This is worth forwarding. Nice tools for 'listening" to the web. As organizers, many nonprofits are focused on getting the message "out" but very few have a listening strategy. Why listen? Listening helps you become a better organizer. Listening is part of your brand offline. It should be a part of your brand online. It helps you communicate more effectively. You can learn things that reshape your strategy. It is fun. 1. Addictomatic: This is by far the easiest way to create a listening dashboard for free. Type in a search term and it will generate the latest news, blog posts, videos and even images around the keyword. After it generates results (using a variety of search engines, news sites and social networks) you can personalize the dashboard. Bookmark it and check it daily. 2. Topsy: Part search engine, part social web connector. When you search for something on Topsy, such as “climate change”, Topsy finds daily conversations that match the search term. The results are the items people link to, when discussing your search term via a social network, news website, blog, etc. Topsy ranks results based on how well they match your search terms, and the “influence” of...

I have blogged on many eyes in the past. It is a useful tool for generating visualizations of data, text and trends. There is a capacity to pull together data sets including twitter feeds or government data to tell a complex story in a single image. The world we live in becomes increasingly digital. Each activity generates a new digital shadow. The challenge to the organizers is to leverage this complex data to learn faster and make the right conclusions based on data trends. This data driven adaptation of strategy will be the key to successful organizing. (It always has been) The tools to do it well are getting cheaper and more accessible. Think about the data you have, the stories the data can tell to your organizing team, supporters, the media or your allies. What are the things you learn from your data .

Clay is on fire. Cultures get what they celebrate! What does your campaign and movement celebrate? Are you setting up a movement culture that celebrates sharing, collaboration, collective action and trust? Or are you celebrating donations, staff size, media attention and individual credit? What are the metrics you celebrate in movement building? Are those different than when you focus on legislative outcomes? There are tons of good riffs in his talk and book. Ways we network the movement will directly position (or not position) civic change leaders to leverage these dynamics. It never happens by accident. In each case it took leaders to build the network, support the network and drive the network to produce. Usually, they were different leaders and each had different skills and focus.

If you are interested in that approach, here's a couple of tips. First, try to show users something as soon as possible. In an ideal world they arrive at your page and immediately see a graph that tells them something interesting about themselves or something they relate too. Typically this isn't achievable, but at the very least have a single step where they enter an email address, twitter name, etc and then within a few seconds get some information. You should also show an example of what they will get on the landing page. These techniques reduced my bounce rate massively, never overestimate people's patience, you constantly need to be convincing them to spend time navigating your site. The second key is presenting your statistics in an actionable way. If you can not only tell a user something interesting, but cause them to do something based on that information, then your chances of a repeat visit shoot way up. Feedburner has an 'Optimize' tab that guides you through ways of increasing your traffic. I found that changing from just showing your most-frequently-contacted friends to sending a report of the people you used to talk to and haven't for a while...

I like these tools to help tell the story. This widget misses a few important tweaks that would make it more valuable for both the user and PBS. 1. Sign up for updates on this story. (Name recruitment for PBS). Thank you emails should have links to charities and actions in them. 2. Donate to news coverage of the gulf coast spill. (short video talking about the cost of covering the story) 3. The logo link to news hour should be all the Gulf spill coverage NOT the homepage. 4. Tell your story of the Gulf like this..link 5. Watch the Mos Def the Gulf Aid track, 'Ain't My Fault.' http://bit.ly/acApvO#mb Oil in the Gulf.

There are big drivers afoot shifting civic organizing again. These forces are going to be as trans formative as the web was and initial email. The forces are mobile and data. You need to be developing strategies today that: a. capture data b. position you to leverage the data you capture to deliver service to users. c. integrate this personalized information product with social and mobile media channels. There are lots of reasons "why". and even more ways "how". It is a process I am working on right now with clients and campaigns I care about. Unfortunately, very few organizations or social movements are working on serious strategies that are going to line up with the coming wave of changes in content will be delivered. I ran across this quote "Organizations should refocus their attention on personalizing content and disseminating news through mobile devices" - Eric Schmitt @ Google. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35649.html#ixzz0nanfhl4Z It is interesting to think about.