Alltop is a virtual magazine rack featuring the recent headlines for the "top blogs" on any given subject, created by Guy Kawasaki . About Alltop here.
Check out Nonprofit Alltop here. This is a great place to find some big association/nonprofit blogs to read, and to see what's out there in the blogosphere on this and any other topic of interest to you.
I have decided I would love to get this blog on Alltop by the end of the year. Their system for listing blogs is based on recommendations, particularly from the Twitter community. If you think I deserve to be listed, please feel free to email Guy at info@alltop.com and let him know. If I make it, I will throw a big party for all of you. : )
Happy Friday!
5.30.2008
Heard about Alltop?
Quote of the day: Content is everything
From Mitch Joel of the Six Pixels of Separation blog.
"Once you start these conversations, you have to keep them going. You have to be clever. You have to be engaging. Not too many brands have, what I call, the "intestinal fortitude" to deliver on that very real conversation. Brands tend to be great at busting out of the gates - engaging sites and some content to pique the interests of the consumers, but creating content is a marathon and not a sprint. It's the ripples that the conversations start, and not the splash-effect of a campaign."
Awesome.
5.28.2008
What if you build it and they don't come?
Busy getting ready to head to the ASAE Membership and Marketing conference tomorrow, but was reading a few recent things in my RSS feed and came across a really nice post on NTEN I couldn't resist linking to.
If you don't know about NTEN (The Nonprofit Technology Network), they are the membership association for technology professionals in the non-profit sector. Here's more on them. Anyway, as you can imagine, they have a pretty great blog. I encourage you to subscribe!
The post I am referring to is all about how you might build all the flashy social tools in the world, but what if your members don't want to use them?
Holly writes,
"...You may build it, they may not come.
Of course, this is not to say that I don't think you should be experimenting with social media. I think you should be trying as much as possible. What I am saying is that your audience may not be ready to have the conversation that social media enables. That's because social media does not just enable conversations. It enables PUBLIC conversations.
- If you blog, do you remember your first blog post? Did you feel awkward and silly for publishing your two cents where anyone could read it. Did it make you feel like a bit of an egomaniac?
- Have you posted a photo online and wondered what your boss, colleague, or significant other would think if they ran across it online?"
Read the rest, but she ends her post with some tips:
- "Demonstrate that it's ok. Find a few community members (not staff!) and ask them to participate in your conversation, and encourage others to do the same.
- Use social media like a normal human. You will be more successful at having a conversation if you don't participate as "THE ORGANIZATION." Empower your staff to participate as individuals, sharing the right mix of organization party line (Check out our new program!), as well as personal news (I got a new puppy!).
- Keep at it. Building a true, interactive community takes a lot of time, and it happens slowly. Keep plugging away at it, and be consistent in your attempts and it will start to pay off."
Anyhoo... I will be in Charm City tomorrow and Friday, hopefully doing some live blogging, or taking video for PITV, or getting together with some YAPstars. If you are there and want to hang with us, follow me or Lindy on Twitter (@maddiegrant or @lindydreyer) and we'll keep you updated as to where we are. If you're not there, I'll see you on the other side.
More on data mining... show me how to find the gold!
Dean Abbott posted this great comment to my recent post about Data Mining.
"Thanks for your provocative post (at least it is provocative to a data miner!) Data mining, applied well, though, doesn't take the place of the experts.
When you write that those that rely on hard data and analytics say to you "we're afraid of trusting our instincts", I would say that one validates instincts with analytics. My usual experience in building predictive models is that much of what the model finds makes perfect sense, but there are usually additional insights that even the best experts either didn't know, or didn't (or couldn't) express.
As a light-hearted example, which is true? "Birds of a feather flock together" or "opposites attract"? Well, both are, at least to some degree. Experts build intuition, but their intuition isn't always general. So yes, we should be afraid of failing (because few of us have broad enough experience to be definitive in our assessment of customers). Is it not better to augment what we know from experience with what we can learn from the data?"
Thank you Dean, for picking up on this - I was hoping someone would! - and even more, for expanding upon it in your blog.
I want to ask you something. I agree that we can see value in data retrospectively - in other words, like you said in your post, when the data confirms what you think you know. But I have to wonder, is it really naive to think that I can manipulate any data to say what I want it to say? I mean, we see the mainstream media and politicians do it all the time. (Granted this may be a very typically Gen-x way of seeing the world, where we distrust "the Man" and any corporate or mainstream messaging, especially advertising messaging.).
But we (association execs) are often told that we need to know how to ask the right questions in order to not skew the results, and for this we need a "proper" surveying company to conduct membership surveys for us. Do you think that's true?
I know not all data is survey data, but I am operating from the point of view of a very small association where we've only just begun to collect demographic and engagement data as part of our normal operations. So we do need to supplement that with surveys, and we have just completed a full comprehensive membership survey as part of our strategic planning process.
This also brings to mind an old debate on the Acronym blog about whether we are here to lead or to serve our members. Scott ended his post by saying:
"You know one of the seven measures (similar to one of the ways Collins says “great” companies distinguish themselves from “good” ones) is to be data driven. I love the principle but I hate how it’s described in 7 Measures and what it means to most people. Don’t use data to figure out what members want or how to serve them; use it as part of the discussion about what they need and how the organization can lead the profession/industry/interest forward."
Kevin Holland also continued the discussion on his blog:
"Here’s the thing: You should know what your members want and need to know about more than they do themselves, because unlike them, you should have a treasure trove of data about the online behaviors of large numbers of people just like them. You should know what articles get read, what links get clicked, what files get downloaded. And you should also know what articles don’t get read, what links don’t get clicked, what files don’t get downloaded.
Most people think of “data-driven” decisions as those based on surveys or asking people “what do you want?” I’ve always preferred to rely on real data about real behavior. With e-newsletters and dynamic websites, we have more of this data than we ever dreamed possible — and many associations don’t even bother to use it! With a few years worth of this information under your belt, being able to tell what your members want becomes second nature. Until you know and truly understand what it is that your members want, it is simply impossible for you to push through the other side and begin deciding what they need without introducing biases based on your own passions and experiences (or the passions and experiences of a limited number of members).
But, if you understand what your members want, you can give them what they need, in a way that they want to get it."
So - are we gathering data to confirm patterns of behavior (for example) that we already know about? Or are we collecting data to find gaps in information - or experience - or whatever future "need" that we could fill ? And yes, I suppose the answer is "both", but that's not very helpful. Because the real sticky point for me, is that is seems you can make the data say whatever you want. For example - at the meeting I went to, there seemed to be a case for predictive modeling software to be used in order to allocate marketing dollars to certain segments. Like "let's focus on marketing our annual conference to those most likely to attend". Which makes sense, on one level. But what if you used that same data to say, "Let's focus our marketing efforts on those who need more convincing!" and specifically targeted those least likely to attend, then drew them in, and managed to get some newly evangelistic members because they had such an unexpectedly amazing time?
I guess what I am trying to say is that if you think data can be manipulated, and/or if you think data can show patterns of behavior, and/or if you think data can show gaps in behavior, isn't that all just a lot of hard work and money involved, where the end result is that you end up doing whatever you believe is the strategic thing to do regardless?
I know this post in going in circles but that is kinda my point. : ) What do you think?
5.24.2008
Don't really get OpenID. Sorry.
I was going to do a post all about how OpenID is not working for me because I can't remember my OpenID login - but this great post (thanks to David Hinson, via Facebook) summarized the issues for me quite nicely! Score!
Hope everyone is having a great Memorial Day weekend!
I am heading over to Artomatic tonight, and will go next door afterwards to dance to DC's own Saeed at Ibiza DC til the wee hours. Join me if you are local and have nothing else planned. : )
5.23.2008
OMG. Check out this amazing blog.
So I just had to share a really fantastic blog I just came across. As some of you may know, I have a couple of degrees in art history, and used to teach marketing at the Royal College of Art in London. I would love to maybe one day get back into the art world through the association industry, maybe even start my own. So, when I found this blog called Museums 2.0, I just had to take a look. Holy moly!
Written by Nina Simon, there's so much amazing content here, I don't even know where to start, but I think a lot of the ideas discussed in here are very relevant to not only institutions like museums, but to associations / non-profits in general who are continuously thinking about how they create an engaging member experience for their current and potential future members AND thinking about incorporating web 2.0 into the mix.
Here's the list of "most popular posts" just to give you a taster. You'll see.
5.22.2008
Data mine... or data black hole?
Lindy tagged me on the thorny (to me) issue of data mining. She poses the great question,
"Predictive analytics, in my mind, is like the holy grail of data mining—it becomes an obsession for those who pursue it, but does it really change anything?"
and,
"does it make sense for a membership organization to spend time and resources on predictive modeling, or is it just another layer separating us from our members?"
As she mentions, she and I were both at the same meeting on this subject. (I'll be honest, I went because it was in my calendar as a "Technology Idea Swap", so I had no recollection that it was on data mining until I got there and heard everyone introducing themselves and talking about how they wanted to learn about databases and SQL searches and stuff... and then I thought, "Dang.") And of course, you know me, I was actually very interested in whether anyone was getting any useful data out of social networks, which was disappointingly completely off-topic and, sadly for me, a question left lonely and unanswered.
Anyway. Lindy and I were a bit squirmy through the whole discussion. It seemed like so many hopes and dreams were being placed at the altar of the goddess Clementine... but I had to ask myself, could you REALLY get any more analysis out of it then you could get simply by asking your members what events they attend, plan to attend, ever attended, or might attend in the future, and why? Since when did we stop talking to our members about this stuff? A good internal marketing manager could give you all the answers you seek about which of your various audiences are likely to respond to which of your messages, who's going to engage with you, why and when, who's going to participate in which of your events, etcetera, and they would know these answers not through stats and charts (even if you ask for them) but through experience and listening.
The other part of me thinks that the questions can be manipulated to get whatever result you want - both when surveying members and when using predictive modeling software. I don't trust any of it as far as I can throw it (metaphorically speaking, I guess... heh). But I GET that some people need the charts, graphs and metrics to show them (or their higher-ups) that they are on the right path. I get that, and I have no problem with that. To each their own!
But there's something about the reliance on supposedly hard data and analytics that says to me,
"we're afraid of trusting our instincts"
"we're afraid of failing"
"we're afraid of being wrong"
But in order to have real Business Intelligence, and real iterative strategic thinking, then we need to simply be paying attention - continuously - and be able to be reactive and proactive to fluctuations in data, or results, or whatever metrics we want, and create a flexible and agile way of working. You can't fail if you build "failure" into your processes and learn from each small adjustment. You can't fail if you beta test everything.
"we're afraid of failing"
"we're afraid of being wrong"
But in order to have real Business Intelligence, and real iterative strategic thinking, then we need to simply be paying attention - continuously - and be able to be reactive and proactive to fluctuations in data, or results, or whatever metrics we want, and create a flexible and agile way of working. You can't fail if you build "failure" into your processes and learn from each small adjustment. You can't fail if you beta test everything.
5.21.2008
Socialfishing...
Change is good. No fear!
My name is Maddie Grant. Here's how you can contact me, and where you can find me on the social web.
Maddie Grant Washington, DC USA | Mobile: 202.294.6148 madsgrant@gmail.com  | |
association blogger               | ||
| Visit MyBlogLog and get a signature like this! | ||
I am a Gen-X blogger, “shiny new toy” addict and 1%er. I’ve made a professional home for myself within the association/non-profit world after a dry run down several different career paths in the UK and here in Washington, DC. As the number two executive of a small professional membership association, I spent several years as a big fish in a really small puddle. I used my past experience with social technologies to “just get crackin’,” proving it is possible to beta-test ideas, improve processes through technology, and save money at the same time! I first started blogging as a platform to develop my thinking about all kinds of association industry issues and record my journey towards getting my Certified Association Executive (CAE) certification. I soon found that, for me, all paths lead to the social media space. I started exploring and was hooked. I’m especially interested in how social media, Web 2.0 and 3.0 and the new culture of flexibility, openness and innovation is forcing associations to change how they think about governance, strategy, marketing, communications, membership, IT, and other traditional management silos.
I am also Chief Social Media Strategist for SocialFish, LLC.
More about me you might want to know:
Named "Best New Association Blogger" 2007 by Ben Martin, CAE, the "RSS of Associations".
"Young and Aspiring Association Professional" (2007) - awarded by Association Trends.
Currently second of top five Association blogs, according to Technorati, as of December 2008 per Bmart:
1. Principled Innovation (#90,043)
2. Socialfishing... (#97,489)
3. Certified Association Executive (#108,350)
4. Acronym (#131,529)
5. Get Me Jamie Notter (#142,500)
*************************************
Interested? Subscribe to my blog! Thanks for reading!
Interested? Subscribe to my blog! Thanks for reading!
Or subscribe by email
Twitter Primer Redux - 9 ways to find people to follow on Twitter.
I was asked last night about how I find people to follow on Twitter, so I thought I'd turn that into a quick post. Twitter is an incredibly useful tool but it's easy to miss out, if you don't follow people who can give you whatever insight you are looking for.
I am currently following 332 people, and have 273 followers. Here's a few resources I have used:
1. Twitter Pack Project - check out the Nonprofit Pack in particular. When I posted about this recently, I followed everyone on this list. Most of them followed me back! I also followed a lot of the Social Media people on the list when I cam across it originally.
2. Twitterlocal - click on your location, if it's in the list, or download and do a search, if it's not, and this site will give you a list of Twitterers local to you. Since I am particularly interested in social media, and social media junkies are all on Twitter, I was lucky and found a whole crowd of cool local DC people this way.
3. Search Twitter for something specific and see who's talking about that subject. Use Summize, (check out the search results for "non-profits" I just put in) or Tweetscan.
4. Bookmark the nonprofit pulse and click on the people who have interesting things to say.
5. Check out what's being discussed on Twitbuzz, which lists the top links being tweeted, most "social" people, and top conversations. Obviously this is mostly tech topics or some hot news topic.
6. Who Should I Follow. com - this gives you a list of people you might be interested in based on who your twitter friends follow. Twubble does the same thing but comes up with different results. Wait to do these until you have a few people in your follow list!
7. Every once in a while, do this last yourself - click on some of your friends' follow/friend lists and see who they follow. I have found a ton of interesting people to follow that way.
8. Listen to recommendations! If you see someone tweet, "follow @johndoe, he has a good post on xxx", then check him out! Or "Follow @janedoe, she's new on Twitter" - do that too, if you're inclined to be friendly. @janedoe could prove to be well connected and a source of good tweets and good future follows.
9. Every time you come across a new blog you like via your RSS feed, go to the site to see if the blogger is on Twitter and follow him or her.
As you can imagine, this is all fairly self-propagating and the more people you find of interest to follow, the more people you will find of interest to follow. If you get what I'm saying.
Two final thoughts:
Don't be shy about "unfollowing" people who no longer interest you. Twitter won't let them know you are unfollowing them, they won't get offended. In fact, I think you should follow as many as you can at first, then every once in a while... streamline.
And lastly, remember to acknowledge when people follow you back! A nice online handshake and "thanks for the follow!" never goes amiss, and makes you stand out from the crowd.
Any more? Let me know if you know of other good Twitter tips.
More on PITV...
So apparently it works to call someone out. Jeff's making me an executive producer of PITV! Whoo hoo! This is gonna ROCK. Get ready!
So if anyone has nurtured a secret desire to start video blogging... OR if anyone has a special skill when it comes to finding cool, fun, informative, and/or preferably but not necessarily association-relevant videos online ... OR if anyone has a hankering to try their hand at video journalism... OR if you enjoy taking video of yourself and your friends having fun at ASAE conferences (or YAPpy hours!)... or even if you have ideas about what you'd like to see in our video blog!
Then give me a shout at madsgrant at gmail.com and we'll see what's what. I've already got a couple of awesome bloggers lined up to contribute, so the more the merrier... : )
5.20.2008
On strategy as a way of thinking
Geoff Livingston had an interesting post on strategy at the Buzz Bin that I have been thinking about for a while.
He says,
"Strategy is not valued as an independent thing. Instead, we try to teach it as part of a profession, or hope that good mentorship will lead young minds into strategic thinking. This is a mistake. Based on many of the people I have met in this business, based on the extreme value placed on a great strategic thinker in agencies, we have failed.
And it’s a failure on the part of our education system. I can just see agency execs as well as communications and PR professors’ fingers twitching on their keyboards in angst. They believe they are doing the right thing.
Systematically, this is a failure.
Strategy is not part of a profession. It’s a way of thinking.
…just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions - Sun Tzu
When you think strategically, you think about how to get from A to Z. You do not think of tactics like blogs or press releases.
The farmer does not think I like this hoe, we should use it. No, he/she thinks I need to yield an 8 megaton crop of tomatoes. Given that my soil factor is X, the climate is this, and these are the external elements and diseases common in this land, what are the right tools to get there?
Applied to communications: Who are my stakeholders and what compels them (research)? Do we have the ability serve them (can we win)? If so, given my resources, what’s the best way to do that? Which tools should I use, traditional, social or experimental? Is this strategy fluid enough to adapt to changing market situations?"
It seems to me that in the "Associations 2.0" model we can encourage strategic imagination through all rungs of an organization. And I think the key to that is trust and respect. Trust in younger generations, who can be naturally flexible and strategic in their enthusiasm, as long as we encourage their interest in the industry as a professionally rewarding and FUN place to grow; and respect in our members, whose ideas and participation we need in order to create viral growth.Dave Webb, another influential social media blogger, shared this in the comments:
1. Regarding Purpose (which has to do with HEART, what you FEEL) - Why do you exist as an organization, or why does this segment, function or activity of your organization exist? What is it that you have been put on earth to do, what is your message to the world? What is your passion, or the heart behind what motivates you? What do you feel it is that that really gets you going with contagious excitement and enthusiasm and makes people want to become engaged with you? If you don’t care, why should anyone else?
2. Regarding Vision (which has to do with CLARITY, what you SEE) - Where are you going with your purpose, what’s the best case, ideal end result you are looking for? What do you see that others need to see? What insight, solution to the problems, or vantage point do you have that others could benefit from? How are you leading others toward that vision? If you can’t see where you’re going, why should anyone follow?
3. Regarding Mission (which has to do with ACTION, what you DO) - How do you carry out your purpose practically? What do you do that gets massive results? What action have you taken that practically demonstrates your ability to accomplish great things? If what you do doesn’t work, why should anyone listen to you?
These are things everyone in an association should be able to know and act on. Associations are mission driven, of course - but how many members or staff can quote the mission? I know I can't, for mine (but then again, I made up a new tagline that I use on my association's website that I thought was better.)
We should all have a 140-character or less version of our mission statement that EVERYONE can use to think and act strategically on behalf of our organizations.
The days of top-down strategic planning and thinking are numbered, that's what I think.
5.19.2008
So, over on PITV...
...I posted a few videos recently of interesting things.
And yes, for those of you asking, I am thinking of staging a coup and renaming it "MaddieTV"... But I know Ben and Jeff are crazy busy, just saw both recently, and Matt just had a baby, so he gets a pass for now - but I am hereby calling all three of you out. I told you I have a plan for world domination. Be warned.
Anyway! In case you haven't seen these:
- Why I love Twitter - a sweet mashup by Darren Rowse of problogger fame, when he posed the question on Twitter.
- Fantastic Use of Video in Association-Land - The American Cancer Society's project SharingHope.TV. It is TRULY AWESOME. ***NEW*** Follow-up interview with David J Neff is here. Tips on social media for nonprofits here.
- Never too old - check out how the AARP uses social media.
- An idea for attracting Gen-Xers to your association's local events...
- Chris Condayan (of the American Society for Microbiology) has a great video of the State of Media 2008. The man is super cool - his speaker bio states "Condayan has spearheaded ASM's efforts in podcasting, establishing the organization as the first scientific society to have a daily audio podcast and a weekly video podcast." Rock on.
- A repost of Jeff's interview on blogging with The Magazine group.
- Ideas take life when they are shared - a nice video by Charles Leadbeater, author of the book "We Think".
- Dave Webb of Mission Driven Marketing (he writes a popular blog about non-profit issues) on Mission Statements.
Phew! Enough for ya? Don't tell me I never give you anything. : )
What I want a social media expert to know
Just wanted to revisit my fave social media blogger Chris Brogan's list of what we might want a social media expert to know.
This was originally posted over a month ago, on April 15, and his original list was as follows:
Strategic
- Which department you think your role should fall into.
- How your role ties to marketing, PR, advertising, R&D, finance, HR, sales.
- What tasks you’d expect a community manager to perform, and how would you measure them.
- How you expect a company to engage in “the conversation,” and what processes will go into place to make any of that matter.
- How to turn blog posts into business leads.
- How to listen and find where people are talking about you.
- Ways to report your weekly listening and community work to a very senior level person in a huge company that has about 2 minutes of time to hear your briefing.
- Know about 100 people in the space who are doing something. The more diverse the profession and location, the better.
- How to launch and operate a blogger outreach campaign.
- How to tie other media into social media as an integrated campaign.
Tactical
- How to install a blog (pick your software) on a hosted server.
- How to edit the sidebar to include a widget, or an embed, or anything.
- How to create, edit, and post at least one other type of media besides text.
- At least five social network accounts active, including but not limited to: LinkedIn, Yahoo! Groups, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
- How to find and subscribe to a podcast WITHOUT using iTunes.
- Five stats worth knowing for any blog/website.
- How to structure a blog post so that humans and Google like it.
(my summarizing!)
Strategic:
- Have some knowledge of non-US engines and social media groups
- How to measure value/ROI in different ways (not just sales)
- How to "feed the content beast"
- Have some insight into sociology/behavioral research
- How to match specific needs with the appropriate communications channels - NOT one size fits all
- Be active offline in the social media community (real F2F relationships with other "experts" as well as knowing them online)
- Know the art of timing
- Have experienced some mistakes and why they happened
- Be able to clarify the purpose of participating in social media
- Be able to define what constitutes success, how to measure it and how to optimize it to improve over time.
- Be able to demonstrate RSS
- Be able to show pros and cons about various tools
- Know how to find answers quickly (eg Twitter vs. Google)
- Have an understanding of analytics beyond just a few statistics
- Have an understanding of Search Engine Optimization
- Have an understanding of public v. private, personalization, data portability, how viral loops really work, social media etiquette, groups within groups and other issues around networks
Here are mine (I just picked one for each):
Strategic
- know how to find and use champions within the organization AND be able to help employees nurture the networks once built.
Tactical (technical)?
- Be aware of the latest platforms and applications, test some personally, but be able to discern when they are not yet proven to be of worth to an organization. Continuously listen to the conversation.
I think this kind of list can be really useful - for those of us who consider ourselves "early adopters", we can benchmark ourselves against it to see if we could make the leap from enthusiast to expert; and for those of us who work for associations, we can use this list to help decide if we can do it from the inside or if we're ready to get some outside help in. Either way, it's all good.
Chris Brogan, by the way, totally rocks. Bookmark his list of his best social media advice - you'll be reading for days - or will have a handy resource for when your association is ready to just get crackin'.
5.16.2008
Just get crackin' part 4 - guerrilla social media warfare in large organizations
Read a great white paper by Colin McKay (@canuckflack on Twitter) this weekend. By complete coincidence, it manages to also bridge the gap between the revolutionaries and the incrementalists by being totally revolution-themed while advocating small surreptitious steps.
Check it out here (pdf is here). The Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organizations answers the question, "How do you bring a spirit of innovation and experimentation to the communications shop of a large organization?"
In other words,
- "How do you convince your boss to even experiment with social media?
- Doesn't it mean a lot of extra work?
- Isn't this sort of stuff blocked by our organizational policies?"
Examples:
"Operate as a cell" - build personal awareness and expertise by operating alone at first.
"Train with another brigade" - find friends through blogs on topics you find of interest.
"Pull a Kissinger" - work the backchannels - find other employees who are also experimenting - they are already on LinkedIn and Facebook.
"Leapfrog the dead weeds" - develop an elevator pitch in case you run into senior execs who get it.
"Call in the big guns" - hire an outside consultant to validate your ideas
"Isolate and neutralize" - find the techies in the IT department who might be into social media to get them in your corner.
Etc, all the way through to "Victory!"
Hehehe.
It also contains at the end a great list of blogs specifically focused on getting started within the confines of a large organization - and the author should know, having worked for the government for ten years.
"The key? Don’t let your imagination and enthusiasm be dampened by organizational politics or institutional caution."
Amen, brother.
Groupsites from a kid's point of view...
This is TOO CUTE. I can't wait until Jackson & Bo can do vids for me! And CollectiveX rocks, anyway.
(p.s. to my chagrin this didn't work in Firefox, but works fine in IE.) Courtesy Shaun's blog.
5.15.2008
5.14.2008
Learning to listen - the real "quiet revolution" that is social media
Thought you would be interested in reading my guest post for Harry Hoover and the My Creative Team THINking blog. Thank you, Harry for inviting me to post!
********
I was thinking about what to write as my guest post for the THINKing blog. Since I write about social media specifically as it pertains to associations and non-profits, which seem to be (unnecessarily, but for obvious reasons), always trailing a bit behind the corporate world, I didn’t want to either be too specifically association-centered in this post or too “surface” or general for the audience of the THINking blog.
But I suddenly realized that that none of that really matters! Because it’s actually not about writing. The real lesson of social media is that it is teaching us - all of us - to LISTEN.
When I started my blog less than a year ago, I thought that it would be a way to get my thoughts about my industry (and its relationship to social media and innovation) on “paper”, that it would help me learn to write, that if I was lucky I’d get a few friends and colleagues commenting who would help me clarify my thoughts and deepen my understanding of whatever issues I was writing about. Which did happen, of course - but something far more interesting and far more meaningful happened at the same time. It opened a door to this whole new world where in order to participate fully, I had to listen and interact, not just talk! Listen by reading other’s blogs, by joining social networks where other bloggers were discussing similar things, by joining groups within groups, by reading what others shared or tagged, by subscribing to feeds on all sorts of relevant topics, by signing up to Twitter where the conversation is free flowing. Only once I started to really listen, did I see how to get real lasting value out of adding to the conversation.
All this listening can be intimidating, of course - I couldn’t do it all at once, I had to dip my toes in first, then the rest of me, little by little. Organizations need to find their own ways to do the same. We early adopters in the non-profit world like to argue about the how we get organizations to join the revolution. But really, it’s an internal, psychological shift that has to happen. Listening is something that historically and structurally organizations have never really known how to do!
But with the advent of everything 2.0 and the new power of the consumer to have a voice, companies began to be forced to listen, in a reactive fashion, because of customer complaints. New social technologies enabled people to complain about problems directly to the companies, and when they weren’t heard, between themselves about those companies, and then to anyone out there on the web. And for the first time, they began to really be heard. Because not only could they voice dissatisfaction, they could enable themselves to affect the future of a product, service or an entire company through joining forces with other customers who felt the same way. Companies started to take notice, to respond or change when pushed hard enough.
In the association/non-profit industry (as elsewhere), organizations have structures in place that, as it turns out, are all about NOT listening. The Decision to Join was a massive study of over 16,000 individuals and why they choose to belong (or not) to associations. One of the study’s findings was that there is a huge disconnect between the perceptions of those at the top about what matters to members about benefits and services, and those of the “rank-and-file” about what they think matters most. Which disproves the idea that the governance level people (the board and top level volunteer leadership) can represent the rest of the membership and act for them - maybe they don’t even know what the membership is really thinking. Sound familiar? We’re learning that we can’t truly know what our members / customers / audiences want - unless we ask, and unless we listen to what they tell us even when we don’t ask.
So, with the advent of the newly empowered “user” (apologies to Drew Olanoff), companies and associations have begun to realize that the world is shifting. We still market; we still advertise; we still brand; we still push our promotional messages; we still send communications out to existing audiences, target audiences and the world at large. But all of sudden, those audiences have the power to talk back - or to ACTIVELY IGNORE our messages by creating their own products (eg through open source technology), starting their own groups, finding the information they need elsewhere on the internet…
So organizations are realizing - some faster than others! - that they need to learn to listen, in order to participate, in order to reach those new and old audiences that may no longer feel the need to pay attention to their traditional push communications. They need to set up online alerts to get notified about what people are saying about them. They need to let go of the "myth of control", and not be afraid of hearing negative things - which, on the whole, are much less frequent than they think. They need to start by listening.
There are different ways to listen. I found this on a site about learning disabilities (my formatting):
“It has been shown that people listen with a preferred listening approach:
Appreciative - listens in a relaxed manner, seeking enjoyment, entertainment, or inspiration.
Empathic - Listens without judging, is supportive of the speaker and learns from the experience of others.
Comprehensive - Listens to organize and make sense of information by understanding relationships among ideas.
Discerning - Listens to get complete information, understand the main message and determine important details.
Evaluative - Listens in order to make a decision based on information provided and may accept or reject message based on personal beliefs.Most individual listen with more than one listening style. To be a good listener takes practice in becoming proficient in each style.
This refers to individuals, but organizations also need to learn how to listen in some of all of these ways, depending on the context. It’s not enough just to have the “technological translation tools” - technology will always move faster than any of us can really keep up! Many organizations get too worried about what platforms to use and what tools they need. Learning to listen is not about what tools you use to do it, it’s a change that has to happen from within in order to learn how to understand the language of this new world and stake your place in it.
5.13.2008
The value of social networks for non-profits and for-profits discussed on the Diane Rehm show on NPR
Image via WikipediaDiane Rehm on NPR yesterday talked to Gina Bianchini, co-founder of Ning, Andy Carvin of NPR New Media and Josh Bernoff, co-author with Charlene Li of the new book Groundswell: Winning in a World Trasnformed by Social Media (reviewed by Lindy Dreyer here).
Podcast of the discussion can be found here.
Enjoy.
5.12.2008
Check the nonprofit pulse...
Potentially awesome Twitter-based mashup is here. Created by Eduardo Bejar @edobejar, it tracks what non-profit twitterers are talking about and what links they are sharing.
Here's from the "what is this?" page:
What is this?
This is a mashup that tracks messages shared at Twitter ("tweets") by people working or related to the nonprofit area, worldwide.
Why was it created?
It was created to provide an instant glimpse of what is being discussed, shared or mentioned on Twitter, today by these users.
People are so creative, I love it.
5.08.2008
YAP has NO lower age limit either!
"Carol" posted this comment to my last post.
"What about those "young professionals" still in college like 18-20 years old. I'm 20 turning 21 in 3 months and am already the director at my company. I was interested in joining your group but since I'm not 21 it won't allow me to join. Are you trying to say that only people 21+ are considered "young professionals" and the rest of us are still babies? I was extremely disappointed in that fact because I know a lot of people my age that are young professionals and we are actually taken seriously. I think you need to actually do some work instead of socializing all day..."
OMG!!! Carol didn't leave any contact info so I hope she sees this post. Carol, I think you might be talking about some other group. Our YAP group absolutely does NOT discriminate by age, at the lower end or the higher end, unless there is some weird Facebook setting I don't know about. I have never heard of anyone not being allowed to join. Did you get some weird error message? YAP is open to everyone. If you are on Facebook, you can join. And we want you! YAP is a support network for all young professionals. Please email me at madsgrant at gmail.com and I will personally ensure that you and any friends join the group without any problems.
p.s. my joke about the "babyYAP" subgroup was tongue-in-cheek like ALL of YAP's officer titles, and all of our references to YAPstars, YAPlings, YAPpies, et.al.... Sorry if that was not obvious.
p.p.s. I WISH I could socialize all day - I would not wish the amount of work I do on my worst enemy.
5.07.2008
Old is the new young - or not!
Just heard about this blog post where Cindy Butts argues that a group shouldn't use the tag "young" if it includes people who are "not" young. Hmmm.... wonder what that might be directed at...?
She says,
"When you're a young professional, there's absolutely no problem finding colleagues one, two, three, or four decades older than you are. A real challenge is finding your own peer age group, with a shared experience. I love the experiences of working with many generations that association management provides - both from standpoint of members and employees - they're all crucial to our effectiveness. But when any professional group is given a descriptive label for networking or gathering purposes, should it describe?"
I have actually found, as a young professional (with the title to prove it), the TOTAL OPPOSITE of what she describes, in my personal experience. It's EASY, for my generation and the ones following, to find lots of people our own ages to hang out with online or off. And then we work with people in other age groups, and we try to find our feet in what might be the right career path, and we find that we're not (necessarily) taken seriously and not (always) allowed to be strategic thinkers and innovators.
A group of us - all young, but not all in our twenties - created YAP for a whole bunch of reasons, some social, others just to annoy the establishment just a wee bit, some more serious, but the WHOLE POINT is that we are moving towards an open social world where rigid rules are totally unnecessary. Who cares if some of us are older than 30? Not one of the under-30's have complained about that - and they wouldn't anyway, they would just go start their "babyYAP" subgroup (feel free, by the way!). Why limit ourselves all the time? It's so unnecessary, unproductive and the opposite of innovative.
Here's the comment I posted:
Since this is clearly directed at YAP, I am happy to respond to your question. The group was created as a forum and network to support young association professionals and to nurture and encourage their already proven abilities to be strategic. Did I and my fellow (young) admins request that they actually be young? Yes - young in age or young in imagination. The group has a spirit of openness, experimentation and innovation which means no limits - no age limits, no silos, no rules. The rules are specifically that there are no rules (beyond the common sense ones like no spitting and no pulling hair). So, yes, I agree that some people may think "young" is a specific age range. But what might that be? Is 30 too old? Is 40 too old? In this industry, a "young association professional" is really anyone either starting out and learning that there might actually be a cool career to be had here, all the way up to upper-level Gen-X execs who want to figure out how to navigate those top rungs while perhaps being younger at this stage in their careers than their predecessors were when they got to that same point. There is no doubt that there is a serious crisis brewing where there is a tiny and shrinking pool of talented Gen-X-ers willing to take over when the HUGE crowd of boomers start to retire. But Gen-Xers need to engage, encourage and trust their Millennial colleagues in order to create an industry that will innovate and thrive. And we like to have fun, and connect, and IM, and Tweet, and post videos and photos on Facebook, and party, and buy T-shirts with logos, and think up cool titles for ourselves, and dance, and drink, and get to know each other online before we meet IRL. The day I am too old for any of that is the day I crawl under a rock and die... or start an "old farts on Facebook" group.
What do you think? Are we (YAP admins) being dishonest because some of us haven't seen 21 for a while now and are really really psyched when we still get carded? Is "thinking young" a cliche? I'll tell you straight - not to me.
5.06.2008
The "bastion of incrementalism" gains ground
Just read this awesome post from Bob Wolfe on innovation from a YAP's perspective. Those of us trying to innovate from the inside have a real tightrope to navigate. We need to prove to the top tier that they can trust us, but we can't be too enthusiastic or radical or we'll get that blank look (you know the one, the one that says, "I see your mouth moving, but the words are in some unknown language, so I am going to think about what I'm having for dinner instead"). And that's if it's a good day. On a mediocre day, we'll get contrived transparency, and on a bad day, we'll get fired.
But we all have the capacity to be change agents! I think Jamie still has the best quote:
Helping people through change requires meeting them where they are. You can still push them once you're there, and when things are changing rapidly and radically, they will NEED YOU to really push them. But in order to push them, you need to be close to them—right next to them, in fact. That means seeing the world as they see it and, if they give you permission, partnering with them in the change. Remember: it's their change, not yours.
5.04.2008
More twitter fun stuff
Just a few random cool things to do with Twitter, should you be bored on this beautiful Sunday (unlikely, I know) - or more likely, in the mood to procrastinate a bit on Monday...
There are many apps that create visualizations of how we are connected to others on Twitter. These are some of my favorites - there's not a huge amount of point to them, but sometimes, in this world of words, it's refreshing to see some cool imagery showing our interconnectedness. These visualizations are mostly mine, unless it reverts to a login page when someone else clicks on the link; if you are on Twitter, plug in your own username to see yours!
- Tweetwheel - click on a name to see the friends we have in common
- Twitter blocks - click on a block to see what happens!
- Gridjit - see your Twitter friends' tweets in a grid, if you prefer that than scrolling.
- Twittearth - realtime tweets across the globe
- Twemes - conversations tagged by keyword. Here, check out Jeff's tweeting the ASAE Social Responsibility Global Summit last week.
- Self-explanatory Twictionary wiki of Twitter words.
Think associations are not using Twitter?
Check out this list, courtesy TwitterPacks. Are you using Twitter on behalf of your association but not on the list? Go add yourself. Easy-peasy- lemon-squeezy.
Non-Profit Pack
http://twitter.com/08ntc (home of the 2008 NTEN conference!)
http://twitter.com/adamgn (online and offline organizing; advocacy; healthcare4every1.org)
http://twitter.com/ahutson (immigrant & refugee rights, GLBT rights, open-source CMS, CiviCRM, grants)
http://twitter.com/ahoppin (online organizing, grassroots, web 2.0 for government, social networks, open-source CMS, etc.)
http://twitter.com/andrewjcohen
http://twitter.com/annaliese_h
http://twitter.com/antigenocide
http://twitter.com/audrieschaller (consultant to nonprofits; board development, communications, web 2.0 adoption for nonprofits)
http://twitter.com/brooklynmuseum
http://twitter.com/ckreutz (crisscrossed.net)
http://twitter.com/creativesage (mgmt. consultant for nonprofits, social entrepreneurship, arts and environmental issues)
http://twitter.com/drewbernard (ONE/Northwest Program Manager)
http://twitter.com/gandhilover (personal, professional and fun - life shouldn't be too serious!)
http://twitter.com/IdentityWoman
http://twitter.com/internationale - content to be different
http://twitter.com/jcolman - web marketing evangelista at The Nature Conservancy
http://twitter.com/littlelaura
http://twitter.com/kariapeterson
http://twitter.com/Katrinskaya
http://twitter.com/kivilm (nonprofit marketing/communications trainer, consultant, and blogger)
http://twitter.com/nancywhite (fullcirc.com)
http://twitter.com/NurtureGirl
http://twitter.com/onevoicewalk - One Voice Domestic Violence Community Awareness Walk
http://twitter.com/pce (mission-based technology consulting for non-profits, foundations, schools - but this is for playing!)
http://twitter.com/penguinasana
http://twitter.com/quixoticlife
http://twitter.com/rachelannyes (nonprofit tech, arts & culture, sustainability, marketing)
http://twitter.com/RobCottingham
http://twitter.com/rosiedefremery
http://twitter.com/ruby (lotusmedia.org, OrangePolitics.org, Fellowship of Reconciliation, network-centric advocacy, social networks, etc.)
http://twitter.com/sethschneider
http://twitter.com/shava23 (nonprofit consultant, grantwriter)
http://twitter.com/smartsculture
http://twitter.com/SocialBttrfly (social marketing believer, blogger, researcher, practitioner and enthusiast w/ a heart 4 social media)
http://twitter.com/sonnycloward
http://twitter.com/stevebridger (nfp 2.0)
http://twitter.com/sugarcube (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, JDRF)
http://twitter.com/surfriders (First Coast Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation - grassroots environmental non-profit)
http://twitter.com/wmacphail (rabble.ca, Alzheimer Society of Ontario, w8nc inc.)
http://twitter.com/steveames Running a small arts organization in Northern Vermont: River Arts
http://twitter.com/kate_is_busy
http://twitter.com/watfordgap (Getting UK Non-profits / VCS Infrastructure to use existing and new technology to help them grow)
5.01.2008
One for you data watchers
From Twitter via @fredsimmons. Thanks, hon.
Social media is still on the rise globally - here's some data from TrendSpotting.
"Universal McCann has recently published its comparative study following Social Media trends by three waves: September 2006 (Wave 1), June 2007 (Wave 2) March 2008 (Wave 3)."
There's some good commentary on this data at the original post. I personally am not interested in specific data (numbers and percentages - yawn) but trends, absolutely. And what this graph means to me is this:
- Blogs and online videos are now absolutely mainstream. There is no reason to not CONSIDER taking advantage of what value might be created by incorporating them in your association's communications vehicles.
- Social networks are now almost mainstream. Even if you don't want to create a profile for your association, do it now as a placeholder before someone else takes your name.
- Podcasts are coming up in the world. What an easy thing to start doing. Offer them to your members only or use them to promote your content to the public, but use them. People are downloading them!
- RSS is still having an identity crisis. We early adopters need to find a way to teach our associations how to use it effectively internally and to push feeds out to our audiences. Once it catches on to the mainstream it will change everything for late-adopters - but people still don't get it.
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