Nonprofits & new media: Interview with Jenette Martens, The Winnipeg Foundation’s Social Media Convenor

Connecting meaningfully with people is a top priority for nonprofits: our business goals—donations, advocates and volunteers—can only be achieved when people really care about what we do.

More and more nonprofits are realizing the power of social media to forge those relationships, and are allocating precious marketing communications budgets to creating social media roles. The real-time and very public nature of the medium makes it essential to have dedicated, knowledgeable people crafting a digital strategy, monitoring and responding, and developing great, shareable content.

And it’s just a great place for people to get to know you!

The Winnipeg Foundation is one of the city’s largest nonprofits, making grants of almost $21 million to over 670 local charities (including my organization, United Way of Winnipeg). Just a few months ago, the Foundation created a social role to better engage the public and spread understanding of their work.

So what are this nonprofit’s plans for their first ‘official’ year in social media? I chat with Jenette Martens, the Foundation’s new Social Media Convenor.

Erica Glasier: Your position at Winnipeg Foundation is very new, just 2 months old. Had the Foundation started dabbling in social media and found that they needed someone to take it over full time, or are you the first person to foray into it? How did your position come to be? How are you the right person for your job (education, tech interest, social butterfly)?

Jenette Martens: I was introduced to The Winnipeg Foundation as an intern on a three-week work placement earlier this year through the Creative Communications program at Red River College. The internship introduced me to a variety of tasks at the Foundation, and because of personal interest, I gravitated toward social media.

The Foundation was already using some social media tools when I started. For example, our CEO, Rick Frost, had a monthly blog and the Foundation already had a Twitter account. During my internship, I organized Twitter lists, set us up with HootSuite, and introduced tweet scheduling.

The Foundation recognized the increased demands created by social media and the timing of my internship put me in the right place at the right time! There is an endless supply of great grant stories and good causes for the Foundation to talk about online.

My training in public relations also helps me in my new role. I understand from my studies the importance of being strategic and creating objectives. When I was hired, one of my first goals was drafting a social media strategy. We do evaluations to make sure we’re on the right track to achieving our goals.

EG: Is your job part of a larger interactive communications strategy?

JM: My job is very closely linked with the Foundation’s overall strategic communications. Our online voice needs to match our other communications.

The Foundation interacts with the community in a lot of ways: we speak at and attend community events, have TV, print and radio ads, and much more.

My job doing social media is just another way we talk with people, get feedback, and help the public understand who we are and what we do.

EG: How have you been using social media so far? (platforms, presences, contests, data gathering?) Who’s your audience?

JM: I’ve only been here for a few months, and we’ve just started creating our social media identity. We use Twitter regularly to positive effect. Our followers grow a little every day and we’re starting to see a regular response to our tweets which is very exciting. We’ve started a Foundation Facebook page and I’m working on collecting pictures and videos to post on it. I don’t think people realize how many projects The Winnipeg Foundation has supported so we’re using Twitter and Facebook to tell these stories. For example, I’m making a video right now about the new Plug In ICA building which we recently supported with a grant.

We haven’t created any contests. Though we’re working on a new Facebook promotion right now and we’re looking into a geocaching activity that may have a competitive aspect to it.

As to how I gather information; I’m working on setting up the Foundation’s Google Analytics for our Twitter and Facebook page. I use Tweetalarm on top of Twitter searches to watch what people are saying about the Foundation on Twitter. I use Google Reader to watch close to 50 blogs (include yours Erica!). HootSuite and Facebook have some built in stats, so I check those often. I also have Google Alerts set up for our organization.

The Foundation has more than one audience. Through social media tools, we’re trying to build awareness with young professionals about The Winnipeg Foundation, what we do and what sort of things are going on in philanthropy in Winnipeg. We also want our social media platforms to be interesting and useful to Winnipeg charities and other community foundations.

EG: What have you learned about social media and the non-profit world so far? How responsive and active online do you feel Winnipeggers are?

JM: I have learned a lot about social media since I’ve joined The Winnipeg Foundation and even more about the non-profit world.

In my position, I don’t just need to know what The Winnipeg Foundation is up to and how we operate, but what all the charities in the city are up to. There is a lot to learn!

I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I’d say Winnipeggers are reasonably active online and this will only increase as time goes on.

Social media is quite new to many so I hear a variety of responses when I tell people what I do. Some people don’t know what social media is, some think it’s a fad, some use it solely for connecting with family and friends, and some start talking about social media tools that I’ve never heard of before!

EG: What strategic goals are you concerned with achieving in your first year? Why is the Foundation using social media? (promotion, awareness, publicity, customer service, donor relations, donor acquisition?)

JM: In our first year we are most concerned with building awareness with the Foundation’s new audiences. We want people to know who we are, and what we do. We want them to consider our social media platforms as a go-to source for information about philanthropy and of course, we want to build relationships with individuals, non-profits, and community foundations.

EG: What do you plan to do tactically to achieve your strategic goals? I’ll make that sound less boring—how will you interact with Winnipeggers?

There’s not just one way, it’s going to be a thousand little things. We’ll try to provide content that is interesting, invite feedback, comment on what other people are doing and try to participate more fully in  the Winnipeg online community. We’ll make sure we’re not just talking, but also listening. We’re going to start another blog related to philanthropy and have a variety of people contribute to it.

Once we’ve established a solid presence on the main social media sites, we’ll be able to expand and join more niche sites. We watch our sector colleagues closely and are always getting ideas from what other people are doing. Our strategy will change based on what’s happening around us.

Feeling philanthropic? You can connect with the Winnipeg Foundation on Facebook and Twitter. Their CEO has a blog and he also tweets—an impressive commitment to new media!

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Twitter & the crowdsourced brand

Behold Winnipeg ad campaign Recycle Everywhere! I chased buses for days to bring you these shots, so take a minute to really behold.

If you’re confused what this ad campaign (designed to ease in new, higher recycling levies in Winnipeg) has to do with Twitter, so am I.

The crux of the branding seems to be a small blue bird with voice balloons. Hallmarks of, you know, the 10th most famous digital brand.

Can you brand something with a blue bird in 2010 and not be referencing Twitter?

It’s a lovely brand, I just think someone’s using it right now.

I’m struggling with whether the designers:

1. believe Twitter, with about 6800 local participants, according to a quick Tweepz search, just isn’t prevalent enough in Winnipeg for the brand similarities to matter
2. are planning a brilliant Twitter campaign to support & extend the print blitz, or
3. have never heard of Twitter

Does Twitter own birds? Do they want to?

Modern birds have had their own look for roughly 65 million years. Can Twitter own the notion of a bird, or subset of birds (the blue ones)? If a brand spawns thousands of mashup logos, does it really make a sound?

Twitter famously licensed the first bird on iStockphoto for roughly $6. Designer Simon Oxley still sells it there for 14 credits.

That Twitter didn’t feel the need to purchase the icon outright like they did with Yiying Lu’s Fail Whale suggests they don’t want to ‘own’ the bird as logo. It’s a “decorative element”, branding wall art.

Logo liberty and the essence of crowdsourcing

The thing with Twitter is that the community really took the wall art and ran with it. You can find literally infinite permutations, literally, of  Twitter’s blue bird and they all mean ‘tweet’.

Logo liberty is one of the sticky factors of the Twitter brand. In true crowdsourced, Web-2.0-at-it’s-best fashion we are all permitted to customize the brand to suit us while still projecting the brand essence. That’s because the brand essence is crowdsourcing and participation. It’s a unique medium-is-the-message branding model born of a cultural shift to group brand ownership.

Let’s examine the extent of this Bird of the Crowd metamorphosis, shall we?

Blue birds = Twitter

A marriage of Twitter’s corporate blue and Oxley’s iconic (not blue) bird, blue birds from a variety of artistic  traditions were the first mascots to say “Twitter”. Beyond style preference, designers inserted their attitude visually as a means to convey their communication style (“I’m cute! I’m fun!”) or expertise (“I’m a freakin’ NINJA with WOLVERINE CLAWS!).

ANY bird = Twitter

We don’t all have blue websites, so soon all manner and species of bird came to symbolize a link to the Twitterverse. Twitter’s bird mindshare grew to encompass every bird.

Dissolving birds that are hardly even birds = Twitter

The whole ‘bird’ idea began to abstract, to simplify, to fly like a small blue bird to the wide open sky of possibilities, of barely-birds.

Anything blue = Twitter

With the bird concept now optional, the final ties to the corporate brand lay in colour. Twitter icons expanded to include anything in a fresh Web 2.0-y shade of blue.

Things that are neither blue nor birds = Twitter

Blue is so limiting. So are birds. There’s no reason a piece of toast can’t symbolize Twitter.

I’m sure you can appreciate the scope of the designer’s problem. If Twitter’s brand encompasses blue birds, all other birds, everything blue, and anything that isn’t blue or a bird, we’re going to need to open up more of the visual spectrum or something if we want to keep creating distinctive work.

This does make it tough to brand new products and services. Perhaps we’ve reached the end of branding, and it’s safe to start over again with small blue birds.

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God’s unlimited data plan

Spotted in the window of a local Christian bookstore. The travel mug says “I love Jesus a latte”.

I’d feel really good about myself if you’d subscribe to my blog. Interactive & social media marketing insights served piping hot!

The law of Facebook Fan Page status updates

Making premium-quality lemonade out of nasty comments

I’ve been back managing my community for oh, 3 weeks now, and already I’ve encountered the least-pleasant but most-fixable of conversation problems: the big ole’ misconception.

Nonprofits, especially large ones, encounter this curiosity about administration costs a lot (insert your industry’s pervasive rumour here if this one doesn’t apply to you). In our nonprofit’s case, it happens to be totally untrue. All donations go to the community.

This is the point where some people will cringe at social media’s power to attack your brand, but I like this kind of comment. It provides a great opportunity to publicly offer the correct information.

It also serves to reinforce the fact that this misconception about use of donations, or whatever inaccuracy you’re confronting, is still, yes still, floating around out there and obviously still needs to be countered in your general communication strategy.

Our nonprofit already makes it clear on printed material that 100% of donations go to the community, but if I take this comment as representative of a segment of the population, then more needs to be done to communicate the facts. I’d hate for people not to donate based on the wrong information.

What can we do to clear up a rumour?

• Create an FAQ for our website, with a front-page banner calling attention to it (SEO)
• Create a unique static FBML tab on our Facebook fan page with the information (AD DESTINATION)
• The occasional tweet (MESSAGING)
• If it’s really bad, produce a (FUNNY) video about it and spread (SOCIAL OBJECT)

Just being armed with the realization that a persistent rumour is still persisting gives your organization a chance to be proactive about it. Sometimes you feel like you put a message out there so often, everyone has to have heard it. Then the social media focus group speaks and you realize there’s more work to be done.

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Facebook Page Admin Hell

While Facebook is busy clicking the “Convert Page to Place” button, humble Page Admins are left embattled and bewildered by the senseless usability they have to deal with. Here are the two most bizarre and frustrating aspects of Adminning, presented so that whoever works on these things at Facebook can just copy and paste them to their boss and get some changes rolling.

1. Page admins can’t like or post comments as themselves on their page

This is bad for marketing, sharing, and community building.

I may want to like something and have it published to my news stream, so my friends see it and can share it. (SHARING, ADVERTISING)

I may need to speak in a voice not brand-authorized. Sometimes I need to be myself, assert opinions that belong to me alone. (BRANDING, SOCIAL PROOF)

Sometimes I need to comment just to get a conversation rolling. (COMMUNITY BUILDING)

Compounding the duct tape over my virtual mouth, my back up page admins, so inducted in the event that I perish, are similarly prevented from contributing to the conversation. That’s another couple otherwise engaged people who can’t like or comment. (MARKETING, WORD OF MOUTH, SOCIAL PROOF)

No less a social butterfly than Tamar Weinberg has herself railed against this insanity. Facebook, listen up. Here’s a super simple way to make it work:

See what I’m doing there? I’m solving a bunch of problems for zillions of people.

Facebook does have a “business account” you can set up in the freaking unlikely event that you don’t already have a Facebook profile. I assume, if you cheated, this would allow you to admin and post on the page. They make it clear that you better not try it, lest you be socially outcast forever.

Pages seem to be designed, in fact, to hide your identity. The setter-uppers of this mess envisioned that it would look more professional, I suppose, if you spoke as the brand. In fact, being able to post as yourself is regarded as a bug by Facebook Help.

2. Page admins are not notified when stuff happens on their page.

I know, what?!

I refer you to the hundreds of page admins begging Facebook to add this feature because they’re missing chances to engage with their community and/or turbo-delete unsightly profanity.

Yup. So when you get back from killing Foursquare or whatever you’re up to today, Facebook, please have a breakout session on Page Adminning and plan some improvements.

Thanks.

Facebook Places: A collage.