Who will Drupal 8 benefit the most, users or developers? This is hard to quantify, but so far, it seems that the end user will feel the biggest shift. The most dramatic changes for end users will be a simplified interface for content modification, and improved mobile compatibility. However, these are not the only enhancements that are underway for what is undoubtedly the most ambitious Drupal version to date.

If you can post to Facebook, You can post to Drupal 8

Posting content will be as easy as it is on popular social networking sites, perhaps easier depending on specifics. If you can post to a site like Facebook, you ought to be able to update Drupal 8 content without any additional training.

The usability for site managers is also markedly improved. This is all due mainly to the Spark distribution work which allows in-place editing. The goal is for content creators, site managers and end users to have the option to click what they want to edit on a page and make changes directly without having to switch to an administrative editing interface. This update will make the process of seeing what your changes look like as you compose feel entirely natural.

Mobile

Drupal 8 is setup for mobile in multiple ways. The new Drupal is being built so that you will be able to interact with your site on both traditional and mobile displays. Additionally, work is underway to develop “responsive layouts” which allow site creators to place regions of text, graphics and other elements so that everything appears readable on mobile devices and laptops, auto adjusting size and orientation to the device. Mobile apps will also be able to tie into Drupal 8 more easily.

Say you feel like logging into your Drupal site and checking on new comment activity, but you only have your mobile phone. With Drupal 8 you’ll be able to do that with an interface that works well with your mobile device; no scrolling around and trying to enlarge text. While much of this is possible with Drupal 7 with extra setup beforehand, we’re going to see this become the standard on Drupal 8.

HTML5 and High-Performance

Drupal 8 does HTML5, the shiny new version of Hyper Text Markup Language that supports video, audio, better forms, 2D/3D graphics and animation. That is just the start of the great things HTML5 offers and it’s with Drupal 8 it’s already built in.

We can also expect performance improvements with Drupal 8. To generate pages suitable for a variety of devices it is important for Drupal 8 to be quick, and major progress is already underway to enhance speed, mainly on the “front-end,” and that means on your end-user device. In actuality, the skill of the Drupal site builder has a large effect on the final performance of a site, and is also related to server technologies used.

Other Initiatives

Two of the other main features of the Drupal 8 release are multilingual sites and theme design.

If you have a multilingual site, or more to the point, want a multilingual site, Drupal 8 now includes the language systems in core. So adding languages and translations is more like installing or updating modules.

Designers will also see big changes with the way themes are made using Drupal 8, and given the mobile initiatives, this is imperative. The goal here is to make design work well, and the result should be cleaner and more elegant web design.

That is a long list so far and that’s just the beginning. Drupal 8 has even more in store for all of us due the large and growing community of ambitious and hard-working contributors.

Elements in this post are based on ever changing progress thus far, and the final software will have differences when released at some point in the future, which as many know, is par for the course for virtually all complex software projects. This article is intended to give the flavor of some of the current Drupal projects on the table.

This blog entry is based on an informal presentation and post-discussions about Drupal 8 given by Darrell Ulm at Drupal Camp Ohio 2012.

Darrell works for Advomatic which is a progressive website development company.

How It Works

According to the description on their website, Thunderclap “helps users be heard by saying something together.” The platform aims to amplify the impact of posting on Facebook or Twitter by pushing out the same message from tens or hundreds of different people at the same time. The idea is that one big push may allow the message to cut through the ever-present noise on social media, something that might not happen if users were all to post individually at different times.

The way the system works is very similar to how Kickstarter works: you set a goal that needs to be reached by a target date and time, in order for the campaign to succeed. In the case of Kickstarter, the goal is an amount of money, and success is collecting that money to fund your project. In the case of Thunderclap, the goal is a specific number of people who have committed to post on social media, and success is all of those posts going out at the same time.

Trying It Out

Last month, I decided to try out Thunderclap to see how (and how well) it worked. A new campaign had just been started by the good folks over at Color of Change to push back against some rather blatant voter-suppression billboards that had been erected in Black and Latino neighborhoods of Cleveland, Ohio. Color of Change had launched a petition targeted at Clear Channel Media, the company who owned the billboards, asking them to take the billboards down. I decided to see if I could help by creating a Thunderclap campaign to get the message out and convince more people to sign the petition.

One of the voter-suppression billboards in Cleveland, Ohio

For my campaign against the voter-suppression billboards, I decided to set a goal of 100 supporters (the minimum allowed) who would need to sign up to post within 14 days of my campaign launching. My campaign message was:

Tell #ClearChannel: Stop running billboards promoting voter suppression in Black & Latino neighborhoods! #LetUsVote

A few filled-out text fields and clicks later, and I had created my campaign. After that came the hard part: getting people to sign up. I spent the next five days reaching out to friends and colleagues via Facebook, Twitter, email, IM, and in person, convincing them they needed to join the Thunderclap. It took quite a bit of effort, but I was eventually able to get the required number of people to sign up.

My Thunderclap launched with exactly 100 supporters, with a combined reached of 255,981 people. I have to admit, it was pretty thrilling to watch tweet after tweet appear in my Twitter feed, all pushing the same message. The downside was, after twenty minutes, things had gotten pretty quiet – there was the occasional retweet and comment on Facebook, but it all seemed like barely a whisper compared to the noise of the Thunderclap going out.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Helpful Tips

After setting up and running a complete campaign, I found some features of Thunderclap that worked quite well and some that didn’t. There are also a few things that I would do differently next time around.

The Good:

• Ease of use: Thunderclap campaigns are very easy to set up – it took me a total of less than 10 minutes to create an account using my Facebook login, draft the small amount of required copy, upload a photo, and launch the campaign. The system explains everything very clearly through the entire process.
• Good customer support: One of Thunderclap’s support representatives got in touch with me once I had created my campaign and let me know that it had been made active. Later, after 100 people had signed up to post, I reached out and ask if he could move up my Thunderclap launch date, since waiting the full 14 days would diminish the impact of the launch. He promptly replied and changed the launch time to later that same day, and answered several follow-up questions I had about the launch later on.
• It’s a group effort: Along with number of supporters, every Thunderclap campaign shows the total social media reach for all supporters. Once you’ve signed up to support the campaign, it also shows you how much you’ve added to that reach. Seeing your contribution to the larger effort makes the act of joining feel much more worthwhile than if you just posted to your own social media account in isolation.
• Good performance on Twitter:Using Thunderclap with Twitter seemed to work quite well, for several reasons.
  • High reach – There’s no limit to how many followers someone can have on Twitter, and several of the accounts that signed up had sizable followings: @MoveOn with 77,193, @AFLCIO with 28,884, and @heif with 16,275. Those three accounts combined accounted for nearly half of the total campaign reach.
  • Retweets – Of the 100 campaign supporters, 78 signed up to post on Twitter. From those 78 tweets, there were a total of 160 retweets, more than twice the original number. This allowed the message to spread much farther than just the original blast.
  • Potential for trending – If a hashtag from a Thunderclap post began to trend on Twitter, it would reach a much larger audience than you’d get from just the initial blast. This unfortunately did not occur for the #LetUsVote hashtag from this campaign, but a larger campaign with more retweets might have a better chance of getting that to happen.

The Bad:

• Twitter/Facebook app authorization: In order to push all the social media posts out simultaneously, Thunderclap requires supporters to authorize an application with their Facebook or Twitter account. This is a major barrier to entry for a lot of people, and it makes it much more difficult to get folks to join the campaign.
• Bad performance on Facebook:Thunderclap’s impact on Facebook appeared to be quite minimal in the end. A few different factors contributed to this:
  • Fewer supporters – Only 35 people signed up to post on Facebook, despite it being used by far more people than Twitter. Pledging a Facebook post may seem like a much bigger commitment to people than pledging a tweet.
  • Collapsed posts – For anyone who had more than one Facebook friend join the Thunderclap, the posts showed up as a collapsed list that had to be manually expanded to see them all – the perceived breadth of support is much lower with this method of display.
  • Limited reach – Only individual accounts, not Facebook pages, could join the Thunderclap, which meant that the reach for each person was limited to their number of friends. This resulted in a much lower overall reach than was achievable on Twitter.
• No Twitter handles allowed: When I originally drafted the message for my Thunderclap campaign, I started out with “Tell @ClearChannel”, in order to actually send all the messages to Clear Channel’s Twitter account. Unfortunately, Thunderclap does not allow Twitter handles to be included in posts, which lowers the impact of targeted messages.
• Hard to assess impact: Once the Thunderclap goes out, it can be very difficult to assess what impact it actually had. I was very pleased that five days after the Thunderclap launched, Clear Channel took down the offensive billboards. However, there had been extensive campaigning against them by Cleveland city officials, as well as Color of Change and other groups, so it’s pretty much impossible to know how much the Thunderclap contributed to this, if at all.

Helpful Tips:

• Keep your text short enough for retweets: For my campaign, I made the mistake of drafting text that (including the link) was 136 characters long. This prevented anyone from doing a manual retweet of posts on Twitter, which may have resulted in fewer total retweets and also hurt the chances of the hashtag trending. A shorter message would likely get shared more.
• Include a retweet ask: One of the best ways to get more retweets is to just ask your followers to do it. Including “Pls RT” in the message could get even more people to share it.
• Edit your post description when sharing on Facebook: When someone posts your Thunderclap campaign on Facebook, the default description is “I just supported CAMPAIGN TITLE on Thunderclap!” If you’re trying to recruit supporters by sharing it from your own account, you’ll likely have better luck if you change it to something more compelling than that.

Is It Worth It?

I would say the jury’s still out on how much of a game changer Thunderclap really is – there’s some interesting potential there, but it’s difficult to say at this point whether the gain is worth the effort.

I do think it’s worth further investigation, though, and I’m planning on trying it for other campaigns in the weeks and months ahead. And if you’re curious, I’d encourage you to do the same, and let me know how it goes!

Many nonprofits and small organizations have jumped on the social media bandwagon because ‘everyone else is there’ or because their competition is doing it. But those aren’t good reasons to go at it without a plan and you owe it to yourself to put some structure in place.

The problem is: there is no one book that tells you how to create one or what it should encompass; and those who are ‘doing social media well’ seem to be Fortune 500 companies and they sure aren’t sharing their secrets.

Upon my hire as the marketing & communication specialist at a small organization, I was tasked with creating a social media toolkit to be used by managers in charge of staff who hosted social media accounts. At first, it was daunting and I spent about 3-4 months total amassing all of the materials needed until I had a completed manual.

So what do the ‘cool kids’ know that you don’t? A social media toolkit for nonprofits and small organizations should include the following:

• HR Considerations (including defining company accounts v. private accounts)
• Your organization’s social media guidelines/policy
• What is social media? (defining the tools)
• How your company uses social media (strategy)
• How your organization monitors social media (reputation management, public relations, marketing, etc)
• Social Media strategy template (extending the current strategy)
• Social Media Tools Census (a collection of all accounts, logins, and users)
• Additional items: benchmarks, reports, and best practices

SCIENCE FACT: You are the worst predictor of what will go viral on the Interwebs. So am I.

What’s an Upworthy? We curate and aggregate meaningful stuff you make on the Internet and compel the world to share it for the cause of good and reason and freedom and whiskey. Here’s a handy diagram that totally almost explains everything about what we do:
We find the amazing things you care about, or don’t know that you should care about yet, put a nice new coat of paint on them (headline and a picture), shine them up all pretty (new description), then send them back into the world to be shared some more. We might be pushing the radical homosexual agenda of equality for all, or cheering on female people’s weird demands to get “paid the same” as male people, or just showing you a brave kid and making you cry, or helping you find an apartment you can’t afford, or trying to seduce Ryan Gosling.

What qualifies us to be social media experts? Well, as an example, you may have seen an Obama ad that debunked the Koch Brothers recently. We provided almost half the traffic to the video using our secret blend of herbs and spiciness.

We use fancy data to test every single piece of content we put out there, constantly changing things up as we get more results that improve our shareability. So at #NN12, we’re gonna give away all our best secrets about how to make your stuff SUPER SHAREABLE.

To that end, here’s a teaser of what to expect. Let’s walk through a hypothetical situation.

Say there’s a big, scary corporate bill that fundamentally threatens free speech on the Internet. We’ll call it the Great Orange Satan Protection Act, or GOSPA for short. Its purpose: to shut down dailykos.com.

In order to defeat the powers of evil, using the Internet, we must use all the resources at our disposal.

You and I already know that the media are a bunch of dinosaurs distrusted by both sides of the aisle for their bias toward sensationalism and suckiness. You also know most people trust their friends. Thus, sharing sites like Facebook will drive communication going forward.

To win, we must get people to share.

There are two puzzles to solve to WIN SHARING.
1)  If people see this, will they want to share it?
2)  If someone shares this with you, will you click on it?

Here’s a few things we’ve learned so far.

1. Visual is more shareable. It’s true. Graphics and videos do better. So that means that you should ask yourself, “Can I distill my message into a simple, compelling idea that grabs the viewer?” All the statistics in the world mean diddly squat if no one is engaged enough to learn about them.
2. Emotional arousal causes people so share. We’re not just saying that. Researchers are publishing papers. People share because of anger, humor, inspiration, anxiety. Sadness actually is not a good one. It’s depressive, and it depresses sharing. We’re going to help you think that through.
3. Awesome headlines work. Upworthy’s co-founder, Peter Koechley, was the managing editor of The Onion. The most important thing he learned: it’s ALL ABOUT the headlines. At Upworthy, we use a creative brainstorming process similar to The Onion. And we will TELL YOU WHAT THAT IS. And we will tell you how a sexy headline turned a YouTube video with 700,000 views into one with 17 million views (#WINNING!).
4. People share to tell people who they are. Conspicuous expression is displacing conspicuous consumption, people. Make a headline too polarizing and people will be afraid to share it, for fear of painting themselves in an unflattering light. So choose wisely (unlike me that one time.)
5. Optimizing for FaceSpace and TEH Twitterverse is very, very important. Many organizations and good causes have incredibly insightful ideas and data, and they spend lots of money to make them look pretty on their website. What they don’t do is make those things work flawlessly on other people’s websites — specifically, Mark Zuckerberg’s website. They don’t test and adapt on the fly. We do. One test we ran recently increased the sharing on Facebook from our site by 330%. Feature change coming soon…Let me repeat that: We are going to increase our share output by
   
   See, if you were Andrew Breitbart’s protégé right now, sharing your pro-GOSPA infographic, you’d be failing at the tubez, missing out on tons of traffic.
   

It’s not too late to stop GOSPA. You just have to come to our training to really master the art of the share.

So join me and my fellow curator, Sara Critchfield, at 3 p.m. on Friday, June 6, at Netroots Nation.

We’ll pass out secrets, workshop some of your content, and help you win the tubez. Let us know you are coming by RSVPing on our event page. We’ll choose one or two RSVPers to workshop in front of the entire group. You can also tweet at us to RSVP, if you holler to @advodude, @upworthy, or @saracritchfield.

BONUS PRIZES!
You read this monstrosity all the way through. You are an amazing human being.

Just for that, if you stop by our booth in the lounge, we’ll give you a free chair massage from actual professionals! And maybe a pony.

Also, you get a bonus KITTEH!

See you at Netroots Nation, Kossacks!

It’s true. National security hasn’t historically been the territory of progressives. Remember the swift-boating of John Kerry? The draft-dodging of Bill Clinton? Or that terrible picture of Michael Dukakis on a tank? For too long, progressives have been on the defensive when national defense is concerned.

But no longer. President Obama has one of the strongest records on national security and foreign policy of any president in recent memory. As a result, the Left is suddenly seeing national security as a winning campaign issue.

It’s time for progressives to engage security voters. But Netroots Nation is a busy place. So here are three reasons that if you attend one training this year at Netroots, you should make it Decoding Defense: Speaking with Authority on National Security Issues.

1. Arguments framed in national security terms (and backed by the military) win in Washington. From AIDS to climate change, we’ve long known that talking about issues in terms of America’s national security wins moderate GOP votes. But those national security arguments have to be convincing – and often, backed by the military and defense experts. Take Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, for example. The willingness of top brass to reassure GOP Senators that allowing LGBT members to serve went a long way toward ensuring the hated program’s repeal. Likewise, support for the New START treaty from five former Republican Secretaries of State helped convince Republicans to vote for ratification. Such bipartisan support does not happen without arguments that recognize where the military is at and what our true national security needs really are.
2. The military is more progressive than you think. Care about human rights? International development? Healthcare? The environment? The military is taking a lead on every single one of these issues. And, they’re providing an example for the rest of us to follow. From basic R&D on alternative fuels to a government-run national healthcare system, the military is already taking on the challenges that many progressives think make sense for the rest of the nation. And the right has actually attacked them for it.  But we’re not paying attention. Cross-pollination between the progressive community and the progressive military could be a huge asset in convincing the rest of the nation to follow where the military has led.
3. The nation needs national security policy run by progressives. Let’s face it, Republican national security has really screwed up the country (Iraq, anyone?). And they are still trying to lead us astray for their own profits. Heard about the upcoming war in Iran? Leaving the national security conversation to the right has left America vulnerable and distracted the nation from creating sound environmental, economic or social policy. The more progressives engage in the national security conversation, the more likely we are to have a national security policy that reflects OUR values, that actually restores America as a global democratic leader, and that doesn’t starve our economy of needed resources.

Convinced? Join us at 3pm on Thursday, 6/7 at Netroots Nation to learn from some of the best writers on the beat how to navigate the often complicated, acronym-driven conversation around national security with eloquence and pizazz. Check out the details and training description, and then tweet us at @plough_shares, @pogoblog and @AdamWeinstein to let us know you’ll be there!

Click here to register now for Netroots Nation, June 7-10, 2012.

While grassroots marketing efforts are moving online, there are still lots of things we do to enact change and create awareness offline. Unfortunately, it’s really difficult to understand how well these are working when it comes to driving traffic to our website.

You’ll notice the success of offline marketing in Google Analytics in one way:

Direct traffic does little for the analyst. Direct traffic means someone typed a URL into their web browser, clicked a link in an email or arrived at your site via a bookmark. Seeing Direct traffic increase usually means we are creating more brand awareness, but how do we know which effort was doing the most? Is it a radio campaign, a mailer, word of mouth? You may want to throw your hands in the air when it comes to traffic offline traffic, but don’t give up home, because there is a way!

You may have seen a URL like the one above around the web. Those parameters after the URL are called campaign tags, and they give special meaning to traffic in Google Analytics. When a user goes to a URL with campaign tagging, they are no longer lumped into the Direct traffic bucket, which is why you’ll most often see these type of URLs in email. The three required parameters are:

&utm_campaign – The name of the marketing campaign

&utm_source – The specific source of the campaign

&utm_medium – The broad medium of the campaign

A good example would be a mailer sent out to people who have donated in the past. You might point them to your website, http://www.takeactionforllamas.com. To know they came from this mailer, you’d add the following parameters: http://www.takeactionforllamas.com/?utm_campaign=fall2012mailer&utm_medium=postcard&utm_source=donation_mailer

Ok, I can see you looking into the computer screen like I’m crazy. People will never type in such a long URL right? Enter the URL shortener. Most large non-profits I’ve worked with have a Bit.ly Enterprise account, which gives them a special, short, vanity URL like http://tal.co/mailer, organizations without Bit.ly enterprise can still use many of the other shorteners out there like http://goo.gl. So make a memorable shortened url for your campaign:

Turn: http://www.takeactionforllamas.com/?utm_campaign=fall2012mailer&utm_medium=postcard&utm_source=donation_mailer

Into: http://tal.co/justice

Another option is to make a specific, memorable URL for your campaign. People will easily remember seeing the URL http://SocksForLlamas.org which then redirects to your normal website, with campaign tags: http://www.takeactionforllamas.com/?utm_campaign=llamasocks&utm_medium=billboard&utm_source=route95

You can even go a step further and embed a shortened URL in a QR Code, so it’s very convenient for your advocates to get to your campaign, and now you can show a much more accurate ROI on your marketing efforts.

If you are interested in learning how to get a better picture of your marketing campaigns, be sure to check out my session at Netroots Nation on Friday, 6/8 at 3pm. In “Getting Analytical with Google Analytics” I’ll answer the following questions: How can I tell which method of marketing is working the best for our cause and driving traffic to our website? Are visitors from certain sources more likely to take action then others? The session will take a deeper dive into Google Analytics and show some tips and tricks for getting a better understanding of your marketing campaigns and how to identify the most successful ways to encourage action on your website.

Click here to register now for Netroots Nation, June 7-10, 2012.

Text messaging is already the de facto way our society communicates. People text to make plans with their friends and send vital information to coworkers. They have their phones with them at all times – on the dinner table when they’re eating, and by their bedside when they’re asleep.

Since people are already communicating with each other over text, shouldn’t that be how you’re reaching them too? More and more groups are realizing that a mobile campaign can be a simple and effective way to build a list of supporters and reach them with targeted, relevant information.

In this post, I’ll step through why a mobile campaign is an important part of your outreach strategy.

1. Make it Easy for People to Join
Texting makes it easy for people to join your campaign, and it integrates seamlessly with your existing outreach. No matter what kind of communications materials you have – whether it’s a PSA, a newsletter, a flyer, or even signs at an event – it’s simple to add a mobile “call to action.” That’s the brief shout-out that says “Text our KEYWORD to our SHORT CODE”.

Then, people can text to join no matter where they see your message. In fact, research has shown that asking people to text in is 3-4 times more effective than directing them to a website. Your audience may not be at a computer, but it’s a sure bet they have their phones.

2. Ask Your Users Questions to Learn More About Them
Once people have joined your list, a mobile campaign lets you reach out them to learn more. Mobile marketing software (like my company, Mobile Commons) tracks and logs every text message you send or receive. So if you ask people for their zip code, or their email address, or what issues they care about most, you can store their answers. That’s vital when you want to segment them later.

3. Target Your Message to the Most Relevant People
Once you’ve learned about your users, you can be sure then to only send them the messages that matter most to them. Target event alerts by zip code, or send action items only to the people who care about those issues. By sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time, you can motivate your audience far more than with a general blast.

4. Organize a Call-in Campaign
Of course, mobile communications is not just about text messaging. If you’re an activist organization, the most important part of the mobile phone could just be the phone. At Mobile Commons, we can run a click-to-call campaign that routes each user to his or her local legislator. That way, you’re motivating local advocacy on a national level.

That’s just a small teaser of how a mobile campaign can help with your existing communications. For more ideas, please stop by my Netroots Nation training on Friday, 6/8 at 10:30am. In “Winning Wireless” we’ll discuss how text messaging, phone calls, and the mobile web can help your organization connect with supporters and drive meaningful action.

Click here to register now for Netroots Nation, June 7-10, 2012.

Image by Yasin Öztürk.

Here’s a story of two online petitions.

These petitions were both sent out by Democrats running for Congress to their email list of supporters recently. They both had to do with the recent Republican vote to end Medicare in the House of Representatives. And they both called out the Republicans in the race for supporting the vote.

The email linking to the first petition read like this:

This week House Republicans unveiled their budget, and it holds the same toxic provisions that would turn Medicare into a voucher program even though more than 1.8 million Illinois seniors rely on the popular program.

[my opponents] voted for nearly the same budget proposal last year.

Sign our petition telling them to oppose the plan and show independence from Washington GOP leaders >>

And the second read like this:

On Friday, Paul Ryan said he was ‘excited’ about cutting Medicare, and that the Republicans are “just going to keep doing it and doing it, to show that we’re serious and we’re committed.”

As budget talks bear down on us and Ryan is about to announce a new 2012 budget plan, I am asking my Tea Party Republican opponent to make a choice. Will he join Paul Ryan and the Republican Congress in forcing seniors to give up their Medicare guaranteed benefits to pay for tax cuts for millionaires?

Click here to add your name to this petition before my delivery to [my opponent] on Wednesday.

What’s the difference? Take a few moments to read closely, see if you can find the answer.

On the surface, these emails are very similar. Both link to petitions about Republicans wanting to end Medicare. Both hit a Republican opponent for supporting this plan. If you clicked the bolded link in each email, you would have been taken to a petition page where you could sign each respective petition. In fact, tactically, these emails are almost identical — they’re asking you to do pretty much the same thing.

But strategically, they’re very different.

The first email is slacktivism — it’s asking you to take a meaningless online action, for the purposes of perhaps making you feel good that you “did something.” But more likely, the campaign is hoping you’ll share it with your friends, who will sign themselves and grow the campaign email list, so the campaign can ask more people for donations.

Why is the first email meaningless? Because there’s no indication of what will happen to that petition after you sign it. And that probably means nothing will happen after you sign it.

In the first example, we’re being asked to sign a petition to “tell [the republican opponents] to oppose the plan and show independence from Washington GOP leaders.” Given that call to action, it’s logical to ask the question, “In what way will my signature tell them anything?” Will the campaign collecting the petition signatures deliver the names to their opponents, to make sure these names “tell” them something? Will the campaign inform the media of how many signatures they got, to “tell” the opponents through the press? Will the campaign make each name into a form letter, make little paper airplanes from them, and throw them at the opponents during debates? How exactly will the message get through?

We’re being asked to go from point A (signing the petition) to point C (sending a message) without a point B (the target actually getting the message in some way). Without point B, there’s a disconnect. This email has a theory of change that’s broken.

The second email, however, tells you directly about point B: “Click here to add your name to this petition before my delivery to [my opponent] on Wednesday.” (emphasis added)

Here, the theory of change is intact — if you click on this email’s link and sign this petition, it will be delivered to the Republican opponent, so your message will be received.

Having a strong theory of change can make the difference between success and failure. If you clearly communicate to the online activists you talk to your theory of change (and then you do what you say you are going to do and report back to them with the results), you build up immense credibility. People will want to take action, because you have a track record of being honest, effective, and powerful. And of course, a strong theory of change means you make an actual impact in the real world, too. A petition delivered to nobody is a waste of time and clicks, but a petition delivered in the real world, in front of the media, with a crowd of supporters to hand over the stacks of paper to the target can create actual pressure, and help win your demands.

At Netroots Nation in Providence this year, I’ll be leading a training entitled “How to Make Clicks Mean Something: Strategic Planning for Online Campaigns.” There, I’ll present the method I and others at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) use to plan our campaigns. I’ll be discussing theory of change, but also the other pieces that go into making an online campaign impactful and successful — setting good goals, coming up with a strategy, reporting back, and using momentum moments to drive forward. And I’ll be presenting a case study of one of the PCCC’s successes as an example.

Come join me on Saturday, 6/9 at 10:30am and learn more about how to prevent slacktivism and start winning your online campaigns. And in the meantime, make sure every campaign you launch has a strong, clearly communicated theory of change!

Click here to register now for Netroots Nation, June 7-10, 2012.

New social networks tend to freak out professionals like myself; but only because our colleagues think that we must sign up for an account – sight unseen.

But Pinterest is different and it’s recent growth is unparalleled beacause of two key reasons – visual storytelling and women. Still don’t believe it? Just take a look at some of these impressive stats:

• 18M unique visitors in March 2012
• 10 million monthly unique users - faster than any standalone site ever
• American users of the social network spend an average of one hour and 17 minutes on the site
• and the biggest demographic for Pinterest: women ages 25 to 34

How did Pinterest manage to do what no other social network could?

We now live in a world where information is potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning? Only human beings can tell you where it is. We’re extracting meaning from our minds and our own lives. - inventor and futurist George Dyson

Pinterest is successful, particularly among women, because the images it chronicles tell a story and history tells us that women are natural storytellers [see Scheherazade]. Also of note, a recent study by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the University of Indiana concludes that women are 40% more likely to donate (to a charitable cause) than men.

So how can nonprofits leverage Pinterest and it’s captive audience? Two words: meaningful metrics.

If your organization’s metrics include meaningful outcome measurements,  visual storytelling can become an effective way of reaching a key constituency – women.

Let’s take the American Red Cross for example – known for their social media prowess. They’ve managed to take their Pinterest page and turn into a visual story supporting their goals of emergency preparedness and blood donation with ‘pinnable’ infographics .

Amnesty International uses their board to highlight their littlest activists and inspiring people. And there are many more nonprofits using meaningful metrics to make a difference on Pinterest.

True, every nonprofit isn’t cut out to take Pinterest by storm, but those who have a solid communications plans can use Pinterest as a visual storytelling tool dedicated to a key audience.

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today. - Robert McAfee Brown

 crossposted @ thefriendraiser.com

In today’s ever changing communication landscape, you should liken your social media efforts to building a house.  You’ll create your blueprint (social, web, mobile, etc), amass your tools (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Flickr, YouTube and FourSquare), and finally, bring your rulers and leveler (outcome and output measurements).

Many of us who utilize social media are well versed in our tools and blueprint but we often fail to measure our results – or if we do, we stick strictly to outputs.

By definition, output measurements measure those that are tangible and concrete; things like Twitter followers, Facebook likes, etc.  It’s very easy to rest on those laurels when reporting social media success.

But social media is about engagement. How do you measure that?

Start by determining a few key outcome measurements that will speak to success.  Outcome measures are harder to identify, which is why most of us don’t bother; but they help to identify and quantify change.

For example, if you are conducting an advocacy campaign, you shouldn’t limit yourself to the number Twitter followers that your organization has (output). Instead, determine an outcome measurement that clearly identifies ‘change’ like click-throughs on a specific link that sends emails sent to legislators about your campaign.

If you haven’t explored ways to measure outcomes, take a look at the ‘social engagement’ tool in your Google Analytics account or the ‘reach’ tool in your Facebook fan page’s Insights.

For even more detailed information (and fancy charts), try a paid social media aggregator like SproutSocial or HootSuite. Both tools are affordable options for nonprofits or consultants and can help you measure effectively.

(See image above from SproutSocial – reporting period Jan 1-31, 2012 from @thefriendrasier’s Twitter account.)

Being armed with two forms of measurements will help you determine real social media success in current campaigns as well as update your blueprint for future campaigns.

Well, what are you waiting for? Get out there and start building!

(Cross-posted @ the art of friendraising.)