Among the many responsibilities we have as nonprofit leaders is media monitoring: serving as air traffic controllers for the daily, ubiquitous flow of digital information from social media, websites, email and the like. For the sake of simplifying the discussion that follows, let’s put the information in two buckets:
- Current Events: In this category are things like a local elected official introducing a bill that stands to impact our organization, the local paper reporting on an issue related to our mission, and an allied organization winning an important grant.
- Current Issues: In this category are things like posts from important blogs and podcasts that we follow, studies issued by thought leaders, and the development of handbooks and similar publications that may help to advance our cause.
Given the volume of information coming at us, we could easily spend the better part of any given day triaging the flow. We can’t do that, however, and still manage our organizations. Here, I want share a couple of strategies for media monitoring, i.e., tools I use for mastering the management of digital information, with the hope that you may find them useful, too.
1. Media monitoring: a framework
David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, provides a useful framework for media monitoring. It suggests that the key to mastering workflow lies in five tasks: (1) Capture; (2) Clarify; (3) Organize; (4) Reflect; and (5) Engage. The book’s focus on enhancing productivity is much broader than our concern with media monitoring; nonetheless, its principles provide an excellent framework for this discussion. We’ll look at each of the tasks, and at the related media monitoring tools, in turn.
2. media monitoring: capture
In David Allen’s model, capture means having a system for grabbing and storing information such that you can easily review it at a later time. I use two different dashboard software programs for this purpose: (1) Start.me for what I have called “current events” and (2) Netvibes for what I have called “current issues.” We will look at each, in turn.
A. current events: START.ME
I hate surprises – e.g., a bill that gets introduced that might be harmful to my organization’s mission; a partner that plans an event on our land, but neglects to tell us about it, potentially handicapping our ability to tell a great story or, worse, to put our insurance carrier on notice; an agency hearing on an issue that could set legal precedent that is unfavorable to our cause. Certainly, we should all be building relationships so that other people are telling us about these things before they happen. But people are not perfect and some, unfortunately, would prefer to do things in such a way that nonprofit advocates remain in the dark. What to do?
Luckily in this 21st century in which we live, there are things that we, as leaders of small but mighty nonprofits, can do to keep a watchful eye on things. Many people have signed on to Facebook feeds and Groups as a way of monitoring what’s happen in their communities. Some also sign up for elected officials’ email newsletters, bookmark important websites, and set up Google Alerts. But think how many different sources of information are referenced in the foregoing sentence. You could spend half the morning trying to check them all.
My answer to this challenge has been to pay the $20 annual charge for a dashboard product called “Start.me.” And I use it religiously to keep an eye on the people and organizations in my community that have the greatest potential to directly impact my organization’s mission. Let me explain.
(1) wHAT IS "START.ME?"
Quite simply, Start.me is a modern-day bookmark manager with some added “jazz” and it’s in the “jazz” that it shines, in my humble opinion. The “jazz,” which only comes with the $20/year “Pro” plan, includes premium widgets, especially Facebook, and live RSS feeds. What does this mean as a practical matter? This will be the best $20 you spend annually in terms of staying on top of the people and organizations that have the greatest chance to impact your mission, for better or for worse, because you can monitor their website RSS feeds, particular website pages where there isn’t an RSS feed, and social media pages all from one or more simple dashboards that show up in a tab of your Internet Browser. (I go into RSS feeds in greater depth in Section B, below).
(2) HOW DO I USE IT?
My start.me account, which shows up as a separate tab in Google Chrome, has 3 subtabs.
(a) My Personal Tab
The first, a personal tab, has all of the bookmarks I use frequently, widgets for this blog’s and my nonprofit’s Facebook and Twitter Feeds; the NOAA radar image loop map; the breaking news window from a local tv/radio station; the agenda view of my daily calendar, and the “today” view of my Nozbe project/task management app.
(b) The County Groups Tab
Our organization has a county-wide focus and we are concerned with the protection of land for public open space. So we use Start.me to follow the County RSS news feed, the pending legislation page of the County Council, the RSS feed on development and zoning hearings, the Facebook pages of County Council members, the Baltimore County news feed of a regional newspaper, and the like. Here’s a look at this dashboard:
(c) The Stewarship Partners Tab
We have over 100 acres of land to take care of across 21 different sites. We rely on community partners extensively to help us; so, our stewardship partners tab tracks the websites and Facebook pages of our partners, where such sites and pages exist.
B. current issues: NETVIBES
There are probably many organizations that you follow as a nonprofit leader. There are “umbrella organizations” at the State and national levels for land trusts, for example, that offer newsletters, tools, and other helpful information. There are “think tanks” offering publications on best practices, groups like “Tech Soup” offering discounted software, and thought leaders like Joan Garry offering advice on everything from communications and fundraising to strategic planning. (Visit my resources page for a curated list of blogs and podcasts on a variety of topics of particular interest for small and growing nonprofits).
Most of these sources want to keep you updated by sending you a periodic email, which is the last thing you need – more email! I manage to get to Inbox 0 most days because I have unsubscribed from most of these newsletters and opted to receive updates by RSS Feed in Netvibes, instead. Let me explain how this completely free tool works.
(1) What is an rss feed?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. An RSS feed is a file that automatically collects new information from a website whenever that website is updated. It depends on a “feed reader,” which converts the files into readable text, typically in the form of headlines, summaries, update notices and links back to the native articles on the website that you are following. By glancing at the headlines and summaries, you can quickly tell whether the article is something you actually need or want to read.
(2) what is netvibes?
Netvibes is like Start.me in that it is dashboard software program that reads RSS feeds, among other things. Unlike Start.me, however, Netvibes allows you to easily find the address of a website’s feed AND to see all of your feeds by date in a single scrollable page.
(3) how do i use it?
One way I’ve reduced the daily deluge of email by unsubscribing from the email lists of blogs and websites that I follow, finding their RSS feeds, and adding those feeds to my Netvibes Dashboard instead. Let’s see how this works.
Pamela Grow is someone I recommend that small nonprofits follow because she provides excellent fundraising advice for the small development shop. She has a weekly email newsletter called the Grow Report, which is highly worth reading in my humble opinion. Instead of adding yet another email to your inbox, however, let’s see how to add this to Netvibes as an RSS feed.
The first step is to find the URL of Pamela Grow’s Fundraising Coaching for Small Nonprofits website, which is “https://www.pamelagrow.com/.” We then go to Netvibes, click on the Green “Add” button in the top, left-hand corner, click on the “+” icon under “New Reading App” and supply the URL, as shown below:
In a matter of a few seconds, Netvibes finds the RSS Feed. Click on the “+” sign, as shown below, adds the feed to a Netvibes Tab. (Some websites may make it easy for you to find the RSS feed by providing the RSS symbol:
If you see this, all you need to do is right click on it and select “copy URL to clipboard.” Then simply paste the URL into the dialogue box below).
Here’s what it looks like once added to a Netvibes Tab:
The Netvibes view shown above is called the “Apps” view. Within a given tab, you see a separate scrollable box for each of your feeds. You may be thinking, “this looks very much like the Start.me view from above. Why wouldn’t you simply add these feeds to Start.me?”
The answer is that, in addition to the “Apps” view, Netvibes also has a “Reader” view, which makes it even easier to scroll through your feeds because they are shown as a simple list by date. What’s more, in “Reader” view, I can see all of the feeds from a single tab or the feeds from every tab together in a single list by date, as shown below.
THE IMPORTANT TAKEAWAY: In just a few minutes’ time, I can easily scroll through these, find the items that are important, and skip over those that are not relevant.
3. media monitoring: clarify & Organize
Once I find something important on one of my dashboards, I need to clarify what the item represents, decide what action it demands, and organize the material to be able to take action as necessary. Essentially, this is about making lists that you can reference easily at a later time. We use two tools for this purpose at my nonprofit: Nozbe (a hybrid way of saying “be naturally organized”) and Evernote. Each has a free version and each works well with teams and across platforms. They also integrate with other applications, like Gmail, Google Drive and Google Calendar. There are several in depth articles on this blog about both Nozbe and Evernote. Here are some specific examples of how we use these tools to clarify and organize the information captured in the two dashboard apps described above:
4. media monitoring: reflect & engage
All of the above steps focused on capturing, clarifying and organizing information are for naught if we don’t take the time periodically to reflect on the “task” and “read later” lists that we’ve created and prioritize how and when we will do the work and reading that they demand. So, I have a task in “Nozbe” called “Sunday Weekly Review” that specifically includes looking at my “READ LATER” notebook in Evernote and picking out those things I need to read during every upcoming week, based on my schedule and the priorities I have set for myself in any given week or month. By linking my Evernote, Nozbe and Google accounts, I can simply add “a reminder” (the date I need to read the article) to an article in Evernote and it will appear as a task in Nozbe as well as on my Google calendar.
I do the very same thing with the podcasts I follow, picking the episodes that are relevant to what I am doing in the coming week and scheduling them in Nozbe so that I can listen to them as I am taking my daily walk or driving in the car. This method of reading articles and listening to podcasts based on what you need to learn in a given week is known as “just-in-time learning.” The fact you review the material and then put it to use in your work helps in retaining the information. I similarly go through the list of tasks I’ve created in Nozbe and either delegate them to staff, who also use the Nozbe app, or schedule them for an appropriate time in the coming weeks, based on the priorities I’ve set for myself and the activities on my calendar.
5. media monitoring: conclusions & recommendations
Even with all of the demands that we face daily as leaders of small nonprofits, it is still possible to stay on top of what is happening in the communities where we work and pay attention to important developments in the nonprofit arenas in which we work. What makes it possible is the principled use of strategies for managing workflow, like David Allen’s, Getting Things Done, tools for capturing information like Start.me and Netvibes, and other tools for organizing, reflecting on, and engaging with information like Evernote and Nozbe. You can find information about all of these tools, including specialized materials for learning to use them, on my blog and on my Resources Page.
Resources
Allen, D. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity. (Penguin Books: New York, NY) (2015).
Juo, J. “4 Tips to Implement Just-in-Time Learning at Your Organization.” Udemy Blog (Feb. 2020) (Available at: https://www.udemy.com/blog/4-tips-to-implement-just-in-time-learning-at-your-organization/)