March 27, 2009

Making Your Website Work for You

Stephen Rockwell

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Today’s Agenda

• Introductions• Web 2.0 – What is It?• Building Networks Online

– Donor Community– Sector-specific Networks– Community Planning Efforts

• Action Steps You Can Take This Week

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Exploring 2.0: The tools that are changing the game

• Social networking websites (myspace, linkedin, change.org)– On-line communities

• Blogs, podcasts, videocasts– Multimedia by and for the masses

• Microblogs (Twitter Facebook Updates)• RSS (Real Simple Syndication):

– Interconnected news for/from your site• Tagging (del.ici.ous):

– Sharing bookmarks• Wikis:

– Producing knowledge collaboratively• User provided and rated content (digg, youtube,

allrecipes.com):– Wisdom of the masses determines content

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Tech. Background: A short history of technological change

Printing PressBook/Newspaper

1453Photography

1826Radio

1896Television1920s

Text Audio Video

InternetText/ email

1969

World Wide WebImages

1990

Digital MusicMP3 1994

Digital MovieOnline1997

1st Generation Media – 500 years, One-Way Communication

2nd Generation Media – 30 Years, Multi-Modal Communication

Pictures

Technology fundamentally changed economics of content creation and who has access to the keys of the network.

• The marginal cost of production and distribution of content ~ $0

• 80% of non–“hits” are now produced –new voices, democratized filtering– Networked empowered organizing takes

advantage of a wider range of stakeholder perspectives to move the mission.

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2.0 Ramifications: Online engagement and fundraising become the standard

• Wall Street Journal gives MySpace friend updates

• Changing Campaign Fundraising and Organization

• Nonprofit Strategy– What can we learn

from the campaigns?• Fundraising• Community organizing

and mobilization• Operations and

business processes

88,000 Myspacefriends

81,000 Myspacefriends –caught up

Q2: $25 million100,000 donors

Q2: $26 million50,000 donors

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How Does 2.0 Affect Your Organizational Partnerships and External Relationships?

• Draw a diagram of how your organization fits with its partners, donors, funders etc.

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What kind of organization: networked or inward looking?

• Are you this? • Or this?

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Networks and Nonprofits

• Communities are built on connections –human networks

• Technology can help individuals know the network and doing so more tightly knits the network together

• Nonprofits may require more use of social networking than companies given their volunteer and donor needs

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Stage I – Scattered Clusters Stage 2 – Single Hub & Spoke

�������������� ������ ������������������������� ��������������������������������������

Stage 3 – Multi Hub Small World Stage 4 – Core Periphery

Network Evolution

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Today’s Agenda

• Introductions• Web 2.0 – What is It?• Building Networks Online

– Donor Community– Sector-specific Networks– Community Planning Efforts

• Action Steps You Can Take This Week

Your site in a web 2.0 world:Five Strategic Challenges

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1. Content

• Locating, drafting, editing, and posting timely content the first challenge.

• Broaden writing, editing team w/o HTML• Making content consistently formatted,

printable, downloadable– News, calendars, Tips– Including graphics– Aging of content

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Combat the downward spiral

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Content Management:Build an upward spiral

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Permissions for Roles

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2. Presence

• Once you have content, how do you elbow for presence among so many other sites?

• What makes your content stand out?• What makes first time visitors become

repeat visitors?• How can you increase attention of target

visitors?• Are you look at your web presence

holistically, rather just your website?17

Presence Tools

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• Indexing and searchability• Cross referencing within site• Connecting to Email news • Aggregating (RSS news)• “Tell a Friend” and easy downloads• Tagging (del.icio.us)• Blogging

Example: news feed sign up

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live!

3. Engagement

• Once people come regularly to your site, what can they do?

• How does the site connect to your goals, your services profile, your organizing?

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Engagement Tools

• Surveys• Calendar, Jobs• Register for classes, , programs, events• Contact the media• Petitions, Contact public officials• Organize a meeting• Request a service, refer a client

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Events on Calendar

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Event sign up

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Example: Take Action

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4. Constituency

• Who are your supporters and how can you work better with them? – Events, donations, manage training and other

services– Organizing volunteers and other activities

• From a set of tools to an integrated environment– Connection to email, internal databases

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Categorizing Web Actors

Building Relationships

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5. Community

• Does everything depend on you?• Will you become a network centric

organization?

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Community Building Tools

• Internal projects and committees (workspaces, shared documents)

• Develop policy and knowledge collaboratively (wikis)

• On line training• Expanded blogging, chat• Users create their own discussions,

forums

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Example: discussion forums

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Workspace example

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Donor Scenario: A New Take on the Annual Appeal

• Annual appeal traditional resources: – Development director and staff– Letter and Email– Board support

• 2.0 Resources– Engage friends on social networking sites– Create incentives for donors to ask friends to

contribute– Have individuals blog with personal stories to support

campaign • Raise money for the cause and not solely the

organization? Work with similar organizations?

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Sector Scenario: You are an Out of school Program Seek to Build a New Website

• Key Questions For Website Design – How can a portal be both a place for transacting the

business of education, while building a community of support?

– How do we construct windows to the site that are suitable for the different audiences: students, parents, educators, guidance counselors, college administrators, student loan administrators?

• Key Questions for Content– What applications should be included? – What partners need to be at the table for building

tools?–– If you build it, will they come?If you build it, will they come?

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Today’s Agenda

• Introductions• Web 2.0 – What is It?• Building Networks Online

– Donor Community– Sector-specific Networks

• Action Steps You Can Take This Week

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Action Steps This Week

• Amend your communications and web strategy to include a 2.0 adoption bath.

• Start a blog through a free service and link from your site.

• Set up an account for your organization on social networking site.

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Action Steps for the Next Few Months

• Experiment – There’s a lot more that we don’t know than we know.

• New Website - Engage stakeholders in planning for new site, use open source CMS to deliver on 2.0 capabilities

• Ongoing strategic technology management –Develop strategic technology plan or integrate tech. with existing strategic plan.

• Develop communications strategy that includes 2.0 – provide staffing and marketing resources

• Engage outside expertise as necessary.