CAFFEINATED POLITICS PolitiScoop - Citizen Journalism when the truth matters AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE) Democurmudgeon rightwingwatch.org One Wisconsin Now Blogging BlueNN12 training preview—Leading up to the conference, we’ll be featuring guest posts from NN12 trainers. Click here to register now for Netroots Nation, June 7-10, 2012.
Text messaging is already the de facto way our society communicates. People text to make plans with their friends and send vital information to coworkers. They have their phones with them at all times – on the dinner table when they’re eating, and by their bedside when they’re asleep.
Since people are already communicating with each other over text, shouldn’t that be how you’re reaching them too? More and more groups are realizing that a mobile campaign can be a simple and effective way to build a list of supporters and reach them with targeted, relevant information.
In this post, I’ll step through why a mobile campaign is an important part of your outreach strategy.
1. Make it Easy for People to Join
Texting makes it easy for people to join your campaign, and it integrates seamlessly with your existing outreach. No matter what kind of communications materials you have – whether it’s a PSA, a newsletter, a flyer, or even signs at an event – it’s simple to add a mobile “call to action.” That’s the brief shout-out that says “Text our KEYWORD to our SHORT CODE”.
Then, people can text to join no matter where they see your message. In fact, research has shown that asking people to text in is 3-4 times more effective than directing them to a website. Your audience may not be at a computer, but it’s a sure bet they have their phones.
2. Ask Your Users Questions to Learn More About Them
Once people have joined your list, a mobile campaign lets you reach out them to learn more. Mobile marketing software (like my company, Mobile Commons) tracks and logs every text message you send or receive. So if you ask people for their zip code, or their email address, or what issues they care about most, you can store their answers. That’s vital when you want to segment them later.
3. Target Your Message to the Most Relevant People
Once you’ve learned about your users, you can be sure then to only send them the messages that matter most to them. Target event alerts by zip code, or send action items only to the people who care about those issues. By sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time, you can motivate your audience far more than with a general blast.
4. Organize a Call-in Campaign
Of course, mobile communications is not just about text messaging. If you’re an activist organization, the most important part of the mobile phone could just be the phone. At Mobile Commons, we can run a click-to-call campaign that routes each user to his or her local legislator. That way, you’re motivating local advocacy on a national level.
That’s just a small teaser of how a mobile campaign can help with your existing communications. For more ideas, please stop by my Netroots Nation training on Friday, 6/8 at 10:30am. In “Winning Wireless” we’ll discuss how text messaging, phone calls, and the mobile web can help your organization connect with supporters and drive meaningful action.
Click here to register now for Netroots Nation, June 7-10, 2012.
Image by Yasin Öztürk.
Friday Linx is a recurring feature on our blog. We’re aiming to bring you a collection of links worth a read and cute cat video to ease you into the weekend. Below you’ll find items on free Facebook webinars, winning tactics and messaging, driving e-commerce with Pinterest and Facebook, resources from Idealware, and the new Google Analytics Easy Dashboard Library.
Onto the links!
Facebook announced that they’re going to start offering webinars targeted to small- to mid-size businesses. Topics include “Build your page”, “Connect with new fans using ads”, “Measure and improve your ad campaigns”, and “Deep dive to sponsored stories”. Though the sessions aren’t designed for nonprofits specifically, they still seem worth checking out (especially since they’re free!).
Kivi Leroux Miller wisely pointed out that “Your Boredom is a Bad Way to Measure Success”. Just because you’re bored with your tactics or messaging doesn’t mean that your supporters are.
AllFacecook shared an infographic that shows that when it comes to driving e-commerce, Pinterest is beating out Facebook. If your organization uses social media sites to sell merchandise, this post is worth a look.
Idealware pulled together all of the resources they’ve posted to their blog in one super helpful post. You can bookmark this post and use it to find the following types of resources:
Google Analytics API users will be happy to learn that Google just created an Easy Dashboard Library just for you. You can use the Google Analytics API to create custom reports for your organization with Google Analytics data.
Finally, the countdown to Netroots Nation continues! Don’t miss out on the 30 hands-on training sessions covering the critical skills that every organizer needs. Register now and join us in Providence June 7–10.
NN12 training preview—Leading up to the conference, we’ll be featuring guest posts from NN12 trainers. Click here to register now for Netroots Nation, June 7-10, 2012.
Here’s a story of two online petitions.
These petitions were both sent out by Democrats running for Congress to their email list of supporters recently. They both had to do with the recent Republican vote to end Medicare in the House of Representatives. And they both called out the Republicans in the race for supporting the vote.
The email linking to the first petition read like this:
This week House Republicans unveiled their budget, and it holds the same toxic provisions that would turn Medicare into a voucher program even though more than 1.8 million Illinois seniors rely on the popular program.
[my opponents] voted for nearly the same budget proposal last year.
Sign our petition telling them to oppose the plan and show independence from Washington GOP leaders >>
And the second read like this:
On Friday, Paul Ryan said he was ‘excited’ about cutting Medicare, and that the Republicans are “just going to keep doing it and doing it, to show that we’re serious and we’re committed.”
As budget talks bear down on us and Ryan is about to announce a new 2012 budget plan, I am asking my Tea Party Republican opponent to make a choice. Will he join Paul Ryan and the Republican Congress in forcing seniors to give up their Medicare guaranteed benefits to pay for tax cuts for millionaires?
Click here to add your name to this petition before my delivery to [my opponent] on Wednesday.
What’s the difference? Take a few moments to read closely, see if you can find the answer.
On the surface, these emails are very similar. Both link to petitions about Republicans wanting to end Medicare. Both hit a Republican opponent for supporting this plan. If you clicked the bolded link in each email, you would have been taken to a petition page where you could sign each respective petition. In fact, tactically, these emails are almost identical — they’re asking you to do pretty much the same thing.
But strategically, they’re very different.
The first email is slacktivism — it’s asking you to take a meaningless online action, for the purposes of perhaps making you feel good that you “did something.” But more likely, the campaign is hoping you’ll share it with your friends, who will sign themselves and grow the campaign email list, so the campaign can ask more people for donations.
Why is the first email meaningless? Because there’s no indication of what will happen to that petition after you sign it. And that probably means nothing will happen after you sign it.
In the first example, we’re being asked to sign a petition to “tell [the republican opponents] to oppose the plan and show independence from Washington GOP leaders.” Given that call to action, it’s logical to ask the question, “In what way will my signature tell them anything?” Will the campaign collecting the petition signatures deliver the names to their opponents, to make sure these names “tell” them something? Will the campaign inform the media of how many signatures they got, to “tell” the opponents through the press? Will the campaign make each name into a form letter, make little paper airplanes from them, and throw them at the opponents during debates? How exactly will the message get through?
We’re being asked to go from point A (signing the petition) to point C (sending a message) without a point B (the target actually getting the message in some way). Without point B, there’s a disconnect. This email has a theory of change that’s broken.
The second email, however, tells you directly about point B: “Click here to add your name to this petition before my delivery to [my opponent] on Wednesday.” (emphasis added)
Here, the theory of change is intact — if you click on this email’s link and sign this petition, it will be delivered to the Republican opponent, so your message will be received.
Having a strong theory of change can make the difference between success and failure. If you clearly communicate to the online activists you talk to your theory of change (and then you do what you say you are going to do and report back to them with the results), you build up immense credibility. People will want to take action, because you have a track record of being honest, effective, and powerful. And of course, a strong theory of change means you make an actual impact in the real world, too. A petition delivered to nobody is a waste of time and clicks, but a petition delivered in the real world, in front of the media, with a crowd of supporters to hand over the stacks of paper to the target can create actual pressure, and help win your demands.
At Netroots Nation in Providence this year, I’ll be leading a training entitled “How to Make Clicks Mean Something: Strategic Planning for Online Campaigns.” There, I’ll present the method I and others at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) use to plan our campaigns. I’ll be discussing theory of change, but also the other pieces that go into making an online campaign impactful and successful — setting good goals, coming up with a strategy, reporting back, and using momentum moments to drive forward. And I’ll be presenting a case study of one of the PCCC’s successes as an example.
Come join me on Saturday, 6/9 at 10:30am and learn more about how to prevent slacktivism and start winning your online campaigns. And in the meantime, make sure every campaign you launch has a strong, clearly communicated theory of change!
Click here to register now for Netroots Nation, June 7-10, 2012.
Netroots Nation 2012 is just around the corner! This year we’ve got thirty training sessions from some of the nation’s most talented activists and experts.
As we countdown to NN12, we’ll be giving you a preview of what you can expect at the conference by publishing blog posts from some of our trainers. Keep an eye out for posts by Jason Rosenbaum from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Michael Sabat from Mobile Commons, and more.
If you still haven’t registered, now’s the time!
Click here to register now for Netroots Nation, June 7-10, 2012.
We’re expecting a record crowd this year, and I hope you’re planning to be a part of it. For more info about the event, check the Netroots Nation website.
Friday Linx is a recurring feature on our blog. We’re aiming to bring you a collection of links worth a read and cute cat video to ease you into the weekend. Below you’ll find items on Google Analytics, websites, cool mobile apps, and SEO.
Onto the links!
Google recently added some pretty cool reports to Google Analytics to help you measure clicks to your site from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs. The reports make it easy for you to see which sites are sending you traffic, which pages they’re sending traffic to, and more.
According to Katya, we should be spending half of our digital time managing our websites! She makes a good case and includes some helpful tips from Wikibrands.
Fenton released a nifty little list of apps: Apps We Love, Part I: Work Better, Connect Better, Play Better.
SocialMediaToday’s got a post with tips on extracting SEO insights from Google Analytics.
Finally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t remind you that Netroots Nation is just a few weeks away! This year we’ve got 30 hands-on training sessions covering the critical skills that every organizer needs, from developing your website to becoming a media star. Register now and join us in Providence June 7–10.
Recently a fellow ‘Winning the Internet’ blogger lamented on why she didn’t “care about Pinterest” and I promised her that I write a post to counter her position
New social networks tend to freak out professionals like myself; but only because our colleagues think that we must sign up for an account – sight unseen.
But Pinterest is different and it’s recent growth is unparalleled beacause of two key reasons – visual storytelling and women. Still don’t believe it? Just take a look at some of these impressive stats:
How did Pinterest manage to do what no other social network could?
We now live in a world where information is potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning? Only human beings can tell you where it is. We’re extracting meaning from our minds and our own lives. - inventor and futurist George Dyson
Pinterest is successful, particularly among women, because the images it chronicles tell a story and history tells us that women are natural storytellers [see Scheherazade]. Also of note, a recent study by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the University of Indiana concludes that women are 40% more likely to donate (to a charitable cause) than men.
So how can nonprofits leverage Pinterest and it’s captive audience? Two words: meaningful metrics.
If your organization’s metrics include meaningful outcome measurements, visual storytelling can become an effective way of reaching a key constituency – women.
Let’s take the American Red Cross for example – known for their social media prowess. They’ve managed to take their Pinterest page and turn into a visual story supporting their goals of emergency preparedness and blood donation with ‘pinnable’ infographics .
Amnesty International uses their board to highlight their littlest activists and inspiring people. And there are many more nonprofits using meaningful metrics to make a difference on Pinterest.
True, every nonprofit isn’t cut out to take Pinterest by storm, but those who have a solid communications plans can use Pinterest as a visual storytelling tool dedicated to a key audience.
Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today. - Robert McAfee Brown
crossposted @ thefriendraiser.com
Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about one of the most powerful free tools available to organizations: Google Analytics. A basic installation of Google Analytics is easy and enlightening. However, you can get so much more out of the tool by going a couple of steps beyond the basic installation.
In case you missed them, here’s a round-up of our recent Google Analytics posts, with tips for turbo charging your account.
An amazing amount of data can be found in Google Analytics—some may argue it’s too much data. This is where custom reports can be a huge help. With Google Analytics’ custom report tool you can create any report you want, save it, and view it as frequently as you like, with just a few of clicks.
Below are instructions for creating four of my favorite custom reports:
Traffic from social networks
You can automatically see traffic from social networks, along with other sites, by looking at the All Traffic report (Traffic Sources > Sources > All Traffic). However, it’s sometimes helpful to look only at traffic from social networks. Here’s how you do it.
Traffic from blogs
Do you have a handful of blogs that mention your organization regularly? If you’re interested in seeing how much traffic those mentions lead to, you can setup a custom report to do it.
Most popular blog posts
If your site includes a blog, it’s a good idea to look at that section of the site in isolation periodically to see which topics perform best, etc. Here’s how you can do this with a custom report:
Most popular pages (for a particular part of the site)
Sometimes it’s helpful to look at how a particular section of your site is performing in isolation. For example, a staff member may be interested in her program pages only.
Happy custom reporting!
If you’ve got just a basic Google Analytics setup, you’re likely missing out on a lot. For example, have you ever noticed that Google Analytics only tracks clicks on links that lead to webpages that are part of your site?
For most of us, clicks on links to other sites aren’t tracked at all. This can be a major drag, especially considering that donate and take action links often leads to third-party sites.
Fortunately, the good folks over at Google have created a solution! It’s called Event Tracking. With the right coding, you can track outbound links and just about any type of interaction within a page.
First you’ll need to add some code to your site – I’ll explain exactly how to do that in a moment. Once your code is in place, you’ll be able to view clicks on outbound links by looking at the Top Events report in the Content section of Google Analytics.
Your report will look something like this (depending on how you add the code to your site). First you’ll see something like this report that shows the total number of events and unique events (think clicks).
Once you drill down (I clicked on Outbound Link in this example), you should see a list of the links that were clicked, like this:
Now you’ll always know exactly how many people clicked on your donation link!
I my opinion, outbound link tracking is the easiest type of event tracking to implement. To set it up, you’ll need to add some code to your site. There are two ways to do this.
Manual link tracking
To manually track clicks on outbound links as events, all you need to do is add a bit of extra code to each link. If your coding skills are limited and you’ve got a small site with only a few outbound links, this could be a good choice. Here’s some example code from Google:
<a onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Outbound Links', 'Click', 'Google']);" href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a>To use this code for your link, just copy and paste the code, and make the following changes. http://www.google.com/ should be the url you’d like to link to. The first Google (between the single quotes) should be whatever you’d like to name your link, and the second Google (between the carrots) should be the text you want to be hyperlinked.
Automatic link tracking
If the idea of manually tagging every link on your site makes you want to cry, you should probably try automatic link tracking. This involves making sure you have asynchronous tracking installed on your site, and adding a little bit of JavaScript code that will automatically tag the links for you. This is fairly technically involved, so I won’t go into the details of how to do this here. Axllent.org has a pretty good how-to though.
Tracking video interactions and other actions
You can also use event tracking to track how people interact with a video on your site (play, pause, etc.), or anything else that involves clicking within a page (initializing a game, etc.). The coding involved here is a bit more complex than with outbound links.
Unfortunately I haven’t yet found a resource that breaks this down and makes it easy to understand. If you’ve got a good source, please share it in the comments! However, if you’re feeling motivated and you know how to code, Google’s code site has some instructions.
I’m pleased to announce the official training line-up for Netroots Nation 2012! The sessions were selected from almost 90 submissions by a committee of training experts.
Thank you to those who submitted ideas—the competition this year was fierce. The sessions that made the final cut will be led by trainers from organizations like Democracy for America, NOI, Wellstone and Obama for America, plus nonprofits like Green for All and Advocates for Youth.
You can find descriptions of all the sessions here.
And now for the line-up!
Welcome to NN12!
Grassroots Organizing
Issues & Advocacy
Media & Communications
Online Organizing 1
Online Organizing 2
Technology & Design
Writing & Blogging
We’ve got a couple more sessions that we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks. For now, check out the descriptions for these sessions and the rest of our agenda.
Friday Linx is a recurring feature on our blog. We’re aiming to bring you a collection of links worth a read and cute cat video to ease you into the weekend. Well, the cats are on strike this weekend. So we bring you Jon Stewart instead. Below you’ll find items on Code Academy, Communications, Email, Benchmarking reports, and the best meme to hit the Internet this week.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Onto the links!
If you haven’t heard about Code Academy it’s something that’s a must if you’re an online organizer. You can’t be effective if you’re not conversant in basic HTML and CSS. And you can be a real asset if you’re capable of getting a microsite online without hiring a design firm. Best of all, it’s free! Check out this post Sunlight Foundation wrote on it.
Kivi Leroux Miller has penned an article for NTEN’s latest journal called 5 Communications Myths Non-Profit Executive Directors Believe. Any of these sound familiar?
epolitics has released their How campaigns can use the internet to win in 2012 ebook. If you sub out “candidate” for “organization” a lot of this is still good advice.
I’m of the opinion that there’s pretty close to no valid reason to be doing a “newsletter” any more. Kivi isn’t so partisan on that front, but she does have a good guide on what it takes to make the change.
There were several benchmarking reports that came out this week. Melissa’s done a roundup of those and added a little detail, check it out.
This wins the Internet for the week, refresh it obsessively.
Ever wonder how your organization’s new media program compares to other nonprofits’? Three reports were just released that can help you answer that question.
First up is M+R and NTEN’s 2012 eNonprofits Benchmarks Study. This is one of my favorites because it’s light on text and easy to parse quickly. This report focuses heavily on measurable results, so you’ll find things like average email and social media stats by vertical, and easily digestible tidbits like this:
One of the things I like about this study is that they make an effort to collect data from organizations of various sizes. So, if your organization is on the smaller size, it’s still fair to use this report to see how you measure up.
Blackbaud released their Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report. This report is interesting because it looks at how organizations are using social media, from an operations standpoint.
In this one you’ll find info about how many employees organizations have devoted to social media, how organizations are using Facebook advertising, what drives success on social networks, etc. (Surprise, surprise: the number 1 factor for success is having a strategy!). They also surveyed organizations of various sizes.
Finally, Convio also came out with their own study this week. The content is similar to the eNonprofits study, though the report is bigger and tougher to read. Personally I’d take this study with a grain of salt – especially for smaller organizations. The data was pulled from Convio’s own tools. These tools are very expensive and as a result the organizations that use them tend to be a bit bigger.
Happy benchmarking!
Did you know that you can use Google Analytics to track social engagement on your website?
It’s true! The latest version of Google Analytics includes new social reports that you can use to measure social interactions on your website. “Social interactions” include clicks to your Facebook or Twitter page, Likes on a particular page or blog post, etc.
There are three new reports, all of which can be found in the Audience section of Google Analytics.
Engagement
The Engagement report shows how many visitors to your site are socially engaged. “Socially engaged” represents visitors that clicked on one of your social media buttons or tools while on your site. “Not socially engaged” represents visitors that did not. (Click to enlarge screen shots.)
Action
The Action report breaks down the actual social media actions that visitors took on the site. The cool part about this is that the report can even distinguish between visitors that clicked through to your Facebook page, and visitors that clicked the Facebook Like button for a particular blog post or piece of content.
Pages
The Pages report is super cool because you can see exactly which pages visitors were on when they clicked the social media buttons. The first column shows the total number of social actions for each page, and the additional columns show exactly how many of each type of social action were taken.
Pretty cool, right? Until now, most of us had no idea if 5 or 500 people a month were clicking on some of these buttons. Now you can measure exactly how many people are interacting with social tools through your website.
Setting it up
Google Analytics automatically tracks Google+ interactions, but not interactions with other tools (of course!). If you want to track Facebook, Twitter, etc., you’ll need to add some additional code to your site.
Lunametrics has a great post that breaks down exactly what you need to do to add the code to your site. If you’re the one that manages the Google Analytics code on your organization’s site, you should be able to use their tutorial to add this extra code to your site. If not, pass the blog post on to your webmaster or web consultant and let them know exactly what you want to track.
We just recently wrapped up mentorships with four incredible nonprofit organizations, and are about to embark on our next journey with three new organizations. We’re excited to announce our third cohort:
New Media Mentors seeks to help progressive nonprofits use social media and online organizing tools effectively. It’s a six-month intensive mentorship designed to shift organizations toward strategic thinking and a deep integration of new media and programmatic work.
In case you missed it, we wrote up our key take-aways from the first year of New Media Mentors.
In the first year we worked with seven organizations: Pesticide Action Network, Green Corps, California Immigrant Policy Center, Mujeres Unidas Y Activas’ Caring Hands Workers Association, International Development Exchange, Californians for Justice, and Chinese for Affirmative Action.
It’s been a joy to work with these organizations and we’re excited to get started with the new cohort.
Whether you were ready or not, Facebook turned on Timeline for all pages on March 30th. What you’ve likely seen a lot of is write-ups about the new features available to you. This isn’t another piece about features, it’s about strategy.
If this is taking you by surprise and you’re scrambling to get something up then your first stop should be two tactical pieces explaining how to use the new features. This article has been written 300 ways, but I liked these two from All Facebook. This piece provides a good overview of the new features and you should of course watch Facebook’s tour. And this page gives you the exact measurements of all the images so you won’t have any scaling issues.
Now that you’ve got a cover photo up let’s talk strategy. I’ll preface this by saying that it’s unclear at this point whether this new functionality will actually lead to increased engagement or not. Time will tell. In our case we justified spending time on this because we wanted to relate our history better to new supporters anyway.
Telling your story
So the whole point of doing this is that Facebook is giving you a visually attractive way of telling the story of your organization. You’ve probably seen the promotional video they did when they rolled this out for personal use or how the Kony 2012 folks approached it. If you put in the effort it is in fact an attractive way to tell your story. The outstanding question is whether people will largely care and appreciate it. That’s to be determined.
Before you get started, you have a few decisions to make.
1. What kind of story do you want to tell about your organizational history? Is it programming achievements, campaign wins, internal milestones like leadership changes and growth, all of the above?
2. Do you want it to be just about you? Or do you want to also include things that were going on in the background for your set of issues? That doesn’t mean claiming other people’s wins, but rather indicating there’s momentum on the issues you’re working on.
Once you’ve answered those questions for yourself you can begin writing out your story. That’s going to include things like:
Once you’ve collected all of those things in one place in a coherent order you’re ready to get started.
Cleaning up
The first thing you’re going to want to do is a lot of cleanup. Depending on whether you allow followers to post on your wall, how many posts you make on average a week and how long you’ve been on Facebook you have a little to a lot of work ahead of you.
You can hide posts directly from timeline but that’s not very efficient. You want to go straight to the activity log. It’s under Manage -> Use Activity Log.
What you want to do here is just start hiding things from the page that are not relevant for telling the story you’ve created for yourself. So start at the beginning and work backwards. This activity log interface makes it a lot faster. In our case we had a lot of promotional stuff that was unnecessary like announcing a registration rate increase or the opening of our auction. Stuff like that is no longer relevant when you’re this far back in time, so hide it. We pretty much left 2012 alone, but every other year was fair game. It sounds like an awful process but it goes quickly.
Your founding milestone
You can’t do anything else with milestones until you deal with this. It’ll be defaulted to the year you listed as the start of your organization if you filled that in previously. This one’s important to your story because you can’t put anything further back in time. In our case we didn’t choose a founding milestone that represented the signing of corporate papers that officially gave birth to the organization or anything. This was ours:
In our case the real start of the organization was a diary written by PastorDan shortly after the 2004 elections. It may be different in your case but it may not simply be what’s reflected on your corporate paperwork.
Rolling out your milestones and stories
Now that you’ve got the founding milestone taken care of it’s time to fill in the rest of your story. All those links, significant events, photos and videos? It’s time to post them.
Mechanically all you need to do is go to the status box where you’d usually post and start writing. Once you’ve published your page and have a founding milestone you’ll notice you can create other milestones. Those work well if you’d like to write a little story and share a photo about some significant event. You can also include links in them as we did in the screenshot above.
One tip I haven’t seen too many people mention is make sure you check the hide from newsfeed box on milestones, otherwise you’ll be hitting your followers with each update, and that’ll get annoying fast.
To post status updates, links, videos, or photos you just need to do that like you are used to doing. However, note that there is now a icon in the lower left corner that looks like a clock.
Make sure that you click that each time or you’ll be posting directly to the top of your Timeline. You should also note that once you add a year (and month or day) you’ll also get a “hide from newsfeed” checkbox. Again, you want to check this if you don’t want to spam your followers.
If some of your work involves posting an album of photos then there is a similar hide from newsfeed concept there if you set the date for the album to be a date in the past.
Finishing up
That’s pretty much all there is to it. When you’re done you can choose to do nothing and just let people explore or you can work this into some sort of engagement campaign with your followers. We’re planning to use it as a tool for newer supporters to help tell our story but we won’t be doing anything like sending an email to our members or anything like that.
Good luck!
Since its inception, Netroots Nation has been a great place to meet, organize and learn from each other. With over 2,000 attendees, the conference not only provides the opportunity to connect with people people engaged in similar work, but also allows people who have worked together on line for months, or in some cases years, to finally meet face-to-face. It’s at Netroots Nation that folks are able to match faces to domain names, organizations and publicatons and, in turn interact personally.
More and more, we see AIM, Skype, Gchat and others replacing the traditional water cooler. And while technology has greatly changed the way we communicate (Email, Skype, online chat) there is nothing like people sitting down, in person, engaged in the exchange or information and ideas. Personal conversation is unlike calls that rely on a smartphone, computer program or web connection.
With these ideas in mind, in 2008 the National LGBT Blogger and Citizen Journalist Initiative was started. The effort brought together 60 online bloggers and journalists for a weekend of training, skill sharing and – as important as any part of the program – social time to interact with their fellow on-liners and build strong working relationships.
In 2009, the Initiative came to Netroots Nation. Two years of pre-conventions were so successful that in 2011 the Netroots Nation organization formally welcomed the program and named it Netroots Connect. The LGBT Netroots Connect program provides scholarships for Netroots Nation and hosts what has become one of the important meetings for LGBT leaders across the country.
In addition to the LGBT Netroots Connect program, Netroots Nation has expanded the program. In 2011 a Labor Netroots Connect was held and this year a Netroots Connect program is being held for activists engaged in on- and off-line organizing around women’s issues.
Look for information about thde LGBT Netroots Connect here. This year’s program will take place on June 6th, one day prior to the Netroots Nation conference. To join the LGBT Netroots Connect announcement list for the pre-conference and scholarship programs, drop a note to mrogers@rogersdc.com.
Anyone with a Google Analytics account can login and see how many people have visited their site, which pages the visitors checked out, where they came from, etc. That’s easy, right?
That may be easy, but it isn’t always meaningful. Sometimes, you may be interested in finding out how a subset of your audience is using your site. As long as Google Analytics is collecting the data, you can do this with Advanced Segments. Today’s post explains how to create an Advanced Segment and apply it to a report, and highlights some of my favorite Advanced Segments.
Setting up a segmentBasically, if you’ve seen something included on another report in Google Analytics, you can turn that into an Advanced Segment and use it to filter the report you’re interested in. Here’s how you do it:
1. Make a note of the dimension
The first step is to figure out what you want your segment to be. Think of it first in real world terms– ex: people that come to our site from another website – specifically Facebook. Once you’ve got that, you need to figure out what Google Analytics calls that (they use the term Dimension).
The easiest way to do this is to find a report that already has that Dimension in it, then make a note of the Dimension name, and the specific value you’re interested in. So, for the example given above, you can find the Dimension by looking at the All Traffic report (located under Traffic Sources). In this case, the Dimension is Source and the value is facebook.com or m.facebook.com. (Note: This particular report is actually using two Dimensions – Source and Medium. Either can be used to create a segment.)
2. Navigate to the report
Next, navigate to the report you’re interested in looking at for the subset of the population. For example, if you wanted to see which pages people coming from Facebook visited, you might check out the Pages report (under Content > Site Content).
3. Create and add your segment
At the top of the report, click Advanced Segments, then +New Custom Segment.
Give the advanced segment a name, then click on the green box to change the Dimension to the one you wrote down. Select the operator that is the most appropriate for your segment, then enter the value you saved before into the box next to it.
If you’re interested in more than one value for the dimension, add it under Or. When you’re done, test the segment to make sure it’s working, then click Save Segment.
There you go – you should see the report you were interested in, for that segment only. (Note: To turn off the segment, click Advanced Segments again, uncheck the box next to the segment and click Apply.)
My favorite Advanced SegmentsI’ve quickly fallen in love with Advanced Segments. Once you get the hang of creating them, they’re easy to setup and are a huge help when you’re measuring results or troubleshooting issues. Here are a few of my favorites:
Traffic from social media
I like to see which of our blog posts were most popular for visitors coming from social media sites. To do this, I look at the Pages report, then follow the steps described above. I just keep adding Or statements until all of my social media sites are covered.
Location
If you’re targeting a particular state or city with your marketing efforts, it can be interesting to see how many people come to the site from that area, and how they get to the site. To do this, look at the Audience Overview report or the All Traffic report, and apply one of the following segments. Dimension = Region, containing [state name], or Dimension = City, containing [city name].
Traffic to a particular landing page
Earlier this year our blog post about the Susan G. Komen controversy received a whopping 12,000 pageviews. I wanted to find out if people that came to the site to read that post ended up checking out other pages on the site. To do this, I looked at the Pages report, then created an Advanced Segment with the following properties: Dimension = Landing Page, containing Komen.
Internet service provider
This is a really interesting one. Google Analytics records the Internet Service Providors (ISPs) of your visitors. For the most part, this information is pretty boring (the top ISPs are generally Comcast, Verizon, etc.). However, large companies and universities sometimes have their own ISPs. If for any reason you want to monitor this kind of traffic to your site, you can!
To take an initial look at the ISPs that are sending traffic to your site, check out the Network report (found under Audience > Technology). Once you’ve got a list of the ISPs you’re interested in, you can create the following segment: Dimension = Service Provider, containing [ISP]. One of the organizations I mentored recently does organizing at college campuses and went crazy for this, as it allowed them to see how their offline work resulted in traffic to their site.
If you’re new to Advanced Segments, go ahead and try creating one! They’re quick, easy and make Google Analytics soooo much more powerful.
Friday Linx is a recurring feature on our blog. We’re aiming to bring you a collection of links worth a read and cute cat video to ease you into the weekend. Below you’ll find items on Twitter, Google Analytics, new YouTube features, and new Facebook features.
Onto the links!
Twitter turned 6 this week. Mashable put together this timeline of some of their highlights.
Google has been busy rolling out some cool enhancements to analytics. There is a big new feature that should go a long way toward helping you measure the value of social media and the impact of your campaigns.
YouTube’s released some basic video editing tools that let you polish videos directly on the site. YouTube is also allowing non-profits participating in its program to livestream on their platform. I haven’t had a chance to compare it to platforms like ustream or livestream, but if you have thoughts please comment.
Mat Honan over at Gizmodo has put together his thoughts on the direction Google’s been heading and where they may have gone wrong.
As a reminder, Facebook is turning on timeline for all pages on March 30th. We’re still working on ours (and the corresponding post) but this video with some simple tips is worth watching.
Finally, Facebook has also quietly rolled out a feature called Interest Lists. Right now only people can create them, not pages, but the Washington Post is trying something creative to use it for their page.
In the “Hunger Games”, heroine Katniss Everdeen heralds from District 12—a coal mining area in the Appalachian Mountains. Life in District 12 is hard. Boys start working in the mines early so their families don’t starve, and it’s not uunusual for families to be shattered by mining accidents. In fact, Katniss’ own father died in a coal mine.
District 12 residents hate the mines, but they keep working there because they have to. Panem’s spoiled Capitol relies on District 12’s coal to fuel their lifestyle of extravagance. As a result, the district’s economy and way of life are deeply rooted in the mines.
Does this sound familiar? People are suffering from these same issues in coal mining towns today. District 12 is real.
As I read the first “Hunger Games” book I couldn’t help but think about what a good opportunity this is to get a mainstream conversation going about coal. It’s a topic too often ignored by the media, but right now, tweens and teens are wearing coal jewelry and even eating coal cookies!
Pop culture has just happened to shine the light on this issue, so why not take advantage of it? The “Hunger Games” might be the biggest movie of 2012. There has been and will continue to be a ton of press on the topic, and why shouldn’t activists get in on that action?
Jumping on a hot topic isn’t necessarily a new tactic, but it can be effective.
Just last year, the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NWDA) used the movie “The Help” to bring domestic worker rights into the spotlight. NWDA ran a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #BeTheHelp, organized house parties around the Academy Awards, posted a petition on Change.org, uploaded a video to YouTube, and more. This led to exposure in mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post and thousands of new supporters of domestic worker rights.
Be creative, be strategicSometimes you can see an opportunity coming and you have time to prepare (as with the “Hunger Games”) and sometimes the opportunity hits you unexpectedly. Just keep an eye out for opportunities and be ready to pounce on them when they arrive. That means working quickly (even if you have the idea at 8pm on a Saturday night), and developing a strategic campaign plan.
If you have time to prepare
Think hard about how you can repurpose content you’ve produced for an issue like coal mining or how you can reboot a campaign you’ve run. You probably want to plan a creative microsite that focuses exclusively on your target audience, removes your brand from the equation, and provides solid information and actions for people. Focus on creating something that people will want to share on social networks and/or will be fodder for a news story.
Also spend time thinking about how you’ll push traffic to the site to get the ball rolling. You’ll need to seed the campaign, most likely with Facebook, Twitter, and your address book.
If you don’t have time to prepare
If a pop star suddenly makes an outlandish comment relating to your cause or something else happens suddenly, you’ll need to be quick and creative. These are the same principles folks applied recently with the the Komen fiasco and the pepper spraying cop. Even through you have less time, you still need to go through the strategic planning process (don’t worry, it can be done quickly—just use bullet points and resist drafting a strategic novella). You need goals, a theory of change, a strategy and tactics. This is important, because it forces you to think things through and can save you from embarrassment.
Take advantage of platforms that are easy to get up and running with a few clicks like Tumblr. A great example of this is what Deanna Zandt did when Komen pulled funding for breast cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood. She got a bare bones Tumblr account up called Planned Parenthood Saved Me and started collecting powerful stories.
Another way to capitalize on the moment quickly and build momentum for a campaign is to quickly deploy a petition. Whether you choose your own tools, Change.org, Signon.org or something else, just get it up quickly. When Kobe Bryant made a gay slur, a 35 year-old accountant used the incident to create a Change.org petition asking the San Francisco Giants to create an It Gets Better video. He collected over 6,500 signatures, and the Giants became the first professional sports team to create a video for the It Gets Better project.
When it comes to developing creative tactics, the sky’s the limit! Take the opportunity to engage your supporters in a fun way and create content that will be shared on social networks.
Know your audienceThis sounds simple, but for any of this to work you have to know the material and your audience. In the case of the “Hunger Games” you’re primarily looking at an audience of tweens, teens, and adult pop culture junkies (yeah okay, and some new media bloggers in their 30s). Consider this when you’re developing the tone and voice for your work.
It should fit with the the movie or other pop culture opportunity and appeal to your target audience. It’s possible to get really creative here and use the same villains and heroes but work in your own points. The Center for Disease Control’s Zombie Preparedness guide is a great example.
You also want to jump in places you know your audience will be talking. That could be on Facebook, Twitter or maybe even specific fan forums.
Think about searchWhen you’re dealing with a pop culture phenomenon you’re going to have a lot of people searching and talking about the topic online. Just by being smart about how you write posts about your issue or create microsites can have big returns. For example, about two weeks ago Raven wrote a post titled “The anatomy of Kony 2012” right as the video was blowing up. The post performed well on its own, but close to 40-50% of the views came from Google searches related to the video. If you have an advertising budget, you may want to spend some of it on things like Facebook, Google and Twitter hashtag ads.
You don’t need a professional team of stylists or years of experience handling a bow and arrow to run a successful pop culture-based campaign—just a timely idea and some guts. So think things through, but don’t hold back! And—I couldn’t end the post without saying it—may the odds be ever in your favor.
Photo from Rae Gun Ramblings.
All week I’ve been sharing learnings from my last year mentoring for New Media Mentors. Here’s a recap of the posts in case you missed them:
Last Friday marked the end of New Media Mentors’ second cohort. We’ll be kicking things off with a new set of groups next month. Be sure to check back for more lessons over the next six months!
