Social Media Listening
Literacy For Nonprofits
Beth Kanter, Beth’s Blog

Listening Literacy: Step-by-Step
1. Get your nonprofit ready to listen
2. Key skills
3. Essential Tool: RSS Reader
4. Your Radar
5. The Art of Responding
6. Pattern Analysis, Trends, and
Reporting
7. Listening in A Blizzard

Share Pair
• What is your organization’s
experience with listening?
• What do you want to
improve?

1. Get your organization ready to listen

How will you organize listening?
•Who will do the listening and
responding?
•Response policy?
•How much time will you allocate?
•How will you analyze the results
and share insights?
•How will you know if listening
has be useful?

2. Listening: Key Skills
• Keywords Are King: Composing & Refining
• Pattern Analysis
• Engaging Effectively

Keywords Are King: Composing & Refining

What to search for?
• Nonprofit Name
• Other nonprofit names in your space
• Program, services, and event names
• CEO or well-known personalities
associated with your organization
• Other nonprofits with similar
program names
• Your brand or tagline
• URLs for your blog, web site, online
community
• Industry terms or other phrases
• Your known strengths and
weaknesses.

What NOT to search for?
Try to avoid generic terms.
If your organization's name or program
names contain generic words, use
Boolean operators like \"AND\" or
\"NOT.\"

Think like your audience
“It is important to connect with people
based on their interests (I will
sometimes search twitter for \"kids
outside\" and then compliment them on
giving their kids a green hour!) ”
Danielle Brigida

Think Offline ….
List Your Key Why Important Brainstorm
Words/Phrases Related Words
Share Pair: Brainstorm some key words

Use Online Keyword Tools
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Revise Keywords Based On Results

Use Your RSS Reader
Like A Rock Star!

Which one is
right for you?

Good RSS Habits
Small block of time
for daily reading
Clean house,
reorganize
Don’t feel obligated
to read everything

Let’s Set Up Your First Social Media Radar
(using free tools)

Ego Searches Basics
Persistent Searches Key words phrases
Key Bloggers Blog Feeds
Other Places Social Networks,
YouTube, Etc

Your Ego Feeds
Name or URL
Put into folders in your reader

There’s not a (free) magic wand ……

Exercise: Set Up A Few Ego
Feeds in Your Reader
• Do search at site for the first time
• Add a RSS feed to your reader
• Monitor in your reader
• Pattern Analysis
• Engage when needed

Persistent Search: Use Keywords, Rinse and
Repeat

Exercise: Set up Keyword Searches

Listening to Bloggers

These steps require a few hours of
research in the beginning …

Browse and scan blogs at directories

Look for bridge
bloggers

Add to Your Reader

You read the blog in your reader ..

Building Your Feeds and
Finding Influencers
• Slow growth at first, spider out
• Don’t be afraid to clean, unsubscribe, and
reorganize
• Spreadsheet analysis
• Check out Google Page Rank
• You can check out their monthly views
• You can check out their technorati
ranking

Other Places To Set Up Listening Posts
If you’re planning to set up a presence or you
know your audience is there …

Source: Kd Paine – Buy her book, read her blog

Most important:
How many times was a video watched?
How many times was it rated and what
were the ratings?
How many comments did it get?
Also record:
How many times has it been favorited?
How many times has it been embedded?
How many times has it been linked to?

The Art of Response

If you find people talking
about you ….
Problem Not Problem
Big Problem Keep track of themes
Little Problem
Keep track of positives
Track themes
Be prepared to discuss
Source: KD Paine

Swing into crisis mode and call in the boss

If Keywords are Kings, Comments are Queens

Read and comment on blogs
Think before you respond!
What did they say well?
What did they miss?
Answer questions
What are other people saying
How does it apply to you
Look forward
Look backward
Ask what if?

Pattern Analysis
Tools

The Most Important Tool

Excel Spreadsheet

Review Trends, Share

Listening in a Blizzard: Professional Tools

• What can professional tools do that
free ones can’t?
• Start with free tools, perfect your
radar, look for ways that professional
tools can save you time
• Growing number of vendors, do your
due diligence
• Demo

Listening Literacy: Step-by-Step
1. Get your nonprofit ready to listen
2. Key skills
3. Essential Tool: RSS Reader
4. Your Radar
5. The Art of Responding
6. Pattern Analysis, Trends, and
Reporting
7. Listening in A Blizzard

Happy Listening!

Sources of Inspiration
Inspiration and Sources
KD Paine, Queen of Measurement
http://www.themeasurementstandard.com/
(Buy her book, read her blog)
WeAreMedia: Nonprofit Social Media Starter Kit
http://www.wearemedia.org/
(I’m the wiki facilitator and gardener. Check out
the Tool Box section)
All Photos Creative Commons Licensed
from Flickr and attribution in notes

Beth’s Writings and Resource
Collections
I have two personal learning spaces
Social Media Listening
http://socialmedia-listening.wikispaces.com/
Social Media Metrics
http://socialmediametrics.wikispaces.com/
Plus you can check out my blog posts on the topic
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/listening/

Thank You!
Beth’s Blog
http://beth.typepad.com
Have a blog post topic idea?
beth@bethkanter.org