This is day 4 of the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media. Yesterday we spoke about measuring stats on your blog. Today we’ll be gathering some stats on where you’re at on Twitter.

In two weeks we’ll discuss how to analyze your network more deeply to build specific strategies. For now, we want to set a baseline so you can measure growth over the next 2, 3 and 6 months.

The three basic measurements

1. Followers

This number indicates reach. Your followers number is the number of people that have shown on interest in your Twitter stream. Track how your follower numbers grow by jotting it down every month or so in an excel spreadsheet. You’ll notice the more followers you gain, the faster this number will grow (to a point). Keep in mind that some of these folks only followed you in hopes that you’d follow back and may not be part of your actual community.

2. Following

This number has meaning when put next to your followers number. Are you following more people than the number of people following you? If so, you might want to look at adding more value on Twitter. If you’re new on Twitter, keep in mind that this number might be higher than your follower number. That will change with time and effort.

3. Lists

This number indicates the amount of value you create for others on Twitter. Look though the lists that people have put you on to see how people perceive your contribution on Twitter. For example, if you look at the lists I’m on, most of them have to do with non-profit social media topics.

Measuring network and impact

Measuring your network and your impact can be done in a number of ways (and with a number of tools), but remember, you simply want to document where you’re at on Twitter right now.

Two tools make it easy to measure your impact. Both are free.

4. Measure Your Network with Twitter Friends

Twitter Friends is a free tool for measuring the health of your network. There are three basic reports you should study:

Network overlap: This graph shows you the level of two-way conversations you have with folks.

Conversation Quotient: The Twitter-Friends FAQ states, “People with a high CQ are using Twitter to have direct conversations with other users. People with a low CQ are using it more for broadcasting links or status messages.”

Retweet Quotient: This tells you what percent of your tweets are retweeted by others.

5. Measure Your Impact With Twitter Grader and Klout

Twitter Grader is a free tool from HubSpot that grades your use of Twitter and offers recommendations for improvement. Of course, a computer won’t take into account the nuances of your blog strategy, you can get a few useful suggestion, and a grade of your use of Twitter from 0-100.

Klout is another free tool that allows you “track the impact of your opinions, links and recommendations across your social graph”. I like this tool, because, like Hubspot’s Twitter Grader,  it’s very easy to understand. For example, they give you an overall klout score and even suggest what “personality type” you are:

You can also see a list of your most retweeted posts:

Measuring how your content is tweeted

6. Tweetmeme Analytics

Tweetmeme is a tool that allows you to analyze how people are talking about your content on twitter. You need to set up an account with Tweetmeme so you can view the analytics directly in WordPress (download this free overview of Tweetmeme’s reporting).

Homework: Capture these 6 sets of Twitter stats in an excel spreadsheet. Update as often as you like, but at least note the date when you collected today’s homework.

If you don’t want to miss out on the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media, please sign up.

Cross-posted from JohnHaydon.com.

The post 6 simple stats you need to measure on Twitter appeared first on Socialbrite.

The platform just hit open beta, so create an account and start playing. You can create your own campaigns with unique URLs, add all kinds of media, and then start campaigning for change!

Here are some initial impressions.

What’s Louder?

LOUDER will be the new online home for campaigners. The free and accessible site draws together a range of social media tools for people who want to change the world.

Through Louder you will be able to create a microsite for your campaign with the most used ‘change-tools’ the web has to offer. You will be able to connect to and manage profiles on other social media sites helping you coordinate supporter action.

To help make your campaign louder you will be able to connect up with other campaigns and those running them. Providing a much needed online space for campaigners, from international NGOs to grass roots activists, to link up collaborate and share experiences.

Why I like Louder

I’ve been playing around with the new platform a bit and am quite excited about it.  I think it has a lot of potential to join with campaigning tools like Fairsay’s tool for Plone and collaborative tools like Zanby.

I like that Louder …

1. lets you create and distribute content all over the web
2. brings in content you create elsewhere
3. lets you work on a campaign without everything being “live”
4. uses a straightforward process to set up modules and then drag/drop to design your page
5. is being developed by folks IN the nonprofit and campaigning for change sector, so they “get it” already

Dive in!

LOUDER is in a “progressive beta” phase now and is working fast and furiously to built out more and more functionality for campaigners. You can visit their roadmap to see what’s in the pipeline of development and share your ideas about what you’d like the platform to do for you.

Some things currently in the works include:

• Newslist and newsletter management
• Email MPs/MEPs/Councillors and other influential people
• Contact management tools
• Collaborative tools for planning campaigns
• The ability to connect to Facebook accounts

What do you think?

What are you waiting for? Go check out LOUDER now!

And let me know what you think, too.

Republished from Amy Sample Ward’s Version of NPTech.

The post Louder: A collaborative campaigning platform appeared first on Socialbrite.

Guest post by Chris Abraham
Abraham-Harrison

Back in the earlier days of third-party Twitter apps (just a few months ago, actually), a few very effective web-based services got my attention: SocialToo, TweetLater, and HootSuite. Sad thing was, while they were all very powerful services, they were all poorly designed, very hacked together, and fugly. Enter the elegant, sexy, feature-rich HootSuite 2.0 (no matter what you think about all the controversy and extortion — see below).

Everyone’s talking about HootSuite 2.0

Today, while I was monitoring my stream-o-tweets, I noticed that every third person of the 2,587 I currently follow were tweeting that they “upgraded to #HootSuite 2.0 because it works http://hootsuite.com/upgrade.” HootSuite — pronounced like it sounds (HOOT-sweet) and a play on the French phrase tout de suite — was the first online player to offer multi-Twitter-account management and Twittering, an essential tool to any business application of Twitter that required the management of more than one Twitter account, such as @marcon, @abrahamharrison, @chrisabraham, etc.

HootSuite 1.0 was ugly

I used HootSuite to manage multiple accounts, in spite of very basic, very Web 1.0 forms-based interface. HootSuite allowed me to simply pop tweets to one or more account and to manage as many as I wanted. I used it as I expanded into new accounts. And then there was Seesmic Desktop, by Loic Le Meur, and now there is TweetDeck, both AIR apps that are multi-platform clients that I personally really love: their ease of use, their look and feel, and their modern design.

HootSuite 2.0 is a hottie

Today, as I alluded to earlier, HootSuite got a lot of work done. In fact, I feel like I am in some sort of before and after makeover scene in morning TV. HootSuite 2.0 is a hottie: gorgeous, stunning, modern and Ajaxy, integrating new levels of innovation that leaves every Twitter-inspired web services in its technological wake — even Twitter!

Looking good even on my small-screen laptop

I run a Lenovo x61 ThinkPad, which only has a 12.1-inch screen, which doesn’t work very well with TweetDeck (it just isn’t wide enough). Seesmic Desktop does a little better with a pretty cool “shuffling” innovation. However, HootSuite does it the best, using a regular browser to display lots and lots of information by means of scrollers and tabs, allowing everything to be contained simply and quickly using even my pathetically small “executive” laptop and might even work swimmingly in a netbook with a 10-inch screen.

All of the other stuff is crap compared to what’s really cool

I have been saving the best for last: HootSuite allows you to create columns with persistent search, meaning you can keep your eyes on what is going on around your brand, your name, your competitors, and your industry. Psych! That’s not the big deal! The big deal is that “you can now take your column with you,” meaning you can create a search for something like #Socialmedia.biz. This is really cool and so innovative! You can set up your own dashboard, you can shoehorn the stream into your blog’s or site’s nav bar — lots of stuff. Nobody else offers this, as far as I can tell, and this is a winner! The reason why we all use and worship YouTube is partially because it was one of the first video hosting sites that allowed one to embed content. You might not know it now, but this is a big deal!

Embeddable columns widget

Apparently, Twitter embeddable search, too

Update: Right after I posted this article, I popped the link to the lovely and brilliant Adele McAlear, who popped me the note via Google Talk, “I think someone else does the widget… I’ll find it…one sec. Yeah…its Twitter themselves. Customizable. Announced this week based on search.twitter. I’ve already embedded one on my blog (which explains why I’ve seen it, smacks head). Yes, the link works in my left sidebar. Custom search terms, sizes, colours, mouse over “join the conversation” in the widget to see the search terms used.” Well, there you have it! Here’s the link to the Twitter Widget Search.

Controversy

Now, the controversy: remember that “I upgraded to #HootSuite 2.0 because it works http://hootsuite.com/upgrade” tweet I have been seeing all over the Twittosphere? Well, here’s the controversy and the genius: if you want to upgrade to HootSuite version 2 — if you really want to upgrade — then you have to be willing to tweet “I upgraded to #HootSuite 2.0 because it works http://hootsuite.com/upgrade” or there’s no moving forward. Coercion! Blackmail! Extortion! Brilliant! Worth it! Shameless! Arrogant! How dare you!

Well, I think it worked. Just today, there were at least 2,133 mentions of the Twitter hashtag #hootsuite, roughly equivalent to a minor earthquake or coup d’état insurrection. I mean, it works and it got my attention, it got JD’s attention, and the messaging — my messaging — wasn’t even the result of a direct mail. And, when I repeated the message to my 10k+ followers, it was willingly. I mean, what price tweeting to get a glimpse of what everyone is on about.

Do you use HootSuite? What do you think?

Update: Blake Samic commented that there are parts of HootSuite that I hadn’t yet explored, “I’m interested to see how their analytics engine stacks up to something like ‘su.pr‘ (another great scheduled-tweet app). The other interesting feature I noticed in Hootsuite was the ability to have multiple people managing a Twitter account (kind of like Co-Tweet).”

Cross-posted from Socialmedia.biz.

The post Best new Twitter tool: HootSuite 2.0 appeared first on Socialbrite.

Spent Wednesday night at SocialVoter, a special event featuring California Secretary of State Debra Bowen and presented by CitizenSpace and the Social Media Club. You can follow the tweets on Twitter — for the next two weeks, anyway, when they disappear. So I thought a blog recap would be in order.

Here, too, is a Flickr photo set of the gathering.

For readers who don’t know Debra Bowen, she’s one of the most forward-looking public officials in the land, with a presence on Twitter (@DBowen) and Facebook and, more importantly, a commitment to bringing the public into public policy discussions.

The conversation between Bowen and the 35 participants in the room was free-flowing and wide-ranging, with suggestions about how to provide voters with critical information about candidates and ballot initiatives, how to crowdsource ballot explanations, how to increase transparency in the election process, et al.

Instant runoffs and crowdsourcing ballot arguments

Some highlights:

• Debra Bowen: “The most important resource we have in the Secretary of State’s Office is that I’m there and I want to make this happen. I want people to tell me about how they think this should work. … That’s your job, to figure out where this might go” and to help her and her staff work in a highly collaborative way. “What if people actually worked at the front of the policy chain instead of reacting to it?”

Echoes of President Obama’s call for bottom-up civic participation.

• One practical reason Bowen is looking to democratize some of the work that might traditionally fall to her office: The Secretary of State’s office has 470 employees. 80% of them are doing corporate and business filings and document processing. The elections staff has fewer than 30 employees. The voter education “staff” consists of one full-time and two part-time workers.

• I’ve long been among those who support a system of “instant runoff voting,” which San Francisco has done in the past and Alameda County and other districts are now seriously considering.

In an instant runoff, voters get to vote for not just their favorite candidate but their second and third choices, allowing citizens to vote for their preferred candidate rather than the lesser of two evils. If your candidate finishes out of the running, your vote goes to your second choice, allowing races with multiple candidates to be decided instantly without a runoff. Brilliant.

Said Bowen: “One of the conditions will be a voter education program so we don’t lose a big chunk of voters for an election or two while they figure out how it works.”

• For decades, California voters have been presented with two sides of every ballot proposition, pro and con. “East of the Mississippi, no one does this,” Bowen said. They’re either flummoxed or amazed. But some states are looking to California to emulate the practice.

Meantime, Bowen is taking the pro and con idea one step further. What if we crowdsourced the ballot arguments? she asked us. How would that look? Who polices it? How could people contribute, and should the arguments be limited to just two?

• Bowen asked for a resource with an easy-to-understand glossary for the public to learn about terms like social media, APIs and Creative Commons. I pointed out that Socialbrite.org has the best social media glossary around, and we’re happy to expand it. (It’s shareable under a Creative Commons BY license.)

• One especially good idea: Use the social graf when it comes to financial disclosure to identify which groups are backing what propositions.

• More Bowen: “I don’t think there’s anyone in California with a .gov address who’s done anything with a wiki.” It’s time to change that, and the group came close to agreement on setting up a public site to document all of these resources.

• Bowen: “95% of the voter education budget is spent on newsprint to print the voter information guide.” Almost zero for online info.

• I asked about restrictions against rewarding people for voting. In New Jersey, you can get free donuts or a cup of coffee for showing your voting slip. Not so in California, where giving a voter a donut for voting is a crime. There are no federal laws against the practice, Bowen told me. But there may be good reasons for the state’s prohibition, which prevents monied interests from shepherding poor voters to the polls to vote for a specific issue.

Grassroots politics resources

Some of the grassroots organizations and resources that were mentioned during the evening:

• The Sunlight Foundation for its pioneering work providing watchdog tools and advocating for political reform and transparency.

• Dan Ancona is building a “Democracy Dashboard,” which he showed me (looks really cool) and which will be ready for release soon.

• Uservoice, a way to turn customer feedback into action.

• Ideascale, a “crowdsourcing platform providing a way to suggest and discuss ideas for increasing openness and transparency.”

• Google Moderator, a tool that allows distributed communities to submit and vote on questions for talks, presentations and events.

• Civio, a voter activation network that debuts this fall.

• TransparentDemocracy, a site that helps you understand your election choices so you can vote more intelligently.

• SmartVoter and California Voter Foundation.

• The League of Women Voters, natch. and the League of Young Voters.

• Citability.org, making government “accessible, reliable and trasparent” through permalinks.

• Lala.com, a service that will give you a link to a song you want to cite so you can share it where you want.

• Adina Levin mentioned discussions around hacking open government at OSCON last week, though not sure where to look for info about that.

The post California’s Secretary of State: Come and collaborate! appeared first on Socialbrite.

For those of you who don’t know, Tactical Tech is an international NGO specialising in helping human rights advocates use information, communications and digital technologies to maximise the impact of their advocacy work. They empower by providing advocates with guides, tools, training and consultancy which help them develop the skills and tactics they need to increase the impact of their campaigning.

I’ve been fortunate to have worked with Tactical Tech over the past couple of years, and am a huge fan of their work. If you’re an NGO, or work with NGOs, then take a look at some of the tool kits they’ve put together. Just like any good sweet shop, there’s something in there for everyone.

Mobiles in a box

Designed to support campaigners looking to use mobile technology in their work
English: http://mobiles.tacticaltech.org
French: http://fr.mobiles.tacticaltech.org
Email: mobiles{at}tacticaltech.org

Message in-a-box

A set of strategic guides and tools to help non-profits create media and communicate for social change
English: http://www.messageinabox.tacticaltech.org
Email: miab{at}tacticaltech.org

Security in-a-box

Created to meet the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders
English: http://security.ngoinabox.org
Soon in Arabic, Russian, French, Spanish
Email: security{at}tacticaltech.org

Maps for Advocacy

An effective, practical guide to using maps in advocacy campaigns
English: http://www.tacticaltech.org/mapsforadvocacy
Email: mapping{at}tacticaltech.org

Visualising Information for Advocacy

A manual aimed at helping NGOs and advocates strengthen their campaigns and projects through visual communication
English: http://www.tacticaltech.org/infodesign
Soon available in Russian
Email: infodesign{at}tacticaltech.org

Quick ‘n’ Easy Guide to Online Advocacy

Aims to expose advocates to online services that are quick to use and easy to understand
English: http://onlineadvocacy.tacticaltech.org

Base NGO in-a-box

A collection of tools for the day-to-day running of small to medium sized NGOs
English: http://base.ngoinabox.org
Currently being updated and translated into a number of languages
Email: base{at}tacticaltech.org

All of these guides and toolkits are available online as downloadable files, or they can be posted to not-for-profits in a book/CD format, free of charge.

The post When help comes in a box appeared first on Socialbrite.

Fortunately, there are many applications (both desktop and web-based) to help you organize your followers and conversations on Twitter.

One such tool is Seesmic.

Below are three videos I created for folks who want to learn how to use Seesmic.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

The post How to use Seesmic Desktop appeared first on Socialbrite.

Last October, Brian Solis created the definitive list of Twitter Tools, a handy list of Twitter helper applications by key categories. Given Twitter’s explosive growth and crossing the chasm to more mainstream adoption, the palette of Twitter tools has most definitely expanded as Brian notes in his post to more than 1,000 apps.  I noticed this a few months ago, when a few of us analytics geeks fooled around with creating a Twitter Monitoring and Analytic Tools Taxonomy.

That’s why I’m was so excited to see that Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas have collaborated on an “alpha” version of the “Twitterverse” of Twitter tools covering a broader taxonomy of uses — from relationship management to workflow support and beyond.

You may remember that they also created the much replicated and shared  Conversation Prism — a map to help communications, service, marketing, and community professionals more effectively navigate the many social media tools. They are asking for feedback on what is missing, suggestions for categories, and other ways to improve the tool.

I would love to see a clickable version. Better yet, I’d like to see a wikispace that included descriptions, links to tutorials, and tips.

I’ve used the Conversation Prism diagram in almost every presentation or training I’ve done since Brian created it (with a credit to the creator and a mini advertisement to read Brian’s blog). The reaction I often get from folks in the room is a feeling of being overwhelmed. So, what I’d also like to see is the 101 version of the Twitterverse perhaps for the next iteration of the WeAreMedia Tool Box.

Thanks, Brian and Jesse, for a terrifically useful map to the Twitterverse.

This post originally appeared on Beth’s Blog.

The post A compendium of useful Twitter tools appeared first on Socialbrite.

The summit Women Who Tech brings together talented and renowned women breaking new ground in technology who use their tech savvy skills to transform the world and inspire change. We provide a supportive network for the vibrant and thriving community of women in technology professions by giving women an open platform to share their talents, experiences, and insights.

On May 12, 2009 the second annual Women Who Tech TeleSummit (held via phone and web) brought together hundreds of women from across the US and abroad in the non-profit, political and business world for an incredible lineup of thought provoking panels featuring technology change makers such as Joan Blades of MoveOn and Moms Rising, Allison Fine of Personal Democracy Forum, Lynne D Johnson of Fast Company, Charlene Li, Holly Ross of NTEN, Rashmi Sinha of SlideShare, Lisa Stone of BlogHer and more.

I had the great honor of moderating the panel Tools Galore in Online Communications:

From Google Earth to Wiki’s and Twitter this panel will give you the nuts and bolts of the latest tools organizations can utilize to ramp up their next online campaign. Panelists: Natalie Foster, DNC; Rebecca Moore, Google Earth Outreach; Laura Quinn, Idealware. Moderator: Amy Sample Ward, NetSquared

The sessions were short (only 50 minutes!) but packed in a tremendous amount of information.  Here’s a rundown of the Tools Galore session. See the slide deck above and notes from the panelists below:

Websites, Email & Constituent Management from Laura Quinn

Your website is you, online.

For many people who find you online, your website is the organization. Does it say what you really want it to about your organization? Your website should tell people who you and what you do. It’s also a good idea to use a content management system to manage your website’s content and updates, like WordPress, Joomla, and Squarespace. There are quite a few options for doing this, some open source and free others not. Idealware.org has reviews of many of these tools as well.

Email is a critical channel.

Use email to reach out to your constituents to let them know what you’re up to or to ask them to take action. New tools get talked about a lot, but don’t get caught up in new sexy tools and forget about the power of email. With email newsletters and emails as part of your campaigns you can move your supporters up the ladder of engagement to take more actions and help you more and more.

The details of your emails are critical. Things to consider and target include:

• sender line: who is your email “from”
• subject line: what are you saying before the email is even opened?
• opening: do you make your email seem personal, use your database to insert members’ names
• design: is it clean? does it rely on graphics/images?
• spam filters: are you using spam-like words in any of your content?
• take action: are your calls to action clear and immediately stand out
• footer: is there an option for opting out or unsubscribing?

There are quite a few tools for creating, sending and managing your enewsletters and email campaigns. Two tools include:

Vertical Response:

• 10,000 emails per month free for 501c3s
• After 10,000 emails, prices are reasonable.
• Reliable and sophisticated, though complex in areas
• Strong in deliverability and integration

Network for Good:

• $29.95/month for up to 20,000 emails, and $2/thousand after
• Great template options, including custom designs for $199
• Reliable and sophisticated, though complex in areas
• Sustainable product and solid support from a nonprofit specialist

Don’t forget your Constituent Database.

Think carefully about your constituents when setting up your database or management tool. Consider the groups you will want to track or by which you will want to arrange members: donors, activists, organizers, stakeholders, partners, volunteers, supporters, and so on. Depending on your goals and your work, you may want to use a constituent management tool that is really good at tracking actions and activists, but not as good at other things. Or, you may need to get one that can work for many kinds of groups. Everything revolves around the audience.

Social Networks & Twitter from Natalie Foster

Two Principles:

1. Firstly, know what you want to get out of your campaign or communications online. What is your real output? 2. Prioritize your ROI around the biggest impact, whether that’s raising funds, engaging people, or something else. Email still gets a good response – if it will best help you reach your desired output, don’t feel obligated to short change your capacity there to try to use social networking or something else.

The trust that comes with using social networks (engaging people you know, who engage the people they know, and so on) is what creates the power of using social networking tools.

Facebook General Growth data:

• More than 200 million active users
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
• More than 3.5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
• More than 20 million users update their statuses at least once each day
• More than 4 million users become fans of Pages each day

A couple of examples:

• GreenPeace didn’t have everything they needed to conduct an email campaign so they set up a Myspace profile. They were active and dedicated to making it work and raised 90,000+ friends. They were able to use the platform for organizing offline events, finding and collaborating with volunteer organizers, and more.
• Natalie has found that many more people are online and available to take action or respond in the evening – sending a message or call to action via Facebook in the evening can garner far more responses

Twitter still has a small user base compared to all those who are generally “online” – compared to those with email, for example. But, if you have a good percentage of your constinuents who are early adopters and tech savvy, it’s a great place to be. And it’s something to monitor regardless as it is growing more and more.

Twitter data:

• An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 new accounts are registered each day.
• Only 5 percent of all Twitter users have more than 250 followers.
• Only 0.8 percent have more than 1,000

A couple of examples:

• Recently, Rep. Butterfield was speaking from the floor about the proposed energy bill on the hill. Representatives from Energy Action Coalition were present at the hearing and were using Twitter to send updates from the White House in real time to those on the outside following along. This was a great way for EAC to create a meaningful channel into the discussions and to maintain transparency.
• The White House opened up their Twitter account during the peak of the Swine Flu hysteria. They accepted questions via Twitter and then had an expert reply via the White House blog. A great example of using Twitter for real information exchange and for conversation.

Helpful resources on Twitter:

• Pew Internet report
• O’Reilly New Radar Report: Twitter and the Micro Messaging Revolution
• Deanna Zandt wrote this great beginner’s guide
• Very cool project from 2008: Twitter Vote Report

Google Earth Outreach from Rebecca Moore

Google’s mapping tools may seem like an obscure tool to use in your work but these aren’t traditional maps: the new generation of mapping technology is fully interactive, enables storytelling, and more. (Did you know you can embed an audio file in Google Earth?) You can embed Google Earth into your website to present information to your community that really helps tell the story of your work and your issue.

Google’s Mapping tools include:

• Google Earth
• Google Maps & MyMaps
• Google Sketchup
• Google Earth API (plugin)
• Google Maps API

Examples:

• Neighborhoods Against Irresponsible Logging (NAIL): When planners distributed a confusing and hard-to-understand map, many people in Rebecca’s local community didn’t “get” what kind of logging plan was really in store. She re-mapped the data in Google Earth and shared the new map with community members, local politicians, and presented it at the community meeeting to a much different response. Al Gore signed the petition, other politicians wanted to see it, and more. The new map galvanized the community because they were able to really understand the impact of the plan. With the information and story this new map was able to convey, they were able to stop the logging plans. Read the full case study here.
• Appalachain Voices: With ILoveMountains.org, Appalachain Voices created an always-available tour for politicians, activists, and interested citizens to fly over areas of the Appalachain area of the USA devestated by coal mining. Raising awareness and providing local communities a venue for sharing their story. You can read the full case study here. Impact of the campaign: 13,000+ people from every U.S. state and 30+ countries signed their online petition to stop the dumping of mountaintop mining waste into waterways; More than 150 congressional co-sponsors from the U.S. House of Representatives; EPA just halted all new permits and ordered a review of the practice.

How Google Earth & Maps can help Non-Profits:

• Show what is at stake – don’t just tell people
• Raise awareness for your cause and projects
• Reach a broader audience: More than 500M Google Earth users today; Drive people to your site; Gain members, volunteers, donors, media coverage
• Plan and visualize your projects and results: Where are we getting (or giving) donations? Organize projects, such as a volunteer beach cleanup activity.
• Educate, inform and move people emotionally – inspire action
• Influence decision-makers; impact public policy

To get started and to review more case studies, visit: http://earth.google.com/outreach

Questions & Answers

What do you think about the idea of organizations only using social media tools as an online presence instead of a traditional website?

Laura: Your website acts as a home base; where you can tell people who you are, what you do, and so on. If you are able to accomplish that and create a homebase elsewhere, then consider it. This isn’t about using social media so websites aren’t important; consider what your goal is online and how your website and other social media support that.

Natalie: It’s really about numbers as well. There are many people on Facebook; but far more people have the internet and are not on Facebook than those who are.

Rebecca: It can be generational as well, with some groups not necessarily wanting to or visiting your organization’s website and others not wanting to or visiting your other spaces online. It really depends on the audience you are trying to engage.

We are all after real world changes, so how do we measure our use of these tools on real world impact?

Laura: What are your goals? Link to things that can be measured. Web metrics, talking to people, emails (who opens, clicks, etc.). Don’t measure things for the sake of measurement. There are myriad things that “could” be measured. Focus what you measure on things that translate into real world impact.

Natalie: This is the question that I think the whole session is about. Tools are just tactics, just like phone-banking or canvassing. What are the tools that get you there – the number of friends you have on Facebook doesn’t mean you’ve won the campaign. If you start with a theory of change, you can then design tactics around it.

Rebecca: Need to be careful with sexy tools; we can forget what we’re really using them for, what the actual goals are. Think about what your trying to accomplish, then what kind of work, maintenance, and so forth will be required. In the Google Earth case studies, the projects all had real world impact but they remained focused on that, and not on just using everything that maps can do.

Why is Joomla listed twice? Is it considered more complex or simple?

Laura: Joomla can work for both a simple site and a complex one.

Can you talk about difference between keeping in touch, vs. call to action. What about idea that e-newsletter is “dead”? Mixed opinions all over the place.

Laura: the difference between those are relatively straightforward – keeping in touch is about passing on your good work, keeping people invovled with what you’re doing, while a call to action specifically asks them to do something. I don’t know people other than that psuedo-Obama-staff guy who would say that e-News is dead. Though that guy had an interesting point about possibly breaking enews down into shorter bits, and less of “newsletter” format. but I would argue strongly that updates are critical.

I see on the slides different services, is there one comprehensive program where we can manage everything?

Laura: that’s a really hard question to answer – it really depends on your needs. vendors will say they do everything, but the more they try to do, often, the less powerful they are in any one area. and more expensive. something like Salesforce is very configurable, so it can be a good option to track lots of types of constituents – but it will take considerable time and expertise to setup.

What is difference between a blog, social media tools, and websites?

Laura: Social media is a big umbrella term that includes blogs, social networks, other online methods by which people pass your message online from person to person. A blog tends to be specifically personal posts, in date order. A website could include some of these things, but tends to be more of a “home base” for your organization, including basics like your mission and programs.

Learn more:

• WomenWhoTech.org
• WeAreMedia.org

This post originally appeared at Amy Sample Ward’s Version of NPTech.

The post Tools galore at Women Who Tech Telesummit appeared first on Socialbrite.

To make managing multiple sites easier, Facebook allows you to post your social media activities on Twitter by posting tweets directly from your Facebook page (and visa versa).

How to link your Twitter and Facebook profiles

After you log into your Facebook account, follow these steps:

1. Search for “Twitter” in Facebook’s search field:

2. Click the “Allow” button in the “Allow Application” window:

3. After being prompted to log-in to Twitter, you will come to this page:

4. Anything you type in the “What are you doing?” field will be instantly posted to Twitter:

5. If you want your Facebook status to be updated with every post you make from Twitter, click the following (see warning below):

Warning: Posting every tweet to your status can be annoying to your Facebook friends (I learned the hard way ). Consider how often you use Twitter before selecting this option.

Have other tips or best practices?

The post How to link your Twitter and Facebook profiles appeared first on Socialbrite.

And seasoned practitioners are debating whether a particular social media tool is in and of itself a strategy.   And, while it may be an argument about semantics, it further illustrates this tension.

The “is Twitter a strategy or tool debate” was fueled as Twitter got lots of attention (and  hype) as part of the coverage of last week’s protests in Moldova. Ivan Boothe points out in his post “The Fire and Food: Why There’s No Such Thing As A Twitter Revolution,” the real-time use of Twitter as an organizing tool is a not revolution.  Twitter has been used during the G20 protests and crowd-sourcing the location of a torch when it was passing through San Francisco.   And while quite, different from the “mainstream” use of Twitter by nonprofits, Ivan warns against tool-driven decisions for activism campaigns:

Stretching his metaphor of fire and food, Ivan says:

Ivan ends with this advice:

Colin Delaney puts it another way:

Again, I ain’t hatin’ on Twitter, but professional communicators ought to know why they’re using it and what they’re trying to get out of it. Otherwise, they’re just jumping on a crowded bandwagon without even knowing where it’s headed. And our public discourse is shallow enough as it is.

Once this is in place, it is important to understand how the tool can or can’t be use to reach that goal, what the limitations are, and how to take a “multi-channel” approach. This requires getting your hands on the tools and doing some experiments. But not wild experiments – having a objective, metrics to monitor, and a reflection process.

DigiActive Guide to Twitter

The recently published The DigiActive Guide to Twitter for Activism (click here to download the PDF version) offers some mini-case studies organized by objective.  The objectives:

1.  Spread the Word
2.  Campaigns
3.  Coordinating Collective Action
4.  Crowdsourcing
5.  Personal Security

There is a useful section that explains the getting started steps.  What’s missing is a Step 0 – which is asking the question – “Is Twitter the best tool to reach your campaign strategy outcomes?”  The rest of the guide is a great basic primer on getting started with Twitter.

What are some of the best examples of digital activism that use Twitter?

Resources

Colin Delaney: Strategy or Tool, On the Metaphysics of Twitter
Alan Rosenblatt: Is Twitter a Strategy? Like, Come On
Ivan Boothe: The Fire and the Food: Why There’s No Such Thing As A Twitter Revolution
Lina Srivastava: Telling Your Across Media Platforms To Effect Social Change
Jon Pincus: Twitter Is A Strategy
Seminal: Activism At the Speed of Skittles
BL Ochman: Ten Reasons Your Company Shouldn’t Be on Twitter
Digiactive: Using Twitter To Coordinate Protests in London

This entry originally appeared on Beth’s Blog.

The post Twitter as a tool for activism appeared first on Socialbrite.