Integrating Social Media with Your
Communications Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture Living Case Studies and Twitter Tips Beth Kanter, Visiting Scholar The David and Lucile Packard Foundation Flickr photo by pro soil West Coast Sustainable Agriculture Grantees Webinar April, 2012

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Integrating Social Media with Your
Communications Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture Two-Part Webinar Living Case Studies and Twitter Tips Beth Kanter, Visiting Scholar The David and Lucile Packard Foundation Flickr photo by pro soil West Coast Sustainable Agriculture Grantees Webinar April, 2012

Beth Kanter, Visiting Scholar

Presenters: Daniela Aceves, Roots of
Change Daniela Aceves - Communications Manager Roots of Change (http://www.rootsofchange.org) Daniela has been engaged in various projects to create social and environmental change. Prior to joining ROC, she was the marketing coordinator at the Community Agroecology Network (CAN) where she managed marketing and outreach efforts to promote fairly traded coffee, food security in coffee- dependent communities, and sustainable farming practices. She graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2008 with a combined major in Global Economics and Latin American & Latino Studies. She is passionate about furthering food policy in California, and is working towards building awareness through innovative networking techniques and communications strategies.

Presenters: Hanah Welch, grist.org Hanna
Welch, Social Media Producer Grist (http://www.grist.org) Hanna grew up smack-dab in the center of Seattle and was lucky enough to spend her formative years stomping around the city while also spending summers at her family’s cabin on a small island in the San Juans. To date, she still thinks it’s the most beautiful place in the world. Like any respectable daughter of hippie parents, Hanna learned how to use native plants to dye wool for weaving and dreamed of being a naturalist. Instead she ran away to study law in Washington, D.C., and eventually followed her bleeding heart to New Orleans to help create an interactive science workshop for low- income kids. Unable to stay away from her hometown, she moved back to the Emerald City and dabbled in corporate life, then found her rightful place in the land of nonprofits. Lured by Grist’s mission to green the world one pun at a time, she now does her best to help it keep on growing.

Who is on the Call?
http://twitchimp.com/user/kanter/ag-grantees/

Who is on the Call?
Most frequently tweet words Your hashtags

Quick Poll Types of programs
Staff Position What platforms? How much time?

Agenda Introduction Case Study #1:
Roots of Change Case Study #2: grist.org Follow Up Session: April 26th from 12-1 PM PST Twitter Tips and Coaching

Twitter Best Practices and Tips
#agpack

Integrating Social Media
Daniela Aceves

Who We Are Roots of
Change brings a diverse range of Californians to the table to build a common interest in food and farming so that every aspect of our food – from the time it’s grown to the time it’s eaten – can be healthy, safe, profitable, affordable and fair.

Communications Editing Online Fundraising Social
Media PR/Media Content Relations Creation * Image by Ruth Malan

How We Value Social Media
Low Investment Tool – Easily Accessible – Quick to Update Facebook: - Build our base of supporters - Raise awareness - Align constituents to support the movement Twitter: - Continue to build a base of supporters - Two-way information sharing tool - Timely actions

• Specific Our Strategy •
Measureable • Attainable Policy Impact • Relevant Get people to take • Timely Highlight the action stories of people/programs creating a difference Share educational articles

Case Study #1 Food Movement
Rising Challenge: Today, more than ever a growing network of citizens, businesses and organizations are rethinking and challenging every aspect of our food – from the time it’s grown to the time it’s eaten. Solution: Create a short 3 minute video using photos and narration to convey our message and motivate people to join and take action. Create Establish Plan to Content Campaign Measure Strategy

Create Custom Landing Page Roots
of Change Website Insert Visible Sharing Buttons Subscribe button Simple Way to Get Involved: Clear & Simple Ask:

Building Momentum Established Partnerships: ROC
reached out to several allies to help spread the word. Provided boiler plate language for Facebook and Twitter

Facebook Examples: Twitter Examples #1
@NRDC Interested in healthy, #sustainable food and #farms? Watch this new video from @Rootsofchange: #2 http://bit.ly/lhya5F #FoodMvmt @Michael Pollan Check out this compelling video on the food movement, rising, from Roots of Change in California. http://p2.to/1cIp #3 @SlowFoodUSA Food Movement Rising: Let's work together to build a movement! Video from @RootsofChange

Outcomes Food Movement Rising was
a success thanks to the Results use of a video campaign, solid partnerships and Total Views 6,830 strategically embedding social media to promote our effort. Org Partnership 20 s Featured Partners in Video Email Sign 559 Up

What We Learned Takeaways: •
Partnerships are an easy way to reach a larger audience • Align messaging and cross promote on all channels (i.e Email, Facebook, Twitter) • Very important to thank and recognize the people/groups supporting cause • Social media is a great tool to generate excitement

What We Learned Challenges: •
Set a timeline and stick to it • Launching this campaign in July was challenging because we realized a lot of people were on vacation • Engaged a lot of partners but didn’t focus enough time on recruiting people to help spread the word (brand ambassador)

Case Study #2 Join the
"Your Meal Matters" Twitter chat party on March 27 at 9:30am PST/12:30pm EST. Roots of Change (@RootsofChange) will be partnering with organizations across the globe including Greennovate (@Greennovate), GoodGuide (@GoodGuide) , Eating Well (@EatingWell) and Practically Green (@PracticallyGrn) to share ideas about how each of us can make an impact. We will spend an hour discussing everything from what to do with your leftovers to how to navigate the grocery store. Just follow the hashtag #YourMealMatters to join in!

Measuring Our Impact Regardless of
the size of the campaign it’s always important to measure your effectiveness. There are a variety of FREE tools that can help in measuring growth, success, and reach. Results: • 757 tweets generating • 3.8 million impression • Reached an audience of 345k followers Example: Our True Reach on Klout

Final Thoughts How We Value
Social Media • Social media is a great way to generate buzz about your organization • Don’t be afraid to fail and use new tools • Social media is constantly evolving so always test and retest your strategy

grist on the social web
recent experiments

grist mission grist sets the
agenda by showing how green is reshaping our world. we cut through the noise and empower a new generation to make change.

RESPONSIBILITIES: Org-wide strategic social plan
creation: •Research/experimentation •Implementation •Measurement Day-to day execution of that effort: •Promotion •Engagement

gristastic ladder ‘o engagement policy
level discussions/calls personal calls to to action action stories of people making change fun on-ramps

grist on the social web

twitter chat: #sodawars quick and
effective way to give content more legs

“super” twitter chat: #bikenomics 840
tweets reached close to 250,000 people created an entirely new avenue for the topic

what we’ve learned
be nimble.

twitsourcing #hipsterfarmerbands over 815 tweets
in two days reach of over 290,000 people being quick and opportunistic reaches outside new audience

Pinning is the new winning

what we’ve learned don’t be
afraid to experiment.

the new rules for nonprofits
• be authentic • believe in the tools • be willing to experiment • be attentive … to the conversation and its results

What’s Your Intent? How Does
It Support Your Communications Strategy? • Keep current supporters • Recruit volunteers engaged • Coordinate meetings with • Inspire conversation to officials and policy leaders support communications goal • Identify Influencers like journalists using Twitter and • Create buzz around an encourage them to use you offline event before, during, as a source and after • Identify and build • Get new ideas and feedback relationships with allies & on programs and services supporters • Program support to clients • Sharing key points about • Drive traffic to web site or your issue blog (Google)

What To Tweet: How Will
It Support Integrated Content Strategy? http://bit.ly/edit-cal-template

Twitter Best Practices and Practicing
– Look & Feel A Complete Profile Is Important

Brand Twitter Profile: Does It
Match Your Brand?

Twitter Best Practices and Practicing
– Look & Feel http://bit.ly/twitter-template

Who Will Tweet? Brand and
Departments

Who Will Tweet?
Staff person

A Combination

What To Tweet What To
Tweet • Tweet relevant valuable information (not your organization’s content) • Link to editorial calendar • Use #hashtags • Reply instead of post • Share Photos • Say something provocative or funny • Ask questions

What to Tweet: Avoid Ruts
Link Content To Editorial Calendar

How to Write Great Tweets
Omit Needless Words Describe, Simplify, Avoid One thought per Tweet

Leave Room for Re-tweets: 120
Characters

Increase Your Twitter Followers: Engagement
Search Thank Scan Twitter Office Minutes Re-tweet Reply

Engagement Techniques • Converse with
influencers that care • Honestly follow interesting people • Tweet relevant valuable non org centric information • Network weave – introduce people • Be helpful • Say thanks • Give shout outs • Hashtags conversations and chats

Avoid Built In Retweet Button
Easier to use if you’re using a client like Hootsuite, BufferApp, or Others

Build Your Following: Use Lists
Using lists helps you stay organized as you keep an eye on various groups of people or organizations.

Find Interesting People To Follow:
Leverage Other People’s Lists

How To Be Efficient: Selective
Automation Buffer: · Create account: Nonprofits can use free option that allows 10 tweets a day or paid options that allow more posting if the NGO can afford that · Link buffer to your Nonprofit twitter account · Define settings and your Nonprofit posting schedule

How To Be Efficient: Selective
Automation

Measure, Tweak, Measure