Seeking Suggestions :: Social Media for Promotion of Nonprofits

Social media will be incorporated into a summer project I’m working on for Easter Seals Camp ASCCA. I know you’ve seen me write about Camp ASCCA often, but this summer - get ready - you’ll see it a lot here and at the Camp ASCCA Web site.

I honestly believe that this will be the largest nonprofit use of social media (blogs, podcasts, video, forums and more) that has ever been attempted (aside from political sites and some national / international NPO sites). But, I can’t say that for certain until I do some more research. You can help, if you like. Do you know of any site for a nonprofit organization that has posted this much, this often and using online communication?

Below you will see an outline of what our plans are and how we seek to accomplish these tasks. I have abbreviated the plan as it is actually written out and is 12 pages - single-spaced - in a Word document. I’m still working on it, too.

Here, in a nutshell, is what we’re going to try. I’d love to receive your feedback, suggestions and criticisms.

ASCCA is a nonprofit organization and resources are limited. They have devoted two internships (paid) to the process. The students will receive free housing, meals and $1,000 per month (the same salary camp program staff receive). That, I believe, is a remarkable commitment.

Beyond that, ASCCA has invested in two multimedia computers, digital audio recorders, video recorders (straight to MPEG) and software. I am donating the use of a digital video camera, digital photo camera and a digital audio recorder, too. This should enable the interns to easily capture, and quickly edit, the content they capture. More on that below.

• Two interns will run the operation. Their work hours are quite different from other jobs. They will follow, essentially, the same day that all of the campers and staff do - 7:00 AM until 10:00 PM each day. The camps traditionally run from Sunday at Noon until Friday at Noon.
• In an attempt to be realistic, I am seting an initial “minimum” number of blog postings at four per day. Actually, I believe it could be 8 or more per day.
• Posts will be a combination of audio, video, photos and text.
1. VIDEO: Our initial goal is to do short video pieces and they will be loaded up to our Google Video site and YouTube. These will highlight the program areas from lakefront and the pool to horseback riding and high adventure. We have over a dozen activity areas, so content will be widely avaialable.
2. AUDIO: These will be short interviews with campers, parents, counselors and visitors. The length will not, I pray, go beyond 10 minutes each. These will be hosted on our servers and delivered through the Wordpress Podpress plugin and iTunes.
3. PHOTOS: Digital cameras will be used to capture dozens of photos each day. They will highlight four main areas: programs, camper/counselor relationships, barrier-free architecture incorporated into activities and cabin life. These will be hosted on our servers and in our Flickr Pro account.
4. WRITING: These will be observations by the interns about Camp ASCCA and the experiences of the campers and staff. Visitors (fund raising) will also be highlighted. We want honest observations. ASCCA has always been about the reality of abilities - not focusing on the disabilities. We want to offer answers/solutions which allow people with disabilities to participate. We don’t want any “poor pitiful crippled children” stories. Those always irk me.

I realize that is a lot of uploading. Now the sad news. One of the limitations we have at a camp is our location. We have satellite web access. That means that uploading is essentially dial-up. Camp is 10 miles from the nearest highway. A squirrel on the phone line can cause havoc. We may actually drive into town for the uploading of the video, audio and photo files. The only alternative is to keep the phone lines running all night.

With few exceptions, opensource software will be used for all of these projects. We have a wiki (PmWiki), CRM (SugarCRM), calendars (30boxes and Google Calendar), forums and/or alumni database (phpBB), eLearning (Moodle), photo albums (Flickr and Gallery 2), video (Google Video and YouTube) along with Wordpress blogs and plugins.

The students have already used much of the software and they have seen the rest of it in action.

New releases will be delivered via a blog newsroom setup to the state and southeastern publications serving our campers hometowns. Most of these are mid-sized to small publications and usually appreciate the content. High resolution photos will accompany the stories created by the interns. Where possible, audio actualities will be included and sent to their local radio stations. Small town radio still does radio news, you know.

I am not sure what, if any, value online press release delivery services could offer us, but we may try them. We’ll likely only use the free services, unless someone wants to spot us for free access to a paid service. That would be a blessing.

Contacts will be made to these local news organizations and offer them email notification of stories or RSS feeds. They’ll likely prefer the emails, as most of the releases will be specifically targeted by locality.

Side projects include populating the Moodle eLearning site to help expand ASCCA’s appeal to school teachers in the areas of environmental education.

Among our many goals are: considerable search engine placement and optimization, increased visibility in online social media communities, a rebirth of ASCCA’s regional media releases, active involvement with our primary audiences (people with disabilities, parents, caregivers, teachers, therapists/medical, other nonprofits and our alumni - campers, staff and volunteers).

Yes, we will be pitching - news outlets and bloggers. We will be commenting in other blogs and developing relationships with sites/blogs addressing disability issues.

We are also interested in online fundraising, but that will come down the road. We want to develop a strong respectable presence online, first.

OK, that is a brief (believe it or not) synopsis of what we’ll be doing this summer. What do you think? I’m reserving some comments I have until I hear from you.

Uh, oh… Schools. Are you tracking blogs?

Well, I know this is an isolated incident and overly dramatic. But, if this story about an Alabama Teacher Accused of (a) Sex, Murder Plot doesn’t offer a test case for school systems and state boards of education (or any organization or business) to monitor online communication - nothing does.

I created this to share with teachers, online-newbie communicators and students. The genesis for this idea came from posts by Kami Huyse at Communication Overtones and Josh Hallett’s “How Can You Not Google Yourself?” post. Both are on reputation management and search. Great posts. Check them out. I’ve just adapted my little tutorial for a quick post.

It was easy to set up a few RSS blog searches to see how bloggers, news sources and many other information sources (social media/WOM) may be talking about this story.

If are not familiar with RSS (Really Simple Syndication), RSS readers and RSS Search aggregators, here’s one way to do it. There are *many* ways to do this, I’m just sharing this one because it is relatively simple. And, once you are through with this, you may use this process to track all sorts of RSS feeds.

First, you need to get the Firefox Web Browser. It is free and easy to use. The saying goes, “Once you try Firefox, you’ll never go back (to Internet Explorer).” We’ll see if that holds true with the next edition of Explorer.

OK, now - using Firefox browser - go get the Sage feedreader extension. This is essentially a free plugin that allows you to read RSS feeds. You will click on the “Install” link at the top of the page and then click the “click here to install” on that page. Now, you must close/exit Firefox and restart the browser.

Done? Now, you’ll need to create a new tab in Firefox (press Ctrl+T on your keyboard). How cool, huh? Tabbed browsing in Firefox. This allows you to keep these instructions and bounce back and forth from here to the feeds. Next, select the new blank tab in your browser and go up to your browser’s top menu. Click on “View” to select “Sidebar” and then slide down to “Sage.” A sidebar frame will open up in your browser window. You are ready to import OPML files or create new bookmarks to the feeds on your favorite sites.

Hang with me, we are almost done. Next, you can download these sample OPML files which I created at Monitor This. Here are the files:

• Right-click on the links and choose “Save Link As…”
  and save it to your desktop.
• Coffeeville
• Coffeeville High School
• Sharon Rutherford (the teacher)

Got ‘em? Good. Now, you just need to import them into your Sage reader. So, in your Sage sidebar, click on “Options” and slide down to “OPML Import/Export…” to import each file one at a time. Each time you import one of the files a folder will appear in your Sage reader’s sidbar top box. Click that folder and see all the sources drop down. Click one source at a time and they will appear in the larger browser window to the right for you to find the links to various articles, blog posts and news items. Some sources provide excerpts and others provide the entire story.

Kinda scary, isn’t it? That is a lot of people talking about Coffeeville. Hundreds and hundreds of blog posts. Hundreds more instances of reprinted AP stories. Dozens of individual news sites - TV and print - with their stories. Folks, Coffeeville is a small town and a small school with only a little over 100 students. Now, apply that to a metropolitan area with a school having 1,000+ students and you get the point. Blog savvy kids will write about their school and others will write about your problems, too.

One idea - by schools, for example - might be to create searches like these for your school (or schools) name(s) and also put in promintent figures like superintendents, principals, board members, etc. Stack them all up in the Sage sidebar and check them daily or weekly. I bet it will open your eyes to online WOM (word-of-mouth). It may also help you catch something being written about you that needs to be watched further, or tackled before it snowballs. Businesses can do this, too. Think of it as a 30 to 60 minute investment that can pay off every day.

If nothing else, this serves as an example of online WOM and how you can track it - about any key term or phrase.

Update: From Slashdot, here is one more example of the tracking that is going on from MSNBC.

My next post will likely be about Eric Eggerston’s latest find - a “Blog-based Fund-raising Campaign” called Blogidarity. Thanks, Eric. Looks like a very interesting idea.

Google Calendar Beta

Was chatting with my brother online today and he made me realize that Google Calendar is out in beta. I hadn’t noticed. Very cool. Thanks, Bill.

I love it already. Still, there are some aspects that I would like to see beyond this Beta version. Naturally, they are still working on it so here is my wish list.

A shared output that can be viewed like a traditional calendar. You know, with little boxes in rows and columns. Google’s, just like 30boxes, simply provides the feed. Why not allow a the caledar box view? Perhaps because it frees them from having to host such an animal. The way they are doing it, Google just has to deal with delivering the RSS feed.

The calendar already allows for pop-up notifications as well as notifications by email and SMS. You can have reminders sent to your cellphone. The calendars have public and “invite a friend” capabilities, too. Excellent idea by Google and much appreciated.

This tool has potentional to be tied into Google video and podcasting along with Flickr. The possibilities are many and broad. But, we’ll have to wait as the 3rd party developers get started working with the API.

Can’t wait to see the mods and hacks that will be coming down the line. CBS News reports:

Google is publishing an “application program interface” (API) which will enable independent programmers and web developers to create applications that work with the calendar.

That will almost certainly result in a number of rich applications including event web sites using Google calendar as well as added features such as two-way synchronization between Google Calendar, Blackberries and programs such as Microsoft Outlook.

Ike Pigott Draws RSS Blood and News

Ike Pigott, of Accentuate the Positive, 2.0, shared news of an interesting project at the Birmingham Red Cross.

The campaign includes two blogs and a customized/branded RSS reader that you can download.

The blogs are Red Cross Media Alerts and Jefferson County EMA Media Alerts. Also, check out Ike’s version of a branded RSS reader. That is just one of many ways you could accomplish this neat little freebie. During an emergency situation, I can imagine some news people launching this to keep track of new posts.

I like this for several reasons. First, news outlets always want these Red Cross and EMA alerts. Many news outlets have not engaged in RSS and this is a way to turn them on to it easily.

Second, using Blogger (as Ike has) the sites are free. Any free hosted service will do. Perhaps this will spur other nonprofits into the blogosphere. Later on, they may start a blog from within their ranks - beyond news releases and alerts, after seeing how easy it can be to publish. Blogs are an easy way to tell your organization’s story.

Third - and Ike, this is where my students will love you - the branded RSS reader is so cool I’m going to require they make one as part of their final project.

Yes, I know some will say that RSS readers are everywhere and why would someone want your branded version. Well, if they have not adopted RSS and you are the one that gets them started, they may well keep your branded version for awhile. That means each time they start the reader (which you can add other feeds to, as well) they will see your logo and info. Now what is wrong with that? The effort to make one is so minimal that the real question might be “Why not make one?”

Finally, Ike is helping nonprofits get into new media and that is laudable. His efforts are also in line with the ideals behind Operation Link Love where we are trying to find examples of nonprofit blogging. Ike takes the next step of “paying it forward” and “giving back” by getting the nonprofits involved. Now that is admirable and I appreciate his efforts. Good job, Ike.

Am I A Six Apart Project? Are they ‘watching’ me?

Don’t worry. I’m not paranoid. This is probably an example of good practice - something very innocent and innocuous. I just found it interesting that when I upgraded the blog and went through areas I had not visited in a long time (to see if they still work) this came up. It isn’t often you find your site listed as a part of someone’s “projectz.”

In my WP-Stattraq plugin (which works in 2.0, by the way), I found a link from Six Apart’s subdomain site projetz.blogs.com in the referrals. Interesting.

Blogs.com resolves to Typepad’s site. The site - projetz.blogs.com/ - is password protected, so I cannot see what the link is referencing. I also cannot tell what post it is pointing to, either.

Now, my best guess is that they either have a RSS tracker of all posts about Typepad running there - or, they have a blog where they are writing about people that are criticizing/praising Typepad. I have written about them, so it makes sense that the link(s) might show up in their RSS search results.

I give them praise, if either of those possibilities prove true. It means they are watching the memes about their company and paying attention. Good job, Six Apart, if that is what you are doing. Can you tell us, please?

The interesting thing will be to see if (a) they are still watching, (b) this post shows up, and (c) if they come here to comment about it. Now that would be quite a revealing transparency experience, wouldn’t it? The only thing I would suggest is, whatever you are using for your tracking, it must be pinging something - like me. You are tipping your hand, Six Apart. If you want stealth, um - stop pinging as a referrer.

Society for New Communications Research - Society for New Communications Research Launches

Well, I find the EUPRERA survey and PR academic directory, yesterday. That, alone, was a great thing to see. But, when it rains it pours. Today I learn of the Society for New Communications Research. A Society for New Communications Research. Thanks to Jeremy Pepper for the heads up.

Check it out:

Society for New Communications Research Launches :: International, Multidisciplinary Consortium to Study the Impact of New Media & Participatory Communications

Palo Alto, Calif. - October 31, 2005 - The Society for New Communications Research (http://www.sncr.org), a new international, non-profit think tank, was announced today. The group was formed to provide a forum for research and education and a source of expertise focused on the broad theoretical and practical implications surrounding new communications methodologies, tools and technologies.

Vision

To be the leading think tank for the advanced study of new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, i.e. blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasts, collaborative tools and the growing phenomena of participatory communications and their effect on traditional media, marketing, public relations and advertising, as well as their broader impact on business, politics, entertainment, culture, education, religion and society.

Mission

To investigate, develop, share and transfer in-depth and forward-facing insights resulting from our deep ongoing study, learning, and continuous mastery of new communications tools and technologies with the academic community and industry for the promotion of best practices.

Their Planned Activities:

In-depth Research Studies
Whitepapers & Case Studies
Best Practices & Standards Development
Industry Education: via Face-to-face events, Teleseminars, Podcasts, Videocasts, Publications
Journal of New Communications Research
Annual Research Symposium & Awards program

The journal idea sounds particularly interesting. All of it sounds great, actually.

New Aggregator Tool :: PRblogs.org Update

Found a new RSS feed aggregator tool. lilana is an opensource browser aggregator tool. It does not require a database and is easily uploaded and launched in minutes. This tool will be quite useful in a variety of situations.

To view the new tool, please visit these links providing posts from the:

• Last 24 Hours
• Last 48 Hours
• The Past Week
• All Posts - “Danger, Will Robinson.” This one will likely take a long time to load.

The aggregator comes with (a) Google contextual search suggestions for each post topic, (b) del.icio.us and furl bookmarking tools, (c) dropdown excerpt views, (d) OPML download to put the feeds / links into your own tools - and more.

I have launched it for aggregating all of the posts from the entire PRblogs.org community. You can visit the post outlining the new tool at PRblogs.org :: “Aggregator of All PRBlogs :: New Blogger - Jennifer”.

And, as you see above, we have yet another PRblogs.org user. Jennifer is a senior in PR and Vice President of her university’s PRSSA chapter. She is at a school in another state and I look forward to getting to know Jennifer better along the way. Jenn is quite passionate, as she relates in her blog:

I am a driven person and am very passionate about the work I accomplish and the goals I have set for myself. I hope to make an impact. I know that sounds trite, but I sincerely do.

That’s great. Just the kind of student we’re looking for in the new community. Visit Jennifer’s blog - “That’s News To Me” at PRblogs.org. Special thanks to Jeremy Pepper as I believe he may have suggested she come on over and try out PRblogs.org. Update: Yep, it is the same student Jeremy found and steered to PRblog.org. Thanks Jeremy!

This is exactly the type of person I was hoping to attract to PRblogs.org. If you can think of any other students, educators and professionals that might want to dip their toes into the blogging pool - please point them to PRblogs.org.

UPDATE: And, we now have a Blogdigger aggregation Group for PRblogs.org. It is open to public view. I’ve always liked Blogdigger. A cool tool.

Yahoo! Subscriptions BETA

Jeremy Pepper writes about the latest search offering from Yahoo!

Think about this: in PR, we do a lot of research. We do research for new business proposals. We do research for press releases. We do research for media pitches, or we should at least be doing research on the product and its competitors to be able to speak intelligibly to reporters. A cornerstone of PR is research.

Yahoo! Subscriptions BETA is a powerful tool which, with the future addition of Factiva, will become even more useful.

Currently the search tool digs through subscription based resources not usually accessible by search engines. The resources available currently are: Consumer Reports, FT.com (60 days), Forrester Research, IEEE publications, New England Journal of Medicine, TheStreet.com, and Wall Street Journal (30 days). Days in parentheses relate to how far back the search digs into their archives. (”Note: You will need a valid subscription to the sources above to access their content.”)

Most of those resources are available to us through the university library. So, check out the search tool and see what you can then find using Auburn University’s AubieCat service.

Why is this search different?

Yahoo! Search Subscriptions enables you to search access-restricted content such as news and reference sites that are normally not accessible to search engines.

Search all the sources listed above or check the specific sources you want to search. Use preferences if you want to save these settings for future searches and want to add these sources to your regular Web search experience.

Learn more about Yahoo! Search Subscriptions.

Yahoo! Mindset searches: Read more

LinkStats and SiteStats :: Pubsub

Pubsub’s Bob Wyman announced the new LinkCounts tools. Visit his blog - As I May Think…

The “Expanded Blogosphere Statistics” tools featuer their own “Atom Feeds of data available” for the links/sites you’re tracking. The reports also feature daynamically created ‘.png’ graphs/charts representing traffic for each link you track.

I can already imagine the plugins being created for WordPress/MT blogs that access/report the “InLinks, OutLinks” the new tools offer. But, there is more to this than just the links. The interesting part is how they are reported. Check out Wyman’s post and you’ll see that you may track your own blogs and others, too.

Among the new tracking reports available:

• Number of New entries seen each day
• Number of OutLinks seen each day
• Number of sites with OutLinks each day
• Number of feeds with updates on each day
• A variety of other bits of data

There are also “SiteStats pages.”

In order to see all the reports in their splendor, let’s compare two high profile blogs like: Robert Scoble’s Scobleizer and Markos Moulitsas’ DailyKos.

He has a very good blog. He doesn’t update it very frequently, but - when he does - it does a good job of promoting the Pubsub mission.

NYTimes Pageviews and Pulled Businesswire Release

PaidContent.org features a snippet about the New York Times citing a press release from Yahoo! Biz.

If you follow the link to ‘biz.yahoo’, you find this:

Removed

This article has been removed at the request of the news provider, Business Wire.

Strange, isn’t it? From PaidContent.org:

NYTimes.com’s RSS Feeds Drive 5.9 Million Pagviews In March: An interesting factoid in the press release by NYTimes.com, announcing record online traffic for March: RSS feeds generated 5.9 million pageviews on the site in March, which represents a 342 percent increase year over year and a 39 percent increase from February’s 4.3 million pageviews. The sections that were most popular among RSS feeds included: Washington and Business… [by rafat] [Apr.18, 05] | NYT |RSS Etc. |

Is there a good reason for such a post to be pulled? Was it an ‘ooops’ by BW? Was it NYTimes? We’ll see if either the numbers/terminology were wrong or someone jumped the gun? Any other ideas why this would be pulled? It just seems strange.

Recently, it was reported that Wikipedia “Launched in 2001, … is one of the most visited Web sites worldwide, according to Alexa Internet Traffic Rankings, with more than 500 million page views per month.” Since this number makes the “5.9 million pageviews on the site in March” seem miniscule by comparison, is this the reason it was pulled?

Sure, they are ‘likely’ referring to 5.9 million additional pageviews thanks to RSS, but still… Won’t know until someone puts out an explanation.

Hat tip to Michael Tippett at NowPublic for the link.

More on Aggregate Content… PR 101?

This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when we started talking about aggregator blogs, but it certainly is happening. And now - to me, too.

Yes, I have admittedly aggregated the content of others and shared it with my students. In my case, there are no ads. I’ve turned all the links back to the originating blogs. I have turned off comments. I have clearly stated why I’m aggregating the content. My intention is to expose students to new ideas and content/writing, thereby sending them off to explore new blogs and sites.

What follows are two separate reactions to this new turn of events in ‘aggregating’ many blogs into one. Part I was written ‘before’ I found out that aggregation of my content was occurring. Part II is after I discovered it.

Read more

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