Being Buff: Marketing the social economy

I attended another informative Case Study Jam Ottawa tonight and caught three presentations, two of which were most relevant to all who read this blog:

• A win from independent financial advisor Randy Little, who went out on his own with a commitment to doing things differently. Building from the ground up, Randy has built his business by reaching out to the people of Ottawa almost entirely through his Twitter account.

Hear Randy Little talk about building his business with Twitter.

• A fail from Chelsea Edgell about being hired to find an environmentally-friendly way to publish a massive, annual employee job manual and being shown the door when she suggested a wiki might be a better solution than burning 50 CDs.

Hear Chelsea Edgell talk about failing to convince her organisation to embrace collaborative tools.

Randy said that one of the reasons he was on Twitter was because the kind of people he wants to reach are on Twitter. I asked him how he knew who was on and he told me:

• he knows they’re in Ottawa because he searches for people using TweetDeck’s “Tweets Nearby” feature (Randy uses TweetDeck on his iPhone)
• he reads people’s bios and looks for clues in their tweets (i.e. do they talk about owning a house?)

Randy says he follows 2000 people so cut him some slack if you follow him – but he doesn’t follow you back.

Thanks to the Case Study Jam organisers for another good one.

Tags: Twitter, Wikis
Posted in Twitter, Wikis | 2 Comments »

rabble.ca  continues its role as a social media leader with its latest experiment: an activist toolkit developed collaboratively from the ground up using a wiki.  rabble describes the Toolkit as ”a collaborative online resource that rabble.ca members can create, use and modify. It has been envisioned as an ever expanding repository of guides, articles, images, media and vocabularies — much like a wiki. You may think of it as a landing page for online resources, or perhaps a social-justice themed encyclopedia.”

They’ve invited folks to beta test the wiki and I have signed on.  I got an email yesterday saying beta testing will start soon and reminding us the toolkit is a user-contributed resource so we shouldn’t be afraid to jump in and start making improvements.  They’ve put up some initial pages as examples and, in classic wiki style, we’ll be able to make edits to those pages (to add, change or otherwise improve the content) and create new ones.  For those unfamiliar with wikis they’ve provided links to a forum where people can ask questions 
http://rabble.ca/babble/rabble-content/activist-toolkit or send them to
toolkit@rabble.ca

Let the experiment – and the blogging of the results – begin !

Tags: Wikis
Posted in Wikis | 1 Comment »

Since entering the social media space I’ve been looking for a place where progressive Canadian, communicators share social media best practices. I have found tons of spaces where marketers are sharing what they know. They’re blogging and commenting others’ blogs, on organizing and presenting at conferences, holding geek dinners, Tweetups, and Webinars – and they’re producing and consuming each other’s podcasts.

With the economy in meltdown and organizations having to cut back – but still wanting and needing to communicate – social media offers great potential to target specific audiences for a lot less money than traditional media.

Beth Kanter’s blog, that highlights best practices of mostly US organizations, is a great resource but Canada is need of our own – partly because of special challenges we have like two official languages.

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel so I ask here: did I miss something? Does anyone know of an online social space (or an offline one like a conference for that matter) where progressive, Canadian social economy folks swap social media ideas?

Posted in Online activism, Wikis | 1 Comment »

I talk about the We Are Media Project in the latest episode of my Looking Good Naked podcast (episode #17) but felt it deserved more attention so here it is.

We Are Media is a wiki devoted to becoming a one-stop resource for social media best practices for non-profits. That means it’s being collaboratively created by the non-profit community any of whom can edit it after signing up. We Are Media says its goal is that “the community work in a networked way to help identify the best existing resources, people, and case studies that will give nonprofit organizations the knowledge and resources they need to be the media.” . “…Be the media”….I love it.

Right now the current information is divided into the following categories:

Strategic Track
Module 1: Why Should Your Nonprofit Embrace Social Media? (Or Not?)
Module 2: Thinking Strategically About Social Media
Module 3: Social Media Ready Nonprofit: Dealing with Resistance
Module 4: The Art of Storytelling
Module 5: Engagement Strategy and Skills
Module 6: Considering the ROI

Tools Track
Module 1: Listening and participating in the conversation
Module 2: Sharing Your Organization’s Story in Multi-Media
Module 3: Getting Others To Tell Or Spread Your Story
Module 4: Social Networking
Module 5: Citizen Fundraising
Module 6: Designing Effective Social Media Experiments

Many of the sections are just outlines now with the exception of Module 6 on Considering the Return on Investment.  If the ROI section is any indication there is much more great content to come. The section features the following subsections in varying states of completion:

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Learning Objectives:

To understand the basic definitions of measurement, metrics, and return on investment
To understand how to identify benefits – tangible and intangible – that implementing a social media strategy might provide to an organization’s mission.
To understand how to use qualitative and quantitative information to understand how to improve social media strategy and assess impact.

Key Questions:

What are the benefits, both tangible and intangible, that a social media strategy might offer? What value does our social media strategy provide to our organization or stakeholders?
What type of quantitative and qualitative information do we need to track to measure our success or learn how to improve our social media strategy?
What are the best examples of nonprofits of social media and ROI? What are the best resources to guide our thinking about ROI and Social Media?

Learning Tasks:

Worksheets
Small Group Discussions or Exercises

Resources:

• Primer
• The 2-3 best articles related to the learning goals
• The 2-3 best web sites or blogs to get more in-depth information
• The 2-3 best how-to videos/screencasts

Chris Brogan, 12 Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss
Aaron Uhrmacher, How To Measure ROI for Business
Beth Kanter, Social Media Metrics and Nonprofits Wiki

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If you’ve been looking for some way to get some wiki experience other than Wikipedia, We Are Media is a doubly great resource. Learn about wikis the second best way possible: by contributing to one – the best way is by creating one – and get some great ideas about how social media can help your organization achieve its objectives (maybe by using a wiki).

The project is US-based but the wiki is open to everyone so Canadians are encouraged to join like everyone else. I have already added my two cents to the page on Listening and participating in the conversation.

Beth Kanter who has a great blog on social media for non-profits, curates the wiki and is the one to contact with any questions.

I will be eagerly watching – and contributing to – We Are Media in general, and the best practices resources in particular, to get some examples of what’s working and what’s not in the real world.

Posted in Non-profits, Wikis | No Comments »