See What’s Out There

Alison Fine just gave us a head’s up about a cool project she developed with her colleague Nancy Scola to help ensure a fair and safe election for all U.S. citizens. It’s called Twitter Voter Report and it brings together a team of techies, Twitter users and a Wiki to aggregate information on voting day.

From their website:

On November 4th 2008, millions of Americans will go to over 200,000 distinct voting locations and using different systems and machinery to vote. Some voters will have a terrific experiences, and others will experience the same problems we have been hearing about for years - long lines, broken machines, inaccurate voting rolls, and others will experience problems that we haven’t heard about before. Using Twitter.com and 1-866-Our-Vote Hotline, voters will have a new way to share these experiences with one another and ensure that the media and watchdog groups are aware of any problems.

As news outlets and blogs will report on Election Day stories, we are building an invaluable resource for thousands of voters to get immediate help. From questions like “where do I vote” or “how do I make sure that my rights are being upheld,” Twitter Voter Report augments these efforts by providing a new way for voters to send text messages (aka tweets) via cellphones or computers which will be aggregated and mapped so that everyone can see the Nation’s voting problems in real-time.

Imagine a Nationwide web map with pins identifying every zip code where Americans are waiting over 30 minutes to vote or indicating those election districts where the voting machines are not working. Collectively we will inform each other when when the lines too long and ensure that media and watchdog groups know where problems exist.

You can follow the project on Twitter: @voterreport
or join the VoteReport Google Group.

Last week we asked our friends on Twitter, “How often do you check your email per day?” As you can tell by some of their responses below, there are a lot of people who never sign out of their email accounts!

What do you think? Is “always on” email the most efficient way to work? I’ve had friends like David Kadavy tell me that I should accomplish a couple of tasks in the morning before I open my email and then schedule several times a day to check it. That way I can avoid being interrupted in the middle of a task. Ofcourse, it does depend on the type of work because some people really do need updates throughout the day.

Next week’s question: Is a PDA necessary for your work? Why? Just reply @See3 on Twitter.

Last week we asked our friends on Twitter, “ What’s your favorite social-networking site?” Check out some of the responses below:

Next week’s question: How many times do you check your email per day? Just reply @See3 on Twitter.

Last week we asked our friends on Twitter, “How has your personal or business blog helped you achieve goals for yourself or your organization?” Check out some of the responses below:

Next week’s question: What is your favorite social networking site and why?

Last week we asked our peeps (or should I say Tweeps?) on Twitter, “What’s the most successful strategy your organization has used to build an email list?” Check out some of the responses below:

1) Petitions

2) Organization Donor Lists

3) Social Networking

LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project) is a good example of an organization that has had success building their email list through a Flickr page, MySpace profile and YouTube channel.

4) Web Videos

As @DCVito mentions, it can be hard to measure how much traffic your videos are bringing in to your site or email sign-up. It’s very important to include a clear call to action with a url in your video so your audience knows how to take the next step. Here are some other tips for making your videos more effective fundraising and outreach tools.

4) Campaigns

One of the best ways to spread the word about your organization and build an email list is a campaign. A campaign uses tools like social-networking and web video to complete a sustained action that targets a particular audience for a specific goal. For example, See3 recently completed a campaign for Sierra Club called “Lightbulbs to Leadership” which included it’s own splash page, 3 video series, letter-writing campaign and house parties across the country.

Last week we asked our peeps on Twitter, “What’s your favorite nonprofit video?” Check out some of the responses below:

Also, check out this video for Operation Smile featured on @johnhaydon’s recent blog post The Six Sees of Nonprofit Video:

Here in our office, we have a tie for the staff’s favorite nonprofit video produced by See3. The first was created to bring attention to the Foreign Assistance Act for Global Development Matters.

The second was made for Amnesty International to raise awareness about extraordinary rendition.

Special thanks to everyone who responded! This week’s question: What’s the most effective strategy you’ve used to build an email list? (For example: in-person events, a petition, social networking, a video campaign…)

I like Twitter.

At first, I thought we were all nuts. A year or so ago, Twitter was described to me as text messaging what you are doing every minute of the day to your friends and then getting text messages of what all of your friends are doing, every minute of the day.

Buzzz
“I am eating ice cream.”

Buzzz
“I am doing nothing in particular.”

Buzzz
“I am wasting your time making you read this.”

Buzzz
“Are we nuts?”

Twitter is like a combination of micro-blogging and social networking. Micro-blogging, meaning blog posts of no more than 140 characters. Social networking means connecting these micro-blogs directly to your friends.

I started to like Twitter the minute I turned off the alerts on my phone. No more buzzing.

Now, I open a browser tab with Twitter and it looks like this.

Why do I like it? The same reason I like reading blogs — I get interesting information. But the best part is that each of these info tidbits are no more than 140 characters long. Long thoughtful blog posts are nice, but so is something that says:

Hear free teleconference w/Andy Sernovitz on getting started with word of mouth. Use code ‘wommafreebie’. http://tinyurl.com/5na6gm

That’s a tweet from @Nedra (Twitter-speak for username Nedra who is social marketing guru Nedra Weinreich.)

She’s telling me about the Word of Mouth Marketing Association free teleconference with Andy Sernovitz. And she told me in 131 characters, including the URL.

With Twitter you can build a following for your organization and send updates, with links. It’s a smart way to communicate. You can send Twitter updates from a mobile phone, so someone in the field in Uganda could send mobile updates that your Twitter followers can learn from.

No, don’t drop everything and have 10 employees Tweeting full time. But you can start playing with it, see what it’s about and you might find it proves to be useful.

Congress is actually starting to pay attention.

From CNN:

Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, is at the forefront of a new effort to reach constituents by using services such as Twitter.com, Qik.com, and Utterz.com. Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows users to publish short text messages known as “tweets.” …

Word quickly spread last week via Twitter.com that regulation of congressional use of the site might be coming. It prompted the Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan organization advocating for greater use of the Internet in order to make information about the federal government more available to the public, set up a Web site as well as a Twitter-based petition.

House Franking Commission Chairman Mike Capuano, D-Massachusetts, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi each weighed in on the matter and sought to make it clear that any new regulations would be limited for now to use of online video sites such as YouTube and Qik.

In my first job as a political consultant based in San Francisco I wrote Congressional Frank Mail for a half dozen Members. Frank mail are those free newsletters that are sent at taxpayer expense and tell you how hard your Member of Congress is listening. With Twitter — and YouTube and MySpace and Facebook et al. — we’ve come a long way since then.

Link [CNN]
Link [Twitter]

The tech blog, Read Write Web has a post today called How To Use Social Media for Social Change. That’s a really ambitious title, given that the topic is huge and that thousands of folks like us at See3 spend their full time working on the question.

The post has some interesting examples and focused to some extent on Twitter. If you don’t know Twitter, it is a newish social network (based on short cell-phone text messages) that is using up a lot of the oxygen in the social media conversation these days. Word is that Twitter just raised another $15 million in investment. Twitter is really a mobile-centric application and I believe that mobile activism, fundraising and engagement will be coming on very strong over the next 18 months. Stay tuned.

One of the more interesting case studies in the Read Write Web story is about Nerd Fighter:

Use YouTube to Promote Charities

Last December, we wrote about how two brothers used YouTube to promote various charities. The brothers started a project called “Nerdfighters Power Project for Awesome,” which entailed a series of videos, each featuring a certain charity. Their videos briefly became YouTube’s most discussed videos, filling each one of the slots on the YouTube’s Most Discussed Videos page. They didn’t use any tricks to do so, either. Instead, they reached out to the YouTube community to generate interest, messaging many high-profile YouTubers and generating a mailing list of around 4,000 interested people who were later alerted when it was time to act.

Here’s a Nerd Fighter video for you to view.

Learn more about the project they talk about here.

Learn more about the Nerd Fighters here.