360DigitalInfluence

Held at the Nature Conservancy, in Arlington, Virginia, this year’s second Web Managers Roundtable brought in a great crowd - the largest crowd to date, in fact.

The Nature Conservancy not only shared their space for the guests of the Roundtable, but also their story on how the organization is holding its own in the social media space. Along with four other panelists, The Nature Conservancy shared their experience working in the realm of Social Media. They shared their thinking and brain power behind the strategy, the trials and tribulations (and, yes, the push back) they received from both internal team members and external communities, and they shared their successes and evaluation of the work.

Let’s start with the host. Jonathon Colman, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy, explained that the #1 objective for organization was to “bring the eyeball to [the] Web site”. And #2? “To get people talking about us”. Makes sense, right? The question was how. That’s where digg.com comes in. The Nature Conservancy had recently raised over $100 million to preserve rain forests, wildlife and land and they wanted people to know about it. Creating a digg profile, Jonathon was able use Digg as a communication tool. (See the last listing on page 3) The announcement gained 56 comments and 836 diggs. The announcement directed over 2,000 visitors to the site in under one hour and 6,000 views to the landing page in one day. The Nature Conservancy is still active on digg, now acting as a resource center for the social network. According to Jonathon, The Nature Conservancy’s profile was rated the 24th most successful profile on digg. Not bad!

(Side Note: One key point I want to make is that Jonathon joined digg as a real person, member name burkinaboy (no fake name, no fake profile, just the real deal). He was able to provide the community with a man behind the mask, making the relationship more personal between the organization and the community. 100% transparent.)

Another great account, and one you myspace.com fans will appreciate, came from Carie Lewis, Internet Marketing Manager at the Humane Society of the United States. A common misconception, and a lot of times the reason for passing on an opportunity like this, is that myspace, facebook and other popular social networks are only for “teenage girls talking about what they are going to do that night”, as Carie put it. When in fact, a large number of the population is logged on one, if not more, of these networks. More and more organizations are joining myspace and facebook to share their message and engage community members on important issues. The Humane Society is a great example. The Humane Society has been an active member of the myspace community for the past six months and has gained over 20,000 friends, receiving over 100 friend requests a day. The organization page has a lot to offer users, and that is where the strategy comes into play. With a sign up field for the organization enewsletter and free badges offered to supporters to post on their sites, measuring the success of this page becomes a bit easier. Each badge has it’s own source code, tracking visits from each click through. Check out both the Humane Society myspace page and Sunny the Seal’s page and see for yourself how engaging it is.

(Side note: Carie monitors all the comments, posts and messages that are sent to the myspace page. Whether the comments are appropriate or unpublishable, Carie responds to each one. She explains that “the whole point of social networks is two-way communication.” Agreed.)

We were lucky enough to be joined by three more panelists this morning, all with significant accounts of how their organizations have, are and will be using social media in their communications.

Karen Huffman, from the National Geographic Society, has been hard at work setting her internal teams up for communication, networking and collaboration. In the past 2 years, 6 new wikis have been launched to better serve the needs of corporate editorial business users. Just a of the wikis that have proven highly resourceful include the Integrated Marketing Wiki, the Women Explorers Wiki (which houses a series of podcasts on Women in History) and wikis being used by NGS’ Think Tank Team for meetings, notes and collaborations. In order to grow the internal collaborations and use of social media, Karen is now preparing training sessions and manuals for both the new and veteran wiki user.

Paul Hyland, Executive Producer of edweek.org at Editorial Projects in Education, gave us a sneak peak into the upcoming social media engagements happening in the education arena. Currently, the organization has approximately 10 blogs published at any given time. In the near future edweek.org will be creating message boards enabling teachers to sharing teaching tips, upload and download content. The organization will also help to engage teachers in the online teaching community by developing social networking tools and for teachers use and create in an online social network.

Kevin Novak, our .gov guy, from the Library of Congress, finished up the panelist presentation with his insight on social media participation from the government sector. As the 207th birthday for the Library of Congress has come and gone, and over 20 million items have been digitized within the last 10 years, the Library has made a smart move in looking into social media outlets to get the community involved. So among the launch of their blog, authored   by the Director of Communication, the Library is now in collaboration with flickr, to create a program that will allow the community to collaborate and get involved. That’s not it. The Library is launching a series of podcasts and are even considering a Second Life community. It seems like Kevin has his group have the social media and government thing figured out, doesn’t it? Aside from the extreme awareness of the content and it’s appropriateness (after all, the Library’s boss is Congress), Kevin still had a few questions for fellow government organizations, maybe you can provide your input…
What is the best way to archive on the LOC blog?
How should the LOC handle requests for official documentation of blog content since the blog is public?

So have all these tales of social media got your wheels turning? Just think of the impact you can make and the communities you can engage through the vast array of social media tools out there today (and most of them or free - what a great investment).

If you have any questions, you know where to find us. Just ask - we love to share.