While there are a good number of tech-savvy hipsters out there that understand terms like “Static Web”, “Dynamic Content”, “User-Generated”, “Cloud Computing”, and “Semantic Web”, the majority of nonprofits don’t talk or understand such tech speak. So, to simply for the nonprofit masses, I present and frame very simple definitions and interpretations of Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 as follows:
Web 1.0 = Websites, e-mail newsletters and “Donate Now” buttons
Web 1.0 is one person or organization pushing content out to many people via websites and e-mail newsletters. The donation process is not interactive or public. You donate and then receive a “Thank You” email. It’s one-way communication.
Web 2.0 = Blogs, wikis, and social networking sites
At its core, Web 2.0 is the beginning of two-way communication in the online public commons. People can post comments and converse with your organization in public for all to see. It’s one person or organization publishing content to many on social networking sites who then re-publish your content to their friends, fans, followers, connections, etc. Donating is a public experience. Friends, fans, followers, connections, etc. on social networking sites see your giving and fundraising activity through widgets, Apps, and peer-to-peering fundraising tools, like fundraising pages.
Web 3.0 = Mobile Websites, Text Campaigns and Smartphone Apps
Web 3.0 is all of the above except that the Web experience is no longer limited to desktop and laptop computers while stationary in one place. It’s the Internet on the go fueled by mobile phones and tablets. Mobile websites must be designed to be easily read on mobile devices. Group text campaigns function like e-mail newsletters in Web 1.0… to drive traffic to your mobile website. Text-to-Give technology allows quick, easy donations on your mobile phone inspired by urgent calls to actions. Smartphone Apps enable content to be published and shared easily while on the go. Effectively donating via smartphone Apps doesn’t exist yet, but its coming. Very soon.
Web 1.0 + Web 2.0 + Web 3.0 = Integrated Web Communications
What’s important to understand is that all three eras of the Web are complimentary and build and serve one another, rather than replace one another. They can also overlap. You use Web 2.0 tools to drive traffic to your website, to build your e-mail newsletter list, and to increase visits to your Donate Now buttons. You use your Web 2.0 communities to launch your Web 3.0 campaigns. And you use your Web 3.0 tools to grow your communities on social networking sites and to send supporters and donors to mobile versions of your e-mail newsletter “Subscribe” and “Donate Now” pages.
And while many nonprofit communicators are overwhelmed by all these new tools, it’s important to understand that there has been a paradigm shift in web communications. Some supporters and donors still prefer to be engaged by your nonprofit Web 1.0 style. Others think “e-mail is for old people” and consistently get most of their content and inspiration from social networking sites. Web 3.0 will organize the masses in ways never seen before through geolocation, group texting and mobile websites, and much of it will be done via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and FourSquare smartphone Apps.
Bottom Line: There’s no “One Fits All” communication tool or tool set anymore. Age, class, race, gender and location play huge roles now in how people want to receive information and calls to action from nonprofits. The good news is that all of these tools are now affordable for nonprofits (even mobile marketing tools!). It’s just a matter of keeping up and finding the staff time – and the right person on staff – to master Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0. Those nonprofits that do it best will be the most successful in sharing their mission and programs, creating social change, and securing and maintaining new donors. That’s my take. How about you?
FourSquare has received quite a bit of buzz over the last few months. Some have even declared it to be the “Twitter of 2010“. I am not so sure about that, but it is fun. It is Different. Addictive. And as of last week, FourSquare has gone global. Thus, now all nonprofits worldwide have a good reason to get FourSquare on their radar screen.
Part social networking site, part smartphone App, and part social experiment, FourSquare is a tool meant to be primary used on the go on your smartphone. Quite simply, you “Check-in” to places while physically at the location and offer “Tips” and send out “Shouts”. Cafes, bars, and live music venues are its primary focus, but nonprofits can and are already starting to add their physical location as “Venues” to FourSquare in order to show up in “Check-in” searches.
I’ll be doing a couple more blog posts on FourSquare over the next month and the site will likely add a lot of new features in 2010 (I’m excited!), but right now let’s start with the basics for nonprofits:
1) Sign up for an individual profile on their website.
Don’t create a profile for your organization. Create a profile for yourself. Sign up. Do not skip the option to upload a photo. You will not accrue “Badges” if you do not have a photo, nor will you become a “Mayor”. Do not use your organization’s logo. At this point, the power for nonprofits on FourSquare is in the individual profile.
Now, something very important. You must sync your FourSquare account with your organization’s Twitter account to get a username i.e, www.foursquare.com/user/nonprofitorgs [Friend me!]. Please note that you can change Twitter accounts at a later date, thus your are not locked into a FourSquare username. This also hints at how fully integrated FourSquare will be with Twitter. Love that. Love Twitter.
That said, I have configured that none of my FourSquare activity be automatically sent out as Tweets under “Settings” and I would suggest you do the same. I don’t think your Twitter Followers care much that you “Checked-in” at Starbucks, unless your organization is having a fundraiser at Starbucks. Hint. Hint. 
2) Search for your organization.
There is a 99.99% chance that your organization is not going to come up in search results, thus select “Add Venue” and follow the steps below:
1. Enter the name of your organization… correctly. Don’t enter in all lower case. For Example, “Discovery Center”.
2. Enter the address. FourSquare requests that you use abbreviations for streets and avenues. Cities should be spelled out. States and countries should be abbreviated in CAPS:
438 E. St. Louis St.
Springfield, MO 65806
3. Enter your organization’s Twitter ID. If by chance you do not work for a nonprofit, but take the initiative to add nonprofits to FourSquare, please go to the nonprofit’s website to see if they have a Twitter account or Google the name of the nonprofit with the word “Twitter”. In most cases, if the nonprofit is on Twitter, then their Twitter account will show up in the top 10 Google results. Many people that don’t work at nonprofits, but want to help will be adding nonprofits to FourSquare. If you are one of them, thank you, but please do it correctly.
4. Add the Tags “nonprofit” and “nonprofit organization” and “charity”, as well as any other Tags relevant to your organization and its mission (human rights, environment, peace, etc.). The default is that all Tags appear in lowercase. Very important: Add the city and state of your organization as a Tag. It doesn’t make a difference in searches on the website version of FourSquare, but it does in the iPhone App version!
When the steps above are completed, here’s an example of a correctly added nonprofit venue: www.foursquare.com/venue/556716
3) If you have a smartphone, download the FourSquare App and then Check-in to your nonprofit venue.
Foursquare is available for the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Palm Pre. Download the App, Check-in, and then on the next day, Check-in again. At that point you become the “Mayor”. More Mayor strategies, To Dos, and Tips next week!
DIOSA Communications has been offering social media webinars for nonprofits since February 2008, but the content of the webinars and the time schedule mostly accommodate nonprofits in the United States. Approximately 30 charities in the U.K., Western and Eastern Europe, New Zealand and the Middle East have attended past webinars, but the timing is not convenient since the webinars take place on Tuesdays from 6-7:30pm GMT.
Beginning in February 2010, DIOSA Communications will also offer social media webinars for charities in Europe on Thursdays at 2pm GMT. The webinars are also well-suited for nonprofits in Eastern Canada. 80% of the content is the same as other DIOSA webinars, but these webinars will be tailored to also cover social media fundraising tools that are available to charities outside the United States. The first two webinar dates and topics are:
February 4: How Nonprofit Organizations Can Successfully Use Twitter and Flickr
February 11: How Nonprofit Organizations Can Successfully Use Facebook Pages and YouTube
Each webinar is 2 hours and costs $60US each, or $100US if you register for both at the same time. The webinars listed above will be repeated every 3-4 months, and if attendance is good, then additional webinars will be offered to cover blogging on WordPress and mobile technology. Attendees do not need to make an international call for the audio portion, only a long distance call within your own country. If you have VOIP, you can listen to the presentation via the speakers on your computer.
Please Note: The webinars will be in English and they will not be recorded. DIOSA Communications never records webinars since trends in social media change so frequently, but attendees are provided a very comprehensive set of notes within 24 hours of the webinar presentation.
Recent studies have revealed that the vast majority of nonprofits do not know how to measure ROI (Return on Investment) from utilizing social media. Below are 5 simple, low-cost ways nonprofits can measure ROI with a minimal time investment of only a couple of hours a month.
1. Monitor your website traffic.
During the Era of Web 1.0, nonprofits were very keen on increasing website traffic. They spent relatively large amounts of cash on SEO and invested many hours is getting listed on portals. E-mail marketing took off and promotional materials were loaded with plugs to “Visit our website!”. Website traffic was the number one indicator to measure ROI.
Today, I think most nonprofits that are not monitoring traffic would be surprised by how little traffic their website is actually getting. Of those that are monitoring their traffic, many are not aware that “Unique Visitors” is the number to watch and that “Hits” are meaningless. Those that are not monitoring traffic are just completely in the dark about the effectiveness of their web campaigns.
Every website out there has stats to monitor. How many unique visitors by day, month, year? Exactly what pages are visitors viewing? How long are they on your website? What websites were your visitors on right before they visited your site [Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace]? Every nonprofit should be monitoring this data.
Furthermore, if your traffic has not increased significantly from social media, then you are doing something wrong. Are you correctly using the “Links” and “Static FBML” Apps on Facebook? Are you putting a “http://” in front of all website links in Facebook Updates? Are you building community on Twitter or just pushing out press releases and blog posts [that in time people start to ignore]? Do you have an account on Bit.ly to make sure that the links you are posting are actually interesting to your Twitter community? If not, you may be surprised what people click and what they don’t. Having an account on Bit.ly is a must to Tweet successfully!
On average, my website gets about 5,000 unique visitors a month. Nonprofit Tech 2.0 averages about 15,000 (WOW). And it’s not “empty traffic”. It’s traffic that leads to new clients and new Webinars attendees. If it wasn’t for social media, I’d be getting less than 1,000 and entirely dependent on my e-newsletter, referrals, and search engine results. So, I think this poll is very telling:
Most nonprofits are not even monitoring stats. Those that are monitoring stats are split on whether social media has increased website traffic. If you are not getting traffic, then your mission and programs just might not be sexy enough for social media (for lack of a better word), and it may be time to re-evaluate.
Or, and in my experience, those that are not getting much traffic from social media need some training. A bit harsh, but true. Overconfidence in one’s social media skills can be a problem when it comes to social media ROI. Even the most self-proclaimed social media maven, expert, guru, miracle worker, etc. could use training from time to time. Me included. Good social media training is essential.
On a final note, many nonprofits will be launching mobile websites in 2010, and much of the traffic on those sites will be going to or from social networking sites. Social media has gone mobile and that will be an entirely new set of data to monitor and track.
2. Poll your donors.
Another very telling poll:
81% answered no. 81%! You can’t judge your social media fundraising success from how much has been donated to your Facebook Cause or a fundraising widget. It’s pretty clear that online donors do not yet trust these new tools, and why would they when more than half of fundraising Causes and widgets have a great big $0 on them? [Donate to your own Cause and widgets to get the ball rolling!]
My guess is that we will be pleasantly surprised that many online donors that are following you on Twitter or Facebook will indeed go to make a donation on your website during the year-end fundraising season. I know my giving has changed dramatically. I now give to smaller nonprofits I never heard of 2 years ago. I watch them on social media sites, and then when I have the cash to give, I go to their website or donate to them on Change.org. Not only do 40% of folks fan brands on Facebook, but 34% of those folks then go visit their website before purcahsing or donating. And yet, as many as 81% of nonprofits are not tracking this behavior!
So, how about after someone makes a donation on your website, you ask them on the next page to answer a poll about what message prompted them to donate and where did they read it? End-of-Year print appeal, e-newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linkedn, YouTube? 3. Ask people to subscribe to your email newsletter and mobile lists.
Just having an e-mail newsletter and mobile list sign up box on your Facebook Page or MySpace does not work. You have to ask people to subscribe. Post a Tweet or a Status Update:
Text NONPROFITORGS to 41411 to receive text alerts (2-3 monthly) from Nonprofit Tech 2.0!
Sending out my Web 2.0 Best Practices e-Newsletter on Wednesday. To receive a copy, please subscribe: http://bit.ly/2VeW7A
Over the years I have been consistently surprised by how many people will subscribe once asked on a social media site, but not until I asked. I have tabled a number of events over the years asking people to sign up for e-mail newsletters. The number of subscribers I get from social media trumps tabling any day of the week.
4. Ask people to become volunteers.
The study listed above argues that social media is worthless to small and medium sized nonprofits because they aren’t getting any donations or new volunteers from social media campaigns. The flaw in fundraising ROI I have already discussed. Personally, I have a hard time believing that nonprofits are not getting volunteers from social media campaigning. I get asked at least once a week by random strangers if they can volunteer for me. So, I know potential volunteers are out there.
Are you asking that they volunteer for your organization correctly? Make sure you are using social media to ask, to call out for volunteers. Don’t just assume they are going to click on a “Volunteer!” link on your Facebook Page and then ask to be signed up. You have to ask them. Do you have volunteer testimonials on your website? Are you mentioning that your organization would be good a good reference? Are you pitching the social aspect of volunteering with your organization (meet new friends online and offline)? Are you giving them good reason to want to volunteer with your organization on your website, and then using social media sites correctly to drive them to that page?
Now that I think of it, in four years of using social media 40-60 hours a week… I never seen one nonprofit message me on Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace asking me to become a volunteer. Something to ponder.
5. Plot fans, followers, friends, subscribers.
I think 1-4 are much more important than this, but plotting your fans, followers and friends on an Excel spreadsheet will at least give you a sense of how quickly or slowly your social media communities are growing.Create a spreadsheet. On the far left column list the social media sites you are using, and then create 12 columns on the right… one for each month of the year. Then on the first day of every month post the number of current friends, followers, fans, and subscribers. Combine this with monitoring your website and e-mail/mobile sign up stats, how your online donors and volunteers found you, then you are well on your way to successfully measuring your social media ROI.
One final note. I give social media webinars that focus on detailed, How To… not just big picture “Social media is great!” webinars. My primary audience is small to medium sized nonprofits, and my goal is to make sure they know how to use social media beyond the obvious [90% of nonprofit social media campaigns that I see are not operating beyond the obvious]. The New Organizing Institute and NTEN also give webinars on social media. I have never taken one from them, but they both have a good reputation.
POLL: Have you ever taken a webinar about how to use social media?
The number of third-party Twitter Apps has exploded over the last year. Twtbase currently lists over 500 of them, and I have highlighted five of my favorites for nonprofit organizations and activists below:
1) Twitter Mosaic: Twitter Mosaic allows you to generate html code of your Twitter Followers or Friends that you can then embed on a blog or Web site. CarbonFund.org used it to celebrate reaching 1,000 Followers. See their Twitter Mosaic.
2) Twibbon: Twibbon allows your followers to embed ribbons, icons, etc. on their Twitter avatars, and then spread them throughout the Twitterverse. It’s an easy and effective first step for launching an awareness campaign on Twitter. Love146 is effectively using Twibbon. See their Twibbon campaign.
3) BubbleTweet: BubbleTweet allows to embed a video directly on your Twitter profile. We all know how annoying it is to go to a website and video starts playing right away, so BubbleTweet can be an effective tool, but I would suggest you use it only on special occasions. If you are a global health organization, then add a BubbleTweet to your profile on World Malaria Day. Or if your organization is doing a special campaign to push to get folks to call Congress, then add a BubbleTweet on that day asking them to call and telling them the phone number. I don’t know of any nonprofits using BubbleTweet yet, but click here to view an example of an individual using BubbleTweet on Twitter.
4) TwitPay: TwitPay allows nonprofits to accept micropayments from individuals on Twitter. Both the nonprofit and the individual needs to have a PayPal account.
5) Twititions: Twitition helps you create, sign, and share petitions on Twitter. I like the idea, and the functionality of the Twititions themselves, but I personally don’t sign them because it automatically posts to my Twitter profile that I signed the petition. The idea is a good one, but the agressive marketing component could be annoying to your supporters. Hopefully a service like this will come the nonprofit sector soon!
In my Webinar covering Twitter and Flickr, I cover all five of these tools… as well as 15 more that are useful to the nonprofit sector. Tweeting and ReTweeting is powerful in and of itself (that’s been my experience), but using some of these third party tools can really transform your Twitter strategy!
Copyright © Ammado AG, 2012
