It’s hard to believe now, but in 2007-2008, most people had never heard of the term social media. 

Well, that changed fast. By fall 2008, “social media” was the hot new buzz phrase. And Socialbrite was there to help with activism, advocacy, and advice on everything from apps to storytelling techniques to tutorials on corporate social responsibility and social enterprises. Our Sharing Center won kudos and awards and Socialbrite received a number of honors from the nonprofit community for the service it provided.

But as we approach our 16th birthday, we need to shut things down. We’ll keep the site up for a while longer, so if you have some favorite articles or resources, please download them now.

Founder J.D. Lasica is heading up two different tech startups, Cruiseable and Authors A.I., as well as pursuing a career as an author. And the original Socialbrite team of social media experts has been pulled in new directions. Social media itself is having a bit of a midlife crisis, but there are plenty of other sites out there to fill the gap and help nonprofits and social enterprises fulfill their worthy missions.

If you are interested in purchasing the highly ranked socialbrite.org domain, contact us at (925) 413-3870.

Thank you for the wonderful ride.

The post Socialbrite is shutting down appeared first on Socialbrite.

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, journalists, educators, general public.

While a number of promising Web 2.0 social enterprises have launched in the past few years, SourceRise, which just soft launched in beta last week, is showing great momentum right out of the gate. SourceRise, founded by our very own Caroline Avakian (managing partner at Socialbrite), connects journalists and bloggers to sources at international NGOs and nonprofits in an effort to diversify the voices represented in the news and to increase the number of well researched, compelling development and foreign news stories in traditional media.

Last week I interviewed Caroline to find out more about SourceRise and how it’s building bridges between the media and nonprofit sources.

SourceRise is a social enterprise that directly connects journalists to sources at international NGOs and nonprofits. In a time when international news gathering budgets are shrinking at record rates, it is becoming more difficult for major news outlets to independently cover international and development news stories. Via a network of journalists and expert global NGO sources, SourceRise enables development foreign news reporting rooted in real time, accuracy, and deep context

SourceRise is a social enterprise that directly connects journalists to sources at international NGOs and nonprofits. In a time when international news gathering budgets are shrinking at record rates, it is becoming more difficult for major news outlets to independently cover international and development news stories. Via a network of journalists and expert global NGO sources, SourceRise enables development foreign news reporting rooted in real time, accuracy, and deep context.

We connect journalists and nonprofits by sending out source request emails from journalists to sources, and by facilitating digital media briefings on breaking global hot topics or humanitarian crises. SourceRise also holds media call-to-actions around global issues that aren’t getting the media coverage they deserve, by connecting journalists and bloggers to sources who can immediately provide information and context around important issues. In addition, SourceRise matches journalists, photojournalists and other media makers with NGOs able to host them in the areas of the world they want to report on.

A couple of years ago, when I actually started telling people about my budding idea that would eventually became SourceRise, colleagues would tell me, “Yeah, nice idea but aren’t there already development news sites writing about these stories?” I realized that when people free-associate on “foreign” or “development news,” there’s an underlying assumption that it should live on a separate news site, that there’s no place or desire for it in mainstream news. Interestingly, we know that’s not the case. Data shows us that people actually want more international news brought to them on the news channels and sites they’re already watching and reading. It became very apparent to me that there is a perception and language disconnect when we speak about development or foreign news. That disconnect fuels my efforts to mainstream SourceRise and change the way we view and create news.

SourceRise is different in that our focus is on development news reporting, something that other reporter/source connector sites don’t focus on. At a time when foreign news desks are shutting down due to budget constraints, our mission as a social enterprise is to solve that problem by helping journalists connect easily to vetted expert sources they can trust and quote in their pieces, which ultimately provides better, more contextualized development and foreign news coverage.

Mainstream media and NGOs have had a longstanding relationship. Journalists often reach out to NGO expert sources for access to remote parts of the world — they rely on them for quotes, to provide context to political, social and cultural issues on the ground, to give them info and statistics they can reference in their stories. Currently, we are seeing a huge shift in the international reporting landscape that has led to the shut down of many foreign bureaus of even major news outlets. This has led to many NGOs and nonprofits researching and pitching their own stories, sharing sources and analysis and even providing travel logistics, guides and housing to reporters. In short, without the help of NGOs, many foreign news stories would never be told. SourceRise is the result and the logical next step to advancing this mutually beneficial relationship.

A recent survey by MPO Research Group found that American media are missing the mark when it comes to providing international coverage to the public. When MPO asked respondents what they think about the coverage of international news, over half said there should be more of it and just over a quarter think it’s fine just as it is, indicating that there’s a lot of room for improvement from our media outlets.

The bottom line is, we look at the Internet and think we have this wide view of the world, when in fact we’re not really as connected as we think we are. In the 1970s US global news was about 35-45% of the mainstream media we consumed. Now, it’s about 12-15%. Development and foreign news have been relegated to “special” news sites. You have to go searching for that news, because you’re not really going to find much of it on the sites you’re likely already reading. So, we’ve slowly adapted to that shift through the years. I think that’s really problematic on many levels. The real problems of the world we need to solve are global in scale, that require global conversations to get to global solutions. We’re nowhere near that right now.

SourceRise is currently in beta and a social good startup to keep an eye on!

• Sign up on the SourceRise website

• Nonprofits/NGOs can sign up directly here

• Journalists and bloggers can sign up directly here

• Follow SourceRise founder Caroline Avakian on Twitter

• Follow SourceRise on Twitter

• Fan SourceRise on Facebook

The post SourceRise: Connecting nonprofits/NGOs to journalists appeared first on Socialbrite.

Tips for fundraising and other outreach to supporters

At a startup event in San Francisco last week, Matt Van Horn, VP of Business at Path, shared five tactics for how to reach people you have no relationship with.

After I heard his tips, I thought, anyone working for a nonprofit whose job it is to engage influencers or raise funds from donors could benefit from Van Horn’s advice. So here’s a short cheat sheet on how to reach out to potential partners, influencers or donors:

Use Rapportive to guess email addresses

1Use Rapportive or other tools to learn a recipient’s email address. Rapportive is an add-on for Chrome and Firefox that lets you easily see a person’s contact information and social networks right inside your email inbox, particularly Gmail. Purchased by LinkedIn last year, Rapportive pulls info from all over the Web and puts it at your fingertips. (Hey, I see you’re tweeting about poverty. I’m with you on that!)

This week I had lost my old contact information for Wired staff writer Steve Levy, so I began guessing his email address in the “To” field of Gmail (was it steve.levy? steven.levy? ah! steven_levy@wired.com). Rapportive has tens of millions of email addresses in its database, so start guessing away and often you’ll hit on the right combination.

Van Horn also listed Slideshare and Google (but you knew that) as other good sources for obtaining contact information. Send a short, friendly intro before you hit someone with an overture that requires them to do take an action.

Use your social network to be social

2“Use your network to make a cold call a warm one,” Van Horn said. That means make use of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram to start engaging with people. You have to start building a modest relationship before getting down to business. “Add value before an ask,” he said.

Follow up after meetings

3After spending time with someone you met in a meeting or on the phone, send a quick two- to three-line email within 48 hours of meeting someone. Try to mention one unique thing you spoke with them about to help them remember you.

Keep and use a deep contacts list

4Use Gmail, Google Apps or a Contacts database to add a person’s name, affiliation and email address after you get, say, their business card. Set up 1 on 1 time to connect over a drink, coffee or food. Draw upon those contacts whenever the opportunity arises.

Go old school and pick up the phone

5Here’s a little trick Van Horn employs. “When I’m trying to reach someone at a business, I call the corporate number and the person’s extension at odd hours like 7-9 am and 5-7 pm. You’d be surprised how often they’re in and they pick up.”

Bonus tip: Pick up a copy of Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi (hardcover and Kindle), which outlines a strategy for building a lifelong community of colleagues, contacts, friends and mentors.

Cross-posted to Socialmedia.biz.

The post 5 ways to turn a cold call into a warm call appeared first on Socialbrite.

How to identify potential champions for your cause

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, educators, journalists, Web publishers, Twitter users.

When I give my webinars on CharityHowTo, one of the questions that often comes up is: How do I get visibility for my organization’s website, blog or cause?

The answer is not to focus exclusively on your site or search engine strategies. It’s about enlisting supporters to help spread the word about the awesome work you’re doing. Use your community!

To go down that road begins with identifying the influencers in your space who’ll help carry the message forward, right?

And that’s why you need to know about Twtrland, a social intelligence tool that offers incredibly useful insights about the individuals on Twitter — and, soon, other social networks — who bring the most weight to bear on a particular topic. Probably your topic.

Get insights, reach influencers and discover trends in your sector

A few days ago Twtrland rolled out a new dashboard for businesses — which works equally well for nonprofits, foundations and other organizations. (Click “start free trial” to check it out for free for seven days.)

Guy Avigdor, co-founder and vice president of business development at Twtrland, gave me a run-through of the service. Twtrland has always billed itself as “a simple way to get insights about your social presence, reach influencers and discover market trends,” but its new features make it even more useful for organizations looking to identify potential evangelists and champions.

Debuting in April 2011 and headquartered in Haifa, Israel, with an office opening soon in New York, Twtrland’s eight-person team has managed to compile groupings of influencers in 60,000 topic areas, from sustainable agriculture to refugees to diabetes care to almost anything you can think of. Through a combination of machine intelligence and human indexing, they identify influencers not based on, say, the description in their Twitter profiles but based on the content they actually produce.

What Twtrland offers, in a word, is context for your Twitter routine, giving you data about which Twitter users are most worth following and engaging with. As I always advise in my social media webinars, you need to find the top influences in your sector and schmooze them up!

Who uses Twtrland? “People use us for influencer marketing, to write blog posts, to generate sales leads, for community management — for any form of social media marketing,” Avigdor said.

The basic service is free, with Pro accounts generally running from $20 to $100 a month, though the company does a subpar job displaying pricing options. Take the free seven-day test drive and decide what’s right for you. If you’re like most nonprofits, the $20 a month price tag is a small price to pay for this treasure trove of social data.

Put social analytics to work for your mission

Here’s how Twtrland works. You sign in via your Twitter or Instagram credentials and register with your name and email, or just use Twtrland anonymously to conduct a search.

Naturally, you’ll want to see how Twtrland sizes up your own Twitter account, right? (Go ahead, I’ll wait!) Plunk your Twitter handle into the big, fat search field and a few seconds later you should see a snapshot of your Twitter activity (see the National Wildlife Federation’s Twtrland profile at top), displaying:

• The number of tweets per day you average

• The number of times you are retweeted for every 100 tweets you post

• The number of replies you post per 100 tweets (an important stat — if the number is below 5, it means you’re using Twitter as a broadcast medium and not for conversation)

Twtrland also shows you your followers’ gender gap, their location and how many people you’ve talked with recently. Yes, your little ol’ nonprofit is part of Twtrland’s index!

At the top right is a pie chart with a color-coded breakdown of your tweets: retweets that you posted (my advice is to RT generously), replies (aka conversations), links (tweets containing a link), mentions and plain tweets. How does your breakdown compare?

Further down the profile page you’ll find “Famous words,” some of the top tweets from the account over the years, Followers Analysis, a breakdown of your followers’ demographics, Business Insights, photos and videos shared, endorsements and more. And this is cool: A section showing which brands the person interacted with (see Socialbrite’s example at right).

Keep in mind, you can do the same search on any Twitter user’s handle — including foundations, employees, brands, small businesses, celebrities, friends. And you can also conduct searches by location, if that’s key to your enterprise.

How to home in on the top power users

But the most impressive feature of Twtrland is its ability to bubble up influencers, or “power users,” as they put it, in a particular niche. Marketers have long understood the power of identifying audience segments, and Twtrland offers some top-flight social analytics. Check out the data in some of these searches to get a better sense of Twtrland’s capabilities:

• Influencers on obesity prevention in California

• Top fundraisers on Twitter from the U.S.

• Bloggers from Egypt

• Women 20-40 from NYC

One of the most interesting slices of data is the list of Top Followers for each profile that appears in the left sidebar.

Prepare to spend some time with Twtrland, because it takes some practice to master all of the power under the hood. But the bottom line is that Twtrland is perhaps the most affordable social intelligence tool you can add to your arsenal. And shouldn’t you be increasing your nonprofit’s social IQ?

A version of this article geared to businesses appeared yesterday on Socialmedia.biz.

Related

• Little Bird: New social tool helps identify potential supporters (Socialbrite)

• How to build awareness for your campaign (Socialbrite)

• 10 paid social media monitoring services for nonprofits (Socialbrite)

The post Twtrland: Find your nonprofit’s top influencers appeared first on Socialbrite.

Plan for the month’s top conferences & events

With summer largely behind us, September marks a return to a number of conferences key to the nonprofit and social good community. On tap this month: SOCAP (the Social Capital Markets conference, kicking off today), Web of Change, the IdeaFestival, ArtezInterAction, Blackbaud Conference for Nonprofits and lots more.

Which of these will you be attending?

For the full year, see our Calendar of 2013 nonprofit and 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. And if you can’t attend, I hope you’ll follow the proceedings online, through live streams (where available) or Twitter hashtags.

Conference	Date	Place
September
SOCAP	Sept. 3-6	San Francisco
The venerable Social Capital Markets gathering for social entrepreneurs and change agents will return to SF’s Fort Mason Center.
Nonprofit Management Institute	Sept. 10-11	Stanford, Calif.
The Nonprofit Management Institute is conducted by leaders in the field of social change: academics known for their work at Stanford and at other renowned universities and well-known practitioners who will share their insights and experiences from successes in the field.
Web of Change	Sept. 18-22	San Antonio, Texas
Web of Change is a series of conferences that connects the foremost thinkers and doers in the growing community of social change and technology from across North America.
Social Venture Institute	Sept. 18-22	Cortes Island, BC
Join business leaders and social entrepreneurs at the Social Venture Institute for an intensive, interactive inquiry into how to face the day-to-day challenges of running a socially conscious enterprise. Take advantage of this opportunity to fine tune business strategies, learn best practices for solving problems and build long lasting relationships with business peers and mentors.
IdeaFestival	Sept. 24-27	Louisville, Ky.
IdeaFestival is a celebration for the intellectually curious. It’s an eclectic network of global thinkers and one-of-a-kind innovators bound together by an intense curiosity about what is impacting and shaping the future of the arts, business, technology, design, science, philosophy and education.
ArtezInterAction	Sept. 26	Toronto
Whether you’re a seasoned fundraising veteran or new to fundraising, ArtezInterAction has something for everyone. This one-day conference is designed for fundraisers looking to accelerate their online activities.
Blackbaud Conference for Nonprofits	Sept. 29-Oct. 2	National Harbor, Md.
Join this conference to experience everything you love about the Blackbaud Conference — three days of educational content dedicated to your specific needs and opportunities to network and interact with your peers and industry experts.
Retail Sustainability Conference	Sept. 30-Oct. 3	Orlando, Fla.
This event brings together executives from all major retail and consumer product segments along with relevant solution providers to address the key issues of sustainability and environmental compliance for retail.

The post Calendar of nonprofit conferences: September 2013 appeared first on Socialbrite.

Why nonprofits need to tell their stories by creating new content

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, marketers, journalists, general public.

I‘ve been to dozens of nonprofits’ offices, but there’s a phrase I’ve never heard uttered even once: content marketing.

Sounds kind of mysterious, doesn’t it? But when you strip it down to its essence, content marketing is just a way for organizations to tell their stories.

I was interviewed, along with marketer Greg Jordan, about content marketing for nonprofits at a new podcast from the Content Marketing Examiner moderated by publisher Martin van der Roest. Here’s our conversation:

To get discovered online, you must create fresh content

Some highlights from the podcast:

• Don’t be put off by the term “content marketing.” The marketing landscape has evolved with the realization that all nonprofits and businesses are media entities now. If you have a nonprofit or business with an online presence, guess what? You’re a media publisher. For people to find you through search, you have to create content. The webinars I give for CharityHowTo cover search engine marketing in part and explain why keywords are critical to your nonprofit or business.

• Content comes in many forms, from blog posts and Facebook updates to Pinterest pins and Twitter tweets (I’ve never liked the term “micro-blogging” so won’t use it here).

• Don’t get hung up on crafting perfect content. Don’t get frozen by writer’s block. As my partner John Haydon likes to say, Done beats perfect.

• Greg Jordan made an important point: Before you begin, start with identifying your business goals. Write them down, make them something that’s attainable, realistic and worth achieving. And measure them, little by little.

• I suggested trying to find individuals who represent your cause or brand. Ask if they’d be willing to share their stories. Have someone inside your organization, or a contractor, come in and capture those stories on video, on audio or in text. By bringing your story down to the individual level, you make it universal.

• Consider asking people in different parts of your organization, in a respectful way, whether they’d be interested in sharing their skills and passions. Do they blog in their off-hours? Do they shoot photos or video on the weekend? Are they willing to attend an event you’re putting on to help capture it and share it in social media?

• Greg reminded us that it’s not just about creating your own content. It’s about sharing others’ content and updates.

What would you add about storytelling or content marketing for organizations?

Related articles on Socialbrite

• 8 great examples of nonprofit storytelling
• 10 secrets to video storytelling success
• Step-by-step guide to creating a media strategy
• Complete guide to creating a video project
• How to find amazing, powerful stories for your nonprofit video
• How nonprofits should be using visual storytelling
• How to create high-quality Web video interviews
• Visual storytelling checklist

The post Content marketing: We’re all media publishers now appeared first on Socialbrite.

Plan for the month’s top conferences & events

June marks a busy month for the nonprofit and social good community — the last frenetic blast of conferences before the lull of summer kicks in. Highlights include the Emerging Media Conference in Seattle (starting today), NCTech4Good, Personal Democracy Forum, North by Northeast, the National Conference on Volunteering and Service, Netroots Nation, Indie Web Camp and the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Which of these will you be attending?

For the full year, see our Calendar of 2013 nonprofit and 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. And if you can’t attend, hope you’ll follow the proceedings online, through live streams (where available) or Twitter hashtags.

Conference	Date	Place
June
The Learning Conference	June 3-4	Miami
The Learning Conference will bring together more than 200 leaders in philanthropy for cutting-edge conversations that will showcase diverse perspectives, strategies and solutions to help navigate the challenges and opportunities associated with making learning a priority.
EmMeCon: Emerging Media Conference	June 3-6	Seattle
The Emerging Media Conference welcomes attendees with an opportunity to view and experience the latest in technology advances and upcoming product roll-outs. Included in this program are demonstrations, presentations and discussions led by some of the most connected and recognized experts in the industry.
Sustainable Brands	June 3-6	San Diego
Sustainable Brands is an international community of learning and action focused on understanding and leveraging the role of brands in shaping a flourishing future. The gathering is ground zero for sustainability, brand and innovation professionals who come together from around the world to be inspired, engaged and equipped to succeed by building the better brands of tomorrow, while building a network of like-minded colleagues who can help.
NMC Summer Conference	June 4-7	South Carolina
The NMC Summer Conference is a one-of-a-kind event, attracting an audience of hundreds of highly skilled professionals interested in the integration of emerging technologies into teaching, learning and creative inquiry.
Fundraising Day	June 5	Toronto
The Association of Fundraising Professionals is the professional association for individuals responsible for generating philanthropic support for a wide variety of charitable organizations. In thie annual event, the association advances philanthropy in society by enabling people and organizations to practice effective and ethical fundraising.
NCTech4Good	June 6-7	Chapel Hill, N.C.
This conference is designed to serve nonprofit professionals, volunteers and consultants, as well as small business owners. The conference focuses on technologies in areas such as fundraising, social media and communication and advocacy tools, offering both pre-selected presentations and workshops and spontaneous sessions.
Personal Democracy Forum	June 6-7	New York
Personal Democracy Forum is the world’s leading conference exploring and analyzing technology’s impact on politics and government. Join hundreds of individuals interested in how technology is changing politics, governance and society.
Social Change Institute	June 6-10	Hollyhock, B.C
At the Social Change Institute, you’ll gain insight into the latest movement and organizing strategies, online tools, campaigns and leadership practices while immersed in the stunning natural setting of Canada’s leading educational retreat center: Hollyhock. This is your chance to break away from the daily pressures of work and life. To think big, focus your intensions, sharpen your skills and make life-long connections.
North by Northeast	June 10-16	Toronto
Now in its 19th year, North by Northeast has become the Canadian festival destination for emerging artists and major-label headliners, for music filmmakers and for digital interactive innovators bridging the gap between technology and the arts. Seen as the most anticipated summer music event in Canada, NXNE Music, NXNE Film and NXNE Interactive are an essential gathering for artists, industry and fans.
Social Media for Nonprofits	June 13	Mountain View, Calif.
In this conference series, these sessions are designed to provide attendees with concrete insights and takeaways, showcasing best practices, pitfalls to avoid and free, helpful resources for nonprofits and causes.
Tällberg Forum	June 13-15	Stockholm
The Tällberg Forum is an arena for reflection, conversations and the search for creative solutions, integrating both nature and the arts, where people feel free to step outside of their professional identity, to share doubts and new ideas and to search for ways forward outside of established frameworks. It acts to stimulate the conversation on, and design solutions to, the problems of our times in order to foster new thinking and solutions.
Symposium on Scaling Social Impact	June 17	New York
Social Impact Exchange’s Symposium on Scaling Social Impact will bring together nonprofit leaders, funders, professional service providers and academics to explore the state of scaling in the nonprofit sector. The symposium is a wonderful opportunity for those interested in advancing the field of social impact to network with other like-minded professionals and build knowledge and increase skills for this important work.
National Conference on Volunteering and Service	June 19-22	Washington, DC
This National Conference on Volunteering and Service provides attendees an opportunity to learn, connect and be inspired through a wide range of exciting and informative plenary sessions, workshops, immersion learnings, special events, service projects, exhibits, specialized tracks and more.
Allied Media	June 20-23	Detroit
The Allied Media Conference cultivates strategies for a more just and creative world. We come together to share tools and tactics for transforming our communities through media-based organizing.
Netroots Nation	June 20-23	San Jose
Netroots Nation amplifies progressive voices by providing an online and in-person campus for exchanging ideas and learning how to be more effective in using technology to influence the public debate. At the annual convention, participants strengthen the community, inspire action and serve as an incubator for ideas that challenge the status quo and ultimately affect change in the public sphere.
Indie Web Camp	June 22-23	Portland, Ore.
Indie Web Camp is a regular gathering of web creators building and sharing open Web technologies to advance the state of the independent Web and empower users to own their own identities and content on the Web. Participants get together for a weekend to talk about what has been done in the field, what still needs to be done and then spend a day hacking and creating.
Aspen Ideas Festival	June 26-July 2	Aspen, Colo.
The Aspen Ideas Festival will gather some of the most interesting thinkers and leaders from around the U.S. and abroad to discuss their work, the issues that inspire them and their ideas. Presented by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, the festival is dedicated to dialogue and exchange and in its commitment to bringing ideas to the public at large.

The post Calendar of nonprofit conferences: June 2013 appeared first on Socialbrite.

Photo by Randi Deuro on Flickr (CC BY)

New social tool helps organizations identify top influencers

Target audience: Businesses, brands, digital marketers, advertising agencies, SEO specialists, entrepreneurs, educators, journalists, Web publishers.

Social media has changed not only marketing but search. Today, you need to know who are the top influencers in your sector before you can engage with them and convert them into becoming supporters or champions.

Now along comes a new player in the social influence space whose goal is to provide that missing piece of the puzzle: Little Bird. The brainchild of Marshall Kirkpatrick, an entrepreneur/data journalist/technologist who was co-editor at ReadWriteWeb, Little Bird has been in closed beta since October with an exclusive focus on Twitter. But today the site is spreading its wings (sorry!) by expanding to include Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn. It’s still in private beta but the invitation wait time is very short.

Think of it as a way to roll your own army of supporters. “The ultimate vision is that anybody will be able to convene a circle of experts in their field: product design, nutritionists, ceramicists,” Marshall told me. “We can deliver you right to the top of the mountain to begin your engagement to save you the grind of the heavy lifting.”

The top of the mountain being the rugged mountaineers who have slogged to the social media summit and become the top influencers in their sectors. Similar in some ways to how Google’s Page Rank looks for linkbacks to web pages to determine credibility and relevancy, the Little Bird engine analyzes the connections between people to determine who has the most juice in a particular community or on a specific topic.

It’s all about the verticals

I tried Little Bird and was immediately impressed by how it sized up the top influencers in several fields. For social media marketers and public relations professionals, Little Bird offers special appeal, saving us countless hours of assessing who are the folks worth paying attention to — not just at the summit but far down the mountaintop as well.

But Little Bird holds much wider appeal. Don’t know if that fellow sitting in front of you in a job interview is all that? Suss him out on Little Bird — and see which of the influencers in his field are following him.

If you’re a journalist, you may want to know the top 15 experts in the field of water conservation.

If this reminds you a bit of Klout, that’s OK. Influence is hot right now. But there are important differences. Klout is an axe, Little Bird is a scalpel. While Klout is about overall online popularity and clout, whatever that is, Little Bird is not about inducing people to pass along corporate messages to mass audiences. It’s more about discovering the people whose opinions matter in a particular niche or vertical.

“This is tool to build relationships and foster a deeper way to engage with people, not another way to spam people,” Marshall said.

Here’s a short video of Marshall introducing the service:

Introducing Little BIrd from getlittlebird on Vimeo.

A bit pricey, but worth it

OK, final details: Yes, it’s a bit pricey, so you’ll need to gauge whether it’s worth your investment. Little Bird costs $50/month for individuals (up to five reports), $250/month for small businesses, $500/month for mid-size businesses, $1,000/month for businesses with 101 to 500 employees and contract prices for enterprises. Last time I heard, they’re still weighing another pricing tier for nonprofits.

I haven’t tried all the features yet, but there are a sweet set of options beyond running reports. For those of us tired of the firehose, Little Bird is a welcome relief.

Little Bird is still a tad rough around some of the edges, as with any new service, but with Marshall at the helm, you can bet that Little Bird’s forays into online influencers will only get better and better. Search is becoming more social, and Little Bird is one of the companies leading the way.

The post Little Bird: New social tool helps identify potential supporters appeared first on Socialbrite.

This morning I’m giving a two-hour bootcamp at the annual California State PTA convention in San Jose, a year after I gave a similar workshop to the same gathering in Anaheim.

We expect over 100 PTA officials, educators, volunteers and others on hand for an interactive session about how PTAs and similar organizations can benefit from enlisting support from the community.

I’ve embedded my bootcamp presentation above — we’re in room 210B of the San Jose Convention Center at 9 am — and added a number of resources on a special Socialbrite.org/PTA page we’ve set up.

10 ways PTAs can use social media

I hope to learn as much as I share today. Here are some initial ideas about how PTAs — national and state organizations and local chapters — can use social media:

1. Enhance educational experience at your school

2. Promote your PTA, school or school district


3. Involve the community in decision making

4. Feedback loop with community

5. Enlist volunteers

6. Build online community of supporters

7. Raise funds for a cause or campaign

8. Get people to attend your events

9. Enhance existing communications programs

10. Connect with peers at other PTAs

What did I miss? How is your organization using social media?

The post How should PTAs be using social media? appeared first on Socialbrite.

Overseas projects to focus on mobile, data, journalism

On Monday I’ll be heading to Stanford University to help judge News Pioneers: Media innovations from Europe.

The participating teams are in different stages in their projects or start-ups. A few already have a working product and a growing customer base. Most, however, are just at the starting point in their development work. Stanford is bringing in a number of new media veterans to offer feedback and guidance to the teams about how to develop their project with innovative new media approaches. I’ll be looking forward to hearing more about each of these interesting efforts.

Nearhood: Helping local communities to flourish

1The founders of Nearhood believe that local is the next big trend in globalized world. But today digital services for local communities are still underdeveloped. Nearhood collects together locally relevant information to be easily accessible by local residents, creates a social platform which strengthens local communities and opens new, efficient and real-time marketing and sales channel for locally operating businesses. The Finnish startup aggregates local information using both volunteer editors and machine intelligence. They say, “By opening our platform to other services, we aim to create an ecosystem of local digital and physical services. Local isn’t just about discussions, it is also about services.” Practical. I like that.

OnDisplay: A weekly dose of art with a social layer

2OnDisplay is a mobile gallery aimed at creating a new forum for art criticism. It combines art journalism, art education and audio guide into an application that is simple to maintain and easy to use. It offers reviews of individual works of art hand-picked by professional critics. In addition to written articles, the application lets users view the artwork and listen to an audio guide specially produced for each work. The location and visitor information are also available through the OnDisplay interface. The first phase of the project creates the mobile application in cooperation with the local critics, galleries and museums in Helsinki. The second phase will open the application for user-generated content, developing the portal of arts criticism into a social media of visual arts. There are thousands of artworks displayed annually in Helsinki, and OnDisplay wants to find and display the works that may change your life.

Pallopostia: A news service for children

3The Pallopostia project aims to create an open, safe, free, easily accessible digital news service for children ages 6-17. Accessible via mobile devices such as tablets and touch-screen-phones, Pallopostia will bring the world closer to children in small, discrete pieces. At its best, it will help children in building their identity and self-esteem. It will serve all children in Finland and eventually it can be launched in other countries as well.

Infogr.am: New tool for data journalism

4Infogr.am is a Web-based tool for creating infographics. Aimed at newsrooms, journalists and bloggers, it provides a variety of super-easy data visualization tools for online and offline publishing. Infogr.am is working on new interactive ways to present data in online news media. With data becoming more visual, Infogr.am’s a solution for interactive visualizations.

Long Play: Platform for long-form feature journalism

5Long Play is a new kind of digital publisher. LP publishes one well-developed piece of long-form narrative journalism per month. Its “singles,” made up of long-form features and investigative reporting, are longer than magazine articles but shorter than books. LP is also an experiment in finding a new business model for investigative journalism, which is suffering in the age of severe newsroom cuts. LP uses a crowdfunding mode: They sell their works directly to readers for the price of a cup of coffee. Says the Long Play team: “We believe that there are enough people who are willing to support the production of high-quality journalism with a few euros every month.” LP currently publishes in Finnish, and they plan to translate some of their stories into Swedish, English and other languages.

Sounds interesting, no?

News Pioneer Innovation Challenge

The event is organized by the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation, which runs the Uutisraivaaja Innovation Challenge in Finland.

Here are the details:

Where: d.school, Stanford’s Institute of Design

When: 6 to 7 pm Monday, with a reception at 5 pm, and a tour of the d.school afterward for judges and guests by Justin Ferrell, the Fellowships director at d.school; Justin was formerly director of digital development at the Washington Post.

If you’re interested in attending, please email Tanja Aitamurto by today.

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