Tips on how to use social media strategically to advance your organization's mission, presented by J.D. Lasica at ETR Associates.

1. Using social media
to build community
& measure impact
JD Lasica
Founder, Socialbrite.org
jd@socialbrite.org
June 27, 2012

2. Who is this guy anyway?
Chief strategist, Socialbrite
Spoken at the UN, Harvard, Stanford,
MIT, Cannes Film Festival and at
events in Paris, Milan and Seoul.
Named one of the Top 40 Silicon
Valley Influencers, one of the Top 100
Social Media Influencers and one of
Top 100 Media Bloggers.
Co-founded Ourmedia.org, the first
free video hosting site (before YouTube)
About 17,000 followers on Twitter at @jdlasica

3. What we’ll cover today
Lay the foundation
Create a strategy
Facebook
Twitter
Storytelling
Build community
Mobile
Metrics: Goals, SEO & keywords, Google
Analytics, Facebook Insights
Q&A, hugs, tearful goodbyes

4. Relax!
http://socialbrite.org/etr
(Your homework assignment!)
Creative Commons
BY photo on Flickr
by Tom@HK

5. THE ECOSYSTEM
Types of social media
Blogs
Social networks
Microblogs (Twitter)
Online video
Curation (Pinterest)
Widgets
Photo sharing
Podcasts
Virtual worlds
Wikis
Social bookmarking
Forums
Presentation sharing

6. Staggering growth
150 million active blogs; 1 million blog posts created per day
YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, VEVO, Twitter are among top
sites in world
Facebook: 900+ million active members
Twitter: 150 million active users, 250 million+ tweets per day
Google+: On track to 400 million users
YouTube: 3 billion videos watched per day
8 trillion text messages sent in 2011

7. RESOURCES
Socialbrite Sharing Center
http://socialbrite.org/sharing-center

8. P R E P W O R K : E S TA B L I S H B U S I N E S S G O A L S
How can nonprofits use social media?
1. Raise public awareness of your mission or cause
2. Raise funds for a cause or campaign
3. Reach new constituents or supporters
4. Build a community of champions
5. Recruit volunteers
6. Get people to take real-world actions
7. Enhance existing communications programs
8. Involve the community in decision-making
9. Advance your organization’s mission in other ways
10. Have fun!

9. L AY T H E G R O U N D W O R K
Before you plunge in ...
Social media is a marathon, not a sprint
Do you have buy-in from top management?
Do you have a social media policy or guidelines?
Do you have a Strategic Plan in place?
Have you researched your audiences/community?
Have you identified & trained your team members?
Do you have an idea worth spreading?
Have you built a program before you turn to a campaign?

10. Have you defined a clear theme?
Boil down your cause to a strong, single sentence
Vittana:
Help anyone go to college
Alter Eco:
Support fair trade
ActBlue:
Elect progressive candidates
DonorsChoose:
Support public classrooms in need

11. Begin with a strategy document

12. Elements of a Strategic Plan
360° assessment of social
media capabilities
Spell out business goals
Identify online community
Proposed use of social tools
& platforms
Recommendations on
expanded capabilities
Lay out metrics program
Competitive/peer analysis

13. Create a listening post

14. FACEBOOK
Facebook: The social network
900 million members worldwide —
70% of Americans on Facebook use it every day
900
600
300
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009 0
2010
2011
Today
Facebook’s global growth rate, 2004-2012, in millions

15. FACEBOOK
Get into those news feeds!
edgerankchecker.com
Article: http://bit.ly/edgerank-checker

16. FACEBOOK TIPS
How to get more engagement
Keep your posts short
& simple
Post visually appealing
content
Include calls to action,
including Shares
Ask questions the right way
Use fill-in-the-blank posts
Be topical & relevant
Make it easy to share outside of Facebook

17. Facebook’s Timeline

18. Public figure pages

19. Secret groups on Facebook
facebook.com/groups

20. TWITTER
Make Twitter work for you
Staff should be trained on how to use Twitter.
Not a broadcasting medium to just distribute press releases or
your headlines.
Start by listening & observing.
Be yourself, be conversational, lose
the marketing jargon.
Use it for outreach, soliciting ideas,
customer support, to announce events,
to recommend articles, to identify experts.
#1 traffic driver: retweets. Use ‘Please RT’ strategically.
Tweets with a URL are 3x more likely to be retweeted.
Twitter drives 4%+ of traffic to NY Times, 10% to AOL, MSN.

21. JD’s 60-30-10 Twitter rule
60% retweets, pointing to
value, sharing other voices
30% responding, connecting
10% promoting, announcing

22. Prospecting on Twitter
http://search.twitter.com

23. Search by location
Twitter Advanced Search

24. Tweeting about breast cancer in LA

25. C O N T E N T S T R AT E G I E S
The power of storytelling
Cave drawing, Lascaux, France, 17,000 years ago

26. Be the blue fish!
Conversation follows interesting content

27. STORYTELLING
Create lightweight media
Don’t look now but you’re a content creator! Using Animoto

28. PRODUCTION PROCESSES
Create an Events Calendar
Key off both internal events & community events
sfgoodwill.org/community/

29. Create an Editorial Calendar
Map out a weekly or monthly game plan

30. Use personal storytelling
Find emotional core, use videos or photos to make us feel
invisiblepeople.tv

31. USE YOUR COMMUNITY
Build community, not eyeballs
here’s an amazing
difference between building
an audience and building a
community. An audience
will watch you fall on a
sword. A community will fall
on a sword for you.
— Chris Brogan
Author, “Trust Agents”

32. Don’t do all the heavy lifting
Creative Commons
photo on Flickr by
Jason Means
Don’t be like this guy!

33. CASE STUDIES
Involve your supporters
350.org livestrong.org

34. Find your champions!
Find the big kahunas in your sector by using your listening
post. Then, influence the influencers. Post on their blogs &
retweet.
Establish a rapport and only then reach out to try to convert
them into evangelists & ambassadors for your cause.
Scope out Twitter Lists that intersect with your organization
or social cause.
Useful tools: Klout, SocialMention, Google Analytics.

35. Use social love handles!
Generate an Attention Wave

36. The awesome power of free
Free content! Free resources!
Free photos Socialbrite.org/sharing-center
Free videos (eg, TED talks) Creativecommons.org
Free music & audio Techsoup
Free services! Free expertise!
Google Grants BarCamp
YouTube for Nonprofits PodCamp
Google Earth for Nonprofits WordCamp
Social Media
Free software & platforms! Club
WordPress & its plug-ins
Open Office, Google docs
Drupal, Joomla

37. flickr.com/creativecommons
Creativecommons.org
• Rich source of free
commercial & noncommercial
images
• Flickr: 228 million
Attribution, Noncommercial,
No Derivatives & ShareAlike
licenses
• Use them for your blog,
website, email or print
newsletter, presentations, etc.
• Don’t just take. Share!

38. Don’t overlook mobile
New Goodwill Bay Area app

39. EXERCISE
Create a mobile calling card
Text 'jdlasica' to 50500
Create your own at http://contxts.com

40. Is your site mobile-ready?
WPtouch Pro & UppSite for mobile phones, Onswipe for iPad

41. PA RT 2 : M E T R I C S
Why measure?
Because ‘data is better than gut’
Photos on Flickr by Emran Kassim, left, and Vee Dub (CC-BY)

42. For internal & external reasons
Internal purposes:
Inform decision-making about your brand or cause
Testing messages or products before launch
Market research into constituents, supporters, volunteers
Data about supporters’ giving habits
External purposes:
charity: water

43. THE METRICS PROCESS SIMPLIFIED
INFORMATION
INSIGHTS
KPIs
Who, how, why
Funnel ACTION
of love

44. SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS
Map metrics to goals
Business goals/objectives Things to measure
Grow our list of supporters # newsletter, RSS subscribers
Get more volunteers # of volunteers & volunteer hours
Hit fundraising target # new, online donors, $ raised
Increase positive mentions mentions or pick-ups in blogs
of organization or cause & social networks
Increase # of people served # constituents contacted, helped
Make our content more viral # of shares, # of comments/post
Get people to take action # of petition signatures
Get people to attend event # of registrants, year over year
Increase website visibility increase in traffic or linkback #s

45. Set up a metrics program
1. Get buy-in at the top
2. Identify a Chief Metrics Guru
& give him or her support
3. Interview stakeholders across depts.
to identify key goals & target audiences
4. Create internal document that ties these
goals to specific KPIs you can track
5. Identify tools to use and begin tracking
6. Print out monthly reports, circulate among key execs and
managers. Make this a part of someone’s job. (Watch her evolve
from Chief Metrics Guru to Number-Crunching Superstar.)
7. Spend time analyzing the data & drawing conclusions
8. Refine and fine-tune

46. HANDOUT
Metrics tools for your arsenal

47. Why keywords are key
Where Socialbrite keywords rank on Google

48. HANDS-ON DEMO
What does your site rank for?
Search your site’s keyword juju
on semrush.com & spyfu.com
(Hint: 'etr' and 'ccap')

49. K E Y W O R D S T R AT E G Y
Focus on 1- to 4-word phrases
Average global search phrase length:
1 word (24%)
2 words (23%)
3 words (21%)
4 words (14%)
5 words (8%)
6 words (4%)
7 words (2%)
8+ words (4%)
0 10 20 30
Source: Experian Hitwise

50. RESOURCE
Google Keyword tool
https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer

51. Google Keyword tool

52. Google Analytics
google.com/analytics

53. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
Start with the big picture
Visitors Overview

54. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
What countries?
Audience > Demographics > Location

55. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
What states?
Audience > Demographics > Location > click on USA

56. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
What cities?
Audience > Demographics > Location > click on a state

57. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
Traffic sources
Traffic Sources > Overview
Search traffic: traffic you get from search
engines
Referral traffic: traffic you get from other sites
Direct traffic: visitors coming by tying in your
url or through bookmarks

58. G O O N D E -A N A D Y T IO S
HAGLS ON LEM C
Social referral traffic
Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals

59. G O O G L E A N A LY T I C S
What content is most popular?
Content > Overview

60. HANDS-ON DEMO
What nav links are working?
Content > In-Page Analytics

61. HANDOUT
Google Analytics cheat sheet

62. Facebook Insights

63. FACEBOOK INSIGHTS
Who likes your page
Demographics & location of Likes

64. FACEBOOK INSIGHTS
Posts with the most reach
Sort by Date, Reach, Engaged Users & more

65. FACEBOOK INSIGHTS
People Talking About This
Try to stoke more engagement

66. When should you post?
PostPlanner.com: Rank your updates by likes, comments
or clicks to see what time of day is most prevalent

67. HANDOUT
Guide to Facebook Insights
15-page handout
for Facebook
developers by Facebook

68. Twitter analytics
bit.ly tracks who’s clicking on your links in Twitter. (Add
“+” to end of your bit.ly url to see the stats.)
Twitter Counter lets you count registrations and
comments on a particular campaign you’re running.
Klout, Tweet Grader & Twitaholic assess your impact.
Twittorati tracks tweets from high-profile bloggers.
tweetreach offers reach metrics, statistics and analysis
for marketing and PR pros.
Retweetrank measures how often you get retweeted.
Tweeteffect determines which tweets make you lose or
gain followers.

69. GOOGLE PLUS
Google+ to increase visibility
• Private or public Hangouts
• Share photos & campaign information
• Set up targeted circles
• Give your content a search boost

70. LINKEDIN
LinkedIn for nonprofits
http://learn.linkedin.com/nonprofits/
Get found in Google search. Integrate keywords into your
organization profile.
Recruit staff or board members.
Host fundraising events.
Create community vibrancy.
Generate viral awareness.
Find connections & expert advice through Groups.

71. C U R AT I O N T O O L S
Pinterest

72. SOCIAL MEDIA DASHBOARDS
Pace yourself, don’t stress!
HootSuite Buffer
Tweetdeck Spredfast
Crowdbooster ThinkUp
http://bit.ly/smdash

73. Integrate social into the culture
Create teams of participants.
Knock down the silos.
Get people using the tools.
Use ‘reverse mentoring.’
Share monthly metrics reports.
Photo on Flickr by lanuiop
Provide evidence of how social
media moved the needle.
Shine a light on examples of
employees doing social media
well — reward best practices.
Convert the skeptics

74. Key takeaways
Begin with an Aligned Strategy,
not with the tools.
Tell your stories
Use your community — your
biggest resource: your supporters!
Measure, measure, measure!
Evaluate, iterate, relaunch.

75. And spur real-world action!
Turn supporters into champions
Photo on Flickr by 350.org

76. Don’t settle for the status quo
If you do not change
direction, you may
end up where you
are heading.
— Lao Tse

77. Thank you, let’s talk!
JD Lasica, founder
Socialbrite: Social media consulting for nonprofits
email: jd@socialbrite.org
Twitter: @jdlasica
@socialbrite
http://socialbrite.org/etr/