An interesting thing happened during the various sessions concerning the ROI of social media; A lot of people showed up to listen, and no one had any answers. I had a conversation with Eve Smith of Easter Seals about this and we decided that the silver lining was we weren't behind anybody else. The confirmation that nobody else seemed to know how, or even what, to measure was comforting, in a sense.

I was especially interested in the results of the impromptu survey Beth Kanter took during her session, asking how many of audience members were formally, informally, or not at all measuring their social media ROI. The results were overwhelming for the latter, and I was just dying to jump in and ask, "Is that because you don't know what to measure?" But I didn't, so I'll ask it here? Are most non profits not measuring the ROI of their social media efforts because they don't know what to measure?

If there was anybody willing to go out on a limb and provide a solid opinion on the ROI of social media, it was Justin Perkins, whose calculator says negative 90%. He was quick to follow up with a challenge for the audience to beat the calculator, but also a warning to put your efforts to better use. My opinion is that Justin's calculator is a decent start, but far from complete. Here's why:

• It measures cost versus revenue, but it only takes into account donations and advocacy related income. What about the myriad of other ways an organization has to engage and profit from a constituent, like volunteering, event participation, and referrals?

• It fails to account for the pace of content delivery in social media. By assuming that each person engaged by social media will only donate once, it assumes that people follow the same patterns they do with email. In social media, it is acceptable to present new content on a daily basis. For example, Defenders of Wildlife post a new update in Facebook with a very high frequency. Now, if the content is angled just slightly differently, it's like a whole new campaign. The opportunities to support the organization are presented more frequently and in a more varied way, and I think they'll eventually result in more frequent support.

I do recognize that more frequent support isn't exactly in evidence yet, but my suspicion is that the frequency of support is actually up, but the actual donations are being made yet. By that, I mean an individual is looking more often at the content of an organization, and they are mentally engaging more often. The trick will be to figure out how to turn the mental into the financial.

I too am at the NTEN conference this week and yesterday Fred Waugh and I slipped away to go visit a new client of Convio’s, The National World War II Museum. Frankly, I was blown away at both what they have amassed (a C-47 hanging from the ceiling in the main entrance as one example) and their vision for the future. Stephen Watson, COO, and Paul Parrie, Director of IT,  hosted us and gave me some insight into their vision of the future. While there certainly are statistics, tanks, weapons, and jeeps galore, the main theme of the museum is to remember what arguably was the most important event in the last several hundred years.

The youngest vet from WWII is now 81 and many of them are at the museum for first hand accounts of their missions and memories. The team at the museum is dedicated to making sure that we never lose sight of why WWII needed to take place and how a country that was fresh off of a recession had to amass the spirit and commitment to take on such a daunting task. This was a war that involved little debate, but nevertheless it was one that taxed our country beyond belief. What is particularly exciting about their vision is how focused they are on the generations behind us Boomers. They really want young people (all of you non-boomers!) to understand the commitment, leadership and sacrifice a country made in a truly world struggle.

I just attended the NTC session "Five Ways to Set Up / Amp Up / Screw Up Your Email Messages", hosted by Madeline from Watershed, with TJ from Convio, Heidi from CDF and Nzinga from Watershed.

As always, Madeline delivered an excellent session, full of clever quips, intelligent insights and rationale suggestions.

One that got me thinking is the idea of offering email subscription options.  What I'm talking about are sites where the organization asks "are you interested in topics a, b, c, etc., let us know and we'll keep you posted on these issues".  Sounds logical right?  But here's the problem... asking people for their preferences is notoriously a flawed approach because what we actually do and what we say are usually much different.

A smarter approach to interest-based email segmentation is to assign interest values based upon behavior, not preferences.  In other words, over a period of time your organization can analyze response rates, advocacy actions, fundraising conversions, etc. and use that data to populate interest values for subscribers more accurately than relying upon the preferences an individual will self-select.  Granted... you need the data, the tools and the capacity to get it done, but the payoff is worth the effort.

And there's another reason to limit or avoid subscription options - people are already reluctant to join yet another email list because they're concerned about spam and volume, and if you say "check each issue you would like to hear from us about: climate, poverty, animals, disease, etc. etc." the potential subscriber sees that list and thinks "hmmm... I'm actually interested in all of those, but does checking each one mean I'll receive X more email from this group? I think I'll just leave that blank". 

So what's a group to do? If you have a good reason to believe self-select options are good for your unique strategy, do it.  But consider also maintaining a non-public set of interest preferences you populate over time based on behavior. 

3.    Web 2.0 - Unlike video and phone, this is an area where nonprofits can really see the obvious benefits right now. Services like Flickr, Facebook, YouTube and blogging are changing the past one-to-many model of the past and allowing for direct feedback and engagement on the Internet. Some useful and interesting sites discussed included Kiva, Goloco and the new British government e-petitions. Examples like these show that enhancements in technology and online strategy can truly help nonprofits and other organizations trying to make a difference in the lives’ of people around the world.

"If it takes a village to raise a child, what does it take to raise a village?" Hal Roark, Executive Director for the Broadmoor Development Corporation.

During today's lunch at NTC New Orleans, I had the pleasure of sitting with Hal. Hal's organization is one of the many fine organizations that are working to help rebuild the region after Hurricane Katrina - to raise a village. While many of the challenges these nonprofits face are unique, there are certain best practices that these organizations can leverage to better use the Internet to aid in the fulfillment of their respective missions. According to Hal sometimes it is not a technology question, it is simply having someone help them by sharing the 8-10 steps needed to be more successful with an online campaign or to increase Web site conversion rates, etc. 

That is truly the vision behind Convio's Connection Cafe. And, while we would never claim to have every answer, we think that the talent and experience of our client community, Fusion Partners and staff, combined with people who write the blogs we link to (an hundreds more) and the comments and feedback you, the visitors to Connection Cafe provide, can make this spot a great resource for connecting people, ideas and technology.

Join us in the discussion, provide your feedback and comments and check out our online profile . People like Hal are counting on us. As Hal told me:

"The more all of us in the nonprofit sector learn and share, the better off we will all be."  

Holly Ross, Executive Director of NTEN, started this morning with a passionate and heartfelt welcome to the participants in this year's conference. Holly's enthusiasm and excitement for how nonprofits can use technology to help solve problems and make the world better is contagious.

She then introduced David Pogue, consumer technology columnist and blogger extraordinare' from The New York Times, who entertained the audience with his view of the three hottest technologies to watch - two being voice over IP and mobile technology. As David shared his thoughts on technology the crowd cheered his singing and waved their iPhones in the air - don't think it's all geeks here, I was at a concert during SXSW where the audience held up their cell phones like the lighters of the 70s and 80s. It was an engaged and inspired crowd. (That is David and Holly in the photo.)

 As David talked about the impact of wireless technology on our culture, it dawned on me that my morning was a proof point to his talk. At 6:30, my 7-year old son called me on my cell phone to make sure I received the update for his NCAA Basketball Tournament Bracket - please do not judge my parenting, the kid is obsessed with football and basketball (reading and art too). He was calling my cell phone, using voice over IP technology from our cable provider, after emailing me over our wireless home network. His expectations of feedback where immediate and on his terms.

As my son and my daughters age, I wonder how the nonprofit sector will engage with the "un-tethered constituents", as our CEO Gene Austin refers to them. A recent survey by The Nonprofit Times showed that nearly 20 percent of the donors they surveyed lived without a landline phone for the past 12 months. With the growth in mobile technology that number will continue to grow.  What should nonprofits be doing to engage these "un-tethered" supporters when and where they want to connect to their favorite causes?

I'm off to hear what Jed Alpert, CEO of Mobile Commons, Katrin Verclass of Mobile Active have to teach us. I also enjoyed watching a demo of the Mobile Commons integration with Convio in the Open Lab just after the plenary session.  Time to grab my mobile phone and run. (Below, James Young demonstrates the Facebook application.)

Here at the National Technology Conference, it seems everyone is getting their "twit" on...or their "tweet" on...or whatever you want to call it.  They're looking at their phones to catch messages from the Twittersphere. Twitter is a "social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface."

Basically twitterers create an account and then select their friends, colleagues, or topics they’d on which they’d like to get short updates. Lots of people use it to exchange quick notes by phone-based text messages, instant messenger, and/or a web based interface.

Someone who works for an international relief organization asked me recently, "What should my organization's Twitter strategy be?" I looked at her and said, "Nothing. You shouldn't have one."

Called me old fashioned. Call me a troglodyte. Call me whatever you want.

It's not that I don't love web 2.0 applications as much as the next guy. It's just that I think there are a ton of new, cool, awesome tools emerging every day; BUT, very few of us have used the current technology to its fullest. In seeking to use the latest and greatest, many of us forget that we’ve barely made use of the last great thing,

I should probably be clear. Developing a Twitter strategy today probably makes sense for your organization if:

• Your organization already has an awesome online presence with lots of useful content and you need to drive more traffic to it
• Your organization holds lots of events where people who are attending will benefit from a live, collective conscience
• Your organization is visitation focused, like a museum

If at least one of the three conditions don't apply to your organization, I'd say wait on developing that Twitter strategy. Instead here are five things you can do today to improve your online presence that will return real results.

1. Think about your audience
Take ten minutes to write down who the primary audience for your web site is. Think about what motivates them to support your organization. What tasks do you want them to perform on your web site? If you were in their shoes, what kind of content and features on your web site would compel them to action.

2. Tear apart your home page
Take a long hard look at your web page...then tear it apart. If this was someone else's home page, what kind of advice would you give them? Take five minutes and make a quick hit list. Is the home page too busy? Does the design look professional? Don't forget to make the changes you identify.

3. Make an editorial calendar
Lots of people get overwhelmed by the daunting task of keeping their site up to date. Make this large task a simple one. Start by planning out web content for the next year. Depending on your staff resources (1 or 100), create a plan for your content. Time new content based on the calendar. Will you need holiday content or content around events you KNOW will happen like Earth Day, the presidential election, or your annual report? Put these things on a calendar then plan around them.

Maybe I’m wrong about the immediate value or lack thereof Twitter. I was wrong about those blogs.

I'm not saying Twitter is a bad thing...I just think that there are more important things we can invest time and energy in. If you must, however, investigate how Twitter can enhance your online presence, here's a Twitter guide for newbies. And if you want to follow me, check out my Twitter feed, here.

But please, have a heart, I'm just getting started.

As an NTC newbie, I have to say that I found the first afternoon pretty exciting. I met some cool people and had some interesting conversations. I certainly spent more time talking social media today than I get to at home. My wife graciously patronizes me when I try to talk social media over dinner, and my kids only like the part where they get to create their own “guy,” as they like to call the avatars. So, today was a treat for me and I have high expectations for tomorrow and Friday.

You see, tomorrow is the day that Beth Kanter talks about The Web 2.0 ROI, and on Friday Justin Perkins will cover similar ground but presumably focusing more on fundraising. I’ve been reading about the struggles a lot of social media minded people have had convincing their powers-that-be to invest in some sort of social media effort and, of course, struggling to answer the question of what ROI the organization would receive from the effort. Both Beth and Justin know more about this space than I do, I’m sure, and they mention metrics in their session descriptions. I am excited to learn what those metrics are, but I have some concerns that I am going to hear about page views, time on site, etc.

To my mind, the success of a social network or similar social media efforts can be claimed if the organization can answer yes to the following questions?

1. Did more people do something we like them to do?

2. Did each person do a wider variety of the things we like them to do?

3. Did each person do something we like them to do faster than before?

4. Did each person do something we like them to do more frequently than before?

Clearly, these “things we like them to do” can be more than simply giving money. In fact, it seems that places like Facebook should not be seen as fertile fundraising grounds just yet, but I’m fairly certain that other actions like surrendering an email address, or registering for an event, or writing a legislator are things that most organizations can attach some dollar figure to, and so measuring the activity can be converted into some monetary value. If this is true, then comparing the volume, frequency, and speed at which these activities happen within a social media campaign versus outside of a social media campaign should be quantifiable as dollars.

I’m looking forward to learning something from Beth and Justin, and I’m looking forward to sharing what I learned and what I think about it here. See you then.

Why am I excited?  Will I finally come to appreciate the value of twitter? Doubtful; or discover the next new tech thing which all nonprofits will flock to adopt? Hopefully; or will I meet some amazingly smart people doing cool things that I'll begin to follow when I get back to the grind?  Yeah... probably; but that's not what has me excited.  I'm pumped because attending the NTC is like a high school reunion where only the nice people were invited :).  Seriously, already today I've had great conversations with Judi Sohn, Michelle Murrain, several Beaconfire peeps and many others.  I've rubbed elbows with staff from Sierra Club, Mercy Corps and NARAL.  I had dinner with the new Firefly team and caught up with two of my GetActive mentor's Bill Pease and Sheeraz Haji.

I cannot overstate this... if you work for a nonprofit, or provide services to nonprofits and your work involves technology (excluding hardware stuff), you need to be here.

Tomorrow will be a busy day... my mission, more reunions and good conversations and find someone who can convince me twitter is worth the effort.