Engagement

Colorado Kaleidoscope: the Story of a Good Online Storytelling Site

July 6, 2011 by Ted Fickes

Some days I wake up and think that storytelling seems to have become the buzzword du jour (well, I don’t think this immediately upon awakening…after a cup or two of coffee perhaps…a time when “buzz”word takes on meaning). Inviting members, supporters, constituents or whatever part of your audience you like to “tell their story” now seems to be step one of the online engagement handbook.

Colorado Kaleidoscope homepage — Colorado Kaleidoscope storytelling site from Colorado Health Foundation

But once something enters the handbook it can be mishandled. Organizations run the risk of commoditizing stories by using them primarily as a tool, a tactic, a method for getting towards “engagement” and increasingly elusive fundraising and/or advocacy goals.

By their very nature, stories are personal. Those of us who write blog posts, fundraising emails and other material about the issues we work on ever day sometimes forget the personal nature of stories. A good story – with plot, hero, crisis and resolution – does nothing if not peel back the onion over the soul of the teller.

A story can give a glimpse into the experience, heart and mind of people. This is personal and can be a bit scary, which helps explain why good stories can be so hard to write. Despite evidence provided by Facebook’s rise (or perhaps evidenced by the often shallow nature of Facebook interaction), sharing is not simple. Most people have a hard time revealing or hinting at details of their lives for an audience. We’re shy. Or wary. Reticent. Or just way too damn busy to bother.

Organizations Behave Like Organizations, not People

Organizations too often approach storytelling projects as, well, the organizations they are and not as people. It’s hard to explain the purpose of the story, what will happen to it, what the organization will offer in return for the story. Organizations dive into the technical aspects – guidelines, format for the web page, forms, where do photos and video actually live – and can pay too little attention to the story itself and the opportunity for creating and strengthening sustainable relationships that can offer more value to the organization and the storyteller.

We can, with a good sized email list or other audience, make a request for user stories – narrative, audio, video, photos or a combination – and get responses. But it’s easy to undervalue the opportunity and/or not be sure how much value there might be. Interaction and relationship-building has a reputation for being staff resource intensive – and it can be tough and not necessarily scale. Rather than undermine the potential, however, by not giving a project enough resources and the participants enough support.

That’s why it is great to see an online storytelling website with a purpose in mind and a fair value proposition for the audience while providing the support needed to help the audience craft great stories.

Slow Action: Engagement with Intention

June 28, 2011 by Ted Fickes

Slow Food International’s website has a quote from Carlo Petrini, Slow Food founder and president, at the top of the homepage that does a great job summing up what the movement is about:

“Slow Food unites the pleasure of food with responsibility, sustainability and harmony with nature.”

Tortoise and the Hare sculpture in Copley Square, Boston. Photo by Leo Reynolds, Flickr.

Set aside the “food” part for a minute and let’s talk about “slow.” I know, nobody wants to deal with slow. In our culture – and organizations – slow seems counter to progress. And progress, moving forward and change is what we want. Most often, change needs to happen now. Or tomorrow. Or at least by that key deadline for donations at the end of the month.

Take a look at our communications with constituents. Emails are action alerts. We strive to create a sense of urgency. There is so much “noise” out there that we presume that if the tone isn’t critical, dire and needing action today then we’ll be ignored.

There is nothing slow about what we’re doing. In fact, we can be so frantic that constituents can’t keep track of who we are and what we’re doing.

What’s missing is not so much the “slow” but rather engagement and intention. Campaigns roll out quickly, perhaps even unexpectedly from the view of the member.

One concept at the base of slow food is “oneness.” A deep understanding of food issues – and agriculture, nutrition and humane eating – is fostered over time by establishing relationships with other people, recipes, animals and the meals themselves.

What’s often missing is an intentional plan and commitment to helping people create relationships with issues – and with other people in and around the issue – over time. Immediate needs and critical issues are not sustainable over time. Relationships – deeply felt bonds – can be held onto and built upon.

Perhaps we need to up our expectations: both what we hope for the time and investment that people will make in our issues AND the level of guidance and support that we provide to constituents.

In most organizations we can’t have personal engagement plans for each and every person that comes through the door (or the inbox) but we can create general guidelines and strategies to implement them. Maybe we say that 50% of new subscribers will take a second action within 45 days (and while that may not seem impressive it would be a big reach in most organizations). Then we need to measure for that and create, assess and adjust our tactics to meet that goal.

This might be a start. We could create similar plans for Facebook and other social network constituents – and I would argue that those networks need clear goals, plans and resources to move fans to action-taking contributors to issues.

Engagement and relationships are a process. The tortoise didn’t beat the hare with quick action but through intention and commitment to a plan. If organizations are going to be good stewards of their goals, issues and donor resources then there needs to be a commitment to strategic intention that builds and deepens relationships over time.

Model Goals, Not Just Outcomes

May 11, 2011 by Ted Fickes

Dealing as I do with online campaigns and social media I hear quite often about how we the organization or client “need to do it like they did it [at group or campaign X].” Invariably, when pressed for what that means, you hear something like “well, they really got a lot of people involved” and/or “they raised a ton of money.” Sometimes you hear “well, they won.”

350 Day of Action photo by Sioux Falls Green Project — Photo from 350.org day of action by Flickr user Sioux Falls Green Project

All good reasons to look for inspiration and models in the work of others. They were successful. Let’s do it that way.

But this assumes at least a couple factors that organizations or campaigns can’t necessarily replicate. Nor should they.

It assumes that the goals and practices of “good campaign x” track are a match and transferable. Hmm. Maybe but probably not. This deserves examination. When you peel back the layers of a campaign’s communications, staff, volunteers, ads, news coverage and all the rest you come to its core goals. Nine times out of ten (at least) the best campaigns perform at a high level because those goals were crystalline, achievable and shared amongst all involved. The outcomes track to those. If your goals aren’t similar you’ll struggle to replicate outcomes. Align on goals first.
These high-performing online campaigns share interesting structures that are optimized for the web and social media. This doesn’t mean they’re all built the same way (which would lead one to define the secret formula…psst, there isn’t one) or that they aren’t tied into a larger structure that operates differently.

This structure is one that takes into account the interconnectedness and social aspects of the web. But staffing and “culturing” this network-sensitive approach in an organization takes some awareness. It’s not just about creating a website with “social features.”

Recently, Jason Mogus at Communicopia blogged about how organizations and campaigns can craft themselves using the network principles of the web and how that structure lends itself to creating campaigns, cultures and organizations that thrive on the hyper-networked web. He draws on actual first-hand experience (the best kind) with entities and campaigns like 350.org, Avaaz and TckTckTck . Here’s what he had to say:

From my own observations working with these groups familiar patterns emerge: small, usually virtual teams of multi-skilled people â€“ all leaders in their own right â€“ collaborating in real time without silos or management reporting boundaries. Not distracted by ongoing programs that muddy priorities and chew up resources, and empowered to say no to opportunities that don’t fit or aren’t realistic. Valuing listening, letting the community they serve inform (or even set) priorities, and collaborating openly with them on their most important work. Disciplined people, tracking metrics in real time, dropping what doesnâ€™t work, and focusing on a few key leverage points, throwing everything they’ve got at one thing when openings appear.

They way they use technology is also important. There is often no â€œweb departmentâ€ of networked orgs â€“ everyone is comfortable using modern communications tools. There are of course specialists on staff to build and fix things, but no one has to ask a different department to â€œblog that storyâ€ or â€œtweet that insightâ€, everyone has their fingers on the pulse of a different version of their constituency, everyone is a collaborator. Technology helps them do this faster and more efficiently, and lowers the barriers between those inside and those outside the organization.

This is worth chewing on as you tackle your next “big social media campaign.” It’s not about the technology – this app or that website – but rather it’s about the people. The people you’re trying to reach and engage, no doubt, but also the people inside guiding the work. How do they interact, learn and share? Build and model networks internally and you may have more success building and engaging them externally.

Book Review: Lindy Dreyer & Maddie Grant’s Open Community

April 25, 2011 by Ted Fickes

Lindy Dreyer and Maddie Grant have have a cool little book out called Open Community that’s worth picking up if you haven’t yet. They published it late last year and it’s very useful and super relevant, and definitely worth a read if you are interested in using online tools for community-building. “Open community,” to Dreyer and Grant, is a community with some sort of shared interests that engage with each other online. It tracks closely to the “networked nonprofit” idea that Beth Kanter and Allison Fine describe in their book of that name, and it actually complements the Kanter and Fine book nicely.

Where Kanter and Fine aim to map out a bigger picture story about what it means to be a “networked nonprofit,” Dreyer and Grant focus on a narrower question: how to use online social media tools to support your community-building efforts. They don’t dive into the use of specific tools, but that’s sensible since anything they might have written about the specifics of using Facebook, for instance, would likely become outdated quickly. Instead, it’s filled with practical advice about how to approach the use of those tools. Getting to know your members, understanding the relationship between your homebase and your outposts, and between your formal and informal outposts, removing the hurdles that keep your community from engaging online, and the critical importance of listening and soliciting feedback from your community are examples of the ground they cover.

It’s very pragmatic, readable, and to the point, and while it’s ostensibly focused on professional associations it is clearly applicable to any nonprofit or interest-based organization, as well. As a bonus, their cartoons are terrific (including, for instance, â€œHey, remind me â€“ whatâ€™s the keyboard shortcut for creating a vibrant, productive online community?â€).

Reading it reminded me of an interview I did with Bonnie Shaw of BYO Consulting a couple of months ago about her work on the relationship between on- and offline communities. A conversation involving all of these folks could be a lot of fun: Beth and Allison on their transformative model for social sector organizations, Lindy and Maddie on the specifics of building online community, and Bonnie illuminating how both can help strengthen communities in their on- and offline manifestations.

By the way, you can keep up with Dreyer and Grant on their SocialFish blog, which is worth adding to your RSS feed.

The Engagement Pyramid’s Missing Step

April 22, 2011 by Ted Fickes

Ted and Apollo at their 'These Boots Are Made for Organizing' Panel at NTC 2011.

Back in March at NTC in D.C., my BrightPlus3 colleague Ted Fickes joined Apollo Gonzales and Shayna Englin for a really interesting panel on social media and grassroots organizing (“These Boots Are Made for Organizing, Not Just Facebooking“). Apollo is doing some great social media work at NRDC, and part of his presentation focused on their use of an engagement pyramid. A number of folks have different versions of the same idea (engagement ladders are another): engage people in some very minimal way, and then slowly increase the intensity of that engagement over time. It’s a really useful model for thinking about how to initially connect with someone and then how to increase their connection to your organization, their commitment to your cause, and the magnitude of their support.

But it’s a flawed model, as well, because it skips what I think is the critical prior question: what’s the point of the engagement in the first place?

The theory of change idea is one way to get at this, since it forces you to be clear about what outcome you are seeking and exactly what’s required to achieve it. I tend to come at this question from an organizing perspective, starting by identifying the specific decision I want specific people to make in order to achieve that outcome, then identifying the factors that will shape their decisions, and then building a strategy around effectively influencing the right people and factors. If you haven’t answered this first, an engagement pyramid approach may well lead you astray, encouraging you to overinvest in engagement efforts that don’t effectively advance your goal and miss the critical ones.

Here’s what I mean: If my goal is to persuade a member of Congress representing a rural district in the western U.S. to support a wilderness bill, then tapping people across an engagement pyramid (a large number of people sending emails, a smaller group sending personal letters, a few traveling to D.C. to meet with the Member) regardless of how many or how intensively engaged they are, is unlikely to be a successful strategy. A much more likely path to success will involve the Member of Congress hearing support for the bill from the conservative, rancher-dominated ranks that traditionally oppose such bills. Those rural county commissioners, ranchers, and other conservative rural voices don’t belong on the same engagement pyramid that you might use for your membership campaign or your “convince the City Council to create a community garden” effort . . . entirely different challenges, and the levers that can produce the outcome you want are very different.

This isn’t rocket science, by any stretch – it’s really just Organizing 101 or Political Campaign Strategy 101 – but the engagement pyramid model (and all of its sibling models) would be stronger if it clearly incorporated the critical first step of identifying what, exactly, you are trying to accomplish, and what, exactly, you need in order to do so. With that critical context, it’s a lot more likely your engagement model will actually track to the outcomes you are targeting.