Team Obama ranked #1 most innovative by Fast Company

The Internet has phenomenal power. That much we all know by now.

The true mystery lies in how we tap into this power and harness the vast WWW for our personal needs, whether they be to engage constituents, make money for a business, tap into a new demographic for a cause – the list could go on forever - and how to take what seem like highly successful anomalies and turn them into models to follow.

Fast Company’s list of “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies” was recently released and its #1 innovative “company” was one we know all too well by now: Team Obama.

As many nonprofits and socially conscious organizations and businesses now know, the Obama for America campaign broke the mold this election season in almost every aspect: fundraising, outreach, grassroots efforts and particularly using the Internet and new media to do almost everything.

Numerous blog posts and articles have dissected the campaign and provided key strategic takeaways (see Transparency, stupid, Will Mobile Really Move People?and Learning From the Obama Campaign: Essential Reading for starters) but the Fast Company article visually outlined key milestones and tactics Obama made in his road to success. Almost all of which were dominated by the Internet:

February 2007: Launch of mybarackobama.com. a social networking site. Eventually this site draws over 2 million profiles and 35,000 volunteer groups. (To put those numbers into perspective for our 300 million, 50 state population in the USA, 1 in every 150 people in the country joined the site on average and an average of 700 volunteer groups were started per state.)

May 2007: A grassroots Obama MySpace page hits 100,000 fans. The campaign takes over this page and creates profiles on other networking sites, targeting key demographics where they spend their time such as BlackPlanet and AsianAve. Obama’s Facebook pages alone grow to 3.2 million fans (or an average of 1 in every 93 Americans).

June 2007: Obama Girl video is posted on YouTube, receiving 12 million views. The number seems monumental, but compared to the 110 million views the Obama YouTube channel receives, the number is dwarfed in comparison.

July 2008: Supporters launch an uprising on mybarackobama.com in response to a vote made by Obama. Obama writes a long blog to explain his reasoning.  A notable point here: the Obama team realizes allowing supporters to provide feedback is crucial part of online engagement and that responses to these should be taken series. Rather than call a press conference or use a media opportunity to respond to these constituents, he responds in the space where they spend their time and in the informal format they prefer, a blog post.

August 2008: Obama makes the VP announcement everyone was anxiously awaiting by text message for the first time ever.

November 4, 2008: Team Obama sends out at least 3 text messages to each supporter who has signed up for alerts in battle ground states.

Overall online fundraising: Over $500 million, or half a billion (yes, half a BILLION), is raised solely online with vast majority of those donations under $100 each.

The true takeaways here are:

• Obama embraced new, emerging media despite the fact that it does carry risks
• All of the campaign’s online/new media activities supported one another and worked together cohesively.
• Online efforts did not work in a vacuum for the team. In-person events and traditional media tactics also worked hand-in-hand with online efforts so that the two always maximized the other’s effectiveness.

Like the article stated, “the community that elected Obama raised more money, held more events, made more phone calls, shared more videos and offered more policy suggestions than any in history.” Organizations should take heed of this new model.  While the power of the Internet can’t make everyone the next president, it might just help you achieve your mission at hand.

Things To Do In Facebook

You’ve heard of Facebook, right? That social network thingy? Thingy, indeed! As if I needed to provide the justification for why you need a presence in Facebook, here are the latest statistics from Facebook, as posted on their site at the time this post was published.

General Growth
• More than 150 million active users
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 30 years old and older

User Engagement
• Average user has 120 friends on the site
• More than 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
• More than 15 million users update their statuses at least once each day
• More than 3.5 million users become fans of Pages each day

Applications
• More than 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 5 million videos uploaded each month
• More than 24 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each month
• More than 2 million events created each month
• More than 20 million active user groups exist on the site

International Growth
• More than 35 translations available on the site, with more than 60 in development
• More than 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

Platform
• More than 660,000 developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
• More than 52,000 applications currently available on Facebook Platform
• 140 new applications added per day
• More than 95% of Facebook members have used at least one application built on Facebook Platform

So, assuming you still want to have access to 150 million active users, and the roughly 300,000 new people that sign up every day, then you’ll need to know how to engage with these folks. I can think of at least 5 things to do in Facebook:

1. Your Facebook Page
2. Your Facebook Group
3. Using the applications that already exist in Facebook
4. If you are a Convio client, using your own Facebook application
5. Using a custom application

Your Facebook Page

Social networks, like the real world, consist of people. Each person has a profile that belongs to them. They can add information to their profile in an effort to tell other people who they are. Also like the real world, people congregate into entities for various purposes, like companies or schools. Entities can also have a “profile” within Facebook by creating a Page (note the capital P). Pages act very much like a personal profile in that the entity can post information about itself for others to see. Individuals in Facebook can become a fan of the entity, which is equivalent to becoming a friend of a person.

The greatest thing about a Page is that you can send Updates to all Fans. An Update is essentially the same as an email, so you can easily communicate with all of your fans, letting them know of new content, or an event, etc. Note that Fans can not send a message to a Page, so the communication is outbound from the Page and not inbound.

Learn about how Pages work directly from Facebook.

Your Facebook Group

Warning! Groups will seem very similar to Pages at first, so don’t be put off by that déjà vu feeling. Groups allow a lot of the same conversation and information flow that a Page allows. Groups can be set up to be open to anybody, invitation only, or you can accept members on a case by case basis.Groups have one marked difference from Pages. Groups can only send messages to 5000 members each day. While 5000 is a lot, it is not unlimited like a Page.

To start a Group of your own, you’ll need to add the Groups application to your personal profile in Facebook. From here, you search for existing Groups or create your own.

If you would like another perspective on the difference between Pages and Groups, check out Tim’s Davie’s post, Facebook groups vs Facebook pages.

At this point, I’d like to offer a little encouragement and advice. The encouragement is this: start both a Page and a Group. Different people want to interact with you in different ways. Offering both Pages and Groups increases your chances of reaching as many people as possible. The advice is this: don’t freak out when you find existing Groups and Pages for your organization. Generally, these are started by people who have the best intentions in mind. You should consider the owners of these efforts allies, and work with them to make sure they have the best content and information, and be a participant in their conversations as well as inviting them to be a participant in your conversations.

Using the applications that already exist in Facebook

Applications in Facebook are the equivalent to the board games, books, and magazines in your favorite coffee shop. They give you something to do while you’re hanging out. There are applications for everything under the sun. The good news is that there are some great applications already built whose purpose is to empower people to promote your organization.  I’m going to cover the major applications, but there are more. Try and find them and use them, because with 150 million people, you never know where your next constituent is hiding.  To find them, try this search.

Change.org:  Change.org is a great social network in its own right. Members can associate themselves with non-profits directly, or they can create a “change” and designate a non-profit as the beneficiary of the “change.” People join the “change” that appeals to them, and engage in conversation and activity to make that “change” happen in the world. One activity, of course, is making a donation. Change.org uses a 3rd party payment processor, so your organization will eventually get a check in the mail from Change.org. There are other things similar to “changes” in Change.org, such as “actions” and “ideas” that all enable some activity in support of your organization. Clearly, in this model, there can be an unlimited number of “changes” that benefit your organization. The Change.org Facebook application is simply an extension of the website into Facebook. All of the same functionality exists, with the added benefit of the viral tools built right into Facebook. At the time of publication, the Change.org application was down for remodeling.

Causes: Causes is almost exactly like Change.org. Just replace the word “change” with “cause.” Causes exists only in Facebook, so there are more bells and whistles.

Razoo: Razoo Speed Granting is an interesting application where the community votes on projects, with the winner receiving a grant. Razoo also has a web site proper which is a social network.

For another perspective on which applications are good to use, check out BL’ONG post on the topic.

Build an Application using the Convio platform

This section only applies to those readers who are Convio clients, so feel free to skip ahead if this does not apply to you. For clients using Convio, you have the ability to build your own, organization specific application for Facebook.  Our offering empowers you to build a website within Facebook, complete with content conditionalization and personalization. You simply get it set it using our toolkit and then build the content pages you want. Now, the people who are interested in your mission or organization can access your content without leaving Facebook, and if they want to take action, they can do that too. Their actions will be broadcast in Facebook using the viral tools native to Facebook. You can also create virtual gifts that Facebook members can send to each other, spreading the application even farther into the 150 million and counting.

Learn more about the Convio Facebook Application platform

Build a custom application

There are companies out there who build Facebook applications for a living, and they would be happy to build one for your organization. Think about this as a blank slate. There are many, but a few that I know of that do good work are:

Social Agency

FreeCause

boundlessFundraising 

This is a long post, so I’ll wrap it up quickly. There are a lot of activities here that you could use to reach new and existing constituents in Facebook. Try them all. Sounds easy, right? It doesn’t come for free. Actually, you can do a lot without spending any money on technology, but you do need the people and time to man these efforts. Like most things, your degree of success in Facebook is directly related to the amount of effort you put in. You have to keep these outlets supplied with a couple of things:

• Fresh content that educates and inspires
• A personal touch to make sure people feel like they matter
• Feedback, because social media is about dialogue

Good luck, and please feel free to add your suggestions to the comments on this post. I’m sure there are plenty of other applications and activities I’ve not mentioned.

Free Tools with Big Potential

I'm not sure if you've heard or not, but it turns out the country is in the middle of an economic crisis. Every morning, we're bombarded with information about economic stimulus packages and layoffs. Naturally (and responsibly) we are all tightening our belts and gearing up for the unknown. Everyone is trying to do more with less, and undoubtedly it's a challenge.

We get questions and requests every day from organizations trying to figure out how to make the most out of the dollars that they have while still improving their online presence. Whenever this question comes up, I first and foremost suggest that they begin using Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.

Most of us are likely familiar with Google Analytics. This is a free service from Google, and is relatively painless to install. This product tracks user activity on your site, and can give you visibility into trends with your web traffic. The info provided isn't the end-all, be-all of definitive quantitative data, but can certainly help to shine a light onto how users are using your site. And, for a free tool, it does provide some pretty thorough reporting and a nice interface.

The lesser known sibling of Google Analytics is Google Webmaster Tools. This may require a little more setup (you need to run a third-party sitemap tool on your site, and you also need FTP access to verify your site), but once installed, this tool can tell you a lot about your web presence. There is diagnostic information regarding errors and problems the Google crawlers (which index your site for the search engine), and problems with meta data like titles and keywords. There is also reporting on the statistical components of your site, like keywords and external sites that are linked to yours. Basically, this tool allows you to see how Google sees your site, and make adjustments based on that information. And, with the great job that Google does with documentation, it's pretty easy to learn the basics. This is an excellent tool for those trying to get a better understanding of their web presence, from search engines to referral links. Used in conjunction with Google Analytics, you're sure to gain some really valuable insight into how your site performs.

Those are my two favorites - free, fairly easy to install, and super informative. I'm sure there are other suggestions out there, and if you have others, please feel free to list them here and in the community. I'll be interested to hear what others are using to help make decisions!

Beyonce + Bacon + Trombones = Holly Ross' breakout performance & NTC scholarships galore!

I have to say up front, Holly Ross is a much braver woman than I... 

A few weeks ago we announced a joint effort between NTEN and Convio to raise scholarship funds to help people get to this year's NTC in the rough economy where travel budgets are being cut. After our initial announcement and Holly's birthday Facebook Cause push, almost 40 people had donated funds. But today, Holly is working to make an even bigger push to help those in need get to the conference by offering to make what's sure to be the breakout performance of the year if the fundraising goal is met. Check out what we all have in store if the thermometer tips $10K below (originally posted on the NTEN blog earlier today by Holly). Warning: be prepared to laugh outloud if watching this in your office as I was when I first viewed the video.

"Over 900 of you have already registered for the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference. You're registering at a record-breaking pace, and we can't wait to get the whole community in one room this April. But we also know that the economy has made it impossible for some our members to join us, so we've been raising scholarship money to send up to 57 nonprofit staff to the nonprofit technology conference. We're raising $10,000 and Convio is matching that dollar for dollar.

We've only got three weeks left -- and a long way to go -- so I thought I would, to borrow a phrase, kick it up a notch. Watch the video, or read after the jump for details:

BAM! I did, in fact, just kick it up a notch! Every single person who donates to the scholarship fund is going to get one vote to decide my fate. After we reach $10,000 raised, I will:

    * Make my own "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" video. Thousands of people already have. I'll join them. But I won't wear a leotard. (Even I have standards!)
    * Eat a bacon explosion. It's the pork-phenomenon that's swept the internet. I'll eat a whole one.
    * Play my college marching band trombone. In Union Square. In Daylight. A bunch of my college buddies have already vowed to turn up to mock me. Should be a good time!

Of course, whichever option you choose, it will be recorded for posterity.

So, go make your contribution today.

It doesn't have to be a lot. If everybody already registered gives just $10.77, we'll reach our goal! But you DO have to give to vote. Think of it as a double win for our community: Your donation sends more folks to the NTC and gives the gift of laughter to the entire community.

If you're already among those who've given, thank you! You'll get to vote on March 1st, as well. I'd especially like to thank you for giving before I had to agree to this:

    * Beth Kanter
    * David Krumlauf
    * Corey Pudhiridsky
    * EcoScribe Communications
    * Jordan Viator
    * Tompkins Spann
    * Judi Sohn
    * Michael McCarthy
    * John Granquist
    * Melissa Shorlat
    * Mark Rovner
    * Cheryl Hanback
    * Michelle Kaminsky
    * Peter Campbell
    * Rachel Weidinger
    * Dean Matseuda
    * Gale Peterson
    * Nancy Schwartz
    * Judy Hallman
    * Michaela Hackner
    * AgentHandy Loves
    * Ted Hart
    * Bill Snyder
    * Norman Reiss
    * JD Lasica
    * Jordan Dossett
    * Amy Sample Ward
    * Farra Trompeter
    * Alexandra Blacker
    * Mary Gross
    * Rose Vines
    * James Young
    * Jesse Wiley
    * Paul Lamb
    * Dahna Goldstein
    * Robert Weiner
    * Steve MacLaughlin"

User Generated Content Wins Again

I must admit, I watched this year’s Super Bowl more for the commercials than the actual game, and came away underwhelmed by most of the ads. However, the Doritos/crystal ball commercial was the most notable for me, and come to find out it was shot by two guys from Indiana that entered their spot in a contest and ended up winning $1 million. By watching the Doritos ad in comparison to the other glossy, overdone, way too expensive spots, I could tell it was different. The lighting isn’t perfect, the actors look like they could be my neighbors, and there was a simple (and cheesy) script that didn’t require voice-over talent. The point is it wasn’t perfect, and that’s probably why it stood out to me.

This is just another example of the power of user generated content (UGC) and it can be very valuable for corporations and nonprofits alike. For Doritos, they entrusted their brand to a few amateur filmmakers that created something that resonated with the millions of consumers watching the Super Bowl. The same can be true for nonprofits — likely your most valuable assets are your constituents, and letting them speak on your organization’s behalf can have great results. The methods can vary — video, emails, special events, pictures etc. — but the concept of the constituent/user/consumer telling the story is the common thread and can create an even bigger impact.

Here are some great examples of how nonprofits are sharing UGC to the masses:

• American Cancer Society: http://www.sharinghope.tv/
• Beth’s Blog: WeAreMedia: Nonprofit Examples of Stakeholder Generated Content, Some Great Tips, and More http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/09/wearemedia-nonp.html

If you are using UGC for your organization, leave a comment and I’d love to feature you in a future post. And, here's the Doritos commercial for those that might not have seen it.