Tag Archives: communications

Who IS that person in charge of your social media?

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There is a large international organization I follow on Facebook and Twitter, and I’m sorry to say that its been making major missteps via these social media tools.

In the last four weeks, whomever is in charge of social media at this organization has posted a message that, in my opinion, was completely inappropriate and put the organization in a very bad light, as well as repeatedly posting inaccurate information relating to the mission of this organization and not responding to most online questions and criticisms. But no one seems to be noticing at the organization – the mistakes keep happening, and when I made inquiries to two people who work for the organization, they had no idea what was going on online (in fact, they weren’t sure who was in charge of social media activities). 

It’s painfully obvious that there is no strategy regarding this organization’s use of social media. Perhaps the job has been handed over to an intern or two – after all, if you are in your 20s, you are just automatically an online social media expert, right? It’s also obvious that no one in senior management is following the accounts regularly – because if they were, these very public missteps wouldn’t have gone on this long.

It brings to mind a long, long time ago, way back in the 1990, when a lot of marketing directors at nonprofit organizations handed over web site development and management to the person in charge of IT – the person who kept the computers running. These marketing managers saw the Web as technology, rather than as outreach. Web sites for these organizations often were packed with flashy web features, but light on information, and answers to basic questions that someone goes to a web site for – where the organization is located, the nearest free parking, the nearest mass transit stop, hours of operation, upcoming event information, how to volunteer, etc. – were oh-so-hard to find. Many marketing directors were oblivious to the web site’s shortcomings – they never looked at the site beyond a unveiling of such (at which pizza and soda was served in the break room and a good time had by all).

Back in 90s, I worked at an organization where I was the internal communications manager – but ended up in charge of all Internet outreach. The marketing director (to whom I did not report) thought the Internet was a fad and said he wasn’t interested in it, so I was in charge of building the organization’s web site, and in undertaking all online outreach via email and online discussion groups. He never had any idea what I was doing, and was never interested in sitting down and learning. After several months, he realized his mistake, as what was happening online was being talked about by people and organizations we were trying tor reach much more than our print materials.

I said it back in the 1990s, I’ll say it again now: everyone has a role in an organization’s outreach, online and offline. The receptionist needs to see the organization’s main brochure before it goes to print, or the web site before it’s launched – she or he knows the primary reasons why people call the organization, and she or he can make sure these publications include this information. The people that deliver the organization’s programs or interact most with the public, as well as senior managers, including the head of marketing, need to follow the organization’s social media profiles, and their feedback about such needs to be listened to. Everyone at the organization needs to have copies of print publications and, if they have a comment about the usability of an online tool or how the public is responding to the organization online, senior management needs to listen to them.

Just as importantly, your organization needs a fully integrated social media strategy, a plan that puts a reason behind every Facebook status update and every Tweet, one that answers the questions What are we going to accomplish today with our social media use? What are we going to accomplish this week with our social media use? Three months from now, how are we going to measure social media success? Does the head of marketing have a written outreach plan, and are online tools fully-integrated into such – not just mentioned? Does the head of programming have a fully-integrated plan for using online tools, including social media, in his or her written strategy for the coming year?

And, finally, make sure whomever is posting those messages to Facebook or Twitter or GooglePlus or whatever on your organization’s behalf is fully supervised. That person needs to be sitting in on every marketing meeting and every public event. That person needs to be presenting a briefing on what’s happened in the last week – and not just number of tweets, number of Facebook status updates, number of “likes”, number of “friends”, etc., because numbers really mean nothing. And senior management needs to be following what this person is doing online in real time.

Delegating social media tasks doesn’t mean senior management stops participating online. Too many nonprofit organizations, international aid agencies and other mission-based organizations forget that.

Walking My Talk: How Do I Use Online Tools for Outreach?

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I talk again and again about the importance of nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies and other mission-based organizations:

  • creating a strategy for their online communications,
  • always knowing exactly how they are using each online tool,
  • always looking for measurements of success and areas that need improvement, and
  • always looking for ways to refine that strategy.

Do I practice what I preach, for myself and my own business? Yes I do! And I’ll share my own ever-evolving strategy regarding social media networks, right here, right now, not as a blue print for you, but for you to consider how to create your own road map for your nonprofit, NGO, government program or other mission-based endeavor.

My use of all these tools is ever-evolving. This is how I use these now, but in a year? It may not be true!

Facebook
I have both a Facebook fan page, which I hope you will “like”, and a Facebook account, Jayne Cravens.

I use my Facebook fan page to post about updates to my blog or my web site, and to note anything I think nonprofits, NGOs or other organizations will find particularly helpful or interesting with regards to computer and Internet technology, management, public relations/outreach, volunteers / volunteering, humanitarian / development / aid issues, and women’s empowerment. I try to post to it every work day. One does not have to be my friend on Facebook to like me (and receive updates from me).

I use my Facebook profile page to like, comment on or share other people’s or organization’s Facebook status updates, and to report on personal news that I think my associates might be interested in and that I feel comfortable sharing online. I also use my Facebook profile page to talk about what I’m doing as a consultant, the organization I’m working for, what I’m learning, what we’re accomplishing, etc. (I save my criticisms of current employers for offline conversations directly with the employer, of course!). I try to keep my personal life and professional life separate online, but I don’t want the wall to be so thick that I have no personality online to professional colleagues, and this profile helps in that regard. I friend people I work with, people I volunteer with, volunteers I support or have supported, people I admire and want to learn from, and organizations I support personally or that I think do a great job using Facebook for community engagement. And I accept almost all requests to friend me, though I turn down anyone who I suspect is actually a spammer or scammer… and anyone who is shirtless.

I also have a personal Facebook account that is only for friends. Real friends. People I know and drink beer with. Yes, a *few* people are on all three. A couple of times a month, I might share an item on all three accounts, but I really do try to keep each focused on a specific goal, on a specific audience.

Twitter
Like my Facebook fan page, I use my Twitter feed to post about updates to my blog or my web site, and to note anything I think nonprofits, NGOs or other organizations will provide particularly helpful or interesting with regards to computer and Internet technology, management, public relations/outreach, volunteers / volunteering, humanitarian / development / aid issues, and women’s empowerment. And like my Facebook profile page, I also use it to learn from people and organizations that are also at least somewhat focused on my areas of professional interest. Anyone can follow me on Twitter, but I don’t automatically follow someone who is following me; by limiting those I follow on Twitter to only those people and organizations that relate to my work and that I don’t already friend or follow on Facebook, I keep Twitter much more valuable to me.

I greatly prefer Twitter to Facebook when it comes to getting the word out about my own professional activities and engaging with others (commenting on other’s activities, forwarding the messages of others, etc.). I also learn more on Twitter than I do on Facebook – I learn about resources my own network should know about, news that will affect my work, and ideas I can use in my work. Twitter feels more creative, more fun, and more manageable than Facebook. But I have to be on Facebook too, because that’s where soooo many people and organizations are. For your organization, it might be the reverse – I have worked with many organizations that get far more out of Facebook in terms of engaging constituents, including volunteers, than Twitter.

I don’t link my Twitter and Facebook accounts – meaning when I post to one, it doesn’t automatically post to the other. Because I really don’t like it when someone does that – feeds to Twitter from Facebook often make no sense (the person forgets Twitter’s 140 character limit, or the URL link doesn’t come out right), and feeds from Twitter on Facebook look cryptic. More on why not to do this is best said in this presentation by Carie Lewis at Humane Society of the USA.

LinkedIn
I use my LinkedIn connections to connect with people I have worked with. Period. My 360+ connections on LinkedIn are actual colleagues. These are people I’ve worked with, volunteered with, corresponded with at length regarding work or volunteering, have been in one of my workshops, etc. They are people I know. That makes them a real, trusted network. It is my highly-specialized database to use for specific communications to that network.

My former boss and good friend, Howard Sherman, said in a Tweet once,

Why do people I don’t know keep trying to link to me on @linkedin? Don’t they understand it’s for professional ties? Poor use dilutes goal.

That is exactly how I think as well.

I do use LinkedIn to network: I’m on as many groups as a free account allows me to be on, I post my presentation dates in the events feature, so others can consider attending, and I post regularly to the “answers” section regarding nonprofits. All of that brings me in contact regularly with new people and organizations – and we engage together via email, I read their blogs, they read mine, we get to know each other, and maybe, as a real relationship develops, I may ask to friend them on LinkedIn (or they may ask me). Otherwise, everyone who asks to be a connection that isn’t a professional or volunteer colleague gets directed to my Facebook page, my blog and my email newsletter, Tech4Impact, and I ask for their blog address, newsletter subscription info, or any links to publications they have so I can learn more about them and their work.

Tech4Impact
I have a monthly email newsletter. It has almost 800 subscribers, most of whom do not follow me on Facebook or Twitter. My email newsletter is focused on…

  • how technology is used effectively by mission-based organizations — that means nonprofits, non-governmental organizations/NGOs, civil society organizations, public sector agencies, schools — and their supporters, to benefit individuals, communities and the environment;
  • what tech and online tools, resources and practices are proving most valuable to these organizations and their volunteers;
  • what cultural and financial conditions, legislation, and other factors are that can and do influence tech use by these groups.
  • news and resources relating to all of the above
  • updates to the Coyote Communications web site relating to nonprofits and technology.

Tech4Impact is less about techno-jargon and more about the human factors in using technology successfully, including the Internet, to benefit people, communities and the environment.

I would love to get rid of this newsletter and convert everyone on it to my Twitter feed or an RSS reader for the blog you are reading now. But guess what! The subscribers have told me that is not what they want to do, and so, I’m going to keep publishing this email newsletter. Because that’s what this huge group of people interested in my work have asked for, and I listen!

Google+
I’m still figuring this out. I will probably use it just like I use Facebook. And maybe it will replace Facebook someday. Or maybe it will go away, just like GoogleWave.

I also am still an active user on many email-based and web-based online discussion groups, including several on YahooGroups; it’s through these channels that I reach the most people and organizations, far more than any of the social media channels I’ve just named.

I also subscribe to numerous blogs via RSS, though I’m lead to most via a link on Twitter, Facebook or an email newsletter.

My goal with all this? To be truly accessible – that all of the information I want about me is out there is for the people who want that information, in the form in which they want it. Not everyone wants information delivered the same way, hence why these multiple channels are necessary.

How do I judge success with these tools? Not by the numbers… but here are those numbers, in case you are interested:

There’s not as much cross-over on those social media network numbers as you might think – meaning most of the members of each of those audiences do not follow me multiple ways. How do I know there isn’t much crossover? I’ve asked who is following me where, and I look over subscriber and follower lists to look for people or organizations showing up on more than one network.

I judge success with these tools by the kind of comments I get from readers and colleagues, by the inquiries I get for my services, and by what I learn via these channels, the blogs or web pages inspired by what I learn, and how often the information from these networks leads to new web pages or new material for presentations.

Based on that criteria for success that I use, I abandoned MySpace, GoogleWave and USENET/newsgroups (which used to be the primary way I used the Internet, except for email, back in the 1990s).

Okay, I’ve shown you mine – now, organizations, you don’t have to show me yours, but you do have to create a similar map for use in your own organization or program. How and why are you using various online tools, and what is the result of using those tools? How are you using those tools not just to get information out, but also to get information in?

More on how I use Twitter (includes a list of tags I follow and use)

Tags: social, media, advertising, networking, outreach, relationships, communications, connections, networks

Tech Jargon – Let’s Rebrand Email

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The Internet is now the Cloud.

Telecommuting is now workshifting.  

Virtual volunteering is now microvolunteering.

What was done on USENET in the 1980s and 90s is now crowdsourcing on social media.

So, since we love coming up with new jargon for old things, then it’s only a matter of time before someone comes up with a new name for email, right?

In honor of Friday, my favorite day of the week: How should we rebrand email?

Snarky/humorous answers will be the most-welcomed.

Answer in the comments section here, or via Twitter. The first answer is from

Erin Barnhart:

Microstatic conversations

And, FYI, this is how I posed this question to my Twitter feed, : (see more re: How I Use Twitter, including my frequently-used, frequently-followed tags)

is now . is now . How should we rebrand email?

Tags:  jargon, technology, terms, tech, cyberspace, language, communications, humor

 

Feuds in the nonprofit/NGO/charity world

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I work with nonprofit organizations, international agencies and even government offices that don’t get along with each other. And it leaves me in an awkward position when I’m talking with such an organization about some activity or resources that would be oh-so-appealing to another organization. I know that, when I make the suggestion for collaboration, or even just an email update or event invitation from one organization to the other, a heavy silence will fill the air – or some quickly-made-up excuses will flow and the suggestion will be ignored.

Entire organizations hurt each other’s feelings all the time, just as people do – because organizations are made up of people. But often, what one organization views as a criticism or an act of conscious disrespect by another organization is actually incompetence or thoughtlessness – it’s not at all a deliberate act. It can be an email that doesn’t receive a response or a phone call that doesn’t get returned (They are ignoring me! They hate me!) or a duplication of activities (They *know* we already do an event like that! They did this to try to steal our thunder!) or an event that doesn’t get announced until late (They didn’t tell us about this earlier so we wouldn’t be able to participate!).

I know one organization that believes it’s in a feud with another organization – but that other organization has no idea there’s any hurt feelings! So while the Hurt Organization takes every action by Other Organization as an attack, a slight, an insult, etc., Other Organization is completely oblivious that Hurt Organization feels that way.

Sometimes, a feud is acknowledged by both organizations – but there’s no effort to get over it. And there always be an effort to get over it, because there’s no room in the nonprofit / NGO / charity world for feuds. Disagreements? Yes, those need to happen, and it may be you never see eye-to-eye about what the approach should be to homelessness, or women’s health care, or stray animals – but the disagreement can be acknowledged by both parties without a silent and/or nasty feud between them. Debates? Absolutely – we won’t evolve or learn if we don’t debate! But silent feuding? That hurts all of us and those we serve.

When I take on public relations/outreach activities for an organization, one of the first things I do is to look at the distribution list for press releases and announcements, invitation lists for events, etc., and I make sure every organization that has a similar mission and is working in the same area is on those lists. That can include groups that have publicly said they disagree with the organization’s mission. There might be some cringing from other department heads, even a closed-door meeting where I’m assured the overture won’t lead to anything positive, but I insist. And every time, maybe after weeks, maybe after months, there’s a thawing of relations: Someone has lunch with someone else. Someone attends another’s special event. A white paper is shared. Small steps.

Maybe the organizations will never like each other; but I don’t have to like you to work with you!

Also see:

How to handle online criticism

Community Relations, With & Without Tech

Photos & videos by & of volunteers online – privacy issues?

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Following up on the post from yesterday regarding why nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations shouldn’t use stock photos, let’s talk today about privacy issues with photos of volunteers, particularly children.

Back in 2010 on UKVPMs, a discussion group for volunteer managers in the United Kingdom, someone wrote:

I have vague memories of this issue being discussed before, but I’m looking into guidance (mainly for volunteers, but also for paid staff and service users) around people posting photo’s or video clips etc on You Tube and similar sites. If working with children and/or  other vulnerable groups, are there clear legal responsibilities we need to be aware of ? I don’t have a deal of experience in this area, so don’t know how much vetting the sites carry out themselves and how reliable this might be. Is data protection an issue

Video and photo-sharing sites do NOT vet any photos or videos submitted to their sites, just as the phone company isn’t responsible for what you are saying in a phone conversation.

It’s important to remember that, in most countries, you cannot legally control what people take photos of or film at a public event. Think of it as the picnic in the public park rule — you cannot control someone taking photos or film of you if you are having a picnic in a public park, regardless of whether or not kids are present.

That said, you should ask your staff and volunteers (same rule for all) to adhere to certain rules regarding taking photos or filming at any of your organization’s activities, public or not, and to adhere to certain rules regarding what they do with that film and video. You need to determine what those rules should be. You need to let volunteers know this includes whatever they do with their cell phones (so no one can say — “Oh, I thought you just meant cameras“).

Do all of your staff and volunteers already sign photo release forms, saying that photos may be taken of them at organization activities in which they participate and may be used in your own outreach activities (your web site, your blog, brochures, slide show presentations, posters, etc.)? Do parents of all children participating in your programs sign such a form? If not, you definitely should get busy getting such a form put together and signed by everyone now, and everyone who joins later. You can find lots of examples of photo release forms on Google.

I don’t know how much these releases would count in a court, but they do create awareness among participants that photos are sometimes taken. I haven’t lost any volunteers over the signing of such a policy — has anyone else? (I’d be interested to hear how you handled such in the comments section below — or did you lose the volunteer altogether?).

Do you already have a policy regarding how your organization identifies children in photos? (first name only, no names at all, etc.) Make sure all staff and volunteers know this policy. If you don’t have such a policy, again, look on Google — lots of organization’s share their policy. Some I found:

With the photo release and children-in-photos policies taken care of, talk with staff and volunteers and involve them in the development of further policies regarding taking photos and film during organization activities, and how they use these photos and videos. Reinforce your confidentiality policies and children-identification-in-photos policy during these conversations. Be clear about what cannot be filmed or posted under any circumstances (personnel discussions, staff meetings, counseling sessions, etc.). I find that involving people in the conversation about policy development (asking for their feedback in my online discussion group for volunteers, at onsite meetings, informally when we meet, etc.) better guarantees people will embrace it and make sure it is enforced.

If you are going to prohibit all such photo and video-taking, you need to have very clear reasons why (in writing and in conversations), and you need to talk about what the consequences will be to staff and volunteers if the prohibition is violated. You also need to consider the consequences of such a draconian ban — you will be losing out on a significant public outreach tool. Volunteers can create a LOT of interest among their friends, family and associates for your organization when they share photos and videos of their activities as a volunteer. Also, you will probably lose more volunteers over such a draconian ban than you will if you allow photos to be taken.

One of the guidelines I have is to ask staff and volunteers to always announce to their colleagues “I’m taking photos/video now!” before they start doing so, and to respect the wishes of people who say they do not want to be filmed. Ask staff and volunteers to respect the wishes of their fellow volunteers who may contact them and ask that an image that features them on their own Flickr account (or other photo-sharing site) or YouTube account to be removed (note that these accounts are owned by them, not you). Ask staff and volunteers to share links to videos and photos with the organization, as a courtesy. Talk with volunteers about what a photo dispute might look like and how such could be negotiated/mediated (you could give them two or three fictional scenarios for discussion). And, as noted above, ask for their own suggestions for policies.

For whatever you come up with in terms of guidelines, you will have to reinforce the message frequently — you can’t just deliver the message once and expect it to be heard.

Related blogs and sites:

Social media policies for mission-based organizations

Forget the stock photos; make your own photo archive

Photos of me at work

Tags: photos, communications, communicating, mission, outreach, story, news, volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, volunteerism, smartphones, PDAs, camera, phone, cell

Don’t use stock photos; make your own photo archive

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One of the many online communities I’m on had a posting by someone from a nonprofit organization looking for stock photos of volunteers to use in a brochure they were producing.

And I cringed.

Stock photos are professionally-produced photos made available for companies and organizations to use to express a certain notion or idea. Stock photos are also of people who have no affiliation with the company or organization that uses them on their web sites, in their brochures, etc. You see stock photos in picture frames for sale.

A stock photo used by a nonprofit organization on its web site, in its brochure, or on a poster is obvious — and dishonest. To me, it screams, “These are professional models who don’t actually volunteer here/aren’t actually clients here!”

Unless the identity of your volunteers or clients needs to be protected (and that certainly does happen — for instance, with domestic violence shelters), you should have a folder on your computer system (on your local network, in the cloud, whatever) filled with digital photos showing genuine volunteers, clients, staff and others, ready for use in your marketing materials and fund-raising proposals.

The good news is that you can easily compile such a stock photo archive!

Begin by ensuring that you have a signed photo release for every volunteer at your organization. Volunteers should be asked to sign such a form at the time they attend the first orientation or volunteering session or with their completed volunteer application. If you intend to take photos at an activity or event where clients will be present, you will also need to get a photo release form for any clients (or anyone else) who might be photographed. You can find samples of photo release forms by typing in this phrase into Google.com or your favorite online search tool:
photo release form

Next, make sure every paid staff member, every unpaid volunteer, every client and every parent or guardian of a client knows your organization’s policies regarding taking photos in association with your organization’s activities (again, just type photo policy into Google.com or your favorite online search tool to find examples of such), and within the boundaries of those policies, invite them to take photos in association with your organization’s activities and to share these photos with your organization. With most smart phones and other handheld tech coming with a camera, your volunteers and clients may already be taking photos. Remind everyone associated with your organization, via regular meetings or regular online or print communications, both of these policies and that you would like such photos shared with you (people need to hear messages more than once in order to have them in mind).

Note in your event or activity announcements if photos might be taken. Whoever takes photos should identify him or herself to those being photographed. This should be a part of your photography policies that you have communicated organization-wide.

When photographing at events where people may not know me, I ask that whomever kicks off the meeting to announce that I’m taking photos that could appear on our web site or in printed materials, and that if anyone does not want their photo used, they should raise their hand any time they see me taking a photo they might be a part of so that later, when going through photos later, I will delete any photo of a person who is raising their hand, or crop them out of the photo. This worked really well when I took photos at community meetings in Afghanistan (more about Taking Photos in the Developing World, a resource I developed while working in Afghanistan in 2007).

Frequently encourage volunteers, employees and clients to share photos they have taken at your events or during volunteering activities with your organization (they need to hear this message more than once!). The best way to share photos is, IMO, via Flickr (photos can be shared with just your organization, without sharing them with the entire world) or via Drop Box (don’t accept photos via email – it uses too much bandwidth and will slow your emails down!).

As photos come in to you, create a folder on your computer or drive for photos you might want to use on your web site, in a brochure, in a fundraising proposal, etc. Look for photos that have at least one of these qualities:

  • shows action
  • shows smiles
  • shows diversity
  • teens
  • seniors

If you don’t have software or an operating system that allows you to organize and search photos easily, create a naming system for photos, sub-folders and files on your computer so you can easily find photos for certain kinds of images, such as photos that show:

  • female participation
  • senior/elder participation
  • multi-cultural participation
  • physical action
  • enjoyment/happiness
  • caring
  • etc.

If you can afford to use a professional photographer and have photo setups, where volunteers pretend to be in the middle of a service activity, or where staff pretend to be engaged in their work, great! It’s okay to set up a photo — just use your own folks, not professional models.

Stay genuine! That attracts people much more than even the slickest of stock images.

March 26, 2018 update: I was working on a very large PR campaign with a colleague. I wanted to solicit photos from various sources to use in our campaign, photos of people engaged in an activity that related to our campaign. She wanted to use stock photos. I relented for various reasons. A year later, I stopped at a gas station in Kentucky, and while inside, looked up at a poster about job opportunities with this particular company. There was a series of photos that I guess were meant to represent people that work for the company. And among that series of photos was one that we had used prominently in our own campaign, which had nothing to do with gas stations… I realize it’s unlikely that anyone else made the connection, and I certainly don’t dislike gas stations – I’m quite fond of their services. But it was a reminder of why using stock photos is often a very bad idea.

March 8, 2021 update: Here is a fantastic blog about a company that created its own photo stock library, using its own assets (it’s own offices). I think going round your building with a smartphone, taking snaps and adding insta filters will always trump purchasing stock images. What a great task for volunteers to undertake for your organization!

What is impressive, what is not

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Things I’m not impressed by:

  • How many Facebook “likes” or “friends” your organization has
  • How many times your organization “tweets” or your tweet has been retweeted
  • That your organization received an “award” from one of your VENDORS
  • That you “gave up” a corporate career to work in the nonprofit sector
  • How many hours your volunteers contributed last year
  • How many hours of overtime your organization’s employees work most weeks
  • That you are hiring a Rock Star-anything (Rock Star Membership Coordinator, Rock Star Social Media Manager) unless you are PAYING a Rock Star salary and providing Rock Star benefits.
  • Your web site’s use of stock photos
  • That your new web site is coming soon and all your descriptions of how great it’s going to be.

Things I am impressed by:

  • Online activities leading to offline action
  • How your organization handles negative comments on your Facebook page
  • That your organization was recognized by your Governor’s volunteering awards
  • That your tweet last week resulted in a $5000 donation (or more) than you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise
  • What your volunteers accomplished last year, in terms of tangible results (literacy among your clients increased, trees planted, perceptions changed, legislation passed, etc.)
  • Volunteers in leadership positions at your organization (leading a project, serving on an advisory board regarding marketing and outreach, producing a publication or online video, etc.)
  • Happy employees that love going to work and supporting each other, that love collaborating internally and sharing information and resources with each other
  • A competitive salary and benefits package for employees
  • Photos of your own organization’s actual volunteers or clients, however out-of-focus such may be
  • That your new web site is launched, on time, that it’s easy to navigate, that I can quickly find what I’m looking for without having to sit through a video or shut down your blaring audio that starts up automatically, that it works with any browser, and that you obviously incorporated the suggestions of others into the new design.

 

Handling a social media faux pax

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I love this! Not the faux pax (actually, the faux pax is hilarious), but the brilliant way it was handled:

In February 2011, someone mistakenly tweeted from the American Red Cross account something that was meant to come from that person’s personal Twitter account. The tweet involved beer.

The American Red Cross said in their blog about the event:

We realized our honest mistake (the Tweeter was not drunk) and deleted the above Tweet. We all know that it’s impossible to really delete a tweet like this, so we acknowledged our mistake

And they acknowledged it with both a humorous tweet and this blog.

And here’s the kicker: the Twittersphere immediately embraced the mix-up and many pledged donations to the Red Cross! The beer brand that was named in the accidental tweet, as well as the micro brew community, jumped on board and further encouraged donations to the Red Cross.

Kudos to the American Red Cross for not putting together a crisis communications response committee, spending hours / days in meetings on developing a response strategy and then issuing formal apologies written in corporate-ease. No, instead, you handled it immediately, with humor and common sense, and knowing your supporters would do the same. You have cultivated meaningful relationships with the public and supporters for many years, and that cultivation paid off. That’s the kind of resilient, responsive, dynamic approach that will keep the American Red Cross around for another 130 or so years.

Other national organizations… they aren’t even reading this blog right now but, instead, are in a communications meeting to discuss if, perhaps, they might want to start posting to Facebook, or if, instead, they want to ban on use of such by their employees and volunteers – their fourth meeting about such in the last 12 months…

Red Cross – you are full of win!

Could your organization be deceived by GOTCHA media?

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Not everyone loves your nonprofit organization. Not everyone loves your non-governmental organization (NGO), civil society organization, or government agency. In fact, there is at least one individual, and maybe even a group, that would like nothing better than to hurt your organization in a very public way.

You may think no one would launch a negative campaign against your beloved organization that protects wildlife or works to educate children from low-income communities or helps women fleeing abusive relationships or encourages people to spay and neuter their pets or helps people grow their own food or brings the joy of live theater to your town. You may think:

Our organization is completely non-threatening to anyone. We’re a-political. We’re politically benign. No one would want to see our organization go away. We benefit everyone!

The truth is that every cause can become politicized, and every organization can become a political target.

I learned this while working in public relations and marketing for nonprofit professional theaters in New England back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when arts groups became the target of a very vocal, well-funded political force who felt all local, state and national government funding for theater companies, dance companies, museums and other arts organizations should be cut off. They declared such funding not only a waste of money, but also as promoting pornography and un-American values. And they had snippets of plays and photos from various exhibits that, out-of-context, seemed to prove their case to the public and the press. I felt completely unprepared as I helped book a very famous actor to debate a very famous televangelist on the subject, on a new network called CNN, and wrote talking points – I’d never been trained for such a response. I never expected to have to do anything like that for an arts organization.

Since then, in various jobs, I’ve interacted with people I later found out weren’t really representatives of the press, weren’t really independent documentary film makers, and weren’t volunteering to help with a mailing because they believed so passionately in this or that cause. Luckily, the discovery of who they really were was always made early enough such that no damage was done – usually before a first face-to-face meeting even took place. I learned to always confirm someone really did represent whatever organization they claimed to, no matter how nice they sounded on the phone, and to always vet every potential volunteer, no matter how enthusiastic and well-qualified they seemed initially – and that was before I had the Internet to help me research people. Subterfuge has been attempted at almost every organization I’ve ever been a part of, no matter what the mission.

Over the last 20 years, I have seen seemingly-benign causes come under voracious attack again and again, the latest being National Public Radio. Your organization may not be big enough to become the target of gotcha right-wing film-maker James O’Keefe, who also brought down the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), a collection of community-based organizations in the USA that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, and affordable housing. But there could be just one person in your community with a video camera and a dream of humiliating your organization right out of existence – and given the opportunity, that person could upload a YouTube video that gets picked up by the media and sends you scrambling to explain yourself.

Whether its an animal shelter, or a volunteer association that supports a state park, or a community radio station, or a homeless shelter – no matter what kind of organization it is – you need to talk with staff regularly about handling various scenarios, including:

  • how fund raisers and chief executives should respond to solicitation calls and initial meetings with potential donors, especially those who seem to represent potentially large gifts
  • an email or phone call from anyone claiming to be from the press
  • vetting volunteers and job applicants
  • what staff and volunteers should not share on their blogs and social networking sites, no matter how private they may think such is
  • what conversations should never take place via email or text-based chat
  • what to do when faced with suspicious activity by a volunteer, a donor, a new staff member, someone claiming to be a film maker, etc.
  • pointed questions from someone at an open house, a public event, etc.
  • any questions that hint at the organization helping someone in an illegal way

Don’t assume senior staff, including your Executive Director, is prepared for these kinds of situations because they are in a leadership position. It doesn’t mean that person has to give up individual opinions, but they need to remember when they are “on the clock”, representing the organization to others, and they need to clarify when they are speaking as an individual and when their views do not represent the organization.

Also, don’t become a fortress. You aren’t looking to shut down staff blogs or prevent volunteers from taking photos during their service. You want to exude transparency and openness; but you also want all staff and volunteers to remember the powers of their words and actions.

We hear a lot about how great social media is; but remember that it can be used to spread misinformation and bad press as quickly as it spreads the good stuff the press likes to be breathless about.

One more thing: a lot of people are chastising the head of NPR for not saying anything when the fake donors were making disparaging, insulting remarks about Israel. Yet these critics are the same people who, when chastised for making disparaging, insulting remarks themselves about other various countries and cultures and people, will cry, “Stop telling me to be politically correct!” How many times has a politician, a community leader, a well-known person, said something in a private conversation to you, when you were meeting in relation to your work, that was sexist, racist, and otherwise inappropriate or inflammatory? Did you grin uncomfortably and try to move on, or did you say that the language made you uncomfortable? It’s happened to me too many times to count. Most of the time, indeed, I say something (surprise!), but a few times, I’ve changed the subject or found an excuse to walk away because I was too flabbergasted to say anything else. Before you reprimand a staff person for telling a beloved volunteer, “The language you are using right now about my co-worker is inappropriate and I cannot continue this conversation if you are going to continue using those terms to describe women,” or you reprimand a staff person for staying silent in a hidden camera video while a fake customer made racist comments, consider how well you’ve trained staff to handle these situations, and what YOU do in similar circumstances!

Also see how to handle online criticism, a resource for nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies and other mission-based organizations.

Drop the Jargon!

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Trina Wallace, a writer at ngo.media, has written a fantastic blog, Here’s to a jargon-free voluntary sector in 2011:

Too often, charity writing is littered with the latest buzzwords and highfalutin phrases in the belief that this sounds impressive. Strip away the jargon, though, and there’s often very little meaning underneath.

Brilliant! Read it! Show it to all consultants you work with! It’s an article that United Nations staff and those at other humanitarian organizations should read as well…