When most businesses and non-profits start using social media, they start with “small talk” with their communities. They politely reply to tweets, express appreciation to donors, respond as quickly as possible to customer support issues, and generally try to add value to their network.

But all to often, they fail to move beyond the “small talk” and create meaningful discussions that their communities are dying to have.

Then, after a few months pass, they express some level of disillusionment about the value of social media for their business, and eventually retreat to passive monitoring and pleasant tweeting with current fans. Meanwhile, the board members wonder why being nice wasn’t enough.

Engaged conversations

My customers are often surprised when I first ask them: “So, what are you going to talk about with your customers?”.

They’ve spent resources building up their profiles and blogs, and have spent a few weeks tweeting and replying to comments. But when I ask this question, they get a little confused. “Well… we’re responding to comments and answering questions that folks have on Twitter. We think we’re being responsive and engaged. Aren’t we?”

More than small talk

I’m seeing organizations starting to understand that there’s more to engagement than simply talking. And that when folks are truly engaged, the community blows the bugel, not the company.

The American Cancer society has a great conversation strategy. They’ve created an entire community around achieving victory over cancer by talking about “creating a world with more birthdays.” These conversations are both engaging and meaningful because they touch on a basic desire we all have: To celebrate a happy life.

Share Our Strength has one of the most passionate communities I’ve met. They care profoundly about the stake that they’ve planted deeply in the ground: End childhood hunger by 2015. This mission is immediate, heartfelt and simply stated. It’s the prime point of their conversation strategy.

Epic Change is about to make history by talking about gratitude – not about their organization and why you should donate.

Creating a conversation strategy

Here are a few thoughts on how folks can create a conversation strategy. Please (and I do mean please) add your ideas in the comments.

• Understand why they buy. The real reason. The one that has nothing to do with price or product. I have an iPod because it makes me look cool and work smarter.
• Understand why they tell their friends. I’ve been telling all my friends about @foursquare because I want to be the first.
• Know what’s engaging the customers of your competition. Is there something they’re saying that’s not being heard?
• Talk to your employees. Beyond the paycheck and benefits – what’s the real reason they show up everyday at 8:30AM?
• Talk face to face. Have coffee with some of your customers. Get to know their whole lives, not just the pain points you address with your product.
• Listen. “It is so crucial to engaged conversations and so easily overlooked in our active, talk-focused society.” – Bonnie Koenig
• Polarize. Can you sincerely talk about your beliefs to an extreme? Think Greenpeace and the GOP.
• Use your divining rod. Find bloggers who are already passionate about that you do. How are they talking about it? How engaged are their readers?
• Plan. Talk often with staff about the business. Listen to each other. Map out why these conversations matter and how you’ll start talking.
• Be sincere. People can tell if you’re real. Make sincerity a key element in your strategy. And if it turns out that you can’t sincerely have conversations in a particular way, move on. Trashing a half-hearted conversation plan will save everyone headaches.

What else?

The sprouted seeds that create most non-profits are often powerful and personal stories. Stories that can revive a bored board meeting or fuel a fundraising event. They can be told with pictures, videos, or blog posts.

But sometimes they need to be told face to face.

This past weekend I had the privilege of attending a meetup in Florida with Patience Salgado, Sanjay Patel, Liz Rosas, Shannon Aronin, Danny Brown, Stacey Monk, Jen Lemen, Vince Hunt, Charles McKeever, Avi Kaplan, Kira Siddall. Without getting into the details, the main point of this meeting was to deepen our connections with each other. We did this by sharing our stories and dreams.

I interviewed Stacey Monk a few months ago, so I was familiar with the Epic Change mission and their success with Tweetsgiving. But I wanted to hear the personal back story. I wanted to hear the “why”.

So when I had a minute alone with her, I asked: “Why did you start Epic Change?”

What followed was an exchange that helped me renew my own personal dreams and resolutions – my “whys”.

Six and a half years ago, Stacey’s brother died from a drug overdose, devastating his family and leaving behind his 4-year old daughter, Zoe. The morning of his death, Stacey went through photographs in her mind, including one of a double rainbow she snapped while flying over the Rocky Mountains.

Stacey remembered thinking how sad it was that her brother never had a chance to see such beauty. Five years after his death, she reflected “I think I travel so much now because I want to take him to all those amazing places that he missed. People often ask me why I went to Africa. I think I went to take Josh.”

Stacey realized that life is short, but the value left after one’s death is forever. A couple of year later, Epic Change was born.

I shared with Stacey my story as well, which I’ve shared throughout my blog. And in my heart, I renewed my resolution a behalf of my mom.

Do you think Epic Change has new meaning for me?

I used to think Epic Change was about making lasting, positive change in the world. But now I know that it’s much more than that. Epic Change is really about the change the Stacey made in her life – an individual human revolution as a result of tragedy. It’s about the epic changes I’ve made and will continue to make in my life. It’s about the epic change in your life too.

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One more question: Do you think I’m more committed than ever to see Epic Change succeed?

That’s why we need to share our story.

Following is an interview with Jeff Wiedner at Share Our Strength, who work to end hunger and poverty in the United States.

Based on your experience, what are the most important “building blocks” of social media fundraising strategy?

“When we began to ramp up our social media efforts, we got a great kick start from Scott Henderson (@Mediasauce) with the Pledge to End Hunger campaign and then from Danny Brown with #12for12k. They were very different approaches to campaigns, but I learned that you really need good relationships to make fundraising work in social media. In both instances, the strength of the networks drove the strength of the fundraising.”

“Based on that, we found the best approach to be focusing on relationships first, build conversations and connect with folks 90% of the time and only ask 10% of the time. Folks tune you out fast if you always have your hand out. So, we provide information about the issue, post news articles to build conversation, and help people understand the scope of the issue. We also help other organizations out as much as possible. There are a lot of great groups making a difference against hunger and doing cool stuff. So we try to help them get their messages out and share ideas and “lessons learned” from our experiences so they don’t have to take the same lumps we did.”

What impact has Twitter and Facebook had on your fundraising?

“We have a wide variety of fundraising platforms to engage our different constituents. They range from individual grassroots fundraising activities to culinary tasting events to engaging the restaurant community. But most of them are either completely offline or have an offline component. We’re finding that social media is allowing us to connect and support these fundraising efforts better than ever.”

“Facebook has been helpful for letting our folks have a “badge” that they’re supporting our mission. This helps get the word out about our organization to new audiences. Our fan page has also become a bit of a bulletin board, where folks can tell us what they’re doing and folks can give them some love for their efforts. We also use the Facebook events quite extensively to help fans find events in their area. But in terms of actually raising dollars, tools such as FB Causes have been nice, but we’re not see much usage by our folks so it hasn’t been a big focus for us.”

“Twitter has been especially important for us in our campaigning. We’ve tried various fundraisers through it, but it’s been more effective for outreach than anything else. Many people we engage with on Twitter have blogs and  like talking about our mission. These bloggers have helped us build targeted exposure for our offline events through their blog posts. But to raise funds, we’ve had more success engaging bloggers in using a ChipIn widget on their site to raise funds and have begun to promote that more than Causes.”

How do you stay passionate about Share Our Strength?

“My two personal “hot buttons” are kids and the environment. I’ve been actively involved in both areas for a long time. So helping kids get the food they need is a no-brainer for me. But a big driver for staying energized is that Share Our Strength is very entrepreneurial. There’s a lot of opportunity to experiment and folks are open to creative ideas. So there’s internal support for trying new things, experimenting and finding new ways to get our message out. It is really exciting to have that support and enthusiasm from the top.”

Thanks, Jeff!

More info about Share Our Strenth:

Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

Obviously your organization is a local Chapter of one of the largest non-profits in the United States. How do you use social media to create awareness, fundraise and connect with donors locally?

We always use the line “this is YOUR Red Cross” to give people a sense of local ownership. Most of our stories posted revolve around what the local Chapter is doing and how we’re affecting the lives of friends and neighbors in Santa Barbara County. We are also big on providing pictures of what we’re doing – it gives people the opportunity to not just hear, but to also “touch” what we do everyday in their community.

It’s important for a Chapter to balance messaging for National projects or disasters with their own area. A great way to do this is through the stories of local volunteers who respond to National disasters. We can take these stories and share them with our local audience. It shows followers that the people in their community are talented enough to be responding to National disasters, so if anything happens at home, the best of the best will be responding. It’s a great way to blend the programs.

How does Givezooks help with those efforts?

I believe one of the greatest attributes of Givezooks is the grassroots fundraising tool. People now have an opportunity to not just give to the Red Cross, but to tell their friends, family, and colleagues what the Red Cross means to them – especially if their lives have been touched by our services. There is nothing more powerful than hearing a personal story. I think it helps that Givezooks is a local company helping local nonprofits. Santa Barbara County is extremely supportive of local business.

How do you unify that approach with the social media campaigns run by the National Red Cross?

Social media programs at the Chapter level and National level work incredibly well together. When there is a local disaster – which Santa Barbara County just experienced in May – National will post through their networks how people can get information via social media tools hosted by the Chapter. The same goes for the Chapters, if there is a national disaster, we will give updates and point people to follow the National accounts.

Thanks, Kristiana!

Could one of the most important words in the English language be on the verge of extinction? Will it be lost in the vast white noise I lovingly refer to the “social media conversation about the social media conversation”?

Is there an endangered word list?

For the past few months, I’ve read hundreds of blog posts about “listening with social media”. Maybe you have too. Last count is over 14,800 instances of the exact search phrase. If you don’t believe me, let me Google it for you.

Are we overusing and misusing the word “listening”?

Will we eventually go deaf to the word itself?

We know that listening is not talking, but do we know that listening is not taking?

Many of these articles talk about the tools, tactics and technology for “listening with social media”, but rarely focus on the art of listening. Many of them talk about listening as a way to research a “target market”, or to “uncover potential buyers”. It seems that much of the buzz around “listening” is about take, take take – me, me, me.

But very few of these articles talk about listening and it’s role in developing a relationship.

Bored room jargon

My fear is that after a while, “listening” will become just another word in the glossary section of a marketing text book. And that it will soon be used as a way to impress folks at executive board meetings. And soon after that, we won’t even hear the the freshness of the word – ever again.

“By listening with social media, we’ll really know what resonates with our prospects. If you could start listening, that would be terrific, OK?” (and I’m saying this in my best Bill Lumbergh voice).

Is there a way to keep listening humanistic rather than have it become a mere check box in a social media marketing plan?

Here’s what people on Twitter had to say about listening:

Allison Fine in her book, Momentum notes: “Listening requires genuine interest in what that person is saying and a willingness to change as a result of what was said.”

What does it mean to listen with “genuine interest“?

And what’s the negative impact if our listening is not genuine?

I had the incredible opportunity to speak with Gabe O’Neill of Kids Are Heroes a couple of weeks ago and was completely blown away by two things:

1. His unwavering sense of mission.
2. He uses only Twitter for social media actions.

Kids Are Heroes recently won the competition for Richard Branson’s first ever PitchTV show! In this video, I talk about my meeting with Gabe and the four success factors that contributed to his success:

1. Solid Sense Of Mission
2. Remarkable Content
3. Be Active With Social Media
4. A Reason To Fight

Follow Gabe on Twitter and watch Kids Are Heroes on YouTube.

I published a video last week of Brian Halligan talking about how non-profits can use Social Media. This video is from the same event called “The 140-Character Mission: Social Media & Entrepreneurship“, and shows Joe Waters talking about how Boston Medical Center uses social media to add value for their corporate sponsors.

Following is an interview I conducted with Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation. She has been mentioned several times on Beth Kanter’s blog about her use of social media to increase traffic to NWF’s site.

________________________

What was the business reason for the National Wildlife Federation getting involved with social media?

“When I initially started signing NWF up for social media sites, I was looking to increase our activist numbers and rally people to speak up for wildlife. I was looking for hard numbers on converting people and engaging them to be high-end activists. I soon learned that NWF needed a presence that was about much more than pushing people to fill out action alerts, so I switched my goals to be more about engagement, leaving traditional ROI behind. Currently, our business reasons for using social media are (1) to establish our brand, (2) to build relationships and (3) to listen to people more effectively. We’ve definitely had to take into account that the benefits that come from being active on social media sites are often measured differently than other business goals of the organization.”

What, specifically pushed the executives and board members to say “Yes, let’s use social media to achieve these business results”?

“Mostly it was my coworker Kristin Johnson and I, spending a few hours a week playing around with different social media sites and testing out NWF‘s messages on them. There hasn’t been a conscious decision to do this stuff–a few of us just started doing it and the organization is seeing the benefits and is jumping on board one program at a time. The way I see social media is that it’s like an extended hand that allows people get to know us better. Hopefully it gives them meaningful context for what NWF does, as well as a reason to get involved with us.”

What was the “before” picture of your metrics (For example: traffic, repeat visitors, subscribers, number of online donations, amount of online donations or viral tendency)?

“Social media has helped increase the number of people linking to our site and this is very desireable from a search engine optimization perspective. We’ve also received a lot of traffic from Stumbleupon and Digg as well as the other social news and bookmarking sites. While we have seen increases in traffic, our next goal is to help increase engagement.”

What did you do first? What was your very first step into social media and why?

“My first step was to get NWF on Facebook and MySpace. We soon realized that while these were great, it was somewhat an interruption to contact people through these realms. Now, we play with a number of communication tools. If you start to view social media as an orchestra you can see how they all work together. We have used StumbleUpon, Digg and other sites strategically to drive traffic and share interesting resources.”

You have over 10 NWF staff members on Twitter. What has been working with Twitter?

“Our Twitter strategy is that we have an overall @NWF account, with a few specifically branded program accounts that are geared toward specific audiences (@campusecology messages to college students and faculty; @wildlife_watch is geared toward people actively watching wildlife). We also have a number of staff with personal accounts who sometimes tweet about the work they do at NWF. Our Twitter strategy is doing very well because we are expanding our reach and connecting different audiences with the right people!”

You have over 5,000 fans on your Facebook Page. What has been working with Facebook?

“The facebook page is nice because we have syndicated a lot of content. However, I’d like to see us double our fanpage base in the next few months. Figuring out how to do that would mostly entail using the FBML boxes to create a more interactive page for users who are getting familiar with NWF.”

What measurable results have you gotten from social media to date?

“Besides Digg being one of the top referring sites for NWF.org last year, we’ve seen a ton of other meaningful traffic and linkbacks to our site. But more importantly, we are forming meaningful relationship with people that are passionate about our cause WHILE getting great results. It’s a win-win situation.“

What would you have done differently with social media if you knew what you know now?

“Probably worked more with our program staff initially. I think that our strategy grew organically and has now set a process in place for people who want to start promoting their program through social media. It’s great because I feel like if done right, social media can really connect people so that it helps everyone!”

Epic Change believes that people’s stories are assets that can be used as resources to improve their lives. They help people in need share their “epic” true stories so that they can raise money to create positive “change” in their communities.

I had the pleasure of meeting Stacey Monk a few months on Twitter.  She has been using social media tools to increase awareness and fundraising for Epic Change. And she’s gotten some very powerful results…

John: What state, both financially and from a market presence standpoint, was your non-profit before using social media tools?

Stacey: Epic Change launched in September 2007, and immediately adopted social media tools, including a WordPress blog, YouTube, a Facebook cause and, several months later, Twitter. We started from zero funding and zero market presence.

John: What compelling event or events led your non-profit to decide on using social media?

Stacey: Because we had no funding, we adopted these free tools out of necessity. The Net2 Mashup Challenge led us to discover Twitter, and the Case Foundation America’s Giving Challenge revealed the utility of Facebook Causes.

John:What obstacles did you encounter? Technology understanding? Lack of acceptance of SocMed by your non-profit’s leadership?

Stacey: I think the prime obstacle has been flying while building the plane. We’re learning as we go, but certainly didn’t have training or experience in social media before we launched our efforts.

John: What resources did you find most helpful?

Stacey: Most Helpful Guide: Beth’s Blog
Most Helpful Apps: Twitter, WordPress, YouTube and Facebook (also VolunteerMatch, Chipin, Idealist)

John: What measurable results have you gained from your social media strategy?

Stacey: Our most significant social media accomplishment has been TweetsGiving, an event in which we used Twitter to raise over $11K from over 350 new donors in just 48 hours last November. Through all our efforts, we now have been posted on over 200 blogs, including the NonProfit Times and Mashable, and have over 1300 Twitter Followers, a few hundred friends of our Facebook cause, and, perhaps most valuable, a volunteer and professional network that has been built in large part due to building our social media community.

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