WomenWhoTech: Tools Galore
View more presentations from Amy Sample ward.
Websites, Email & Constituent Management from Laura Quinn:
Your website is you, online. For many people who find you online, your website is the organization. Does it say what you really want it to about your organization? Your website should tell people who you and what you do. It's also a good idea to use a content management system to manage your website's content and updates, like Wordpress, Joomla, and Squarespace. There are quite a few options for doing this, some open source and free others not. Idealware.org has reviews of many of these tools as well.
Email is a critical channel. Use email to reach out to your constituents to let them know what you're up to or to ask them to take action. New tools get talked about a lot, but don't get caught up in new sexy tools and forget about the power of email. With email newsletters and emails as part of your campaigns you can move your supporters up the ladder of engagement to take more actions and help you more and more. The details of your emails are critical. Things to consider and target include:
There are quite a few tools for creating, sending and managing your enewsletters and email campaigns. Two tools include:
Don't forget your Constituent Database. Think carefully about your constituents when setting up your database or management tool. Consider the groups you will want to track or by which you will want to arrange members: donors, activists, organizers, stakeholders, partners, volunteers, supporters, and so on. Depending on your goals and your work, you may want to use a constituent management tool that is really good at tracking actions and activists, but not as good at other things. Or, you may need to get one that can work for many kinds of groups. Everything revolves around the audience.
Social Networks & Twitter from Natalie Foster:
Two Principles: 1. Firstly, know what you want to get out of your campaign or communications online. What is your real output? 2. Prioritize your ROI around the biggest impact, whether that's raising funds, engaging people, or something else. Email still gets a good response - if it will best help you reach your desired output, don't feel obligated to short change your capacity there to try to use social networking or something else. The trust that comes with using social networks (engaging people you know, who engage the people they know, and so on) is what creates the power of using social networking tools.
Facebook General Growth data:
A couple of examples:
Twitter still has a small user base compared to all those who are generally "online" - compared to those with email, for example. But, if you have a good percentage of your constinuents who are early adopters and tech savvy, it's a great place to be. And it's something to monitor regardless as it is growing more and more.
Twitter data:
A couple of examples:
Helpful resources on Twitter:
Google Earth Outreach from Rebecca Moore:
Google's mapping tools may seem like an obscure tool to use in your work but these aren't traditional maps: the new generation of mapping technology is fully interactive, enables storytelling, and more. (Did you know you can embed an audio file in Google Earth?) You can embed Google Earth into your website to present information to your community that really helps tell the story of your work and your issue.
Google's Mapping tools include:
Examples:
How Google Earth & Maps can help Non-Profits:
To get started and to review more case studies, visit: http://earth.google.com/outreach
Questions & Answers:
What do you think about the idea of organizations only using social media tools as an online presence instead of a traditional website?
Laura: Your website acts as a home base; where you can tell people who you are, what you do, and so on. If you are able to accomplish that and create a homebase elsewhere, then consider it. This isn't about using social media so websites aren't important; consider what your goal is online and how your website and other social media support that.
Natalie: It's really about numbers as well. There are many people on Facebook; but far more people have the internet and are not on Facebook than those who are.
Rebecca: It can be generational as well, with some groups not necessarily wanting to or visiting your organization's website and others not wanting to or visiting your other spaces online. It really depends on the audience you are trying to engage.
We are all after real world changes, so how do we measure our use of these tools on real world impact?
Laura: What are your goals? Link to things that can be measured. Web metrics, talking to people, emails (who opens your alerts, clicks on links, etc.). Don't measure things for the sake of measurement. There are a myriad things that "could" be measured. Focus what you measure on - things that translate into real world impact.
Natalie: This is the question that I think the whole session is about. Tools are just tactics, just like phone-banking or canvassing. What are the tools that get you there - the number of friends you have on Facebook doesn't mean you've won the campaign. If you start with a theory of change, you can then design tactics around it.
Rebecca: We need to be careful with sexy tools; we can forget what we're really using them for, what the actual goals are. Think about what your trying to accomplish, then what kind of work, maintenance, and so forth will be required. In the Google Earth case studies, the projects all had real world impact but they remained focused on that, and not on just using everything that maps can do.
Can you talk about difference between keeping in touch, vs. call to action. What about the idea that e-newsletters are "dead"? There are mixed opinions all over the place.
Laura: The difference between those are relatively straightforward - keeping in touch is about passing on your good work and keeping people invovled with what you're doing, while a call to action specifically asks them to do something. I don't know people other than Thomas Gensemer of Blue State Digital who would say that e-News is dead. Though he had an interesting point about possibly breaking enews down into shorter bits, and less of a "newsletter" format, but I would argue strongly that updates are critical.
I see on the slides different services, is there one comprehensive program where we can manage everything?
Laura: That's a really hard question to answer - it really depends on your needs. Vendors will say they do everything, but the more they try to do, often, the less powerful they are in any one area and more expensive. Something like Salesforce is very configurable, so it can be a good option to track lots of types of constituents - but it will take considerable time and expertise to setup.
What is difference between a blog, social media tools, and websites?
Laura: Social media is a big umbrella term that includes blogs, social networks, other online methods by which people pass your message online from person to person. A blog tends to be specifically personal posts, in date order. A website could include some of these things, but tends to be more of a "home base" for your organization, including basics like your mission and programs.
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