Group+2+The+Trust+for+Hidden+Villa


 * The Trust for Hidden Villa**

Participant Name: Nathalie Palmer Arch Web Site: http://www.hiddenvilla.org Email: development@hiddenvilla.org Phone: 650-949-9702


 * Social Media Presences**

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Hidden-Villa/ Blog: YouTube: Twitter: HiddenVilla LinkedIn: Listening:

After each session, use the wiki journal to jot down key takeaways, ahas, next action steps, or questions.
 * Wiki Journal**

Orientation: Overview of the Peer Exchange and answer questions July 13, 2011 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

**Goals and Obstacles:** Articulating Hidden Villa's social media goals gets overwhelming quickly because many of our senior staff remain unconvinced of the relevance of social media to any part of our mission. There is a second camp of staff and board that have seen what an effective social media strategy can do for a nonprofit and are impatient for an phenomenally successful outcome to report to the first camp. What stands between us and these amazing outcomes is capacity and patience. We have yet to identify a benchmark that can appease the expectations we have in the context of the time we have to achieve them. The social media coordinator (me) is allotted 10 hours a week to the weird, wild and wired beast that is social media, and it's intimidating to think that there are many organizations out there (including a fair number participating in this workgroup) that have dedicated staff members (or even teams!) who can devote their time entirely to taming this animal--can you imagine training an unruly puppy with just 10 hours a week with no one else to help you? Time management doesn't cover half of it. However, we are all up to the challenge and quite excited to participate.


 * Reflections and Ahas: ** I believe my greatest challenge and the pivotal reflection I can share is that I am not good at SMART goals. Identifying the goals that light up all the letters on the Wheel of Social Media board that spell "SMART" has thus far been difficult for me; sometimes I have the "S" and the "R" up there, or perhaps the "A" is lit up but "R" and "T" are nowhere in sight. I don't think "M" has ever been a letter I can count on--and yet I know that it's the second letter, and without measurement I can't direct my time appropriately, achieve buy-in from potential participants and get to the next round in the game. It is therefore with great excitement that I embark on this journey with Beth (who in this analogy is the social media Vanna White) and the rest of the Peer Group.

**Next Steps:** Let's talk Pilot Program. Hidden Villa is launching its new website on September 1st, 2011. There will be a Twitter, Facebook and "Email This" button on every page on our new website. Hidden Villa's pilot program for the Peer Exchange can focus on driving traffic from our new website to and from our social media channels, monitoring the success of these efforts, and listening to and responding to questions, comments and complaints. It is unlikely that Hidden Villa will be able to launch its new blogs (likely limited to our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program and Animal Husbandry Program, at least initially) at this time, but as capacity develops around the launch it would be beneficial to measure traffic and response around these pages as well.

Session 1: Assessing Your Networked Nonprofit Maturity of Practice July 28 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST


 * Reflections and Ahas: ** While sometimes I feel like Hidden Villa is running, and other times I worry that we are crawling, Hidden Villa is probably at the "walking" stage of its social media strategy, according to Beth's continuum. In order to move to a running stage, Hidden Villa needs to a) create the infrastructure for more than one person to effectively contribute to the social media strategy and b) find/empower a few wonderful volunteers to help us use it.

Social Media Measurement Pilot
 * Hidden Villa Pilot Program **

**Goal of Pilot:** Promote September 1st relaunch of website (www.hiddenvilla.org) through social media to inspire interest in Hidden Villa's mission and values, encourage interaction and measure response


 * Key Performance Indicators: **
 * New followers, likes, etc. (although Paine advises against this)
 * Increased engagement
 * Advocacy/changed relationships (increased recommendations, retweets, testimonials)
 * Increased activities/outcomes (participation, application/registration to programs, donations)


 * Stage 1: Environmental Audit (Due: August 31) **
 * Define audience
 * Generate environmental study/snapshot of current online community relationship index (Paine: control, trust, satisfaction, commitment, exchange, communal, 38 of 52)
 * Create spreadsheets to contain relevant information


 * Stage 2: Personal Audit (Due: August 31) **
 * Document/assess all activities of social media coordinator
 * Develop better understanding of web analytics tools
 * Redefine success to achievable goal


 * Stage 3: Organizational Audit (Due: ) **
 * Break social media interactions down into themes to start to primary interests of online community (see below for thematic breakdown)
 * Develop list of engagement
 * Develop continuum of impressions (Paine's KI Over Time slide, 49 of 52)


 * Stage 4: It Begins (Starting: September 1) **
 * Promote relaunch of website on Twitter and Facebook
 * Promote blogs on these channels
 * Respond, provide customer service, interactions, positive reinforcements for interaction


 * Stage 5: Measurement and More (Starting: September 1) **
 * Monitor all measurable impressions
 * Capture and relay all results in a timely manner to spreadsheets


 * Stage 6: Analysis **
 * Analyze results
 * Weigh results against KPI
 * Weigh results against first snapshot


 * Stage 7: Postmortem **
 * //Did it work?//
 * Demonstrate pluses and deltas of social media plan to staff and board to inspire participation

Session 2: Align Social Media Measurement With Results August 25 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

**Measurement Pilot Design Worksheet** Note: I understand the colors used in this worksheet might be bright/hard to read. While they help me organize my thoughts, I can also tone them down if anyone would like to make that request.

__1. What are the results of the activity you want to measure for the pilot?__

**Describe the activity** **Broad:** Promote September 1st relaunch of website (www.hiddenvilla.org) through social media to inspire interest in Hidden Villa's mission and values. Encourage interaction and measure response. **Bearing down:** Create blogging program. Develop infrastructure for content creation and then moderate/curate content for regular blog posts. Experiment with tagging. Make sure to notify followers and fans when posts are made. Monitor, moderate and measure feedback (retweets, comments). Use analytics to develop value impression spreadsheets for more popular topics and relay to executive staff. Initiate introduction of social media strategy into four-year strategic plan. **Describe the result from the activity** **Broad:** Increased interest in Hidden Villa's mission and values. Increased discussion of Hidden Villa's values in community. Increased awareness of events and classes/workshops. **Create a series of if/then statements that go from your result down to your use of social media** If the social media coordinator sets up a protocol and schedule for blog posts, staff and volunteers will create content (ie. blog posts). If they create content, we will have more content to share with our community. If we have more content to share with our community, our community will see that we have a diverse set of interesting values/partnerships/opportunities/activities. If our community is more aware of us, we will be able to share this information with them better, and serve them better.
 * **In the organizational work plan?** I will spend 10 hours a week managing this project, which is the same amount of time I have been allowed to allocate. Unfortunately, there are a great deal of other deadlines that are cropping up around now, including our big annual fundraising event. I regret to say I've had to scale back on some of my more immediate goals (like an organizational/personal audit) and hope to achieve those early October.
 * **Keeps your executive director or board up at night?** Probably not. But, it keeps my director of development up at night, and that's an excellent start.
 * ** Doable, manageable? ** Yes--I just need to get past our big event. After the 24th, all I have to do is create the infrastructure to encourage participation in a timely manner and enforce/employ it.
 * ** Everyone agrees: ** I am scheduled to finalize and confirm this project with the development department Tuesday, September 20. Despite other setbacks in my timeline, I am going to press very hard for that meeting.
 * Bearing down: ** Awareness in online community of Hidden Villa's mission and values extends to knowledge and interest of upcoming blog posts. Recipes, ideas, themes and values are topic of discussion in social media channels. Most importantly, we want people to engage, connect and ask questions.

__2. Strategy__

**SMART Objectives (How many, by when?) (Results, capacity, tools)** **Environment:** Receptive? Friendly? We believe our environment is "ready" for this type of action. **Messaging/content:** All content will be proofread/soundchecked before posting--initially. Once organizational tone and messaging is embedded we will be able to be more flexible with self-publishing enthusiasts. While we're open to experimentation, the tone we'll start with is open, friendly and enthusiastic, and very personable. Informative and helpful. When there is friction the voice will respond immediately, politely and graciously--without going belly-up. We are people, too--treat us nicely! **Channels:** FB, Twitter, blogs **Budget:** 10 hrs/week (@ 1 person's pay rate) **Timeline:** Measure goals and check KPI at conclusion of Kanter project
 * **Audience description:** HV community, on and offline. Our target audience is typically from the bay area (regional, due to our location-based programs). Sometimes they care about food and food issues, such as sustainability, farm animals/meat production, etc.
 * ** Target audience: ** Activists (without advocacy), youth, parents, farmers, gardeners, educators, bloggers, historians, donors, activity enthusiasts (hikers and joggers), environmentalists, animal lovers
 * **Influencers:** See above, with followers (Deborah Madison, Mark Bittman, Alice Waters, Richard Louv, Marianne Nestle, Michael Pollan, Ann Cooper, Jesse Kool, Delaine Eastin, Michelle Obama)
 * **Ladder of engagement:** Fans/followers->blogwatchers/observers->blog commentaters/RTers/FB commentaters->bloggers/advocates/posters->volunteers and community activisits

__3. Benchmarks__ **How did you come up with your "how many" and "by when?"** Looking at internal growth goals is difficult with only about a year of context. Anything we say is likely to be unrealistic based on our lack of experience. However, we can look around this peer group and try to determine approximately where we should be standing. I don't see anyone coming forward with any specific numbers, but it's not too difficult to do a little research against organizations with the size and scope of Hidden Villa and come to some conclusions. __4. Key Performance Metrics__
 * Compared to peers? Compared to history?** Peers--history isn't nearly as complete as it might be.
 * Realistic or not?** We plan on being flexible about goals--measuring progress is

**Look at each of your SMART objectives and ask what is the single best metric to know you are on track?** Tracking the growth of our fans/followers is, despite arguments, still our ultimate and best metric. (No matter how many RTs we have, the question we get asked most is "Well, did anyone new follow you?") While value impressions are important to collect, they are not really translatable at this moment to executive staff without also needing to throw in "Oh yes, and we got 15 more followers." It's hard to convey the amount of dross and spam in both channels (although FB has the advantage over Twitter) and explain that a smaller number of fans/followers that are more dedicated can be twice as useful as three times as many fans/followers. **Ask what you don't have to collect?** A A
 * If you end up with a long list, can you narrow it down to the 3-5 data points to get started?**

__5. Costs__

**How much staff time will you invest in implementing the activity?** 10 hours a week are allocated of one staff member's time (this varies based on departmental need). This could amount to about 25% of a person's time. However, as schedules and priorities shift due to upcoming needs and expectations, it is unlikely we will have more than 2 hours a week to allocate to this project without serious consideration. **What are the opportunity costs?** There is a chance that social media could, some day in the distant future, replace the bulk of traditional media (which is hugely expensive). The trick about social media is that the opportunity cost will always hover on the lower end of that continuum--resources will always scale to overwhelm costs because (unless things change), social media is free (outside of staff time). If staff time was already (ideally) allocated, then there has not been a shift. **Are you adding resources or shifting them?** The social media coordinator position remains largely unchanged (see above). **What are the consequences of not investing time?** Uncertainty! Worry about the road not traveled. Not keeping our finger on the pulse of our community. Fear of the unknown. Our website could go unnoticed. Our mission and values could go undercommunicated. There are people who could benefit from our programs and services who might never hear about us. **How can you efficiently track time spent on the activity?** That's extremely difficult. I have to complete social media tasks/coordination in snatches of time between this or that project and deadline. It's impossible to gauge, definitely, how much time we spend on social media. I'm going to have to think about it. Any suggestions?

__6. Right tool for the job__

**Content analysis of social or traditional media** A **Primary audience via online, mail or phone surveys** A **Analytics** Google Analytics, ow.ly, Tweetstats, native Hootsuite applications

__7. Turn data into action__

**Formal reflection process** A **Review data process** A **Real time feedback loops** A

Session 3: Why Does Bad Measurement Practice Happen To Good Nonprofits? September 22 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Session 4: Benchmarking: Networked Nonprofits Measure Social Media in Context October 27 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Session 5: Overview of Measurement Tools November 17 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Session 6: Transform Data into Wisdom and Reporting December 15 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Session 7: Reflection and Reiteration January 5 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Learning Culmination January 12 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST This session will be a “virtual party” to celebration the completion of the program and for participants to share what they learned through their action learning projects.