Top Twelve “WTF?” Moments From the NonProfit Technology Conference

So Lindy and I got back late last night from NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference, which was, of course totally intense.

We’d never been before (and were able to find lots of others who hadn't either, creating another layer of collective newbie experience (awesome!))... We were able to meet a whole ton of cool people IRL who we had gotten to know online, which was, as always, truly incredible... We met a bunch of brand new folks too, not least some amazing socmed/nonprofit experts we follow all across the social web... We recruited at least 8 people to YAP.... We hung out with an awesome DC contingent... We designed and presented a session on using social media to energize face to face events that went really well (and was recorded live, so we’ll let you know details for how to get the recording if you were not able to watch it at the time)...

Overall, we got a good sense of the great things happening in the nonprofit space and made some fantastic and hopefully long-lasting connections.

But you know us – we’re fairly irreverent and a bit cynical for this do-gooder scene (teehee) – so true to form, just for fun, instead of doing a serious recap, I thought I’d share our top twelve “WTF?” moments. Please note tongue is firmly planted in cheek!


No. 12 - we had a stress attack in the whole run up to our session about how everyone at this conference appeared to be obsessed with fundraising... and then no one in our session cared about that. Phew! Note that link is to the Twitter stream for our session - lots of good stuff if you want to check it out.


No. 11 - In a generally female-dominated industry, the NTEN Award winners – and the presenters of those winners – were all male. It was a little weird. Jus' sayin'.


No. 10 - Rockstar Beth Kanter was being followed around by hordes of groupies all day every day for 4 days. By the time we caught up with her in the hotel bar on Tuesday night, the poor dear was about ready to collapse or cry or both. We had to give her hugs and help her with chill vibes for a little while. [Love!] :)


No. 9 – The conference food was awesome. Seriously. Not joking. In what weird twilight zone does that happen??




No. 8 – The very active Twitter stream went dead by 9:30 pm on the first two nights. Dang, y’all, association peeps party way harder than you nonprofiteers. Lightweights!




No. 7 – Speaking of which – the DC contingent rocked the house (despite jetlag) at the afterparty on Monday night, closed the bar down and refused to leave (and all headed elsewhere for more shenanigans late into the night). Who closes a bar at 12:30???




No. 6 – The session on sustaining and building community had a Facebook Causes guy on the panel. Eh?


No. 5 – The whole conference’s obsession with the Swine Flu. I mean, really. Avoiding swine flu is easy. Drink lots of bourbon.

Or click here to find out if you have it.


No. 4 – The panel session on grassroots advocacy’s key final takeaway – “write emails that cut through the noise”. Email? Really? Seriously?




No. 3 – David Neff of the American Cancer Society telling a whole room of nonprofits that they should start with Facebook. Dave – we heart you, but… huh??? You really think so?





No. 2 – The Google guy in the usability session downplaying site search because “it usually doesn’t work” – and never mentioning Google gadgets. Or the fact that the two websites they were looking at had no search box. That’s your usability problem right there dude. Who “navigates” any more?




Number 1 "WTF?" Moment... Rob Cottingham of Noise to Signal fame doing stand-up comedy at the afterparty. Yes, really! Awesome.


Seriously, though, it was an honor to be part of this conference. I couldn’t think of a good joke to make in my list about Clay Shirky, whose genius and awesomeness know no bounds, but I will share this perfect link from Chad Norman on 15 Clay Shirky Quotes That Blew My Mind at NTC which sums that up quite nicely. [UPDATE - and check out Rob's doodles on his keynote - OMG. Kool and the Gang or what!!]

Nor can I say anything about Holly Ross and the NTENny staff (a whole five or six of them total!) to adequately express how really truly amazing they are. Thanks so much for the invitation to participate. It was really great to see you again (or for the first time F2F) and I really hope we can make it to Atlanta next year!

To end, here (among many, many good ones) is my all time 09ntc favorite tweet of the conference.





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NTEN Water Cooler Chat 4/30

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week, we talked about whether it's better to build your own social networking site on Drupal or buy a whitelabel solution.

We talked about LinkedIn groups and the Digital Now fiasco.

We talked about Twitter hashtag confusion and derivatives for 09NTC.

We talked about how Bucchere once again broached the alcohol topic first...

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

8 Steps for Building Community on Twitter: Tips for Membership Organizations

(Image by Maggi_94)

Here's a repost of my TwiTip Guest post from 4/11/09. You've already read this, but I'm including it here for archival purposes. This was a follow-up from this post where I laid out 4 step for setting up an organizational Twitter account. For the TwiTip post, I rewrote it by adding steps for building community in general.

Twitter can be a great space for building community around your membership-based organization, whether you work for a professional society, trade association or a cause-related nonprofit.

Here's a quick eight-step rundown of how to set up a Twitter account for your ".org". This isn't the only way, of course. But if you are starting from scratch, this is what we're finding works the best.

1. Set up a main "umbrella" account for the organization - e.g. @ORGtweets or just @ORG ("ORG" being whatever your acronym is).

Why? So people can find you easily. In the description, put in a nutshell what the organization does. A mission statement in under 140 characters, for example. (Be pithy - people like that. There are lots of other places you can be boring). For the website link field of the profile, create a Twitter landing page on your website which says, "Welcome to the Twitter page for [ORG]! We're glad you're here. Here's what we're all about. Here are some of the things we tweet about. And here are our team members, should you be interested in following them too." Then list your staff on Twitter as per #2.

2. Give your staff their own individual accounts - e.g. ORG_Bob, Maggie@ORG, etc. If you have several staffers already on Twitter with their own followers, allow them to use their accounts for tweeting on your behalf, assuming they are willing to do that.

Why? because people want to see individual people representing their organizations. There can be backlash when that doesn't happen. Presumably each staffer will have their own personality, their own things they like to tweet about personally and professionally, and they will also have their own content that they are responsible for - namely PR, or marketing, or advocacy, or publications, or events. Each person will grow their own followers independently - and can share them under the umbrella account as they go along (see #5.)

3. Use a multiple Twitter account client to manage your accounts.

Why? Because it's MUCH easier than signing in and out of accounts all day. SplitTweet works great, as do HootSuite and CoTweet (currently in private beta). All these services allow you to monitor multiple accounts at the same time - so your team can choose to tweet something to their individual accounts and the umbrella account, or just to one at a time. SplitTweet has a cool "track your brand mentions" feature; CoTweet allows you to tag your replies as being from a particular person, and allows you to assign responses to team members. HootSuite has great analytics and intelligent search for Twitter conversations. All three are always improving and evolving as professional Twitter use grows, and there may be a new multiple account application on the scene by the time this post appears, so just find the one that has the functionality you need.


4. Ask each staffer to follow people who tweet regularly about your industry or cause, as well as actively Tweeting members, donors, or other stakeholders.

Why? Because Twitter is about conversation - and directed conversation can build community. Find those other interested Tweeps simply by using Twitter search for your particular industry keywords, your organization name mentions, even competitor or sister organization mentions. Twitter directories like Twellow , We Follow , and Twibs allow you to find people based on tags or types of business. Each staffer should find their own relevant people to follow, based on their particular interests or area of expertise. If you have members, or an email list of any kind, use Twitter's own import function to import emails and find those members already on Twitter (only do a few at a time). Look for names you recognize, or clearly active Tweeters (you can tell by the number of updates, friends and followers they have). You only need to find a few key active stakeholders - others will come with them when they start to interact with you. Ask those you have a good "real life" relationship with to help you spread the word about your new presence on Twitter.

5. Under the umbrella account, periodically retweet items from your team members as well as from their followers/friends.

Why? To show a coherent stream of content where visitors can immediately see what you're about and that different people speak for you in different ways. If managed well, you can follow relevant public conversations between team members under the umbrella too - conversations that might draw people in to whatever topic you are discussing. Retweeting good stuff by people who are part of your network gives them an ego boost and shows them that it's not all about you, that you're paying attention to what they are talking about, that you're interested in learning from them too.


6. Got an annual conference or big fundraising event? Use hashtags to enable your registrants and anyone else to find you through your event promotion.

Why? Because the buzz leading up to and during face-to-face events can bring your organization into focus and can attract new people to your cause. Tweet lots of good stuff about how cool your event will be and use and promote a specific designated hashtag for it. Remember to publicize the hashtag in your other promotional materials too. We're often asked about whether it's a good idea to set up a separate Twitter account (as opposed to a hashtag) for a conference - this can work too, but a hashtag is more easily found in search, will trend if you have lots of people Tweeting the event, and allows you to differentiate between annual conferences from year to year - e.g. #Tech09 versus #Tech10. Also, the staff members who have built a following on Twitter will stay visible and won't be hidden under a conference account. They will each be enabled to add their own personal takes on the conference, by talking about the particular sessions they are attending and the things they care about from their individual (professional) viewpoints.If you set up a new account for each conference, you are basically starting from zero friends and followers each time - and it takes time to build those networks.


7. Bottom line: Share great content.

Why? Because great content sparks word of mouth, and word of mouth (you guessed it!) builds community. Ask each staffer to take responsibility for sharing links with interesting and useful information relevant to their specific areas of expertise. Encourage them to engage in conversation with their Twitter networks, respond to things other people are tweeting about, retweet links and tweets from people outside your organization as well as your own; don't be afraid to actually converse about topics of interest. Find champions within your networks to help you spread the word about specific issues. Use your umbrella account to corral it all in a place where people can find it easily. Community builds around shared interests, but only if you nurture it and feed it, which means listening as well as talking.


8. Bonus: Benchmark and measure!

Why? So you can see how it's all going and know when it might be necessary to put in a bit more effort or move up to the next level of awesomeness. Benchmark and measure your progress using whatever metrics make the most sense to you. Number of followers, organization links retweeted, new registrants to your events, etc. There are lots of specific Twitter analytics apps out there, but measure engagement in other ways too. Building community online is all about building community offline.

That should be enough to get you started! Here are a couple places to find examples of associations and nonprofits on Twitter, as well as three related posts from Twitip that dig a bit deeper into Tweeting for organizational use. Tweet on!

- Associations on Twitter
- more associations on Twitter
- Nonprofits on Twitter
- more on nonprofits using Twitter

TwiTip Resources:
- Building an Effective Business Profile on Twitter
- Tips for Brands and Nonprofits
- How to Handle Multiple Users Within Your Company

San Francisco Here We Come

So we're about to head off to sunny San Francisco for NTEN's NTC09 conference. I know some of you will be there and I'm very excited to meet a bunch of NTENny peeps in person for the first time, as well as hang out with Brian Solis, Chris Carfi, Margaret Francis and any other local Tweeps we can find! If you are local and want to meet up, please contact us via Twitter (@maddiegrant and @lindydreyer).

I've also set up a YAPpy group inside the event network (NTConnect - login required) in case any association folks will be there, so we can meet up and hang out. (You only need two YAPstars in a room to create a party...)

Lindy and I have never been to NTC before, so we're very excited and we are sure to do some live blogging while we're there - you can also follow the Twitter stream if you are interested in the going's on out West. Here's everything you can do remotely via their live coverage.

And big news, our session will be available via ReadyTalk! Here's the session info, Unleashing the Ultimate Cool Factor: Case Studies of Conferences Energized Through Social Media, and here's the link to the free webinar of the session - 10:30 PST on Tuesday 4/28.

It's a panel, so I hope everyone has good questions. If you have some (about using social media at events) please do tweet them to us before and during, using the hashtags #09ntc and #cool. Thanks!



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140 Health Care Uses for Twitter

If this doesn't inspire you...

Go on. Try finding 140 uses for your industry. Just for fun, or for your future.

140 Health Care Uses For Twitter

View more presentations from Phil Baumann.

NTEN Water Cooler Chat 4/23

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week, Lindy and I showed up super fashionably late to our chat due to a client meeting - sorry guys! must pay the bills! - and found our regular crew engaged in a deep and super serious conversation about the semantics around the word "nonprofit" as opposed to "community benefit" (they were discussing Hildy Gottlieb's ideas). So we just hung out and watched the awesomeness unfold (...at least until someone mentioned tequila). So happy! You guys are so great!

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

What viral video can do for you

I wrote a little article for ASAE's Tech Council E-newsletter, Technoscope, on an IEEE video project which they created to celebrate their 125th anniversary. My article has a bit of background, but you don't really need it to get it. It's a simple idea which created a really moving, still ongoing, simply and deeply engaging and beautiful thing.

Here's the video. Watch to the end as they get more and more creative with the piece of paper with the IEEE logo...



But here's the clincher. I posted a link to the video on Twitter (the article itself is behind the firewall, which is irritating in the extreme) and immediately got this back:



BAM! That's what you want your stuff to do. Make it easy, make it shareable, make it WOM-worthy, and your value will spread all by itself.

Reasons Why Some Social Networks Fail

Just read this fantastic post over at AriWriter from guest poster Ethan Yarbrough, who explains how as a social media expert he wants to be asked not only how many social networks he has managed, but how many have succeeded or failed.

Read the details of the two networks he built that did not work and why.

"In the first example I misdiagnosed the need and thus designed the wrong solution, in the second case I designed a solution for a need that didn’t exist. I am an idealist and an enthusiast, and my excitement over social networking and media led me to the same mistake that many others have made: I fell for the tools and forgot about the strategy. I fell victim to the Field of Dreams Fallacy: “If you build it, they will come” … it works in the movies, but it’s not a good strategy for designing a social network."

[My bold]

Building community using social networks, whether white label or on public sites like CollectiveX, is not an easy task.

That's why you must have strategic objectives you want to accomplish before you can figure out the roadmap for getting there. Your objective cannot be "we need to set up a social network". Why are you thinking about doing that? Is it because your members are self-forming groups all over the place and you want them to have a home base to do it in? Is it because you have chapters in different locations that could benefit from having a central place to get to know each other? Is it because you want to provide a place for "raise your hand" volunteerism, where everyone knows how to find things they can do for the association and for each other?

This is also why social objects are so incredibly important. After the initial launch, people will not automatically begin to interact in your new space unless you give them social objects and actions to do around those social objects. Being connected by virtue of being members of your organization is not enough. "Networking" on its own is not enough.

Read Ethan's "lessons learned". Major food for thought.

31 Days to Build A Better Blog

So I'm taking part in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge (well, exercise - you're just challenging yourself) from ProBlogger Darren Rowse.

I thought in the spirit of designing in public I'd let you know what I've done so far and how it's all going, as we're about half way through. If you have a blog or are interested in starting one, you can't go wrong doing this challenge too or simply bookmarking this post (and the second one I'll do at the end of the 31 days) and checking out each step. You totally do not have to do it in 31 days straight - I am, because otherwise it will get superceded by everything else, but you can do it at your own pace or just browse through the tips to see if anything sounds useful to you.

Each of these numbers corresponds to a daily task, and my comment afterwards is what I did with it.

1. Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Blog

I have one! W00t! "Association/non-profit blog on social media, community building, strategic imagination." Check!

2. Write a List Post

Awesome coincidence, had just written one! List posts are great, everyone loves them and they are pretty easy to write.

3. Promote a Blog Post

I didn't do more than I already do on this task, but there are lots of good tips here. I'm already all over the web, I figured I should keep on keeping on and not saturate the market (hehehe)!

4. Analyze a Top Blog in Your Niche

I actually skipped this one. I like to do my own thing, having had a bit of success with it so far... :)

5. Email a Blog Reader

I'm pretty good at interacting with my blog community (I hope), but this was a great coincidence that I asked you guys for help on that same day.

6.Must Read Advice from Successful Bloggers

I wasn't too thrilled with this. There were three posts each from nine bloggers. I would have preferred one from each, or having them be organized by subject matter (for example so I could skip all the monetizing ones - I don't plan to ever put ads on this blog). Having said that, Liz Strauss on why people don't comment and this one on 43 web design mistakes to avoid were fantastic posts.

7. Write a Link Post

This one was easy for me; I linked to the Leadership Meme post that I had just written. I probably need to actually write more of my own stuff and quit linking to everyone else all the time. hahaha....

8. Interlink Your Old Blog Posts

Interlinking to older blog posts is something I think I do pretty well, as I try to write thematically. I've bookmarked this one though, to come back to periodically. If I had time I would do more of this.

9. Join a Forum and Start Participating

Hmmm... Lucky me!

10. Set Up ‘Alerts’ to Monitor What is Happening in Your Niche

Dude. Listening? I'm all over it. :)

11. Come Up with 10 Post Ideas

"Ever run out of things to write about on your blog?" Ummm... no. Skipped this one. I have a bunch of posts in draft at all times. Can't keep up with all the stuff I want to write about. But if you ever get blogger's block, read this post. His exercises for extending past posts are really good.

12. Develop an Editorial Calendar for Your Blog

I skipped this too. I have my weekly chat post set to go on Thursdays, otherwise I post when I have good stuff to post. Which is pretty much all the time (I hope you agree!). If I tried to get more "organized" about it all my backlog would probably get worse.

13. Take a Trip to the ‘Mall’ and Improve Your Blog

I haven't actually done this specifically yet, but I do like to think about what I see out there in the real world. I think I'll save this one for later.

14. Update a Key Page on Your Blog

This one was another no-brainer for me, I'm continuously changing my about page (linked from my license plate above, currently points to my website about page), moving stuff around on here and trying widgets and thinking about usability. BUT, I want to find a way to move all my badges and many of my widgets to somewhere other than the sidebar, as it all gets messy (even though I change them up a lot and get rid of stuff that's not useful). Need to figure this one out still. If anyone has any ideas let me know - I don't think you can do "pages" on Blogger, not that I can figure out anyway.

15. Find a Blog Buddy.

Hmmm. Check! :)


So I'm feeling pretty good about the fact that so far I've been able to do all these tasks pretty easily (or skip them because I was already doing the directives in general). But I think this has been a really useful project so far. It's hard to take a step back and look at your own blog as an evolving piece of work, and doing something like this has helped me confirm that there's a lot about blogging that I "get" instinctively, that it comes naturally to me I suppose, but also it's been good for thinking about it all in a different way than just "from the gut". I'm enjoying it a lot and can't wait to see what the next 2 weeks worth of tasks will be. I'll certainly let you know with another recap later, and we'll see together whether it's helped me build a better blog after all...!

NTEN Water Cooler Chat 4/16

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

I was hoping to be able to tell you more about our intensely awesome conversation last week - inspired by a presentation we'd just been to that morning, we discussed the hefty theme of what it means to be a member in a web-enabled world. The conversation was on fire, everyone had insanely great stuff to say, but sadly, Meebo chats can't be archived and I couldn't write anything down in time - except for this tiny tidbit from Jeff Hurt:

"The edges between work and social life are blurring. People are shifting their social networks into their work networks and vice versa—business associates and childhood friends, side by side. Associations need to capture that."

And the hilarious comment from newcomer to the chat room Peter De Jager, that he had learned more about associations in the last fifteen minutes than in the last five years. LOL! So I guess you just had to be there. So no excuses! Join us or miss out. :)

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

Check Out Association Jam

Brought to you by the cool kids at Wild Apricot and Bonasource Inc., Association Jam is a news site for associations, with user-submitted articles of note. Like a Digg for Associations. You can:

1) Find stories (most popular float to the top, based on votes by others);
2) Submit stories;
3) Vote for stories, and join or start discussions;
4) Connect with association peeps.

The site is still in beta, but please check it out and feel free to add stuff and give your feedback. My take? One word: Awesomesauce.

Tagging As a Community Building Tool

I'm just finished an awesome book called Tagging: People-Powered MetaData for the Social Web by Gene Smith.

It sounds like a dry subject, but tagging is really super cool and has massive implications for the design, building and nurturing of online communities. I thought I'd jot down some notes I took straight out of the book so you can see why.

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How tagging works:
1) Tags are multiple ways of finding something
2) Tags are a way to browse
3) Tags are part of a community pool - act as a bridge between personal and community knowledge
4) Tags connect objects to other objects
5) Tags are hooks used to pull information together from other website that use tags, like Technorait, Flickr, Delicious.

Tags by themselves are like a filing system without files - need USERS and RESOURCES to be useful.

Tags can be created from three perspectives:

- Information Architecture - for organizational content
- Social Software - to facilitate group interaction
- Personal Information Management (PIM) - organizing stuff for an individual's use.
There can be friction between these.

Tagging is related to the re-emergence of oral culture online. (Alex Wright)

Tagging is NOT like folders, where you move something from one place (e.g. inbox) to another (folder) - tags allow things to live in several places at once.

Tagging is SOCIAL = personal + collaborative at the same time. Tags show minority viewpoints as well as consensus. (Tag Clouds are a visualization of this).

Value Centered Design = value comes from balancing the goals of the people who create the system (RETURN ON INVESTMENT) with those of the people who use the system (RETURN ON EXPERIENCE).

Motivations for users to tag (ROE):
- ease of use
- to manage personal info
- sharing and collaborating (---> communities of interest)
- fun
- self-expression

Business benefits (ROI):
- to facilitate collaboration
- to obtain descriptive metadata
- to enhance findability
- to increase participation
- to identify patterns
- to augment existing classification systems
- to spark innovation (e.g. data mashups, geodata/geotagging)

THEREFORE:

- tagging must be made easy,
- it must help people manage their info as well as yours
- it must encourage collaboration, play, self-expression.

ALIGN USERS' GOALS WITH SYSTEM'S GOALS.

Tags connect objects together and help disparate users find each other = social experience through common interests.

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I know this is just the bare bones and I could get a lot deeper into this, but I'm wondering if anyone has found "communities of interest" bubbling up from their organization's use of tags? Do you allow user-generated tags?

Good Tweet <<>> Bad Tweet

Good Tweet Vs Bad Tweet: A Guide To Being Not Boring On Twitter

View more presentations from Flightpath.

Feed Hell

OMG. What a complete nightmare. To anyone who experienced craziness from my new Feedblitz feed, I am so sorry. I have completely shut it down now, so hopefully that should stop soon, if not immediately (which is what I'm hoping).

I have reverted to my boring old Blogger feed with no bells and whistles. Everyone breathe a sigh of relief. And whatever you do, DO NOT switch your own feeds to Feedblitz!! I suspect they got a massive influx of new feeds after the widely discussed Feedburner problems and they didn't plan for it so their servers have completely lost the plot.

If you don't hate me, please resubscribe here. (Copy link and paste to your reader subscription field.)

Thank you so much, and again I really am so sorry for the hassle and the feed spam.

The Leadership Meme

So Jamie started what is turning out to be a really interesting meme asking three qualities a leader should have. His three? "Know yourself", "Understand systems", "Learn communication". Read his post for his analysis.

Jeff then posted his: "Take responsibility", "Be courageous", "Embrace learning"...

...and Deirde added hers: "Have a spine", "Have a heart", "Have open ears and eyes". Their posts have wonderful further descriptions of what they mean by their choices.

So here are mine, which actually relate to a lot the others have already said.

1. Combine big picture thinking with practical knowledge.

Know how things work on the ground, even when you see the future in the blue sky. Engage team members at all levels. Provide future direction that has a roadmap for getting there.

2. Give ownership of the system to each player.

Help everyone have a part to play in the strategic direction of an organization. Encourage ideas from all sources. Remind each team member how important they are. Break down silos. Level the playing field. Encourage individuals to shine. Give kudos when deserved.

3. Be real.

Be accessible. Talk to people. Don't be afraid to be wrong - but figure that out early. Don't be afraid to argue. Don't be afraid to laugh or cry. Ask questions. Mentor. Share yourself.

That's it from me. Can't wait to read more. Next!

10 Ways Associations Can Be More Like Twitter

I attended a wonderful session by innovation guru Jeff De Cagna yesterday - Strategies for Association Success in the Era of Social Business.

Jeff and his two co-hosts Chris Hopkinson of DubMeNow and Chris Bucchere of the Social Collective, were gleefully surprised when Jeff asked, "Who here is on Twitter?" and just about every single person raised their hand. It was a fantastic chance to get deeper into the concept of social business and what it might mean for associations.

We did one exercise at our tables that I found awesomely fun and interesting. I don't want to scoop Jeff, as I know he's planning on posting all of the attendees' answers and he'll surely give us some great further analysis, but I just thought I'd share the ideas we came up with at our table.

The question posed was, "How Could Associations Be More Like Twitter?"

Here were our answers:

1. anyone can join the conversation

2. quick response/reaction times

3. keep conversations short

4. searchable!

5. focus on individual members' networks, not the org's network

6. have unconferences and association tweetups

7. survey and listen - easily and often

8. no hierarchy, or hierarchy based on social capital

9. ideas and innovation coming from any individual

10. allow for creativity in terms of adding "applications", without taking away from the core simple platform - platform allows for an organic ecosystem to be built on it.

This was only a small slice of all the answers, we'll wait for Jeff to post the rest - but what do you think? Awesome, or what? What do you think of the metaphor?

We had our weekly Water Cooler chat later that day and told our chat room peeps all about it - and the best conversation we've had yet ensued. I'll try and summarize it for next week's chat post if not before. In the meantime, what could you add to this list? If you come up with more ideas, perhaps we can ask Jeff to add them to the summary!

NTEN Water Cooler Chat 4/9

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week, we had a fairly intense conversation about setting up a blog for your association: whether it's a good idea to ask publications staff to switch to blogging (no!), whether controversy helps (yes!), and how blogging (specifically, maintaining momentum) is actually quite difficult and you absolutely have to find people who will do it for the love, whether staff or members, or it will fail.

Then, true to form, we cheered ourselves up with these addictive sources of non-work-related amusement: Unnecessary Quotes, Twitfave, #oneliner, and of course, Beer Haiku Daily.


Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

Reader Help Requested: An Association Blog Dilemma

Image by bitzcelt via Flickr

Lindy and I were recently approached by a colleague in the association world who told us about a dilemma they were having with their newly launched blog. They asked if I would post their dilemma here and ask my readers to comment.

This is an interesting one! We gave her our take, but we're all curious to know what you would do, what your thought are about it.

Here's the pickle:

Our association blog is multi-author representing various industry topics from multiple perspectives. In our initial weeks, things are going very well. Lots of traffic on the site, etc. Two other industry blogs launched during the same month we did. The dilemma is that we all have the same authors who are supplying us with the same (or recycled) content. We are all participating on the same social networking groups, posting the same articles with links to our blogs. I’m trying to embrace the cooperative spirit of the blogger world. However, this just isn’t helpful to our readers. If they can read the same article on 3 different blog sites, we, of course, want our blog to win this competitive game. We want to be the best industry blog, with the best authors, with the best content. We have the same small audience subscribing to our blogs and participating on our social sites. You may recall, we developed a blogger application with a list of rules and guidelines, and a release form. We ask our volunteer authors for “original” content, but not “exclusive” content. The other two blogs are managed by supplier companies for the industry our association represents, however, neither are member companies. One of the managers of the competing blog has reached out to us to “partner” and cross-promote. We would approach this “frienemy” thing different if they were a sponsor, exhibitor, or advertiser with the association, however, we’re really not interested in “partnering” with a non-member company.

1) Are we turning off our readers by posting recycled content?

2) Do we go back to our blog authors to ask them to only submit to us “exclusive” content for our blog?

3) Am I silly to be worrying about sharing content with competing blogs?

4) Is this situation likely to resolve itself as we all gain wider readership and more folks in the industry begin to blog?

What do you think? Please post in the comments. Thanks!

What's YOUR story?

Do you know who's part of your community?

Who are your people?
Why are they here?
How have they changed?
What's important to them?

Have you asked recently? And while we're at it.. what's YOUR story?

Want to Swim like a SocialFish?

Lindy and I currently working on our Spring schedule of School of SocialFish workshops. Full information is here. Our workshops are small (4-8 people), intensive (3 hours), hands-on (bring a laptop) and tailored to the people in the room. We do workshops specific to an organization (we come to you) or we group individuals who have specific interests together.

We do practical workshops on blogging (introductory and advanced, individual and organizational), on specific outpost strategies for social spaces like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, as well as thematic workshops on listening and brand monitoring, nurturing your homebase community, engaging young professionals, building buzz around your conference, and lots more.

If you are interested, as an individual or organization, in any of our workshops please let us know as soon as possible as space is limited. Dates are not yet set and will depend on each group members' availability.

Please also forward to any colleagues or friends who might be interested. Thank you in advance for sharing some SocialFish love!

New RSS feed for SocialFishing...

If you subscribe to this blog in a reader, please note I have changed my RSS service to Feedblitz, due to ongoing crapness from Feedburner.

[UPDATE OMG did this not work at all. Reverted to Blogger feed with no bells and whistles.]

Thanks!

Yummy Shrimp with Chili and Basil Recipe

Oh, plus my interview at Social Gumbo, which I thought you might like to have a look at. (The recipe is included at the bottom of the post, just fyi!)

George "Loki" Williams is a New Orleans based, music industry blogger whose first blog, HumidCity, became notable when he podcasted evacuee interviews during the Katrina disaster and subsequently used viral methods to help find musicians and industry people in the aftermath. He's also worked with community radio and continues to work with the Human Digital Memory Bank which records Katrina and Rita survivor stories - read all about his story here. Thank you, Loki, for the interview!

Just riding the coattails...

Just wanted to let you know that my lovely biz partner Lindy's now on the advisory board for Smart Brief on Social Media. Totally awesome - and check out the illustrious company she's keeping. Holy sh- I mean, Wow!

Here's the press release with more on Smart Brief. Their goal with the (free) SBOSM newsletter and blog is to "enlighten business leaders and marketers about ways to use social media to their advantage."

This is great for her, and great for SocialFish, but far more importantly, it's great for you. Lindy will be able to bring the association perspective to the table, ask questions on your behalf or bring up those all-important issues about community building and engagement as well as social media marketing and technology. Let's all keep her well stocked with all those burning questions we like to think about. As a matter of fact, she's already got two questions for you. Please give some good stuff!

Yay Lindy!

Nice SocMed Slideshow from the National Wildlife Federation

NWF Staff: Intro to Social Media

View more presentations from Danielle Brigida.

Got this via Beth Kanter. It's by Danielle Brigida of NWF, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the DC Twestival and who created this for NWF staff. See what you think!

NTEN Water Cooler Chat 4/2

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Here's a bunch of links from things we talked about last week!

- Toni Rae's new blog
- Deirdre Reid's new blog
- Go2Web20 - great apps database for everything
- Mini Maddie doll on flickr (what I would look like if I was skinnier and um, other things)
- How to set up an organizational Twitter account
- Association social media breakfast (Alexandria, April 9) with Chris Bucchere and friends (we're going!)

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

Quote of the Week : On Community

"The key to creating or transforming community is to see the power in the small but important elements of being with others. The shift we seek needs to be embodied in each invitation we make, each relationship we encounter, and each meeting we attend. For at the most operational and practical level, after all the thinking about policy, strategy, mission, and milestones, it gets down to this: How are we going to be when we gather together?

- Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging