5 Questions to Answer Before Blogging About Your Cause

Posted on December 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

Blogging for a cause is challenging and on National Wildlife Federation’s blog, we’re always trying to bring value to the conversation while writing posts people want to read. Anne Cissel, our blog editor, helped put together a great list of questions to ask yourself before you write a post. But even before you answer these questions,   reflect which blogs are your favorite and why. Don’t limit yourself to blogs within your field — look everywhere!

Then answer these questions:

1. What is your goal? Why are you blogging?
(Raise awareness, get petition signatures, etc. The more specific the better.)

2. How will you measure success?
(New visitors, page views, backlinks)

Now … Forget about your goals! Forget what you want readers to do and think only about your target audience.

3. Who is your audience? Activists? Parents? Teachers? Animal lovers? Spend some time researching your audience online. What are their concerns, needs, wants? What do they like to read/share online?

4. What are the concerns, needs, and secret desires of your target audience?

5. What do they like to share online? (Hint: Visit blogs who have already cultivated this audience)

Once you answer these questions, you can then dive into content creation! Here are some tips to get you on your way:

Brainstorm Compelling Content:
Certain formats and topics work best for blogs and make for irresistible content.

  • Lists (5 Ways …)
  • Photo galleries and short compelling videos
  • Curation (Create a useful resource that also creates “friends” in the blogosphere: 6 Best Green Bloggers)
  • Tips (4 Easy Birdhouse Crafts)
  • Surprising personal stories
  • Myth-busters
  • Quizzes, polls

Only after you’ve got an outline for your post  … REVISIT YOUR GOALS FROM QUESTION ONE! How can you weave in your “ask” into the content?

Engage, engage, engage:
A blog should be a two-way conversation. Think about how and where you want your reader to engage. Maybe you just want them to answer a question  in the blog comments or on Facebook. You could even create a blog post from the answers. Let your readers do the work for you!

What other great tips do you have about writing blogs? We want to know!

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Posted in Blogging

Nature and Wildlife Google+ Brand Pages

Posted on November 10, 2011 | 6 Comments

With the addition of Google+ brand pages, I’ve noticed  a number of awesome  environmental, outdoor and wildlife brand pages. I couldn’t resist sharing them.

I decided I would create a useful Nature and Wildlife Circle on Google+  that includes many of the environmental groups you can follow. I’d love to aggregate a number of them, so if you’re on Google+ and I haven’t included you– please let me know by commenting with your page link below.

There are some fantastic blog posts out there that are discussing how nonprofits are using Google+ brand pages as well as how Google+ can improve the experience for brand managers. I think this is an exciting time to be a part of the community! So please join us and let’s bring the wildlife to Google+!.

I’ve insisted that the benefits for being early to a new site are to get a chance to talk to other curious, early-adopters. By joining now, it allows you to take the time to get to know the space and the etiquette that’s expected. It’s been interesting to spend time talking and commenting on Google+ while it’s still pretty empty and the conversations are still very meaningful. So join us now and let’s “hang out”!

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Posted in Communities, Technology

Exploring the Social Media Ecosystem

Posted on October 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

When you explore a new place, how do you process the new information? Whether I’m hiking a new trail, observing a stream or exploring a new social media site, I’ve noticed I behave similarly and try to react to my surroundings.  I try to find my “niche” even if it’s as a quiet observer.

I tackle new situations by:

  • Listening
  • Asking/Documenting Questions
  • Experimenting
  • Creating
  • Assessing and Analyzing

I used this chart in a recent presentation to explain how I break down my time on social media.

I want to continue recording my experiences online and improve at capturing data so that others can learn quickly, what has taken me time to figure out.

I recently presented (the presentation below) to National Wildlife Federation’s social media users. It was a ton of information in a short time, but I’m hopeful that we can continue to tweak how we measure our success and map out future outreach and relationship building. I love that online allows us to connect with wildlife enthusiasts far and wide.

When you explore…what questions do you ask? How do you keep track of the information?

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Posted in communication

Great Tools for Creating a Free Petition for Nature

Posted on May 24, 2011 | 4 Comments

I’ve collected a number of free ways to create a petition and hope that anyone (mom) who reads this blog can put them to good use for protecting the environment and wildlife. As always, I welcome feedback and hope you share your tools and techniques with me!

Change.org: Even from the homepage, Change.org encourages members to create petitions around issues they care about. Not only that, but if done well, the community may even promote your petition. In a few easy steps, you can create and promote your desired “change” to your contacts and other nonprofit organizations on the site and on social media.

What’s required: Change.org account
The Impact: Very easy to maneuver, and change.org has fantastic content as well, so sometimes it’s even possible to link your petition to content that’s available. The community is buzzing with social causes and if you can get your action featured in their newsletter you can see the impact.

Care2: There is so much a user can do on Care2, that you can forgetabout how simple it is to go to the petition site and create a place to collect signatures for the cause or campaign of your choosing. It’s very easy to get distracted, but there are many passionate users and good causes. You can even join like-minded groups and promote your petition that way!

What’s required: Care2 login
The Impact: Similar to Change.org, there’s a very active community that if you’re willing, you can get involved with and illicit their help and expertise.

Act.ly:
This site gives you a quick way to create an action campaign on Twitter.Take the person’s username and target your messaging in 140 characters. Then ask your supporters to re-tweet it and that serves as a signature. It takes very little time to set up but can have a huge impact. Especially if the user on the receiving end is an avid Twitter user!

What’s required: Twitter usernames
(both you need one and your target)
The Impact: May not be as impressive as calling your representative, but can be overwhelming to the person managing the Twitter account and can definitely build a movement over an important issue. It also takes no time to set up, which can be a definitely benefit for quick turn around campaigns!

Facebook Causes Petitions:
If you’re an administrator for a nonprofit or advocacy group and you’re looking to increase Facebook engagement as well as ask people to take action, I think experimenting with the petitions on Causes is a good step. In order to get a good idea how to create a petition, check out this helpful video.

What’s Required: Nonprofit Causes partner login.
The Impact: As a nonprofit you can leverage your communities on Causes to help petition on your behalf. The names are displayed in a way so that you can export them and hand them to the person you’re trying to target and can be very effective in spreading the word.

There’s also a FANTASTIC post by SocialBrite that lists a bunch of tools like iPetitions and Petitionspot I didn’t mention here. I highly recommend people check it out. If you’re someone who’s passionate about an issue and you don’t work for a nonprofit, I definitely recommend you use these petitions to get on the radar of people who do (me!).

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Posted in communication, Technology

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Surveying Soil and Social Media?

Posted on May 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

I knew I would find soil fascinating, so I decided to take a night class titled “The Living Soil“.  I was also interested in learning about soil so that when the inevitable zombie apocalypse strikes I may be able to plant some food for my dear family and the few remaining survivors. Currently I’m just a serial killer of plants and fail to keep the sturdiest of them alive.

A few weeks ago we had our first soil field trip and I was able to get more hands-on with a stream bed and some soil-y colleagues. We were each instructed to attempt to identify different horizons as well as the texture, color and structure of a small area of soil in Maryland.  It was mucky, interesting, and I felt like I was guessing a lot of the time. But in learning how to survey soil, I was reminded how similar it is to surveying social media and how each site offers different aspects with a unique function.

In soil, you determine physical properties by examining the:

  • Structure: (type, size and grade)
  • Texture: (percentage of sand, silt and clay)
  • Porosity: (air and water space)
  • Color: (hue, value and chroma of the soil)

It’s very easy, because soil scientists and people surveying  soil can reference any number of information sites and decide how to address the next step. But what if someone is curious about using social media? There’s no obvious key. People have to swim around in the social space and copy their competitors.

If we had to decide on how to determine the attributes of social media sites that we would need to survey I would say:

  • Structure: Profiles, Groups, Pages
  • Texture: Friendly, Intellectual or Marketing Heavy
  • Intensity: How often must you check it? How much does it take to update it?
  • Design: How user friendly is it?

Keeping in mind that I’ve only had a few moments to think about this,  I think sites like Twitter would be the topsoil and sites as built out as Ning would be the bedrock. But maybe I should just get back to studying…

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Posted in Communities, Ramblings

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Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders and the Future of Bat Guano

Posted on April 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

Back in early April I participated in a training as part of the  Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders. Not only was the group spectacular, but I came away with a fantastic team and a very interesting project! We are going to develop the international standards for harvesting bat guano. In many countries there are no standards or best practices that protect both the bats and the cave ecosystem and so it goes from a renewable resource to a devastating event. We’re hoping that through our research and collaboration we can work together and help Bat Conservation International develop these important standards.

As for the training session, we learned so much! I’m happy to share with anyone who is interested. Here is just a broad overview of what the training covered:

•    Professional mission statements and goal setting
•    Leadership skills and work-life balance
•    Successful campaigning skills
•    Communications and messaging strategies
•    Planning tools for advocacy campaigns
•    Adaptive management techniques
•    International biodiversity funding opportunities
•    Coordinated organizational response models
•    On-camera media training
•    Tools for dealing with conflict in the workplace
•    Fundraising Advice

While I think the environmental movement keeps getting stronger, it’s important we stick together and help one another. We can do that online, in person, and through special events and trainings. We must do this, I think it is imperative to our future.

On the tech side of this whole project, I’ve been playing more with Google Sites and figuring out how to make it a friendly, collaborative place to share documents and information.  It was very simple to select a template and then manipulate it to make it functional and relevant (bat photo).

Great collaboration tools so far:
1) Google Docs (both spreadsheet & docs)
2) Google Calendar
3) Skype
4) Google Sites

What tools have you used for group collaboration? I need recommendations!

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Posted in communication

Google Bundles for Nature Lovers

Posted on March 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

Being an avid news-junkie, loving RSS feeds (RSS = Real Simple Syndication) that make staying up to date on key issues easy and amusing comes with the territory. I love them so much that I sometimes get carried away and I overpopulate my Google Reader. I subscribe to everything from nonprofit technology bloggers to key science feeds that update so frequently I could be checking them every minute and they would still have content for me to read.

I also use Google Reader to monitor NWF’s mentions and it was when Google first launched “Bundles” that I though perhaps this an excellent way for people sharing and trading information through blogs, sites and search terms they follow.

Google Bundles Allow for Easy Feed Sharing

What I found was really interesting! Google bundles are something that anyone with a Reader account can create, and they make sharing information about your organization, cause or focus much more accessible.

Here’s how you create a Google Bundle.

  • Go to your Google Reader Account
  • Click on Browse for Stuff (left-hand navigation)
  • Once you click “create” you are set to start naming your bundle and dragging and dropping the feeds of your choice.

The real reason I’m telling you how to do this? So that you can help me compile a great list of nature blogs! I’ll add my public feeds here and please write your bundles in the comments and I’ll add them to my list.

My Google Bundles:

What are your bundles? Share with us!

(If you don’t believe I really love feeds… here’s presentation from a recent webinar!)

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Posted in communication, Technology

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Identifying Wildlife With Question and Answer Sites

Posted on January 19, 2011 | 5 Comments

Virginia State Parks Asks for ID

I like to share great examples of nonprofits using social media, and I get even more excited when people engage around wildlife.

I saw a great example in wildlife identification from Virgina State Parks on their Facebook page. They asked their friends to help them identify this bird–>

We’ve talked about the benefits of crowdsourcing, but more and more I’m seeing several benefits to asking the community great questions.

In case you haven’t read about Quora, this site has recently received some attention and it works similarly to Yahoo Answers or Aardvark. Since I’ve been curious about the growth of sites like these, I found this chart helpful for comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the Q&A networks. Both nonprofits and nature lovers could use it as a chance to answer and ask questions while building relationships.

And you know I’m all for that!

Who’s testing Quora out now? What do you think?

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Posted in birds, Wildlife

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Digital PR Summit – Who says NYC doesn’t have Wildlife?

Posted on October 8, 2010 | 3 Comments

Yesterday I presented with a number of talented PR professionals at the Digital PR Summit in New York City.  It was a great experience and I learned so much from everyone there. Special thanks to my co- panelists, Johna Burke and Tim Marklein.

Here are my slides from the event:

I Heart New York City’s Wildlife
What I love about the city, besides the amazing energy that everyone talks about, is the fact that wildlife is ever present. I notice them slinking behind trash cans, climbing Central Park trees,  or weaving around your feet (pigeons). I find their adaptation to city-life fascinating. And where it’s lacking on the biodiversity, fragmented habitats and the animals that survive in them are still incredibly interesting to me.

If you live in a city and want to learn neat ways to get involved or ways to help the local wildlife, here are a few sites I recommend:

So yes, who thinks there isn’t any wildlife in NYC? I certainly know there is…and I also know those PR people can add the wild to life any day! :)

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Posted in conference

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5 Social Ways to Help National Wildlife Federation’s Oil Spill Work

Posted on August 20, 2010 | 2 Comments

1) Become a fan of Perry Ellis on Facebook:
For every “like” on their Project Beach tab on Facebook, Perry Ellis will donate $1 to NWF’s  Gulf Oil Spill Restoration Fund.




Keith Powell2) Donate through Keith Powell: I’ve been watching Keith every chance I can get on “30 Rock” and so I was thrilled to see he was using social media to help wildlife. If you choose to donate through Keith’s fundraising page, he may make an awesomely hilarious video confessing his love for you and making you laugh on the side. Pretty kind of him to do and a clever way for him to raise funds for the oil spill! Be sure to check out his Youtube videos as they are too hilarious to miss.

3) Donate Your Tweets: With justcoz.org you can volunteer a tweet a day to any nonprofit organization that has an account. We’ve been using it to spread oil spill information but haven’t tweeted from it every day (more like every few weeks). It’s a great way to help us if you’re comfortable with us updating your followers with oil spill information!

4) Use a URL Shortener: Through a service called edeems,  you can now shop or  shorten a link all while helping the oil spill work we’re doing. Go to http://nwf.honr.it/ . Whether your just looking to browse items or you’re looking to shorten a link you’re about to tweet…these are two clever and painless ways to help wildlife.


5) Join Our Tweet-athon: By teaming up with Promojam, the National Wildlife Federation has been able to launch its first Tweet-athon! If you’re not really interested in giving a tweet a day, but would like to spread the word, feel free checking out this application that allows you to tweet with only a few clicks!


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Posted in Ramblings

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