photo by darwin bell

When is it better to do nothing? I find myself having this conversation (argument, really) more and more these days. The flip answer, of course, is when you don’t kow what the hell you’re doing.

The refrain I hear all the time: “We’ve got to do SOMETHING!” Just do it—run that ad, produce that brochure, put out that newsletter. Doing something’s GOT TO BE BETTER THAN DOING NOTHING.

Please forgive me for disagreeing.

Run that ad? Not if you have no clue what you’re saying or who you’re trying to reach. Worse, not if all past evidence tells you it won’t generate a response.

Produce that brochure? Not if it serves no purpose other than to add to your local landfill.

Put out that newsletter? Not if you’re pushing out a message your audience has no interest in, that adds no value to their lives or the conversation you’re having.

The problem today is that we’re beyond up to our eyeballs in communication. We’re drowning in friggin’ communication. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone’s idea of communication. Everyone’s throwing everything against the wall, hoping something will stick. (In case I’m being obtuse, you’re the wall.)

You may not agree with this, but personally I think it’s better to figure out the right way to communicate before you start, you know, communicating. Contrary to what some believe, bad communication is not better than no communication at all. Stuff that doesn’t stick frequently has the opposite effect … it repels. Of course, if repellent is what you’re going for, by all means have at it.

Figure out your communication goals. Choose objectives that meet your goals. Create a strategy that best serves those objectives. Develop tactics that execute on your strategy. Measure the results. Tweak and repeat.

Feel free to have this tattooed on your forehead in case the powers that be aren’t clear where you’re coming from.

photo by mykl roventine

It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that every nonprofit organization that hopes to accomplish anything meaningful needs a strategic plan. Unfortunately, planning (as opposed to reacting) seems to be anathema in many organizations.

I know all the excuses for not having a plan. We’re too busy doing the work. We know what we’re doing. We can’t afford to hire someone to help us with this right now. Hell, I’ve used some of these excuses myself.

Planning is scary and intimidating for some. Others take the cynic’s view after seeing plan after plan developed to sit on a shelf gathering dust. But the simple fact is this: Without a deep understanding of who you are, what you want to be and how to get there, you won’t make a real difference out there.

I get that planning is hard. So let’s not plan. How about a game of 20 Questions instead? Gather up your team and pose the following questions to them.  Everyone plays, everyone participates.

Q1: How would you describe your organization?

Q2: What do you do?

Q3: Who do you serve?

Q4: Who should you serve that you’re not currently serving?

Q5: What should you maybe stop doing?

Q6: Why should I care about what you do?

Q7: If you disappeared tomorrow, what difference would it make?

Q8: Where would you like to be as an organization in five to 10 years?

Q9: Who else is doing what you do?

Q10: How do you do it better?

Q11: How do they do it better?

Q12: Of everything you do, what do you do best?

Q13: Of everything you do, what are you doing that no one else does?

Q14: What threatens your ability to do what you do?

Q15: Where are your greatest opportunities to make a difference?

Q16: What resources do you have that make you good at what you do?

Q17: What do you need to do it better?

Q18: What would you need to take advantage of your opportunities?

Q19: How do you measure success?

Q20: Now that you know the answers to Q1-19, what’s your next step?

Once you have all your answers, come back together a week later to refine and clarify. By the end of this process you may not have complete agreement, but you should at least have clarity.

If you hired me to help you draft a communications plan and the first thing you handed me were the answers to these questions, I’d kiss you full on the lips. It would make my job immeasurably easier. Yours too, I’ll bet.

For those who still don’t get it, this preso by Marta Kagan does an excellent job of making the case for social media as “a force to be reckoned with” with the potential to be something far more transformative and impactful than just another marketing channel.

While the for-profit world may have the resources and the motivation (read: potential sales revenues), I believe nonprofits have greater incentive to be the innovation leaders in the social media arena.

Unlike traditional marketing channels, social media offer us the tools to identify potential allies and supporters, learn what others think (or don’t think) of us, build relationships, organized and collaborate around common causes, and measure the success or failure of our efforts, all at a cost signficantly lower than in the past. Who has more to gain than nonprofits?

And as you fret over your next newsletter or year-end appeal, try naming one other communication or marketing tool that comes close to offering what social media can offer you. It’s not the print advertising you continue to run despite the evidence that no one’s reading your daily paper any more. Or the direct mail. TV and radio have certainly gotten more affordable, mainly because they’re losing their traditional buyers in droves. Even your old-school website doesn’t do half the work of a social media-focused site.

This isn’t about social media augmenting or replacing your current marketing efforts. Sooner than you might think, social media are going to be at the center of your program efforts. Operational efforts. External and internal communication efforts. Fund-raising efforts. Recruiting efforts. And yes, your marketing and promotional efforts.

So why are so many of us so slow to get on board? That’s the $64,000 question we all must ask ourselves. Better ask it quick.

David Armano is one of the leading thinkers on social business design, and this evolving presentation attests to that fact. His personal blog is always a rich source of information and inspiration for those of us trying to get a handle on how best to implement integrated social media strategies in our organizations. Lots of food for thought here, and Armano continues to revise it to reflect his latest insights.

photo by rockinfree

Social media wasn’t even a gleam in my eye when I first read The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz five years ago. Rereading it last weekend, Schwartz’s argument that the abundance of choice can be detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being takes on new meaning in our burgeoning social media paradise.

Early in the book, Schwartz paraphrases Nobel prize-winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen as follows:

[Sen] suggests that instead of being fetishistic about freedom of choice, we should ask ourselves whether it nourishes us or deprives us, whether it makes us mobile or hems us in, whether it enhances self-respect or diminishes it, and whether it enables us to participate in our communities or prevents us from doing so. Freedom is essential to self-respect, public participation, mobility, and nourishment, but not all choice enhances freedom. In particular, increased choice among goods and services may contribute little or nothing to the kind of freedom that counts. Indeed, it may impair freedom by taking time and energy we’d be better off devoting to other matters.

Any of that resonate for you in a social media context? On the one hand, the proliferation of social media tools, communities of shared interests, platforms for the wider dissemination of ideas and opinion, etc., is a great thing. On the other hand, the seemingly infinite number of tools, communities, platforms, etc., can be overwhelming and enervating.

Abundance of choice has made each choice we make more complex, Schwartz says. Choice overload makes you question the decisions you make. And while each choice may solve a problem, it creates a whole new set of problems requiring our attention.

Schwartz illustrates his thesis with examples of choosing the right jeans, the right health care plan and even the right soul mate. But if the overwhelming embarrassment of internet riches offers unlimited opportunities for social engagement, doesn’t it also threaten to paralyze us in our tracks, investing more and more time in determining the right tools, the right socializing opportunities, the right people to follow, the right places to comment, and so on? At what point does the investment of time and energy tip over into a colossal time suck where costs outweigh the benefits?

Schwartz does offer advice on how to limit choices to a manageable number and focus on those of greatest value while ignoring the rest (no easy task).  You’ll have to read the book to get the full picture, but here’s a quick synopsis:

1. Choose when to choose. Managing the problem of excessive choice requires deciding which choices matter most and focusing our time and energy there. This means letting many opportunities to choose pass us by.
2. Be a chooser, not a picker. Choosers determine which decisions are important and whether a choice even must be made. Pickers are more reactive, passively selecting from whatever is available.
3. Satisfice more and maximize less. Learning to accept “good enough” rather than always seeking the best simplifies decision making and increases satisfaction in your choices.
4. Think about the opportunity costs of opportunity costs. Ignoring opportunity costs can lead to overestimating the value of the choices we make, but dwelling too much on them lessens the satisfaction we derive from our choices. Schwartz suggests sticking with a choice once made unless truly dissatisfied, and avoiding the temptations presented by the many “new” and “better” choices that inevitably will come down the pike.
5. Make your decisions non-reversible. Here’s a tough one in the era of “Free.” But final decisions enable you to move on to other issues and options.
6. Practice an “attitude of gratitude.” Strive to be more grateful for what’s good about your choice and be less disappointed in what’s lacking.
7. Regret less. Regret that becomes so pronounced that it poisons or prevents decisions should be minimized.
8. Anticipate adaptation. The initial satisfaction we experience from our choices doesn’t remain strong. Be realistic about how your experience of your choice is going to change over time.
9. Control expectations. Eliminate excessively high expectations by reducing the number of options you consider and allow for a degree of serendipity that results in unexpected pleasures.
10. Curtail social comparison. Stop paying so much attention to how (and what) others are doing around you.
11. Learn to love constraints. Accepting certain rules, standards or limits frees you from making the same decisions over and over again. Focus your energy on the options and decisions where no rules apply.

If you haven’t read The Paradox of Choice, this is one choice I encourage you to make. Then consider how Schwartz’s advice might help you deal better with the abundance of choice we’re all contending with in our little digital cornucopia of social media delights.

photo by eldar

Last week when I wrote about fishing for Twitter followers, I briefly mentioned looking for followers in other people’s streams. This is in fact one of the best methods for building a high-quality following. It’s a slow and laborious process, but I think it pays off in the end.

This can be downright excruciating when looking through the streams of people who have amassed followings that number in the tens of thousands. Many of these have been auto-generated and contain a lot of crap (no offense, but I doubt those people are reading this; only people of quality and intelligence here).

I’ve found the greatest value in the streams of those who share my interests but have considerably smaller numbers, say hundreds or even a few thousand followers. I’ve run across many interesting people working in communications, nonprofits, social media, etc., who are just beginning to connect on Twitter.

Check out the people who are following me to start. I’m confident you’ll find many of them as follow-worthy as I have.

Here’s a presentation I made last weekend to a group of elementary and teen after-school program providers. Other than the fact that I couldn’t get my laptop to communicate with their projector for the first half of my talk, I thought it went fairly well. I had about 30 minutes to sketch out the basics for a group I was told was new to the concept.

There’s so much territory to cover even in a basic overview of social media that I’m always working on what to leave in and what to take out. Your constructive criticism is always welcome.

photo by edu_phon

I’ve decided to expand my normal 10 tweets to 20 from now on because there’s just too much good stuff to share each month. Running through the list of the most popular links I posted on Twitter last month is almost like a Rorschach test that helps me take a dip into the minds of those following me there. My main takeaway is that people are hungry for good, actionable information on communications in general and social media specifically.

So in case you missed any of these the first time around, here in order are the tweets that drew the most attention:

PR Gaffe Delivers Unintended National Press

How to Astonish Your Audience With Statistics

10 Best Practices in Social Media for Nonprofits

Aspire to This: an Example of a Great Website

8 Twitter Habits That May Get You Unfollowed or Semi-Followed

Emotional Messaging Works; Rational Messaging Hurts

5 Fresh Ideas for Social Media Marketers

Why Don’t Tweens Tweet? We Asked Over 10,000 of Them

Are You Antisocial in Your Social Media Efforts?

How to Tell Your Story in 100 Words or Less

ROI of Listening: 17 Things to Do With What You Hear

Your Web Site: Less is More. Really.

Being Helpful is the New Black

10 Common Writing Mistakes Your Spell Checker Won’t Find

73 Ways to Become a Better Writer

Time for a Twitter Reality Check

Your Company is a Media Company

45% of Employers Use Social Networking Sites to Research Job Candidates

A Child’s First Hitchcock: Psycho

What’s So Scary About Marketing Strategy?

Check out any you may have missed last month on Twitter. There’s lots of good food for thought in this list (although my favorite, A Child’s First Hitchock, is just for fun … great storytelling example, though).

Enjoy!

photo by intangible arts

Print or digital, the newsletter continues to be one of my favorite communication tools. It’s a quick targeted read, relatively inexpensive and easy to produce with current technologies. For example, I do a 12-page philanthropic newsletter for my nonprofit’s stakeholders and distribute it cheaply via print by using in-house color copiers (the quality is surprisingly good) and by emailed PDF. We get great feedback and it’s helped to create a culture of philanthropy where little existed previously.

There’s really no excuse for a bad newsletter these days, and yet they’re everywhere (like here and here). Bad writing and poor design are common culprits, but I think the biggest mistake made is a lack of thoughtful planning.

Here’s how too many newsletters are born. Someone’s boss suddenly decides, “Hey, we need a newsletter.” The newsletter “editor” (sometimes qualified, often not) throws together a story list based on what management thinks everyone needs to know rather than what the audience will actually find interesting. Some poorly written stories are cobbled together. Someone takes really bad snapshots of people standing around at a meeting or posing awkwardly against a bare white (sometimes beige) wall, holding a check or report or some other lame prop that “connects” to the story. Then someone puts it all together using Microsoft Publisher and a newsletter template they found in the program or on the web and voilà! We have a newsletter.

Creating a great newsletter isn’t rocket science (unless it’s a newsletter about, you know, rocket science). But you do need to answer these questions before you get started:

What am I trying to accomplish? Seems simple, but you’d be surprised how many newsletters are launched with the vaguest of answers. “Informing people what we’re doing” and “creating greater awareness” are lame at best. Get specific. The answer to this question should dictate everything that goes into your newsletter.

Who is my audience and what need am I fulfilling? These aren’t simple questions. Your audience may be composed of several different stakeholder groups, each with different information needs. How are you going to meet these needs and yet remain focused?

How will I organize what I’m trying to communicate? A good periodical is made up of well-defined parts that hang together as a whole. Every article should have a specific reason for being that relates directly to your communication objectives. If you can’t quickly explain why you’re including something, then it probably doesn’t belong.

The easiest way to organize newsletter content is to establish departments and a feature section. Departments have a specific focus and are consistent from issue to issue. For example, an alumni newsletter might have a department that tells a current student’s story as a way of drawing a connection between life on campus today to the reader’s own experience. An association newsletter may have a standing roundup of legislative actions taken that affect the industry it serves.

Features are where your newsletter can really stretch, but again keep in mind your objectives. Readers like both the comfort of the familiar that departments offer and the unexpected surprise of a feature that takes an unconventional approach to its subject.

What are my resources? If you’re relying on amateur writers, be sure to give them plenty of guidance and time to develop their stories. I’ve found that giving a novice a fairly detailed outline that suggests how the story might flow can help a lot. Rather than rely on bad photos, consider the creative use of stock photography and illustrations. Play good art big and minimize the bad if forced to use it.

What’s my schedule? Make sure you allow enough time to get it right. Rushing production is a sure path to a sloppy, unprofessional final product. Be sure to pad your schedule for unanticipated issues like approvals taking longer than expected, or a story falling through at the last moment.

As you answer these questions, keep the following in mind:

Every story has a purpose. I’m going to say this again because I see pointless stories all the time. There shouldn’t be anything in your newsletter that doesn’t link back to your communication goals and objectives. If the story you’re considering doesn’t, then chances are it doesn’t belong in your newsletter.

You’re building a relationship with your audience. What I love about a great periodical is the sense that I belong to a larger community of shared interests. I felt it when I was a kid reading comic books. Each issue had a letters to the editor section where fellow fanboys would comment on the latest developments, rail about something someone else wrote in last issue’ s letters page, etc. Although I never wrote a letter myself, I still felt a part of the community.

The same thing is true today with magazines. My subscription to Inc. enrolls me in a community of fellow travelers, all interested in what it takes to start and grow a business. When I read Garden & Gun, I’m communing with others who love the life and culture of the American South. Your periodical has the potential to tap into this power … if it’s done well.

Incorporate calls to action. A good newsletter engages the reader in a conversation about what you’ve written. Give your audience a way to respond. Encourage letters, use polls to find out readers’ thoughts on relevant issues, create quizzes and contests that are both fun and informative, anything that begs a response.

Keep it short, simple and easy to follow. You hear this all the time with respect to writing for the web, but it’s always been true for newsletters. This is short-form communication. Newsletters are uniquely suited for an audience that has little time for long, drawn-out stories.

Vary your story approach. As with departments and features, use different ways of telling a story to keep your publication interesting. Telling someone’s story can take the form of a straightforward profile or a Q&A. Do “10 Things You Didn’t Know About X,” or make it a photo essay with very little text at all. Make sure whatever you do is appropriate to the subject; don’t try to force cleverness. But don’t do story after story in the same voice, from the same perspective. You’ll bore your readers.

Design is important. We live in an age of sophisticated design, from furniture to teapots to office supplies to newsletters. You may not be able to afford great graphic design, but there are enough resources out there for you to fake it. Affordable graphic designers and inexpensive design templates are just two options available to you.

I could go on and on (and probably have), but I’ll save further discussion for a future post. The important thing to remember right now is that if you’re thoughtful and strategic in your planning, you just might end up with one hell of a newsletter.

photo by Yandle

The ongoing conversation regarding social media reminds me of every previous conversation I’ve ever had concerning marketing and communications. Today the questions are:

“Should I be on Twitter?”

“Do I need to blog?”

“Should I set up a Facebook fan page for my organization?”

“Is it time to overhaul my website?”

In the old days (which ended just a few years ago), the conversation went like this:

Client: I think we need a newsletter

Me: You’re a moron.

OK, maybe it didn’t go exactly like that. Maybe that “moron” line was just in my head. The difference I see between then and now is that, for the moment, most people really don’t know what they should be doing in social media. Those same people had no problem telling me that they needed a newsletter. Or an ad campaign. A direct mail piece. A brochure. Etc. And I have no doubt that we’ll quickly reach the stage where clients again state, with confidence, exactly which social media tool they need.

My irritation lies in the fact that asking what tool you need is never the first question to ask. Try answering these questions first:

• What’s my goal? What am I trying to accomplish?
• Who am I trying to reach? Who are they, where are they, where’s the best place to reach them?
• What’s my message? What am I trying to communicate to my target audience(s)?
• What objectives will help me reach my goal?
• What are the potential barriers to achieving my objectives? For example, will I have the support of management?
• What’s a good strategy for pursuing my objectives?
• What resources (staff, money, volunteers) are available to me?

And finally, given the answers to all these questions, what tools make the most sense?

Anything short of answering these questions will result in an ill-formed communications initiative that, if not doomed to failure, will be nowhere near as effective as if you had taken the time to consider all these issues.

If you can answer these questions, then the answers to all your social media questions will become a bit easier to find.