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.

Beth Kanter (the heavyweight champion in getting technology into the hands of nonprofits) points out some new research to us today. Well, actually it’s more like a sneak preview of new research — which, of course, is even better.

The research shows us that large nonprofits are adopting social media more readily than Fortune 500 companies. They define social media as online video, blogging, social networking, podcasting, message boards, and wikis; and they also note that nonprofits are monitoring their reputation on the web more carefully than businesses are.

It makes perfect sense. Utilizing social media is an inexpensive and trust-driven way to reach lots of people. I hope awareness of how to use these tools effectively is also trickling down to the smaller nonprofits — the ones who need it the most.

You can download the four-page executive summary from UMass Dartmouth.

This post concludes the three-part saga:

• CrazyBlindDate.com: Field Research in Extreme Social Media Sports
• CrazyBlindDate – Cover me, I’m goin’ in!

At the risk of being a real jerk to some poor, nice, innocent man on the Internet, I’m going to tell the truth:

THAT DATE SUCKED!

First off, thank you to my twitter posse for watching the play-by-play and offering me escape routes when things went South. One of you offered to come pick me up, and another called me to pretend that her car had exploded and that she needed me–and only me–to come and rescue her right now. That was awesome. Fortunately, I didn’t need it. Surfer Dude got the hint and let me leave on my own free will.

But let’s back up. Things started off fine. Well, sort of.

CBD has this neat thing where they enable text messaging between parties 30 minutes before the date. He texted me first (10 points right there), and agreed to meet early (another 5 points). He was fabulous and charming in those few, brief text messages. Yay CrazyBlindDate!

A few minutes later, he showed up in a hat with a marijuana leaf on it, a glazed look in his eyes, and a slow voice. He then proceeded to forget the first few things I told him about myself. (minus 20 points)

But as we moved from pizza place to bar, he started talking, opened up, and became charming again (10 points!). Then he bought me a beer (5 points). A Chimay, actually (‘nuther 5 points).

But when the conversation shifted from “what do you do for a living?” to sexuality in San Francisco, and he became politely — and quite sincerely — homophobic (minus 50 points).

The clinching line was, “You know, I think it’s okay for women to be lesbians, but not for men to be gay. I used to think that was a sexist statement, but now I believe it’s just natural. See, lesbians turn men on, so that makes it okay.” (minus 100 points.)

And then, to solidify the logic: “Well, if gay men turned women on, I think more men would be gay. ‘Cuz men will do anything to have sex. I mean, with women. So men would be gay to have sex with women.” (Can we just drop an anvil on his head right now?)

Then we got personal, and such gems fell out of his mouth as “Have you ever tried to be feminine?” (I’m wearing lipstick, eyeliner, and cleavage, you asshole) and “Maybe you could wear a wig next time…” (I had stopped keeping track of points by now). He finished by reassuring me that I’m cute, even though it seems like I try not to be. (Gee, thanks.)

Then he reached out, stroked my arm, rubbed my ears, and offered to take me back to his place to watch horror movies so he could watch me squirm. (“Do I look like the squirmy type?” I asked. “Oh yeah,” he said.)

There were more comments, but frankly, I don’t think they’re appropriate for a public blog post.

The worst part was he was so kind in his misogyny. I actually felt bad for him. And he was sensitive to the fact that we were living on different planets. One of his sweetest statements, as he rubbed my wrist inappropriately, was “Isn’t it amazing how two people who are so different can get along so well?”

That was when I realized I was being far too polite, and it was time to go.

When he offered to give me a ride home, I flat out lied to him and told him I had a friend nearby that I needed to visit. We hugged briefly and walked away in different directions. I waited until he wasn’t looking and then ducked into a store. Five minutes later, I saw him walk past the window: he had walked in the opposite direction of his car just to get away from me. Well, at least the date was a mutual failure.

But as lame as all of that was, I still think CrazyBlindDate is amazing. The website, at least. It’s wonderful. The people? Well, I guess you get what you get. Be prepared for some rotten apples. Or maybe, just put on your “every problem is an opportunity” hats, and see what you can learn from the situation.

For example, I learned that there ARE still idiots in the world. Somehow I had forgotten this.

(I wonder who I’ll get for my date for Friday night!)

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