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Before activists and organizations can consider how to target and use blogs, they should first learn to listen and join the conversation.
Our week began at Social Media Club (SMC), where the denizens of Web 2.0 media and marketing gathered to discuss and shape the way forward in this brave new world. On Wednesday, we attended another panel discussion billed as “L.A. Blogs, Green Blogs; New Media and Social Change,” which was organized by Green L.A. and Liberty Hill Foundation. Despite the seeming overlap, the contrast between these events could not have been more stark. At SMC so much preaching to the proverbial choir prompted this analysis. While at Green L.A., an informal poll revealed that fewer than 20% of the room used instant messaging. The following goes to show how important perspective and point of view can be when it comes to said analysis.
The panel consisted of prominent LA-area blog types, two of whom write specifically about green issues. The audience was “made up primarily of local enviro and social change orgs [including] Heal the Bay, Coalition for Clean Air, Santa Monica Baykeeper, and the like,” according to Green LA Girl (Siel), who sat on the panel and blogged about her experience. From what we could gather, most attendees were looking for ways to pitch bloggers and generate coverage for their issues or initiatives. It’s tough to say if they gleaned anything from it, so perhaps they’ll find this post and leave a comment.
We’ve written about a number of companies and organizations that seek to assist under-resourced nonprofits (aren’t they all?) in generating support from donors and volunteers through Web 2.0 technologies like social networking. The social web presents tremendous opportunities for nonprofits because the organizational hurdles have been all but eliminated. However, as this event made clear, there is still a significant knowledge gap not only with nonprofits but also from many “bloggers” who think of blogs as just another way to publish a newspaper or magazine.
The panel started with commentary from Margot Roosevelt, an environmental writer for the LA Times. If you’ve not followed the news on this, LAT has had major layoffs, and its future is bleak. Siel recounts Roosevelt’s intro: “She kicked off the panel by saying little about blogging but instead emphasizing that the LA Times won’t survive unless all of us buy the print version of the paper. Hmmm…. I’d like the LAT to survive, but I’m pretty happy reading it online — and just don’t think readers’ll be reverting back to the 90s anytime soon.”
We couldn’t agree more, but it’s not entirely for environmental reasons. It was clear that many on the panel and in the audience didn’t get the big picture of blogging and how blogs are precisely why the LA Times‘ days are numbered. (We’re confident Siel gets it but didn’t comment on it.)
To illustrate our point, take the New York Times’ famous tagline: “All the news that’s fit to print.” To which we’d respond, “According to and for whom?” How can a single newspaper cover all the news that is relevant and important to us as individuals? Or to you? It can’t, especially when there are literally millions of other news sources to turn to. Furthermore, we’re no longer content to get our news on a one-way channel. We’re the people formerly known as the audience, which is to say that “readers” are just as much a part of the news as the news itself. Fortunately, LAT has some excellent blogs and bloggers (Siel is one of them), so it offers social media alternatives with plenty of dialog.
In terms of the panel providing any insider tips to the attendees, either they were being coy and protecting their secrets or they just didn’t know any better. In addition to Green LA Girl, there were representatives from LAist, TruthDig, LA Observed, Treehugger, and Witness LA. None seemed willing to volunteer that blogging is actually pretty damn easy. You can download Wordpress and have it up and running in less than an hour, complete with tools (SEO) to make your content more discoverable through search i.e. Google. To this point, someone asked about generating traffic. Unfortunately, many still believe you need to actively target people and convince them to type your URL into a browser. That’s how traffic gets to your site, right? Not necessarily. Provided content is properly organized, such as in a blog, Google knows it’s there. When someone enters a search that matches your content, there’s a good chance they’ll find it, especially if it’s specific enough. This levels the playing field with the LA Times. Your content has just as much of a chance of being found as that of the LA Times. Which, again, is partly why the LA Times‘ days are numbered.
It should go without saying, then, that every nonprofit should have a blog, even if all they publish is their news releases. But let’s slow down a bit. Blogging and creating original content is actually jumping a couple steps ahead in terms of what nonprofits can do on the social web to raise awareness, drive traffic, and generate support. The first step is listening.
The social web, which includes blogs, social networks, instant messaging, forums, social news, and many other types of socially driven media, consists of hundreds of millions of conversations. These can be between two people or two million. The first step for any brand, including nonprofits, is to find the right conversations and start listening. Here’s an excellent example.
We ended up at this very event as a direct result of listening to a conversation on the social web. We use a free service called Twitter, which is basically instant messaging meets blogging and social networking. We happen to “follow” Green LA Girl and Jeremy Jaquot, who was also on the panel and writes for Treehugger. Because we follow them and they follow us, we see the things they are chatting about and can enter their conversation. Jeremy sent Siel a “Tweet” message about the event, and we saw it. We inquired because it caught our attention based on keywords. Jeremy gave us the contact info for Liberty Hill, and we RSVP’d for the event.
What’s so compelling about this is that Liberty Hill didn’t have to do anything to get us there. No resources were expended on its part to market to us, and yet we attended and now we’re even blogging about it. We simply overheard a conversation that contained several keywords we look for: green, LA, blog, new media, social change. If you’ve read Max Gladwell, you know that this is precisely what we’re about.
One of the questions addressed to the panel was how to find and target the right blogs and how to know if a particular blog is worth your time. The panel gave a quick answer to the latter (Compete.com) but spent far too much time talking about the former by going over each of their favorite blogs, which accomplished nothing because the blogs and sources that are right for them have no bearing on which are right for you. The correcct answer to the question is learning how to listen. To this end, here’s how to build a rudimentary listenting post from Chris Brogan, one of the top authorities on social media:
Get a Google account and get Google Reader. Go to Technorati and Google Blogsearch. Find the search bar and put in:
Your company name (if that matters).
Your competition’s name.
Your name in quotes.
Keywords to your industry.
Every time you do a search, look for the orange RSS subscription button on Technorati, and click it. Look for the RSS subscription link to the left on Google Blogsearch. Click it. Add all of these to your Google Reader (upper left area of the left sidebar).
Google Reader enables you to scan headlines from hundreds of news sources (including LAT) without actually having to go to the sites; in some cases you can read the articles within Google Reader. This is a tremendous time saver, enabling you to listen to far more sources than you might otherwise be able to. There are many other ways to listen on the social web. Also see AllTop, specifically its Nonprofit channel. But let’s take this a step further.
Once you have a sense for listening, it’s time to enter the conversation. The easiest way to start is by commenting on blogs and adding value to those conversations. The assumption is that you’ve found this conversation through keen listening, so you’re probably somewhat knowledgeable and have something to add. Most blogs allow you to enter a web address as part of your signature. Several even allow for small images or logos, and you can paste links as part of your comment. This way, someone can link directly from your comment to your website. In the case of a nonprofit, that person could be your next big donor because what you wrote inspired them to click back to the source and learn more. As self-serving as it might have seemed, no one on the panel offered this.
Of course, these are just the first steps to engaging with the social web for marketing, PR, or customer relations. The reality is that your customers or supporters are out there, and it no longer requires expensive advertising or coverage in the LA Times to find or reach them.
For next steps, see our post on being a beacon. Also look to the left sidebar for our Recommended Reading.
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5 responses so far ↓
1 TJ Sondermann // Aug 1, 2008 at 10:25 am
Re: Listening. I had a brilliant idea for a start-up based around this, but, as per usual, found that it already existed in a similar, but not quite what I had in mind sort of way:
http://serph.com/about
2 Natalie // Aug 1, 2008 at 11:45 am
Excellent, post — and just the kind of content that should have been at the meeting (and in fact was what I was hoping would be there when I signed up) — but it seems that there is a pretty big digital divide that most non-profits need to bridge. I noticed this at another Liberty Hill event focused on eActivism strategies and approaches.
Part of it is not just from the inherent lack of resources/funding pervasive to NFP (as most blogging activities are cost-free), but rather more to NFP perspective and culture — most NFPs seem conservative and hierarchical in organization and approach (not that that’s all bad given their stewardship responsibilities), but it does make diving into a world where dialog (vs. didactic), speed and openness are core concepts, a bit of a challenge.
Again, thanks for the all the links in this article!
3 Celeste Fremon // Aug 5, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Great article on the panel.
Even as someone who was actually on the panel, I found your post more informative than we were.
I wish you’d spoken up (or spoken up more, as maybe you did).
In any case, excellent stuff!
4 funnygirl // Aug 7, 2008 at 6:09 am
Very nice.
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