Watch a demo of the ConstantContact-Salesforce integration

Core Features

• Contacts and Leads can be synced to lists in ConstantContact
• Email opt out can be synced between both systems
• Email campaign history can be viewed on each Contact record
  
  

Contact and Lead Sync

There are three steps required to sync your Salesforce data with ConstantContact.

1. Contacts and Leads are mapped to fields in ConstantContact through a data mapping wizard
2. Contact and Lead subscribers are selected in Salesforce from a list view—no more than 200 records can be selected at a time.  If your list is large (5,000+), this step would be onerous and you would repeat this step for each new list.
3. You must then create a list in CC or add to an existing list

While technically quite easy, this design is seriously flawed because large lists would take a lot of time to move over. You can only select up to 200 Contacts per page in this type of list, meaning a list of 5,000 contacts would take at least 25 mouse-clicks to fully select!  This alone makes the ConstantContact-Salesforce integration unsuitable for use by groups with even moderately large lists.

Viewing Campaign History

Metrics about opens, clicks, etc. is displayed on the Contact page layout in a Visualforce pagelet.  The underlying email metrics data doesn't actually exist in Salesforce but is piped in through the ConstantContact API when a Contact record is viewed. There also isn't any aggregated information about the send itself. The problem is you cannot run reports in Salesforce to tally up your email stats nor can you segment your Contacts based on opens or click-throughs.

You certainly could perform reporting and segmentation in ConstantContact but most often your database of record will be Salesforce and it would be more helpful to slice and dice your lists with vital information from your CRM.  That's not possible with this integration.

Syncing Opt-outs

Email opt-out (unsubscribes) syncing can be scheduled, and opt-out data can go both from Salesforce to ConstantContact and vice-versa.

However, the only thing that appears to be synced is the Email Opt Out field (on Leads or Contacts), which means that global opt-outs would be synced, but for organizations with multiple lists/subscriptions or other profile management information, you're out of luck.

The Bottom Line

In general, we feel that this integration falls short of Groundwire's standards for a solid Salesforce/email platform integration.

In addition to a glaring UI flaw for Contact & Lead Sync, ConstantContact's Salesforce integration is missing two important elements: a way to see email metrics in Salesforce and use of Campaigns and Campaign Members. More successful integrations (e.g., ExactTarget, VerticalResponse, iContact and PredictiveResponse) will write email metrics to Campaign Members or at least roll up an activity score so that Contacts and Leads can be segmented in Salesforce. We also feel that the best point of integration is the Campaign record.

While we applaud ConstantContact's recognition that Salesforce integration is an important feature, we're sorry to report that the implemenation leaves much to be desired.  We hope to be able to report back on improvements in the near future!

As promised, here are the results and a short analysis of the responses we received. Thanks to all of you who responded to this survey!

Time Investment

Like anything worth doing, good email communications programs take a fair bit of time to execute well. Preparation of content and troubleshooting of formatting problems are the two major contributors to the time crunch.

On average it takes 3 people 5.9 hours to create, test, and deliver 4 email messages per month to a list of about 6300 subscribers. Therefore, in general, expect to spend about 23.6 hours per month running your email communications program.

It's also worth mentioning how much time survey responders felt they were allowed to take for preparing and sending email. We asked how strongly do you agree with this statement: "In general, do you feel that you are given adequate time in your job role to prepare and send email communication". The responses were:

• Strongly Agree - 31.9%
• Agree Somewhat - 41.5%
• Disagree Somewhat - 17.0%
• Strongly Disagree - 9.6%

Some of the optional responses to this question are quite interesting. Here are a sampling of those responses:

Impact of email marketing not given high enough value internally, despite being the channel with far and away the highest ROI.

The problem isn't total time, it's the "rush jobs" ("need it done today") with no notice or advance planning

We have made sending out our e-newsletter a communications priority. As such, we have a lot of organizational support for producing a high quality product. To streamline our process, we profile content that is on our website, then drive people to the website, significantly reducing the time spent on the e-newsletter

I HATE the formatting glitchiness of our email template, which has degraded over time -- it doubles the length of time it takes to prepare the send.

Problems

The majority of responders (66%) said that formatting the email properly was the biggest problem they faced when trying to get an email newsletter or alert out the door. Many layout problems can only be solved through analyzing the underlying HTML or through lots of trial and error. A solid understanding of HTML is an essential skill for successful email communication.

The second major blocker on email was simply getting the content written (35%). Content (especially quality content) takes time to develop. It's part of the cost of doing business and is fundamental to being successful online. Hire a staff writer or allocate the responsibility to someone who shows writing talent on staff and you'll see the benefits of good copy working for you.

Other major problems mentioned by survey responders were:

• Difficulty working with the email platform
• Reaching consensus internally on email message, timing and tone
• Deliverability problems
  
  

Service Providers

Here is a list of the top 4 service providers the responders said they are using:

• VerticalResponse
• ConstantContact
• CampaignMonitor
• WhatCounts

Emma, Convio, Sympa, MailChimp, and plain old mass emailing from Outlook were also indicated by small portions of the survey responders.

Benefits of Email Communication

The final question in the survey asked responders to list some of the benefits of having an email communication program. The question as stated was - "What are the most important benefits of mass email to your organization? What goal(s) does it help you accomplish?"

Common responses were

• Communication with supporters/members and donors
• Getting the word out on programs and events
• Easy method to deliver important messages
• Driving traffic to the website
• Fundraising
  

Here are a couple of select quotes from responses to the above question:

The benefits are great - it allows me to directly reach the segment of our audience specifically interested in my program area, and have a regular way to give them more in-depth information and opportunities.

Survey Details

We emailed the survey link to people on our general mailing list which is composed of past and future clients as well as many others who are interested in following our work. We received approximately 100 responses.

• Name
• Age, Gender, Location
• Colleges, Jobs
• Social site memberships and number of friends: LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter
• Twitter stats: following, followers, # of updates, last tweet date
• Facebook fan pages, MySpace interests, and Amazon Wishlist
• Social site memberships: bebo, Care2, Cyworld, Digg, Flickr, Flixster, FriendFeed, Friendster, Hi5, iLike, LiveJournal, MySpace, Playlist, Tagged
• Commercial site memberships: Amazon, Wishlist, Bebo, Cafemom, Care2, Costco, DailyMotion, Facebook, Flickr, Flixster, Friendster, Hi5, Hotels.com, Hyves, The L.A. Times, LiveJournal, Metroflog, Multiply, MySpace, MyYearbook, Nba, Nytimes, Pandora, Perfspot, Photobucket, Plaxo, Playlist, Sevenload, Stumbleupon, Tagged, Tiger Direct, Vox, The Washington Post, Wordpress, Youku, Zimbio

Of course, you won't get all of this information for everyone – not everyone on your list will have a Facebook account, and those that do may not have it associated with the email address you have for them (you may have their work address, while they used a personal address for Facebook, for example). But you can expect to get some data for a majority of the people in your database.

What to do with all of this beautiful data? As always, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish, but here’s a few ideas to try:

Better target your mass communications

Top of our list is using social data to send more targeted and segmented email.  For example, you may want to send an email to Twitter users asking them to follow you on Twitter – something you probably don't want to send to your whole list. You can split up a campaign based on age or gender and tailor your message accordingly. If you’re willing to do a little analysis of people’s likes on Facebook, you can segment people based on interests or affiliations – for example, tailoring a different message for likely conservatives and likely liberals.

Targeting influentials

Let’s say you have an important advocacy campaign you’re launching, and you want it to spread like wildfire.  Wouldn’t it be helpful to know which of your members has the biggest online following? You could put together a list of all your supporters with more than a thousand online fans and call them personally to ask for their help.  

On an ongoing basis, you could make a point of following all of your biggest Twitterers and Facebook fans online and looking for opportunities to build your relationships with them, or establish an online VIP program.

Better personalize one-on-one communications

It’s easy to forget that your database is not just a collection of names, but a collection of real people.  Appending social data to your records can help bring them to life and make one-on-one contacts, like fundraising calls, much easier. You can add photos, see what the individual’s interests are, what they do for a living, where they went to school, and, with quick links to their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, who else they have relationships with.

Make sure you’re spending your time on the right social media

By looking at the number of members you have on various social networking sites, you can see if there are any gaps in your social media strategy.  Who knows, maybe you have a ton of members on Friendster you've been ignoring.

Don't be creepy

While we know you’ll only use this information for good, it might still make your constituents uncomfortable that you’ve added personal information about them to your database. That’s especially true for information people might not realize is publicly available.  Amazon Wish List, we’re looking at you.

Our advice?  Don’t be creepy. If your sense of creepy is not finely developed, ask other people for their reaction. In general, we recommend not using personal info explicitly. So don’t offer to mail me that back scratcher I just added to my Amazon Wish List if I make a $100 contribution. That would definitely be creepy.

• Promote your grantees on your website. Your seal of approval gives them increased credibility with both other institutional funders and curious individual donors, and your positive content will show up in internet searches.
• Link to your grantees on your website.  External links to an organization’s website increase its search engine ranking, so every additional external link gives your grantee higher prominence in a Google search.
• Tweet about your grantees work.  If your foundation has invested deeply in a region or issue area, and your grantees are doing great work, you can use hash tags to draw attention to that work.  Funding outreach to help communities in the wake of the BP spill?  Send out a quick tweet about that work, with the website address of the grantee doing it, and use the tag #bp. Everyone following the #bp tag (media, in particular, is your target here) will receive your tweet.  Note: Twitter is not for everyone.  If this suggestion fills you with fear and loathing, you’re allowed to skip over it.  If it’s piqued your interest, check out http://www.twazzup.com/ and type in a subject that’s germane to your work to get a sense of the twittersphere conversation.
• Keep track of your grantees via Facebook and Twitter.  If your grantees have Facebook pages or tweet regularly, this is a quick and easy way to stay current on their activities. 
• Pull fresh content from your grantees’ websites into your Google Reader or other RSS aggregator.  If your grantees have RSS feeds set up on their websites, you can automate that content to be delivered to you.  Want more info on Google Reader or RSS? Check out this great post on the Northern California Grantmakers website.
• Contribute to public blog sites and discussions. You’ve got influence, and an interesting perspective (who else knows as much as you do about the nonprofit efforts to protect local watersheds in the Great Lakes region?), so participate in the conversation.  Program officers and other foundation staff have that rare “bird’s eye view” and are sometimes the best-informed people on specific issues. We know it’s not the traditional role of foundations to be out front (and we’re sure you have communications policies to which you must adhere), but don’t hide your light under a bushel.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. There are many ways funders can use online tools to track, highlight and amplify the good work of their grantees, as well as add their own expertise to the virtual discussion, and many foundations are already pushing the envelope.  As a new generation of program officers as well as long-time pillars of the foundation world embrace the digital age, there’s so much opportunity. Dig in!

Links are a funny animal when it comes to color. By default, links are the familiar electric blue we've all become accustomed to. However, it's often desirable to change the color of links to conform to your organization's color palette.

Look at this example. In this particular case, you can't even read the links because the color contrast makes the letters almost illegible.

Let's look at the underlying HTML. Notice the code for this example puts the font color tag outside of the actual anchor tag:

<font color="#ffffff"><a href="mailto:info@oursite.org">info@oursite.org</a></font>

Because the anchor tag is "closer" to the actual content it takes precedence over the styling and the link is rendered as the default blue link color.

Instead, make sure that your HTML code is formatted such that the color information resides inside the anchor tag like this:

<a href="mailto:info@oursite.org"><font color="#ffffff">info@oursite.org</font></a>

With the anchor and <font> tag nested properly, we get the following result:

For those of you groaning about using <font>, I could have also done the same thing with a <span> tag with inline CSS color.

You may also use inline styling to determine the color of a link in your email template. An example would look like this:

<a href="mailto:info@oursite.org" style="color: #ffffff;">info@oursite.org</a>

Most mass email platform's visual editors will use a tag instead of doing inline CSS. When that's the case, it's the order of operations that will determine where the tag is applied to relation to the anchor tag. You may have to experiment a little to get the right sequence.

Setting the Link Color Globally

You might be thinking that there must be an easier way that having to individually code each link with a color. And you are correct . . . at least partially.

For the most part, you should never use an embedded stylesheet in your email template because many email clients will simply ignore it. However, if you can live with the default blue link color appearing in some cases, you can set the color globally. Here's how:

In the <head> block of your template include an embedded style like this:

<style>
<--
a {color: #006699;
   }
-->
</style>

If you want to get a little fancier, add an underline when you mouseover a link:

<style>
<--
a {color: #006699;
        text-decoration: none;
    }
a:hover {text-decoration: underline;
    }
-->
</style>

 This is the second installment of tricks and tips for troubleshooting HTML problems in an email newsletter template. Click here to read Volume One.

Salesforce includes 100MB of data record storage per user license. The Salesforce Foundation grants nonprofits 10 user licenses, which means that most of our Salesforce consulting clients have a 1GB limit on data record storage. Using an integrated email broadcasting platform that reports data back to Salesforce can very quickly consume this limited data storage space.

The main reason for this is that most integrated email broadcasting solutions use their own custom object to track email results on a per-contact basis. This is a relatively inefficient storage strategy.  For each email sent, this approach uses 3KB of Salesforce storage per email recipient to track the email send results (campaign member is 1KB, plus 2KB for the custom object).

This doesn't sound like a lot, but given the number of records that email broadcasting generates, the storage load quickly mushrooms out of control.  Consider the following example:

• An organization's Salesforce database contains 25,000 contact records
• The organization wants to send a weekly email broadcast to all 25,000 contacts and track the results per contact
• For each email sent, the current integrations are creating 3kB of data. 
  
• 25,000 sends X 3KB data storage per send = 73MB of data per email blast
  
• At this rate, an organization will exhaust its data storage limits in approximately 13 weeks!
  
• Organizations can purchase additional storage space from Salesforce, but it's quite expensive -- approximately $1200/yr per 500MB.  So, storing the data associated with a weekly blast to 25,000 recipients would cost nearly $9000/year!
  

While most of our clients are not burning through data storage quite that fast, since they're not emailing their entire list each week, several have shown trajectories to reach their storage limit in less than a year from when they begin integrated email communication activities.

Barring changes in Salesforce's data storage policies, Groundwire believes that the current approach most email broadcasting providers are using for data storage in their Salesforce integrations results in unsustainable costs.

OUR RECOMMENDATIONS

We believe that significant improvements in email broadcasting data storage efficiency are easily achievable, by using Campaign Member objects as the point of integration, rather than a custom object. Groundwire recommends that email broadcasting providers who integrate with Salesforce adopt this strategy for reporting data back to Salesforce. 

Here's the outline, followed by a proposed schema:

• The best place to store email broadcasting results data is in the Campaign Member object, not in a third-party custom object such as VerticalResponse's "Email History" object or ExactTarget’s "Individual Email Result" object
• Email broadcasting platforms should add several custom fields to the Campaign Member object to track email results
• Custom objects which track aggregate data such as ExactTarget’s "Email Results" object may still be used as only one object is generated per email campaign, and this does not contribute significantly to data storage bloat
  
  

Using the Campaign Member Object

• Create new checkbox fields: Opened, Clicked, Bounced, Unsubscribed
• Create new number field: Number of Clicks
• Create a Text field for the Campaign ID
• Create a Text Area (Rich ) field called Clicked Links - This will be the field which captures the actual URL of a clicked link (or links)
  
  

Proposed Schema for New Fields

Note that Email Opt Out on the Contact record should be checked automatically as part of the integration when there is an unsubscribe.

Figure 1. This chart shows a hypothetical data usage scenario. The x-axis is months, and the y-axis is in MB. Both lines start with a baseline of 200MB or roughly 20% of data storage used for records like Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities, etc. After 15 months of sending 20,000 emails per month, the non-mitigated example would run out of storage while the other would only use about half of the available storage in that time.

I get email newsletters all the time from lots and lots of sources. Makes sense because I head up our email communications program here at Groundwire and I like to stay on top of what people are doing with their designs and their content. This also means that I see when things don't go exactly as planned.

Below is a series of screenshots based on actual emails I've received with various problems and notes on exactly why the problem occurred and what can be done about it. My hope is that you who are in charge of authoring email messages on a regular basis can learn some useful troubleshooting tips.

Image Alignment

image-float-bad.jpg

Notice how the images in this example isn't allowing for text to wrap. It's left aligned alright but the text begins at the bottom of the image instead of at the top. Here's why.

<img src="http://www.mysite.org/images/news/2010/whale.jpg" alt="Whale" width="250" height="200" border="0" style="float: left;margin-right: 15px;margin-bottom: 10px;border: solid 1px black">

style="float: left;"

<img src="http:mysite.org/images/news/2010/whale.jpg" align="left" width="200" height="200" />

So here's a screen shot of the image with the correct HTML alignment property applied.

image-float-good.jpg

More on Image Alignment

So from the above example we see that the align tag attribute is the way to go. I would recommend using only these three alignments for images:

• align="left" (left aligns the image, text wraps around the right side)
  
• align="right" (right aligns the image, text wraps around the left side)
  
• align="middle" (Good for placing several images next to each other in a row, or in cases where you don't want any text wrapping)

 Image Size

image-size-bad.jpg

An image similar to this arrived really, really large in my inbox just the other day. The content is squished to a thin column over to the left. What's going on here?

My best advice here is to resize the image and insert it at the size it should be viewed at. If that's not possible you can include a height and width declaration to change the image size in your HTML code. Let's look at how the code for this image was created:

<img hspace="5" align="right" alt="" style="width: 266px; height: 420px;" src="http://mysite.org/images/map.jpg" />

Once again, Outlook 2007 and Lotus Notes aren't playing nice. They ignore the inline CSS which is supposed to give the image a smaller dimension, seen here:

style="width: 266px; height: 420px;"

Instead, use the width and height tag attributes, like this:

<img src="http://mysite.org/images/map.jpg" align="right" width="266" height="420" />

The result is an image which does render correctly in all email clients:

image-size-good.jpg

One more thing; if you forget to include a height and width at all, some email clients will assume that you meant height=0 and width=0 so the image won't appear at all!

HTML 5

The biggest news about HTML 5 is advent of the <audio> and <video> tags for directly embedding and streaming multi-media. Browsers will start to ship with players built-in, so no more embedding Real Player, Quicktime, or other desktop apps. HTML 5 also promises an expanded suite of document structure tags to support easy transplanting of page content such as through syndication, and will provide more semantic meaning about the structure of a document.

Read this article from A List Apart for more about HTML 5. 

CSS3

CSS3 promises to make interactive web features easier to program and provides a new bag of tricks that CSS implementers can use. Most of what can be done can already be done through Flash or Javascript but historically some of these have been "hacks" rather than fully supported web features.

I think it's just better to see what's possible rather than have me try to describe the technical details, so feast your eyes on this tour of CSS3.

To see some of these examples yourself, visit:

• Noupee.Com
• WebDesignerWall.Com
  
• Things We Left on the Moon
• CSS3.Info

When Can We Have It!?

The specifications for both HTML 5 and CSS3 are still in flux but on the home stretch for wide adoption. Some browsers already support most of the features such a Google's Chrome browser and Safari. Internet Explorer 9 is slated to fully support both new specifications.

Simply put, you won't see any of these new features rolled out overnight. Rather they will be gradually included in more and more websites in the coming 18 months or so. It's been 10 years since the last update to these important web languages so it will take time for the common practices to emerge and for a solid implementation consensus to be formed. 

Since there isn't really one place to find answers to all these questions I decided to post links to where I know those resources are. If any of you good people out there know of other great resources, don't hold back. Add a comment to this blog post and share the wealth!

Below are the best of breed articles from some of the leading Email Service Providers in the industry:

• Writing Email Newsletter Best Practices (from Groundwire)
• Using CSS in Email Newsletters (from Groundwire)
• Guide to CSS support (from CampaignMonitor)
  
• Email Design Guidelines (from CampaignMonitor)
• Designing Email for Mobile Devices (from Vertical Response)
• Comparing Subject Lines (from MailChimp)
• Marketing Benchmarks for Small Businesses (from MailChimp)
• Email Segmentation Ideas (from MailChimp)
• Improving Your Open Rate (from MailChimp)

Here are some guidelines to help you decide when it's OK to add an address to your mailing list, and when you probably shouldn't.

Be Transparent

The best thing to do is to be perfectly clear what you are going to do with someone's email address. Make it clear that the person is opting to be added to your mailing list. The best example of how to do this right is to put a form on your website and call it "Sign Up for Email" or something similar. Link to your Privacy Policy on that same form. You can also require that all new subscribers confirm their email address. This method known as "double opt-in" also helps keep your list cleaner because false email addresses won't be added to your list.

Single Opt-in or Double Opt-in?

The debate around which opt-in procedure to use has always been a lively one. There are pros and cons on both sides. Here are a few facts to help guide your decision here:

• Single Opt-ins are a faster subscription process and should result in more list signups. The downside is you do get more bogus email addresses this way which clutters up your reporting and your database.
• Double Opt-ins require a second step after the initial signup and you might lose some potential subscribers because they don't see your confirmation email or forget to complete the registration. However, you'll have a better quality list.

In the end, you may not be able to choose anyway because your Email Service Provider has their own policy for opt-in procedure. You should always honor the terms of service you've agreed to when using any service provider's email system.

Gray Areas

An email signup form is not the only way an email address can make its way into your database. For example, you might have an event registration form that gathers email addresses so you can send event information to the participants. However, unless you specifically state it, you should not assume that person also wants to be added to your regular email list.

There are innumerable variation on the example above that you may or may not feel constitutes an opt-in. Let's look at what the law says, and at what Email Service Providers say about this.

Know the Law

is a federal law that governs unsolicited email. Heavy fines can be levied if you are found to be in violation of this law. Among other things, the law states that mass email must:

• Contain a working unsubscribe link
• Contain a physical mailing address of the sender
• Not contain false or misleading information in the subject line
• Not contain a false or misleading From address
  

Since the government mostly had retail marketers in mind when they wrote the law, it is meant to cover email that is "commercial" in nature. You might think that being a nonprofit, this law doesn't apply to you. However, most Email Service Providers (providers mass email delivery systems) define "commercial" to include:

• Newsletters
• Fundraising
• Solicitations for Votes or Political Action
• Surveys
• Invitations to Seminars

We can debate all day whether or not that definition is fair or whether your specific case is exempt or not. The buck stops with your Email Service Provider and if they feel your actions are in violation of their terms of use, you might see your account closed. The bottom line is, follow the provisions of the law and your provider's terms of service for all mass emailing.

When in Doubt

Whew! I know this is a lot of information to think about and that there is much more gray area than clear distinctions here. My advice is always to be conservative about these issues. If you think (even a little bit) that someone would not know how they got on your list or be surprised to start getting your monthly newsletter, then don't go there! A successful email list is founded upon a happy, interested, and engaged audience.

One of the great challenges for those of us in the environmental movement is going beyond our choir and reaching the majority on issues we care about. It’s a tough haul – our causes often crash against the American dream, scare the crap out of people, or are so scientific and abstract that the eye glaze happens within seconds along with excuses to get to the punch bowl/the bathroom/to talk to someone a little less, well, serious.

Environmental Priorities in the Legislative Session

Today, the legislative session begins here in Washington State. So in our world, that means a lot of talk about the Environmental Priorities for 2010. Washington State has a coalition of environmental groups, appropriately named the Environmental Priorities Coalition (EPC), who are working together to make sure our decision-makers are hearing the public’s concerns on issues of health and environment.

Thanks in large part to the EPC’s new communications director, Nicole Fallat, the social medias have been abuzz the last few weeks resulting in a standing-room-only legislative workshop on Saturday; a lovely poem from Washington Toxics Coalition, and most importantly, the hammering home of the three priority issues the coalition will be supporting this session. Most likely you know the rules of Marketing 101: people need to see something seven times before it registers; the more people see something, the more they believe it’s true; yada yada. A good marketing person will burn their message into your subconscious, and I can tell you over the last month, the EPC did a fine job of it. EPC 2010 = baby bottles; clean water and the jobs to get us there; environment stays in the budget. Check. Check. Check.

So back to the masses, who have no idea a session is starting today or what BPA is. (And I mean that with all of the love in my heart, because these are my people, and I'm sure -- some of your people, too.) This is what I sent my friends and family today:

Safe Bottles For All Babies; Real Jobs to Clean Up The Sound; You Always Go On And On About How This Is The Most Beautiful Place In The World.

Hey Friends.
 
As you know, the Washington state legislative session starts today. (Do. Not. Stop. Reading.)

First things first: did you know Washington State has a coalition of 25 environmental groups working together on all kinds of environmental issues -- from public health to conservation to green jobs?

This coalition is down in Olympia right now, working on three important issues: Safe Baby Bottles for all kids (harmful chemicals in plastics can really screw us up); clean water and the creation of jobs to get us there; and keeping environmental issues in the budget (as you know just about everything in Washington state is on the chopping block this year).

I see you on the Facebook, you know I do. Fan these pages and look for updates in your news feed about what’s going on:

Environmental Priorities Coalition
Cascade Bicycle Club
Climate Solutions
Conservation NW
Fuse
Heart of America NW
People for Puget Sound
Transportation Choices
Washington Conservation Voters
Washington Environmental Council
Washington Toxics Coalition

For you tweeters out there, keep up on the haps:
@cascadebicycle
@climatesolution
@conservationNW
@hoanw
@pugetpeople
@WA_Toxics
@epctweets

and hashtags: ##
#waleg
#BPAFREEWA
#BPA

And for those of you who refuse social media because you don’t want it to mess with your game or whatever -- sign up for email news and action alerts from:

Environmental Priorities Coalition
Cascade Bicycle Club
Climate Solutions
Conservation NW
Fuse
Heart of America NW
People for Puget Sound
Transportation Choices
Washington Conservation Voters
Washington Toxics Coalition
Audubon Washington
League of Women Voters

Bored at work? Watch the legislative session online.

Want to take it to the next level? Environmental Priorities Lobby Day 2010 is Jan 26.  Take your babies and bottles and really make an impact.

Are you reaching beyond your base and finding new supporters? Tell us what's working for you.

Tips on Organizational Blogging

Overview of the social networking site Facebook.

There are roughly 350 million Facebook users in the world, with over 50 million added over the fall of 2009. That number includes a whole new group of users over the age of 55 answering the question, "What's on your mind?" and doling out the thumbs-up.

Any person, organization, or business can set up a profile or page (read all about fan page vs. group here), add contacts (friends) and join networks organized by city, workplace, school, or region to connect with other people.

Individual users and organizations can send messages, update and share their personal profile, and easily post links, videos, and information on everything from local causes to supporting a politician to a clip from their favorite television show.  And with a click of a button, friends can re-post the same link, ostensibly reaching millions of users with the same post.

Audience Considerations

There are many things to consider as you explore whether or not an investment in a Facebook presence makes sense for your organization. Likely the most important among the considerations is whether or not your existing or realistically targeted members and supporters are on Facebook themselves.

Good For

Reaching and Attracting
With the right audience, campaign and strategy, Facebook can help you reach new people. Yet keep in mind that Facebook is a social networking tool so simply putting a page up on Facebook will likely not result in any meaningful new connections being made. You must invest in online communications strategy that is consistent and sustainable and fits into your organization’s marketing plan.

Communicating and Informing
For those individuals who are in your Facebook community, Facebook can be a great medium to receive news, events announcements, and calls to action. It is an easy platform for the staff of an organization to publish written content, videos, and photos. Facebook makes it easy for members to also upload news from their own website and/or blog to their Facebook news stream. 

Listening and Learning
One of our favorite uses for Facebook is listening and learning what people are thinking and saying. Facebook gives us a window into what people are thinking about, what inspires them, what groups they are connected with and so on. 

Remembering and Growing
Facebook offers some unique possibilities for organizations to remember and grow their relationships. We are only now beginning to understand some of the ways that Facebook connected with a CRM Database could serve an organization and its members.

What You'll Need

•    Facebook account
•    Clear understanding of the metrics you'll use to assess the return on your effort
•    Staff resources and time
•    Organizational social media guidelines
•    Able to and willing to let conversation happen

Cost and Time Considerations

Any organization can set up a Facebook page for free. The real cost of Facebook is the time it takes to build and sustain your network.

Through its application interface Facebook allows for the custom development of an application that a user can install and then use to invite others to participate with in some way. Development of an application is intensive and runs in the 10-100k range.

Connects Easily To

Website: Facebook connects to an organization’s existing website, blog, and other online mediums in a number of ways.  Website content and content shared via mass email can be configured so visitors can easily share the content to their Facebook network with a single mouse click.

What Others Are Saying

•    To Nonprofits Seeking Cash, Facebook App Isn’t So Green, The Washington Post 
•    An Introduction to Facebook Activism
•    Innovative Giving: The Nature Conservancy and (Lil) Green Patch, Fast Company
•    Faith in Facebook: A Success Story
•    How Marketers Tap Facebook and Twitter, Apps and Widgets, Advertising Age

Want more? Click here for Facebook tips from the Washington Trails Association, the Washington Bus, and People for Puget Sound.

All The Cool Kids Are Doing It

You've seen the good (Twitter as a tool for organizing in Iran), the bad (minute by minute updates on the gastronomical and recreational patterns of your friends), and the downright ugly (Ashton Kutcher v. CNN in a race for 1 million followers!). Whether you tweet every day or are still trying to figure out how your organization fits into the social media landscape, there's no question Twitter, and its buddy Facebook, are leading the social networking pack.

Twitter enables users to send and read updates to and from people and organizations they are interested in. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page, and delivered to other users (followers) who have chosen to follow the author and his or her content.

Twitter users can follow anyone or any organization without having to ask permission (unlike Facebook).

Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider texting fees.

Audience Considerations

Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others (Pew Internet and American Life Project, Fall 2009).

When you embark on any new online communications plan with your supporters and members, it's necessary to have strategies and editorial guidelines in place. Just as compelling content can win you followers, irrelevant postings and over-tweeting can clutter feeds and lose followers.

Good For

Twitter is a communications platform and as such can be useful in many different ways. Many organizations and businesses maintain a corporate or brand Twitter feed, but the most successful feeds are delivered in ways that keeps the communication personal and informal. In the same way that effective bloggers invest their time not only in writing but in reading and commenting on other blogs, most effective Twitter users spend their time participating with their network, not just talking at it. 

Reaching and Attracting

Twitter can support efforts to reach and attract visitors to a campaign or website. If your organization provides content that is of value to your followers, it may get forwarded (RT: or ReTweeted) by your followers to their own Twitter networks. If the quality of the content is good enough, your organization's Twitter feed will begin to attract a readership, both passive and active.

Communicating and Informing

Twitter can provide a platform for an organization to publish or share written content that might be less formal than what they would put into a program or resources section on their website. Twitter is widely used to post links, send out action alerts, or post quick event reminders. 

It's useful for getting the word out rapidly, in real time, when appropriate. This can lead to offline action. Check out the first Twestival for charity, where in less than two weeks a group of Twitter users organized a series of meet-ups around the globe in support of a nonprofit working for clean drinking water in developing nations.

Listening and Learning

Twitter can connect a small number of close and highly engaged members to foster a large network of coalition partners or grassroots supporters to work together to track activity, share insights, and take collective action.

Remembering and Growing

Twitter can play an important role in providing meaningful ways for members to participate and be heard by each other and your staff.

Target your tweets. Find public figures, including legislators, CEOs, and community leaders to follow and become followers of your group. You can find usernames on TweetCongress and WeFollow.

What You'll Need to Tweet

• A free Twitter account
• Clear understanding of the metrics you'll use to assess the return on you effort
• Appropriate staff resources and time
• Organizational blogging guidelines
• Appropriate audience
• Able to and willing to let conversation happen

Cost and time considerations
As with any social media tool, it's wise to remember Twitter is not the strategy; it helps you implement the strategy. Twitter is not the goal; it helps you reach the goal. Twitter feeds are only as good as the content published through them. The quality of your feed is very much a function of the time and effort an organization puts into it. Five to 10 hours per week minimum is a good place to start.

Connects Easily To

Websites: Twitter feeds can be fed to other websites using RSS. It is also easy to allow readers of your website content to easily share your post with their own Twitter network. 

Other social web properties: Information can be easily share to and from most blogs and the most common social web properties including: Facebook, Blogs, Del.icio.us, Myspace, Flickr, and YouTube.

Other people's websites and blogs: Twitter provides RSS feeds which allows the content to be syndicated and shared across the internet.

What Others Are Saying

• "Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned," The New York Times
  
• "On Twitter, Most People Are Sheep: 80 Percent Of Accounts Have Fewer Than 10 Followers," Tech Crunch
  
• "New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets," Harvard Business
  
• "Twitteracy (Twitter Literacy)," Beth's Blogs: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media
  
• "Handful of Twitter Users Do All the Tweeting," Telegraph.co.uk

Find out how Cascade Bicycle Club Advocacy Director David Hiller uses Twitter on the legislative floor.