Aaron Landry

Yesterday I spoke at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits‘ “Nonprofit Essentials: Nuts and Bolts of Practical Management” event at the University of St. Thomas‘ Minneapolis campus. My session was called “Web 2.0 101.” It was a lot of fun; the group ranged from a few people that currently blog to people that don’t know what a blog is and a few people that have presences on social networks to people that have never seen Facebook or MySpace before. In an hour’s worth of time I wanted to tell a few success stories, answer as many questions as I could and leave with four main takeaway ideas. Keeping it to the fundamental basics was a challenge.

As I didn’t have any handouts, this post serves as my recap, notes and links.

Web 2.0

“Web 2.0″ is less about new technology and more about understanding a philosophy. It’s the idea where instead of translating traditional media to work online, you utilize the power of the Internet to work in new ways and to connect with people more directly. The only slide in my presentation I read out loud was a quote from Tim O’Reilly:

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.

I made a facetious but common example of traditional media where an organization may have a press release and that press release gets to newspapers and there’s a chance that the newspaper would want to follow up with the organization on it and possibly there’d be a story. If a story is printed, the newspaper readership may read it and people may talk about it at the water cooler at the office, leaving a huge gap between you and the conversation people are having about you. Organizations are starting to understand different ways to close that gap online.

Listening and Responding

I talked about my friend Bill who used Twitter to broadcast a vulgar message about his problems with a product developed by SAS. He soon got an email:

did you convince sas/graph to do your bidding?

The kicker is that it was sent to him directly from from a guy at SAS in Research & Development. After a couple email exchanges, Bill’s last email ended with:

I got everything working the way I wanted, it just took some time to work through understanding everything that was going on with the preexisting code. Now to clean up those macros and get everything packaged back up again permanently.

Thanks again!
Bill

Bill never asked for the help and he was only broadcasting his message for the intent of his friends to read it. For SAS to be able to, as an organization, be able to respond directly to people that are talking about its products and services and reverse their opinion is, on a basic level, a true “Web 2.0″ success.

I gave a couple other examples and there are a number of ways to try to monitor who is talking about you online. If you are just getting started, the service that will catch a lot of it is Google Alerts.

Publicly Conversing

A lot of people describe “Web 2.0″ as “a conversation” and one way to participate in that is to blog. I spent some time explaining what a blog is but I won’t go into it on this post. Wikipedia has a good entry on “Blog” as well as an even more basic entry on “Blog” in, well, “plain English”.

I showed a number of blogs but paused on a couple local non-profit examples of successful blogging. The Parents for Ethical Marketing has a blog where they talk about things relevant to their mission but not necessarily news items or press releases. Sometimes, it’s just sharing a link or a video, such as a piece on a firm utilizing six-year-old children to sell products and sometimes it’s sharing opinions on corporate-sponsored exhibits on historical public property. The Nonprofits Assistance Fund has a blog giving tidbits relevant to nonprofit organizations such as addressing economic stress and chiming in on Vermont’s new type of hybrid “Low-profit Limited Liability Corporation.”

On these kinds of blogs, the organization has a voice that’s human, many times opinion-based and personal. They have the ability for people to comment publicly on every item. It’s a different way for people to interact, communicate and become more interested in your organization.

I also mentioned Beth Kanter’s blog as she effectively works for nonprofits and blogs about how nonprofits can blog effectively. Thanks to those who laughed when I said that. While Beth and I have sometimes very different tactics, she is regarded as one of the most effective and most influential people with helping nonprofits leverage efforts online. She is absolutely worth reading.

On a side note, if you’re raring to start blogging now and if the people managing your website are not sure what blogging platform to use, for most organizations these I’ve been recommending WordPress.

Publicly Conversing on Their Turf

Many times, if not more often than not, it is more important to converse on sites that aren’t your own than it is to have your own blog. The main example I used is Robert Moffitt from the American Lung Association of Minnesota. I believe they had a blog at one point but as far as I’m aware they do not have one anymore. I don’t think they need one either because Moffitt has become proficient at being the ALA’s side of the conversation everywhere else on the local Internet. I joked that I “see him everywhere online” and it’s true. There’s been a number hot-button issues for the ALA in the last couple years, two of which were getting the Minnesota state-wide smoking ban passed and promoting fuels that are cleaner and cause less air pollution.

If people are talking about these issues online, more often than not, Moffitt will chime in. At the nonprofit news source , he’s many times some of the first commenters on stories such as “High drama in the courts: Bar owners try to skirt state’s smoking ban.” He frequently shows up on blogs such as MNspeak where for an example, a story about how “Ethanol May Fuel Health Problems” the very first comment read: “What do you say [Robert Moffitt]? Does this change things?” It’s to the point where people expect him to be part of the conversation. (Would you like it if people online were begging your organization to give your opinion and respond on the issues you fight for?!)

He responds in part by giving a personal, person-to-person take on it:

The study can’t really doesn’t stand much scrutiny. He used computer models, basically turning all of America in to a super-heated LA of the future, fed only “worst case senario” data on E85 into his machine, crunched numbers on smog-related morbidity and mortality and Lo, I become Ethanol, destroyer of worlds…

…and also gives a more sturdy “official” stance on it:

The American Lung Association of Minnesota does not support issues or projects without rigorously testing and researching first. We have real data, from real vehicles using real E85 and gasoline we bought at Twin Cities stations. We used independent scientists and laboratories. What we have is hard data, proven and replicated by other researchers around the globe.

…and otherwise participates in the conversation. He effectively is able to mix being a human having a person-to-person conversation about the issues while delivering the American Lung Association’s stance and setting the record, in the ALA’s view, straight.

Working Social Media

The most difficult part of my day yesterday was explaining how social networking works on a fundamental level (using Facebook as my primary example) and showing how it can be effective for nonprofits in ten minutes.

Social networking sites, such as Facebook, are generally places where people create a page or profile for themselves and they declare who they are friends with on the site. You then can inform your friends what you are up to, what you’re writing and share your photos, for example. In some situations, you also see what your friends are doing and what events you are going to.

It is relevant for nonprofits to be involved in this space because it is a way to promote what you are doing, share your events and publish your messages in a place where people are already communicating with each other. More importantly it is a great way to utilize the people’s social networks as online word-of-mouth promotion.

Whew. I used the Minnesota Historical Society’s Facebook page as one example of a presence on a social network. I showed how when people declare themselves as “fans” of the MHS, it shows up on their profile page for all their friends to see. I also showed how a lot of their content links off of Facebook and back to MHS… many times to places people wouldn’t normally access on their own without the influence of Facebook.

Unfortunately, having a page on Facebook isn’t effective alone. It’s people that make social networking magic happen. To illustrate, I showed some items from a typical “news feed” on Facbook: some of my friends attending a birthday party, some of them declared they were going to a concert and a couple friends going to the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association Land Use Meeting. I wondered, “why would my friends be going to that?” I saw that the event on Facebook was placed by a group called Stop the Destruction of Florence Court and then noticed that more friends of mine were also part of that group. In one minute, I learned about a group of people and an event that I was not familiar with, possibly am interested in, and I already received the best referral: the declaration that my friends are part of it. If it wasn’t for Facebook, I wouldn’t have known about it.

If word-of-mouth is the best marketing, this is word-of-mouth on speed.

There’s hundreds of other ways social networking can be used and this was only a couple small examples. Facebook Business Solutions has a lot of good information on getting started on Facebook, but keep in mind there are a lot of other social networking sites that may or may not be more relevant to your organization and what you are trying to accomplish.

In Closing

Web 2.0 is really about the philosophy of utilizing the medium of the Internet in ways to bring you and your organization closer to people and to leverage that to your advantage.

Not everything will work and there isn’t a solid plan that works for everyone. Plan on some of your efforts failing. The best way to start finding what works is to try. Even if your organization is not comfortable jumping into blogging and social networks yet, do it yourself. Search for blogs on Google that you might be interested reading and commenting on. Start your own blog using Blogger or Tumblr and write about whatever you want. Maybe you want to document a project you’re working on at home or perhaps you’d like to have a record of photos of your new pet. It doesn’t matter what you write about — it’s good to just do it and get a feel of how it all works. If you’re not on a social networking site, sign up as regular user on Facebook or LinkedIn. My guess is that you’ll find friends or colleagues on both.

It was a fun hour. If you attended, I hope you were able to get something out of it. Feel free to comment below or contact me if you have any questions.

Everyone else that reads my site: Agree? Disagree? Think I went wrong somewhere? Bring it!