Transcript: Live Ask the Guru Session with Beth Kanter

Kari: Hi there, welcome to ‘Gear up for Giving’ sponsored by the Case foundation and our friends at See3 Communications, the Goldhirsh Foundation, and Flip video. I am Kari Saratovsky and I am thrilled to be here today with Beth Kanter. As many of you know and the frequent readers of Beth’s blog, she is a social media guru and has been for many years in leading efforts really as a leading champion and works for the nonprofit sector when it comes to social media. We are so thrilled to have Beth with us today and as you know for those of you who have tuned in before, we are here every Tuesdays and Thursdays, actually we have been here for a month, our last session will be this Thursday with Sarah Koch from causes who will be answering all your questions about causes on facebook and how to utilize that platform and of course we are here because we are gearing up for America’s giving challenge and America’s giving challenge is officially launching next week, October 7th so make sure you are getting your trips ready to participate in that and to have the opportunity to win $50,000 for your cause.

You will be learning much more about on the case foundation site and of course Sarah will be answering to your questions related to causes on Thursday but today we are going to have another kind of broad reaching session with Beth and should be taking all your social media and nonprofit related questions. So you can start sending those, which many of you already have, we have many emails, tweets and also via that blog that she posted on our site earlier this week. So, if you have not sent in your questions yet, of course you can participate in the chat that is happening below the screen, you can also email us at ‘gearup@casefoundation.org’ and if you are already on Twitter, go ahead and tweet your questions just use the ‘#’ tag ‘# AGC’. Beth is sitting right here, I have my computer and we are ready to go. I want to start by having Beth say a few words on some of the trends that is happening in social media adoption by nonprofits by right now, just to warm up before we get to the questions.

Beth: Great, in terms of trends it’s a great opportunity to look back. I have been blogging since 2002 I guess, I really started blogging I guess in 2005. What I have seen is it’s great to have more voices. Its fun to be an early adopter or an innovator but it’s lonely.

Kari: Sure, but many people are joining you now.

Beth: I think we are beginning to start. A lot of organizations were just getting started and some were thinking about getting started. So, we see more even distribution of people looking at it. I am excited about that is because I see that there will be more best practices for us to share with one another and there will be many more examples and lots of learning opportunities.

Kari: Absolutely, I think we will jump in to the questions. Let’s start with this question of time. You know, so many nonprofits are really stressed right now they have lot of competing priorities. We have one organization that sent an email saying, “I have a small staff, how do I find the resources to keep up to date with the content on social networks, how do I manage our time and presence here?

Beth: Well, that’s really a great question. Actually I have just given away my timeout timer. So, when I started I used to get really distracted because I did not have a steady work flow and facebook and all the other things would be clamoring and chiming before you know that you haven’t accomplished the task that you need to do. So couple of years ago I bought the kids timeout timer and I really structured my time on social network and my task. I used to stick the task right up on the monitor what I have got to accomplish and then I would accomplish those, when I am done with all I would get to the next task.

Kari: So, you were that disciplined.

Beth: Yeah, and also it’s a great way to learn because in the beginning you would know what your work flow is. Often I run experiments, one of the experiments was to find how much time it is going to take me and what is the most efficient work flow and there was another part of that question about small staff and keeping up with everything. So with the small staff I think you need to be very selective and how you are going to engage. It’s better to engage deeply in fewer places than to engage all around the map, see carefully where you want to engage. I think there is a great opportunity working with interns and volunteers but you can’t just write to them saying to take care of it. You really have to engage them in your organization’s mission, programs and goals so that they have an understanding. You need to work with them and it’s a great opportunity for cross mentoring if you are new to the technology.

Kari: This also brings up this interesting point of cross generational dialogue that seems to be happening. So while you have interns coming on board and they are very excited on social media, you may have a CEO or an executive staff that a little bit more vary. How do you balance some of that? What are some of the most effective ways you have seen to handle some of the cross generational things that are happening? Also what is your thoughts and opinions on who should own the social media strategy?

Beth: well, let’s get to the first piece which is the cross generational mentoring, I would say it works best if it’s a team approach so that the senior manager is comfortable that the less experienced staff or volunteers & interns can speak on behalf of the organisation in making the decisions. So I think they go into this with a learning approach. This is an opportunity to get the talking points this is how the facebook works. If you go into it without any specific outcomes besides learning on how do we work together and how do we become more comfortable. That’s a really good thing to do in the initial couple of weeks or couple of months.

Kari: In terms of who should actually own?

Beth: I think the organisation should own it and everyone in the organisation but I know that it is a big league. Often it begins in the marketing department or in the fundraising department but then it needs to spread.

Kari: I think you have written a bit about this on Beth’s blog but what are the three or four questions that the organizations should ask themselves before diving into the social media? This question came via email as well. What are some of the guiding principles that you have and the key questions that they should ask?

Beth: That’s a great question and I really appreciate that. Actually I answered this question on the blog this morning. I was happy typing because I think better from my fingers than my thoughts. This is a great chance to speak about some new beginning questions.

So, here they are:

• Is your organisation ready to be a learning organisation that is to value mistakes as opportunity to learn?
• Does your leadership understand the potential value? Are they willing to invest more on experimentations and not say ‘show me the money’ up front?
• Can you articulate a clear set of reasonable starter goals that makes incorporate some learning. A goal, instead of getting some x amount dollars figure out how much time is it going to take or is our audience here and what are they saying about us.
• Can you shape and indentify a beginner project that doesn’t take too much time and leads up to your goals. I think what happens is, we get too complex in the beginning, and we add a lot of stuff and try to accomplish lot of stuff. It’s better to start with a simplistic easy starter kind of goal; 5 is a nice number you know we have been asking for 5 but people come up with 3.
• Are you really ready to engage and start having conversation with your audience, start making relationships rather than just talking to them?

Kari: Those were very helpful and in case you can’t catch all of those you can actually find those answers on the blog post on the case foundation web page, you can check that out. There is a follow up question from chat that says, “We dived into the social media without doing any listening work. How do we revert now?

Beth: Can I be silly? I am making this up, so here is your fish and you just dived in. So first thing I would do is because I have done that and you are not the only one. Dive back out, sit for a while and ask yourself ‘did you learn anything from just diving in? Maybe you would have seen some immediate results but what did you learn from the people who respond to you. When you just threw up a facebook page, people join that facebook page; what did you do to have them join that page or posting things on that facebook page. Maybe you have situation where no one came and there is nothing there that is an important learning to do something. So you have to start listening. I actually have a whole Wiki that has some starter projects on it but the first thing you want to do is setup a listening post. I don’t how updated your organization is, maybe you bring up a small group of people and start brainstorming some of your key words because that’s the essential part of listening. Keywords are simple phrases; they could be your executive director’s name, your organization’s name, your tag line or your organization’s URL. Those are the kinds of things you are going to start with your simple listening post and then you can go and have all the tools lit up and you can go to www.wearemedia.org and go the listening section, they are basically like goggle for the social media page. You type in the keywords and it creates something called RSS feeds but you don’t need to worry about that you just need to know that it makes things easy for you, to have that search going out there continuously and then you would need to get really familiar with the tool called the RSS reader, add those feeds to that reader and make a daily or weekly habit of reading those. The important thing there is at least once a week depending on your volume summarize what you are seeing, what are the phrases that are coming up, is it positive or neutral or negative. Don’t start to respond yet but maybe if someone has raise a blog post about your organisation, see what the comment is, follow the links do that for about three days and then you shift over to the beginning so that you can let the people know that you are there. First follow your trails and then you can start to pickup things and start to interact.

Kari: I think that is helpful, it’s a helpful process to go through, to take that time and take a step back and listen.

Beth: I think the biggest thing that people are concerned about is the listening part. They are like “Oh my god it’s going to be information overload”. You need to be Zen about it, very Zen about it. You don’t have to read everything, don’t follow every word just pick two or three things that are most important and understand that the fog will lift after the first couple of weeks. First it might seem weird, you would have that sense of feel but you would know what keywords that you would need and you are going to zero in on that.

Kari: Terrific, again terrific use of prods this is working out well. Couple of follow through that has come via chat. The first one is with regard to the generational differences, “does reverse mentoring actually work?”

Beth: You know, I have done reverse mentoring with people, in my 50s I have done reverse mentoring for people in their 80s and 90s, so yes you can do it. Also it helps if you know somebody, you know it’s not all younger people you have some old people. Maybe you can find somebody who is a peer, someone on your board or your leadership. You can have them do one-on-one coaching and I think that’s really important.

Kari: another question here from the chat, “We have 4000 email newsletter subscribers. Is it a bad idea to invite all the 4000 people to follow us with twitters find people? Do you know much about how find people works on Twitter?

Beth: I am just one of these people who like to build my network one at a time. I would like to know who is following me and that’s the way you would really go to networks, based on relationships not just all numbers. So, maybe I would look for some of those people maybe put something in your email newsletter about joining the twitter see if people take you up. Do a small test, go through the list and see if you know people who are already on twitter. I just think that, you have a join and then what? Its makes it hard to scale that relationship based on that engagement which is the secret sauce to success. Engagement, relationship building and cross mentoring.

Kari: I would like to switch back to the email question this one says “our social media efforts are happening in different places how do I tie these up together and is it important to do so?” I think you have done an incredible job of bringing people from your blog your facebook page, your twitter. So how would you suggest the organizations to tie these up together because I guess this is important?

Beth: It is important, it’s trying to get you to your goals and metrics, what is that you want to achieve? So, think about that first, think about how all these different channels really support that goal and also think about it as the channels that can be woven not just anybody. I know that not everybody on my facebook necessarily follows me on twitter, there are some overlaps because of that I don’t directly connect my twitter on to my facebook profile or on to my fan page. I kind of pick and choose. Each one of these channels have developed its own personality in terms of the community, so I have slightly different ways when I talk to people in my fan page than I do in twitter. I automate very selectively, you can automate feed contents from one place to other, and there are ways to do it manually but require your time. I actually answered them all and thought of having some more questions. So, go through all your social media activities, make it like an inventory right now. Create a spreadsheet, go through it and ask yourself ‘is it strategic, is it helping our goal, are we engaging people and building relationships or is it random?’ Then you have a couple of points. Are you strategically and heart fully cross populating. So it’s like this idea of what I call a network weaver, because you are weaving between networks with your content or with your conversation. For example on my fan page on facebook, I don’t stream my entire blog post, all of my facebook is a listening post actually and it’s a big focus group. I call it the facebook focus group and there I learn about what kind of questions that people asking about their fan pages about their facebook presence. What kind of information can they share and do they have any practices. I ask a lot of questions there because I am still learning facebook. So, I don’t automatically stream all of my content that comes to my blocks because I pick and choose. I just share one up with my question and I look at the inside tour of facebook, fan pages to make sure that I am getting the responses for what types of things that I should share with the content and format. The other thing that you need to definitely tie together is your overall web presence. I am amazed, when in prepare for training I go to every participant’s web page and try to see what their social media activity is and try to follow their trials and I am amazed how they stick their facebook badge at the bottom of their page, they don’t even have it up there. Some have it up there artfully integrated others don’t, so think about that. Also when I look into my facebook fan page badge on my blog in a prominent place, it helps people to find it and join it.

Kari: That’s very helpful, I want to turn back to the chat, this one is interesting and I think lot of organizations face this. “When you find no reviews, comments on your pages or links, would that mean that you are not reaching your part of audience and what do you do?”

Beth: You mean on your facebook page?

Kari: I think they are saying more broadly like if people are participating on your blog. How should organizations react to that? I know it take a while especially if you have a blog, it takes a while for people to comment, get comfortable and get in to a group, posting things on other people’s blogs and reciprocating. So, how do you best suggest the organizations to go about building that conversation?

Beth: Wow, that’s a great question. When I started blogging early on I had several blogs, one of them wasn’t my professional blog it was all about Cambodia and I was blogging to learn about Cambodian culture. I was just blogging away, I didn’t even know that people realize about comments. It was couple of months and then there was a comment and then I followed up with the comment, so it’s not immediate gratification, you have to build it. If it’s a blog they are looking at how you write, are you giving room for the people to join the conversation, are you asking questions, are you writing to the posts, and are you linking to lot of other people. Then with blogging it’s like going to other people’s parties, you don’t have to wait for people to come but on facebook, fan pages I closely look at inside pages, I check how many people liked this, how many left comments and I experiment with that if it’s a photo, did I tag somebody on this, what kind of description did I write, how did the link show up? I do a lot of testing to see what gets responses.

Kari: Actually there is a follow up question that came in via email, “should nonprofits ask their facebook supporters to vote as a cause member and as a fan or just use one approach. Is it worth generating an entirely different content for both causes and fan page?” you have recently experienced a lot of that recently.

Beth: I think you should integrate. I think that the fan page if you consider in terms of lot of engagement, the fan page might help you to make people know you, join you and getting engaged and get them over to your causes when they are ready to donate. So, think of it as lot of engagement percept, you can put a customized tab on your fan page that links to your cause and you can even talk about it.

Kari: That’s helpful, for those of you who have joined little bit late Sarah Koch from causes on facebook is going to be with us on Thursday same time same place and shall be taking lot of question that have come in really specific to facebook and facebook causes. So, you can continue to send those in and we can definitely keep those for Sarah. So, from chat, “Where can I find demographic data on users of different social media venues?

Beth: You just asked about one of my absolute favorite topics.

Kari: Oh my God.

Beth: I use a program called delicious, which is a social bookmarking site and I have a tag called research snippets. So anything that I find I bookmark with that tag. You can subscribe to RSS feeds, you would get information overload, if you are a link person. If you are a visual person like I am, I always read those studies and I take screen captures where I think it’s the most insightful findings and I put them all in my flickr stream. So, you can find all that in my social media market snippet flickr stream. Also if you follow me on my facebook profile you would find the picture from flickr posted, that’s one that I automatically post.

Kari: That’s terrific, we will make sure that is been spitting out some different URLs and addresses. We will make sure that we follow up and post it via twitter and to the attendees to the blog post. In case if you are not catching all those, we will try to catch some of them in the chat and then send that out via other ways. From chat, “I am President of a tiny education foundation we want to find alumni etc., how do we start a social media site, we have no presence currently, no newsletters, no emails.” So these folks are really starting off, how can they find best folks to be part of their network?

Beth: Two things, first thing is start to go on facebook and start searching, I am really surprised because there is a network established for my high school and even my elementary school. So and check if there is some network already in some places with your individual profile. Actually you can make this as a great organizational task, setup a community of people who are comfortable doing this, just setup your personal profile and do some research on facebook, do keyword searches on your institution and come back together to find on what you found and what you learnt, that’s one step. Second step, you said that they don’t have email newsletters?

Kari: Yeah, they don’t have any of that.

Beth: You remember when I called the blue of thirds that social media stuff is fantastic and I love it but you want to have one third of outbound communication, email marketing and your search engine optimization and you want your web presence, you want a home page to bring them back to.

Kari: So, another question that came via chat and I don’t know how much you are going to be able to comment on this. I know its head of the curve to talk about Google way for the nonprofits but “why did nonprofits always seem to be trying to play patch up?” So this is a question specific to the Google wave tool, I don’t know how much you know about Google wave. I think the broader question here is why it seems like nonprofits are late to the table.

Beth: Well I think, let’s go back to the adoption curve, looks like a bell curve. We have our innovators, they are in small number though, and the nonprofit innovators are already on Google wave but it’s a small amount. Vendors are these little casm, whether its fish or shark and then it start to cross the casm and we get the early adopters. That’s slightly a bigger group than the other one but it’s still not the majority of nonprofits. And then there is another casm, this is bigger and that’s the one with the early adopters and early main stream. So we have that part of it and then we actually get to the middle of the curve, we have the late main stream and then we have the lagers. If you are using Google wave you are probably one of the innovators trying to get intervene the early adaptors, you are probably saying “where are those lagers?” it would take those 18 months to two years. There is a benefit of being an early adaptor, there is a benefit of being an innovator there is also benefit of being a lager and the benefit of being an early adaptor is if takes off you are there but if you are the lager you are no longer the wild west, you may not have many dramatic results but it’s less risk.

Kari: So, this next question is coming from chat and you have some great experience with online fundraising. The chat question says, “The old giving campaign model that organizations use to target the audience based on previous donations and responses. Should organizations track followers on twitter and facebook to learn those interests? How should people start building up that, it’s not the traditional model of finding folks?

Beth: Well, I like what your friend talks about, he talks about the ship in the model that is now the market place. You have to start looking for people who are interested in your issue area. Now there are things like in the Bobbins software there is something called the social CRM which Contact Relationship Management software which maintains your existing database online your fundraising database.

Kari: Lot of nonprofits is using sales force right now.

Beth: right, sales force has sort of a social component and there are other programs which integrates that. For example I use a couple of software which I am experimenting right now. I am depicted to a small nonprofit versus a big nonprofit. I pull in all my contact in twitter and manually put them in facebook and I can automatically import from other sources and once I have them in there and look up, then I can start tagging with keywords and I would set groups when I want to reach out to people. So, it’s kind of tweet tag.

Kari: But really a way to track people and what their interests are.

Beth: Right, when have an interaction I would be able to follow up. So, I am not just collecting business cards, now I scan it and get it in to my CRM.

Kari: This is from chat, this chat is so rich I thank for everybody who continue to write. We would try to get to as many as possible; we have another half hour left. So, from chat, “I listened to a presentation that says social media should always point users back to your website. Is it true, can a facebook page supplement that? Where should you drive people?”

Beth: I drive people to other people’s site, that’s how you build the network. I have two twitter profiles, one that is mine which is @kanter that’s where I talk that’s where I have the most followers and I have another profile which Beth Kanter that’s my evil link loving twin, she has a twitter that tweets to other people. I think eventually it becomes intermingled because when I drive people back, I drive them to my facebook page to find my blog.

Kari: The next question from chat, “Do you have guidelines on how to setup an organizational account, should it be anonymous organizational face or certain person from the organization representing it. If you have nonprofit organization and you have a facebook presence should one person mange that or should multiple have access to that account?

Beth: There are three or four different options. You can have institutional branded voice, just the institution, there is no person there or you can have the branded institution but have the manager as the personality or it could be several people or you can have a person as an individual but they are clearly dealt by the organization. So I definitely have a bias towards one in the middle because that’s the most hybrids and I also think that it works well if you have other people in staff that can professionally represent the organization.

Kari: Very true. What are the occasions would you suggest to tracking links that are hosted in social networks?

Beth: well, I use Google analytics because I can write reports, I can see where my refers are I can see where my audience come from I can track that and then when I share link I use twitter. There is actually another one called tweet effect that actually measures how many forwards you lost or gained based on the tweet. For example if I tweet a response and if don’t give any contacts or link, people don’t like that, so I try not to do that.

Kari: That makes sense. So you have written a lot about this idea of return investments. I got so many emails with regard to that question. “How should organizations measure their effectiveness in social media? What are some of those metrics and how should the folks make to their CEO?

Beth: So after you have done what you are supposed to do in the beginning for six to eight months, doing experimentations and tracking soft metrics for your learning, like how much time does it take you and is this for audiences then you would be into the area of action measuring engagement. So you are looking all the relationship things and your action things, comments on your blog using the inside tool of facebook to see how many people like it, how many people commenting. Then you are looking at conversions, which could be translating into traffic, names on to your email list, dollars and of course there is the ultimate which is the weird results; social change behavioral change and what the social media strategy is contributing to that. For example I was thinking of friend Scarlett, they have this fantastic little widget on their facebook profile. Somebody can go and lookup the location of a center and they have all of them listed.

Kari: This one is just for fun, “Did you guys coordinate your outfits?” and believe it or not, we did. It’s little bit of bizarre.

Beth: We are not sure about that anyway.

Kari: Yeah, so do you have examples of websites of organizations with artfully placed platforms? Who is doing a good job of making people drag into their pages?

Beth: I think there are facebook pages, look at frank parapet site I think they are doing a good job, look at red cross, look at wildlife federation and I actually have a list in my Wiki, bethkanter.wikispaces.com. If you look you would find the large list of nonprofits, start clicking through those I think I have marked some of the good ones that’s one place to go and the other thing that I want to mention is if you go to my fan page, its facebook.com/beth.kanter.blog, you would have to join and when you do you would see my customized flash page that was done it. It has a very clear action for why you should join the page.

Kari: you recently launched that right?

Beth: No, actually it was kind of slow launch in July and I was testing these in the last couple of days.

Kari: Ok, terrific. Also from chat, “Is there a way to learn whether or not your audiences in these networks are the same. So, she always goes to excel spreadsheet for any program to help her know her audience and how much over lap is there.

Beth: Why do want to know that?

Kari: I don’t know this is not my question.

Beth: Let’s understand how she is going to use the information and let’s answer that question.

Kari: Yeah

Beth: I actually have three books that I want to book in ways. We should write comments through your blog and then pick some from there. The first one is Twitterville and there is actually on chapter 11 called goodwill fundraising, it’s shut Israel@twitterville. Kanter is giving away this book because there is a goodwill fundraising chapter. I have already given away like 70 copies of this.

My Second one is Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agent. Frank berry wrote a great piece for my blog not too long ago and I embedded a giveaway and so I published something sweet from Daton children’s hospital. There is couple of reviews out there, one on nonprofits about nonprofits.com. If you want to win a copy of this leave a comment on the case foundation blog post for trust agents and if you are in twitter let Chris Brogan know that I am giving this as gifts, and the last one is very special, it’s called digital habitats and it’s by Nancy White Johnson. This is more about like all my communities of practice and how you can do learning across your field in networked way and it’s also helpful for those of you who are working on the field already, you want to coordinate some of the social media strategies together. So these are some of the ways you can do that to share learning. So three books to give away.

Kari: So, those books could be yours if you write comments on the post that Beth wrote on the case foundation site. What sort of comments you are looking at Beth.

Beth: Why you want those books?

Kari: Ok. Terrific. So go ahead start writing the comments and you could be one of the three winners at the end of the day. So getting back here to the chat, actually let’s check the email. How important is it for the nonprofits to monitor their brand. Everybody is like what if they say something bad about us, what we should do, what are the actions we need to take. How important is it for the folks.

Beth: It is essential I think it is fairly important I think we need to be connected. You know people are talking and if you are not tracking those conversations you are going to be crawling back. Even if you are not listening or if you are not having a Google alert at least you are in big trouble, I can say that bold. So, you really need to monitor your brand for sentiment values. And of those bad comments, those are gifts. They are going to say bad things anyway, you should be able to hear and correct it. It could be about your perception or anything about your program.

Kari: A question with regard to direct involvement of social media in organizations. We have more and more organizations say, we have a presence, we have lot of employees online and we are using social media. Some of them are hybrid in representing the organizations and their personalities. So how important it is for the organizations to have guidelines and social media standards?

Beth: Well, the cast is out of the bag and we need a policy. We may have lot of issues that may come up that may already be covered in Human Resources policies, your technology use policies, and professional conduct policies those are pretty much larger organizations that have those kind of policies. I mean if you have 30 or 40 people on staff. So maybe pulling those out and taking a look to see whether or not you need to insert the word social media in there and then it’s also good to have certain guidelines, giving the people the points, giving them more of operational set of guidelines.

Kari: Very helpful.

Beth: I have a special post in my blog for the operational side policies and another one called the pooch porch policy which is a compilation of links to different social media policies from nonprofits as well as government and also to the national, I saw that post they did a couple of weeks ago summarizing 80 different social media policies.

Kari: Yeah.

Beth: But it’s not just a cut and paste thing. You really need to sit and have a conversation.

Kari: This is interesting question from the chat, “Our organizational leadership now wants to expand our social media presence, and they recognized it’s potential for fundraising and relationship building but how do I manage their expectations. I think managing the expectations in social media is very important.

Beth: Well, that’s what we have been saying. Show them the ladder of engagement and show them the ladder of results, show that over time. I actually have a great visual in my flickr about going up one side in the amount of time you have been in the social media network and the amount of learning and interactions that you have done and somewhere around here is where the money starts to come in. you know, feeding them all with updates, reports and while the campaign is happening rather than at the end.

Kari: You have had a great success in online fundraising and as we prepare for the America’s giving challenge on October 7th, what are some of the tips that you have for effective online fund raising strategies.

Beth: The whole thing is hopefully everyone has got their network before they meet us that are an important thing. The first touch with the people must be with your hand, that’s very important, storytelling is important and you need to have a story telling strategy you know, what the impact is or what the result of this money is. What is the individual story that you can tell, what’s the story of your supporters is and what is the stories around why people really like your organization or your cause. The other thing is it’s a matter of engagement and that you are bringing people on and cultivating them. Say thank you, it’s really important to make the people feel special.

Kari: And you have those fun creative ways that you used in the past.

Beth: Oh many, videos to writing in humor on posts, sending personalized greetings and not through emails.

Kari: That’s terrific.

Beth: They appreciate that, really that formal engagement is becoming less and less, personal touch is very important.

Kari: Here is a question from an organization that’s going to be rebranding in the next month or so. “Do you have any recommendation on how to make the best transition and get the most out of this opportunity as they begin to rebrand.”

Beth: That’s a good one I am thinking that they need to go to Kiwi Rowels’ blog. She has couple of good host just on that topic.

Kari: Ok, you said its kiwi.

Beth: Yeah, it’s a nonprofit blog and also getting attention blog. It speaks about the topic and breaks up.

Kari: Great terrific. Gosh, so many chat questions. “How do you balance management oversize and the likely time for management approval with a need to respond to conversation in real time?

Beth: Wow, that is a great question, I think that you need to give the people who are the front liners the attractions, they need to be equipped and they need to have the trust to respond because they can back fire on you if you don’t respond and I think there might be a larger management issue if the front liners, can set every single thing approved. There is a set of bullet points as the sense of knowing what they can approve. I know that there are many top down management process communications and I think that there needs to be some kind of conversational discussion way that social media go through the social life of content messaging they have. I also have a framework that goes through my blog. I think it would be a good tool. It shows the audiences that are subjective in it and then think about what’s you content messaging point is and think about how you can respond in a conversational way. What is the question you can ask and what is the follow-ups that you can point to people.

Kari: Great suggestions. This question has also come quite a bit. What do you see as future for nonprofits in particular and social media? Where are things going and how these organizations can move beyond these cost fatigue and social media fatigue that is happening, stay focused on their mission and also help the followers.

Beth: That’s a great question in fact I am doing a key note with the new media exposure and it’s all featuring on what is the sense of collectiveness mean to the nonprofit sector, what does the nonprofit at 2020 look like. I won’t answer that question now but I think where we are going maybe by 2010, 2012 instead of being in marketing department or fundraising department or just one person that has to promote the organization. We need to look at it in terms of being more open and transparent and actually getting feedbacks and crowd sourcing for program development and interactions for social change. And this whole ideas like silos and boundaries are probably going to melt not only within the organization but also outside on the field.

Kari: Right.

Beth: Working together less as isolated island and more as colonies around specific causes.

Kari: With that we have come to the end of hour. One thing is on the right side of the screen you will see an opportunity to tell us how we are doing give us a little feedback, let us know how these sessions have been.

You can have a chance to win a Flip video camera $250 for your cause, so go ahead and fill that out. Another quick promotion, rather a giveaway. Twitterville, Trust agents and Digital habitats we will be giving those away, we only need a comment on the case foundation site that has a post that’s right up there. So go ahead and let us know why you are interested in those books. Finally case foundation is gearing up for the Americas Giving Challenge and so we really hope that this past month that you have been tuning in to the sessions. They have been helpful and they can help you as you think about your online giving strategy for the challenge and then maybe you would be able to use some of the things that you learned and heard. If you have missed any of the sessions, all of them are available on the case foundation site so you can find us and tune in. We have divided them up by subjects so you can go right to that question that is particularly interesting and listen to that. But I want to give the last word to Beth, to take us out with any final words on the nonprofits that they have been tuning in and asking those questions, final bit of advice or something that you would leave them with.

Beth: Yes, you know if you travelling to different countries especially developing countries they have a whole different culture. Even if you do anything, make sure you don’t hurt anybody by wearing sleeveless shirt or sitting when you need to be standing and then you could actually go in to that experience by getting really worried about it ‘what if I do a mistake, what do I do’ you know what it comes down to it, those are your best teachers. You are going to make mistakes but you are going to learn from it and improve. So go out there embrace what you can do, embrace anything that gives a chance to learning.

Kari: Terrific, we truly appreciate your great guidance throughout this particularly throughout the rest hour. So thank you so much for that, to those of you who have stepped in with us here make sure you tune in Thursday, Sarah Koch from causes on facebook will be answering all your questions and also causes is going to be launching a series of webinars this

October that is really going to help us focus on Americas Giving Challenge, you can find more about those on our site as well.

So Beth thank you so much.

Beth: Thank you.