In this garage session, we've split into two groups.   The "Got Mobile?" group has gone outside, so I will stay here inside  blogging, anchored to the power strip,  with the "Twitter for Social Causes" group, with Susan Mernit and Kwan Booth.   Should be good.   I'll try my best to capture what's going on.  

Twitter for Social Causes

Susan spent a year running the Knight News Challenge, an online news challenge.   It tripled the traffice to the site, boosted blog posts, etc.   Susan saw how effective social media could be, if you planned ahead.   She had a tiny team with very little time, and they could pull it off.   So she's going to share it.

Kwan Booth is an editor/community activist based in  west Oakland.   He's also a journalist.   HE worked in the "wake the game up campaign" two years ago.   It was very effective in using rappers, etc., to get the youth vote registered.   These two will lead the session.

Susan explains that the point is to do this effectively on small time/staff resources.   She's asking what we'd like to hear addressed in this session?

- do's and don'ts for campaign
- how to link this to an overall campaign strategy, not a one-time campaign
- how to you deal with resistance inside org when oldsters resist social media
- what are advantages of Twitter over other social media
- what are the best tools for managing Twitter
- our followers are used to blasts/broadcasts, how to we switch them to a community / interactive mode
- timing/trend

Susan says a 1-2 month campaign or cause is a good way to test out Twitter, to see if it's something you want to keep pursuing.   It won't burn you out if it's a small effort to test it.   Like a fund drive, a community event, a "bursty" effort to ramp up for a short period time.   You push, then step back and see how it worked.

Do's and don'ts for getting started.   Kwan says the first thing to stress is to focus on the community aspects.   He sees this all too often: at 1:00 they create a Twitter account, at 1:01 they are asking for donations. Wrong.   Start off at least a couple weeks or months or years, just start the conversation.   Susan: does it make sense to start with a tangible target?   Kwan: look at the Wake Up challenge, how are we going to get these kids to the polls to vote.   We made sure that every hiphop star, every politician, etc. talked about the need to get to the poll.   Campaign was run mainly through MySpace and Facebook.  

First find out if your community is on Twitter.  

Susan: so some goals could start with a Twitter campaign, and the goal is to get X number of followers for your campaign.   Another goal could be to refer people back to your Weblink, and measure that daily.   Or maybe you want to measure how many people "re-tweet" you, which means quote you.   Twestival.org raised $250,000 for a cause in many cities in about 2 months.   There were webcasts and parties all over the world with different parties and prizes.   Beth Kantor has blogged about microdonation on her blog using Twitter.  

Susan's advice: don't do anything you can't measure.   1,600 people signed up in 2 months for the garage peer mentoring system, and the Knight contest got a lot of applicants that way.   Think about not only what your goal is, but think about metrics, like a customer survey, what you're measuring.  

Rob Fields is the founder of the Black Rock coalition in NY, focusing on African American communities and their presence in Rock'n'roll.   About 6 months ago, he wanted to get a series of CDs together.   Started using Twitter about 4 months ago, to get the word out.   He has about 800-900 followers, he knows them all and talks to them on regular phone all the time.   He wanted to do one CD, but he got so much info and had such community response that he did 3.   So be open to changes, because Twitter is so fluid.  

Rachel from Common Knowledge is working on short campaign for Operation Smile, @140smile.   The Twitter account is Operation Smile.   They've been on Twitter for awhile.   A company helping with the campaign is putting on a conference twtrcon.com (also their Twitter handle) trying to make campaign popular, and businesses who participate can look good to their public because of being associated with a cause.

Paco from IJ Central talks about how they use  Tweets to make a map of people who care about social justice issues.   (see video  of Paco explaining this)

Beth: what tools?

Kwan:   The first is Twitterlocal.   Can do the same thing with Twello(?).
twello
smictesktop  - target your responses and your immediate base
Tweetdeck
search.twitter
tweetchat

(see video of Susan writing on the flipchart)

Susan: you can find people on Google by entering their name + Twitter into Google, and that will usually give you their handle.

Ivan of Rootwork talks about tweetlater if you want to have regular updates.   They'll do an image of the day from earlier campaigns and schedule those out.

Susan: do people have stories to share?

Rachel from Common Knowledge: I'm a rabid fan of cotweet, which is currently in beta.   It helps a single person Twitter to multiple accounts.   Multiple people tweeting to the same account, i.e. to the NetSquared account.   Like having a multiple-author blog, and some really cool stuff comes out of that in terms of conversational opportunities.

Susan: What else?

(someone): keep your radar up.   Think of search terms of things not just happening now, but where you expect to be going.   Look at colums like tweetdeck, so that those people start to know who you are, and when you are finally ready to talk to them, they are comfortable with you.   Also, many people don't know what hashtags are, so help them through it and use keywords.

Kwan: friendfeed.com is an easy way to transfer twitter stuff to your other accounts.   You should ask yourself "what do I want to contribute to the conversation?"   This is like a cocktail party - you don't want to dominate the conversation, but you start with a brief introduction, then insert a comment or two.   Always retweet info as much as possible.

Susan: it's important to comment back.   For Knight challenge, we hired someone to monitor and comment.   She was brilliant, she would engage people who commented and ask them "thanks for the input, are you going to enter the challenge as well?"   Start following the people who are really good, and you'll notice they're good at the personal reply, publicly individually.   Don't reply privately, that's not what Twitter is about, let others see the side conversation, like they would at the coffeeshop.   That gives the followers a chance to jump in and let the conversation ripple out.

Q: Does it matter if you're not following many people, but if you have a million followers?   Should it be more symmetrical?
A:   Kwan: doesn't matter if you're an information source, but consider having a separate personal account that's public where you're following hundreds.   Then people know that you are a real person getting involved.   Generally if you're a person or a cause, you want to follow people back, and spend some time during the day having the conversation and hearing what they're saying.   If they are following 5,000 people but only 200 follow them, it seems like they're a spammer, suspicious, check 'em out or block them.   It's useful to go through and block the people who follow you that are fake, so Twitter will flag them if they have a lot of blocks.

Susan: new favorite tool is  socialtoo.    It helps sort out who is following and  finds patterns.   Howard Rheingold's blog  is an example.  

Ivan from Rootwork likes toppify, email data on followers.   It's a huge help for an organization.

Susan: the beauty of Twitter is that it's on the phone.   Two months ago there were 19 million people on it.   But how many people in your world are on Twitter, that's the question.

Kwan: I work in underserved communities, and the digital divide is very real, but so is the social and economic.   But everyone has a cell phone, and those under 21 are texting all day long.   You can be a mobile reporter with just an iPhone or Blackberry.   To be honest, most of the kids I talk to are all on Twitter, but they're using it for casual conversation.   I've had to teach them how to use it for social causes.   But older people, over 45-50, it is hard to get them onto it.  

(someone)   I've found that getting older people involved works by saying: if you don't get on, the next generation will lose your wisdom base.   And if you don't get on, someone else from a competing organization will get on.   3rd, corporate agenda will dominate the discussion unless we get the social justice agenda out there too.

Susan: I've written a lot about these topics, go to my sit susanmernit.com.  

Rachel from Common Knowledge: there have been a lot of junky apps, but Brian Solis just posted today info on the Twitterverse that groups the useful ones by purpose.   Microsyntax.org is another one.  

Susan: Kwan and I belong to The Public Media Collaborive a new org of volunteers who wnat to transfer this type of knowlege, particulary in the Bay Area, we're on FB.   Come find us there and please join!

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... out of time again!   Great session folks.   Cheers,   Kristy Holch