The Permanent Disruption of Social Media

Social media has chipped away at the foundation of traditional donor-engagement models. A new study highlights the realities of donor behavior and how organizations can redesign their outreach strategies to be more effective.

Fantastic article. Nonprofits and those involved with fundraising, please take the time to read and reflect on how you can reshape strategies for helping your cause.

An excerpt that I really like is the below graphic and accompanying explanation. Organizations on whole need to move towards a vortex model to maximize internal resources and outward impact, but they can’t forget the pyramid model, either.

Source: ssireview.org

We’re working with Social Media leaders from all walks of the federal government to identify and solve our toughest challenges, and unmistakably improve the services and cost savings all our agencies critically need.

Justin Herman, the General Service Administration’s (GSA) social media manager

Glad to see this sort of thinking and creativity in government. It can be challenging in such an established bureaucracy system to change communication patterns and integrate new tools, but he has done some incredible work in this position. Among the social media accomplishments:

  • Created the first federal-wide Social Media Community of Practice, which brings together more than 200 federal practitioners from over 40 agencies and offices for an exchange of ideas and information.
  • Played a major role in GSA’s recent signing of the first federal agreement with Google+.
  • Leading the government’s side of the online Federal Social Media Directory. Agencies have been required to start loading their information since May but it’s been slow. The directory is expected to go public later this year and will spell out what every agency is doing on Social Media and what’s on the drawing board.
  • Implemented a regular Social Media Census for agencies to report their metrics and progress, which had never been tracked. That includes traffic numbers, what features are still to come and what they have learned from their customers who are able to comment at any time about the service.
  • Created a Wiki for all federal agencies to share their best practices and see what others were doing. It’s better for agencies to share apps ideas than create silos of them, he said.

For more accomplishments and information about social media + the feds, check out this article. My cousin Andy is also quoted!

Via USA.gov: How and Why You Should Write a Social Media Will

Social media is a part of daily life, but what happens to the online content that you created once you die?

If you have social media profiles set up online, you should create a statement of how you would like your online identity to be handled. Just like a traditional will helps your survivors handle your physical belongings, a social media will spells out how you want your online identity to be handled.

Like with a traditional will, you’ll need to appoint someone you trust as an online executor. This person will be responsible for closing your email addresses, social media profiles, and blogs after you are deceased. Take these steps to help you write a social media will:

  • Review the privacy policies and the terms and conditions of each website where you have a presence.
  • State how you would like your profiles to be handled. You may want to completely cancel your profile or keep it up for friends and family to visit. Some sites allow users to create a memorial profile where other users can still see your profile but can’t post anything new.
  • Give the social media executor a document that lists all the websites where you have a profile, along with your usernames and passwords.
  • Stipulate in your will that the online executor should have a copy of your death certificate. The online executor may need this as proof in order for websites to take any actions on your behalf.

Learn more about what else you should include in your will and how to create an effective estate plan.

This is a really interesting blog post (especially for USA.gov!) topic. It sounds so morbid, but what a smart idea. The internet allows for more eerie reminders of someone who is no longer alive, whether it’s gmail suggesting other people you might want to include on the email or facebook pages that become interactive memorials. It would make sense that there be a way to control what happens; however, as with “regular” wills, I imagine it has the potential to cause fighting among family and friends and layers of interpretation. With the internet and privacy settings constantly changing, too, it’s likely that the wishes documented in a social media will wouldn’t even be able to be entirely honored.

Don’t worry guys, I sometimes do morbid posts about certain angles of death; it’s just fascinating. I’m not going anywhere, so jenbokoff.com isn’t either.

Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone? A TED talk well worth watching. Please do share your thoughts in comments if you watch; I’m very curious to hear them as I haven’t fully formed my own.

We all need to focus on the many many ways that technology can lead us back to our real lives, our own bodies, our own communities, our own politics, our own planet; they need us. Let’s talk about how we can use digital technology, the technology of our dreams, to make this life the life we can love.

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YouTube Seeks to Improve Nonprofit Videos

YouTube in recent weeks has turned its focus to helping nonprofits create more powerful, effective videos, with a new “playbook” guide and a chance to participate in a one-day video boot camp in San Francisco.

The free 24-page guide, “YouTube for Good,” helps nonprofits devise attention-grabbing names and code their videos’ descriptions to make them more visible to search engines,tell better stories, and use video as part of  broad campaign.

This is excellent. It drives me nuts when organizations have amazing tools at their fingertips but don’t use them well; this is a wonderful effort that both makes YouTube a more accessible tool to nonprofits and also improves YouTube’s brand from being just the source of LOL videos.

(via Chronicle of Philanthropy)

Kari Saratovsky - the originial @socialcitizen - launches new strategy consulting company geared towards millennial engagement

KDS Strategies provides solutions to national and local organizations with a focus on innovative program design, strategic communications, and social media strategy development, all with a unique understanding of next generation engagement. From KDS’s first blog post:

With your help, we will begin to fill this space with authentic conversations that inspire generosity (giving and sharing of new ideas, platforms and approaches) with a fun and refreshing approach.   My focus at least for now, will center on how the rising generation of Millennials are driving change in a way that we have yet to fully see or appreciate across our institutions. These changes are due in large part to the rapid advancements in technology – but there’s also an entrepreneurial drive and desire to find meaning in our work that is playing a large part in how Millennials are influencing the organizational culture of institutions.

I think Kari has tremendous ideas and influence throughout the social good-driven world, and I’m looking forward to seeing the projects that her company signs on to. I’m guessing that the blog part of her page, too, will provide high-level, engaging commentary and conversation surrounding key issues, so you heard it hear folks… follow it!

Social Media Increases Alumni Engagement more than 400%

The Thunderbird School of Global Management enjoyed a 400 percent increase in the number of donors – many of them alumni – to its annual end-of-fiscal-year campaign 2010. Everything they did that year was the same, with one exception – Thunderbird had a small team of social media managers creating and monitoring conversations with the school’s supporters for about a year leading up to the campaign.

(via warehousemedia)

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