Social Media and Networking

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.