Image by Thufir for Big Stock

Where to find stats, metrics & analytics for you & your brand

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. Also see:

• 8 nonprofit Twitter superstars
• 12-step guide on how to live-tweet an event
• 24 best practices for nonprofits using Twitter

By Kyria Abrahams
Socialbrite staff

After you’ve used Twitter for a time, you’ll want to measure your influence on Twitter as well as you’re performing from month to month. Unless you want to hire someone to spend the day counting and analyzing your retweets, take a look at the free tools below (some may have paid premium versions) and put them to use on behalf of your nonprofit, social enterprise, business — or your own brand.

Klout: Measure influence and style

Klout is a visual, logical way to quickly see the main thing most organizations want to know about Twitter: where you stand against the competition. The application’s initial strength is the ease with which you can compare yourself to your peers. After using Klout for about a month, however, the information becomes more advanced, if not just downright complimentary. My “Klout Style” page, for example, offers sleek flattery such as: “You don’t just share news, you create the news” and “When you speak, people listen.” Thanks, Klout! How’s my tie look?

Rating: ★ ★ ★

PeerIndex: Assess your online social capital

Where Klout was accessible and easy to decipher, I found PeerIndex a bit baffling. PeerIndex separates itself by measuring how your tweets “resonate” with others. They include ranking on several important-sounding topics, such as “authority,” “activity” and “realness.” Klout said I was influential, but PeerIndex seems to think my influence is limited. After reading through the Scores and Ranking page in the hopes of defining these terms, I came away still mystified about how the topics work and what they mean. On the plus side, if you use this tool at work, you can probably sound impressive in an office meeting by reporting to your boss that the Twitter project is highly authoritative. It might be a strong tool, but when all is said and done, I didn’t dig too deep into the site. However, it has a nice comparison graph that allows you to add and remove other Twitter users.

Rating: ★ ★

Twitalyzer: A subscription-model tool

Twitalyzer operates mainly on a subscription model, but gives away some basic features for free. I’m not in a position to pay $99/month to track my competition or get daily email alerts, so I can’t speak about its full range of offerings. I do feel comfortable saying it may not worth $99/month to spy on Cogsley Cogs’ Twitter statistics and your time would be better spent working on your own page. With a free account, I was able to log in and immediately see my relative percentile (only as ranked among other Twitalyzer users, though) and a map that informed me that most of my views come from New Jersey. It also told me what my Klout and PeerIndex ratings were. This seems like a tool better suited to analyzing your competition than to analyzing yourself.

Rating: ★ ★

TweetStats: Graph your stats!

Tweetstats remains true to its name, as it compiles a bar graph for quick viewing of your monthly stats. Easily see who you @replied to, whom you retweet and what time of day you tweet the most. A useful, basic tool that will offer a helpful overview for any Twitter campaign your nonprofit or business undertakes.

Rating: ★ ★ ★

Crowdbooster: Schedule and analyze

Of all the applications I used, Crowdbooster was my personal favorite. In addition to analyzing your influence and impressions, they also set themselves apart with useful features like the ability to schedule a tweet at the time where it will reach the most amount of followers. They provide actionable recommendations on influential users, offering the option to follow them back from inside their application. I found their charts clear and precise, and their analysis was directly applicable to my Twitter page.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Tweet Grader: Score your profile

Part of a suite of free online marketing tools powered by HubSpot, Tweet Grader is a straightforward tool that measures the power of your Twitter profile. Type in your Twitter handle and Tweet Grader generates a score out of 100 for your overall Twitter profile. You can also use it to find out the scores of other Twitter users and then compare those to your own. In calculating your score, Tweet Grader’s algorithm takes into account the following factors: number and power of followers, follower-to-following ratio, update frequency and most recent, as well as engagement. The site is also handy for seeing top lists, generated by Twitter Grader based on its scoring system. Use it to locate the “Twitter elite,” i.e. Top Users, Top Brands and even Top Women on Twitter.

Rating ★ ★

Continue reading »

Image by Palto for Big Stock

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, businesses, Web publishers, bloggers, individuals

One of the hardest things to do is to develop a community of interested readers, sharers and contributors to a blog. For new bloggers, it can be discouraging to publish thoughtful content without seeing the immediate return in reader comments and shares. Creating a blog community takes time and commitment, but there are some things you can do to develop a community of interested readers and fellow bloggers.

Why you should want to create a blog community

A blog community is a community of readers who regularly comment on and share your blog content. They feel connected to you through your blog content, comments and responses. They may also feel connected to each other through your blog. This community can be fiercely loyal, if truly engaged with your blog. Blog communities have been known to fundraise for a cause as a community and encourage fellow members to do great things. If you manage a nonprofit blog, this is exactly the kind of community your nonprofit wants to develop. Once engaged, this community can be moved to action.

How to nurture a loyal community

Here are some ways an organization can develop a community of fiercely loyal blog readers:

1 Become an integral part of your industry’s blogosphere. Every nonprofit sector has its “must-read blogs.” Choose five blogs to read that fall within your nonprofit’s sector and begin following them. Be part of those blog communities through blog post commenting, sharing and engaging in the comments discussion. Comment unselfishly by adding to the conversation rather than pointing back to your own organization. Always give your blog’s URL when you register your comment so that other readers can find their way to your blog.

2 Encourage your blog community to share with social sharing widgets. Add the standard social sharing widgets to every blog post, such as a retweet, Facebook share, Google +1 and a catch-all social sharing button. For example, take a look at the social sharing buttons at the top and bottom of posts on Socialbrite (see?) and on my blog Community Organizer 2.0.

3 Encourage repeat traffic with subscribe options. Allow readers to subscribe to your blog through an RSS feed reader or email. Make it easy for them to receive your blog’s content and return to comment.

Continue reading »

Figures, properly used, can help tell your organization’s story

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, Web designers, Web publishers, brands, educators.

Infographics are multiplying like rabbits. I run across them everywhere, and about all types of subjects from the power of social fundraising to what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Some are great, some not so great. The abundance of data we now have to process is fueling the trends toward content curation, data consolidation tools and information visualization.

As Beth Kanter remarked on a public Google Plus thread about creating useful infographics, “I think that information visualization is a necessity in this age of data overload and seeing the forest beyond the trees.” I agree with that statement and personally jump to view the “shiny new storytelling toy” whenever I see an infographic. Infographics represent an exciting new storytelling avenue for nonprofit organizations, enabling them to share important data stories visually.

Infographics as storytelling

Infographics represent a natural extension of storytelling: telling the story of data. It’s not a coincidence that storytelling is growing as we struggle to understand all the information coming at us and overcome cause fatigue.Karen Dietz, who uses storytelling to help businesses grow, says that “infographics are another form of visual storytelling and many of the same oral storytelling principles apply. We’ll be sorting out the issues of authenticity and key messaging and quality as infographics become more popular and easier to produce.” And therein lies the rub: quality. Just as all stories are not created equally, neither are all infographics.

Continue reading »

Image by lirevega for Big Stock

4 easy tips to help you green your planning practices

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, businesses, brands, CSR professionals, marketing professionals, event coordinators, sustainability officers.

By Tamara Schweitzer
Socialbrite staff

With conference season in full swing, nonprofits across the country are gearing up to host an array of educational and entertaining events this fall. Be sure to check out Socialbrite’s Nonprofit Events calendar for any upcoming conferences you may want to attend in your area. If you’re on the planning side of an event for your nonprofit, you know that it takes an enormous amount of time and coordination to pull together a meaningful event. In the midst of all the programming, one aspect of event planning that often gets overlooked is sustainability practices.

But that shouldn’t be the case. In fact, incorporating any level of environmental responsibility into your event not only provides an additional opportunity to educate, but it will also help your organization stand out as a leader in the community.

Just ask Kimberly Lewis, Vice President of Conferences and Events at the US Green Building Council. She heads up the largest green building event in the country: the annual Greenbuild conference, which is taking place today through Friday in Toronto. Lewis has made a living of sustainable event planning and has even led USGBC to several awards for their responsible actions related to Greenbuild.

Lewis offered tips that can help any organization, no matter your budget, to start thinking about bringing sustainability practices into your next event by showcasing your commitment to not just the environment but also to the health and well-being of your attendees.

Tip #1: Introduce sustainability from the beginning

1Sustainability planning for your event may seem overwhelming, but Lewis says it’s not about trying to do it all. She says it’s a good idea to pick two to three areas where you’d like to incorporate sustainable practices and then pursue those goals at the beginning of the planning stages. “A lot of planners make the mistake of putting everything in place and then deciding on the back side that they want to green the event,” Lewis says. “Introduce sustainability from the beginning, starting with the RFP process so the site and vendors know what your goals are and can help you think through how to meet them.”

Lewis says a goal could be as simple as making sure there is recycling at the event, and working with the venue to inform attendees that they have the option to recycle. Operating costs will also be alleviated for the venue if you incorporate these goals into the planning process. “Just as you would negotiate a group rate at the hotel for the event, you can negotiate on incorporating sustainable practices,” she says. Ask the venue to write the sustainability goals and plan into the contract.

Continue reading »

Image by Rosaura Ochoa on Flickr

Use this guide to take stock of your organization’s Twitter routine

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

This is part of our series on how nonprofits can get the most out of Twitter. Please check back weekly for the next installment.

By Kyria Abrahams and J.D. Lasica
Socialbrite staff

There are scads of Twitter guides, cheat sheets and how-tos floating around the Web. However, too often we see experts being clinical, detached and almost mathematical in trying to dissect an otherwise fun and useful social medium.

Actually, Twitter is not that complicated. And unless you’re Anthony Weiner, your job most likely does not hang on a single tweet. In fact, Twitter is especially suited to nonprofits because it allows your organization the freedom to spotlight a broad range of issues and newsworthy items that relate to your cause.

Below we’ll outline some basic practices about how to use Twitter, especially if you’re just getting started with the platform. If you’re an old hat at it, think of this as a little refresher course for your daily Twitter practice.

Here are 24 basic best practices with Twitter that every nonprofit should know.

Don’t overcomplicate Twitter

1Be honest, be real, be human. Don’t be the guy at the party with a set of “emergency” conversation starters on index cards. Don’t overthink your Twitter entries. Use your own voice, not a detached, institutional one.

Tweet about things people care about

2Link to newsworthy events that people are already talking about and how they relate to your cause. Remember, no one outside of your organization cares who your executive director shook hands with today. Link to interesting items about your partners or sector.

Tweet in the moment

3Are you at a gala event and your senator or governor just walked in? Don’t be afraid to live tweet as it’s happening.

Follow the 60-30-10 rule

4That’s 60% retweets and pointers to promote items from other users or sites, 30% conversation and responses, 10% announcements and events. If all you ever talk about is you, no one is going to pay attention after a while.

Be strategic

5Follow and schmooze with influencers in your sector. Use search.twitter.com’s Advanced search link to find people in your sector or geographic region. Use tools like Klout, SocialMention, PeopleBrowsr (including its new Kred) and Twitter Lists to find them and make sure you engage before you ask for anything.

Be supportive

6Follow like-minded users and engage with them. Retweet liberally. Link to interesting news stories about your partners or sector.

Optimize your keywords

7Make sure that people can find you in a search. Your profile should contain the name of your organization, relevant keywords and a url to your site or blog.

Personalize your page

8Upload your organization’s logo as an icon, or you may want individual staffers to use their own thumbnail images. Don’t use a standard Twitter background (click the “Change background image” link under the Design tab of your profile). Adjust background and text colors. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t make your account private.

Continue reading »

Do you know a software developer building open source tools with the potential to positively impact communities around the world? If you do – or you are one – then read on.

The Tides Foundation is now accepting nominations for this year’s Pizzigati Prize. The Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest annually awards a $10,000 cash grant to one individual who has created or led an effort to create an open source software product of significant value to the nonprofit sector and movements for social change.

The 2012 winner will be announced in April at the Nonprofit Technology Network annual conference in San Francisco. Each year, starting in 2006, the Pizzigati Prize has accepted nominations for talented and creative individuals who develop open source software products that demonstrate impressive value to the nonprofit sector. Tides welcomes nominations from both developers and the nonprofits who work with them.

Earlier this year I had the honour of picking up the Pizzigati Prize in Washington DC on behalf of everyone at FrontlineSMS. According to the Pizzigati jury, we’d managed to:

create software that speaks directly to the reality that millions of people globally have only simple mobile phones and no access whatsoever to the Internet. The software they developed turns mobile phones into grassroots organizing tools for everything from mobilizing young voters to thwarting thieving commodity traders.

The 2010 Pizzigati Prize winner, Yaw Anokwa, led the development on Open Data Kit, a modular set of tools that’s helping nonprofits the world over on a wide variety of battlefronts, from struggles to prevent deforestation to campaigns against human rights violations.

“Open source software developers like these fill an indispensable role”, explained Tides Chief of Staff Joseph Mouzon, a Pizzigati Prize judge and the former Executive Director of Nonprofit Services for Network for Good. “The Pizzigati Prize aims to honor that contribution – and encourage programmers to engage their talents in the ongoing struggle for social change”.

The Pizzigati Prize honors the brief life of Tony Pizzigati, an early advocate of open source computing. Born in 1971, Tony spent his college years at MIT, where he worked at the world-famous MIT Media Lab. Tony died in 1995, in an auto accident on his way to work in Silicon Valley.

Full details on the Pizzigati Prize, the largest annual award in public interest computing, are available online.

Please nominate, share or enter as appropriate. Good luck!

Bioneers takes places Oct. 14-16 in San Rafael, Calif.

Events guide for nonprofits & social change organizations

We’re now in full-on conference mode. What events are you planning to attend this month? Anybody going to the first SXSW Eco? Here’s a roundup of conferences and events scheduled in the nonprofit and social change sectors for the month of October. I’ll be speaking at Blackbaud’s BBCon just outside Washington, DC, tomorrow.

For the full year, see our Calendar of 2011 social change conferences. If you’re interested in social media, tech and marketing conferences, see this month’s calendar on our sister site, Socialmedia.biz.

If you know of other events, please share by adding the info in the comments below.

October
Blackbaud Conference for Nonprofits	Oct. 2-5	Washington, DC
The gathering provides four days of educational content dedicated to your specific needs and unprecedented opportunities to network and interact with your peers and industry experts
Convio Summit	Oct. 3-5	Baltimore
Convio Summit is an information-packed gathering of Convio clients, partners, industry experts and other invited guests. It’s an event filled with innovative ideas to get your creativity flowing, with real-world examples of techniques that you can start using right away to boost your fundraising, advocacy, marketing and donor management efforts.
SXSW Eco	Oct. 4-6	Austin, Texas
The first SXSW Eco will feature three days of diverse, top-level programming for professionals in business, government, nonprofits and academia who want to look at environmental and sustainability issues though a fresh lens, develop new collaborations and contribute to innovative solutions to the most pressing challenges facing the environment, the economy and civil society.
Retail Sustainability Conference	Oct. 12-14	Orlando, Fla.
The Retail Sustainability Conference brings together executives involved in establishing environmental programs and integrating green practices into their companies. The conference’s program will address the key operational aspects of environmental sustainability and compliance for the retail industry, including sessions on energy, waste management, water conservation, store operations, real estate development, supply chain issues and opportunities for improving corporate social responsibility.
Bioneers Conference	Oct. 14-16	San Rafael, Calif.
Since 1990, the Bioneers conference has acted as a fertile hub of leading social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges. As a celebration of the genius of nature and human creativity, Bioneers connects people with solutions and each other. It’s a dynamic knowledge platform and a uniquely holistic and diverse network of networks.
fiess 2011	Oct. 17-20	Montreal
This forum is intended as a meeting place for people and ideas. The event aims to bring together key players in the social and solidarity economy from countries across the North and South and their partners in government, labor movements, research institutes and international organizations, to help strengthen partnerships between civil society and governments, to highlight successful partnerships, particularly in the development of public policy, and to encourage the exchange of ideas around the theme of the social and solidarity economy at the international and inter-regional level.
Pop!Tech	Oct. 19-22	Camden, Maine
Pop!Tech will mark its 15th annual gathering with more than 600 remarkable thinkers, leaders and innovators showcasing powerful ideas and projects that are changing the world. I attended one year — it’s a great gathering.
Social Venture Network	Oct. 27-30	Philadelphia
Social Venture Network connects, supports and inspires business leaders and social entrepreneurs in expanding practices that build a just and sustainable economy.
Social Enterprise Summit	Oct 31-Nov 2	Chicago
This international forum advocates for increased social impact through social enterprise. Join over 700 social entrepreneurs to learn, grow, be inspired, make new connections from around the globe and become part of this expanding movement.