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Social Media For Social Good, by Heather Mansfield: a review.

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You work at a nonprofit organization. Perhaps you even lead the organization. Your group has a website, an email list, maybe even a Facebook page (because everybody tells you that you have to have one). In the back of your mind, though, you have the nagging feeling that other groups are doing more, or better, with social media. You wish you had a tech-savvy friend who really gets it about nonprofits who would sit down and explain to you what the heck is going on.

Heather Mansfield is your new best friend. In Social Media for Social Good, she lays out what you’re likely doing now (and how you can do it better), what else you can do now, and what you may want to be doing soon. (Just to show you how friendly she can be, in May 2013 Heather published 33 Must-Read Updates to the book. I wish more how-to authors would do the same!)

What you’re probably doing already is what the author calls Web 1.0. You took written materials and photos you had on the shelf, posted them on the web, and left them there for people to find (the “static web”). Maybe you even got around to updating them on a semi-regular basis and supplemented them with an e-newsletter (the “broadcast web” described in the 33 Updates). Web 1.0 is still crucial. If you do nothing else, follow Heather’s suggestions on how to improve them. (You will find examples and checklists at the end of each chapter to make it easier to put her suggestions into practice.)

We are already well into the age of Web 2.0, the social web. Read the middle section of this book to figure out how to be social online: it is a new skill set for most nonprofits and it can be learned. Read this section also to learn what you could do for your mission with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and photo and video sites like Instagram and Youtube. Are you blogging? Blogs are the quiet powerhouses of social media. I strongly recommend you read that chapter.

Since this book came out in 2011, the world has moved quickly on to Web 3.0, the mobile web. Today, over 40% of the people who view your website or read your email do so on a mobile phone or a tablet like the iPad. You have to make your organization accessible and attractive to them, or else you’re losing a lot of the benefits of being on the web in the first place. Read this section for tips on how to get those people checking their mobile phones on the subway to check in on you.

Your tech-savvy friend might also be so enthusiastic, she tells you more than you want to know. Heather does that sometimes. This book also has some of the “you must” intensity that true enthusiasts bring to their subject. If you’re a cynical reader, you might wonder if, in this book (and even more in the 33 Updates, and in the highly informative webinars that Heather offers), she’s not proselytizing for more jobs for people like her.

I read the book in a different light. Heather Mansfield strongly believes in your organization…AND in the power of social media to help you change the world. It truly pains her that you’re not taking advantage of the tools that are out there. She also points out that early adopters of new media learn how to use them best, and they’re best positioned to learn the next wrinkle when it comes along. That makes sense, but not every organization has the capacity of CARE, or Partners in Health, or NPR. You have to figure out what your organization can do. So, accept her help, and use your own judgment. But stretch yourself a little. If there’s one takeaway message from this book, it’s that social media will create new possibilities faster than we think, and we need to be ready to take advantage of them.

Three Simple Questions to Create a Communications Strategy

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Do you get overwhelmed by the concept of a communications “strategy”? Does it seem so daunting that you keep on doing what you’re doing already?  Or, do you assume your strategy needs to be complete and perfect, so you don’t even start to create one? Relax! It doesn’t have to be so hard. Image

Get the people who have a stake in your communications in the same room and ask them:

1) Who are the audiences we’re trying to reach? (Hint: there is no such thing as “the general public.” You have people inside and outside your organization that you would like to do something for the organization. Who are they, specifically?)

2) Toward what end? (Once we have built up a nice, preferably two-way, relationship with the audience, what will they start to do that they weren’t doing before?)

3) What do we already know about these audiences? What do we need to find out to give them what they’re looking for?

Answer these questions first, and then issues like the content of your messages, the media you should use, what counts as success and how you measure it will be much easier to resolve.

But don’t stop reaching out and interacting with people in the mean time! “Take a sad song and make it better.” —The Beatles

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (review)

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Can you get families to eat healthier food, delinquent students to start showing up on time, businesses and governments to save millions of dollars by buying smarter, all by learning one set of concepts?  Chip & Dan Heath think so.  In Switch, they lay out a basic framework for all kinds of change, from the individual to the social level–and they tell stories to show how to make the changes.

The framework: Each of us is a Rider (rational mind) trying to direct an Elephant (emotional side) along a Path (the environment we’re operating in).  To make a change, all three have to pull together.  Why don’t they?

“What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.” The Heaths show how you can help the Rider in yourself, your colleagues, or your fellow citizens by making it clearer exactly what they need to do.  If you can find a few bright, shining examples of what works, for instance, you can get other people to adopt that approach.  Not everyone will go along, but if enough people buy in, a little change in behavior can lead to a big change in the result.

“What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.” We have a limited amount of self-control. A small rational Rider can only tug on the reins of a big emotional Elephant for so long!  And the rational side of us may plan forever and not get around to acting–I’ve heard this called “analysis paralysis.”  The trick is to get motivated to do what we know would make a difference.  The authors show us how to take changes in small steps and aim for early victories.  They also show how we can cultivate the belief that we are capable of change…which is key to being able to make the change we seek.

“What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.”  If we can make it easier for people to do something different, more of them will.  If we can encourage new habits, those habits will take a lot of the stress and strain out of change.  “Behavior is contagious,” so show that a lot of other people are doing the right thing and you will get even more people to join them.  (This is a concept I’ve heard people call “social marketing,” and it’s one of the big reasons that fewer people smoke tobacco today.)

The Heaths illustrate all these concepts with stories that are “made to stick” in your mind (to use the title of one of their previous books).  Here’s one that pulls all three together:

In 2004, 1 out of every 10 patients in the U.S. received defective medical care.  For instance, they “did not receive their antibiotics in the specified time.”  So, “thousands of patients were dying every year, unnecessarily.  Dr. Donald Berwick set out to change that.

  • He proposed that the medical industry save 100,000 lives in 18 months, and he gave them six specific ways to do it.  (Clarity, for the Rider.)
  • He brought in a mom whose little girl had been killed by a medical error.  She told the hospitals, “I know that if this campaign had been in place four or five years ago, that Josie would be fine.” (Motivation, for the Elephant.  What greater motivation is there for a healthcare professional than saving the life of a child?)
  • He made it easy for hospitals to join the campaign (by signing a one-page form) and brought them together in conferences where they could see how others just like them were succeeding.  (Smoothing the Path)

As a result. by the set date, the campaign had saved 122,300 lives, “the equivalent of throwing a life preserver to every man, woman, and child in Ann Arbor, Michigan.”

Now, I am not convinced that this formula for change will always work.  I agree with the Heaths that even a marginal improvement is better than none, and their techniques will work when there is no entrenched and powerful opposition to the change you have in mind.  You can probably lose weight this way.  You can very likely get more people where you work to respond to their email. If you are trying to raise the minimum wage, or end global warming, or stop a war, you are going to need more.

As Frederick Douglass famously said, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle.”  For struggle, you need a movement.  You cannot throw a behavioral switch. Even a social movement would have something to learn by reading this book, however, and for most of us, most of the time, this framework will be a powerful set of tools.  I strongly recommend reading this book and then going to work on making change where you live.

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