More than eight million people visit Chicago-area online news sites each month, according to our new report released today. While the report highlights a proliferation of online news and information sites in the Chicago area, when it comes to traffic, the sites of mainstream media clearly dominate. Six of the eight million unique cumulative visitors reported by all media outlets participating in the survey were to Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times, RedEye and ChicagoNow (the Trib’s blog site).

The 2^nd annual NEW News report, produced by Community Media Workshop and funded by the Community News Matters program of  The Chicago Community Trust, surveyed 121 online news outlets about issues ranging from salaried employees to the type of content being produced.

According to the report, most of the online sites surveyed rely heavily on unpaid bloggers and reporters and piggy bank financing. More than 60 percent of sites surveyed had no more than one person working full time on the site. A similar percentage reported that no one receives health insurance from their online news outlet.

Read more about the online news ecosystem in our eco-friendly, online-only report.

You’ve Twittered, Facebooked and blogged about your organization’s story but aren’t receiving the response you desire.

Tim Frick, author of “Return on Engagement” and social media trainer at the Workshop’s upcoming fall session, says many nonprofits have two misconceptions about social media and why they don’t produce the desired audience engagement.

“There’s the misconception that it’s free,” says Frick. “It doesn’t cost any money to get a Twitter account, Facebook account, or a LinkedIn account, but it does take time to create and build the content for those things and present that content in a way that is actually going to engage people.”

Frick says most people tend to dive right into social media tools without thinking how they will use them and how they will engage their audience. According to Frick, many nonprofit communicators take their “old one-way marketing approach,” apply it to their social media strategy and are confused when there’s no response from their audience.

“A lot of times that’s because they’re not trying to engage their users. They’re sending out one-way marketing messages that are all about them and not about what the users might actually want to read,” says Frick.

In September, Frick will cover these common misconceptions and more at the Community Media Workshop training Using Social Media To Build Awareness. This three-hour training is designed to show nonprofits how to optimize social media best practices. Participants explore how to create content strategies, which aligns their digital communications with their website; how to create social media profiles and how to engage their audiences.  Using tactics outlined in his book, Frick shows communicators how to shift their offline communications to an online presence and how to adjust their strategy to work with the organization’s available resources.

Frick says many communicators during his training have their ah-ha moment when they see multiple ways to share their message across digital platforms and track that message’s impact.

No matter what size your organization is, increase your impact with this training and start having the conversations that engage your audience. To register for “Using Social Media to Build Awareness” call 312-369-6400 or click here.

To read more about Tim Frick’s work with nonprofits and digital strategies, click here. Tim Frick is the CEO of Mightybytes, is a full-service creative firm that executes design-drive communication solutions for their clientele. Frick is also the author of Design Techniques for Digital Marketing. Follow him on Twitter at @Mightybytes, on Facebook at Mightybytes and learn more on his website at www.mightbytes.com.

Photo by Keith Ellison on www.flickr.com

Last Friday, a Google search of  “LeBron James Media” produced 108,000,000 links and 1160 related articles. On Yahoo.com there were 10,857 stories posted.

If, during the past two weeks, you lived in the forest with no phone, internet, television or interaction with other human beings, you might have missed the story. Here’s what happened: James dominated the 24-hour news-cycle with his impending free agent decision. When it was all said and done (after a well-publicized hour-long special on ESPN), James’ career decision had been given the attention of a world-changing event rather than the simple business process it began as.

What are the lessons behind the LeBron James PR show?

Steve Buckley, at the Boston Herald, drew on lessons from Vince McMahon of WWE fame, to help explain James’ media mastery.

McMahon, an impresario who turned a regional dog-and-pony pro wrestling circuit into what today is known as World Wrestling Entertainment, has known for years that it’s easy to bypass the meddling media middle men and bring your product/message directly to the public. All you need to do is set up your own network, and then use it as a stage on which to play out all your story lines, plot twists, interviews and “breaking news.”

While nonprofits can’t set up their own media outlets, they can deliver their stories and issues to the public directly through available technology. By using social media applications, nonprofits cut out the “middle man,” taking the heart of an issue to a local (or worldwide) audience.  Rather than waiting for a press conference to be covered, nonprofits, like James, can take control and tell their own stories by tying them to a timely news peg.  Write your press releases with flair. Know your story, conflicts involved, and be transparent. Know who your sources are and be prepared to rise to the occasion when pitching reporters or when they come looking for you.

It’s true that James owns a PR company that’s focused on creating an iconic image of James, and it’s also true that most nonprofits will never have the star power of a famous pro basketball player to entice the media. But, nonprofits can tell their own stories and be clever and creative about using the range of tools now available to talk directly to their audiences.

Lesson: First, control the issue. Don’t allow the issue to control you.

James’ media strategy did have its critics. Phil Rosenthal at the Chicago Tribune wrote the outcome would have been better if James’ communications team had seized control from the start.

If James and company had been on top of this, his Web site would have tracked his whole courtship process. He could have kept an ad-supported video diary, including behind-the-scenes video of meetings with franchises.

Of more importance from a business standpoint, fans would have been invited to register to vote for their team and receive updates through e-mail and Twitter, creating a valuable marketing database.

Just one problem: James has owned the domain LeBronJames.com since 2002 but hasn’t done much with it until recently. Until Tuesday, James also had not used Twitter to address the public directly. So much for a New Media offensive.

Do any of these missteps sound familiar? Has your organization attempted to use social media tools in the past, only to fail to put the necessary time into the endeavor because of busy schedules? Perhaps constant Twitter, Facebook, and blog updates are just too much to juggle when you’re already swamped trying to provide services to a community or support to your colleagues.

But don’t underestimate the importance of tending these tools. Posting regular online updates about your organization’s journey, creating a digital archive of past articles on your website, or asking clients for input could give you a powerful platform to engage your audience and keep them coming back.  In other words, use your work to create brand recognition.

Lesson: When given an opportunity to connect, don’t hesitate.

LeBron’s decision to wait to give his answer until his ESPN event was also seen as a big public relations failure by some.  Michael Flood McNulty of OpposingView.com wrote:

LeBron James created a publicity circus unlike any other Thursday night — this was his choosing, not the media’s so don’t blame the messenger — and he humiliated his hometown fans in the most public way possible…

LeBron James alienated a lot of people tonight. Actually, alienated is the wrong word. He stunned and hurt a lot of people tonight.

What’s one of the first rules of communications? Who’s your audience and how can you reach them? Whether you’re trying to educate a specific group about an issue you’re working on or you’re trying to get people to take action, how you say it and when you say it and the channel you use to convey it are so important.

Lesson: Don’t forget your audience. Be thoughtful of what they need to hear your message.

There’s something about McHenry County which keeps drawing me back to conduct training. Maybe its the sprawling landscape or the mom and pop shops that still keep their doors open, but most definitely its the people.

At my last training at the Shaw Center for Corporate Training, I was once again delighted to work with about 30 nonprofit staff working from Seniors Centers to Emergency Preparedness to issues of homelessness and affordable housing. Read the rest of this entry »

"Week Ten: Paczki Day," by Chicago Geek, from flickr

Emily Culbertson is just starting her Social Media Need to Know for Managers workshop this morning–her icebreaker: what are you looking for out of this workshop and what did you have breakfast? Listening to the intros, I had two reflections. Read the rest of this entry »

Wondering where I’ve been (I’d like to think so!) — the answer is, since January, mostly learning how to use my new phone I’m an android now, i guess. You know–the mad whirl of a nonprofit trainer leaves so little time for blogging, dahlings. I have been saving some good stuff up, so watch this space!

Just a quick note now to frame some thoughts on prevention in the LGBT community–today Chicago Dept of Health sponsored “Getting the E-Word Out.” (presentation below except for Gustavo and Simone’s darn it–hey guys send me your slides!). Also fair warning, they are slightly mangled as everyone had their own backgrounds and i just dumped all into one slide deck.

Read the rest of this entry »

Robyn is a marketing and communications consultant for nonprofits and can be reached at stein.robyn @gmail.com

Robyn and I met a few years ago at the TrueSpin conference, Jason Salzman’s biennial gathering of nonprofit communicators in Denver (more about that at the bottom). In October over NYC-diner toasted corn muffins and coffee we discussed that the basic rules of communications adapt well to the online world–as Robyn demonstrates in thinking about audience, and how to segment or subdivide those we seek to reach into smaller groups, the better to connect with them.

How do you identify and then reach the audiences, niches, microgroups you are trying to attract to your campaign, your issue, your organization?”

It used to be formulaic. You could buy a list of 25-35 year olds, send a prospect mailing to a specific zipcode, target the readership of a local, regional or national media outlet, buy an ad in an appropriate publication. Not any more. Now there’s a dizzying array of techniques available enabling us to reach an exponentially larger audience. When did it become so complicated?

The quick answer is it happened when our inner audience screamed out for attention individually and collectively. It happened comparatively slowly during the dotcom surge; it sped up when palm pilots were the thing. It hit lightning speed [literally] when our Blackberrys and iPhones could load 100,000 apps including the ubiquitous Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.

Today, real time is actually real time and quick is an understatement. So how do we connect to the audiences we want to engage? Read the rest of this entry »

Even at 4 p.m. on a gray day with drinks just 30 minutes away, philanthropic communicators enjoyed the social media game (photo by Thom Clark)

At noon Friday with the annual conference over and done till next fall’s event (slated for Los Angeles, BTW), someone from the Boston-based Barr Foundation who participated in the Communications Network social media game tracked me down–to return the cards his group used during the game. “No, you keep them–if you want, take them back to your organization and try this at your office,” I said.

He was one of eight folks who left with sets of the game cards. (the presentation and handouts can be downloaded here and more on the game as originally conceived and developed by Beth is here).

One of my main reflections on presenting the social media game at the conference is about diffusion of ideas across the nonprofit sector: given especially that we are somewhat limited in the channels available to communicate new ideas and practices across nonprofits and philanthropy, the generosity of Beth and David Wilcox in sharing this method and the key role of Creative Commons in providing a way to structure that kind of sharing is truly helping to build the sector.

We played with 6 groups of about 7 people each. Each group chose s scenario from a range of options. We started at 4 p.m., I made my way through about 25 minutes of introductory “teach” (ie, “talk” with some q and a) and then, right around the time that thoughts are usually turning to the bar… the crowd really got into it! All about the genius of the game and the value of learning from, or maybe that should be with, each other (see Beth’s nice post on social learning from last week).

A couple thoughts on how the game works, what appeared to be key learning moments for the group at the CommNetwork conference, and, per Christine Mulvin, 1 thing you’ve got to have to play it well:
Read the rest of this entry »