Engagement
Quote of the Week: Impersonal Engagement
Friday, June 4th, 2010 | Quote of the Week | 4 Comments
This week’s quote comes from Joseph Yoo of Step by Step–a blogger I discovered through Andrew Conrad. Yoo talks about a time when he was in seminary and worked at the Korean United Methodist Church of Greater Washington. In his post, Yoo shares a story with us about a small signficant moment that I think is significant still today and outside the walls of the church.
On this particular day, Yoo was helping out with the church’s youth ministry where the youth would go out to the parks of DC and hand out sandwiches to the less fortunate. On this day though, there were more people than there were sack lunches available and the following interaction occurred:
As the kids were getting in the car, one of the homeless men came up to the passenger window of the van. Thinking he needed a sandwich, the pastor said, “Sorry, we don’t have any more sandwiches. But Jesus loves you.” The man started yelling back, “I know Jesus loves me! But what about you?”
Impersonal Engagement
Yoo goes on to say how the pastor just kept repeating the same thing: Jesus loves you. And the guy kept asking the same thing: Yes, but what about you? until the car drove off. I won’t do it justice, but Yoo goes on to talk about how impersonal things get sometimes–even when you have good intentions. And that sometimes, to truly make a difference and show you care, you have to get engaged and this may mean you have to roll-up your sleeves, get your hands dirty and get involved.
Your Challenge
Does this sound familiar? I find Yoo’s story relevant because in the world of social media–it gets easy to thank someone for a RT. It gets easy to post a photo. It gets easy to give a #followfriday shoutout. It gets easy to ask them for feedback or respond to an inquiry. It’s gets easy…and impersonal. So, here’s your challenge:
Take Five Steps Back
- Review your communications. Look through your Twitter feed and Facebook postings. Count the number of times you have an authentic interaction with a customer versus the number of promotional postings or generic responses.
- Review the conversations you’ve had with customers. Have you taken the conversation to the next level? Did you answer their question?
- Talk to outsiders. For example, call local media–not to pitch a story. But just to ask them what they think about your organization or cause.
- Know your competition. Look at your competitior’s website, Twitter, Facebook, blog, etc. How are they engaging people? What can you learn from them? What gaps exist?
- Get outside your comfort zone. Talk to people that don’t work in your department or function within your organizaton. Showing people you care inside the organizaton will build an attitude of caring.
What else? How can we make sure we are authentically engaging people and buidling relationships?
Like they say: If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Don’t be everyone. Be unique–this is how you will offer true value to your customers.
flickr credit: Matthew Yaktine
One Word of Advice for Voters of Pepsi’s Refresh Project
Monday, February 1st, 2010 | Blog Talk, Case Studies and New Orgs/Campaigns | 5 Comments
Sustainability. In a fast-paced, 140-character world, short term and one-hit wonder thinking is rampant. But when it comes to making a difference and solving the great problems of our times, we need to be thinking for the long-term. This is why I hope the voters of Pepsi’s Refresh Everything Project will keep the concept of sustainability top-of-mind.
Let me first say that I applaud Pepsi’s jump into social good–and I hope more groups follow their lead. Perhaps if more did, then we’d have more case studies, a deeper set of lessons learned and more refined best practices. In a sense, we’d have more to talk about. This post is not for the folks at Pepsi. Rather, it’s aimed at the people who are engaging in Pepsi’s Refresh Everything Project.
For those not familiar, Pepsi is foregoing its Superbowl Ads and instead, engaging in a social good experiment. Pepsi will award a total of $20 million in grants over the course of the year. Who will receive the grants? That’s for you, me and everyone else to decide by voting–and a big reason why I hope, each voter, keeps in mind the concept of sustainability when reviewing the proposed projects. (More on how the project works.)
When reviewing the proposals, a thought kept pulsing, growing bigger and bigger inside me. Pepsi is awarding $20 million dollars in resources–but what if you had $20 million dollars or your organization did–how would you allocate those resource and why?
Sure–Recruiting people to help clean the highways is great–but what if we knew of a way to make it where people didn’t litter in the first place?
Sure–It’s great to offer a summer camp to kids to teach them to better appreciate the earth, but how can we scale this to reach more children in more places?
Sure–It’s great to find ways to get people up and moving. But, there are so many good people working to achieve this already. What strategies do they find working? Let’s invest there.
The Pepsi Refresh Project is a great initiative, but it’s just a start. I expect (and hope) we’ll start to see more of it. I also agree with Beth Kanter that, with crowdsourcing efforts, this is where having a key group of content experts involved is key. But, to me, the biggest take-away is that we, as a community, need to be thinking more strategically with our resources–this is why I love social marketing. It addresses both the short-term and the long-term. It looks at advocacy as well as promotion and a wide range of other various tools. It thinks both upstream and downstream. In other words, it offers a framework for us to create sustainable programs, products and services that truly can make a lasting change and a better world.
Thus, to all you voters, when reviewing, please keep in mind the idea of sustainability. What’s going to make the biggest difference for the amount of effort, resources and time?
What about you–what advice do you have either to Pepsi or to the fellow voters?
How-To Go From Good to Great
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 | Blog Talk, Changeblogging: NP, activism, social change + | 1 Comment
Caveat: I am an outsider looking in, and like the title says–I think this initiative is a good thing. It just good have been great. Let me explain.
Project: Variety’s Power of Women Awards Recognition in Collaboration with the Lifetime Network
Good: Gathering together some of Hollywood’s greatest women, recognizing their contributions to some powerful nonprofits (Save Darfur and ServiceNation amongst them) and engaging the interest and attention of numerous influentials.
How it could have been GREAT: Involving the rest of us. Lifetime in and of itself has a huge audience base, and many of these watchers–I would presume–are also powerful women doing amazing things. What would have been great, would have been a contest of sorts that asked ordinary women to submit the story of everyday women who are working to better and change the world. The winner? Well, she gets to wine and dine with the A-listers at the described event above and gets to be recognized right alongside Anne Hathaway and company. How great would that have been?
Apply this to your own work. Many of you are doing awesome, notable, and persistent work. Good work. Just remember to pause and ask yourself–how can we make this GREAT? If Variety and Lifetime might have made the event bigger, just think of the blog posts, the comerraderie, the buzz, the views, the downloads–but most importantly, the community growth and involvement that could have resulted. It’s good, but it could have been great.
EPA Blogger Neighbor Aaron, brings more than Green to the Greenversation
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 | Blogger Neighbors, Green Marketing | 1 Comment
This week’s Blogger Neighborhood profile intrigues you more and more as you read. Not only does Aaron do fascinating work for the EPA, but he also lives a life full of passion – for the environment, for adventure and for his family.
I mean, not sure about you, but I haven’t met too many other people who have been both an elephant trainer and a first-mate on a whale watching boat…and that’s just the beginning. Enjoy!
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Blog Name: Greenversations
Blog Topic: Greenversations is the official blog of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, writing about personal experiences related to their work. Science Wednesday on the blog features EPA research and development efforts, highlighting environmental and human health research. The overall goal is to engage the public to help accomplish EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment.
About the Author: Aaron Ferster is the lead science writer-editor for the EPA’s Office of Research and Development. As a member of the science communications team, Aaron’s primary focus is communicating EPA research and development to the general public, translating often highly technical environmental and human health science into language and media that is accessible, accurate and engaging to non-scientific audiences.
Before coming to EPA, Aaron spent ten years working as an exhibit writer and developer at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park, in Washington, D.C. He also worked as a first-mate on a whale watch boat, an assistant camera man for National Geographic film crew, and an elephant trainer. He lives in suburban Maryland with his wife, two daughters (one hearing, one deaf), a dog, and a turtle. He and his wife are currently working on a book together about their experiences raising a deaf daughter.
What first Prompted Him to Blog: I’ve been a big fan of blogs for a while. I’m really intrigued by the evolution of the way bloggers and their readers communicate, forming free-flowing, often passionate on-line communities. So when the opportunity to blog at EPA came along, I jumped at the chance. My first chance to post on Greenversations was to help promote “Bike to Work Day.” I’m an avid bike commuter, so it was a perfect fit.
What’s one lesson you’ve learned from blogging? That people are interested in what EPA is doing, and that blogging is a completely appropriate way for us and other government agencies to engage the public in an ongoing dialogue.
If you could live on any street, what would the street be named, and why? Abbey’s Way (Take the other) – tribute to Edward Abbey, one of my favorite writer’s, and a passionate environmentalist.
Who would be your dream real-life neighbor? A full complement of native critters: owls, box turtles, red-tailed hawks, orioles, black snakes, skunks, foxes, white-tailed deer, and perhaps the wandering bear or coyote now and again. We had a pair of barred owls nest in a tree next to our house a couple years ago and the kids loved it.
What latest new bites would you share with your neighbors if they asked you how you were doing? Puppy news – we have an eight-month-old puppy and our neighbors on both sides also have young dogs, so we have lots of puppy news to chat about.
What would you give to a new neighbor as the perfect welcoming gift? Fresh blueberry pie and a gallon of vanilla ice cream.
What is your favorite blog post and why? Michael Chorost, a deaf science writer and author of Rebuilt: how Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, keeps a blog about his experiences as a cochlear implant recipient. My wife and I are currently embroiled in a fight with my health insurance company over refusal to cover a second cochlear implant for our daughter. Chorost chronicles a similiar fight he had on his blog, and his post has been both educational and inspirational.
Past Blogger Neighbors Include:
- Osocio @ Osocio, nominated by SocialButterfly
- Beth Kanter @ Beth’s Blog, nominated by SocialButterfly
- Beth Dunn @ Small Dots, nominated by Beth Kanter
- Len Edgerly @ LenEdgerly.com, nominated by Beth Dunn
- Stacey Monk @ Epic Change, nominated by the Twitter-verse
- Jason Dick @ A Small Change, nominated by Stacey Monk
- Roger Carr @ Everyday Giving, nominated by Jason Dick
- Andre Blackman @ Pulse & Signal, nominated by SocialButterfly
- Laura Stockman @ 25 Days to Make a Difference, nominated by Roger Carr
- Karama Neal @ So What Can I Do?, nominated by the Carnival of Change
- Julie Zauzmer @ 52 Ways to Change the World, nominated by Karama Neal
- Vanessa Mason @ Subject to Change, nominated by SocialButterfly
- Stephanie Gulley @ HeyStephanie.com, nominated by Vanessa Mason
- …and Aaron Ferster @ EPA’s Greenversations, nominated by SocialButterfly
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This continuous weekly series highlights different blogs and their respective bloggers in the blogosphere neighborhood. Following the great Mr. Rogers, who tells us to ‘Get to know your neighbor,’ this series introduces us to our blogger neighbors, making for a more unified, collaborative voice for the social sector. Like to nominate someone or be featured yourself? Contact me @ socialbutterfly4change@gmail.com.
My 4th of July Surprise
Monday, July 7th, 2008 | Blog Talk, SocialButterfly | 12 Comments
I apologize for being very MIA the past few days…it’s not like me. But, I had one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments happen over the holiday weekend:
I GOT ENGAGED!
Yes, this bog is about social marketing. Yes, it’s also about social media. But, for this small 300-word post, I’m going to share a BIG slice of my life with you. My favorite holiday is the 4th of July, and I just moved to Washington D.C. in January. My parents are my best friends and my boyfriend (now fiance) is the love of my life.
Thus, the rents planned a 4th of July trip to D.C. for their first-ever visit to where I now call home. Little did I know that my now-fiance was plotting the whole time to pop the big question. A dinner cruise, a fancy red dress, the song ‘Lady in Red,’ (played by Dennis the piano player who learned the song just for this occassion), dancing and fireworks later….I was engaged. and it was all a surprise.
Life. Is. Great. =)
Are You a Change-Agent? User-Experience Inspires Environmental Change
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 | Blog Talk, Case Studies and New Orgs/Campaigns, General Events and Happenings, Green Marketing, Social Media | No Comments
Timberland + Changents provide an innovative platform, strategy and user experience for change
What do a bus, a canary, an artist, a rocker and a college grad have in common? Getting green. and inspiring others to follow suit.
Today, Timberland, the outdoor company, and Changents unveiled a new online experience where individuals can be catalysts for change by teaming up with environmental “Change Agents” from around the world to advance the green revolution.
Engage ::
Watch broadcasts of firsthand experiences from the field through blogs, videos, photo albums, Flickr streams, phoned-in podcasts, Twitter dispatches and more.
Back a Change Agent by assuming the roles of:
- “Fan” (a shout-out of support),
- “First Responder” (being on-call if their Change Agent gets in a pinch),
- “Buzz Builder” (promoting a Change Agent’s stories and Action Requests through viral sharing),
- “Angel” (helping fill their Change Agent’s piggy bank) and
- “Advocate” (influence policy makers with respect to a Change Agent’s cause)
Plug in to ‘Earthkeepers,’ where you can follow and interact with 5 extraordinary Change Agents, dubbed, “Earthkeeper Heroes.
- Big Green Bus (12 Dartmouth students travel the country this summer in a tricked-out school bus converted to run on waste vegetable oil);
- The Canary Project (an artist couple convey the story of human-induced climate change and potential solutions through media, events and artwork);
- Agent 350 (a recent college grad and his scrappy team sprint to build a global, online/offline climate action movement from scratch);
- Reverb (a group of rock and roll road warriors green summer concert tours for Dave Matthews, John Mayer and Maroon 5/Counting Crows while engaging fans around environmental sustainability);
- POWERleaper (A 23-year old designtrepeneur created a blueprint for urban flooring systems that generates electricity from human foot traffic).
Become an Earthkeeper Hero yourself! Nominate yourself or others to compete for a chance to join the ranks of this amazing group.
About ::
Changents.com is an entertainment-driven Internet destination that connects innovators of social and environmental change – Change Agents – with a global network of people who want to help them. In 2007, Changents was founded by two social entrepreneurs, Alex Hofmann and Deron Triff, who set out to engage a digitally-connected, socially-conscious generation on its own terms.
“We started Changents to give a new generation of social and environmental problem-solvers the tools they need to build teams of active followers and help them become ‘rock stars’ of change through the Internet,” said Changents Co-Founder and CEO Deron Triff.”
Alexandra Bornkessel
Email: abornkessel@fly4change.com
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If you have questions, comments or concerns, email me at socialbutterfly4change@gmail.com.
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