Monitter is one of the Twitter tracking tools reviewed below.

Tips & tools for tracking what’s being said about your nonprofit

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, businesses, brands, bloggers, social media managers, individuals.

This is part of our ongoing series on how organizations can get the most out of Twitter. Please see below for other installments in this series.

By Lindsay Oberst
Socialbrite staff

People are talking about your nonprofit, especially on Twitter. Research shows that one out of three Twitter users talk about brands in their tweets. You don’t have the time to moniter your organization’s Twitter stream all day long, hoping to catch any mentions of your name. Thankfully, it’s easy to keep an eye on your brand. You can save time by setting up the right tools for your Twitter account. Below you’ll find plenty of options for monitoring mentions and tracking keywords so that you can respond to supporters promptly and analyze your results for success.

Twilerts: Twitter alerts via email

1Twilerts is a brand application that enables you to receive regular email alerts of tweets containing your brand, or whatever keyword you want to stay on top of. Think Google Alerts for Twitter. It allows you to track up to 10 queries, using its basic or advanced options, after creating a free account through your Twitter account or through Gmail.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

PeopleBrowsr & Kred: Social analytics for serious marketers

2PeopleBrowsr is a Web-based search engine for real-time conversations. The possibility to search bios and tweets by authority, location and links are among its Twitter features. But this is only the beginning, as this tool provides you with plenty of more options to keep track of your brand. It will even analyze tweets and classify them as positive or negative and track sentiments overtime. PeopleBrowser also offers full social analytics solutions with the ability to monitor Facebook, blogs and forums. With pricing beginning at $149 per month per seat, this is clearly an option for power users who really want to go deep with their tracking. Interestingly, the company announced last month that it’s offering a new service called Kred as a competitor to Klout.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

Sideline: Keep on top of key terms

3Sideline is a free monitoring tool from Yahoo! that lets you specify keywords to keep track of via an attractive downloadable app. It runs on Adobe AIR and is open source (though Yahoo! sticks an odd “all rights reserved” notice at the bottom). Sideline has advanced search features, including auto-refreshing of search queries and scanning trending topics. It also offers an Influencers tool to watch what important people are saying about a topic. Watch a four-minute screencast at Vimeo.

Rating: ★ ★
Platforms: Desktop

SocialMention: Social media search & analysis

4SocialMention lets you search keywords on Twitter; however, it also looks for mentions on 100+ social media properties. Place widgets of tracked searches on your website or create daily email alerts for searches. You can only search for one keyword at a time, although you can set up more than one alert. The dashboard, however, goes beyond only searching for your keyword; it also shows you sentiment, top related words, top users and top hashtags.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

Twitter: Lists and advanced search

5Twitter offers several free tools which can help you keep track of what’s being said of your brand. The ability to create Twitter lists can be hugely helpful if you keep them organized. Third-party apps, such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, make viewing lists easier. With the advanced search options, you can monitor negative impressions, questions and tweets by location.

Rating: ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

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Image by Nano Taboada on Flickr

Don’t overlook the visual component of social media marketing

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, social enterprises, social media managers, marketing professionals, businesses, brands, Web publishers, photographers.

Guest post by Karissa Van Hooser
Marketing associate, Walker Sands Communications

It seems as though everyone is looking for creative ways to engage their audiences through social media. When social media experts develop a campaign, however, many turn to the usual outlets, Twitter and Facebook, with good reason. These social media outlets reach a large, engaged audience.

Flickr, on the other hand, is an often overlooked but effective social network where the emphasis is on visuals: photos and short video clips. Here are a few reasons why you should add Flickr to your next social media campaign.

People are visual
1You’re able to tell a story in a way you can’t through other mediums. Let’s face it: people like to look at pictures. Plus, the change of scenery is nice. Most people, when browsing online, typically stare at text; mix it up to create more ways to engage with and inform your audience.

You can share your photo stream
2The Flickr community is not the only place where people can see the photos you post to the site. Flickr makes it easy to share photos across all social media platforms.

It’s good for searches
3The tags you assign to your photos are used in search. This allows people with your interests to more easily find you, and enables your audience to grow beyond people who already know about your brand.

Higher picture quality
4Picture quality is much higher on Flickr than any other social media platform. On Flickr, you will have fewer grainy images, and your presentations will be much sharper.

Creative Commons
5Flickr provides a safe platform for pictures. They offer creative commons, which means you pick the stringency of your copyright. This feature can give you peace of mind that others aren’t using (or misusing) photos without your permission. This is something you don’t always get with other social media platforms.

You can start discussions
6Flickr allows you to create groups and comments, just like all other social platforms. Although the focus is on photographs and videos, people are still interacting with each other – and could be interacting around images and videos of your brand or client.

Now, go get a Flickr account and let the fun begin!

Photo by hjalmeida for Big Stock

Three simple steps to establish a successful partnership & boost your organization’s profile

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, businesses, brands, marketing professionals.

Guest post by Amanda DiSilvestro
Content Writer, Resource Nation

The phrase “two heads are better than one” is becoming more and more popular as the economic outlook becomes less popular. In other words, many nonprofit organizations have begun to realize that striking up a partnership with another company can be beneficial.

Co-marketing, or cooperative marketing, essentially amounts to an agreement between two companies that says each company will help market the other. For example, an organization dedicated to helping the homeless may work with a food bank, or an organization working to renovate public schools may work with a construction company.

Benefits of establishing a co-marketing partnership

• The other company can refer your organization to customers. This will give you an entirely new group of people who may be interested in your cause.
• People who recognize and trust your partner company will be more likely to give your organization’s ideas a listen.
• You have the option to share expenses and profits with your partner company. For example, you may want to share an ad in a paper or include your logo in your partner’s e-mail messages.
• Both companies can use each other’s talents when creating marketing campaigns.

Now, the tricky thing about co-marketing is actually finding a company you want to work with, and then drawing up the paperwork. If you do one and not the other, those benefits I talked about are likely to go right down the drain. Fortunately, if you follow a few simple steps you will come out of a co-marketing deal with success.

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The upgraded Facebook metric tool explained in plain English

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, social media managers, individuals.

Two weeks ago, Facebook launched a completely new version of Facebook Page Insights along with several new metrics.

Some of the new metrics include:

• People Talking About This – This is the number of people who engage with your Page and includes users who have liked your Page, commented on or shared a post from your Page, answered a Question you’ve asked on your Page, or tagged your Page in an update or in a photo. This also includes Facebook users who’ve responded to an event on your Page.
• Friends of Fans – This is the total number of friends all your fans have.
• Reach – The number of people who have seen content associated with your Page.
• Virality – The percent of people who saw a story from your Page and “talked about it.”

How to access Insights on your Facebook Page

You can access your Facebook Page Insights directly under your Facebook Page’s main image in the sidebar (FYI – this tab can only be viewed by Page admins).

When you click on the Insights icon (see image above), you’ll go directly to an overview of analytics for your Facebook page. You’ll also notice that three sub-tabs have appeared in the sidebar: “Fans,” “Reach” and “Talking About This.”

Making sense of your Page overview

The first tab you’ll see when you click on Insights is an overview of your Page. This tab shows you the day-to-day information you need to know as a page administrator.

What do those four numbers at the top mean?

Those four numbers at the very top of this page are the most current snapshot of your page. Following is the definition for each number:

• Total Likes – Total likes is simply the number of people who have liked your Facebook Page up until yesterday.
• Friends of Fans – Friends of fans is the total number of friends that all of your Facebook fans have, taking mutual friends into account. This number is more useful if you are running a Facebook Sponsored Like Story because it would be the total number of people who could see that ad. The percent increase or decrease next to this number is a comparison with the previous seven-day period.
• People Talking About This – This is the number of people who engaged with your Page over the past seven days and includes users who liked your Page, commented on or shared a post from your Page, answered a Question you’ve asked on your Page, or tagged your Page in an update or in a photo. This also includes Facebook users who’ve responded to an event on your Page. The percent increase or decrease next to this number is a comparison with the previous seven-day period.
• Weekly Total Reach – This is the number of people who have seen any content associated with your Page (including any Ads or Sponsored Stories pointing to your Page) over the past seven days. The percent increase or decrease next to this number is a comparison with the previous seven-day period.

Underneath these four numbers you’ll see a graph with rolling weekly numbers for “Talking About This” and “Weekly Total Reach” for the past month. You’ll also see dots for each day that you’ve posted to your page (dot size indicates the number of posts for that day).

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Luxury Travel Stories is about the idea of connecting the world via ‘stories’ in postcard format. A photo with accompanying text no more than what would fit on the back of a postcard.

Last month I was invited to contribute a postcard to the Luxury Travel Stories project, and chose the photo and text above You can view the post, and those from other contributors, here. The whole site is based on the idea of ”connecting the world via ‘stories’ in postcard format. A photo with accompanying text no more than what would fit on the back of a postcard.” Like “Dear Photograph” (which I blogged about here), it’s a simple but compelling idea.

One of the things I’ve always maintained is that we often know little about the background and motivation of people working in our field, and how they came to work in it. So in part as a way to rectify this I thought it would be great to put together a slideshow of ICT4D-related postcards to share online.

If you work at the intersection of technology and international development and have a favorite photograph – one you’ve taken – with a technology/development theme and would like to take part, send it to postcards@kiwanja.net with your name, a short description of when and where it was taken and what it means to you. Remember, the text needs to fit on the back of a postcard, so keep it concise. And if you know anyone who you think might want to take part, please pass this on.

Once I have enough I’ll pull everything together and drop it into Slideshare. If enough people contribute it might be fun to map the photos, and stories, on Ushahidi.

Looking forward to reading your stories and contributions!

Learn how to disrupt the traditional practices of charitable fundraising

Guest post by Stacy Coleman
Senior Marketing Associate, Vivanista

Join us on Nov. 11 and 12 in San Francisco to take part in Vivanista’s Charitable Fundraising Summit, which will bring together volunteer leaders, fundraising event chairs and nonprofit development staff for inspiring keynotes, expert panels and training workshops.

With the goal of arming fundraisers and volunteers with tools to increase their fundraising effectiveness, The Fundraising Summit will address how to:

• Improve fundraising profitability and long-term viability in an uncertain economy
• Acquire new, tangible fundraising tools that can be integrated immediately
• Gain access to experts for real-life fundraising and donor-loyalty advice

The summit kicks off Friday evening Nov 11 with the VivaBrite Awards, which will honor individuals and nonprofits who have demonstrated outstanding leadership skills, fundraising acumen and creative thinking with respect to the successful execution of a charitable event.

Know an individual or organization that deserves the award? Nominate them using this link: vivanista.com/vivabrite-awards/nominate/ (Nominations close on Monday.)

On Saturday, Nov. 12, the summit will continue with a full day of workshops, panels and keynotes from leading experts, addressing key areas such as generating event revenue, social media and building sustainable audiences. Socialbrite founder JD Lasica will be speaking on the social media panel.

Additional speakers include: Bestselling nonprofit author Kay Sprinkle Grace; (RED) creator Tamsin Smith; GirlUp at The UN Foundation director Gina Reiss-Wilchins; LinkedIn nonprofit community leader Bryan Breckenridge; and director of nonprofit services at Causes, Susan Gordon of Causes.com, among others. See the full lineup of speakers and the summit’s schedule.

Special offer for Socialbrite readers!

Register now at Eventbrite. Socialbrite readers get a 20% discount by using the SOCIALBRITE-VIP code.

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Learn about real-world applications — & get a discount

Guest post by Mollie Allick
Director of PR & events, CrowdFlower

On Nov. 1, CrowdFlower will be kicking off the second annual CrowdConf, the world’s largest crowdsourcing conference, at Mission Bay Conference Center in downtown San Francisco. This year’s conference will bring together more than 600 attendees to discuss innovations in crowdsourcing technology and trends taking place in the growing industry.

The main conference will be all day Wednesday, Nov 2. The agenda will focus on practical tips and tools for understanding crowdsourcing through a range of lenses including investing, philanthropy, community building, and creativity. The day includes keynotes, debates, and interactive breakout sessions, and will conclude with a networking poster reception.

Speakers include: Jeff Howe, author who coined the term “crowdsourcing”; Philip Rosedale, Founder of Second Life; Mark Gerson, Chairman of Gerson Lehrman Group; Charlie Cheever, Founder of Quora, Sharon Chiarella, vice president of Amazon Mechanical Turk; and more than 50 other incredible speakers representing the most influential and fastest-growing crowdsourcing companies. Check out the full list of speakers.

Additional learning opportunities

For those looking to learn more, be sure to join us one day prior to the main event on Nov. 1 for two great workshops that will focus more on research and industry-specific tutorials. Workshops offer conference attendees a head start as they engage in a more intimate exchange with other thought leaders and crowdsourcing experts. Workshops will be taught by: Omar Alonso, Technical lead on the Bing team at Microsoft; Matt Lease, assistant professor at the University of Texas; and David Alan Grier, columnist at IEEE Computer. Space is limited, so register now.

Discount for Socialbrite readers

Socialbrite readers can get a $75 discount by entering the code SCLBRTORG when registering.
Register at Eventbrite.

Event details:
What: CrowdConf 2011 – www.crowdconf.com
When: Workshops: Tuesday, Nov. 1 (10am-3pm); Conference: Wednesday, Nov. 2 (8:30am-6:30pm)
Where: Mission Bay Conference Center, 1675 Owens St., San Francisco
Cost: $75 for workshops, $450 for conference
Register: http://crowdconf2011.eventbrite.com/

Image courtesy of Nonprofit Tech 2.0

Get results with CoTweet, Twylah, LiveIntent & more

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, businesses, brands, bloggers, social media managers, individuals.

This is the part of our ongoing series on how organizations can get the most out of Twitter. Please check back weekly for the next installment, and see below for other installments in this series.

By Lindsay Oberst
Socialbrite staff

Twitter has become an increasingly vital tool for businesses and nonprofits of all sizes. Now that you’ve had a chance to get more familiar with the social media platform, build up your following and even measure your level of influence against other organizations, it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty of using Twitter. We’re talking Twitter apps, people. There are hundreds of Twitter apps that exist, and rather than weed through them by trial and error, we’ve compiled a list of 10 apps we recommend to help nonprofits get serious about getting results with social media.

CoTweet: Proactive marketing solution

1 CoTweet is a powerhouse for Twitter accounts when you have multiple team members tweeting. It allows for scheduling, tracking and adding notes. Nonprofits can manage up to six Twitter accounts for free using the Standard edition. The ability to track past conversations is a great utility to remind you where you stand with each contact. You can also assign specific people to on-duty status. The Enterprise edition costs about $1,500 per month and is worth it for medium to large organizations. With this edition, you can manage campaigns, assign tasks and integrate the tool with third-party apps such as Salesforce.com. On the other hand, the interface is lacking and the analytics could be better. It also allows for Facebook management.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile

MediaFunnel: The app for team tweeting

2 Media Funnel allows for more of your staff to be involved with the tweeting process. It supports multiple user types — admins, publishers, contributors and guests — and tweets can be placed in a queue for editorial review by a publisher or administrator. Scheduled tweets, brand alerts and tweets via email or SMS are supported. This tool also integrates with Salesforce.com, Zendesk, Twilio and Klout. The free plan allows for two users and no brand monitoring, while the standard plan offers many features and costs $1 per user per month or $1 per social media account, whichever is greater.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Desktop, iPhone, Android, Blackberry

Timely: Make your tweets count

3Timely analyzes your past 199 Twitter updates to determine what times during the day people are most likely to read your posts. You can schedule tweets to go live at those times and can use the bookmarklet to tweet links without leaving your current page. You can tweet right away or add the message to your queue. It’s free.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web

Klout: Measuring online influence

4 Klout offers a daily summary of your organization’s or team members’ social media influence, with a ranking that factors in your reach and impact on Twitter (metrics such as retweets, follower counts, list memberships, unique mentions), Facebook and LinkedIn. Klout has an open API that’s integrated into many Twitter apps: More than 750 partners use Klout data, including Hootsuite, CoTweet and Attensity 360. For the end user, its analytics platform is rich and easy to use, even if the methodology used in spitting out a Klout Score is a bit opaque.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based, iPhone (Social Score), Android

Twylah: Branded pages for your Twitter account

5Twylah creates one page that sums up your nonprofit brand. This custom page automatically organizes your tweets into topics that you tweet about most often. Users can interact on your page by retweeting and responding to messages. The biggest benefits this tool brings are for SEO. Google no longer indexes tweets, but it does index each Twylah page and the tweets within it, giving your tweets a longer life. It also offers PowerTweets, which creates a separate landing page for your tweets with other recommended messages. It’s good to use this for blog posts, but if you do it too much, you might annoy your followers.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web

Qwitter: Find out who unfollows you

6Qwitter lets you know when someone stops following you after your last tweet, so you can identify what might have made them unfollow you. This free tool automatically e-mails you when someone unfollows you. If you’re a nonprofit and you tweet about sports and then three people immediately unfollow you, you might want to keep your messages more on topic.
Rating: ★ ★
Platforms: Web

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For the past two years I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with some of the most inspirational, talented social innovators (aka Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellows). This year, good friend Erik Hersman and I returned to Camden, Maine, to work with the 2011 Class. Sharing our own experiences of 2008 – when we were both fellows – and lessons we’ve learned on our journey is a large part of why we were there.

Here’s a brief summary of 12 key lessons I shared with the fellows before the retreat wrapped up late last week.

1. Don’t be in a hurry. Grow your organization on your own terms.
2. Don’t assume you need money to grow. Do what you can before you reach out to external funders.
3. Volunteers and Interns may not be the silver bullet to your human resource issues.
4. Pursue and maximize every opportunity to promote your work.
5. Remember that your website, for most people, is the primary window to you and your ideas.
6. Know when to say “no”. Manage expectations.
7. Avoid being dragged down by the politics of the industry you’re in. Save your energy for more important things.

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