Barriers to Adopting Social Media: Radical Trust
July 5, 2011
(or, How Trusting Your Online Audience Puts Your Organization at a Huge PR Advantage)
Adopting social strategies- such as taking on innovative social media initiatives- requires institutions to change how they think about communications. Creating this change requires removing four, distinct barriers: buy-in, radical trust, uncertainty, and resource issues. In my last post, I discussed buy-in and why social media is critical for institutions. This week, I’m delving into the topic of radical trust.
Radical trust is a term used to describe the confidence that any structured organization, including museums, government entities, libraries, businesses, and religious institutions, has in collaboration and empowerment within online communities. In order for social media to be effective, institutions must place a great deal of trust in their online audiences.
Institutions display trust in these communities by being transparent, open, and honest. That sounds easy, doesn’t it? It’s not. It’s not easy because, very often, social media best practices are in direct opposition with marketing lessons learned in traditional MBA programs. Take Chester Burger’s 1975 MBA curriculum staple on public relations from Harvard Business Review, How to Meet the Press. It’s nearly irrelevant in regard to online communications. In this day-and-age, it’s important not to think of public relations as a game (“how can we swing this?”) because a game implies a lack of transparency, seriousness, and honesty. Moreover, the media-verses-us tone of this and similar PR articles is poisonous for organizations. During a time when people are increasingly becoming the media (43% of young people find out their news from Facebook- that is, from their friends), this translates into a people-verses-us mentality. That’s just not good public relations (anymore), but that’s how many of our brightest have been trained.
Public relations best practices have changed and are changing. We must keep our eyes open to this change regardless of academic background or years in the field. As Abraham Lincoln said, “As our case is new, we must think and act anew.” Need we start from scratch? Certainly not, I don’t think. But today, people strengthen brands through word of mouth marketing more than companies can strengthen brands through paid efforts.
Radical trust pays off. In fact, it’s difficult for social media to be effective in terms of meeting an organization’s bottom line(s) without radical trust. Organizations must keep communication channels open and be unafraid of cultivating personal connections with institutional content. Yes, this does mean embracing some potentially wacky comments and creative conversation, but giving your online community a voice pays off. As a related side, it’s also important to know what people are saying about you on the web. Here’s a tidy little online-gemstone to keep in your pocket for help in this arena: Mashable’s 10 Steps for Successful Social Media Monitoring.
If your wondering what good radical trust looks like and how it can pay off, then you’re in the right place! Here’s a terrific example of a ZAM (zoo, aquarium, or museum) effectively displaying radical trust to educate, make unique connections with audiences, and avoid a possible PR crisis to boot.
The Shedd Aquarium vs. The Low Survival Rate of Dolphin Calves
Here’s the story told alongside explanations of how the Shedd Aquarium rocked radical trust and started gathering sugar for lemonade in case they received a lemon-of-a-situation.
Smart move #1: They celebrated the dolphin birth, despite low mortality rates. The Shedd Aquarium experienced the birth of a new Pacific white-sided dolphin calf on June 3rd, 2011. Despite the staggeringly low survival rates of dolphin calves both in aquarium and in the wild (they have a 33% mortality rate!), the Shedd seemed to shout the birth from its rooftop. They wrote up a birth announcement on their blog and linked to that copy on social media channels. The Shedd even wrote two blog posts on the day of the calf’s birth, establishing the blog as a site for ongoing information regarding the calf. One of the posts featured a video of the calf’s birth. Can you get more intimate than that? Shedd’s decision to celebrate the birth so quickly was a big one. If the calf did not survive even its first night in the world, there would be no turning back or hiding the death after such announcements.
Smart move #2: They kept us posted and let us in. The Shedd wrote ongoing updates on the dolphin calf and her mother, Tique. Communications were effective because they were honest, ongoing, and transparent. Instead of constantly reporting that, “the dolphins are doing great,” (or not posting much information at all) the Shedd shared concerns and small victories regarding the calf’s health along the way. Keeping up communications regarding the state of the dolphins allowed the social media team to connect online audiences with the institution while providing educational information regarding dolphin calf. Not to mention, these communications tactfully showed that the Shedd cared for the dolphins and their online audiences through timely posts. In essence, the Shedd set the stage for possible death of the calf, should such an event occur… which it did.
…and then the dolphin calf passed away… But thanks to the institution’s transparency regarding low survival rates and the preciousness of the baby dolphin before and after the death, online audiences responded with care and concern for the calf’s mother, as well as institution and its staff.
Smart move #3: They were timely in announcing the death through all channels. After posting six blog posts about the dolphin calf’s status throughout the seven days of the dolphin’s life, the calf passed away on June 10th. The Shedd was prepared. In this short time, they had built up interest in the dolphins, and they positioned themselves as loving facilitators between audiences and the calf. The Shedd Aquarium immediately shared the information on Facebook and Twitter, and they sent an immediate announcement to their email contacts. They accepted the risk that some folks might blame them for a possible death, but they opened their communication channels anyway. It paid off. Within only one hour of posting the sad news, the Shedd had 103 sympathetic comments on Facebook. A vast majority of these comments expressed care and concern for the institution. It was immediately clear, even in this example alone, that the Shedd was not going to be villainized for the calf’s death. In fact, they were victims of nature’s course. Have you been emotionally moved yet today? Visit the Shedd’s Facebook page and scroll to the community comments around June 10th, 2011… Maybe prepare a tissue or two beforehand.
Smart move #4: They were human. Immediately following the announcement of the calf’s passing, the Shedd Aquarium answered questions, accepted sympathy, and most of all—expressed human sadness. The end of their email communication and blog announcement stated, “This is a difficult loss for the Shedd family. But in our joy and grief, we remain proud of our animals, our people and our husbandry program.” These sentiments are warm, touching, and (one must believe) true. When it comes to caring for animals, there is a strong reliance on science and research, but the Shedd did not overlook the value of the feelings involved in this situation. They did not “play-down” the situation, embed the announcement within a jam-packed email update, or try to gloss-over the happening in any way. They spoke in plain English, understanding that this is no time for “science-y” words that might alienate a concerned audience. Despite being a world-class institution, the Shedd opened up like a human being, increasing their potential for connection with audiences.
Smart move #5: They followed-up. After the announcement of the calf’s death, the Shedd could have chosen to divert audience attention. They could have turned their focus to their new exhibits, or their summer programs, or anything else. They could have tried to never look back. That’s not what the aquarium chose to do. Instead, they followed up eleven days later with a status report on the calf’s mother. They did not just let the connections created from the dolphin birth slide away, leaving audiences hanging. While this sounds like common sense, following up is a key element of online transparency that is very often overlooked- especially when something “bad” happens. We see this all the time on social media outlets: something bad will happen and the organization will try and make us forget that it ever happened by blindly diverting attention. Here’s a dose of reality: audiences don’t just forget. So don’t go for “forget.” Go for continuing to inspire connections to your nonprofit’s social mission and aim for forgiveness first.
Because of the outstanding trust that the Shedd Aquarium placed in their online audiences, the organization positioned themselves in a win-win situation: If the calf lived, the Shedd had engaging content to help inspire connections and draw attendance and support. If the calf did not live, they had positioned themselves as caring, informative, hardworking, and honest dolphin caretakers recovering from a terrific loss.
The Shedd Aquarium was unafraid. They were unafraid to show emotion, to express concern, and to share positive and negative news. They trusted their audiences to judge them fairly after they had placed all of the information on the table. That, I think, is how to handle a communications crisis and come out on top thanks to radical trust.
Got another example to share? Please write a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.
Barriers to Adopting Social Media: Creating Buy-In
June 20, 2011
(or, Why Your Organization Needs Social Media)
Last week, I identified buy-in as one of the four biggest barriers to change in inspiring institutions to embrace social strategies. And it makes sense that this is a barrier for change; why should an institution invest time and energy into social media if they aren’t aware of the benefits? The good news is that buy-in is a breakable barrier.
Buy-in is important on all levels when transitioning an organization to take on social strategies and online communications. The formula for change addresses important elements in tackling employee and colleague buy-in. However, for many marketing and communications directors with their pulse on social technology, the real obstacle is obtaining buy-in from the head-hanchos. That’s not always easy. In fact, some of the best ideas about social strategies are bound to come from employees working with visitors on the ground because it’s been found that, when it comes to large scale-change (like catching onto the social media revolution), the front-line folks see it first.
Here’s the bottom line: Social media contributes to both of your organization’s bottom lines. That is, (1) the economic needs of the institution, and (2) the social mission to inspire and educate.
1) Social media helps keep the lights on in a big way:
- Word of mouth marketing through social media and earned media are worth more than paid advertising efforts. Marketers may be familiar with the Bass Model. This model is based upon the coefficient of innovation (paid advertising and marketing) and the coefficient of imitation (word of mouth marketing, including social and earned media). According to the model, the initial sale of something depends on the number of people interested in the product (innovation). However, later sales are dependent upon the number of folks drawn to the product after seeing their friends and acquaintances use it (imitation). In the theory, innovation (q) has a value that is often less than 0.01, while imitation (p) has been found to have a value between 0.3 and 0.5. In other words, word of mouth marketing is over ten times more important than paid advertising in terms of driving sales.
- Social media contributes to your brand’s reputation, and reputation is a main driver of attendance. Studies have shown that online communities are increasingly important for brand management and are often more important than your website. You likely wouldn’t think of taking down your website because it’s one of the best ways for potential visitors to learn about the organization. However, social media and online interactions are stealing this spotlight, and it’s worth investing time and money in these social endeavours. Moreover, social media enhances reputation because it increases the perceived value of a product.
Social media increases your word-of-mouth reputation, garnering attention and inspiring visitation. Thus, social media increases attendance (and donations). It does this in two, important and related ways:
- By creating connections that are unique to your institution. Social media provides the opportunity to create a personality for the organization and connect to individuals on a personal level. Because social media platforms are (should be!) always in seemingly-transparent dialogue with fans and followers, these potential visitors have constant sneak peeks into operations. Social media allows folks to feel like insiders who are personally connected to museum happenings. This makes your institution unique to individuals and not “just another visitor-serving organization.” Instead of just a place to see a generic X (say, an original manuscript). It makes that generic X meaningful, and your museum is the only place in which that particular entity exists.
- By securing earned media. Earned media is a gold star in the world of word of mouth marketing. Earned media is media that your institution does not pay for. For instance, a mommy blogger writing a blog post about her terrific day at the museum is earned media. It is a high-propensity visitor sharing his/her experiences with their network, who are also likely to be the kind of high-propensity visitors that your organization is targeting. In the mommy blogger example, this free agent is spreading the museum’s message on her blog, and her blog is likely read by other mommy bloggers, increasing the odds of securing visitors. But not all earned media is organic and spread by visitors. Social media also helps put operations in front of members of the media who may contribute to earned media by writing or reporting about the organization. Here’s a related little tip: thank your free evangelists.
By these same processes, social media aids in building and igniting donor relationships. As every fundraiser knows, building personal connections to an organization is critical for securing donations, and social media helps do just that. On social platforms, dialogue with an organization continues long after visits take place. Social media provides an opportunity to engage potential donors and inspire ongoing connections. Once they’ve contributed, social media helps keep donors and members posted on an organization’s great works, ensuring them that funds are used wisely and that the organization is continuing to cultivate community involvement.
2) Achieving the organization’s mission of educating and inspiring communities
Social media doesn’t just help keep the lights on; it helps organizations fulfill their missions. Informal learning environments often have the mission of educating and inspiring communities. Social media helps by providing an opportunity to:
- Educate- These YouTube videos are creating a one-of-a-kind connection with the institution (and the people working there) that will end up elevating reputation. In real-time, they are presenting engaging content in a fun and informational way.
- Transcend location and taking the mission home- Traditionally, we think of museums and cultural centers as places that are exculsively “place-based.” However, with the development of social media and creative engagement, museums are more than just buildings full of objects… They are accessible everywhere. You can learn from an organization and be inspired through computers, mobile phones, ipads, and podcasts. With the focus taken off of location, audiences can integrate organizations easily into their everyday lives, keeping the institution “top-of-mind” and building brand trust and transparency.
- Reach new audiences- Generation Y has terrific engagement potential, and this audiences is most easily accessed through social media. Moreover, they are accessed on a personal level through social media. To say that having a social strategy will put you ahead of the game with this demographic (and future generations), however, is a lie. Social media is critical for reaching folks of the future—and folks right now. And if you’re not doing it well (or trying to), then you’re already outta the game. As a side, social media doesn’t just appeal to Generation Y. Know a few folks who say that they aren’t involved with social media because of their older age? Studies show that they are lying; one in four Americans over the age of 65 have an account on a social media platform.
Social media is critical to a visitor-serving organization’s everyday operations, as well as its long-term goals. It will be increasingly harder to educate, inspire, fundraise, and even keep the lights on without embracing social media and related social strategies.
What would you add to this? What are other but-in inspiring reasons why innovative social media is an organizational necessity? Please share your input below.
Over the next several weeks starting today, I will be featuring posts on the topic of inspiring change to prepare nonprofit organizations to adapt to social strategies.
Within the last month (hence the hiatus), I graduated with my master of public administration and secured a terrific new work opportunity with a research and development company with the bulk of my work focused on zoos, aquariums, and museums. Or ZAMs, I’ve heard them called affectionately. I like that shortcut. ZAMs sound cutting edge and efficient, much like these institutions strive to be and often are, despite the historically bad rap of nonprofit sector operations.
The company I’m doing work for uses market data and predictive technologies to help organizations make strategic decisions. There are lots of numbers involved in this process, all holding terrific significance to the success or failure of a plan. My colleagues turn right brain theories turn into left brain equations. If math is the universal language, then it makes sense to think of equations as guiding principles for even basic operations. Like the nickname of ‘ZAMs,’ this mingling of left and right-brained thinking provides helpful shortcuts for simplifying complex ideas. For example, complex ideas like how to create change within both an organization and within society as a whole. On second thought, large-scale change may be an overwhelming place to begin. Let’s start with institutional change- more specifically, institutional change involving the incorporation of social media strategies into common practice… Let’s do this.
For the next several weeks starting today, I am going to attempt to aid nonprofits in embracing social innovation by introducing an equation for change (That’s the pretty equation at the top of this post, folks!) I will provide resources to help organizations combat each of the four biggest barriers to embracing the incorporation of social strategies: buy-in, uncertainty, radical trust, and resources.
I created the image above based on a lesson in Professor Robert Myrtle’s Strategic Nonprofit Management course at the University of Southern California. I think it’s helpful to think about change in this way. It requires three, key ingredients that must add up to be greater than the barriers to change:
(a) Dissatisfaction with the status quo- When creating change, it helps when business-as-usual is failing and the people who will need to make change happen already know it. In order for change to happen, individuals must understand that something is indeed broken and must be fixed. But this doesn’t need to a literal thing that is broken; it can be an element of workplace culture. For instance, in the case of sparking change toward creating social strategies, the ‘broken’ thing could be lack of periphery or a lack of vision. It could be a workplace culture that does not value innovation and keeping up with the times in regard to the increased connectivity and information share that is booming with the social media revolution. Folks must know that this element of negative workplace culture exists, and they must be unhappy about it.
This may be the hardest element of the equation to realize, because people often get comfortable with business as usual, and dissatisfaction with the status quo often doesn’t take place until after competitors have raised the bar. In other words, sometimes this dissatisfaction only happens after an organization realizes that they’ve been left behind. For instance, there are still museums that still don’t even have a Facebook account (11% of AZA organizations have 100 or fewer ‘likes’ as of May, 2011). Those museums may note experience dissatisfaction with the status quo until they realize that most other museums do have accounts– and more than that– that most other museums are experiencing increased ticket sales, membership rates, program enrollment, and monetary contributions in large part because of their embrace of social platforms. Workplace culture is very important for this reason. An organization that strives to evolve will feel dissatisfaction with the status quo faster than an organization that makes change a last resort. The former will create change in order to lead the industry. The latter will create only as much change as is necessary to remain relevant, or worse: to keep the doors open.
(b) An understanding of the desired future- In order to change, folks must have an idea of how they want the changed organization to function. Everyone should understand what that changed organization will look like. This is an important step in creating institutional buy-in for change. It requires a clear and compelling leadership team to communicate the vision and make it understandable to everyone in an organization. If you’re going on a trip to Europe, you’ll be much better prepared to make specific, actionable vacation plans if you know your stay will be in Italy. You’ll be even more prepared if you know that you’re spending your time in Rome. Similarly, if everyone works together to discover exactly where they are going (or would like to go), then everyone can work together to get there, and everyone can better relate to the organization’s vision because they understand it.
(d) And knowledge of the first step to get there- We’ve likely all heard Lao Tzu’s famous quote, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Hopefully, integrating social strategies into an organization’s general mentality won’t be a thousand-mile journey. Even if we call it a marathon of 26.2 miles (or a short 5k), understanding the first step is equally important. Plans and timelines are helpful. Social media strategies, though some smart folks say you don’t need one, can be helpful when explaining how integrating online communications will take place. These plans make goals feel more achievable, and the first step must be digestible and understandable. Returning to the topic of Rome, it wasn’t built in a day.
In order for change to take place, so the theory goes– and I think it’s a quite practical theory– these three elements (dissatisfaction with the status quo, an understanding of the desired future, and knowledge of the first step to get there) must be greater than the barriers to change. So what are those barriers for change in regard to integrating social strategies into museums, cultural centers, and other nonprofits? I’ve merged replies from a survey sent out to AZA organizations and my own understanding and experiences with obstacles to integrating social strategies and categorized them into four, main barriers:
1. Buy-in
- Does social technology contribute to our bottom lines?
- How do you measure engagement?
- What is the value of engagement
2. Uncertainty
- What does a social strategy mean and why is it important?
- How exactly do I use social tools?
- What if we try it, and audiences aren’t engaged?
- What are the rules for employees and where are personal and professional lines drawn?
- How do we control content?
- What if someone says something bad about us?
- What if someone shares incorrect information on our page?
4. Resources
- Who is going to run this?
- How much time will it take?
- Will we have to offer a lot of discounts?
The Fundraising Process
*This post is directed toward museum professionals, but these simple fundraising to-dos translate to nearly all nonprofits.
In March, I spoke about how zoos and aquariums can engage audiences using social media at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Mid-Year Meeting. Before the session started, I asked folks to raise their hands according to which department they served in their institution. No less than 30 of the 40 people in the room worked in marketing and PR departments. About eight or nine people worked in education, conservation, or husbandry (which is important; online engagement is an effective tool for education)
…and only one person was part of a development department.
Social media does not belong to the marketing department. In fact, the museums that use it best focus on engagement and education. Social media and online engagement are incredible new tools in our ‘museum professional’ toolboxes… Social media informs. It educates. It creates connections….So why aren’t fundraisers getting with these new tools like the marketers?
Creating an effective social media presence requires collaboration with multiple museum departments. Utilizing social media within the development department is just plain smart. I don’t just mean utilizing social media to help meet a museum’s bottom line through mobile giving campaigns (like this one) or publicizing membership events–though it can be used very effectively for these purposes. If marketing, education, and development can work together to track social media interaction and engage audiences, then it can benefit all three divisions.
Here are three easy, low-resource ways that social media can help development departments build connections and keep a pulse on donor engagement:
1) Note interactions with donors on Facebook and Twitter to monitor buy-in.
An advantage that the development division has? They know who the donors are. Engagement of these folks is particularly important and may lead to further giving. Figure out which of your donors ‘like’ you on Facebook and make it a habit to skim your organization’s Facebook page at the end of each day (or week, even) to see if a donor engaged on the site. This information helps you keep a pulse on your donors. For instance, you may just have a better chances making a formal ask to someone who you know is seeing and interacting with your content. That person is actively keeping tabs on the institution and engaged on a day-to-day basis (and you know it).
2) Make a private Twitter list of small and large-scale donors- and make a point to interact with them.
Retweet them, @ reply them. Whatever you do, don’t ignore them. Because Twitter is a site for active engagement and open information-share, there’s potential to summon excitement and connection through this platform. It’s a bit more difficult to create direct conversation on Facebook. Quick Google searches can often indicate whether or not a specific donor has a twitter account. It’s easy to quickly search and compile a list of donor’s Twitter accounts to pass along to the marketing department (or whomever is managing social media). Give them the list and ask them to keep tabs on these folks using Twitter’s private lists. This way, followers cannot see your donors, but the person running social media has a quick and easy way to remember who to keep an eye on and engage.
3) Take note of donor’s interests through social media to hone your story and find your connection.
Social media profiles and activities can provide a lot of personal information about donors. Marketeers use this information to help trace their demographic, but fundraisers should be using social media to fill in gaps about donors’ interests so that they can be more efficiently ‘courted’ at events and on-site. Checking up on social media activities doesn’t just help by uncovering that, say, a donor is running a half marathon next week (which may or may not be useful to you). By utilizing your museum’s social media channels, fundraisers can learn a lot about what it is about the institution that engages the donor. If someone tends to ‘like’ statuses about specific events or artists, that gives you a peek into their interests– And even better than that; it gives you a peek into your shared interests.
Some fundraisers make it personal by being the face of their cultural center’s fundraising efforts for certain donors. When using social media, transparency is critical and this method banks on that fact, in a way.
Generation Y has incredible giving potential, if you can tap into it- and they are on social media. In fact, many of us were raised with virtual connections and it’s an easy way for us to communicate. Fundraisers who can figure out how to use this medium by keeping tabs on and engaging with donors virtually may have a big advantage in the long run.
*Photo credits to Tushneem’s Ramble
“One day, going on Facebook will be synonymous with going on the Internet.”
“In the future, there will be far fewer middle managers.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if, someday soon, every brand on the market will be tied to a nonprofit or a social cause.”
I don’t think these are futurist claims. It seems to be that what we think of as likely happening in the near future is actually happening right now. Often, it has already happened.
It’s possible that going on the Internet will be synonymous with going on Facebook, but in many ways, that’s the case right now. There are already fewer middle managers in the workplace than there have been in recent years, and corporate social responsibility has been called a new, necessary value for corporate survival. There are a lot of seemingly confident predictions that we make everyday in nonprofit organizations. Usually, these casual comments aren’t just predictions that we share conversationally with coworkers, but important perceptions and clues to strategic organizational evolution. Casual comments about the future are key to organizational periphery because adapting to ‘the future’ as if it were right now is likely to keep cultural nonprofits relevant and better able to adapt to change.
Here are six societal changes that have already started happening in a big way:
1. Nonprofit, for-profit, or individual: only the kind survive. Evolutionary biologists (from Science Daily and other places, too) predict that kindness may trump fitness in the next leg of human evolution. We’re seeing clues of this already. Much of the youngest generation entering the workforce is looking to be hired by nonprofits and public sector entities (though that doesn’t mean they don’t hope to change a few things). More than ever before, folks want to be doing meaningful work. When unemployment went up even early in the recession, so did volunteer rates. When people lost jobs and were unable to volunteer money, they volunteered their time to helping others instead. We are becoming nicer, and we are placing increased value on organizations that are nice. In 2009, Time Magazine called the change in societal and consumer behavior a Responsibility Revolution. According to Towers Watson, being socially responsible is no longer an option for private companies. It’s required for organizational survival. In sum, we’re all high on feel-good oxytocin and we feel it and spread it when we’re nice.
At-a-Glance Updates:
- Champion your mission- Work your cause!
- Help yourself while helping others- Team up with other nonprofits and social causes.
- Make it easy for people to show publicly that they support you- You look good and so do your passionate supporters.
2. Online and virtual communication has changed how we operate. Speaking of oxytocin, we also release it when we use social media and it contributes to feelings of trust and security. Perhaps this is why virtual relationships feel “real”… because, according to our brains, they really are real. There are 600 billion people on Facebook, and all that friending, sharing, and liking has already had effects on what we value. Namely, transparency has been a transformational force in the global economy. Because everything is online and in the open, we want nothing to be hidden. Combining the movement toward positive public good described above and transparency born from the Web has yielded radical transparency. Now we need see-through CEOs. Information share, information access, creating connections, building relationships, learning new skills… It’s all already moved online.
At-a-Glance Updates:
- Update your public relations plan. Value-alignment is more important than making sure everyone says the same exact words during a PR crises.
- GET ONLINE. – And experiment with social technology.
- Be real. Be sincere, identify yourself and your relationship to the organization, and speak conversationally.
- Don’t be defensive. People will wonder what you are hiding.
3. Content is king. And his reign is stronger than ever before. Speaking of wanting everything to be in the open, Information rules. In fact, every two days we create as much information as we did from the dawn of man until 2003. This is in large part thanks to the web, but don’t be quick to think that’s we’re robots spouting crazy facts like those people in the Bing commercials. Studies have found that people who really need information seek it from other people- especially people they already know. (Re) enter: Facebook. It’s not just a platform for personal connections, but for sharing ideas, gathering information, and a mecca for word-of-mouth marketing. This means that social media is great news for organizations. It builds connections while building on a museum’s mission to educate by sharing information- and making it easy for other people to share that information, too.
At-a-Glance Updates:
- Know your stuff- If you have information to share (more than something to sell), then you have value.
- Share your stuff- Make your organization accessible and share your information.
- Become a hub- You don’t need to know all of the answers. If you’re unsure of one, point your fan or follower to someone who would know the answer. They’ll remember.
4. Employees of an organization work with one another, not for one another. The idea behind flat organizations is that removing intervening middle-managers empowers employees, allowing them to play an active role in the decision-making process, creating organizational buy-in, improving morale, and therefore strengthening the entire organization. Flat organizations move more quickly than hierarchical organizations and have several other structural benefits. These organizations are gaining attention. This is how modern businesses run themselves now: with an eye toward employee empowerment. This is in large part due to the web and the growth of information-share. This type of organizational structure should be of particular interest to nonprofits, as it allows organizations to move quickly. A side, fun fact? The science of teams is now actually a science.
At-a-Glance Updates:
- Remove the walls and encourage conversation- Put the museum director in meetings with the coordinators.
- Encourage more teamwork- Because teamwork improves learning and career success.
- Reward new ideas- Or make developing new ideas possible like Google does.
5. If you’re a softie, now’s your moment. There may be no crying in baseball, but we’re moving closer to crying in business. Well, at least business is becoming more subjective, emotional, and related to non-measurable aspects of conscientiousness. Given all of the shifts mentioned above, this isn’t much of a shock. Now even MBA programs want folks who are more creative team-players than the old-fashioned my-way-or-the-highway guys. All this sound feminine? It kind of is. Does that mean the pay gap will catch up and the nonprofiteers (often masters of soft skills) will be making all the dough in the future thanks to their in-demand leadership skills? I sure hope so, but I guess we have to wait and see…
At-a-Glance Updates:
- Hire soft-skilled employees- Look for people who are resourceful, collaborative, and display a positive attitude.
- Celebrate your employees and coworkers- Because chances are, they already display the soft skills that are leading your cultural organization.
6. Generation Y is taking the reigns. And there are a few general qualities that make up members of this generation: entrepreneurial, tech-savvy, over-confident, casual, team-oriented, and we value time over money. There’s value in getting this demographic on board and connecting with your charity. The key to that is in supporting them. I think blogger Sam Davidson says it best: “More Millennials would rather buycott than boycott, and we’d rather volunteer than vote… Gen Y has the potential to change the world, just not in the way you think.” Aside from the fact that they operate in ways that mirror big societal changes taking place and they can keep you current, here are a few more reasons to hire and engage Millennials.
At-a-Glance Updates:
- Hire young folks as managers- or staying relevant may be a bit harder…
- Listen to young employees’ over-share- It could really help you!
- Understand there are things to learn- They operate differently sometimes.
- Know that the way everything operates is changing- And will change even more with Generation Z.
“Show Me The Money!” 3 Social Media Apps Contributing to Both of Museums’ Bottom Lines
March 30, 2011
Robert Dowd's Vincent Dollar, Pop Art Money
Anyone who’s ever tried to convince a less-than-tech-savvy leader about the benefits of social media and online network connectivity has faced one of the hardest parts of building a network: organizational buy-in. Admittedly, the reluctance makes sense: social media is an evolving tool and we haven’t yet figured out how to use it efficiently in many ways. For instance, we haven’t figured out how to quantify the value of an online connection in the nonprofit sector. It could have terrific pay-offs with audiences becoming lifelong donors, or it could have almost no affect- with a person quickly leaving your webpage and never coming back.
Despite the arguable void, common social media applications are pointing us toward some quickly-approaching solutions to resolve the tension between engaging on social media and physically getting people into the door of the museum or making a donation. It’s no surprise that applications like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr have helped to share stories and build positive associations with brands that are building social change… but online engagement doesn’t need to stop at warm fuzzies (and to make it worth our time, it probably shouldn’t). The good news? Answers may be on the horizon. The better news is that I think clues may even be right in front of us.
These three common social media applications may provide important clues to help build the bridge between virtual engagement and monetary contributions in museums and cultural nonprofits. And these applications are right under our noses…
1. Foursquare.
The kicks: It’s sometimes shocking how many cultural nonprofits aren’t utilizing Foursquare and offering small perks to folks who turn their mobile engagement into an on-site check-in. You don’t have to offer free admission. You can offer a discount to one attraction or leftover swag or a printed coloring page for youngsters. Whether your organization is utilizing Foursquare or not, there may be some answers relating to your bottom line(s) here. This social media platform offers rewards (real or virtual) to a location-based audience. We probably shouldn’t underestimate the value of a virtual good, which is in this case similar to a Foursquare badge or mayorship. After all, the power of virtual goods is what fueled to takeoff of Farmville. People will pay good money for certain virtual goods or rewards. In fact, Farmville itself has raised so much that it’s flat-out raising funds for charity. In a way, the fact that Foursquare offers these badges and check-in points could be every museum’s dream: it rewards people– in a way that has certain individual value– for sharing that they took the time and paid the money to experience your museum. That’s word-of-mouth marketing in a sense and it has value.
The kinks: When I got off of the plane in Chattanooga for Association of Zoos and Aquariums Mid-Year Conference last week, only one person was checked in at the Chattanooga airport. In short, Foursquare hasn’t picked up everywhere and may be currently most useful in big cities. Also, the founders of Foursquare know that they’ll soon have to evolve the application and take it a step further to encourage growth and keep folks engaged. Chances are, however, that these changes will keep up the value of location-based check-ins which will continue to function well for museums.
2. Meetup
The kicks: Meetup.com got positive publicity in the museum world when the Brooklyn Museum famously gave up their efforts engaging 1st fans audiences on Twitter and Facebook and switched to meetup.com. That may have been the museum world’s first clue that this social platform has potential for serious payoff. This group organizing site, when used effectively, bridges the gap between online connectivity and getting folks in the door. It can be used to promote events to the general public, but is used most efficiently when targeted toward specific audiences. The San Diego Zoo Mommy Group Planner page facilitates engagement with a targeted audience through custom (or, custom-feeling) experiences that both bring admission-paying mommy groups into the zoo and provides them with a special experience that creates a lasting, personal connection.
The kinks: You can try to organize these events on your website, but there’s a built-in community that uses meetup.com. It’s not really a kink (it may be a blessing), but it’s something to be aware of: you’ll have to drive some traffic to your meetup.com page in much the same fashion that you’re likely already driving folks to your Facebook and Twitter pages. However, the group you’re directing to your meetup page will likely be more targeted. Like Foursquare, this is a relatively low-resource social media application to keep an eye on and play around with if you can. There may be some social media
3. Mobile Giving Campaigns
The kicks: Talk about the giving platform of the future (/present)! According to Pew Research Center, an average 83% of adults own cell phones or smart phones, and it’s estimated that by 2015, mobile wireless internet access will be the primary method of accessing the web. Also, 36% of nonprofit organizations already utilize mobile media or plan to use it in the next year, according to a recent Kaptivate survey. These kinds of giving campaigns work particularly well in obtaining donations from members of Generation Y, a group with a lot of giving power to be tapped. This trend started with museums utilizing mobile giving to raise large funds for related causes they support, but now museums are using it (rightfully) to fundraise for themselves. Tools like Give by Cell aim to make it easier for nonprofits to fundraise through mobile giving.
The kinks: Some mobile vendors charge steep set-up fees and nonprofits are only legally allowed to collect donations in increments of $5-$10. Err… and folks cannot donate more than 5 times monthly, and it can take up to 90 days to receive a donors”/ gift (all sited here). If you want this to be a successful fundraising method, you’ve got to get a lot of people in on it- and that requires resources. Want more information on the mobile lay-of-the-land? Read up on it courtesy of the American Association of Museums’ 2011 Mobile Technology Survey.
Can you measure the monetary value of an online connection?
Museums and cultural nonprofits aren’t the only ones trying to ensure that social media has a measurable impact that contributes to mission and revenue. In fact, we may find that many of our questions in this arena are being solved by folks who know a thing or two about measuring pay-off: those in the private sector.
Do you remember seeing the popular Living Social Deal (a company much like Groupon) in which people could spend $10 and get a $20 Amazon.com gift card? Living Social did not, in actuality, have a sponsorship agreement with Amazon (that’s right there on the deal).They bought the $20 gift cards from the company, with perhaps a small agreement. Living Social had to have calculated the worth of gaining a user, and the company calculated that the worth per customer was more than $10- or the deal wouldn’t work to the company’s benefit. It worked, too. The company captured over 1 million customers in five hours.
I’m not saying that there’s an easy way to calculate the value of a connection- or of the sparks and “a-ha!” moments that make museums so powerful. But I think if we keep our eyes open, even the social media tools right in front of us may have the ability to make virtual connections into on-site inspiration. Some tools and projects (like Tweetups, for instance) can fulfill similar functions to these social media platforms. The bottom line is that social media use is evolving and making its rounds from the marketing department to fundraising and visitor experiences. The basic tools aren’t hidden from us, and they just may give us a peek as to how we’ll soon be solving buy-in problems and contributing online engagement activities into the cash that helps keep the museum lights on.
Shortly after writing 41 Ways Museums are Merging Social and Tech to Engage Audiences, I was approached by a couple of lovely marketing professionals at the Tennessee Aquarium asking if I’d mind sharing current social tech happenings in zoos and aquariums, specifically. Boy, is there a lot going on!
In preparation to facilitate an upcoming workshop on social technology at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Mid-Year Meeting on March 23rd, I’ve put together this list of innovative initiatives that I’ve uncovered with the help of a survey sent to AZA participants. Quite expectedly, the industry’s natural creativity, passion, and aim to inspire and educate are quite clear in zoos and aquariums in much the same way that they are apparent in other types of museums and creative learning environments. Zoos and Aquariums are playing a big part in moving the nonprofit sector forward through social media, crowd-curation, and mobile applications.
Interested in seeing- at a glance- which zoos and aquariums are using social media (or were by November 20, 2010 at least)? Check out this awesome spreadsheet created by Anthony Brown of the San Francisco Zoo. It lists which zoos and aquariums are using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube, as well as basic engagement stats.
Check out some of the classic, creative, charming, and kooky ways that zoos and aquariums are using social technology to make waves in their communities and beyond:
Utilizing Basic Social Media Building Blocks.
1. Twitter. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums maintains a twitter list with over 127 accredited zoos and aquariums on Twitter. But from the looks of things, there are many, many more than that. Among hundreds of others, you can follow the Oregon Zoo, the California Academy of Sciences, the Seattle Aquarium, the Fort Worth Zoo, the Georgia Aquarium…
2. Facebook. 7% of all humans are on Facebook and zoos and aquariums are effectively using this space to cultivate networks, create interaction, and share information. The Tennessee Aquarium always surprises me with cool facts in my Facebook news feed.
3. Flickr. Holy cow! If there’s one social media platform in which zoos and aquariums are taking the lead, it’s on Flickr. When asked (in a survey I crafted in collaboration with AZA), many zoos and aquariums reported Flickr initiatives as their most innovative uses of social technology. My favorite straight-up use of Flickr? That’s a toughie… but the Shedd Aquarium’s Flickr group is up there.
4. YouTube. There’s so much good stuff here, too. Zoos and Aquariums are mostly using this site to help them give visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the institution. I like the San Diego Zoo’s YouTube channel.
5. Website. Have you noticed that many of the biggest and most visited zoos and aquariums feature links to social media pages above the fold on their websites (even if it’s small)?
6. Interactive Pages. Many zoos and aquariums are putting their web-based social and educational resources in one place. Check out the New England Aquarium’s awesome interaction page.
7. Blogging. The Dickerson Park Zoo’s blog posts and short and sweet- and a lot of fun. Speaking of blogs, the Houston Zoo has four of them. They use fun facts and photos to share information on conservation, education and Trunk Tales, a blog covering elephant news and happenings at the zoo.
8. Mobile Applications. These ones by the Woodland Park Zoo, the Memphis Zoo, and the Dallas Zoo aim to make the visitor experience as comfortable as possible by providing basic information on the zoo and the exhibits. They even feature GPS so you can figure out how to get to your favorite animals.
9. Foursquare. Remember to check in when you visit the Sacramento Zoo. You’ll be rewarded with a free carousel ticket- and the mayor gets a free gift.
10. Virtual Conferences. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums is on top of creating engaging webinars that allow zoo and aquarium professionals to connect and share stories online. Couldn’t make it to the AZA Annual Conference in Houston? No worries.
11. Podcasts. The Aquarium of the Pacific’s (for instance) podcasts share information about the aquarium as well as news and information about issues facing our oceans and our planet. It’s music to an audible learner’s ears.
But that’s not even close to the end of it. Prepare to be inspired… and learn a thing or two about sea creatures, four-legged friends, the environment, and everything in between…
Storytelling and Online Engagement
12. It’s a boy! This baby gorilla was abandoned by its mother, and then had to be raised by hand and trained with a surrogate mother at the San Fransisco Zoo. The sensitive situation meant months of no on-site press. But it was no problem for the zoo. They captured the baby gorilla’s pertinent milestones on video. Everything was filmed and edited internally, uploaded on the Zoo’s YouTube channel and then distributed to the press. It worked beautifully and the press used these video links on their own Web sites and in print. Broadcasters pointed viewers and listeners to the YouTube channel and also aired them during newscasts.
13. Talk about streaming cuteness. The Knoxville Zoo’s creative partnership with the Mozilla Foundation raised awareness of endangered species through a 24 hour live stream of two red pandas (firefoxes). Their names, Ember and Spark, were determined by online voters. I cannot lie: sometimes I open this tab on my browser and check-in throughout the day. It’s that cute. (Please don’t judge…)
14. Meet Essex Ed. Turtle Back Zoo’s resident groundhog, Essex Ed, took over the Zoo’s twitter account during the month of February, expanding his prognostication prowess beyond winter weather predictions. Look out @SUEtheTrex & @NatHistoryWhale.This furry futurist was quite charming (even if his lovable predictions weren’t always correct).
15. Turning print materials into links. The National Aquarium transcends the divide between printed materials and the web by using QR codes on printed materials that link to their YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr accounts.
16. Information share within the industry. Impactful nonprofits share their knowledge with others. That’s basically what the San Fransisco Zoo is doing in this video. One thing that I think is cool/important: the zoo doesn’t just leave twitter to the marketing department. They know that many departments should be at least a bit involved.
17. A picture’s worth a thousand words. The Monterey Bay Aquarium holds photo captions contests to engage visitors.
18. Going Meta. The Shedd Aquarium makes celebrating Flickr and Facebook fan engagement through Facebook look easy with their Fan Photo of the Week. They encourage Facebook users to tag themselves in photos in order to vote for their favorite. It’s a genius voting system. When folks tag themselves to vote, it often shows up the newsfeed for people in their networks, spreading the initiative.
19. Live tweeting… from the ocean? The Birch Aquarium at Scripps took the middle-man out of education-based communication when they created a Twitter account specifically for whale-watching season. Their Naturalists tweet live from the boat!
20. Apes, Elephants, Pandas- oh my! The San Diego Zoo invites you to live stream their apes, elephants, pandas and polar bears! And while you’re on the site, try your hand at the Elephant Odyssey Game.
21. No photographer wants to be photo-bombed by strangers. The Aquarium of the Pacific takes Flickr photo contests to another level and uses it to bring folks in the door. They created regular Photography Nights in which photographers (and photographers-in-training) are welcome to take pictures without worrying about the general public.
22. Let’s tweetup! The Houston Zoo conducts so many of them that they have a separate Twitter account for them.
23. We advise you to visit the aquarium. Got a good rating on Trip Advisor thanks to great visitor service efforts? Flaunt it. Word of mouth marketing is thought be to the most trusted and effective form of marketing. Take a lesson from the Oregon Coast Aquarium: link to your ratings on Trip Advisor and make sure folks know how much your visitors love it.
That little owl icon in the right corner says, "People love this place!"
24. Know your assets! In this case, it’s a Great White Shark. Kind of. I dare you to take a look at this Flickr album of enthusiastic visitors to Birch Aquarium at Scripps, and tell me you don’t want to take a picture with this shark.
25. Because “Fluffy’s Daughter” is a bad name for a baby python. And the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium knew it was a lame name, so they called in help from their community. Their naming contest on Facebook resulted in thousands of submissions and 1,200 original names, which were narrowed to five and placed back on Facebook for voting. Talk about well received; more than 500 people voted in the first 20 minutes and the zoo significantly boosted their “likes” on Facebook! (Spoiler: The name “Hanna” won with 816 votes)
26. The good ole’ ‘Fun Fact’ route never goes out of style. Rosamond Gifford Zoo tweets healthy doses of “Today’s Wild Wisdom,” by popular demand from their online community. A little bit (more) proof that social media works best when educational or exciting information is shared… and not just used as an announcement board for holiday closures.
On the West Coast? Not a problem for the Columbus Zoo.
27. Calling all ‘Mommy Group Organizers!’ Using the social tool Meetup.com, the San Diego Zoo makes it easy to set up playdates at the zoo.
28. Are you on Jumo? The Palm Beach Zoo has a page. No pressure.
29. Cell phone audio guides are a classic. At the Florida Aquarium, kids can listen to birds, fish, alligators, and otters through a cell phone audio guide.
30. State lines are for dummies. The Columbus Zoo offers special distance learning classes to K-12 kids across the country. The program “brings the zoo to you” using standard audio/video teleconferencing equipment.
Fundraising, Working the Market, and Strategic Uses of Social Media
31. Mobile devices= tools for donations. The Cameron Park Zoo launched a mobile giving campaign, which allows guests to donate $5 or $10 via text message. .
32. Making fundraising social with new tools. The Museum of Science in Boston uses Fundrazr, a social fundraising tool, to raise funds. In fact, the museum has raised over $2500 for the renovation of the Charles Hayden Planetarium exclusively through its network of online followers.
33. Meet the parents. The Knoxville Zoo knows who makes up a big part of their market- and they utilize a local online social resource called knoxmoms.com to connect with parents in the area.
34. Zoos vs. Aquariums: Who does it better? The National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium is already rocking the contests tab on their Facebook page to engage audiences- but one of their greatest contests featured a friendly race that pitted them against the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, IA. The race was to see which one–Aquarium or Zoo–could promote their page in order to get the most new likes/fans for their respective Facebook page by the end of the contest on October 31, 2010. It was close, but in the end, the aquarium lost and had to do a full day of “dirty jobs” for the zoo. But both organizations were winners in the end because of the increase in fans resulting from the competition. The Aquarium increased it’s Facebook fan base by 283%!
In the spirit of sportsmanship, zoo employees also agreed to do some "dirty work" for the other team. On Facebook, this photo is titled, "Zoo marketing guy tries working at the National Mississippi Museum and Aquarium."
35. A collaboration to strengthen community. The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo partnered with the Division 1 college hockey team in town, the Tigers, to promote both partners’ community-strengthening missions. They agreed to publicize for one another through their social media channels. In exchange, the Tigers promoted the zoo by showing video footage of the zoo’s tigers during period breaks, on the concourse, and on TV big screens at games. The zoo and the hockey team also conducted a successful meet-and-greet with players at the zoo, all the while shouting out to one another and publicizing these events through social media.
36. Make it easier for fans to give. In celebration of National Adoption Day, the Rosamond Gifford Zoo did a two-day promotion in which they significantly discounted their Adopt-an-Animal program. They created a custom package that was smaller than a traditional package (and therefore less expensive for us to produce). The result? An easy way to make an additional $350 for the program while getting the word out and giving their online community a sense of special perks.
37. Don’t forget gift shop sales! Folks at Clyde Peelings Reptiland say that Facebook is their favorite way to promote new items in their gift shop.
38. Tapping social technology for active feedback. The first step in evolving in order to best need visitor needs is to know what those needs are. By listening to audiences on social media, organizations can learn a lot about those needs- but the Brevard Zoo is taking an even more direct approach. They created research site that asks visitors how the museum can improve. The site allows them to get active feedback, create focus groups, and engage in private forums.
The Brevard Zoo wants your opinion.
Do you know of any zoos and aquariums utilizing social technology to engage audiences in ways that aren’t mentioned here? Share them in the comments section and add them to the list!
*Big credits to ourfunnyplanet.com for the top two photos.
The Exploratorium is one of the twleve organizations identified by Crutchfield and Grant that displays all six practices of high-impact nonprofits.
Nonprofits risk missing out on several opportunities when they entertain the mindset that social media belongs to the marketing department. This is especially true for museums. For one, audience-inspiring stories often stem from inside operations, such as conservation, horticulture, and life sciences departments, not to mention anecdotes and lessons from floor staff, interpreters, docents and ongoing programs. The opportunity that social technology affords museums in spreading their mission of educating visitors cannot be ignored. Social technology helps educational initiatives transcend museum walls, and even the most common social media sites offer opportunities to engage different types of learners.
But the issue extends beyond the notion that social media helps nonprofits and museums better fulfill their missions. Social technology can (and soon enough, in everyday life, will be) used to make nonprofits stronger organizations overall. In preparation for their 2007 book, Forces for Good, Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant examined twelve of the nation’s most impactful and successful nonprofit organizations. They pieced their findings together and outlined six practices of high-impact nonprofits: inspire evangelists, nurture nonprofit networks, share leadership, advocate and serve, make markets work, and master the art of adaptation. Today, social technology plays a leading role in helping organizations to meet more than half of the critical six practices of high-impact nonprofits. And chances are, social media will continue to evolve so that we can even better utilize social media to take on these critical functions.
1. Inspiring Evangelists. Successful organizations turn outsiders into insiders in order to help spread a message. Evangelists often have a personal connection to an organization’s cause and they cultivate their own networks to support the cause. This effort helps build the organization’s overall community. Successful organizations open the door to outsiders and seek to communicate with them and creating meaningful experiences. Because being social is at the heart of social media, sites help to efficiently create conversation and cultivate evangelists. In the world of social media, we call these evangelist outsiders free agents. It’s no wonder we’ve developed have our own term for online evangelists in the last four years; the Internet makes it easier than ever to connect with causes- and to connect with people who support your causes.
2. Nurturing Nonprofit Networks. According to Crutchfield and Grant’s research, successful charities recognize that strengthening their organization involves also strengthening the sector and sharing information. The notion that a good nonprofit tries to put itself out of business is at least conceptually true. A step forward in innovative educational outreach for one museum is a step forward for the power of informal learning for everyone. Social media makes it easier to grow the pie and share knowledge. Several significant online resources are free to everyone. If one museum has developed a new exhibit that has been shown to have educational value, it’s easy for museum professionals to share the information. In fact, the blogosphere is great for information-share and overall sector-strengthening. Information sharing not only strengthens museums overall, but it helps to develop individual leadership. And we need strong and knowledgeable leadership for this evolving industry. As a related side, here are some of my favorite, basic resources for individual museum professional development.
3. Mastering the Art of Adaptation. Social media not only facilitates the development of this organizational skill (adaptation), but having good social media requires it. Forces for Good shares a cycle for adapting to change: listen, experiment and innovate, evaluate and learn, modify. This is the exact approach that is advocated (yes, for lean start-ups, but similarly) for developing social media strategies. In order to be effective on social media, folks representing museums and other nonprofit organizations must listen, try new things, and take note of how audiences respond to those initiatives. Moreover, mastering adaptation involves balancing bureaucracy and creativity. As museums embrace social media, they find themselves both hungry for online engagement but also apprehensive of it. Radical trust is an issue for museums. Taking on social media mimics the organizational process of adopting change, mostly because adapting to social media is a big change for many institutions. The cycle never ends. In order to be taking full advantage of social media, organizations must be constantly listening, testing, and fixing. They must be constantly adapting.
Nonprofits are moving forward in utilizing social to aid in the final three practices of high-impact nonprofits as well.
- Advocating and serving. Crutchfield and Grant found that high-impact nonprofits both provide their own services and advocate for policy reform. It’s no surprise that social media is a good tool for building awareness and spreading a message. In fact, Planned Parenthood is a good example of an organization tapping into networks to support policy advocacy.
- Sharing Leadership. “Great nonprofit leaders share power,” Crunchfield and Grant write. Social media can help share information in order to educate professionals and cultivate leaders. It prepares professionals for the sharing of leadership, and empowers them to create their own professional voice through their personal brands.
- Making Markets Work. Social media can help nonprofit and for-profit partners connect to create collaborations that financially aid nonprofits and lend a reputation for promoting social good to for-profits. One way that museums leverage the market is by selling admission. In this case, social media really does work as a true marketing force, and online tools and mobile applications can help visitors purchase admission remotely.
Social media is a key resource for museums that want to develop nonprofit management techniques to help raise their organization above the rest. However, this will not be the case for long. Before we know it, those organizations that have not tapped into online networks to strengthen their museum will be far behind. Using social media to actively and consciously cultivate sustainability and long-term impact will be commonplace. At some point we may find that online engagement through social technology is not just a smart business move, but a matter of long-term nonprofit survival.
How Planned Parenthood Used Social Media to Create a Win-Win Situation for their Cause
February 21, 2011
Over the weekend alone, more than 357,000 people signed Planned Parenthood’s online open letter to Congress to oppose the recent vote from the House of Representatives to bar federal funding for the organization. Planned Parenthood utilized social media to help reposition themselves from a “losing” situation (facing cuts in federal funding) to more of a win-win situation (garnering public support and raising awareness and passion for their cause).
Nonprofits rock at using social media because it supports storytelling, inspires personal connections, and heightens the transparency required to attract donors. It does these things better, and at less of a cost, than a Superbowl ad (or most any ad, for that matter). But there’s an ongoing tension between social media and its ability to have a direct, positive monetary impact for organizations. Like so many actions in the world of nonprofits, it’s hard to monetize and determine the ROI of the effort in terms of dollars.
Planned Parenthood has created a win-win situation: If Planned Parenthood succeeds in overcoming the recent vote to bar federal funding for the organization, then they will have a monetary benefit that resulted from online engagement efforts (they kept funding that might otherwise be lost). But if hundreds of thousands of social media users signing an open letter causes no change in government action, Planned Parenthood still wins. They’ve managed to create a compelling call to action that got their cause into the newsfeed of millions of people in an urgent and compelling way that folks are likely to remember. These people are potential donors with a new reason to contribute. If Planned Parenthood inspires government funding or not, it was still a huge success to summon potential donors who may give money to the organization, should the cuts go through. If your nonprofit organization is going to lose federal funding (which is almost never a “win”), it probably doesn’t hurt to capture hundreds of thousands of hearts in the process.
For better or worse, this case illustrates some interesting ideas about how people relate to causes via social media. Here are some observations that may have led to the organization’s online success:
1. Planned Parenthood’s open letter made it easy to be an evangelist for a cause. Signing the letter takes less than a minute and the letter may have received a lot of attention for that very reason. It made caring about a cause easy and it let people think that they were doing something extremely significant. And they actually were, indeed, becoming evangelists for something significant. Public service and social causes are growing increasingly important to us as consumers (read: supporters and donors), which also may have aided in inspiring thousands to sign the letter. This is over-simplified, but here’s the point: making the letter easy to sign made it easy for people to do something “good,” and because that’s cool and you are cool when you support social change, people want to share that they support it. Result? Lots and lots of easy evangelists.
2. The call to action wasn’t the most important one. It was the most urgent. The call to action isn’t for monetary support, though that would be more active and likely have a bigger impact than adding your name to a letter that may or may not be considered significant in the eyes of officials. Although I hope that it is, it’s not a stretch to see how this online letter might not be taken too seriously. Case in point? The Facebook group called “We Hate the New Facebook, so STOP CHANGING IT!!!” has 1.5 million fans. Not even Facebook cares to listen to the group and it’s on their own platform. Like the Planned Parenthood letter, there’s no threatening action here to make leaders think these people care all too much when it comes down to it. The letter and its support could easily be written off as something that may have more to do with exposure than passionate belief that funds formally allocated to Planned Parenthood shouldn’t go somewhere else. Putting your name on an online letter is something, but it’s far from the most active thing that Planned Parenthood could ask their supporters to do. In fact, Planned Parenthood didn’t seem to ask for active donations at all in their I Stand with Planned Parenthood campaign. Was that the right move? Maybe. Maybe not.
3. Planned Parenthood has cultivated 400,000+ emotional investors just online. That’s a lot of potential passion and a lot of visibility. The above points are far from proving on any level that the social media push was not a great idea for the organization. In fact, though it likely wasn’t the primary goal, Planned Parenthood succeeded in creating a large-scale spread of the most valued kind of marketing: word of mouth. Facebook is interesting territory for marketers. It’s a great way to create conversation and spread your message. However, it is a relatively closed network compared to, say, Twitter- where statements can be searched and seen by anyone. To expand your fan-following on Facebook, you need to get other people to spread your message so that it comes up on the newsfeeds of the users’ networks. Planned Parenthood mastered this by sending a follow-up email to each person who signed up for the open letter with a prominent button asking you to make the message your Facebook status. It was easy and it worked. It’s likely that all 400,000+ supporters knew about Planned Parenthood before coming across the letter, but now those supports have done three valuable things:
- learned more about the organization, assuming they read the letter they signed
- took action to support the cause (emotional investment)
- and many stated their support publicly (solidifying their emotional support and integrating it into their online identity).
4. What Planned Parenthood does next, counts. The organization has built incredible momentum and Planned Parenthood will likely have to do something to harness that momentum before it dwindles. If you’re a museum person, this is the same problem that the Museum of Science and Industry faced after they chose their Month at the Museum winner. How do you keep people engaged for the main event? In this case, how do you get these people to stick around to see if Planned Parenthood gets federal funding? More importantly, how can you utilize this momentum to get people to help support the organization financially if it doesn’t…. or even if it does? There’s a lot of potential here, and there’s a lot that nonprofit organizations can learn about the role of social media in advocacy through what happens next.
As a side for museum-focused folks out there (and others!), Planned Parenthood isn’t the only organization that risks losing funding. There are some scary anti-museum amendments being considered by Congress for FY 2011. While reading about Planned Parenthood, it’s hard not to wonder what the online museum community would do if a severe anti-museum amendment threatened the industry that we both care about fiercely, and that supplies jobs to fellow museum aficionados. Nonprofit organizations in general can learn a lot by watching and supporting Planned Parenthood’s efforts right now. Particularly with regard to the evolving tool of social media which will likely play a growing and important role in advocacy, enagement, and summoning public support to create and realize change.
Please weigh-in with comments about lessons you are taking away from the situation and interesting tidbits that may help shape how nonprofits can use social tools to cultivate political support.
4 Valuable Online Resources for Museum Futurists. No…Right Now-ists.
February 16, 2011
There are six practices of high-impact nonprofits, according to Crutchfield and Grant’s findings in their book, Forces for Good. One of the central six? Nurture Nonprofit Networks. It means share knowledge (grow the pie, work together for change…) Knowledge sharing is a practice that nearly all of the world’s most impactful nonprofits have in common.
Nurturing networks and spreading best practices is one of many things that sets the nonprofit sector apart from the private sector, and it may be one of the biggest differentiations. You won’t catch Thomas’ English Muffins freely giving away the secret to their “nooks and crannies” just to bring the entire world (competitors included) one step closer to creating the perfect English muffin. If they can’t do it, they don’t want anyone else to do it. But nonprofits will put themselves out of business if it means bringing the world one step closer to a common goal.
People are becoming a bit like organizations as individuals build personal brands and play important roles in information dissemination to advance social change. A museum must be conscious of its brand and the professional advantages supplied by the institution. But a museum should not overlook the more personal/professional advantages that can be leveraged when museum employees have the tools they need to connect and engage with other professionals If nurturing nonprofit networks creates high-impact nonprofits, then certainly nurturing nonprofiteer networks leads to even higher-impact nonprofits.
These are four basic online resources for arming museum professionals with the social technology tools needed to embrace new media and encourage both sector transition and innovation:
1. MUSEUM 3 “Museum 3 is a nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring the future of the cultural institution sector. Since it began in 2007 as a social network, Museum3 has grown to almost 3000 members from across the world. In 2010 Museum3 incorporated into a not-for-profit organisation. This has allowed us to plan for extended services including conferences, masterclasses, public talks, new partnerships and new cultural products including podcasts and vodcasts.” One of the reasons why I think that this site is so cool is because it’s international. Talk about sharing the knowledge.
2. MUSEUM-ID: Another cool connecting site is MUSEUM-id, which is also run through Ning and called an “ideas exchange and social network for museum professionals.” Let’s not go nuts here- neither of these social networks is booming with the activity of your Facebook or Twitter feed, but when you consider that these social spaces exist to exchange ideas with similarly-interested professionals, the spaces are pretty darn cool and extremely useful.
3. MUSE TECH CENTRAL: How did I find the leads for so many of these innovative museum social technologies? I started out on Muse Tech Central. I adore it. Muse Tech Central is the Museum Computer Network project registry and it’s a gold mine of museum inspiration. It’s pretty simple, too: it is a list of new and ongoing technology-based projects taking place in museums.
3. CFM’s RESEARCH ROUND-UP: Recommending AAM’s Center for The Future of Museums to museum futurists (right now-ists) is like recommending Mashable for a social media fan; it’s been done and you probably already know a lot about it. Yes, the blog is awesome… but have you checked out their Research Round-Ups? They have everything from academic findings to news articles to essays to commentary. It’s a great complement to the weekly Dispatches from the Future of Museums that you can sign up to have arrive in your inbox, but I don’t see the Research Round-up celebrated as frequently. Knowing what research has been uncovered can be a powerful tool for your museum. Why reinvent the wheel? It helps to take a look at what we’ve figured out thus far.
Getting involved in these networks and checking out these websites probably shouldn’t replace normal social media activities like engaging professionals in your network on Facebook and Twitter- but it’s a great start and a terrific complement to those efforts. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that keeping an eye on these resources will keep you smarter than the average museum social media guru. Not to mention, they’ll keep you thinking, questioning the future, and preparing for new ways to engage audiences online.
*Header image from The Nonprofit Quarterly
I work with zoos, aquariums, and museums in the realm of audience engagement using social technology. I specialize in creative community involvement, new media, nonprofit sector evolution, and the role of Generation Y in the workplace. Learn more about me 
