Great advice to stay safe on Facebook

Let's face it. You are on the front lines.

If you are your organizations' Facebook Fan Page administrator, you are no longer just yourself, independent citizen on Facebook. You are representing your organization and often become the public face for your online network. And it's weird.

Technically, you are not allowed to create a second "professional" profile, and technically you are not allowed to create a profile as if your organization is a person. I say "technically", because many, many admins have pulled this off. But that would help solve much of the problems.

With some of the recent changes to Facebook Fan Pages, things have gotten better. For instance, it used to be if I posted content to my org's FB page, it would show up as coming from me, personally. Now it shows up as coming from my org. That's good.

But before the change, I was frustrated because this meant anyone could click on my profile and see information about me. I would also get numerous friend requests from our supporters and although I hated to turn anyone down, I had to make a hard and fast rule: I never accept friend requests from anyone I don't know personally. I post pictures of my kids on my personal FB page, so I had to draw the line somewhere. Plus some of my own personal opinions and thoughts might not jive too nicely with some of my org's more conservative members. If I had a "professional" second profile, I could accept those requests and maintain my privacy. But no.

Again, tough but important choices in a ginormous gray area. I suspect we'll be hearing much more about this as time marches on. But back to my point.

The changes have improved much of this, but there is still an element of privacy invasion when you need to communicate directly with a supporter (that asks a question, or if you interact with them on Facebook Causes.) There is also the uncomfortableness of what to do when you inevitably get a friend request from your boss. They really don't need to know how you are progressing in Farmville. During work hours.

I suggest changing all of the Privacy settings to "Just Friends" and in your Friends section, create lists. I have one list for "work" and one list for "family" and they don't get to see too much of what I post (you go back into your privacy settings and choose "Customize" from the dropdown and you can choose to limit information to be viewable to all friends except an individual's name or a list.) Everyone not on those lists gets to see everything.

More info here, in a great article I read in The New York Times, titled "5 Easy Steps to Stay Safe (and Private!) on Facebook." (Originally from ReadWriteWeb)

Still not sure you've done it correctly? This page has a really cool feature where you can type in one of your friends' names (or your boss') to see exactly how your page will look to them.

Say it isn't so!

What the WHAT??!! The recent changes to Facebook's terms and conditions now prohibit contests...this has been the one tried and true method for building your community on Facebook!
Read them here:
http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php

Highlights:

These Promotions Guidelines govern the publicizing or administering of any sweepstakes, contest, competition or other similar offering (each, a "promotion") on Facebook by you. For clarity, a "sweepstakes" is a promotion that includes a prize and a winner selected on the basis of chance. A "contest" or "competition" is a promotion that includes a prize and a winner determined on the basis of skill (i.e., through judging based on specific criteria).

You cannot: Condition entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as making a post on a profile or Page, status comment or photo upload.

You cannot: Administer a promotion that users automatically enter by becoming a fan of your Page.

You cannot: Notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or Pages.

This new development has left me speechless, as I am at a loss to develop another technique that has the same effect but falls within FB's terms. I've been meaning to write about it for a week now, but I am stuck. Any good ideas out there?

Ammo for winning the argument for social media: 5 tips

I had the true honor of speaking at a morning educational session at the AFP National Philanthropy Day in Maryland. It is always so great to get out and talk to folks at other nonprofits who do what I do and can feel my pain on everything from fundraising in a down economy to dealing with well-meaning but technology-adverse executives who think the whole social media thing is just frivolity.

I spoke about using technology and new media to extend the reach of our appeals. Most of the attendees wanted to hear about social media. I don't blame them - it's new, it's a powerful awareness and engagement building tool, and it's free (of course, with the exception of manpower.)

But I was asked by more than a few people how we were able to start a social media program at a Catholic agency. (What? Is there a stereotype of Catholics being stuck in the dark ages? Of being extremely conservative?) Can't say I completely disagree, but my organization is an incredible place to work, with an infallible mission, and hundreds of some of the best and the brightest staff who break that stereotype every day. What I usually explain to people is that I was lucky enough to have a savvy manager who was willing to let us give it a try. Once we had built up some success stories we started letting everyone in our agency know, and they were excited to know we were on the leading edge - and successfully meeting our goals - in this new space. The Ever-Brilliant-Chris-Brogan smartly calls this the "Middle Up Down Approach."

But if you are looking for some facts to put in your arsenal to face down your ED or manager, here's a few to pack in the old cannon:

1. It's "free." Although stress that you must be able to devote time on an ongoing basis or it will be a waste of time, and that "you get out of it what you put into it."
2. It's viral. Let your supporters help with the heavy lifting and help spread your message into a deeper audience than you currently have.
   
3. Critical mass. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and MySpace are all in the top 15 most visited sites in the US. Might as well be where the people are.
   
4. Increased awareness. Awareness precedes engagement. Engagement precedes conversion. If you want more donors you need to get out there and chat people up, get friends to introduce you, build relationships - these things take time. It sounds like I am talking about dating, doesn't it? I am, kind of. My organization doubled our "unaided awareness" in one year. I can't take all the credit and say it was solely social networking - but it was unarguably a contributing factor.
   
5. Increased engagement. Time will tell if our most engaged supporters will be our most loyal donors in the future. But in the meantime, harness the power of an engaged constituency: ask the to take advocacy actions, ask them to help spread the word about the work you do, if you enter a contest, ask them to vote for you. These little actions add up.

Good luck. I'd love to hear some stories about how you got permission to bring your organization into the world of social networking.

AFP: CRS Fundraising And Technology102609

Slide deck for the presentation I am giving for the Association of Fundraising Professionals(MD) Philanthropy Day Morning Educational Session...

AFP: CRS Fundraising And Technology102609

View more presentations from Laura Durington.

H1N1 is no joke!

Okay, enough with the excuses, but MAN my family has been through it! All four of us got it and for all the blase attitude I had about it in the beginning, this thing really kicked my ass. I still sound horrid, coughing and wheezing, but I no longer feel like I've been hit by a truck. My poor baby girl Georgie had a 105.7 (!!!) fever...THAT was scary.

We are all on the mend, slowly but surely. I've missed a whole week of work and I feel really disconnected from the world. But tomorrow morning I have a presentation at the AFP-MD Philanthropy Day in Baltimore and I am keeping fingers crossed that I can get through it without a coughing fit. Yikes.

Once I get back in the saddle, more senseless ramblings about social media. But for now, just a thought...what the HELL is facebook thinking with their little guilt-trippy suggestions of people I should "Reconnect with"? (over in the section that used to be reserved for "People you might know"). It feels really icky, even though I know it is just some algorithm telling the Facebot to show me people I have friended but never actually interacted with. Oh, come on...you know what I mean. You get a friend request from someone you can't diss, but you really aren't crazy about so you accept the request - and if you are me, you place them on a restricted list so they can only see certain types of information about you. I shouldn't get a little pang of guilt from facebook of all places. It's like in elementary school and your mother insists on inviting the whole class to your birthday party so no one feels left out.

I'm no Chris Brogan

If you are not already an avid reader of Chris Brogan's blog, or don't know who he is, I highly recommend a daily dose of Chris (you can sign up for e-mail alerts that send his most recent post to your inbox). I nearly always walk away with a new idea or confirmation of something I have an opinion of. Sometime he helps me to articulate an argument I've had trouble finding the right words for when talking about social media. For instance I love this wonderful "apple tree" analogy:

Focus on the Relationship – to me, the new unit of business should be relationships. You get more fruit from an apple tree if you nurture it and pick apples when it’s ripe, instead of uprooting the tree and forcefully shaking the apples into your barrel.

I plan on ripping this off the next time I get called in to explain why it is taking so long to grow our list and why I don't just want to rent an e-mail list.

Great stuff, no?

But the reason I'm no Chris Brogan or Seth Godin or Beth Kanter is that my poor blog is not the central mouthpiece of my work. Sadly, my blog is like the plants in my house...if only they would whine or at least meow, they would have a much better chance of surviving.

This past two weeks has been a blur of natural disasters and sick kids and even giving them the attention that was due was an exhausting feat.

But it hammers home the point...you can't have it all (and to quote Steven Wright, "where would you put it?") Time is an ethereal luxury. You can neither stop it, nor control it.

Embrace it. Enjoy it. Focus on the most important thing in your life at that moment. For me, sometimes it's the knowledge that millions of people were suddenly left homeless due to the unrelenting series of disasters in the Asia-Pacific region and sometimes it's the feverish cry of a small child who needs you to drop everything and just sit with him.

And that's okay. In the grand scheme of things, the blog can wait.

Stay tuned...

Oh earthlings on Twitter, why must you disappoint me so?

Dear Twitter,

Working for an international humanitarian NGO, I tend to be a bit more globally focused than most. But considering the number of colossal natural disasters to strike the Philippines, Samoa and Tonga and Sumatra, Indonesia this week, it just breaks my heart when I read your top trending topics, and they are all about completely mundane, pop-culture stuff.

Your coverage of the #iranelection was when I started to find you so attractive, and I had high hopes that you would rise above as the more adult network for sharing ideas and news on a global scale. But - to say this bluntly - you are rapidly proving yourself to me as just another site on a breakneck race to the middle. To say I am disappointed in you is an understatement.

Twitter, I want to love you so. In theory we should be perfect for each other. But lately I feel as if I am the one doing all the work to try and make this relationship evolve. I am not saying I am breaking up with you, but maybe a trial separation is in order.

Maybe you could take the time to reflect on your public timeline and decide, is this what you really want? To be the mouthpiece of the Ashton Kutchers and Perez Hiltons and relate tidbits of celeb gossip in real time?

Think about it and please let me know.

@ellebe

Virtual Insanity

So I just had the honor of speaking at the 2009 National Catholic Development Conference and after a frantic morning of racing around trying to make sure the conference room where I would be speaking had wireless internet access (it did, thanks to the herculean efforts of one Ryan Gates Gold...who organized that conference so well, it ran like a well-oiled machine - and I know how stressful and challenging it can be to put conference events together. She deserves a standing ovation.)

Anyhoo...my session was called "An Introduction to Social Networking" and much of my prepared presentation was to show Facebook Fan Pages in detail...and wouldn'tcha know it...Facebook Fan pages (at least ours and all the ones I could think of) were down!!! By the time I took the train back to Baltimore, they were fine, but in the 60 minutes I was standing in front of a room full of people, I could not get access to our page. A frantic call to my colleague back at the office, quickly confirmed it was not just me - she couldn't access it either. Drag!

Most people would have to think fast on their feet. Me, I just sorta had an out of body experience...still not sure exactly what I said. I am usually pretty calm about public speaking, but man, I was so flustered!

Trying to talk about social networking in the abstract to a room full of people who have very limited knowledge of Facebook was, let's say, quite a challenge. Of course, being that it was NCDC members, they were all just as nice and polite as they could be, but I felt like I was explaining how to do brain surgery on the moon while speaking in another language. I wish I could have done a better job.

Anyway, lesson learned for next time...screenshot backups. Definitely.

Um, Seth? Gotta disagree, bro.

That's it. I've had it.

I'm might as well pack it all in. I'm washed up, useless, worthless, and not fit to have the word "online" in my job title.

According to this post by Seth Godin (who, btw, I've been a fan of since his "Permission Marketing" book in the go-go early dot.com days), the nonprofit I work for is a failure, because it is not in the top 100 Twitter users in terms of followers. And it is my job to develop our social networking outreach strategy. #fail!

Really, Seth? This is how you measure the effectiveness of nonprofits? Really?

I can't think of a more insipid criteria to measure whether a nonprofit is adverse to change or not, or has an effective communications strategy. Here's why:

1. Nonprofits are adverse to change? Maybe, and to varying degrees some more than others, but isn't everyone? When's the last time you brought home a different brand of toothpaste without someone in your household complaining? Big business, government, manufacturing are all resistant to change (well said, CauseWired.)
   
   
2. Nonprofits have to be good stewards. If NPO's changed their strategy every time the blogosphere got all hot and bothered about the next new thing, we'd all be holding virtual events in Second Life. We owe some caution-before-action to our donors and to those we serve by our mission. We should not be first in the pool. We should at least make sure it is full of water before diving in.
   
   
3. Free is so not free. Managing social networking sites takes staff time - a luxury most nonprofits do not have. At my org, we are fortunate to have 1.5 people managing our social networking profiles (in addition to managing a host of other things, of course), but I know how lucky we are. You have to devote time to it to do it well.
   
   
4. Top 100 on Twitter. Notice anything about what those folks have in common? Most of them don't have day jobs! Or at least not 9-5 jobs. They are celebrities. And many have a staff of people to either tweet for them or ply them with content. They are free to tweet on about the particularities of their day and it is still going to be more widely read than anything I could possibly post about the amazing work my NPO does. God that's depressing.
   
   
5. Shouldn't quality of followers matter? Here's the deal. We're selective. Here's why: We actually use our Twitter channel to listen. I scan our followers' tweets quite a bit. Not just when they mention us, but their everyday tweets. Why? Because I actually want to know, what are they interested in? What types of posts are they retweeting? Are our followers more liberal or more conservative? It's fascinating. But I don't want to wade through pages and pages of followers telling me how to "Get more followers instantly" or "Check out my barely legal photos." So we screen new followers, and if they are spammers, we block them. You can't tell me Ashton screens all 3 million + of his followers.
   

Seth, I'm sorry; I have to call you out on this one. You've got it all wrong.

It's all about the thank you

Wunderkind Chris Brogan has yet another great post up today about the importance of saying thank you. I could not agree more.

One of my work projects that I am most proud of is a team-led idea of creating a video of my organization's beneficiaries who had been helped by my organization, and we asked, on camera, what they would say to a donor if they had the opportunity. Each one chose to say "thank you" in the most heartfelt and genuine way - it was beautiful.

We launched this video, via an e-mail and a social network push right around thanksgiving and the response was overwhelming. We received more than two dozen e-mails from recipients stating they were humbled by the video and that they were honored and inspired to have an opportunity to serve the poor overseas. We intentionally had no ask in the e-mail, but our year-end campaign (which started a week later), did spectacularly, despite the tough economic climate. It was so well received that we are planning to make this an annual event around Thanksgiving.

Whether the "thank you" video increased the year-end campaign's response is indiscernible, but judging from the people that took the time to write in, taking the time to thank them - and most importantly to give them the opportunity to hear it from someone they have helped - seemed to have an incredibly powerful effect.

It is also posted to youtube here.

Choices

I was doing an interview with a writer for the NonProfit Times the other day about how my organization uses social networking to build awareness and further the reach of our campaigns. He asked me what criteria we use for posting content via Twitter and Facebook.

Criteria? I asked.

He continued on to ask if we had a set method of evaluating what to push out through social networks, and what's our approval process - who makes the final decision.

Funny, it never occurred to me to have a set of criteria or decide by committee. I had that sudden panic; "Oh god! Should we get one?" For a minute I ruminated that it is what you are supposed to do, but that feels so, well...formal to me - the antithesis of social community spirit.

But it hit me: when I decide to post content to my personal pages, I tend to post things that blow me away, piss me off, or make me green with envy at their cleverness. I don't have a criteria and I definitely don't consult a committee.

So when I am posting things to my organization's pages, I go with my gut - and so do my co-workers who also post to our pages. It has to be a story that makes me feel something. Sadness, relief, joy, anger. And it has to presented in a way that makes me want to read it.

This is where so many nonprofits and retailers fail miserably. Just providing the title of an article with a link doesn't really do it for me. You have to sell it. Tell me why I should read your post in 140 characters or less. Remind me that you are a human being posting this content and not some RSS robot.

"Was having a hectic day...but this story reminded me why I work here" makes me intrigued. "Read this story this morning and I can't stop thinking about this girl" is another one I would read.

Yes, yes, there are limits and exceptions to everything. Don't overshare, of course. They don't need to know that you "definitely didn't need that last glass of red wine last night." Don't air your nonprofit's dirty laundry. Don't say super-controversial things unless they are part of your mission shtick, like PETA or HRC. There is a line - I just can't tell you where the hell it is. You need to figure that one out on your own.

Be genuine. Be real. You aren't just posting content for a faceless, nameless mass. They are people - so are you - and in most cases, so are those that your mission serves. Keep that in mind and write like that.

This Revolution Will Not Be Televised...or on TiVo, apparently.

If you haven't seen this yet...it's worth the 4:22 minutes (although the music is a little high-drama):

Best Friends...for like, Ever?

I find it so incredibly fascinating that those who have come of age in the dawn of social media will never lose touch with...anyone...that they've ever met. Pretty much anyway. Oh sure, you might unfriend someone in a fit of irrational slash and burn, or maybe jump ship on your MySpace to hang with other Facebook social climbers, but really - you are at most two clicks away from finding them again. It makes "six degrees of separation" seem almost precious, doesn't it?

So what does that look like ten years from now?

Well, for starters, will people even bother going to their twenty-year reunion? I just went to mine and I can honestly say Facebook is the only reason I went. I had just reconnected with some long lost friends - including my BFF - that I am ashamed to say I lost 20 years with because of a stupid falling out over a stupid boy that neither of us can remember his last name. It is one of those things that I know we would have gotten past, but BAM! we graduated, I left home, I think she moved and we just...lost touch with each other. I tried to explain this to some of my husband's students (he's a university prof.) and they just could not compute this. A time before e-mail, a time before Facebook, a time before putting cell phone numbers in your phone - hell, even the old bag-style, plug-in-the-cig-lighter "car phones" still wouldn't be invented for at least five more years from when we graduated.

But I digress. Which, I should warn you - I do a lot. Deal with it.

What was I rambling on about? Oh yeah...so right now, I'll bet if someone studies % of attendance for 20-year reunions it would be peaking right now. But will kids who have always had access to their entire graduating class care about seeing them in person?

But here's the really sad part. I think it is safe to say that all of us pre-social network folks harbor a deep-seated fantasy that everyone we ever dated is secretly pining for us, the one that got away. I like to think that those I dated and parted ways with, amicably or not, knows deep down that I truly was the best thing that ever happened to them and that they blew it. And that knowledge has haunted them to the extent that they have lost all drive to succeed or to Ever Love Again. Mind you, it's not that I would ever want them back - I think we all just want to feel like we mattered...that we had an effect...made a lasting impression. These are the little stories we construct for ourselves.

But for all my young friends...the proof that your ex moved on is everywhere. Even if you unfriend him, he may still pop up when he comments on a mutual friend's wall. And when she changes her profile picture to that "really cute" pic of the two of them together (OMG!) it's just rubbing your nose in it, isn't it?

Well, hello there!

So I had been kicking around the idea for some time to start a blog to discuss all of the things I get asked all the time, about social media, online fundraising and marketing, but I was stuck on what the hell to call this thing. Then John Hughes died (RIP), and after killing an hour by trading favorite Hughes' movie lines with friends on Facebook and Twitter, it hit me.

Because so often I get caught up talking about all this techie-porn stuff and I have to remind myself that at the end of the day...I am talking about Facebook. And people really want to hear more. Kinda funny.

But I get asked to speak about this subject all the time, and I have a bad habit of scribbling ideas down on the back of papers, leave myself voicemail messages, etc. and I can never find what I am looking for when it is time to prepare a new presentation (yes, I am aware of cool tools like Evernote and Voicenotes...I just can't seem to get it together.)

So even if no one ever reads these words, at least I will have one place to organize my random thoughts...about the meaning of life. Or more accurately, Facebook.

So there.