Dopp Juice Archive

In my last post I talked about nonprofits using social media to reach their audiences — it’s inexpensive and effective. Unfortunately, I also know from personal experience that many people — especially in the nonprofit sector — don’t have time to sit down and learn the best strategies to leverage new technology. So let me lay out a few Cliffs Notes.

One of the cooler features of social media is that it allows you to keep an eye on what people are saying about you. If someone across the planet blogs about your organization, you can know about this almost instantaneously. If that blog post was favorable, you can jump right into the comments and thank them. If that blog post was unfavorable, you leap right into ‘damage control’ mode and address the complaint. If fact, you can do whatever you want with this feed of information once you’re receiving it. It’s kind of like a secret ninja move.

These are sometimes called “vanity feeds.” Here’s how to get them:

Technorati Feeds
Watch the blogs.

1. Go to Technorati.com
2. In the search box, type in your name or the name of your organization. If it’s more than one word, use quotation marks.
3. The results that come up are what all of the publicly-indexed the blogs on the web are saying about you. Just above the search results, you should find a link that says “Subscribe.” Click it!
4. What you’re looking at now is an RSS feed. You need to take the URL for this page and put it into an RSS reader, so you can be alerted when new things are added to it. If you’re not already using an RSS reader, go get an account with Google Reader and follow their instructions (it’s super easy).

Google Alerts
Watch the web.

1. Go to Google.com/Alerts
2. In the search box, type in your name or the name of your organization. If it’s more than one word, use quotation marks.
3. Leave the search type drop-down at “Comprehensive,” unless you want to ignore some things and just focus on one area.
4. Leave the “how often” at “once a day,” unless you really prefer otherwise.
5. Type in your email address and hit “Create Alert.” You’ll get notifications of your presence on the web whenever it comes up.

Note: There’s some overlap between Google Alerts and Technorati — try both and see if you only feel like you need one of them after a few weeks. In my experience, Google Alerts will sometimes repeat the same alert over and over again, which can get annoying (and which is why I don’t recommend receiving Google Alerts “as it happens”). Technorati is a cleaner, more meaningful, and less invasive feed, but it also doesn’t cover the entire web.

Knowing about your reputation on the web is a key step in gaining control of it. But be careful not to get too addicted to watching these feeds… you still have other work to do.

I usually try to keep my love life out of the public blogosphere, but this story just needs to be told. I have a date tomorrow night with a guy who is six feet tall and looks like a surfer dude. He enjoys talking about movies, society, philosophy, and politics, and is looking for someone mature and responsible. Sometimes he can get bored easily. Sometimes he smokes. He’s white, he’s college educated, and his religious beliefs are “Other.”

I also know his first name and his age, and that’s about it. We’re meeting at 7pm at a bar in San Francisco. And no, a friend didn’t set us up… unless you want to call CrazyBlindDate.com a “friend”…

CrazyBlindDate.com was started by the folks who brought us OkCupid — the free social networking / test-taking / dating site that’s given the pay sites like Match.com and eHarmony a run for their money. And so far, I’m impressed.

The premise is simple: you tell them a few things about yourself, who you’re looking to meet, where you’re willing to travel, and when you’re willing to do that. Meanwhile, other people are on the site doing the same thing. The Internet Brain lines you up, makes a match where requirements coincide, and asks both parties to confirm the date after showing basic information about the other person. This includes very blurry pictures of each other, as a teaser. Once you say yes, you’re committed to it.

Thirty minutes before the date, they open a phone relay so that you can send text messages to each other via CrazyBlindDate’s central number (you don’t actually get to see the other person’s phone number). This helps with the “spotting each other in a crowded bar” issue. Once you find each other, you’re on your own. Then, after the date, you provide feedback for each other on the site. This helps in coordinating and verifying future crazy blind dates.

Blind dates are inherently sketchy-sounding. Blind dates without mutual friends involved, even more so. That’s why I’m excited about this site: they’re taking something that has massive screw-up potential, and handling it well.

My favorite thing about the site is that it stays focused. When you get there, they don’t start by asking for your login info; they start by asking what city you’d like to go on a date in (sorry — it’s only active for Austin, Boston, NYC, and SF Bay right now). They then walk you through a full dating wizard, convince you that yes, this really could work, and get you emotionally invested in the process. THEN, at the end, after you’ve already checked your schedule to make sure you can have a date tomorrow night, they suggest signing up to actually make it happen. It’s clean, friendly, American-buddy-style language that sets an encouraging tone and asserts some basic etiquette. There’s nothing extraneous thrown in to distract. Not even any ads. And the service is free.

Since the site is pretty new, it’s not overrun with a massive dating pool yet, and finding specific kinds of people at specific times can be hard. I didn’t specify age, gender, or any other personal details. I also set my region to cover most of San Francisco, and I listed wide time slots. That seemed to do it.

What does Surfer Dude know about me? He knows that I have a shaved head, I like to talk about technology and poetry, I’m really just testing out this website, and I’m not planning on sleeping with him (let’s just get that out of the way now!).

The rest will come out over a beer tomorrow night.

Don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it.

Just as mysteriously, my email started working again and all messages from the last day just came through.

Huh.