The CNN Lesson: There Is No Hiding on The Real-Time Web

What do news organizations like CNN and health advocacy organizations like the Susan G. Komen Foundation have in common? They are examples of organizations that have been caught in the middle of a firestorm and don’t have the necessary policies in place to manage an online crisis immediately after it erupts. While CNN is in the business of researching and reporting on the news and Komen is in the business of raising money for breast cancer research, neither of them understands the human side of operating in a multichannel world where people are engaging with you 24/7. This is a significant failure on their part and is one of the key concepts discussed in the new book Social Change Anytime Everywhere that I co-wrote with Amy Sample Ward.

Since CNN reporters Poppy Harlow and Candy Crowley first broke the news about the Steubenville sentencing for the rape of a 16 year-old high school woman, the news network and the reporters have been flooded with criticism. In the past 48 hours, thousands of viewers have tweeted them, posted on their FB page, sent in comments via their web form, and signed online petitions about CNN’s lack of professionalism and insensitivity of their reporting. Many critics have asked the CNN reporters why they chose to focus on the emotional and life changing effects of the rapists rather than the victim. It lends to asking why CNN didn't have experts present to discuss important issues such as why weren't these teens educated about boundaries, and respect? Why weren't they educated about violence, and if they were, what compelled them to think rape was okay?

“Sexuality and power have to be part of the conversation with teenage boys,” said Rabbi Josh Feigelson Educational Director of Hillel's Ask Big Questions initiative, and yet this was not discussed by CNN on that newscast or even after they were flooded with criticism and suggestions for follow up news reports.

CNN’s silence and lack of engagement with their viewers (who also happen to be their largest critics at the moment) illustrates the need for organizations of all sizes to be proactive and focus on providing the best customer or constituent experience as possible across multiple channels. This is even more critical when you are caught in the middle of a public relations firestorm.

Three Tips to Operate Across Multichannels and Respond to Critics

Here are three tips to operate in a multichannel world where your constituents are also your biggest critics. Ironically these are similar tips I shared with a CNN reporter when I was interviewed for a story following the Newton tragedy and the NRA’s silence around the school shootings across online channels.

Be Human:  Say “I’m Sorry”

All organizations mess up. Learn how to say “I’m sorry” publicly on your blog, on your website, on Twitter, Facebook, and any other channels you actively engage your audiences on. Whether you run a big corporation or a nonprofit, you are in the business of engaging with people. When you see a negative comment on your blog or social media channel, don’t delay your response. Many of these channels are public spaces and you don’t want people piling onto the criticism because you are not responding fast enough. Acknowledge people and address their concerns to build community. If you don’t have all of the facts or information to respond or help them, acknowledge it and tell them you are checking into it, and that you will update them shortly. It is better to say, “Thanks for your feedback. We are investigating and will post more information as soon as we can,” than it is to wait hours or days for the response with all of the information.

According to the Huffington Post, "two insiders at CNN exclusively told TheWrap that the controversy had hit reporter Poppy Harlow, covering the events in Steubenville, particularly hard."

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Webinar: Hidden Heroes - the Buried Treasure in Your Database

Just 3% of your existing donors who are giving average amounts today can boost your annual revenue by 30%. The trick is to find the right people, make the right offer and steward gifts strategically.

Join Fraser Green from Good Works and Ryann Miller from Care2 as they unveil both quantitative and qualitative donor research that sheds light on HERO donors – and their incredible potential. Fraser will profile your best HERO prospects, what their giving potential is, what will trigger big gifts -  and what you need to do to keep them giving big to you.

“Hidden Heroes: the Buried Treasure in Your Database”
TUESDAY, MARCH 19TH, 2013 at 2PM ET

In this webinar you'll learn:

• Where to look in your database to find your own HERO prospects
• To understand the elements of the right case and offer to leverage much larger gifts
• How to begin creating HERO giving campaigns that are seamlessly integrated with other solication programs and channels
• To do more with less!

This Expert Webinar is FREE but space is limited so make sure you register today!

About the Presenters:

Fraser Green -- Principal and Chief Strategist, Good Works
Fraser Green is Principal and Chief Strategist at Good Works, one of Canada’s leading fundraising consulting agencies. At Good Works, Fraser’s focus is on deep human communication, donor research and legacy giving. Prior to coming to consulting in 1996, Fraser was CEO of the New Democratic Party of Canada, Special Assistant to Ontario Premier Bob Rae and Director of Organization for the Ontario NDP. Fraser is a gifted writer and a sought after public speaker. He presents regularly at fundraising conferences in Canada, the USA and Europe. His articles are frequently published in professional journals. Fraser is the co-author of ‘Iceberg Philanthropy’ (2007). His new book ‘3D Philanthropy’ will be published in November 2011. Fraser and his wife Jennifer live with their two boys in a log house outside Ottawa. In his spare time, Fraser is passionate about his guitars, kayaking, yoga, cross-country skiing and cycling.

Ryann Miller -- Director of Nonprofit Services, Care2
Ryann Miller is director of nonprofit services at Care2, where she helps nonprofits recruit online supporters. Care2 is the largest online community of people making a difference. She is the former managing director of DonorTrends and was a senior fundraising consultant at HJC New Media. Co-author of the Hilborn eNews (formerly Canadian Fundraising and Philanthropy) series Web Jury, and speaker at fundraising conferences, Ryann is an avid traveler, keen reader, and near-obsessive listener of music. That was before the kid and the dog. Now she dreams of spare time. She's inspired by the nonprofits she has the pleasure of working alongside.

REGISTER to attend this FREE Expert Webinar on TUESDAY, MARCH 19th at 2PM ET

Flowchart: Where Should You Post Your Social Media Status?

We love to talk about social media strategy on the Care2 Frogloop blog, particularly around engagement. We also love to challenge you with serious questions like Is Social Media Making Organizations Lazy? Sometimes I meet organizations that think that social media is a silver bullet for email list growth or fundraising. They continue to reach for the pie in the sky, yet still struggle to figure out what content to post on which social media channel. If this sounds like your organization, take a look at this great flowchart by Daryl Lang that offers some practical advice on where you should post your status updates. I love the humorous approach to the flowchart that screams - are we taking social media just a little too seriously these days?

Twitter Stats You Need To Know and Tips to Get More Clicks

A lot of organizations focus more of their engagement efforts on Facebook than Twitter. I think this is because organizations feel limited by the 140 character tweet length. Plus it can be a noisy space. Twitter can be a great platform to engage with people though, if campaigners take the time to have back and forth discussions and not just use Twitter to promote blog posts, press releases or fact sheets. I have personally had some of the most thought-provoking conversations on Twitter about social justice issues and politics. I have seen it be a powerful organizing tool as part of a multichannel campaign.

If you have ever doubted the power of Twitter, check out these statistics that my colleague Anne Weiskopf over at Digiday shared with me. Note, these statistics were provided by Twitter executives.

1. 400 million: tweets per day


2. 200 million: monthly active users of the services on a 30-day basis


3. 100 million: that figure a year ago


4. 33,000: tweets per second in Japan during New Years


5. 6: median number of brands users follow


6. 95 percent: public conversations about TV shows that happen on Twitter


7. 80 percent: users on mobile in the UK and Japan


8. 78 percent: how much more likely mobile users are to retweet a brand


9. 60 percent: users on mobile in the U.S.


10. 53 percent: increase in purchase intent from users who saw a promoted tweet


11. 50 percent: Americans who see, read or hear about a tweet every day


12. 12 percent: higher the click rate for brand tweets with price in whole dollars


13. 17 percent: higher the click rate for tweets with a question mark


14. 1-3 percent: engagement rates on Twitter ads

I also recommend that you check out this research below by Dan Zarrella of Hubspot, who analyzed the click-thru rate of over 200,000 tweets.

How to Rock Your Website Content Planning

All organizations want to have a website that connects with their audience. Imagine how much more impact you could have on the activists, donors, volunteers, and policymakers you seek to influence if your website content rocked. Having compelling stories backed by facts and data can energize your grassroots efforts by inspiring your audiences and helping them identify with your organization.  Sadly many organizations’ website content sucks, as we highlighted last week via Jonathon Colman’s presentation on Ten Ways To Identify If Your Web Content Sucks.

While you can’t turn a website filled with mediocre content into a compelling website packed with great Photo by Nikol Lohrstories overnight, you can certainly take immediate steps to make your content better. Here are five tips to start rocking your website content planning.

Define 3-4 Website Goals

Before you answer this question – I want you to refrain from saying that your number one goal is to raise money, unless your organization is a crowdfunding platform. Why? Because your website does not solely exist to raise money from your constituents. Could it be one of several goals? Absolutely, but it’s not the main goal. It’s also important to note that only about 8% of donations are still given through online channels.

Once you define your top 3-4 goals (which are different for each organization), then you can produce website content that is centered on these core goals. I also suggest you print out these goals and post them around the office so everyone in the organization remembers these goals. Turn it into a fun poster or an infographic. Write it on big yellow sticky notes. You may think this is silly, but trust me it’s not. The average person needs to see things at least 7x before they remember it. This will also help to weed out the content that someone, somewhere in the organizations thinks must be posted to your website even though it has nothing to do with your core goals.

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Six Steps to Plan a Multichannel Fundraising Campaign

Readers of Care2's Frogloop blog love that our blogger in chief, Allyson Kapin always has her fingers on the pulse of the most current news, research, and best practices in nonprofit technology, online advocacy, fundraising, and social media. But did you know that when Allyson isn't running her web agency Rad Campaign, or writing and editing Frogloop, or running popular conferences like Women Who Tech and Nonprofit 2.0, she writes books?

Allyson's newest book -- co-authored with Amy Sample Ward, and foreword by Craig Newmark of craigslist and craigconnects -- is hot off the presses (almost literally!). It's called "Social Change Anytime Everywhere: How to Implement Online Multichannel Strategies to Spark Advocacy, Raise Money and Engage Your Community." Just for you, dear Frogloop readers, we hereby present an excerpt from Allyson's excellent new book. It's about how to plan a mutlichannel fundraising campaign. Enjoy!

How to Plan a Multichannel Fundraising Campaign

Establish Fundraising Goals

Set your total fundraising goals up front. When determining the “magic number,” it ’s important that you set realistic expectations. For example, if you are experimenting with social media fundraising for the first time, it’s important to remember that only 0.7% of organizations raise more than $100,000 through that channel. And about 8% of money raised is through all online channels. Be very conservative in your goals, and consider the staff time and vendor fees you ’ll need to support your campaign.

Develop Campaign Goals and Messaging

Sometimes it helps to crystallize your campaign goals by doing a simple exercise. Answer the question, “What three or four main goals will we achieve by raising X dollars for Y campaign?” For example, here are some campaign goals that we answered internally for a neighborhood soup kitchen whose mission is to provide warm meals and job training to people who are experiencing homelessness.

“What goals will we achieve by raising $50,000 for the neighborhood soup kitchen?

Goal One: Illustrate that homelessness has risen 25% in our city over the last year, resulting in a rising demand for our free meals and job training services.

We want donors to understand that every night there are lines of hungry people outside our door waiting for a hot meal.

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10 Ways To Identify If Your Web Content Sucks

All organizations that I talk with confide in me that they wish that their web content was more compelling and useful. They want their content to tell a story and to use data to show that their activists and donors are making a real impact on the ground.

Developing good content is challenging for all organizations. It takes planning and patience, staff resources, research, and a big commitment. But most importantly it requires an internal cultural and communications shift within the organization in terms of how all staff (from the Executive Director on down) thinks about producing good web content that web visitors and your activists and donors actually give a hoot to read or skim.

Former nptechie, Jonathon Colman, who is now a Content Strategist and Information Architect for REI, recently did a great presentation called Why Your Content Sucks.  Colman says “content is not a feature, it’s an experience,” a concept that has also been discussed by Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic. While your organization maybe muddling along dressing up bad content, it doesn't fool anyone, says Colman.  

10 Ways to Identify If Your Web Content Sucks 

Colman asks organizations to think about the following when analyzing the quality of your own web content.

1. You treat web content as another commodity instead of as a mission-organizational business asset.
2. You publish as much content as possible instead of curating meaningful content that will resonate with your activists, donors, and other target audiences.

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