral marketing into three key components, The Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context (image from the Digital Mindset blog). To me, Stickiness has already been covered in the Positioning lecture, and the Power of Context requires strategic analysis and research: A full understanding of the community, it’s motivators and it’s concerns. But the Law of the Few is fascinating as it offers a fantastic influencer relations strategy.

Specifically, the Law of the Few says there are three types of people who are necessary to start an idea epidemic:

Connectors: Folks who know lots of people who occupy many niches and subcultures.

Mavens: Collectors of information who want to be helpful, and use that information for others benefit

Salesmen: People who are the great persuaders and push people off the ledge on ideas.

The book uses lots of examples to highlight the theory, from Paul Revere’s ride to Hush Puppies. This model of approaching Connectors and Mavens is the usual PR firm approach to influencer relations: Hit the blog/influencer with the biggest reach. In many ways, this is a natural transition from media relations.

Yahoo’s Duncan Watts had a well-discussed counter point to Gladwell in F@st Company last year dismissing “The Law of the Few:”

…in the large majority of cases, the cascade began with an average Joe (although in cases where an Influential touched off the trend, it spread much further). To stack the deck in favor of Influentials, Watts changed the simulation, making them 10 times more connected… But the rank-and-file citizen was still far more likely to start a contagion.

So who’s right? Well, both are. I don’t think Gladwell meant start with the top necessarily. The Hush Puppies study showed some off-beat hipsters who started the trend, which was noticed by local, NY fashion designers. These kids were truly not that connected. At the same time, once the NY fashion designers did pick up Hush Puppies, it was lights out, so to speak.

Many A-List influencers (and even traditional journalists) won’t notice an idea until lesser, yet influential peers write about it. This “Magic Middle” tier of infleuncers — as David Sifry dubbed them in 2006 — often break stories, which trickle up until a “Connector” discovers the story. For example, Shel Israel is writing about the story of Casper Oppenhuis de Jong who was in a China bookstore when a 7.9 Earthquake struck and he helped inform the world through Twitter (via Robert Scoble and then the International media). One could classify this smaller influencer a Maven (sorry, Watts).

My personal experience is that many times you have to tickle an idea or story up the grapevine into the major A-listers, who are often late to embrace a story. However, once they do write something up there is great potential for word of mouth to occur, either through traditional media or further social media conversations.

The truth is that you really don’t know what’s going to create the ultimate viral campaign, but you do know that you need to talk to the few and the passionate. Those are your influencers, often leaders in the community to opt in. Getting the Huffington Post may not be an immediate option, but often a social media groundswell takes time as opposed to a flash flood of media hits. For organizational social media, this means targeting credible contacts that have the right people in their network, not necessarily the most people.

By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Blogging, Georgetown University: Social Media for Social Good, social media | Tagged blogger relations, Brian Solis, connectors, David Armano, David Sifry, Duncan Watts, influencers, Malcolm Gladwell, mavens, salesmen, social media, Susan Getgood, Toby Bloomberg, Todd Defren | Comments (16)

Mar 17 2009

The Service-Oriented Conversation Creator

March 17, 2009 – 8:13 am

Tonight’s class is on Ben Rigby’s book “Mobilizing Generation 2.0,” a great survey of the many social media tools available to nonprofit communicators.

In our Groundswell class, we examined Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s Forrester Social Technographics profile, which classifies online users in a ladder:

This taxonomy really makes it easy for marketers to grasp the social web community. At the same time, it offers a top down approach from the view of the influencer. In many ways, while an accurate portrayal of the way information flows from an influencer, this image still has a bit of a command and control ethos to it.

Going back to the community principles from Now Is Gone, and based on our experiences working in social media, we suggest an inverted approach. This service-oriented model puts the community (spectators) on top, followed by joiners, collectors, critics and finally the creator, who is the source of content.

The above pyramid demonstrates the service oriented model, and does so using hot and cold colors in deference to Marshall McLuhan. Blue represents low levels of participation (or cool media) versus orange and red “hot media” participants.

From this perspective, the corporate content creator or social PR person uses the tools outlined in Rigby’s book provide valuable content, ultimately meant to serve spectators — specifically, an organization’s stakeholders. In this model, they have the power to participate (or not), and as such they should be kept on top or given the most power in the overall community.

When content and social media marketing is approached in this way — as opposed to top down — serving the community becomes the top priority. Value creation, inspiration, research all help drive how to best get all participants interested and participating. This in turn creates the best approach towards social media communications from an organizational stand point.

Quite frankly, this is how I blog, participate, and design any social media strategy. The community is the ultimate driver and authority. Even if you compel creators, if the community doesn’t buy into it you have no tangible return on investment. And thus, social media tools should be selected with the end community — and thus your strategy — in mind.

By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Georgetown University: Social Media for Social Good | Comments (2)

Mar 2 2009

Community Engagement

March 2, 2009 – 12:01 am

What about communities beyond the oft talked about majors – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, Friendfeed, StumbleUpon, etc.? How does one engage is a very common question, and there are general principles that apply across all social communities major or not. In some ways, Brian Solis and I tried to provide guidance to that effect with Now Is Gone with our Seven Principles of Community Engagement. But there’s more to that (Image: Community Building Competition by absingla).

First, let’s recap the Seven Principles, which are outlined in the closing strategy chapter of Now Is Gone, Think Liquid:

1) Do not try to control the message: Command and control is dead. Though must folks out here get it, organizations are still struggling with relinquishing control. Let’s put it in the context of a relationship — which is the core of traditional PR and again, now with social media marketing.

2) Honesty, ethics and transparencies are musts: This isn’t about baring trade secrets or intellectual property. It’s about basic human relations, and creating a strong foundation for long-term, two-way mutually beneficial relationship. Think about the golden rule here.

3) Participation within the community is marketing (Heuer): Get out there into the stakeholder’s realm. Comment and contribute to larger community groups and social networks. Read customer and related blogs (or vlogs and podcasts), and interact with the writers.

4) Communication to audiences is an out-dated 20th century concept (Rosen): Audiences receive one-way communications — movies, radio broadcasts, speeches, etc. Thanks to social media the audience talks back, forcing organizations to address them in a conversational, two-way manner.

5) Build value for the community: Building value for a community means a core decision to serve them, either with meaningful conversations, links or number 6, content.

6) Inspire your community with real, exciting content, not corporate propaganda: Understand your community has problems, and you have some answers. Creating content for them does not mean give them a press release. It means give them Great Content, fight for their interest, and deliver content on a schedule so readers’ expectations of regular updates are met.

7) Intelligently manage your media forms (RSS, frequency, etc.) to build a stronger, loyal community: When acting in a community, create calls to action, manage your RSS feeds intelligently, make them obvious and accessible.

Now What?

Well, that was a more than a year and a half ago, and much has changed in social media communities since Now Is Gone (image: MacBraynes Bus by conner395). I think it’s fair to say that there are some basic tactical best practices that have arisen. Some of these are obvious human behaviors that when engaged in a two-way conversation would obviously turn users off. Some are best practices based on mistakes and actions others have taken.

1) Bring People Back to Your Web Site. Be smart, especially if you are building a community within a larger network. If you want to build relationships with people, give them a way to contact you, and perhaps further engage. Provide intelligent calls to action. Post meaningful links and content that your community members may want to see. And then provide calls to action for those who want to develop an even stronger relationship with you.

Many nonprofits do well in branding and awareness on major social networks, but fail to achieve significant relationship development. Getting people to interact with you on your site is the difference maker here. The numbers are less, but the relationships are stronger.

2) Relating versus spamming. It’s not kosher to auto DM or spam people. This is basic human relationships, but if you are using your community, either hosted elsewhere or on your own platform as an auto-response and/or pitch mechanism, you will alienate community members. This should be obvious to people.

I mean who wants to walk into a car deal and snake-oiled? The same thing goes for online communities. Talk with – as opposed to at – people.

3)Play within existing communities: It doesn’t make sense most of the time to create your own community. In fact, most organizationally started communities fail. Usually one already exists on Ning, Squidoo, a community board, or yes, one of the majors. See where open APIs, value added content, and groups will let you play withing the larger community.

One of the best examples I’ve seen of this was how HubSpot created Twitter Grader then used the data to produce the State of the Twittersphere report. Oh, by the way they produce inbound marketing software, a natural hit for those who are really into the report data… and how to make a successful app. like Twitter Grader.

4) Don’t dictate to the community. Another somewhat obvious people relations skill, but one that companies like Facebook need to fail before they comprehend that their users are also their partners. On the otherhand, a company like Southwest Airlines has figured out how to use their social community to vet online significant changes.

5) Stay Relevant: Sometimes communities grow stale. Keep updating the technical prowess, features, content and capabilities that are feeding you community. For successes, consider the updates networks like Twitter and Facebook have made over the past year, or lying fallow for too long like Second Life, LinkedIn, Jaiku and MySpace have done over periods of time. Recently, MySpace and LinkedIn made significant progress, but only LinkedIn seems to have benefited from it.

The point is the same though, whether you are on someone else’s platform or your own, the community lives on currentness. Make sure you stay relevant. This in many ways is about the final chapter of Now Is Gone, Think Liquid. Water strategy keeps you moving forward.

Most of these tactical best practices are common sense when you consider them in the context of relationships with other people. You can never go wrong with Golden Rule based actions and principles.

This week’s Georgetown class is being taught by Qui on Now Is Gone. Students will mercifully miss me pontificating on my own book due to a business trip.

By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Georgetown University: Social Media for Social Good, Now Is Gone, Social Networks, communications | Tagged Brian Solis, community, Georgetown University: Social Media for Social Good, Now Is Gone, principles, social media, Social Networks | Comments (28)

Feb 17 2009

The Art of Seduction

February 17, 2009 – 6:33 pm

“Don’t play semantic games with the prospect. Advertising is not a debate. It’s a seduction.”

- Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning

Advertising stopped working a long time ago, prompting Positioning theories and strategies from Ries and Trout. We’re discussing it next week in our weekly Georgetown class on Social Media for Social Good. And what would a classic advertising strategy book be doing in a class that leads off with the Cluetrain Manifesto? Well, you can get social media, but if you don’t understand what makes people fall in love with causes, products, services and ideas then you may as well mail it in (image: Marcel Desaulniers’ "Chocolate Demise" by fooey).

Is seduction too strong a word? I think not.

The whole premise of Positioning 30 years ago was that consumers intentionally avoid advertising and corporate propaganda. Communicators are in a perpetual losing battle for the attention of inundated minds. That was when there was only 50 channels and No Internet, much less social media! The situation for communicators has gotten much more dire, and their empty platitudes and PR messages fall flat, failing left and right at astonishingly high percentages.

Getting in the mind of donors, advocates, citizens and buyers, and tempting them, enticing them to become interested in your efforts is a great accomplishment. It’s hard cutting through the clutter, achieving impact, and retaining commitment.

It means you’ve listened, you understand them, you have value for them, and can build meaningful experiences that resonate in their minds and hearts. You haven’t lied to them, peppered them with corporate messages or BSed them, but you have thought about them, cultivated trust, and positioned yourself to cut through the extremely fractured traditional and social media environments… Not only to be heard, but also welcomed. Indeed, in this kind of media environment that’s seduction. And it’s just good old-fashioned marketing strategy.

Strategy, Again.

Social media and technical savviness does not equate to marketing strategy. Nor do blogs, a bookmarking widget, or crowdsourcing. That’s a meaningless Twitter debate that stakeholders don’t care about. What does count is creating a meaningful way, a method, an overarching course to get and keep the attention of your stakeholders. The rest is tactical.

Like advertising in Positioning, if you can succeed in creating meaningful communications in this particular media form (social), then its likely your strategy will work across diverse traditional media, too, just with different tactics. Positioning is all about finding that way to cut through the clutter with a strategy that separates your market and convinces stakeholders that they should give you that listen. If your cause, service, or product is worthy and you successfully position, communicating becomes easy.

Great strategies are clear, they are simple, and they ring true and unique. They stand out in a crowd and attract the right kind of people, those whose attention we are working so hard to attain.

That’s why we’re reading Positioning. To jog the mind. To think of ways to entice, stand out and use our few, precious opportunities with our stakeholders online to attract them, and strike a meaningful conversation that becomes an even greater relationship.

By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Blogging, Georgetown University: Social Media for Social Good, Internet Marketing | Tagged Al Ries, Jack Trout, marketing, seduction, social media, strategy | Comments (6)

Feb 11 2009

Getting Social Media Approved By Your Boss

February 11, 2009 – 5:45 pm

Our final Georgetown U. Social Media for Social Good class post on the Groundswell deals specifically with Chapter 11, which discusses strategies on how to get social media improved inside the organization. Before I begin, a very special thanks to Charlene Li, who guest lectured last night via Skype (full photo set here).

Rather than comment on this excellent chapter, I’d like to offer our experiences working with organizations to get social media approved. At some point, all nonprofit, corporate and government social media efforts require approval. While most executives understand that social media has become a must have in the larger media environment, many organizations still view it as experimental marketing. In large part, that’s because most of them fail in their initial self-started efforts.

So, that being said here are some tips to getting your boss to say OK. This post is in the form of tactics or ways to nudge the process along. Several Twitters also weighed in and their answers are included. Thanks to Andrew Wright, nishland, Philip Zorn, Larry_Slo, Chris Allison, Robin Yasinow, Chris Gasparro, and Mark Chrisman.

First off, we recommend using a pilot project to get through the door. Reticence is often conquered by a win, and the best way to provide a win is via a pilot project. Tips to ensuring you choose the right pilot project:

Begin with some form of listening or monitoring. You must be in tune with your social web community if you want this to work. Hopefully you are doing this before you begin, but just in case…
Simple and relatively low cost is good. When there is fear involved, an easy, relatively affordable project is an easy thing to sign off on.
Short timeframes help, too. You want to make this a quick test.
Make sure you have a measurable goal. Look at your strategy, it will tell you exactly what to measure. You must be able to attain ROI. That is why attaining something worthwhile is essential, whether it’s micro-donations, market intelligence, feedback on a new product, click-throughs to a store, registrants for a value added webinar, or some other measurable result. You must be able to declare victory.
You have to feel confident that you can attain said goals. Make sure it’s doable. It may be worth bouncing off someone else who has more experience.

Common Objections

People who are skittish often demonstrate their reticence by throwing out objections. Here are some of the more common ones and methods to handle them.

1) If someone references past failures, show them successes, preferably your own. Often best practices have not been deployed, and your asking for dollars to achieve best practices.

2) If they believe you need to publish on Facebook or a blog, and that’s not what you’re recommending, focus on the stakeholder (e.g. donor, customer, advocate), not the tool. It’s all about where your community is. Find them before you meet with executives, and understand what they care about. Bring evidence with you. A blog or Facebook group is often not the answer.

3) Our community isn’t out there is a common objection, particularly for any stakeholder group over 30 years old. Show them real conversations over a significant period of time that the stakeholders are having – without the organization. My favorite way to do that is to type relevant key words or the corporate name on search.twitter.com. Another method is to use market research countering those misconceptions.

4) Control. They don’t want to engage in negative comments. There may be little you can do about this, but I always like to show folks 1) that people are already talking negatively about them and 2) tangible evidence through prior case studies that direct engagement actually reduces negativity and builds relationships.

5) Invented here syndrome. I remember serving as in-house communicator. We may have had some fantastic ideas, but sometimes because it came from the in-house department executives were skeptical. That’s when you trot in a friend or a bonafide consultant who has outside experience. Let them tell your executives the facts and set them straight (so to speak).

I know we’ve got a lot of experienced readers out there. What would you add to this post for our students?

By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Georgetown University: Social Media for Social Good, Social Networks, social media | Tagged Andrew Wright, charlene li, Chris Allison, Chris Gasparro, corporate, groundswell, Larry_Slo, Mark Chrisman, nishland, nonprofit, Philip Zorn, Robin Yasinow, social media | Comments (37)

Feb 10 2009

Five Social Media Strategies

February 10, 2009 – 11:27 am

In our class this week, we discussed several strategies presented in Groundswell. To augment next week’s reading and to benefit Buzz Bin readers in general, I’ve compiled several other social media posts that have been published here or on the Now Is Gone blog. These methodologies and frameworks can either form strategies or inform larger, more complicated efforts (image: chess set by striatic).

Influencing Journalists Using Social Media – The Fifth Estate manifesto outlined the dynamics between traditional media (sometimes dubbed the fourth estate in communications circles) and social media. This strategy was also discussed on Now Is Gone in the Public Relations Long Tail. Intelligently deployed influencer relations strategies can be used to cause a “fifth estate” social media “groundswell,” which attracts the attention of newspapers, TV reporters, etc.:

In essence, the community informs the media when a story reaches a level of importance. The Fifth Estate has become the ultimate source.

Confederated Social Media – Large unwieldy corporate and nonprofit organizations cannot deploy social media from corporate communications. “Instead of trying to control the social media effort under one roof, confederated models try to empower individual stakeholders in the larger organization. A confederated model for a company or non-profit assumes and includes the following:

Lack of control on the local frontline

An engaged communicator who will use social tools, regardless of corporate communication activities

That same communicator will likely cooperate if they are free to communicate as they like

Corporate decides to build a framework of tools for local chapters

Tools include social network and blogging platforms, graphics, tagging guidelines, and social media best practice training and guidelines

A corresponding corporate initiative that embodies best practices

“Wayward” efforts are met with suggestions for betterment rather than enforcement

A continuing commitment by corporate to highlight great local case studies

A continuing commitment to enhance, better and promote the framework”

Water Strategy – In Think Liquid (the final chapter of Now Is Gone), it’s important that the strategist acknowledge that tools and technologies and applications evolve rapidly in social media. The community moves relatively rapidly from social network to social network, from blog to blog. Popularity can be measured in years or even months. To remain relevant, marketers will be forced into a constant social media adaptation process. They will need to be liquid, moving with their community.

Participation Is Marketing – With a fractured, traditional media marketplace and new social media channels, message control is dead. Participation is marketing is not new (as Rich Becker likes to remind me), but it is reborn because of social media. Most marketers can recognize the traditional participation approach with community evangelists (usually non-profits and philanthropic efforts — see the National Business Community blog). Successful social media marketing efforts require companies to become a part of the community. Case studies are listed.

Team Social Media – Small businesses and consultants often feature an individual as the face of the company. But companies and organizations that want to market on the social web for the long term need to deploy teams. This allows them to avoid the pitfalls of a “personal brand” departure and nurture a social media presence built to last.

Additional Resources

Social Media Content Process: This process on Now Is Gone helps new and old communicators alike build social media content strategies from start to finish.

Strategy — A primer on what exactly strategy is…

By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Georgetown University: Social Media for Social Good, Social Networks, social media | Comments (18)

Feb 6 2009

The Number One Lesson from Groundswell: Relationships, Not Technologies

February 6, 2009 – 11:03 am

Our class next week will be on the first half of Groundswell, chapters 1-6. The most important aspect of Groundswell is the home run statement, “concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies.”

By far, this is the greatest barrier to adoption — and more importantly, successful deployment of social media — after the control issue we discussed in the Cluetrain lecture. Everyone wants to talk technology tactics and tools, and not focus on the heart of the groundswell, the community. The community drives social media, not social media in their many technological forms. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff also note that what Todd Defren originally called “Shiny Object Syndrome” as a major barrier to success in Chapter 4.

Instead, communicators should follow POST — People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology. I would add that technology is not your only form of outreach. There is influencer relations and attending or creating social events. Instead of Technology make T in POST “tactics.” Question to the class is do you believe in POST, and why is it so important that our effort begins with community research and listening (as outlined by Qui last week)?

In addition, there’s much said about strategy and understanding objectives. The points in Groundswell are important, so pay attention, but there are more. Our efforts over the next couple of weeks will highlight understanding organizational objectives and building strategy, including the return to basics outlined in the classic book Positioning.

The book offers some strong tips on talking with the Groundswell in Chapter 6. We will discuss the Ernst & Young case study outlined, and how it pertains to the next class assignment. This form of talking is the one we are recommending for our class. Creating a blog, video or branding in a community/socnet can be dangerous if you don’t have great resources, and they can easily be bridged into the T portion of POST.

The Social Technographics Ladder

What’s really going to be a major point of discussion next week is how people interact with each other online — the metaphorical Groundswell. To help communicators better understand the community itself (the people) Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff offer us the Forrester Social Technographics profile, which classifies online users in a ladder:

This taxonomy really makes it easy for marketers to grasp the social web community. It’s important to note that people can be members of multiple classes.

Further, it’s noted in Groundswell and truly critical that marketers focus on both content creators and critics. Both have voices, and as Motrin found out last fall, critics can be all powerful online. This is important to note for any outreach effort. You must be ready to respond openly and transparently with critics, not just primary influencers.

One need not wonder how the statistics would fall now in the Technographics profile as they are now 18 months old. Forrester has updated the data online. Marketers can even build their own Technographics profile based on the age, location and sex of their primary customers.

By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Georgetown University: Social Media for Social Good | Tagged charlene li, community, groundswell, josh bernoff, POST, socia media, social technographics | Comments (2)

Feb 2 2009

The Big Dig – Online Research & Listening

February 2, 2009 – 12:01 am

Picking up where Geoff left off, this week’s “Social Media for Social Good” class is diving into online community research. As part of their group projects, the students will be creating social media strategies for several area nonprofits. The first step towards strategy – and sometimes the most difficult – is listening. (Image by DrBaloneyMD.)

The Burden of Listening

Our ears are always on, sometimes to our chagrin. But although we listen non-stop, we often don’t hear. Therein lies the challenge and opportunity associated with assessing an online environment.

Listening requires depth and patience regardless of the situation. Whether talking with another person, hearing a presentation, eavesdropping on a conversation, or analyzing online discussions, you must intake and process words, retain the knowledge and sometimes take action.

It’s the listener’s burden to determine the significance of the message, sort through non-verbals, and decide what to do next:

Disregard
Ignore
Learn
Change
Repair
Improve
Trust

Turn Yourself Off

In the case of online conversations, you must sift through many voices talking in many places, without the benefit of eye contact or other nonverbal cues. When you don’t have to look people in the eye, it’s easy to overlook things that don’t fit your vision and instead search for what you want to see. But strategy demands that you exploit differences and loopholes, and therefore turn off your own mind and preconceived notions.

Making Sense of What You Hear

It’s not enough to reveal a conversation and pull out data. Discovering a passionate community of people 50,000 strong doesn’t mean jack if it’s the wrong audience. Similarly, a very small community of people only loosely interested in your issue should not be written off. Collectively – that is, in the context of all your research findings – does what you find matter, and how will it affect your strategy?

The term most commonly used for this aspect of research is insight. An insight is more than a fact, data point or sweeping recommendation. It’s a revelation core to moving in the right direction, and moving away from dead ends.

Getting to Insights with Guiding Questions

When “listening to the Internet” for the first time, it helps to know what you’re looking for. The more focused your search, the less overwhelmed you’ll be. In addition to knowing your goals, objectives, and specific target audiences, start with questions you need to answer.

Here’s a sample set of questions that you might use to build an insight related to community engagement:

Is there a [topical] discussion taking place in my organization’s hyper-local social media community?
If so, what key topics and themes are being discussed?
Is the conversation fragmented or is there a clear leading voice(s)? Who are the leading voices? Is the local media leading or hosting these conversations? Competitors?
Does my organization have a voice in the conversation? Is anyone talking about us?
Are our target audiences participating in this conversation?
Are there any passionate fans of our issue or cause? What about detractors?
Is the conversation more prominent in a particular type of social media (e.g., blogs, message boards, social networks etc.)?

And of course, the capstone question: “So what? How do all those answers add up in a meaningful way that will move us forward?” If you can answer that, then you got what you were after.

Metamorphic Listening

An initial, passive deep dive into online discussions is excellent for strategy development. However, next time you dip your toe in, be ready to engage.

After all,

The value of listening is not in the act of listening in and of itself, but when an organization or individual uses the information to improve programs or marketing. This requires engaging in a conversation.” (Wise words from Beth Kanter.)

And active listening, while much more demanding, can be much more rewarding. It gets you “Results on Insights” as Beth Kanter says, and should ultimately become your bread and butter.

By Qui Diaz | Posted in Georgetown University: Social Media for Social Good, Internet Marketing, social cause | Tagged insight, online listening, online research, social media listening, social media research, strategy | Comments (13)

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