See What’s Out There

Charities see potential in tapping young Web users to promote their causes online

By Wailin Wong

Tribune reporter

April 30, 2008

Online social networks used to be just gathering places for friends and long-lost acquaintances. Then the marketers arrived, followed by politicians and job recruiters, all looking to tap into a growing mass of young people who are spending much of their time on the Web. Now, non-profit organizations are testing ways to raise money through these networks, betting that the Internet’s viral nature will open fresh avenues for fundraising and marketing.

It’s a big change for non-profits as they shift from direct-mail campaigns and relying on the checkbooks of older givers to the unpredictable whims of Web popularity. Though the transition is nascent, charities see potential in recruiting young activists who already use online networks to broadcast their identities and make connections.

Actress Cynthia Osuji of New York is a case in point. She became interested in a women’s health non-profit when she received a mass e-mail about auditions for a Circle of Health International-sponsored benefit production of Eve Ensler’s “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer.” The group also was seeking board members to plan the show.

After Osuji, 26, won a spot in the cast and joined the board, she added a copy of the show poster to her MySpace profile. Out-of-town friends who couldn’t attend the show ended up making donations and two “Facebook friends,” casual acquaintances who learned of the benefit through the site, came to the March performance.

Osuji said the show brought her back into community service, an activity she hadn’t pursued since high school. “Violence against women and women in conflict [areas] is something that’s very personal to me,” she said.

Circle of Health International has its own Facebook page, and 26-year-old Matt Bieber clicked on an application called Causes that allowed him to invite more than 100 of his 200-plus contacts to publicize the non-profit on their profile pages. His recruitment effort was akin to distributing virtual bumper stickers with the option to donate through the site. Eleven of his friends added the non-profit to their profiles.

Sean Parker, who helped create Causes, said, “If you can activate a group of people and get some of those people to replicate the process … you’ve got the basis for a movement.”

Outside of general communities like Facebook and MySpace, there are also social networking sites dedicated to philanthropy such as YourCause.com, HopeEquity .org and actor Kevin Bacon’s SixDegrees.org.

Now established institutions like the MacArthur Foundation and the Case Foundation want to know more about the tie between digital life and philanthropy. They are funding studies of online social networks, civic engagement in the Millennial Generation and philanthropy in virtual worlds like Second Life.

“We’re not claiming [online networks are] the panacea for philanthropies,” said Ben Binswanger, the Case Foundation’s chief operating officer. “[But] we think it’s way too early to dismiss it as an Internet fad. … We’re going to keep pushing down this path because we see enough spark here to make it interesting.”

Power to engage

For non-profits, the power of social networks is engagement, not necessarily sheer dollar numbers.

“If you send out a direct-mail piece, you never know if people open it up or not, unless they mail a check back to you,” said Steve Byers, director of development and communications at Kansas-City based WaterPartners International, which promotes safe drinking water. “With the online community, we know which pages they’re clicking on. … They want to provide feedback and interact with the organization in ways that are very exciting and challenging.”

WaterPartners created three fictional characters from Ethiopia, India and Honduras and placed them in a virtual village on Second Life to illustrate the challenges of accessing potable water. The avatars also have profiles on MySpace and Facebook, and shots of their Second Life village are posted on photo-sharing site Flickr. While the amount of money raised so far is tiny, Byers said he could see online marketing and fundraising slowly displacing direct mail.

“I’ve been in fundraising for over 20 years, so this is really kind of a brave new world for me,” he said. “I’ve really had to rethink my whole approach to fundraising through the Internet.”

Clearly, online fundraising is in its infancy. A survey by The Chronicle of Philanthropy showed that online giving for 187 large charities totaled $1.2 billion in 2006, up from $881 million in 2005. But of 147 organizations, 103 said online donations accounted for less than 1 percent of total contributions in 2006.

“There is no really large, significant fundraising happening on social networks, but there’s a sense in the non-profit community that that’s where the prospects come from,” said Michael Hoffman, chief executive of Chicago non-profit consulting firm See3 Communications.

Building relationships

Some non-profits that have a presence on social networking sites have discovered a new relationship with users.

Carie Lewis, the Humane Society’s Internet marketing manager, said she finds herself responding to lots of mundane questions on pet care as a result of maintaining a presence on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr. More important, Lewis said she’s discovered supporters outside the organization’s traditional demographic of women in their 50s.

“It was a lot of work, but it really paid off for us,” Lewis said. The Humane Society has raised more than $33,000 on Facebook from users who have set up pages to protest everything from puppy mills to seal clubbing in Namibia. The amount of money raised is small, but convinced Lewis’ bosses that the online efforts have merit.

“Traditionally, I think non-profits focus on high-value donors, and what MySpace provides is an enormous network of people who are able to get involved through volunteering, offline events and donating in smaller amounts,” said Lee Brenner, who oversees activism-related content on MySpace.

Link [Chicago Tribune]

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

Heather Mansfield over at DIOSA | Communications give us the heads up on how the MySpace experience is evolving:

MySpace soft launched Apps yesterday… a list of those currently available can be found here:

http://apps.myspace.com

I am testing the “Rate My Page” and the “iThink” Apps on my page:

http://www.myspace.com/nonprofitorganizations

It’s definitely going to have a huge impact on how people use MySpace… and MySpace design… I’ll be curious to watch how nonprofits on MySpace use Apps. Anyone else out there experimenting?

Heather will be demonstrating the new MySpace Apps in a webinar in April. You can learn more about her webinars here.

I had a conversation today with a major Jewish Federation about technology change. They are thinking about the future and wanted to look seriously into how changes in technology will impact their activities in the future. They are thinking beyond fundraising to service delivery, health care, and many other segments of community activity for which they are responsible. I tried to give them a framework in which to think about this kind of change and we discussed different models to explore and teach this subject.

The change taking place with technology isn’t simply about operational efficiencies. These changes in technology are creating fundamental changes in how people see their role, the community and their identity. In philanthropy, for example, the people-to-people connectivity of a Kiva is not a new concept, but the internet makes it possible on a new scale.

Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Ariel Beery, one of a whole crop of young technology savvy Jewish thinkers and creative types. Walking in the footsteps of my friend Yossi Abramowitz, these folks are putting out cultural products and shaking the traditional tree with new ideas.

Ariel Beery’s ideas are included on a blog I have been reading called The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy. I was turned on to this blog by a friend and then given it to review as part of the Nonprofit Blog Exchange, which introduces nonprofit bloggers (like me) to other nonprofit bloggers through our work.

How do you think the web and technology change will impact identity? Is Facebook and MySpace a trend? a tool? or a fundamental shift in how people connect and communicate and create networks. Read Ariel Beery’s ideas here and let me know what you think.

We are working with our clients to engage constituents on sites like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace. Why? Because we believe that increasingly we will be seeing engagement move to these social networking models and away from email.

Why? Because email… what’s the technical term?… sucks.

Here’s today’s headline for you:

NEARLY 95% OF EMAIL IS JUNK

Nearly 95 percent of the e-mail sent in 2007 has been “spam,” junk advertising loathed by its recipients, according to a report released Wednesday by a US Web security firm.

The amount of junk e-mail has skyrocketed despite a 2004 US CAN-SPAM Act that placed restrictions on sending unwanted messages and sanctioned penalties for “spammers,” according to California-based Barracuda Networks Inc.

Junk messages made up an estimated 70 percent of e-mail the year the act was passed, the Barracuda report indicates.

“The spam war is a continuous battle between spammers and security vendors,” said Barracuda chief executive Dean Drako.

“Security vendors now require 24-by-7 defense operations to continuously monitor the Internet for new spam trends and distribute new defensive solutions immediately.”

Barracuda said it based its findings on analysis of more than a billion e-mail messages received daily by its approximately 50,000 customers worldwide.

Spammers cunningly hide their identities by routing e-mails through other people’s websites, blogs or computers, according to Barracuda.

Link to the original story.

Most nonprofits are thinking about how to reach younger audiences. Here is an insightful video about their behaviors. Many of you have already seen this video called A Vision of Students Today, added to YouTube over a month ago and now the 94th most discussed video of all time on YouTube with over 6,000 comments. For those who haven’t, I recommend it (be patient through the first 90 seconds of premise).

The last session at the Convio Summit in Austin was well attended, and a fun way to finish the event on Friday. Called “Web 2.0 – New Outreach and Fundraising Techniques,” the topic of this workshop is something every nonprofit marketing manager and online communications professional wants to talk about. The presenters were Carie Lewis of the Humane Society, and Tim Fullerton of Oxfam America, who both gave great insight on what’s happening in the trenches – actual day-to-day examples of how nonprofits can work online communities to gain new supporters, coming directly from the people writing the blog posts, friending people on MySpace, and testing new strategies.

Carie opened with an intro to social media. She says social networks are “not just a bunch of lonely teenage boys.” 84% of people comment, 82% message others, and 39% create content. She notes that people really rely on social networks for influence on decision-making. To me, this confirms as viable the strategy of finding those community leaders who will carry your torch for you, and then messaging them with content to distribute to their friends. She acknowledged it can be very time consuming, and reiterated a suggestion See3 often makes to our clients: get interns and volunteers!

Both HSUS and Oxfam’s primary efforts are on what Carie calls “the big four”: MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. I agree based on sheer traffic volume, the first 3 are no-brainers for any nonprofit to start. However, neither Carie nor Tim discussed social bookmarking or social news strategies in any depth, and Digg, Stumble Upon, and del.icio.us certainly have enough traffic to warrant a deep approach.

On MySpace: Both Oxfam and HSUS prove what we already know from Greenpeace and others – MySpace is a great place to get new advocates. How did they get so many friends? One at a time. When she started the MySpace page, Carie literally requested friends one by one. Tim started by seeing who was already talking about Oxfam. They recommend spending an hour per day building your network. Oxfam now has a very nice custom page. They both use the MySpace blog, which reminds us again to speak to the community where they are, don’t try and drag them over to your main blog. HSUS is now getting 200 friend requests/day. Of the people that friend them, 29% found their page via search, and 13% came from their website. If you are a small organization, you won’t get that traffic. But 36% discovered them through a friend’s profile. This shows the viral potential of raising awareness in the social networks. Tim says MySpace is not good for fundraising, although we have seen some examples of orgs running successful fundraising campaigns, such as Dollars for Darfur.

On Facebook: I think everyone agrees it’s very early. So far, the only real strategy to analyze besides creating groups is the Causes application. Tim says it’s great to see thousands of people join the Oxfam cause, but he does not know who those people are and has no way to follow up with them. Carie says HSUS has raised $20k through the Causes app, though I’m not finding that in my search of Causes. Regardless, very few orgs (though some) have raised real cash via the Causes app. Developing custom Facebook apps may be the way to go, as already discussed on this blog.

On YouTube: everyone loves video. Oxfam ran a campaign against Starbucks with a video being crucial to the resulting success. HSUS ran a video contest during the outcry over the Michael Vick story that received 22 submissions, over 43,000 views of the contest intro video (featuring Hulk Hogan), and garnered 2,000 new list members. They ran their contest on YouTube, but See3 has a private label, fully customizable video contest hosting, management, and marketing solution.

On blogging and blogger outreach: They both moderate every single comment on the blog (they recommend not to allow auto-posting), and someone responds personally to each comment. They also suggest: make it personal, using your real voice; don’t reprint press releases or other web stories; be concise (advice I am not following here ). There was a question from the audience on blogger outreach, from someone who got no traffic from buying an ad on a relevant blog, and got no love from the blogger either. Carie and Tim say customize and personalize each message to bloggers, warm them up, and sell your story. Carie suggests offering exclusivity on a news story in return for promotion, and reminds us to always ask them to link back to your blog. Shana Glickfield of Issue Dynamics Inc., a blogger and consultant on blogger relations, added that your first contact with a blogger should not be an ask. You should touch base with them prior to your campaign, send them swag and information of interest on an ongoing basis.

On Second Life: Tim and Carie both say stay away. I say wait for the MacArthur Foundation’s year-long exploration of the role of philanthropy in virtual worlds, and for significantly increased daily activity on Second Life, and in the meantime focus on video and other live action social media opportunities.

What the Orthodox Jewish sect can teach us about how to use Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and the emerging social web.

It would seem that the ultra-orthodox Chabad Lubavitch have little in common with your nonprofit. Whether you are a direct service provider, an international relief agency, an advocacy group or a trade association, you probably couldn’t imagine what a bunch of black-suited, black-hatted ultra-religious Jews could teach you about outreach, marketing and fundraising. And it seems far fetched to imagine that they have something to say about social networking and internet strategy, in all of its universalistic narcissistic decadence.

But alas, they have a lot to teach us.

I don’t know what you know, if anything, about the Chabad-Lubavitch, so first, a little background. Here I am going to quote extensively from the Wikipedia article on Lubavitch.

Chabad-Lubavitch (also known as Chabad, Habad or Lubavitch), is one of the largest branches of Hasidic Judaism and one of the largest Jewish movements worldwide, especially in the United States, the Former Soviet Union, Europe and Israel. Chabad (חב”ד ) is a Hebrew acronym for “חכמה Chochmah, בינה Binah, דעת Da’at” (”Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge“). Lubavitch, taken from the Russian Любавичи, Lyubavichi, is the name of the town that served as the movement’s headquarters for over a century. In 1993 there were over 200,000 adherents to the movement some estimate today that there are over a million.

OK, so we have this Jewish sect with maybe a million members. If you live in New York, or a college town, you have probably seen some Chabaniks around town. They look like this.

(photo by Mordechai Der Yid)

Chabad, unlike other ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects, don’t keep to themselves. They have it in their DNA to go out into the world and, with incredible passion, reach out to every Jew they can.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson spurred on the movement to what has become known as shlichus (”being emissaries [performing outreach]”) after becoming Rebbe in 1950-1951. As a result, Chabad shluchim (”emissaries”, sing. shliach) have moved all over the world with the stated mission of helping all Jews, regardless of denomination or affiliation. They assist Jews with all their religious needs, as well as with physical assistance and spiritual guidance and teaching. The ultimate goal is to encourage Jews to learn more about their Jewish heritage and to practice Judaism.

The movement, motivated by Rabbi Schneerson, trained and ordained thousands of rabbis, educators, ritual slaughterers, and ritual circumcisers, who are then accompanied by their spouses to many locations around the world. Typically a young Lubavitch rabbi and his wife, in their early twenties, with one or two children, will move to a new location, and as they settle in will raise a large family who as a family unit, will aim to fulfill their mandate of bringing Jewish people closer to Orthodox Judaism and encouraging gentiles to adhere to the Seven Laws of Noah. They will carefully seek out and search for and recruit Jews they have identified and contact them and start the process of encouraging them to observe Judaism, encourage Jews to strengthen their commitment to Judaism. All over the world Lubavitchers (including those not formally in the position of emissaries) assist and support the religious needs of tens of thousands of Jews.

Chabad Houses

Chabad today has centers around the world. Centers are called a Chabad Houses. They are Jewish community centers providing educational and outreach activities for the Jewish community. Level of observance is irrelevant; no minimal level of observance is a requirement for using facilities. The centers are informal in setup. They primarily serve both educational and observance purposes. Effort is made to provide an atmosphere in which the nonobservant will not feel intimidated by any perceived contrast between their lack of knowledge of Jewish practice and the advanced knowledge of some of the people they meet there.

Mitzvah campaigns

Chabad aims to attract non-Orthodox Jews to become Orthodox, and believes this is part of the process of bringing the Messiah. This practice is called “mivtzoim” - meaning “campaigns” or “endeavors.” At one time, Schneerson issued a call to every Jew: “Even if you are not fully committed to a Torah life, do something. Begin with a mitzvah - any mitzvah - its value will not be diminished by the fact that there are others which you are not prepared to do”. Schneerson also suggested ten specific mitzvot that he believed were ideally suited for the emissaries to introduce to non-observant Jews. These were: lighting candles before Shabbat and the Jewish holidays by Jewish women; putting on tefillin; affixing a mezuzah; regular Torah study; giving charity; purchasing Jewish books; keeping kosher; kindness to others; Jewish education, and keeping the family purity laws.

Camps

Chabad has set up an extensive network of camps around the world, most using the name Gan Israel, a name chosen by Rabbi Schneerson for the first overnight camp. There are 1,200 sites serving 210,000 children—most of whom do not come from Orthodox homes. Of these, 500 camps are in the United States.

Campus

In recent years Chabad has greatly expanded its reach on university and college campuses. Chabad Student Centers are active on over 100 campuses, and Chabad offers varied activities at an additional 150 universities worldwide. Professor Alan Dershowitz has said that “Chabad’s presence on college campuses today is absolutely crucial”, and “We cannot rest until Chabad is on every major college campus in the world”.

So what we have here is a group that is mission driven. They have created a vast network of people able to carry their message out to the world. And they are investing in young kids and college kids.

I must mention that the Chabad are not without controversy. Rav Eliezer Shach, who was the patriarch of some of the largest ultra-orthodox communities around the world acerbically called Chabad the “sect closest to Judaism” because of the movement within Chabad to proclaim their late Rabbi Schnerson the messiah.

In addition Chabad has been active in the right-wing of Israeli politics, while at the same time taking a non-Zionist stance (meaning the modern State of Israel is not a theologically consistent phenomenon and that “the only thing that unites Jews is the Torah, not a secular state that happens to be planted on holy land.”

And while I have a serious problem with both of those issues, there is no arguing with their success in building communities of active supporters all over the world. There is no arguing with their success in getting secular Jews to take on some aspects of Jewish observance (a high priority among those who believe intermarriage and assimilation are the biggest threats to Jewish continuity). There is no arguing with their success in getting high-net-worth individuals to part with their money. And there is no arguing with their success in getting people who don’t even believe in their world view to support them every year with donations large and small.

And don’t think that they have this massive centralized fundraising machine that makes it all happen. More from Wikipedia:

Fundraising

Funds for activities of a Chabad center rely entirely on the local community. Chabad centers do not receive funding from Lubavitch headquarters. For the day to day operations, local emissaries do all the fundraising by themselves. The monies fundraised in the local community is invested in that local community. The emissary takes a minimum salary and seldom goes on vacation. Sue Fishcoff writes, “Emissaries in the field may sink millions of dollars into their center, synagogues and Mikvahs, but their own homes are modest, again patterned after their Rebbe’s lack of personal ostentation.”

So how have they done it? How have they been able to get people who will never adopt their lifestyle or world view to support them financially? How are they able to send ultra-Orthodox rabbis to places like Boise, Idaho and expect – know – that they will make it somehow? How are they able to bring non-religious Jews into their synagogues and to their events when their world view and lifestyle is so foreign? And finally, what can their success teach us about fundraising generally and online social networks specifically?

A Theory of Acceptance – Or At Least Tolerance

If I went into a typical Orthodox synagogue in a t-shirt and jeans during the Sabbath service, I would likely have someone ask me to leave. They would tell me that, while they mean no offense, that my clothes are not appropriate for the day or the place and that I am welcome to return in more appropriate attire. If I walk in to a Chabad synagogue on the Sabbath in a t-shirt and jeans I am likely to be given an Aliah – a special honor when you are called to participate in the Torah service. From the Chabad perspective, the one who doesn’t know enough to wear the right clothes is just the person who needs to be brought in and cultivated, not turned away.

Another example. Most Orthodox synagogues close off their parking lots on the Sabbath. Why? You are not allowed to drive on the Sabbath according to Orthodox rules, so having the parking lot open is an tacit invitation to drive, an invitation to break the Sabbath. Makes sense, no? While the Lubavitch take their Sabbath observance very seriously, their parking lots are open and they won’t tell you not to drive. If you drive, drive. Just come.

When Conservative or Orthodox synagogues have group Friday night meals (the beginning of the Sabbath), the evening will include rubber chicken that you most likely had to pay $35 (in advance) to get in the first place. In a Chabad House, you will often get a more elaborate and home-cooked meal (usually prepared by the Rabbi’s wife) and a side order of rousing singing and flowing alcohol. It’s a lot of fun. In fact, the feelings of camaraderie are infectious. No one will ever be made to feel that they are bad or wrong for not taking the Lubavitch path. And no one will ever be asked to pay!

In these three examples we get the core of Lubavitch success that I will try to distill into a few principles:

· Show acceptance and understanding for where people come from
· Never make people feel bad about what they don’t know
· Make them feel welcome in your space
· Teach them by first by example and only explicitly when they ask
· Give them small, non-threatening steps to advance their connection

The most secular person in the world can have a terrific time at a Lubavitch event or even attend their services on a regular basis. They can enjoy speaking to a rabbi whose life is light-years removed from the secular world. And they routinely go out and tell anyone who will listen about the amazing soul that accepts the visitor and gives of themselves without asking for anything in return. That’s magic. Imagine people talking about your organization like that!

Taking the Lessons to Our Fundraising

The lesson I take away from their success for organizational fundraising is that guilt is a losing long-term strategy. Yes, it can work in the short-term. But instead of making me feel bad about what I haven’t done or what I need to do, make me feel good about what you are doing. Inspire me with your dedication. Allow me to participate in a small way, but don’t treat me like a small person for it. Cultivate those who take the first step as if they can become the biggest donor you have and make them feel important for whatever it is they have chosen to do.

The number of organizations that use guilt is staggering. It’s an easy strategy to implement and we see it a lot in direct mail. I recently received a mailing with a nickel in it. “Don’t let this nickel go to waste” they begged me. The same is true with mailing labels. Here are these things with your name on it and you will surely feel guilty is you use them and don’t pay us. This is not how you create deep connections and long-term supporters. (Here is an article in Fundraising Success Magazine that looked at and ranked emotional motivators for fundraising. Guilt was near the end of the list.)

Another lesson that organizations can take from the Lubavitch is in having people on board who are passionate about what they do. Now I don’t expect that most organizations can get to the level of passion of the Lubavitch. These folks believe that their lives, all of our lives, and the future of the universe is at stake. That’s strong motivation and most people who work at your nonprofit won’t come with that level of dedication. But if you are choosing between two employees and one is deeply passionate about your mission and the other one, though more qualified, is seeing it as just another job, pick for passion. (You can see this dedication at work in many organizations. I am seeing it more and more with environmental group staff who are genuinely scared for our collective future and energized by the change that is possible. You can see this dedication in the staff of the New Israel Fund — those in Israel in particular — where I was once a fundraiser. The Israel staff wants desperately to live in a democratic Israel and so they live the change they want to see every day.)

Lessons for Social Networks

The reason I wrote this post was because of a eureka moment I had in connecting the Lubavitch success with social networking. I had this moment last week when I was in Manhattan and I passed the Chabad Mitzvah Tank in Midtown. I had my handy-dandy video camera with me, so you can see:

(I have to pause thank Beka Economopoulos here for planting the seeds of this idea. Beka works for Greenpeace. I saw her speak at the Yearly Kos conference and then suggested that we at See3 invite her to co-present with us at the Craigslist Foundation Nonprofit Boot Camp in New York a couple weeks ago. Beka runs the Greenpeace online organizing program and has seen some amazing success with it and we are grateful for her participation with us in what turned out to be a terrific and well-attended session.)

The average organization, if they have a social network strategy at all, think of social networks as a way to meet people, with the goal of then convincing those people to give the organization their email address, go to their donation link or otherwise become members/donors/activists of the organization in the same way everyone else is. Meaning, they will get the same emails, see the same website, and take the same path to further activity as other prospects. They are using the social networks to meet people, but only see their outreach as successful if they can get those people to do what everyone else is doing.

Part of the problem here is that organizational management hasn’t yet internalized social networking metrics. For Greenpeace, those 68,000 friends on MySpace are just like 68,000 email addresses. For most organizations that would not be true. You are looking at email opens and average gifts from your online donations and these metrics are not really reflective of the potential you have in social networking. (Allan Benamer, a big believer in these tools, writes about this problem on his blog. You should also be reading Beth Kanter and Ruby Sinreich on these subjects.)

Now think of the Lubavitch philosophy. You are a MySpace person. You are comfortable on MySpace. I build a MySpace page to show you I can speak your language. This is where you live. Acceptance means I have to stop trying to get you to leave. Acceptance means creating things you can do right there on MySpace. Acceptance means treating my ability to message you on MySpace the same as if you are on my email list – without forcing you to change.

When you start to care enough you might come on over to our site. When you are impressed with how we “walk the walk” you might get out of your comfort zone by doing something offline. I am not going to force you to change. I am not going to limit your access or the information you can get because you live this “alternative lifestyle”. I am going to respect you for who you are! (Or at least I am going to pretend to.)

All of this is connected to the permission-based marketing society we are in today. Top down advertising is working less and less. Word-of-mouth is more important than ever.

Showing people what you do and why it matters is critical to capture people’s attention. Getting your supporters to recruit others is becoming a central strategy. Your content and your passion are what will carry the day and bring people to your cause. Social media marketing is not about tricks or techniques as much as it is about finding your authentic voice and inviting people to share in your passion at the level they are most comfortable in the venue of their choosing.

[The irony of all of this is that Chabad-Lubavitch does everything wrong on their own MySpace page, which I assume is run by one person in a decentralized way. They don’t follow their own script for offline engagement, which would also bring them online success. On MySpace they seem insular, political and shrill – everything they don’t seem in person.]

In Sum

Be passionate in your work and be grateful to those who come and take interest – at every level. Meet people where they are without judgment or condescension. Make your programs and your content accessible to those who come from a different place than you do. This philosophy is the core of what you need to be successful in social networking strategy.

Tell me how you do or don’t apply these principles to your own online and offline marketing by leaving a comment.

On Friday I went to a social networking panel at Yearly Kos and this is the last thing I have to write up from the conference. The title of the session was “Politics 2.0 - How social networks and new media are changing politics.” On the panel we had Amy Rubin, Stephanie Taylor, Beka Economopoulos and Ruby Sinreich. I didn’t stay for the entire thing, but what I caught was good.

First up was Ruby Sinreich. Her subject was, what makes for effective social networks. Here are some notes:

1. Strong Social Ties
a. personal relationships
b. trust
c. awareness - you have to know the network exists

2. Common Story - we have to be on the same page (eg. Sorry Everybody)

3. Communication grid so people can talk to each other

eg. drinkingliberally.com which is online and offline
one-to-many. You have to have the ability to communicate.

4. Shared Resources
a. data information - eg. wikipedia
b. skills and expertise
c. money
d. space

5. Clarity of Purpose
a. do you feel like a member?
b. knowing what the network is for

After her talk she showed different types of network diagrams. According to Ruby, the mesh network is the best because it is not dependent on a single point — if one person leaves it stays together.

Amy Rubin, the Deputy Director of New Media from the John Edwards campaign then talked about their social network strategy as it related to promoting a webcast after the last debate.

My take-aways from her talk:

1. You can reach out to lots of online communities, but you need a single site that brings all the information together.

2. Meet people where they are, don’t make MySpace people come to Facebook or try to create groups that cross network platforms. Yes, it is more work, but you have to meet people where they live online.

3. Focus on influencers. Not everyone is equal, let the people who influence their friends move your message.

4. The list will grow naturally as you give people what they want where they want it. Don’t make them leave their comfort zone to do something you want them to do. List growth comes when people are interested.

5. Care2, working with them was great to seed the actions.

6. Created private leadership groups within each social network - give the people working the most something special.

The highlight of the session was Beka Economopoulos from Greenpeace. Yes, her name alone would make it a highlight.

She is an online organizer for Greenpeace. Her history is with off-line organizing and so her job is to see how we can leverage social networks and integrate web 2.0 platforms to leverage off-line results. In other words… can you use the web to get people to show up and do things in the real world.

She organizes days of action so people can participate to do bake sales or congressional visits. Greenpeace has 65,000 friends in MySpace. Getting friends is not a communications strategy — MySpace isn’t a web page it’s a network. She had a nice analogy for this. “A friend on a social network is like putting on a bumper sticker.” It’s a sign of affiliation but that’s it.

At Greenpeace, they have a team of interns who work to respond to people it pays off. Their email list is growing and they consider those friends to be an extension of their email list because they send their newsletters and alerts to them as well. So the 65,000 new eyeballs and ears are great, but they are paying close attention to how to convert those people to activists.

She then showed us an amazing case study of action against Kimberly Clark, the big paper company. Kimberly Clark makes Kleenex and they heard that Kleenex was going to be shooting a commercial in Times Square. The commercial was to have real people sit on a couch and tell the camera about their “Kleenex moment.” This makes for great TV because it is an authentic voice. Beka called this the “fetishization of the reality TV genre.” And it set them up for a fall.

Greenpeace inserted themselves into the the story. They are focused on what she called “narrative driven campaigning and culturally focused organizing.” Which is to say, paying attention to what the symbols in the culture are that are resonating and how you can insert yourself into the story and point those symbols in new a direction and with new meaning. So Beka and her merry band brought their own crew and hidden mics and inserted themselves into this commercial shoot. The goal was to educate people about the fact that Kleenex is made from virgin forests and uses no recycled content.

What’s terrific here is not only how well this worked, but how they used the product of it to create a story and training video. The idea with this video is to empower more people to take their own actions and to get people thinking that they too can become an activists. Have a look:

One thing you will notice is that it’s long for web video. She said that friends thought it was too long but it holds together to tell a story — more training video than PSA. All the people in the action are new people. The guy who did the sound bites had never done anything before, now they are all hooked. Beka then promoted this to blogs, focusing on online progressive news and environmental blogs, then promoted it to ad agency and brand people.

Her conclusion was that there is a flattening of politics with over-saturation of media and so organizations should focus their energy and resources when and where you have good content. Amen Sister!

She also said, to my great delight, that there is no such thing as virability. You have to work the communities to get critical mass. She said that on MySpace they are getting very high conversion rates and that people who were individually messaged on a bake sale had a 15% conversion rate to off-line participation and that their average is 10% conversation. That’s huge.

I am looking forward to seeing what they do next.

All of our clients are very interested in the number of visitors to their website or the number of views of their videos. Makes sense right. I want to know whether the investment I made in this marketing is paying off. But what we tell clients is that in addition to basic tracking you need to define what you mean by payoff. If you are trying to raise money, count the money. If you are trying to educate people, you have to define a successful educational interaction before you can count it.

When we talk “viral videos” we tell the clients the who is as important as the how many. I can guarantee your video to get tons of views if you let us do Jacksss-style stunts or not-so-subtly incorporate busty models into our concept — but is this the engaged audience you are looking for? Probably not. Will a list acquired this way perform well later when you ask them to do something else? Surely not.

The issue of website traffic is big in the commercial world because it relates directly to ad revenue. Counting site traffic — hits, visitors, “uniques” — have been mired in controversy since the early days of the web. The problem is that my server keeps logs. Those logs only show a kind of raw data about page loads, image loads and the like. To translate that into a number of visitors I have to make some assumptions. For example, someone surfing my site from the same IP address (a unique number that corresponds to the access point of the Internet) who accesses specific pages (based on the logs) over a contiguous period of time represents a visit. Problem is, every program that parses my server logs does this a little differently. So the best use of the numbers is to show trends and growth.

There is an even bigger problem for companies such as comScore, Nielson/NetRatings and Alexa that are trying to tell us how many people went to a site when they don’t even have access to the server logs. So they are using a variety of methods from surveys to panels. comScore, for example, says they have “2 million participants under continuous measurement.” And then they extrapolate.

The big news in this area is that Nielson/NetRatings, recognizing that Web 2.0 is changing behavior, thought they needed a different way to measure. Here’s the issue: On many new website pages, you can see lots of content without reloading the page. For example, my Google home page has RSS feeds from many different news and blog sources. I can click on those feeds and expand them, without reloading the page. I could read all day on the same page.

So Nielson/NetRatings did a new calculation where they added time spent as a factor. Guess what happened? All hell broke loose when their new calculation showed that AOL was on top — above MySpace and Yahoo and Google and MSN. Read more about it at CNET’s News.com.