Posts tagged as:

socialmedia

Real Social CRM

by Pearlbear on May 24, 2011

So I do have social media ennui, but I am also somewhat of a data geek, and cool ways of moving social media data into one’s nonprofit data workflow is pretty important in my most humble opinion. This post on Social CRM is not going to contain one buzz phrase. It’s going to talk about one particular, interesting example of how to move social media data into a real live CRM -the one you might even be using now – Salesforce.

This example uses an app from the Salesforce AppExchange, called “Salesforce for Facebook and Twitter.” To make things just a tad confusing, this is also called “Salesforce for Social Media” and “Salesforce for Twitter.”

There are likely many more options, but this is one I’ve seen that is pretty cool, although it has its weak spots. It definitely is geared more toward the “Service Cloud” than the “Sales Cloud.”

You can set up multiple twitter and facebook accounts, and each facebook account can have access to multiple pages. It’s all done via OAuth, which is cool. Once you set up the accounts, you can then grab conversations:

You can filter and sort, just like records in any other SF object. You can choose whether or not to send Twitter or Facebook identities to Leads, Contacts, or Person Accounts. You can choose to create cases from tweets or FB posts as well.

You can tweet or post to facebook directly from Salesforce:

And it works:

You can schedule tweets and facebook posts as well.

There is a lot more you can do – it’s a pretty cool tool. The one thing I can’t seem to find – and I don’t know whether this is in development, or they won’t ever do it – is import your social graph into salesforce – your facebook fans or your twitter followers. I’m not sure why this is, exactly. It seems a big gap to me. But then, it is the folks who engage with you who you definitely want to make sure to keep track of.

Anyway, if you are a user of either Salesforce, the Nonprofit Starter Pack, or Convio Common Ground, this is definitely a tool to know about.

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Social Media ennui

by Pearlbear on May 17, 2011

I have a confession to make. I have social media ennui. I’m tired of reading and hearing about about social media and nonprofits, and I’m annoyed that social media is taking up so much of the air space in the #nptech world.

As you know, I’m a bit of a technology curmudgeon, but I’m far from a luddite – I’m an early adopter, for the most part. I’m a fairly active user of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and some other social networking sites, and have been for years now. I certainly have followed and friended lots of organizations on these networks (particularly on Twitter, but also some more personally relevant to me on Facebook.) The apps I use most on my phone include the Facebook app for Android and Tweetdeck.

I spend some amount of my Drupal and WordPress development time, both for my clients and for myself, in setting up one or two-way integrations between websites and social media sites. I understand how the varied APIs work, and have to keep on top of whether I should be using a “like” or a “share” button for Facebook. I’ve been using social media to actively promote my new science fiction books.

In other words, I don’t avoid social media, I use it a lot, and I actively facilitate my clients use of social media integration with their web presence. (And I use hashtags in blog entries!)

But I’m still bored silly. Case in point: A new report out from IBM on Social CRM. It’s geared toward a for-profit audience, but it certainly has some reasonably useful lessons for nonprofits, and it has been a topic of conversation in the #nptech world today. But there isn’t anything in this report I haven’t read a dozen times already. It doesn’t help organizations bridge the huge data and workflow gap present between their traditional CRM/Donation management systems and their social media interactions. And if I hear the buzz phrase “game changer” one more time, I’m going to puke. It’s hype designed to sell things. And hype designed to sell things isn’t necessarily going to help make the world a better place.

No one should take this post personally. I’m very glad that most of my #socialmedia #nptech colleagues talk a lot about ROI of social media, and really try and figure out what works, and what doesn’t. But we’ve had, what 3 or 4 years solid of nonprofits using this stuff. Can it be demoted now?

So what do I want us to talk more about? How about lowering the costs of software by using open source and collaboratively developing software? How about data standards to help us share information more easily? How about finishing the work we did on getting the expensive CRM vendors to really open up their APIs so that organizations can better integrate their systems? Maybe talking how to deal with neglected nonprofit verticals like client management? Helping accidental techies get the training they need so that they can do more work in-house? Nonprofits who need tech help partnering with local organizations who provide training to the unemployed and ex-offender? The list goes on and on.

 

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Does Social Media Work?

by Pearlbear on September 13, 2010

I know for many of you this is old news. But since I’m not on twitter anymore, and I don’t read my RSS feeds as often as I should.

In July, Idealware published the Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide. It’s great – chock full of good information, and some very, very interesting research. One of the most interesting tidbits of data to me was the large gap between people who “thought” social media of varied types either helped them reach new audiences, or helped them raise money, and those that really “knew” this was the case.

And further, the largest change was just an increase in website traffic (20%).  A very close second was substantive feedback and discussions (21%), and a relatively close third was to attract new members or volunteers (16%).

There are some great worksheets to help you figure out what strategies to use, and how to move forward in this space. And there is, to my mind, a lot of fodder for thought and conversation among folks thinking about  how to really measure success in social media, as well as those of us thinking about SocialCRM:  how to best capture that data – whether it be engagement metrics, or actual constituent information.

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Betting the Farm

by Pearlbear on April 16, 2010

Countless nonprofits flocked to Ning to create social networks. Since I’m not a social media guru, I’ve generally kept my opinions about this to myself. But now that Ning isn’t free anymore, I’m going to carp some.

I think over the course of lo this last few years, I have blogged or tweeted about this very phenomenon what feels like countless times. Nonprofits find services for free. They start depending on them. The free services disappear, for business reasons. The nonprofit community gets up in arms. Lather, rinse, repeat.

There is nothing wrong with software or services that don’t cost anything. Nothing at all. But if you are going to bet the farm, make sure you know what the risks are. Using free services is fine, but know why they are free. Are they free because the company behind them is an ad revenue machine and uber profitable (Google)? Is it free because it’s open source (Drupal, Elgg, Word Press)?  Is it free because it is a profitable company that has a clear and well defined donation program (Salesforce.com)? Or is it free because it is a start up in search for a business model (Ning)?

There is an effort afloat (and a petition) to get Ning to make nonprofit and educational accounts free. I’m not holding my breath. They eliminated 40% of their staff. They are feeling pinched, and need to stop their burn rate. I don’t know how charitable this will make them feel. And even if they do, there is no guarantee that Ning will even survive.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a great social network management system that won’t get pulled out from under you, try Elgg. It’s open source, and out of the box, it does just about everything Ning does, without the need for the deep setup required to set up Drupal like Ning. It has an active developer community, and is growing.

Or, if you look for another free service, make sure you understand the risks, and be prepared for possible disaster if it’s a startup in search of a business model.

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Social CRM, part 1

by Pearlbear on April 11, 2010

This blog series is all Beth Kanter’s fault. We (the two partners of OpenIssue) shared a cab from the Atlanta airport to the hotel when we arrived for the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference. We were chatting with her about what kind of work we do, and she asked “do you do social CRM?” She might not have seen the blank stares on our faces since we were in a dark cab, but I’m sure she heard the pregnant, confused silence.

As you know, I don’t blog much about social media. I use it all the time, but there are much better sources of good information on that – I’ve been sticking to writing what I know best. But I have to admit, this idea of social CRM piqued my interest. More than that. The truth is, if @kanter asks me about something that is related to social media, it must be important, so I’d better figure it out. And, of course, I’m at least a year behind the curve on this – there has been a lot going on in this space, although, frankly, in my research so far, I haven’t found a lot in the technology sphere that would immediately be helpful to nonprofits (especially small to medium-sized ones.) There’s some, and I’ll talk about that in the next posts in this series.

Beth pointed us in the direction of Jeremiah Owyang, who I’d been reading a little for a while, but had lost track of, since I don’t follow the social media space carefully. He has a great post on the use cases for Social CRM. It’s a really solid post, with an information-packed report attached, as well as some resources. This is a bit high level for me – my job in life is generally to make use cases real using technology. I’m hoping that someone (hint, hint) will write the blog post or report taking off on this work, and articulate the major nonprofit use cases for Social CRM. The report does include some technologies to look at, and I’ll be delving into those in future posts.

I’m going to take a little chunk off of this, though, and ask some leading questions. And then, I’ll do my best over the course of the next few weeks to answer how these would get accomplished via the technological tools that most nonprofits use  or can get access to.

  1. How do you know which of your Facebook fans/Causes members are also a donors (separate from donations through Causes)?
  2. How do you know how many of your twitter followers are also donors?
  3. How do you know what percentage of your donors or constituents are on social media at all (twitter, facebook, myspace, linkedin?)
  4. Can you follow the trail from tweet (or facebook status) to a donation? A tweet to a specific action (like a petition?)

If you’ve got more questions you’d like to see me address, or you’ve got some examples of how your nonprofit has answered these questions, please feel free to comment on this post.

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