Capability Stairsteps

When we begin a new deployment of our software applications at an organization, we always ask the users "How will you know if this project was a success or not?" We're usually expecting to hear things like "Our staff will spend significantly less time putting together monthly reports" or "We will finally have agreement between the membership lists on the website and in the AMS." But at a recent project kickoff the bar for success was really low: "Our staff will actually use the system." Problems with the adoption of new IT tools can rob an implementation of much of its ROI. And the the solution is not simply making sure you've picked the right tool and delivered the proper training. There are specific steps that need to be taken to encourage user adoption. My friend Russ Eisentstat of TruePoint uses the phrase "capability stairsteps" to emphasize the incremental nature of such transitions. These steps may involve partial use of the new tool, use by a subset of the eventual target user community, or both. But before you can climb these steps you need to design them - adoption will not necessarily spread naturally or completely unless the organization creates a plan and monitors it. The example Russ and I discussed related to the use of a wiki to capture organizational knowledge. One of my long-standing contentions is that an enormous amount of organizational knowledge exists in emails between stakeholders. If these emails were simply captured and organized, a great deal of knowledge documentation could be managed with little or no new writing. But both of us had limited success in encouraging our own organizations to use our wiki. What would a stairstep model for adoption of the wiki look like? First we need to put someone in charge! This is a step that is often ignored in this type of change management. Someone needs to take personal responsibility for the effort to develop the wiki into a useful tool. As soon as we have identified the wikimaster, we have at least one more committed user. The next step is to identify the barriers to adoption so we can plan to eliminate them. Russ and I both agreed that the main barrier is the catch 22 of social sites: the wiki is not attractive to users if it is not yet rich with useful information -- but this will not happen until people begin using it. This barrier can be reduced by "priming the pump." Step two is that the wikimaster takes active responsibility for getting the first fifty articles on the site. He can poll users frequently to get them to send him any material that would be apporpriate for inclusion. This spreads some buzz about the wiki without asking people to utilize it themselves in any way. A second barrier: it takes a bit more learning to become adept at posting than just to read the site. So this suggests the next increment. Step three is to encourage the use of the wiki as a passive repository of information, without leaning on people to post. People can still rely on the wikimaster to post their articles, but can begin to turn to the wiki to look for information they might need. Only now do we tackle active contribution - again a step at a time. In Step four might the wikimaster to encourages people to comment on exisiting articles - reminding them of this capability, and having existing champions comment to prime the discussion on this forum. Step five might be then to put in place rules for how others should post their own articles - how to tag them, how to deal with the home page, how new articles are announced, and so on. At this point a training or informational session might be held for new posters. So what I had thought was a one step procedure - "let's start using this new tool" - has become a five step staircase. This model of identifying barriers and building a step to climb over each one in sequence can be used to encourage adoption of systems of all kinds.

Building your Donor base on Facebook - The Nature Conservancy's experience.

There's been a lot of excitement in the last year about social networking in general, and about Facebook in particular. And a lot of talk about the value of social networking for non-profits. But is there really a return on investment for non-profit participation on these sites? Here's a success story. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a 501(c)3 organization that works in the U.S. and over 30 other countries to protect ecologically important lands and waters. Using tools readily available on Facebook, the organization has raised almost $48,000 in the first six months of their social-networking effort. They did this by creating a Cause and a Fan Page for the org, and by forming a relationship with an ecology oriented game on Facebook, (lil) Green Patch. Six months later the (lil) Green Patch application is one of the most popular on Facebook, with of 6 million users! Jonathon Colman , TNC's Associate Director for Digital Marketing recently developed a slide presentation that summarizes the organization's experience using Facebook as a marketing tool. You can find the presentation here. The slide presentation raised a number of questions in my mind, so I messaged Jonathon on Facebook and we chatted about (lil) Green things. Me - How did (lil) Green Patch come about? Was TNC involved in the creation of lil green patch or was it already on line when you formed your relationship with it? Jonathon - No, the Conservancy was not involved with the creation of (Lil) Green Patch. It was already on Facebook when we found it by doing a search on our name (hence my first recommendation to organizations seeking to use Facebook for marketing purposes). At that point, (Lil) Green Patch already said that they were going to donate a share of their advertising revenue to the Conservancy, but had trouble connecting with the right people in our organization. I immediately wrote them and we started the conversation. From the very first conversation, we encouraged (Lil) Green Patch and other Facebook application developers to donate to us directly through our Facebook Facebook Cause. Me - Can you explain the business model of the application? How does it make money for you? Jonathon - The application is supported by advertising on the site. It's a share of their advertising revenue that's donated to the Conservancy's Cause at http://apps.facebook.com/causes/2979?recruiter_id=1833869 on a month-by-month basis, depending on the application's usage and ads impressed/clicked on. It tends to be somewhere between $6000-$9000/month. Me - how can a consumer be sure an app actually is providing the social benefit it claims? The other day I got several messages in my inbox accusing another app (oceans-related) of not really having a relationship with any non-profit. Jonathon - This is why we're asking (Lil) Green Patch and other Facebook applications like Stop Climate Change Now to donate to us directly via our Facebook Cause -- it provides a complete change of accountability to the application developers and to the Conservancy. When an application donates via the Cause, it's very simple for everyone to see how much was donated: just visit the Cause and scroll down to the "Hall of Fame". You'll see that, to date, (Lil) Green Patch has given $44,650. Clicking on their name of the amount that they've donated yields a graphical chart containing the people that they've recruited and/or recent donations that they've made. Me - So do you need to have folks on staff to oversee the maintenance and ongoing development of the app? Jonathon - Not at all. The Conservancy is in no way involved with the ongoing maintenance nor development of (Lil) Green Patch. Anyone can participate in this process, actually - There's a discussion board and links to the developers' profiles off of the main application page where you can talk with other users and get in touch with the development team. Me - This is all very exciting. But what skills do you think a non-profit needs to bring on board to develop a marketing program built on social media? Jonathon - My team at the Conservancy has incredibly talented editors, producers, a designer, and even a project manager. I couldn't do anything without them. In terms of social media, I think that organizations need to find people who can bring the right balance of: - Writing for the web (specifically writing for members) - Engaging in search engine marketing and optimization; - Marketing to verticals and other segments - Researching marketing and communities - Testing and documentation - Recording metrics and interpretation of "actionable" data - Taking the "long view" on building a social media program and not expecting success right away The right person could come from a direct mail background or from a marketing communication background or even a business information/analytics background... They just need to have some intuition and be willing to fail a few time sin order to succeed. That said, my background is actually not in marketing, but in technical writing .

Policing your Online Image

The other day I noticed one of my clients had an account on Facebook and I asked her how she was using it. "Mainly", she said, "to police our staff to make sure they haven't posted anything that would reflect badly on our organization". -- "You could also take the opportunity to post stuff yourself that would promote your organization and mission", I prompted. --"I don't think so." she chuckled. Then I'd have to be on here twice as much patrolling the responses to my posting." With a growing number of non-profit communicators finding a powerful role for the social media in their online strategy, it's disturbing to realize how many of their peers still approach things this way. Another client of our voiced this same fearful approach when I was urging them to set up an intranet for in-house conversation and information among their several hundred employees. "Impossible - who will read each of those postings to keep an eye out for inappropriate language or content?" The fallacy here is simple. These managers believe they currently have control over the organization's image and they don't want to loose it. The fact is, people are already saying whatever they want about them - in private emails, on blogs, on Facebook walls. Marketing guru Seth Godin in a recent post compares classic brand management to what he calls "tribe management".: ...what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about. In other words, when non-profit communicators give up and join the tribe that already exists around their organization, they discover that participating in the conversation is far more powerful than policing it.

VRM: CRM's flip side

Every non-profit now talks about needing to improve their CRM. But thanks to a post by Jay Deragon, I've been doing some reading this week about the emerging concept of VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management -- If CRM refers to software-based tools for organizations to manage their relationships with customers, constituents, and supporters, VRM is the complimentary set of tools, helping those individuals to manage their relationships with companies, organizations, and communities. The idea is appealing - but its actual application still seems quite hazy. The center of the VRM hub-bub seems to be Project VRM at Harvards' Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Their wiki states that CRM systems until now have borne the full burden of relating with customers. VRM will provide customers with the means to bear some of that weight, and to help make markets work for both vendors and customers — in ways that don't require the former to "lock in" the latter. The goal of VRM is to improve the relationship between Demand and Supply by providing new and better ways for the former to relate to the latter. In a larger sense, VRM immodestly intends to improve markets and their mechanisms by equipping customers to be independent leaders and not just captive followers in their relationships with vendors and other parties on the supply side of the marketplace. Any system that will allow particpation of both vendors and customers (or donors and fundraisers, or politicians and supporters...) starts to point toward the more collaborative environments that are being termed "social media" these days. And indeed, we find VRM being discussed on sites like "The Social Customer" blog by Christopher Carfi, which is trying to evolve models of customer service and marketing that assume a more empowered and participatory customer base. We are all both customers and vendors. But what does a VRM/CRM collaboration look like? This still seems an open question. I'm not yet seeing anything much more concrete than Carfi's call for "a robust way for customers to manage their own online identities without getting trapped in any vendor's silo. " CRM systems today are offering concrete Return on Investment to their users. The VRM conversation needs to focus on how to provide concrete measurable benefits for customers if this paradigm is gain traction.