Posts tagged as:

twitter

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.

Tagged as: , , , , ,

{ 2 comments }

Tools I use: basic workflow

by Pearlbear on April 12, 2011

I was perusing Social Source Commons (something I don’t do nearly often enough,) and catching up on the SSC blog, and I thought it might be worth sharing with this audience what tools I use for basic consulting workflow. I’ll do another few posts for other areas, like development, system maintenance, personal web presence, and writing.

(If you want to look at my Social Source Commons toolbox, it’s here. It’s not so up to date, and it’s a list more of tools I have used, and some I still use.)

The center of my workflow, like for most consultants, is email. I’ve used a variety of email clients of one sort or another over time, and I have recently just decided to ditch them, and use gmail exclusively. I have definitely noticed that I’ve been migrating a lot of functionality of things that I do to web-based apps of one type or another, and this is one example of that. I use Canned Responses to provide HTML signatures when needed, and also forward all of my mail to gmail, then send out mail as other identities. (I’ve learned how to circumvent that annoying thing of “Sent on behalf of” in gmail – use the SMTP of the email alias you’re using.)

What’s also very close to the center is my project management tool, Redmine. (I’m actually now using a very recent fork of Redmine, called Chiliproject.)  I’ve waxed on about this tool ever since I’ve found it, and I would love to challenge a loyal Basecamp user to a point-by-point comparison of the two tools. I think it knocks Basecamp right out of the water. It’s core is a very powerful and flexible ticket tracker, but it includes all of the important project management features you want and need, milestones, time tracking, wikis, file repository, even discussion boards, and it connects with version control repositories. It works for multiple projects. And, it’s open source, and isn’t even that hard to get set up and running.

Another important tool, which I use in my personal life as well as consulting life, is Evernote. Evernote rocks my world. The web interface is great, as is the desktop application (which I use cross-platform – the Windows version works great with WINE). I also access Evernote on my Android phone. It’s a great tool. I use it for to do lists, stuff like blogging calendars, and also the Chrome Evernote extension allows for clipping of whole web pages, which I love (there is a Firefox extension as well.)

A tool I’ve recently come to adore is Passpack. It is an awesome web-based password management tool for teams. I love the collaboration features. For sharing files, as well as providing solid file backup, I use Dropbox (it even works on Linux!)

And, like all consultants, workflow involves documents and spreadsheets, and for that I mostly use LibreOffice, although sometimes using Google Docs makes sense for collaboration. I use Google Reader for RSS feeds, and TweetDeck, or, more recently, HootSuite for Twitter (I really like the tabbed interface of HootSuite. It makes looking at the variety of lists I have a lot easier.)

 

Tagged as: , , , , , , ,

Plotting my return to Twitter

by Pearlbear on November 28, 2010

In April of this year, I left twitter. I had good reason to leave twitter. And, after a few months, I didn’t miss it. And, frankly I still don’t miss it. But I had a bit of an epiphany lately that you social media mavens out there will very much appreciate. I figured it was worth writing on this blog about.

I joined Twitter in the beginning, because my colleagues were. I didn’t have a reason, or a goal, except to find out what everyone one else was, well, all a-twitter about (sorry, I couldn’t help it.) I knew that my nonprofit consulting practice was not going to be geared toward social media (as you all know, I veer way more to the plumber end of the web technology spectrum.) And, it was fun, for a while, then it got old. I didn’t have a specific set of things I wanted to get out there in the world (save in the realm of what I can easily do by blogging) and I just joined because all of my nptech buddies joined.  I got overwhelmed by the information coming my way and it invaded my life. So I left.

What’s changed for me is that I now have a goal and a focus, and with that goal and focus comes a realization. Aha! Twitter will be useful. It sort of took me by surprise, interestingly enough. I began to think about how I would approach this thing, and what would be the best way to learn more, as well as share, and put stuff out, and … voila, Twitter.

And the lesson, I learned, which I’m sure lots of nonprofits are learning, seems to be: Twitter is a means to an end, and it’s important for me to treat it that way, rather than it being and end unto itself. And I know the social media folks have been saying this all along, but it took me this long for it to really sink in.

I know that at least some of you are thinking “so what’s the goal and focus?” Sorry, it’s not nonprofit technology, ya’ll. Now that I’ll be back on Twitter, I’ll probably do a few tweets now and again from our company twitter account, so feel free to follow. And please don’t feel at all slighted if I stop following you on my personal twitter account (It’s likely.)  Because besides being a web techie, I’m a science fiction writer with some stories and novels to peddle.

Tagged as: ,

{ 2 comments }

Three months without Twitter

by Michelle Murrain on July 19, 2010

As you know, I left twitter 3 months ago today. I figured it was a good time to do a reflection of my experiences over this time – what I miss, and what I don’t miss.

What I don’t miss

  • Distractions: I find myself more productive, for sure. I never was very disciplined about turning twitter off, so I was constantly distracted. The lack of distraction has been a really good thing.
  • Information overload: how did I keep all that stuff in my head? My mind feels a lot quieter.
  • Need to share: I’m happy to leave the somewhat narcissistic impulse that Twitter feeds behind.

What I miss

  • Instant answers to questions! And answering people’s questions.
  • Banter: Twitter is way better for banter than any other medium besides being in person.
  • Opportunities for collaboration: it does seem like a lot of that happens now on Twitter and Facebook (which for me is a friends/family only zone) so I’m probably missing out on some of that.

In general, I’m still happy I left, and have no plans to return. I have, on a couple of occasions, used search.twitter.com when a certain event was happening, so I could see up to the minute what was going on. I’m sure I’ll still do that sometimes.

Tagged as:

{ 3 comments }

External, alienated, busy-busy

by Pearlbear on April 19, 2010

As you might know, almost a year ago, I made a big change in my use of social media – I segregated my social graph – work related stuff moved to LinkedIn and Twitter, and personal friends only on Facebook. Now, I have taken the next step, and made somewhat of a momentous decision. I’m not alone – Jon Stahl did this before me, and I know there are others. There are plenty of people who never entered these waters at all.

I have been fairly conflicted about this for a while. There are things I really like about Twitter, Identi.ca, Buzz, etc. I like being connected to the nptech community, and learning what’s happening. I really like reaching out and getting questions answered. But, being on those networks has taken it’s toll on me. It’s time spent I need for other things. It’s an influx of information in my brain that I really don’t need. And I’m sure people really don’t need to hear what I think or what I’m doing in 140 characters or less.

Most of the reason I named this blog “Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology” is that I am very interested in the ethical and spiritual dimensions of technology in general, and nonprofit technology in particular. And I’m very interested in the way my work affects me and my life.

Thomas Merton, one of the people I look to for wisdom once said:

When I speak of the contemplative life … I am talking about a special dimension of inner discipline and experience, a certain integrity and fullness of personal development, which are not compatible with a purely external, alienated, busy-busy existence.

(By “alienated” he meant alienated from ourselves.) For me (and only for me - I’m not making any generalizations for others) this being almost always-on connected to the 140 characters-or-less social networks lead me to an external, alienated, busy-busy existence – the opposite of the direction I want to go.

So … I deleted my Four Square account, and I disconnected varied things from my twitter account. I won’t be using the 1/2 dozen or social media accounts that I have.  I won’t be tweeting really anymore. I haven’t deleted my twitter account, so if you DM me, I’ll still get an SMS telling me. But I won’t be watching it for the most part.

I’ll miss the banter, and the exchange. I’ll miss the easy answers. I won’t miss the barrage of info I don’t need, or the time spent. And, I’ll still be blogging. Although it likely won’t be on too many up-to-the-minute news items (like the recent Ning Thing) because I’ll be paying less attention to those goings on, and more attention to other, deeper things.

Tagged as: ,

{ 11 comments }

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.

Tagged as: , , , ,

{ 2 comments }