Ask our Giving Guru: Geoff Livingston on bridging between on and offline

Photo by Geoff Livingston

Our first Giving Guru, Geoff Livingston, has spent more than 16 years as a public relations strategist in Washington, D.C. and has been dubbed a "local blogging guru" by the Washington Post. Now Is Gone, his book released in 2007, is an award-winning resource on social media. Geoff will be available to answer your questions about social media for nonprofits on Thursday, Sept. 10, at 1 EST. Submit your question in the comments of this post, or check out the many ways to ask our Giving Gurus.

With causes, we seek to create movements using word of mouth tools, and in particular, tools within social media. It's very easy to get stuck in the mindset of a single track effort, such as Twitter, or even an online multichannel effort that involves several tools. Yet, to be truly successful cause-based movements bridge social media, traditional media, as well as good, old-fashioned, brick and mortar offline life.

No one eats their dinner and says to their partner or self, "Hmm, I think I'll go play on social media for an hour tonight." They just go online and surf. Social sites are part of their lives, but so is their favorite magazine, the office bulletin board, tschatkes they pick up at events that they attend, perhaps church or synagogue, etc., etc.

A movement means they do more than click on a tweet! They bring it into their life and talk about it. They tell their friends, both on and offline, and their friends tell more friends!

At the heart of creating movements are word of mouth marketing (WOMM) principles. Social media represents just part of the mix; some -- not all -- of the tools that facilitate conversations and discussion about our special movements. Andy Sernovitz in his soon to be released entertaining light read, "What Is Word of Mouth Marketing," notes tools are just part of the five Ts of WOMM. Those Ts also include Talkers, Topics, Taking Part and Tracking.

Those of us that are fortunate enough to communicate on behalf of causes have it easier than the for-profit sector. Why? By their very nature, causes deal with subjects that touch people’s lives. Going back to Sernovitz's Five Ts, that means people probably already want to talk about the cause, and the cause itself provides a natural topic. Our job is to make it natural and easy for the cause to become part of their lives.

Make It Compelling

For a cause to be successful in its efforts -- whether that's fundraising, creating political actions, or generating volunteers -- it needs to touch the hearts of its stakeholders. That means it uses online social tools to bridge offline and compel people to do things.

On a recent vacation, I spent some time with the Buddhist monastics of Plum Village, the order that follows the teachings of Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Thich Nhat Hanh. In our discussions, they asked me for help with their problems concerning the Vietnamese government's efforts to expel the practice from the Bat Nha monastery. They had launched a blog and Twitter account and had posted about Bat Nha on their 25k strong Facebook community, but were not successful in generating significant activity online.

After examining the efforts to date, several things became clear:

1. That while the cause was worthy, it had not been presented in compelling ways, focusing on the situation without highlighting grievances, or noting that it was Thich Nhat Hanh monastery. We repositioned the topic to make it much more compelling.
2. There was no real call-to-action. In order for people to talk about your cause and incorporate it into their lives, an ask needs to be made. That could be for a donation. In this case, we asked for the following:
   • Write a letter to your Senator (note: this is an example of a non-social call-to-action)
   • Write a blog post
   • Sign a Care 2 petition to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (this was suggested to me by the Case Foundation's Kristin Ivie).
   • Activate your Facebook network by sharing the Bat Nha issue on your profile, and asking them to join the Thich Nhat Hanh group
   • Tweet about the Bat Nha effort
3. While trying, the effort to engage the Thich Nhat Hanh community needed some strengthening. Twitter and Facebook efforts were made more consistent, but more importantly, it became apparent that the best resources the monastics had was their extensive email networks, both formal and through their informal, offline social networks.

Once we massaged those three areas, things took off. More than 7,000 people signed the Care2 petition, which was sent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And through our tracking, it became apparent that the Vietnamese government monitored the situation closely. While the situation still exists at the time I wrote this post, the Vietnamese government's deadline to leave has passed, and the Bat Nha monastics are still allowed to practice in their monastery.

In my mind, success happened through the marriage of creating compelling conversations, building natural social calls-to-action and tools, and integrating traditional word of mouth tools beyond social media. The cause was naturally latent, we just needed to make it easy for word of mouth to occur. Once Bat Nha became compelling and natural to talk about and act upon through day to day on and offline activity, the community rallied around the monastics.

Since the case study in some ways features mindfulness, perhaps the final tip should be mindfulness itself. If we truly want our movement to do something, we must be mindful about our stakeholders. Getting them to do things like donate cash or sign petitions means that the cause must be a heart-felt part of their lives.

What makes the cause speak to them, and how do they want to engage with the cause? Is it a yellow wristband? Or making fundraising for the cause part of their birthday celebration? How can we get our stakeholders to embrace our cause as part of their lives? To do that, we must go beyond the tools and mindfully approach our word of mouth to engage people on their terms. By doing so, we enable people to talk, act, and spread the word, both on and offline.

Update 10/5/2009: Check out the video of Geoff's Q&A session, or read the transcript.