Dooley Online

Better Online Storytelling

Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities. 

Senior writer Roger Burks explains, 

"Action is at the heart of what we do – it’s the step that connects our constituents to those we serve. But how do we get that anonymous person sitting behind a computer screen to make that commitment and take action?"

"You have only 56 seconds to convince an online reader that they should read more and stay on your website."

To do this, Mercy Corps connects with people through online storytelling.

Mercy Corps connects readers to a name, a face and a compelling story as quickly as possible, so that they’ll stay and possibly take action. "First make them: Think, Feel, Care."

Burks advises you to focus on the beneficiary of your work. Why? Because people connect with people. And when writing for the web, you need to think about the engagement time of your users - they are bombarded by a lot of content coming your way. Is your content worth it?

Before writing, ask yourself these questions:

• Is this a story I want to tell? If you don’t want to tell it, they don’t want to hear it.

• Does the story have a heartbeat - put yourself in the story. People will connect with the human character at the center of your story.

• Is the story transformative? Are readers in a different place at the end of the story?

• Does it sound like my organization? Keep your organization's branding in mind.

• Does it have an expiration date? It shouldn’t.

• Will it make the reader want to do something?

Elements of a good story include:

• A compelling title - your title is your marketing piece for the story. How people engage with your title determines whether they will read on.

• An intriguing lead or hook - do you have a short summary description that further engages your reader with your story? Does it have a heartbeat?

• Good stories include photos specific to the content. Many people include a photo and caption that touches on the topic, but the best strategy is to make the photo an integral part of the story.

• The narrative is character-driven. Remember, people connect with people.

• It ends with a call to action - or includes multiple ways to take action. The more focused you are on one call the action, however, the more likely the use will consider taking that action.

Think about how you might adopt these guidelines for your online strategy.

Communicating organizational change in times of transition

Attended a meeting today at the PR firm Waggener Edstrom where the topic was how to make major organizational transition work seamlessly. Working with brands like GE Healthcare, Mastercard International, Microsoft and T-Mobile USA, Waggener Edstrom uses storytelling and strategic communications to facilitate the adoption of new ideas.

Given the recent election, I was interested in hearing what they had to say on successfully navigating the waters of change.

Two initial points:

• There are two types of transitions: Well-planned and sudden. The main difference between the two is the transition timeline. 

• Transitions offer an opportunity to tell stories.

When communicating transition, keep in mind the following:

• Keep concern levels down by focusing on the idea that "there is not as much change as you think." While the way an organization functions may change, the organization will continue to move forward.   

• Don't let the story become the transition only. Manage calendar of coverage of the transition with coverage of other organizational outputs. Look at calendars for both internal and external coverage.

• Don't present an obituary. Focus both on looking forward and looking back. It is a continuing evolution. Don't try to scrub history - you will lose credibility if you don't provide an accurate picture of what came before as prelude to where you are going.

• Own the digital building blocks. Create and own as much content as possible so you can strategically disseminate and redistribute messages through different channels. Also, the better you know the content, the more disciplined you are in defining and sharing the message. 

• Remember your audience. Think primarily about how your target audience receives information. Create content for target audiences that can extend to others. Create advocates for your information who can carry your messages to others.

• Establish a communication calendar. Set periodic tick  marks for artificial coverage points - moments in time that trigger "write the story now."  

• Drive confidence without having carefully crafted platitudes. People have filters built up.

• At times you should consider radical translucency rather than transparency. Think about the shower curtain metaphor - would you rather a transparent or translucent shower curtain? Translucent provides enough information. Transparent too much.

What do you think?

eMetrics DC 2008 - Bloggers Wrapup

Back from a useful eMetrics conference and while I digest the information dispensed, I thought I'd compile links to posts highlighting the different sessions.

Another good emetrics participant resource is webanalytics.alltop.com/ and for those who attended our social media session, my twitter links are available at delicious.com/lldoolj2/emetrics2008-S04

For most of these posts, I have included a photo of the author -- this is a visual cue to easily pick out author styles to highlight colleagues who were busy blogging the conference.

Let me know if I've left out any major posts . . .

Author, Twitter/Bio	Site	Post Title/eMetrics Session
	immeria :: an immersion in web analytics	Pre-Conference: eMetrics: the wind is changing
	Search Marketing Gurus	eMetrics Industry Insights Day: The View from the CMO's office Liz Miller (CMO Council)
	SEMClubHouse	Pre-Conference Workshop: eMetrics & Google Analytics a Key Relevance Review Justin Cutroni (EpikOne)
	Eyes on Web Analytics	Overview: eMetrics, Day 1
	Search Marketing Gurus	Social Media: Social Network Analysis. Internet based communities have been widely discussed since the arrival of the concept Web 2.0. So far, the opportunities and risks of business models based on such user groups are not fully clear. Therefore a more fundamental understanding of community-based social structures is needed. First results for two top forums and once collaboration network. Fred Türling (SHS Viveon AG)
	Web Metrics Guru	Social Media: Social Network Analysis. (see description above)
	Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media	Social Media: Reputation and Relationship Management in A Social Media World. Seven steps to measure your social media program in a credible, actionable way. Katie Delahaye Paine (KDPaine & Partners)
	SEMClubHouse	Social Media: Reputation Management & Social Media. (see description above)
	Search Marketing Gurus	Social Media: Actionable Social Media Metrics Both brand perception and shopping have always had a social context. Here are some ideas about where businesses need to focus as the social web grows in importance over the coming years. Jason Burby (ZAAZ) Ryan Turner (ZAAZ, Web Social Architecture)
	Web Metrics Guru	Social Media: Social Media Metrics - Jason Burby & Ryan Turner, ZAAZ. (see description above)
	Search Marketing Gurus	Social Media: Key, Relevance Factors of Expanding Followers, Friends & Fans, In Your Online Community. Tips, tools and stories from the trenches from three people who focus on online engagement and have more links, friends and followers than some small countries have citizens. Beth Kanter (How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media) Laura Lee Dooley (World Resources Institute) Jonathon D. Colman (The Nature Conservancy)
	Web Metrics Guru	Social Media: Followers, Friends, and Fans: Expanding Your Online Community. (see description above)
	Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media	NEW Social Media: eMetrics Panel Slides, Notes, and Blog Posts: ROI of Blogging, Twitter, and Digg for Nonprofits. (see description above)
		Here are the presentation slides for this session: E-Metrics: Followers, Friends, and Fans - Expanding Your Online Community View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: blogging nptech) Why Twitter Matters View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: microblog analytics) Building Buzz Without a Budget View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: webcontent content)
	Eyes on Web Analytics	Overview: eMetrics, Day 2 And what's the deal with Hotel WiFi?
	Web Metrics Guru	Keynote: James G. Robinson, Director of Web Analytics, The New York Times. How The New York Times uses web analytics to grow both their print and online audiences, improve web engagement, and increase revenue and profit.
	Search Marketing Gurus	Retention: Navigating a University Website: Surely the Smartest People on the Planet Can Know Where to Click?. Discover why user testing with your target market is a must and learn how to undertake segmentation based on real user behavior, not internal assumptions. Vicky Brock (Highland Business Research) Vicky Brock Emetrics Presentation View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: research francisco)
	Web Metrics Guru	Acquisition: DIY SEM: Your Agency May Not Be the Best Resource. How to audit your existing search engine marketing (SEM) program, how to identify the optimization strategies that make sense for your business, and some of the benefits and barriers to managing your own SEM program. Gary Angel (Semphonic) Mark Ruzomberka (Traffic.com) David Harrod (NAVTEQ)
	Occam's Razor	Google Analytics: Google Analytics Releases Advanced Segmentation: Now Be A Ninja! The Google Analytics team announced the release of seven features today. The next stage in the metamorphosis of the popular web analytics tool.
	AnalyticsTalk	Google Analytics: Google Analytics Version 3.0
	Future Now	Google Analytics: Google Analytics Releases Enterprise Feature Set
Jeff Gillis	Google Blog	Google Analytics: More Enterprise-Class Features Added To Google Analytics
Robin Steif	LunaMetrics	Google Analytics: The New Google Analytics: Ready for Enterprise
June Li	One Degree	Google Analytics: Significant Google Analytics Segmentation Enhancements
	SEMClubHouse	Social Media: Word of Mouth Marketing Metrics. This panel described their efforts to compute how receptive customers are to referral-based advertising in order to determine how much of their promotional budgets should be allocated and how to determine their return on that investment. Sandra Ponce de Leon (BuzzLogic) Ann Green (Millward Brown)
	Search Marketing Gurus	Social Media: Web 2.0 Measurements in Today's B2B World. An overview of the data and analytic challenges involved in making social media accountable for driving revenue based on real-world experience integrating traditional direct marketing with social media. Joshua Siler (Babcock & Jenkins)
	SEMClubHouse	Keynote: Hotels.com: The Intersection of Customer Voice and Customer Experience - Listen and Learn to Provide What Your Customers Really Want. How to let your customers tell you what they really want, and not just what they think they want. Megibow takes you through hotels.com experience with continuous monitoring and continuous improvement with multiple techniques to achieve measurable wins. Joe Megibow (Hotels.com)
	Eyes on Web Analytics	Overview: eMetrics, Day 3. And what's the deal with airline food?
	Search Marketing Gurus	Acquisition: Search from Now On. It's the end of search as we know it . . . what happens next? Mike Grehan (Acronym Media)
Sebastian Wenzel	Web Analytics Book	Social Media: Mobile Analytics is Calling You. Learn about the challenges and the differences that come with the mobile web. Sign up for the www.webanalyticsbook.com rss feed to be the first to download the FREE Mobile Analytics E-Book when it is released.
	Highland Busines Centre	A Few Sterne Words - Jim Sterne Summit Wrap-Up: Tough measures for tough times: thoughts from the Washington DC eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit
	SemAngel	Summary: eMetrics Redux: A Few Thoughts from the Conference
	Web Metrics Guru	Summary: Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit DC 08

Other:

• 60% of Marketing Budgets Remain Unchanged by Economy

Randy Pausch: Thanks for the Legacy

I've been holding on to this post for a few weeks. It is very sad to lose Randy Pausch, but we are so glad that he left such a wonderful legacy for his family, his friends, and the world.

I was late in watching his last lecture video online - I eventually did and here are some of the key online resources and videos that I bookmarked.

• CMU professor gives his last lesson on life (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 19, 2007)
  
  "If I don't seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you."

• Randy Pausch's Last Lecture (Carnegie Mellow University). With equal parts humor and heart, Carnegie Mellon professor and alumnus Randy Pausch delivered a one-of-a-kind last lecture that moved an overflow crowd at the university — and went on to move audiences around the globe.

• Randy Pausch, noted CMU prof, succumbs to cancer (Pittsburgh Post Gazette, July 25, 2008). The family requests that donations on his behalf be directed to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, Calif. 90245, or to Carnegie Mellon's Randy Pausch Memorial Fund, which primarily supports the university's continued work on the Alice project.

• The Legacy of Randy Pausch and His Lecture Videos (Dr. Gabriel Robins)

• Randy Pausch's website. Many links to other videos of Randy Pausch. Highlights his efforts to raise awareness about pancreatic cancer.

Finally, what made me finish this post was tacanderson's recent tweet about wordle.net - a tag cloud generator that is more art that function, at least at this point. After playing a bit with this tool myself, I added the RSS feed to my Google Reader. Today, Thesalin posted two word clouds on Randy Pausch - the thumbnails of word clouds are posted below. Somehow, I think Randy would appreciate these:

Randy Pausch	Randy Pausch Life Lessons

Twitter won't create boring people, but it may help tear down walls

Kevin Maney ponders now that Twitter is taking off, it threatens to create boring people (or at least, boring posts).

His argument is that we are going to be so overwhelmed by the technology --  that we are going to have to manage and update a plethora of online tools so they end up squeezing the very life out of us.

As someone who manages twitter, facebook, typepad, technorati, youtube, flickr, slideshare, digg, delicious, linkedin, friendfeed, etc. on a regularly basis, I can understand Kevin's point.

But, I disagree.

I believe different people get information in different ways. Some people love twitter. Others prefer a newspaper. Some like television. Others prefer to google their news. Some people (gasp!) prefer sit down meetings.

In order to reach a variety of people, you must reach out using a variety of information channels, tools and media.

In keeping with the focus on twitter, let's look at the two twitter accounts I manage:

• http://twitter.com/worldresources. This account, updated by several staff, is used to share news of interest to and about my organization. The tweets aren't just about what WRI is doing, it serves as an aggregator of news we are interested in. And we strategically follow tweets that can help us in our work, so while we are posting, we are also listening.

• http://twitter.com/lldoolj2. My personal twitter account is used to follow online marketing, web analytics, and social media tweets as well as some environmental and personal twitter accounts. I also post more personal tweets, but always with an audience in mind that is broader than just my  family and friends.

• Depending on the nature of the tweet, these twitter accounts feed into friendfeed, facebook, websites, my cell phone, tweetburner, google, etc. And some twitterfolk run their rss feeds and twitpics through twitter. All of this collaboration with the twitter framework makes the tweet even more valuable as a source of information about me or my organization. Plus, with a 140 character limit, you don't have to think hard about how you are going to craft the post like you do when you write a longer blog post. Simple and succinct and you've got an information tweet.

Having worked with this media on a regular basis I see we are quickly approaching a tipping point in maintaining our online spaces -- soon we will find that many of the currently separate, individualized tools we use  online are going to be integrated into a few key tools that can be accessed through an individual desktop.

While some have tried to create desktops in the past, they have been confined to a certain architecture and information space. I have accounts with Google and Yahoo and Earthlink which try to pull together a set of tools into a desktop, but none of these pull together ALL the tools I use.

Creating a successful individual desktop requires a built-in flexibility for the individual to access and create links to an infinite combination of tools unique to their own needs.

Which leads to the questions:

• How do we support such an infrastructure recognizing that in some cases we may need to maintain walls around proprietary, organizational, and private information (while still providing access to the verified user)?

• As information walls fall down, so do institutional walls. How to we successfully navigate this landscape?

As followup to the second question, I leave you with the 2005 TED Talk by Clay Shirky, author of "Here Comes Everybody: The Power Of Organizing Without Organizations" (February 2008). While the presentation is dated, it is the foundation for this book with themes just as relevant today as in 2005.

Andy Williams, Iron Man, and Connections

I was watching a movie the other day and the song "Moon River" as sung by Andy Williams played during a montage.

I had a chance to watch the Andy Williams show many years ago and I have to admit, I developed quite a crush. When he sung "Moon River", he was singing to ME! There was a definite connection. Something that I think I first heard Seth Godin describe as a "passion point".

Fast forward to last night -- as I sat in a darkened movie theater behind a row of teenage/early 20s boys watching the movie "Iron Man".

Now, the story of Iron Man wasn't anything new in the superhero genre -- rich, handsome, self-absorbed dude has a life-changing experience which causes him to go beyond himself, create an alter-ego, and save the world.

We've seen it before.

But, despite the fact that this wasn't a new story, it was a cool movie. One of the best in the recent Marvel movie series.

The story, while not new, was modernized from the original Marvel comics stories.

And it didn't hurt that the actor playing Iron Man has an engaging online presence.

Iron Man connected with the audience.

When we go out into the world, we seek connections -- stories and experiences that we share with others that draw us closer.

For me, whenever I hear Andy Williams singing "Moon River", I connect to a younger me, embracing endless possibilities and enduring hope in my future.

When I was watching Iron Man, I connect to an older me of experience and wisdom who recognizes the need for change and takes action regardless of the obstacles in my way.

We are flooded by marketing, communications, socialmedia almost every waking moment. Success in these areas comes when the presentation and message(s) cause us to self-connect to a deeper part of ourselves. And making that connection takes time, talent and honesty.

A Fierce Meme

I'm a fan of the show Project Runway.

This past season's winner was the pixie-like Christian Siriano who regularly used the phrase "That's fierce!" to describe items, events, activities.

What a great phrase! What a great meme! Much better than Paris Hilton's "That's hot!"

A week or so after Christian Siriano's win, I was skipping through the TV channels when I stopped on QVC. What caught my eye was a solar powered fountain and the two women discussing it's virtues.

I was almost sold on the product when one of the women said, "That's fierce!" (Internal dialogue: "Say what? Did she just say the fountain was fierce? Gimme a break.")

It sounded as inappropriate as a 90 year-old grandfather saying, "That's hot!"

Whether or not Christian Siriano originated this meme, it definitely sounded better coming from his lips than from these QVC women trying to get me to purchase a solar fountain. In fact, their use of it seemed so contextually challenged that I grunted, made a face, and turned the channel.

Does this mean that all memes are not created equal?

In other words, does this point to the idea that not all memes can be equally used by all members of society? Or is there a classification or hierarchy of memes -- we can all sing "It's a small world after all" with confidence (over, and over, and over again, ad infinitum) but not everyone can use "That's fierce" convincingly.

Will "That's fierce" take off like "Awesome!" and "That's hot!" and how long will it be sustained and how far will it propogate?

And is Christian's "That's fierce!" a meme or a brand?

Ferocious minds want to know.

The Importance of Network News Continues to Decline

Blogs and other online media continues to chip away at the popularity Network News once enjoyed.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism State of the News Media 2008: Annual Report on American Journalism offers the following display of Evening News Ratings in decline since 1980.

Above version of chart published on Slate.

You can also view other charts or build your own charts online.

The full report is available online for reading or printing (in HTML only).