The single most important asset of any non-profit organization is its relationships with its volunteers, donors, and other stakeholders. If you treat these relationships like sacred data collections instead of an engaged community, you are at risk of becoming irrelevant.

A More Detailed Exploration:

I spend a good portion of my time traveling across the country to attend conferences and meet with clients and prospective clients. Even in this digital era, the custom of exchanging printed business cards is alive and well. As you can see from the photo to the right, I have quite the collection.

But don’t confuse that collection of cards for a robust network of strong relationships. Getting the card is just like adding a new person to your organization’s database. If you do nothing to build the relationship, that business card becomes an artifact proving very little other than that you once had contact with the person.

The Historical Role of the Database

Common wisdom says that you can measure an organization by the number of people who are in its database. Historically, a central staff maintained this database and treated it like a sacred collection of artifacts. In an era when information didn’t flow so easily and it was very difficult to connect with people you’d never met, protecting that collection of records at all costs was a self-evident truth. After all, these records had taken a great deal of work to assemble and represented the lifeblood of your organization.

The Fundamental Shift Happening

Then something funny happened. The Internet made it much easier for individuals to connect with each other. With 1 billion owning personal computers, 1.5 billion having Internet access, almost 4 billion owning mobile phones, and easy-to-use software tools to connect and communicate using these devices, your expectations of the world around you have changed.

You expect to have much greater intimacy and immediacy with those people and organizations you care about. And, you’re not alone. Your donors, volunteers, and potential key stakeholders have the same growing expectations. Now, we can all search for long-lost friends as well as new and interesting people. It just takes a Google search or looking around on Facebook or Twitter to make them magically appear in front of you.

With the advent of opt-in communications, you now have access to a meta-database that includes much more robust information about your stakeholders, which they are freely sharing with you across many different online platforms…if you are on these sites and actively listening.

Accepting the Reality of Self-Organized Swarms

Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of this Interconnected Age is how easy it has become for a small group of people to reach out thru their existing network of relationships to create awareness for a cause, layout the vision for leading this cause, and then assemble a mass of champions to achieve their goals.

No longer are these people waiting for non-profit organizations to reach out to them with your glossy annual report and well-crafted annual appeal letter. They are seeing the need and organizing their own armies. These self-organized swarms are a reality and will become even more prevalent.

“Mr. or Mrs. Non-Profiteer, Tear Down This Wall!”

The time has come to tear down the mental walls that you and your leadership team have constructed around the relationships most important to you. I’m NOT saying that you put your database out on the web naked as a jay bird for all to see. What I am saying is:

Stop treating your database as a sacred collection of data controlled by you and begin to see it for what it has always been: a dynamic record of the engaged community who want to help you achieve your mission.

You can’t just measure that community based on database records. You need to also consider the interaction you have with the people who have joined your Facebook Fan page, subscribe to your Flickr account, watch your YouTube channel, follow your Twitter stream, and choose to invite you into their lives from their online platform of choice.

This is critical for your organization to stay relevant, because it is this mosaic of relationships that you can use to mobilize people to rally around your cause. If you’re not doing it, someone else will.

A Sneak Peak of the Pledge to End Hunger Campaign Case Study

This spring when we launched the Pledge to End Hunger campaign (www.pledgetoendhunger.com) to coincide with the South By Southwest Interactive Festival, one of our main goals was to better understand how social media can be used to help non-profit organizations and cause marketing campaigns.

[For a campaign summary, I recommend this post on Beth Kanter’s Blog.)

While we’re in the process of finalizing the campaign case study to share with you and the rest of the world, I do have some interesting data to share with you now regarding this topic of databases. One key thing we were seeking to determine was which would generate more traffic to the campaign website: existing email databases or Twitter followers.

Between the for-profit and non-profit organizations leading the Pledge to End Hunger, we had seven existing email address databases. Five of the seven databases had been cultivated thru ongoing email correspondences and had a demonstrated affinity for one of the organizations leading the campaign. The other two databases were a collection of people who had participated in eBay charity auctions and had little to no affinity to the organization keeping the database.

We consider the first five to be cultivated databases and the other two non-cultivated. All together, these databases totaled 132,831 names, with 57,831 from cultivated databases and 75,000 from non-cultivated databases.

To compare the results of these email databases, we put them against the Twitter audience of the fifty people who stepped forward as #HungerPledge champions. These were individuals from different geographic areas representing many different industry verticals who were willing to promote the campaign thru Twitter and blogs (if they published one). Collectively, they had contact with almost 208,000 people thru Twitter alone.

In the first seven days of the campaign, we used email and Twitter equally, so let’s compare the three in that period of time. So which database prevailed: cultivated emails, non-cultivated emails, or Twitter?

- 57,831 cultivated email addresses generated 2,204 visitors at a 3.8% conversion rate.
- 75,000 non-cultivated email addresses generated 19 visitors at a .03% conversion rate.
- 207,426 Twitter followers generated 4,154 visitors at a 2.0% conversion rate.

Conclusions from This Data

1. All Databases Are Not Created Equal - Organizations who cultivate their relationships with those in their email databases can mobilize a higher percentage of their known stakeholders when compared to individuals who mobilized their general Twitter audiences and even more than non-cultivated email databases.

2. You Don’t Need an Email Database – Social media makes it easier to tap into people’s existing relationships. Using fifty individuals, we amassed a larger audience and generated more site visitors than the seven existing email databases.

I’m sure there are many more great conclusions to be made here, so let me know what you think. Plus, here’s your chance to add to my broader thoughts about databases or (even better) challenge my notions.

Find me on Twitter: @scottyhendo

I used a lot of my recent ISBDC conference information and you can check all those facts over here – stuff like Facebook being up 700% and how communication has risen 18% in overall time online.  Those are big numbers.

ICR and SMPS people were a great group and I really enjoyed speaking to many of them afterwards.

I would also like to share with you the slideshow deck and a few videos I referenced.

I really enjoyed the Kevin Kelley panel discussion and I believe it’s a must watch for those of us interested in where the internet is going and why it’s so important to get involved online now instead of later.

I gave the group some good nuggets and some specific takeaways that may be relevant to your company.

Here’s some of the nuggets:

• The internet is not the silver bullet for marketing but the connections you make now will digitally last forever. And the relevant connections you have, the more chances of someone finding you.
• Social media is just one tactic of online marketing. You should have overall integrated marketing strategy in place then you can use the social media tactic – if you don’t have this, then how do you know if it is working with you?
• Being a valuable community member is more important than just talking about yourself and your company online.
• Going out and signing up for a Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook account is only part of what you can do. There is a etiquette and language you must learn and follow to be a respected community member.
• So many times businesses sign up for these “free” tools expect them to work with little time or planning dedicated to their success. You usually get out of it what you put into it. If it sucks, then maybe you should look at yourself instead of the tool.

Here where the takeaways:

• Set specific goals with constraints and measurable items of return.
• Put in place a schedule. This will help develop a routine and habits and answer the question of “When do I have time to do this?”
• Figure your expected ROI. Your schedule should answer to the ROI you expect. Which is determined by the goal you laid out in the first step.
• Take sometime to explore the different tools and keep an open mind to how they can fit in your day. I did not learn this overnight but made mistakes and discoveries and learned from them both.
• If you are uncomfortable about communicating, why not just start by listening to what is going on.

Chris Brogan (I’m a big fan of his) just left some great tips on his website.  Check out these 19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day.  They are great.

Feel free to call me at 317.218.0500, tweet, facebook, linkedin, or email me for further advice as you discover these new tools.

And to tell you the truth, sometimes I think I know the answer to this question and sometimes I feel like I don’t.

Has any of my contacts through Linkedin, Facebook or Twitter generated business for MediaSauce.  Well, sort of.  But maybe it’s not the kind of direct correlation that advertising and marketing delivers.  Or that we think advertising and marketing deliver.

You see, you can’t argue with the facts.  Lots and lots of people are using these platforms.  The increase in usage is tremendous.

Facebook is up 700% in time spent and has over 200 million users – over 100 million unique visitors last month.

Linkedin is up 69% in time spent and has over 41 million users – over 12 million unique visitors last month.

And finally, Twitter, the marketing buzz word for the first six months of this year, is up a whooping 3700% increase in time spent and has over 32 million users – over 19 million unique visitors last month.  This is all from Nielsen, if you think I’m making it up.

I know it’s insane.  But what’s even bigger is the fact that more people are using the internet to communicate than entertain themselves.  In fact, according to Netpop, communication online has increased 18% to 27% of total time while entertainment has decreased 30% to 19% of total time online.

What’s that mean? We are more entertained with each other than Hollywood. These social networks are our reality shows (without so much drama – well, maybe not.)

We are social beings.  We love talking and hanging out. We like being part of crowds and causes.  We go out to see people.

Well, what does that have to do with my business?

Let me explain.

Word of Mouth Marketing has the strongest Return on Investment.  When someone you trust gives you a recommendation about a product, you are highly likely to purchase that product.  It’s what every business wants.

Take Apple for example. They made a great product. They have great advertising. But is that what sold the product to you? Probably not.  It was probably a friend that had one that told you how awesome it was.  The advertising exposed you to it but it didn’t sell it to you.  Your friend did.

Social Media and Networking is Word of Mouth online.  That’s it.  It’s that simple.

So if you can figure out how to get your customers to talk about you both offline (WOM) and online (Social Media), you don’t have to spend a lot of money on other pieces of your advertising and marketing budget.

But guess what? Trying to advertise on a social network doesn’t work.  People don’t like banners or contextual ads on their Linkedin and Facebook profiles.  They hate the fact that advertisers are trying to sneak into Twitter.

Why? Because you aren’t being a valuable part of their community.  You aren’t playing by the same rules as they are.  You are buying yourself into the party and shouting out your benefits. You, my friend, are a party-crasher – uninvited and you are stinking the place up.  But they can’t eject you (maybe on the new Digg Ads they will) but they can ignore you.

Just like they ignore you on TV (DVRs), radio (change stations), print (skip the page) and web (does anyone actually see a banner ad anymore?).

So if you want to be in these communities and you want people to notice who you are and what you stand for and are selling then you have to be the person they want to talk to.

You need to be smart, funny, friendly guy that people want to talk to, listen to, and, in general, they want you to notice them as well.  You can’t do that when all you are doing is talking about yourself.

So what do you have to do?  It’s simple – just be a friend.

Check out the powerpoint above, it will give you tips on each platform and walk you through the basics to get started.

By the way, none of these platforms are difficult.  They just take some time to understand and use.  In no time, you’ll be a pro.

If you want to measure the ROI from each one of these platforms, it’s pretty simple but that does take some time as well.

Just set up your CRM tool (Salesforce incorporated some social networking features) or your Excel sheet and measure the items I suggest in the powerpoint.  Like for ROI on Twitter, I suggest:

• Measure Your Time on Twitter

• Measure Your Connections (Target Audience Reach)

• Measure Your Conversations

• Measure Your Cost to Advertise on Twitter – there are a few out there now like BeTweeted.com and Magpie.com

This is just like you would do for a face-to-face meeting or cold calling.

Oh, and I want to make sure that I answer the question at the top.

Whenever I meet someone new, I hook up with them on Linkedin and I search them out on Twitter.

If we have more conversations, I reach out to them on Facebook.

I want them to be a part of my life and I want to be a part of theirs.  We’re friends, we’re business partners.  Lots of businesses say they want to be your partners but do they reach out to you in this personal way.  Probably not.  It’s much harder to ignore someone you have a relationship with.

Have I had success through these links? I sure have.

Through Linkedin, I have met a couple of new clients but the majority of my business has been from former co-workers reaching out and connecting.  We still have those connections going and they can easily find out what I’m up to.  And you better believe they reach out when they have business in what I do because I’m not the first line in the Yellow Pages.  We have a relationship already.  They trust me.

Through Facebook, I’ve met friends of friends and while the connection is social at first, it has quickly leads to business.  In fact, I usually earn business from friends by the way I use Facebook to promote our business and they want to learn how as well.

Through Twitter, I’ve reached out to people I did not know.  But not like a cold call – I reached out by joining in their conversations.  But I’ve also had several reach out to me wanting to learn how they can be a part of MediaSauce and our culture.

Listen, these platforms will probably not be around forever with the way the web is evolving but these virtual connections I’m making will move along with me.  People I’m tied with today will probably remain with me in five years though it might not be through Facebook or whatever.

You don’t have to be my BFF to be connected online.  But if you want to learn more about me, then connect below.  You can be guaranteed that I want to know more about you.  I’m a social being after all.

What do you think?  Think I’m crazy?

Linkedin
Facebook
Twitter
Friendfeed

Just this morning she posed four questions on Twitter that I think are worth exploring in greater detail.  Since @amandachapel doesn’t maintain an active blog, I’ll take the initiative to host the discussion here. I just ask that everyone maintains a civil discourse here. If you violate that tenet, I’ll remove your comments.

Here goes:

QUESTION: 1. What is the basis of the belief that indiscriminate empowerment is a good thing?

QUESTION: 2. What is the basis of the belief that indiscriminate communications is a good thing?

QUESTION: 3. What’s the basis for the belief that the unleashed unfettered unencumbered social groupings that form online are a good thing?

QUESTION: 4. What are the economic consequences of a society devoid of the ability to produce scale?

Feel free to answer any or all of these.

Find me on Twitter: @scottyhendo

The highlight of the program was the lively breakdown of five case studies, which starts on slide 99.  The final one (starting on slide 115) was a behind-the-scenes view of www.pledgetoendhunger.com, which includes various analytics and measurements.

All of the slides I presented are included here.  The remaining slides were from the four companies sponsoring the workshop and can be found via www.causemarketingforum.com.

If you attended, what did you think? If you didn’t, what are your questions and thoughts?

Find me on Twitter:
@scottyhendo

A More Detailed Exploration:
Twitter has changed dramatically in the past six months. Not only has the number of registered users skyrocketed, but the nature of interactions have changed, too.  I’ve been around Twitter for a year now (it’s my paper anniversary, so please send paper my way – preferably something from the US Treasury) and have had a few conversations with others of similar, if not longer, tenures.

The unanimous consensus is that Twitter is a different creature now.  In the “early days” of Twitter, it felt like we had all just arrived for the start of a great party or conference. We were eager to find out as much as we could about each other, freely sharing, and eager for new connections. Now, we’ve found our circles of people we like hanging out with and eagerly seek them out from the crowd.  

To me, Twitter has become like the party or conference that’s gone on too long.  The excitement of meeting new people has given way to a growing weariness of seeing the same bunch of people everywhere. The panels and speakers are beginning to say pretty much the same thing as the previous ones. I’m getting tired of my hotel room, going out on the town, and eating out at restaurants all the time.

Yes, I’m aware it’s mostly my perception, but I know I’m not alone. This doesn’t mean I’m leaving Twitter. It means my frequency of using Twitter will go down and I’ll maintain the relationships with those I find to have enduring value to me.

What do you think? Has Twitter become like the party or conference that’s lost its novelty? How will this impact Twitter? Will Twitter become as irrelevant as the telegraph? Or as critical as the telephone?

 
Find me on Twitter (just less often):
@scottyhendo

So the beef today is with DIRECTV and Sprint.  I’ve been a customer of both for a long time.  DIRECTV for the past five years and Sprint since I’ve had a cell phone (back in 1999).  That’s a long time, right?

I’ve defended both to naysayers and I’ve also pushed a lot of customers their way but I’m done.  I have to be and let me tell you why.

First, DIRECTV.  My area has recently upgraded to U-verse.  I would like to get it.  Why?  Because it has a lot of the features I want and I really don’t want to pay the high fees to get HD for my TV.  Plus I’m still running my internet access through my cable TV (even though, I don’t have cable TV anymore) and I’m tired of their high fees for high speed access because I’m not tied to their bad grainy cable signal.

So I’m ready to break away to something I think is better.  But DIRECTV won’t let me without paying their early withdrawal fees.  I can understand it if I’ve been a customer just a couple of months.  But I’ve been there five years.  Just because I upgraded a last year to a different plan, they treat me as if I’m just another new customer who is not been with them for a long time.  This is what this says to me – THEY REALLY DON’T KNOW WHO I AM.

And when I hear that it makes me say, “You know, I really don’t know who you are, DIRECTV, and you never appreciated any of the time I’ve spent with you so kiss off.”

Now onto Sprint.  Same thing.  I’ve been with them for ten years.  While the Palm Pre looks pretty fantastic, I’m not willing to tie myself to you for another two years just for ONE cool phone.  I’ve been with you for a long time and yet again because I bought a new phone less than two years ago, it’s $600 to break my contract (I have three phones with them).  They are still the only guys that don’t pro-rate the contract.  That’s crap.

Again, they don’t know I’ve been with them for a very long time.  Longer than any job.  Slightly longer than my marriage but yet, they don’t know me.  So I will be breaking my contract and I will be telling people not to sign with Sprint just like DIRECTV because you just don’t care about who you deal with.

Here’s a Twitter worth for your marketing minds.  Are they really worth it?

rootsben: @kmtr You need to work out a contract with DirecTV so we can watch CW! Seriously! about 15 hours ago
distroia: DirecTV scammed the F*&K out of us! When we moved we got a box for Jareth’s room and that AUTOMATICALLY extended our “contract” by 2 years. yesterday
tideturns: i hate directv so much that i am willing to pay to get out of my contract. I’m finally getting AT&T U-Verse 1:51 PM May 15
vcolombo: Just paid my DirecTV early contract termination fee. Glad to be rid of them. 0:53 PM May 14
dbkguy: Beware of Directv. You probably agreed to a contract and u don’t even know it. 11:16 PM May 13

And don’t give me that crap about we have the equipment and free install – your equipment only works with you and no one else so it’s worthless to me if I don’t use you.  There’s no benefit for me just for you.

I tweeted about this concept of ETFs and I got back a lot of responses including one from a good friend, Langston Richardson. He says:

Most marketing efforts concentrates on getting customers into the door, sell them a package and pass them along into an often disconnected realm of customer service. Perceptions of brands will tend to follow this longer engagement track and thus over time effect brand perspectives of consumers. Case in point, the challenge of Charter Communications has with customer service.

As to early termination, anything that is a surprise is a negative. Fortunately, there is no brand who owns this on the subscription model services. Contracts are full of legal-speak but many companies never use them as a selling point. Is there something about the relationship that can be marketed rather than only seen at the end of the relationship during a breakup. Today’s informed and aware consumer hates being tricked.. or thinking they’ve been tricked. Getting out of contracts magnifies this negative.

Along with many others.

Via MTRay27 @donschindler not a fan of #directv after recent experience…would be happy to fill u in…negative branding

Via mrmysterious: @donschindler it was worth it to me to pay two etf’s to Sprint to get my wife and me an iPhone.

Via y0mbo @donschindler Early termination fees only guarantee customers will not be back, even if their new service is worse than what they had.

Via robbyslaughter: @donschindler Early termination fees => good for the vendor, bad for the customer => bad idea. Nothing brilliant.

So how do you fix this? I suggest a very different point of view.  One from the customer.  Here’s what I would do.

Know how long I’ve been a customer.  There should be no contract fees for someone who’s been with you for over two years.  Then I’m more likely to stay.  Locking people up every time they touch their plan is an screw-you move and you know it.  Stop doing it.

I think you should also take away the fees altogether and watch how many people come over from other providers.  No contract.  No hassles.

What do you think?

Is the fee you charge to make sure I hesitate in taking my business elsewhere worth the negative feelings to your brand?

Telligent was one of the campaign’s Corporate Champions and played an important role in making sure Texas was one of the top three states in terms of number of people signing the Pledge.  As active bloggers and Twitter users, George and Lawrence Liu brought great energy and enthusiasm to the team

While George and I were together, George broke out his Kodak video camera and shot this interview of me.  It’s probably the most detailed back story to date of how everything came together.  Hope you enjoy it and learn something useful from it.

MediaSauce Cheese Club
Friday, June 5
12:00 noon
MediaSauce Suite 120
Theme: Cheese & Chocolate
Membership Day Pass: $5

Menu

• Danablu Blue Cheese with Ghiradelli 70% Extra Bittersweet Chocolate
• Capriole Bourbon Chocolate Torta Goat Milk on Graham Crackers
• Seasid English Cheddar & Red Leicester Cheddar with Equal Exchange Organic Milk Chocolate
• Parrano Uniekaas Dutch Gouda with a Bark of Chocolate Callebrut White

Gouda and White Chocolate

Bleu and Dark Chocolate

Goat Cheese with Chocolate

Two Cheddars with Milk Chocolate

The History of the MediaSauce Cheese Club
as recounted by Aaron Scamihorn on his blog (www.ronlewhorn.com)

At MediaSauce, we have a fine tradition of celebrating quality cheese. It all started with a random “get-to-know-you” meeting of a few new Saucers. The question “What is your favorite cheese?” was posed to each person.

While the typical answer was cheddar or Velveeta, we found a couple connoisseurs in our midst. Scotty Hendo couldn’t pick a single cheese and gave us the description of what his board would include. We later found out that Époisses truly is INTENSE! In my wife’s family gatherings, we had started a tradition of bringing random cheeses to meals. During this same MediaSauce meeting, I mentioned that my favorite was a French Morbier.

Noticing the shared passion, Scotty Hendo and I took it upon ourselves to create a club where we might share great cheese with our co-workers and learn a little in the process. It has been an ever-growing group of fromaggiers.

Editor’s Note: While the MediaSauce Cheese Club is a proud customer of Whole Foods Market, we receive no compensation or preferential treatment for the recognition of that fact. It’s not out of ethical reasons.  Rather, it’s because they haven’t offered any yet.

We have four great sponsors who not only are making the workshop very affordable but also will be sharing their expertise and ideas.  Much thanks to Steve Croth from Better the World, Carol Schrader from GiveZooks!, Michael Hoffman from See3 Communications, and Beth Eisenberg from iugo. I’m looking forward to our explorations!

In addition to all this great content, I’m looking forward to giving everyone a very inside look at the recent www.pledgetoendhunger.com campaign.  With the help of the my co-architect, Mitch Maxson, we’ll consider the strategy, tactics, results, lessons learned, and other relevant insights.  We baked a lot of analytics into our campaign and will share some surprising results with you – this will be our first public presentation of these findings.

If you are anywhere near Chicago that day, it’ll be worth the modest $125 registration.  You can register here.  Be sure to let me know if you plan to attend! I’d love to hear from you.