Like it or not, Twitter use continues to surge. Twitter is averaging 230 million tweets per day, up 110 percent January 2011. Over 55 percent of active users contribute tweets from a smartphone or other mobile device. So it’s not going away. Here are a few tidbits to help drill down a little deeper:

Most Twitter users are minorities. In November 2011 the racial divide was 8 percent — 13 percent African-American versus 5 percent white. One in 10 African-American Internet users visit Twitter every day, double the rate of Latinos and nearly four times the rate for whites, according to Pew.

There are also more older adults adopting Twitter than ever before: those in the 30-49 year old bracket doubled to 14 percent from 7 percent last November.

And for kicks, here are some random facts proving that the rich and famous love to tweet: Twitter users include 75 percent of the NBA’s players, 50 percent of the NFL, 82 percent of the U.S. House and 85 percent of the Senate; 87 percent of the Billboard Top 100 Musicians, and 93 percent of the top Food Network chefs.

Facebook has once again – ugh – significant changes to its pages, now called “Brand Timelines.” By March 31st all pages will be converted to the new format, and it will require that all of us figure out the implications. According to epolitics, the key change is that the new format is much more photo-centric. Here’s an edited list of the most significant changes and implications:

Good-bye Landing Page, Hello Cover Photo

Sophisticated facebook pages often use a custom “landing page.” When you go to their page, instead of seeing the list of posts on the page’s wall, you see a custom designed page. There are normally three calls to action: 1) To “like” the page 2) To donate and 3) to volunteer. Landing pages have been shown to be extremely effective in increasing the amount of user engagement on the page (liking, commenting, sharing, going to other pages, etc.) Oh well — under the new layout, landing pages will be no more.

Instead, as on personal profile pages, Facebook will let you chose your own “cover photo.” These are large photos that stretch across the page and are 850 pixels by 315 pixels. Facebook is pretty blunt that these photos should not be promotional in nature and recommend there be little to no text on them. President Obama has made the switch and is taking full advantage of his cover photo as you can see here. As the old saying goes, a picture tells a thousand words, and with cover photos, this could never be more true. Cover photos will be the first thing a user will be drawn to, so they really need to make a splash. Tip: you should change it on a regular basis to communicate more about your work, especially when new issues come up.

Timeline — Tell Your Story, All of It!

The format of actual posts has changed much like the format of the personal pages: they are now split into two columns in a timeline format. Crucially, they allow you to go back (all the way to 1800) and post milestones. The idea is that Facebook wants its users to be able to easily tell their story. In the Timeline, photos are now much bigger, giving you an opportunity to tell a more powerful and visual story than with the old pages. Before switching over to the Timeline format, you should update the timeline with all major events. You can always go in and add more photos or information later, but when it launches you want to give your supporters a complete story about your organization.

Reduced Tab Visibility – Major Format Changes

The “tabs” or “apps” that run down the side of the page in the current format are now moved to a row under the cover photo as rectangular panels or images. Before, you could have dozen of tabs visible on all pages. With Timeline there is only space for three custom tabs. For the rest of your tabs, the user will have to click a drop-down menu to see them all. You will then have to identify the top three apps you want to make visible — chances are users are NOT going to see the other tabs, so this VERY important. Depending on events, you may want to cycle some of your apps into the top spot to address current issues or events.
“Pinning” Content to the Top of the Page

Perhaps in exchange for taking away the landing page, Facebook will now let you “pin” posts to the top of the page. Once pinned, the content will stay at the top of the Timeline for seven days or until you pin something else. You can only have one item pinned at a time. The post will also remain in its place in chronological order in the Timeline. This is a great way to showcase new and interesting content or highlight an older post that has become relevant to a current issue. This is also a great place to put a call to action such as to donate or volunteer.

Private Messaging

While a simple change, allowing private messaging between the page owner and the user is very powerful. Now we can engage in much more detailed conversations with the user. Conversations that might not interest all users (say, a precinct-wide issue) can now be addressed without filling up the content of the Timeline. This will reduce the amount of noise and make it easier for users to navigate the content.

Facebook has a new set of metrics allowing users to monitor “shares” and “clicks”. The definition of a “click” is obvious, but a “share” is less so. To measure shares, Facebook take posts from one user’s feed and posts it into the “Sharer’s” feed for all of their friends to see.

According to the web gurus over at EdgeRank “Shares are very important in driving more exposure to your content. Sometimes asking your users to share a post can be enough to help the content spread further. More elaborate techniques will include creating “Sharable” content. Current popular objects that are being Shared are funny and/or entertaining images or videos. The trick is to get the fan to “share” this photo/video/etc with their friends. Make the photo/video/etc something their friends would actually want to see.”

After trolling though the data, EdgeRank also found that Wednesdays had the best Shares ratios along with the highest Clicks ratios. They conclude that the “trend seems to suggest that more users are on Facebook midweek than on the weekend. Interestingly Friday did poorly in Clicks, perhaps suggesting not many users interact with content as actively than other days of the week.”

In a comparison of clicks per Like vs clicks per Comment (a user commenting on you post) EdgeRank found that a comment results in roughly 4 times the amount of clicks.

Conclusion: Post on Wednesdays and encourage your supporters to comment!

Nonprofit PR has pulled together a simple list of mistakes groups often make as they wade into the social networking world.  Here are the highlights:

Setting up your nonprofit’s Facebook account as a person instead of a page: This is of the most common mistakes made by nonprofits when they first begin using Facebook. Some do it on purpose for a variety of well-meaning reasons, while others simply don’t know any better. A nonprofit should always create a page and categorize it properly as a nonprofit organization. Ideally, nonprofits want to have thousands of supporters on Facebook, and personal accounts allow a maximum of 5,000 friends.

Not fully thinking through the name for your Facebook page: At a basic level, there are two primary branding components on a Facebook page: Your organization’s name and your profile image. While this seems simple, remember that once the Facebook page you created for your nonprofit has 100 fans, you can no longer change the page name (your image, on the other hand, can be changed as many times as you desire). There are currently two options to get around this rule if necessary: Either create a new page and ask your supports to “like” you there instead; or stay with the original name Regardless, when you initially create your page, be sure to take the name into close consideration.

Creating a Facebook page, but not monitoring it properly: There is a debate over whether or not nonprofits should delete Facebook posts or comments (which some equate to censorship). At the very least, nonprofits should monitor their pages for posts and comments that are inappropriate or that are spam. Don’t let anyone use your organization’s wall to promote their own products or agendas, and always monitor all comments for inappropriateness.

Signing up for Twitter when you really don’t have the time for Twitter: Twitter can be a great marketing communications tool for a nonprofit, but only if it is able to invest time on a regular basis. If your organization wants to get to know Twitter, first simply join as an individual and use it as an information consumer. It is a great time-saving tool for getting information from the organizations and causes that you care about. Start there and determine if it makes sense for your organization to make it a priority. If you don’t have time to do something on Twitter on a regular basis, you are better off not creating a profile for your nonprofit.

Using a logo, rather than a graphic icon, as a profile photo: Graphic icons in logos are making a very strong comeback as a response to the need for a strong social-media brand icon. The best branded nonprofit Facebook and Twitter users typically don’t use their organizations’ entire logos as their profile photo. Instead, they use the graphic icon (think red ribbon for AIDS awareness) as the profile photo. It is important to understand that most people will see your icon as a very small image, so make sure what you choose works. Take the time to think about what will work best to meet your organization’s brand guidelines and strategic goals.

Dan Zarrella has posted an infographic — all the rage these days — on how to get more clicks on twitter. While it’s unclear whether his findings are statistically sound, he’s gathered some interesting tidbits useful for those of us trying to get more out of our twitter accounts.

• Tweet later in the day: Tweets posted in the afternoon hours had higher click through rates (CTRs) than tweets posted in the morning

• Tweet on weekends: Tweets posted on Friday, Saturday and Sunday had higher CTRs than those posted during the rest of the week.

• Write Tweets between 120 and 130 characters: He analyzed the length of 200,000 tweets containing links and found the highest CTR on those that were between 120 and 130 characters long

• Tweet your links at a slower pace: The speed of link tweeting increased, the CTR decreased.

• Place links about 25% of the way through your tweet: He analyzed the length of 200,000 and found that the the highest click through rates were for links that were placed roughly 1/4 of the way through the tweet.

• Use action words: Tweets that contained more adverbs and verbs had higher CTRs than noun and adjective heavy tweets.

• Choose the right words and phrases: Tweets containing “via,” “@,” “RT,” “please,” and “check” had higher CTRs than tweets without those words.

• Experiment using the paper.li system: Of all the words and phrases he analyzed, the phrase that had the greatest positive effect on CTR was from us of the paper.li tweet: “daily is out.”

Many Crib Notes readers are also users of Powerbase — PTP’s online database specifically designed for groups engaged in community organizing. For the uninitiated, we developed Powerbase in response to the litany of problems organizing groups were having with existing databases, many of which were designed for businesses, not grassroots organizing.

To help our community get the most out of Powerbase, our Powerbase Community Engagement Director Josué Guillén has put together a really helpful set of screencasts for organizers wanting to do everything from simply adding a new contact to running fundraising drives.

Below are a couple of examples, but go to PTP’s YouTube page to check out all 16 videos.

 

 

 

The folks over at the New Organizing Institute have a great “tip of the day” for new twitter users. If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably seen a few tweets that look something like this: “.@neworganizing, what time does tonight’s event start?” So what’s the dot (.) at the beginning of a tweet?  According to NOI, “It all comes down to how Twitter determines what to show people. When your tweet starts with the handle of a person or organization, Twitter assumes it’s a reply. So why does that matter?”

• Replies are filtered. Twitter assumes replies are semi-private, so tweets that start with a handle (@neworganizing what time…) get filtered. Only people who follow BOTH you AND the account you’re tweeting at will see a reply. This keeps your stream from getting filled with questions and replies between other people.
• Why is this good? It’s helpful if you follow people who answer a lot of questions on Twitter. For example, I follow lots of fantasy football analysts who answer hundreds of questions per day. If I saw all those responses, it would clog my stream.
• Why is it bad? Maybe you want everyone to see the tweet you sent to @WhiteHouse and RT you. Or maybe you want everyone to see your response to a question. When people tweet questions at @neworganizing, I usually want everyone who follows us to see the response, because I know others may have the same question.
• How to solve it. If you’re tweeting at someone and you want all your followers to see it, put any character in front of the handle. It could be a dot (.), a >, a blank space, a word (Hey @WhiteHouse), or anything you want. As long as @ isn’t the first character in your tweet, Twitter gets tricked into thinking it’s just an ordinary tweet, and shows it to everyone who follows you or searches for the other party’s handle.

Here are 5 tips tips from Heather Mansfield, author of the new book, Social Media for Social Good on how you can get better traction with your YouTube channel.

1. Use Your Nonprofit’s Avatar as Your Profile Picture
Your nonprofit’s avatar is very important for branding on YouTube. Your avatar will be displayed on all the channels you subscribe to and become friends with, as well as on the walls of any comments you post. It should be square and include your logo, and it should be the same avatar that you use on your other communities. YouTube is a visual community where avatars trump text or titles, so to maximize brand recognition, never use a photo as your profile picture.

2. Use the Colors of Your Avatar to Design Your Channel
YouTube offers one-click automatic branding for your channel. As with Twitter, you should log in, go to “My Channel > Themes and Colors > Show Advanced Options,” and enter the numeric values of the colors of your avatar. Again, these numbers can be provided to you by your graphic designer or guesstimated by using the 4096 Color Wheel.

3. Limit the Description of Your Channel to Your Mission Statement or One Paragraph
People are not on YouTube to read. They are there to watch videos and be entertained and inspired. Don’t overwhelm your viewers with unnecessary text. Simply go to “My Channel > Profile > Edit” and enter a brief “Channel Description” and link to your website. Disable most categories that you see there, such as age, movies, schools, and music. Keep your profile section simple.

4. Maximize Your YouTube Search Engine Optimization Using Channel Tags and Video Titles
YouTube is now considered the second largest search engine in the world, behind only Google. To maximize the possibility that your videos turn up in YouTube search results, first go to “My Channel >Settings > Channel Tags” and enter a wide variety of tags that you think potential supporters of your work will search for in YouTube. Obvious tags are nonprofit, organization, your city, your state, and your program areas (environment, homelessness, international development, and so on). Next, when you are uploading videos to your channel, again add as many tags as possible to each video, give a strong but brief description, and, most important, title the video to optimize your YouTube search engine optimization (SEO). Titles have the strongest impact on YouTube search results after your channel’s name, so be clever and creative when titling your videos. For example, an excellent video by the Community Housing Partnership with the title “Inside Looking Out” would probably get much more traffic if it were renamed “Inside Looking Out: Homelessness in San Francisco, California.”

5. Enable Channel and Video Comments
YouTube is much more than simply a place to host your nonprofit’s videos. It’s a thriving online community. If you don’t allow comments on your channel or your videos, then you have cut yourself off from the YouTube community. Unless your nonprofit works on controversial issues like religion, politics, immigration, or abortion and you don’t want to have to monitor your comments on a daily basis, enable channel and video comments. The vast majority of the time, the comments will be positive and supportive. For the few that aren’t, if they are exceptionally mean-spirited, then simply delete them, block the user, and move on. That said, there are seemingly more mean and grumpy people on YouTube than on any other community. Try not to be too shocked when you experience your first.

For better or worse, Facebook continues to “evolve.” In the last few weeks alone they have introduced three new features: improved Photos, the Ticker, and Top News. Copyblogger has offered up three easy ways that folks can take advantage of these latest Facebook features:

1. Upload those big, beautiful photos

The new photos are much larger.

When you upload an album you can create a mini-story that is eye-catching and provocative. Post more pictures on your Facebook Page and think about what story you can tell with the photos.

The other great thing about the new photo size is that they take up more space in the News Feed. You are claiming more real estate than a typical post. Remember to add comments onto the main picture in the Album so you can also get your message across, along with your great images.

2. Keep track of The Ticker

The Ticker has probably been the most controversial of the changes Facebook introduced. Some people like it, others can’t stand it, and some have hidden it.

The way to get the most out of the Ticker is to encourage interaction. When you are getting more interaction throughout the day on your posts, other people can easily click on their friend’s Ticker update to see what their friend is commenting on or Liking

Your post can have a longer life if there is a continuing conversation. Any time someone comments, their friends have the potential to see the post and the thread of comments, then jump in and add to the conversation.

Post often (once or twice a day if possible) so you can pop into that Ticker more often.

Make sure you are sharing great, relevant content and ask questions related to that content in the update, just as AllFacebook.com did in the Ticker shown here.

3. Stay on top of the Top Stories

Top Stories aren’t actually completely new.

We used to have Top News and Most Recent on separate tabs. But now they are blended into one stream. Top Stories are what Facebook thinks you want to see, based on past interactions.

If you want to be a Top Story, make sure you are getting those comments and Likes.

So how do you get more comments and Likes?

 

The Electronic Frontier foundation has put together a list of tips on how the #Occupy movement can protect its mobile data. As they say: “Protesters of all political persuasions are increasingly documenting their protests — and encounters with the police — using electronic devices like cameras and cell phones. The following tips apply to protesters in the United States who are concerned about protecting their electronic devices when questioned, detained, or arrested by police. These are general guidelines; individuals with specific concerns should talk to an attorney.”