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Pathfinder+International+Wins+DoGooder+%E2%80%9CFunny+for+Good%E2%80%9D+Video+Award

Fission is pleased to announce that our client Pathfinder International (@PathfinderInt) won the 2013 DoGooder “Funny for Good” Video Award for No Joke. Choice Matters. Everywhere. Exciting news!

Presented by See3Communications, YouTube, the NonProfit Technology Network, and supported by Cisco, the DoGooder award recognizes the creative and effective use of video in promoting social good. Pathfinder is a global nonprofit dedicated to improving sexual and reproductive health. Fission worked with Pathfinder and Amy York Rubin (@Ayrubin) to envision and produce the video, craft a campaign strategy, and launch a campaign around the video.

Congratulations to the Pathfinder International team, and especially to Jaime-Alexis Fowler (@JaimeAlexis), Associate Director of Public Relations and Online Communications at Pathfinder. Watch and share the video!

Here are some recent tweets about the video:

Read more about the video and the organization on Pathfinder’s blog.

Adriana Dakin @apdakin is a strategist with Fission and a board member of Young Women Social Entrepreneurs. She has a Master in Public Policy degree from Harvard Kennedy School.

The+Beauty+of+Replacing+Words%3A+Free+Icons+For+Nonprofits%21

Visitors to your website immediately scan the page to see if there is any visually interesting content. Unfortunately, for many nonprofits, pages are often loaded with relatively boring written content (sorry to be so blunt!).

One of the ways to change this is through Icons - a proven and simple way to communicate the same message in a way that is much more visually compelling.

Icons have been demonstrated to guide a visitor’s eye to the most important areas of content and visually break up paragraphs, lists, and steps, making them less boring and easier to follow.

In some projects, icons make up for the imagery on a website that lacks photographs. One website that Fission recently launched that illustrates this is www.civicdatachallenge.org. You can see how we used icons on this site to create the featured image that explains the Civic Data Challenge process in a unique and easy-to-read way.

Now, really nailing an idea or phrase with an icon isn’t always easy, and designers do not always have time to create custom icons for their organizations or campaigns - especially when working with tight deadlines and low budgets.

So to help, we’ve created a free downloadable icon pack, specially themed for use in nonprofit web design. Designers can download this .psd freebie and use all of these icons for any project. We have also uploaded most of these icons to the Noun Project, a searchable online database of icons that are downloadable in .svg format.

If you’ve used any of our icons in your projects, please share the URL to this post. We would love to see them in action – you can also tweet your pages to us at @Fissionstrategy!

What%27s+In+An+Infographic%3F

This is the first of a series of posts on infographics for non-profits. Next up in the series: online apps for making your own infographics.

Infographics are everywhere now: they are big, bright and packed with information. They are essential tools for non-profit organizations that want to educate and influence their audience. Why? Because infographics are one of the most useful ways of telling stories that stay with an audience.

Every cause can be supported by facts and figures, but many times it’s difficult to make statistics approachable or emotionally compelling to everyday people. Today, both the production and consumption of information have reached levels that make it extraordinarily difficult to grab even the smallest slice of someone’s attention. How do you appeal to supporters when the numbers essential to your cause are just a few in a stream of information on the web?

This is where a well-designed graphic that visualizes data can help. Infographics break up the monotony of reading text on a screen, grab attention, and can be easily used as viral promotional material on sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter where visual posts are more likely to get a high return on user engagement. That said, laying out an infographic and developing the narrative skeleton it rests upon can be a daunting task.

Breaking down what goes into making infographics is what lies at a heart of Column Five cofounders Jason Lankow, Joshie Ritchie, and Ross Crooks’ book INFOGRAPHICS: The Power of Visual Storytelling. They assert that infographics tell visual stories using a trifecta of retention, comprehension, and appeal. Infographics produce better retention through exercising a viewer’s visual working memory, making them easier to recall. As visual content, graphics also help increase the speed of information comprehension by cutting down on the time it would take to understand a long-worded written concept. Finally, infographics appeal to a variety of audiences – and that, more than anything, is a necessity in today’s information-packed Internet.

A Quick Look At What’s Out There: Product(RED)

Let’s look at Product(RED), an organization that works to create an AIDS-free generation by getting shoppers to buy (RED) products that go into a Global Fund that finances HIV/AIDS programs in Africa. They conveyed the scale of their task by using this infographic:

With three lines of content, they conveyed their mission, its scale, and a measurable way of achieving it that shoppers can easily grasp and respond to. As an added bonus, the graphics are in (RED)’s colors, hopefully creating even more brand recognition.

What Should Go Into A Graphic?

Making an infographic from complex information doesn’t always mean putting more information into graphical form. Here’s what an infographic is not:

A better-looking graph, such as the Economist’s Daily Chart
A photo-quote or an essay put into a nice font

Infographics are a type of story-telling medium. Start with a narrative before all else, then find a way to spin it out in a way that is informative but concise. Do whatever it takes to make sure your narrative remains genuine. Consider taking a leaf out of some of this generation’s best storytellers at Pixar.

Anatomy of an Infographic

Take a look at the Column Five infographic Why Tuesday? below. It discusses the problem of putting voting day on a Tuesday. It has great design – it has a color scheme that pops, inventive typography, takes advantage of vertical scrolling, and utilizes memorable visual accents. There are clear sections that serve as support for a final conclusion, as outlined here:

Problem in Title
“Are Americans Doing It Wrong?”
Three Clear Developmental Sections
“Where We Fall In The World”
“Why Our Voter Participation Stinks”
“Other Ways To Do It Better”
Galvanising Conclusion
“Take Action”

But all of these things would mean very little if it didn’t also have a great message to convey: Our voter participation is bad, but you can make that change. It makes the reader part of the story of the American nation, and compels them to spread the word and do something.

Source

What Now?

Perhaps hiring someone to work side-by-side with you to make an infographic would be the best for your campaign. That said, there are many resources available out there for those who want to try their hands at a little Illustrator or Photoshop.

For organizations with design talent on board, sites like The Noun Project and Premium Pixels offer royalty-free vector files and icons that help you cut down on design time. Color palettes such as Adobe’s Kuler are excellent resources for picking colours.

Fission also has created infographics for organizations such as the National Conference on Citizenship, Voices for America’s Children and NAACP LDF (two, actually). Our infographic for NAACP LDF about Voting Rights Act was even retweeted by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand during the Supreme Court discussion of Section 5. Learn more about that project here, and feel free to contact us if you’re looking to have an infographic created!

Who%E2%80%99s+Hiding+Out+On+Your+List%3F

You have an email marketing list - but do you know who is on it? Not every subscriber on your email list is made equal: some users have a greater reach than others, and it’s important that you identify those influencers and engage them on social media.

Source: Datasift

As these startling numbers from a Datasift research paper show, being mentioned by influential users can propel your reach to an audience far larger than your original list. A single influential user’s support causes a ripple effect when content is redistributed by their own followers. This is especially important because users are more likely to respond to recommendations from their social media streams than to other forms of advertising. Engaging your influencers and getting them to spread the word is key to social marketing.
So, are you engaging your influential users?

Attentive.ly starts with your email list and finds those same people on social media. Customers typically find at least a handful of high-Klout members on their lists, and that number can go into the thousands for email marketing lists that are in the millions. In many cases, these members are influential bloggers or journalists, celebrities or Members of Congress - in other words, people who have large audiences that you should be reaching.

Attentive.ly simplifies the process of finding and getting connected to these influential users. Subscribers need only glance at the Members section of their Attentive.ly dashboard to view deep social profiles of their influential members. “Recommendations” not only suggest who to follow, but let you follow multiple influencers with one click. Whenever you search user-posts to see who is talking about a topic, click on “Influencers” to filter the results by “Klout score > 40”. Now engaging those influentials couldn’t be easier!

Engage your list with Attentive.ly! Through April 30, Attentive.ly is offering a $100 discount to our Facebook fans.

3+Tips+to+Make+Video+Meetings+Successful+in+a+Visual+World

Every Friday for an hour, Fission’s team of about 18 strategists and developers meets via video conferencing to connect all our team members. Here everyone is looking happy because a puppy will join the DC team on Monday (a joke for April Fools?! Yes, it was).

Fission prioritizes using video for meetings because, as partner Cheryl Contee notes, a large percentage of our communication is body language. The more senses that are activated in communication, the better understanding and interaction can be.

A high 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual according to Hubspot, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text. Visual ... a big 6-letter word these days! Visuals inspire us. Says one social media coach: “Instagram is easy to use and inspires us to share moments with our friends, be a part of political movements, activism, or to help nonprofits save the world.” So too, video meetings increase multi-sensory communication.

Behavior can change outcomes, and we at Fission are in the business of making the world a better place. As a strategist, I’m interested in how small tweaks can lead to big changes. So here are my recommendations for making video meetings sing so that you get better outcomes:

1. Your body language is speaking so know what you’re saying with it

Of course, a video call isn't just about what you say, but also how you look and move. Programs like the Harvard Mediation Program teach active listening skills that end up being useful for many social situations where you’re being evaluated or judged or simply interacting (can you think of any situations like that?!). While getting certified there, fellow students and I were coached in simple but important things like sitting forward, having arms and legs open (not crossed), and looking attentively at someone’s eyes.

Mark Bowden, a non-verbal communications specialist, believes you can alter a person's impression of you by changing your behavior. He consciously uses his appearance during video meetings to change the way people react to him — through his eyes, hands (many of us might have ours on a keyboard typing but he makes sure to show his hands), and more.

Amy Cuddy, a Harvard Business School professor and researcher, studies how nonverbal behavior and snap judgments affect people from the classroom to the boardroom. In her fantastic TED talk she shows how our body language shapes who we are and what outcomes we can expect. While recovering from a severe car accident as a young woman, she faked it til she made it, in part through projecting body language confidence she didn’t necessarily feel.

Nonverbal behavior has an effect on people’s perception of us — we regularly make sweeping inferences from body language. Someone who looks like they’re actively listening will likely engage in more meaningful conversations that get important information out. We ourselves are also influenced by our own nonverbals, so here’s point #2 to help with that!

2. Take time before a video meeting to be in a power pose

Cuddy makes a persuasive case for taking two minutes before any meeting to stand in a power pose. Do this especially for meetings where you’re being evaluated — but that’s most situations to a degree. It’s a low-tech life hack.

Make yourself big, stretch out, open up. When people feel powerless, we close up and make ourselves small — not what you want to do. When feeling victorious, researchers have found that even blind people extend their arms up and out in a Victory signal. Here are some other high-power poses (these are screenshots from Cuddy's TED talk):

In contrast, here are some low-power poses showing people protecting themselves and closing up:

By participating in meetings with the power of your full presence — with confidence, assertiveness, enthusiasm and comfort — you can help to change the outcomes of meetings. Physiologically, being assertive, confident and comfortable is when people have higher testosterone (more assertive) and lower cortisol (less stress).

Most likely before a meeting you might be hunched up, looking at an iPhone or writing on a computer. But instead we should be doing a victory sign beforehand :) So for 2 minutes take a power pose to get your testosterone up and your cortisol down. You are configuring your brain to perform the best in the situation, as Cuddy says, so you don't leave a meeting feeling "Arg! I didn't show them who I am!"

People evaluate others most positively when they participate with presence, passion, comfort, authenticity, and enthusiasm — ie, when they bring their true selves. You dislike having no reaction from someone you're talking with, right?

3. Show simple, visually clean surroundings behind you

This one is quick! Clean surroundings can enhance a video call while a cluttered background increases distractions. So before you start a video call, think about what your surroundings will look like from the other end. The brains of the people you’re meeting with should focus more on you and what you’re saying, not the filing cabinet and cactus behind you. "It all distracts from the communication we are trying to have right now," explains Bowden. "Remove all distractions."

You can control your background to your advantage. You want focus to be on your body movements and conversation, nothing else.

And to wrap up ...

Of course you know that how you dress sends a visual message, so I won’t include that in these tips :) And you know that a camera pointing at you from below (eg from a laptop) isn’t the normal way that someone would see you in a regular meeting (and not the most flattering).

What tools can you use? When our team was small, we used Skype video … and often experienced technical glitches (but worth it) ... then Google+ Hangout, with glitches as well but still worth it because we could see each other, and now Bluejeans.com to have better sound and video quality for a big group. A benefit of Bluejeans is that some people can call in via phone if needed.

When in-person meetings aren’t practical, video meetings are often a much better alternative to traditional conference calls. You might have to coach people on how to use a video conference tool (download the plug in, test it out, etc), but after the first time they’ll be hooked.

Adriana Dakin @apdakin is a strategist with Fission and a board member of Young Women Social Entrepreneurs. She has a Master in Public Policy degree from Harvard Kennedy School.

I+Take+My+Coffee+Lean

Have you ever been in a work discussion that goes on and on past the point of usefulness?

Have you ever been the one prolonging the conversation because you aren't sure everyone's been heard? Yeah, me too … on both counts.

The Lean Coffee format can help. This meeting format is well-suited to get democratic input on generating agenda items, prioritizing them, and managing time for discussion. I was first introduced to the format by Adam Yuret, a Seattle-based lean practitioner.

There are a number of different Lean Coffee formats that appear if you Google the term, but the variant that I have used requires participants to first display topics they would like to discuss on Post-Its so everyone can see them. When everyone’s ideas for the discussion are up, we go around and each person who provided the topic gives a 30 second explanation of it. Participants have three to five votes to distribute across the topics, which get a "passion index.”

It’s now time to talk! Begin a time-boxed discussion of the topic with the highest votes. I’ve used a time-box of 8 minutes. When the 8 minutes have passed, take a silent roman vote to determine whether participants have derived sufficient value from the discussion or would like more time (a Roman vote is voting by thumb). Thumb up means, “I’d like to continue this discussion,” thumb sideways means “meh,” and thumb down means, “I don’t have more to contribute.” By voting this way, you can vote without interrupting the discussion. If the majority of participants vote thumbs up, continue the discussion on a reset timer.

When the majority of participants vote thumbs down (or thumbs sideways for ambivalent), close out the discussion. This is the time to call out any action items and their owners as applicable, then move to the next topic and discuss it using the same method. In my work experience, 30-45 minutes is a good length for Lean Coffee discussions. There can be a determined time limit, or you can let the passion of the group set that limit.

Working this approach with a distributed group takes a bit of creativity -- you can use a web-based post-it note board like Corkboard.me, or set a Google Doc and use comments to record up, down or "meh" votes.

What benefit does the Lean Coffee format give? The touchstones for the approach are to be democratic, flexible, results-oriented, and to respect people’s time. Within those boundaries, tweak it and make it your own.

So go take it for a spin, and come back to post on your experience, results, and tweaks!

4+Things+I+Learned+On+Advanced+Digital+Organizing

A few weeks ago, I attended a training at the New Organizing Institute on advanced digital organizing. The training ranged from social media to search engine optimization.

Here are the four biggest takeaways from the two day training:

1. Pinterest: Web Traffic Referrals are SECOND to Facebook now, among social networks. In digital marketing, we all talk about how “we really need to get on Pinterest...” but we actually really need to. Pinterest is less than half the age of Twitter, but it’s already blowing Twitter out of the water… er, sky, in terms of referral traffic.

2. Lower Barriers to Action: Beth Becker talked about two products that sound pretty hot: Call2Action and ActionSprout. They both make it easy to embed actions right into Facebook pages or wherever else you would want it.

ActionSprout allows people to not only like or comment on your Facebook content, but also “Join” the cause, sign, RSVP, register, etc. You can customize the tool to your heart’s content. It also works with Facebook’s open graph to show people signing a petition as a “recent activity.” Oh, one more thing: ActionSprout allows you to download your Facebook supporter’s names and email addresses (that’s a big one!).

Call2Action allows you to embed videos just about anywhere that include customized buttons embedded at the bottom of the video. You can have a link to your petition, more videos, a share tool (of course), a donate button, pretty much whatever you want. An example of what their tool can do is below:

And here’s the cherry on top: they can take all those actions from right inside the video. No more clicking a donate button and being taken away from Facebook, or the email message for that matter. These actions can take place all inside Facebook.

3. Text messages have 100% open rates. Sure, there are some people that may instantly delete your message, and there might be some inactive phone numbers on your list, but most smart phones with their pesky notifications are sure to get your supporter’s attention.

While your email blast to 20,000 supporters might have a 20% open rate (if you’re lucky), a text message essentially has a 100% open rate.

Fission is always looking to implement mobile campaigns whenever possible. Last year, we put out a report on how we helped a client recruit 150,000 subscribers and generate 350,000 calls through text messaging. It’s worth a read.

4. Pique their Curiosity: Do you know what The Curiosity Gap is? The folks at Upworthy do a great training on it. And while I can’t put it as well as the folks at Upworthy, the idea is this: don’t give everything away when writing headlines and teasers. That goes for Facebook, Twitter, email, just about any content you are putting out there.

If your post or video is about Oscar the Grouch stealing candy from the grocery store, don’t say that in your headline. Instead, say “You Won’t Believe What Oscar the Grouch is Going to Do to You,” or “This Guy Redefines What it Means to be Total Trash.” Whatever makes you curious and want to click on it.

Upworthy recommends writing 25 headlines for the content, asking a few others what their favorite is, and then ultimately deciding on the best candidate to use.

Sure, It might take some time, but it works pretty darn well. I’ve already watched three Upworthy videos today and it’s not even 10 AM. Ask your friends what they think of your 25 headlines if you like. They’re already sitting on Facebook chat anyways, so put them to work!

Also, there’s no need to be TOO clever, and don’t bum people out. You want to make them angry enough to take action – what you might call “activisty.” An organization doesn't want to make people so sad that they feel hopeless to do anything.

Thanks to Beth Becker, Upworthy, Daily Kos, SEIU, NOI, and many, many others! I thoroughly enjoyed the two-day training!

Facebook%E2%80%99s+Updated+News+Feed+is+%E2%80%9CPrimarily+About+Visual+Content%E2%80%9D

At an event on Thursday, March 7, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was on hand to announce Facebook’s fresh look for its news feed that is said to “have the same look and feel on mobile, tablet, and web.”

What does this mean? Logos and thumbnails for Pages will be larger, and pictures and videos will take up more space on the page. In explaining the shift, Zuckerberg said, “Now that we all have cameras in our pockets, news feed has become primarily about visual content.” He claims that currently 50 percent of content on people’s news feeds are visual.

The latest news feed design aims to take advantage of the shift towards photo content in a way that “should be visual, rich, and engaging.”

Fission Strategy works to promote a wide variety of organizations and their content on Facebook, and these updates reflect behavioral shifts on the site we have seen over the past years – compelling photos can tell a story in a way that words sometimes cannot, an infographic can convey a ton of facts in a matter of seconds, and people are much more likely to share great photos with their friends and families!

You can learn more about the new look of Facebook on their blog now.

Fission+Works+with+NAACP+LDF+To+Defend+Section+5+of+Voting+Rights+Act

On Wednesday, February 27 the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, et al., which took a deeper look at Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). LDF represents six African-American residents of Shelby County who seek to defend the constitutionality of the core provisions of the Act.

In order to help spread information to the media and public about Section 5 of the VRA, Fission created an infographic for NAACP LDF that explained why Section 5 is still necessary and the importance it has played in recent elections.

This infographic proved to be successful in raising awareness about the SCOTUS case and was shared across numerous Twitter accounts and blogs. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted out the infographic:

Click the infographic to the right to see the full infographic here and learn more about the case on the NAACP LDF website.

Social+Data+Tracking%3A+Bitly+and+Datasift

On 7 February, at a Bitly/Datasift webinar entitled “Turning Social Data Into a Strategic Advantage: What Marketers Need to Know,” Bitly CEO Peter Stern made himself clear:

Bitly doesn’t just shorten links–it encodes them, meaning they can consistently track how messages travel across the Internet.

So why is this important in social media analysis?

There are a number of reasons, including that companies use information gleaned from social networks as a vital source of marketing information. Rob Bailey, CEO of Datasift, demonstrated this when he pointed out how his company’s platform aggregates information from over 50 social network sources to generate useful data. This allows clients to analyze demand, identify influencers, and monitor engagement over time. In other words, a good analysis of social data can help shape decisions on what kind of content to post, where and when to post it, and who to direct it to.

Stern described some particularly useful types of social data analysis. By tracking links, clients can learn more about the half-life of their content – the rate at which interest in a post decays – and use that to plan how regularly they should post. They can also keep an eye on how traffic differs between social networks in order to target ones that best cater to their audience. In the past we’ve written about how Google Analytics also has a number of tools to help complement the information provided by Bitly to help your organization.

In order to conduct a truly useful analysis of social media, what is needed is a clear picture of how users interact with content. The success of a Facebook page is, after all, more than just the sum of its Likes and shares.

It would be a mistake to assume that virality – the measure of how often content is actively shared on the Internet – is the only important indicator for the success of a campaign. The impact of an organization’s social media profiles – the number of people it drives to take action and instigate change – is less easily measured, but understanding where and how people are sharing information helps in creating a clear picture.

That’s where Bitly comes in. By encoding links, Bitly is able to track clicks on content as it passes organically from platform to platform. Despite what might be commonly thought, Stern said that less than 40% of Bitly’s links originate on either Facebook or Twitter combined. It would be a shame to ignore how the other 60% of links travel beyond new media and through some of our oldest social networks, including email and instant messaging. Bitly, which alone tracks roughly 1% of new Internet content on a daily basis, helps us to get a clearer view of how social media is really moving.

Datasift’s White Paper, “From Monitoring to Measurable Results: Preparing for the Needs of Today’s Social Media Marketer,” is available here.