Drawn to the Wild aims to raise awareness around threatened Canadian landscapes. It invites Canadians to contribute to a new version of a Sarah Harmer video and support the protection of part of the Niagara Escarpment at the same time. In the video, Sarah is singing “I’m a Mountain” as footage from her  documentary and concert film, “Escarpment Blues”, features Sarah and her band touring across southern Ontario.

When you first visit http://DrawnToTheWild.org, you’re presented with a randomly selected frame from a short segment of the documentary video. After choosing a frame, you use a drawing tool to illustrate it — tracing it, adding to it or radically re-envisioning it. The site aggregates the resulting frames into a new version of the video. Each time someone draws a frame, The Big Wild donates 25 cents to Sarah’s Protecting Escarpment Rural Land (PERL), an organization she cofounded. When enough frames have been submitted, The Big Wild will release a new remixed version of the video. We eagerly await the finished product and we’ll be sure to share it on our website when it’s done.

In the meantime, Darren has put together a screencast, below, to help you better understand how the project works and what to do if you’re interested in submitting a frame, yourself. Have fun, drawing!

TEDx Vancouver hosted 16 speakers and an audience of 1000 at the University of British Columbia’s Chan Centre on November 12th, 2011. Here’s a round-up of four speakers that left an impression on me: data-related or otherwise.

Gamers, It Turns Out, Make Excellent Biochemists

Seth Cooper knows a thing or two about computer science and engineering. He is the creative director of the Center for Game Science at the University of Washington where he focuses on using video games to solve difficult scientific problems. He is also the co-partner of a new project called Foldit. It’s a scientific discovery game that has allowed gamers to advance the field of biochemistry through puzzles. In fact, you may have read about it in the news. In just three weeks, Foldit gamers were able to predict the structure of the HIV Enzyme, a protein that has stumped biochemists for a very long time. News of this discovery and how the gamers did it made international headlines.

We Share Content In Waves Called Cascades

Jer Thorp is currently the Data Artist in Residence at the New York Times. Together with the research and developement department at the NYTimes, he’s been working on a new data visualization project called Cascades which was featured in Mashable earlier this year.

Cascades visually represents what happens when readers tweet about New York Times articles. You can click here to watch a short clip that demonstrates what a cascade looks like and how it’s formed. One of Jer’s favourite cascades was one he named the “Rabbi Cascade.” It’s a small cascade that a group of rabbis on Twitter started when they shared an article from the New York Times. You can measure exactly when conversations like this start on Twitter and when they end when people share New York Times content.

The Ocean is Connected to the Internet (For Real)

Dr. Kate Moran heads up the Neptune Project at the University of Victoria, which connects the ocean floor off the West Coast of Canada to the internet through underwater cables. At the end of each cable rests a device that measures seafloor stability, tectonics and paleo-climates. All of this data travels through Neptune’s underwater internet cables into your desktop computer or personal device where you can volunteer to help interpret it. Dr. Moran is, effectively, crowd-sourcing the content of the ocean and turning us into scientific researchers, working from the comfort of our own homes.

Carl Sagan had a Radio Voice

Reid Gower is the architect behind “The Sagan Series” which borrows excerpts from Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” on audio tape and adds a musical score and film footage to create digital montages. The first part of this series titled “The Frontier is Everywhere” has been viewed more than 1,450,000 times on Youtube. This video opened up TEDx Vancouver and introduced the event theme: Frontiers.

In the past, we’ve seen several well-done infographics that feature international social networks. The first infographic that comes to mind is about a year old now. It’s a colour wheel of networks from Facebook to Flickr to China’s popular Kaixin001.

More recently, Mashable produced an infographic that features “How the World Uses Social Networks.” The infographic breaks down data provided by Nielson from their “Social Media Report” and visualizes social networking across ten different countries.

Here at Capulet, based on the needs of our client, we focused on five countries: Mexico, Thailand, Koren, Japan, and Brazil. We also looked at the European Union as a whole.

Almost every social network we looked at presented advertising opportunities, albeit, in a multitude of languages. If we decided to go ahead and advertise on one of these social networks, we’d have to bring in a professional translator (think simplified Chinese versus traditional Chinese) to help us navigate the bidding process.

A few of the social networks in particular stood out, not only because of their popularity, but because of the specific niche they’re designed to attract. Below is a quick look at some of the more popular social networks we discovered across several different continents.

Sonico is a free-access social networking website focused on the Latin American audience. You can create a profile, add friends, upload photos and videos, and organize events. The site is popular in Latin America and other Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking regions.

Hi5 shares similarities with many social networking sites, and claims around 60 million members from more than 200 countries other than the US.

Cyworld is a Korean social network that gives users access to a profile page, photos, drawings and images uploading, an avatar, neighbourhoods, and clubs. Many renowned Korean socialites and celebrities have accounts. Cyworld has networks in South Korea, China, and Vietnam and is gaining popularity across Asia and the Pacific Island.

Kaixin001 is a popular professional networking tool in China targeting white-collar middle class users who come from a first tier city. This site in China is extremely popular among people who work for multinational companies, ad agencies and other white collar companies. Kaixin001 has gained much more popularity since 2009 because social networking sites, such as Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube were blocked in China.

PerfSpot is a web portal for people of any age, gender, or background who want to share their interests and favourite things on the web. PerfSpot currently publishes its site in 37 different languages, with a moderator team based in the U.S. and the Philippines that screens through up to a million pictures on a daily basis.

We tip our hat to Heather and offer up these additions to what’s looking like an excellent collection of online resources for your non-profit toolbox.

Hootsuite: Your One-Stop Social Media Dashboard

Maybe it’s too obvious or doesn’t quite fit into the genre of “cheap and cheerful” tools for non-profits, but we still think Hootsuite is one of the best tools out there for organizations. For next to nothing, you can decentralize, organize and schedule tweets, Facebook posts, LinkedIn updates and your WordPress blog from one dashboard. Hootsuite even offers tutorials in the form of “Hootsuite University” if you’re overwhelmed with the idea of adding a new social media dashboard to the mix.

Screencast: Capture and Create Online Videos

Screencast is a screen capture tool that captures, among other things, online video and safely stores it online. It won’t compress the video file, which means you keep what you capture. If you’re looking for ways to tell a story using online videos and images, we highly recommend this gem of a tool.

Storify: Connecting the Soc Med Dots

We know that Storify is pretty new on the scene because we signed up as beta users and had some fun with it. Storify allows you to collect content from your different online channels, group it in one place and share the end result with your online communities. It’s a great idea for organizations looking for better ways to collect online community content from multiple channels and present it as one, cohesive story. We look forward to seeing how this tool develops as more users climb on board.

Ushahidi: Online Crisis Mapping

Earlier this year, we attended Mobile for Social Change, a two-day training session that’s part of the Toronto-based conference, My Charity Connects. You can read more about that experience, here. We learned about the latest crisis mapping tools organizations are using to mobile disaster volunteers around the world and Ushahidi was number one on the presenter’s radar. Ushahidi means “testimony” in Swahili and is an open-source mapping tool (which means it’s free) that allows users to contribute reports and content via the web and mobile phones. It launched in 2008 and was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout. Its roots are in Africa and it’s a beautiful example of citizens mobilizing information and news to inform how government’s make nation-wide decisions. You can host the Ushahidi Platform yourself or have Ushahidi host it for you using its new Crowd Map tool.

Wordle: An Oldie But a Goodie

Wordle is still our go-to tool when it comes to producing a fun graphic or word cloud for our social media channels. It helps you narrow in on themes if you’re following an online discussion or reading an article. All you need to do is copy and paste the content and Wordle generates a simple and creative word cloud. If you visit or blog homepage, you’ll see the Wordle we created using the content from this blog post.

Worldometers: Nothing But Numbers

This is one resource we’ve borrowed from Heather’s post. It was just too interesting not to repeat. Using a few specific sources, Worldometers generates numbers that inform, among other things, the rate at which humans are consuming resources and energy, making babies, and dying. Worldometers provides a “quick facts” drop down menu and lists its sources. Averages are adjusted based on the data source. The site, for the most part, is automated and several of the meters reset every 24 hours. For example, there’s a running meter that tracks how much governments around the world are spending on public healthcare on a daily basis. One look at global energy stats or population growth is enough to throw you into a cold sweat. Despite the anxiety this website may bring on, it’s an excellent source if you’re looking to compare numbers, output and global statistics for a specific research project, article or campaign.

In his post, Godin talks about his love for science fiction. He tells of the hours he spent in his high school library reading the sci-fi collection (a telling detail into his awkward teenage years!) and how that reading would impact his future work:

“What I discovered … was that domain knowledge, edge to edge knowledge of a field, was incredibly valuable. It helped me understand where the edges were, and it gave me the confidence to be selective, to develop a taxonomy, to see what was going on.”

The post was shared on our listserv and a reading list sprung forth that we’re pretty sure even Godin would approve of. This reading list is a mix of recommendations that cover everything from organizing to digital advocacy, traditional marketing and inspiration.

We consider it our back-to-school reading as we prepare for September and the Web of Change conference.

Reading List

Beyond the Echo Chamber: How a Networked Progressive Media Can Reshape American Politics
By Jessica Clark & Tracy Van Slyke

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
By Paul Hawken

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose
By Tony Hsieh

Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web
By Brian Solis

Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook
By Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo (yeah, we snuck our book in)

Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed
By Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Patton

Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems
By Van Jones

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
By Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing with Organizations
By Clay Shirky

Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
By Margaret J Wheatley

Momentum: Igniting Social Change in a Connected Age
By Allison Fine

Rework
By Jason Fried and David Heinenmeier Hansson

Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes
By Katya Andreson

Rules for Radicals
By Saul Alinsky

Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web
By David Weinberger

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
By Chip and Dan Heath

The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change
By Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith

The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change
By Allison Fine, Beth Kanter and Randi Zuckerberg

The Purpose Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message and Mission
By Rick Warren

The She Spot: Why Women are the Market for Changing the World and How to Reach Them
By Lisa Witter and Lisa Chen

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
By Ori Brafman

The Tao of Leadership
By John Heider

Trust-based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships
By Charles Green

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
By Don Tapscott

You are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
By Jaron Lanier

According to a recent report published by Efficient Frontier (EF), a digital marketing firm that monitors growth in search engine advertising, the total amount marketers were likely to spend on cost-per-click (CPC) advertising on Facebook rose 22% in the last quarter. If you’ve ever advertised on Facebook, you know that Facebook suggests a CPC rate based on your budget and the audience you want to reach. Ad rates seem to be determined on a case-by-case basis. The bottom line? Online advertisers are spending more to reach their audience, whether they know it or not.

Already Advertising Online?

The data suggests that you can expect to pay more for your CPC campaigns throughout the rest of 2011. Brands already advertising on Facebook have the advantage of connecting with consumers and winning their loyalty early on, even as competition grows. “The longer brands wait to engage with consumers on Facebook, the more expensive it will become to acquire fans.”

Still Thinking of Advertising Online?

The report predicts that “advertising dollars will shift from offline to search, Facebook and display” channels. We tend to agree. If this is true, then brands still considering online advertising budgets would be wise to test the waters of online advertising now. The longer they wait, the longer they risk competing with brands already established in these channels who, as early-adopters of CPC ads, have had a head start converting users into customers.

CPC and the Future

Efficient Frontier recognizes that Facebook advertising is sill a “young channel” and the data it’s pulling from is “highly volatile.” Still, the report wraps up by stating the cost of CPCs will continue to rise. “Even if CPCs increase at 20% per quarter for the remainder of the year, this will still result in an 80% growth in a year.”

Despite the rate increases, Facebook CPC ads continue to be some of the most effective ad dollars we spend for client projects. That’s because conversion rates tend to be high and the cost is still so much lower than traditional web and offline advertising.

To read the complete report by Efficient Frontier, click here.

This is a hard-won lesson we’ll be sharing with other web technologists, campaign organizers and web marketers at Web of Change as we discuss failures, successes and the finer details of running online campaigns that make a real impact at this annual conference for not-for-profit leaders.

Web of Change takes place in September on Cortes Island in British Columbia, Canada. Over five days, teachers, leaders, practitioners and learners (which is everybody!) share their secret recipes for leading movements and running successful social change projects.

Past participants include Greenpeace UK who recently delivered The Dark Side campaign and engaged over 230,000 people from around the globe. The leadership behind 350.org and tcktcktck have attended Web of Change and brought their climate science expertise to the table as well as stories of how to engage massive online communities. At Web of Change, Moveon.org has connected web technologists and leading campaign organizers working on the ground to learn how to better mobilize supporters using online tools so that they can affect real change, offline.

We’re looking forward to this year’s Web of Change conference, the Cortes Island air, and the genesis of ideas that are likely to shift our perspective and lead us down new avenues of innovation. We hope to see you there, too.

Registration is open for the 2011 conference. Visit WebofChange.com for details.

We still do (or at least oversee) influencer outreach today, usually as part of broader online marketing and movement building campaigns.

On Google+, Raul referred me to Kerry’s recent blog post on the old question of paying bloggers for placement. I left a too-long comment, outlining the state of play from my perspective.

As a footnote to that comment, I thought I’d outline how we think about the dreaded return on investment of influencer outreach.

Focusing on What We Can Measure

As I wrote on Kerry’s blog:

When I’m doing online outreach…I’m interested in two things. In the short term, I want to drive high-value visitors to my client’s site. In the longer term, I know a link will help continue to drive visitors, and improve their SEO ranking.

There are plenty of other reasons to do influencer outreach, and they’re the same as traditional media relations. For one, it makes most clients happy to see their names in digital print. Then there are the usual benefits of brand awareness. These have value, but it’s often difficult and expensive to calculate that value. As such, we focus on what we can measure.

Here Comes the Math

Here’s how we think about ROI on influencer outreach. Consider a sample client project where we’re working to raise awareness and drive signatures to a petition run by national non-profit organization.

We know, from previous campaigns and experimenting with online advertising, that the average cost per conversion is $1.75. That’s the average cost of acquiring a petition signature.

The average cost to the client per blogger for influencer outreach for one campaign might be $150. That includes our research, writing the pitch, sending the pitch, following up and reporting, plus the client’s time reviewing the campaign, pitch ideas and so forth. This doesn’t mean that we charge $150 per pitch per blogger–our pricing isn’t that granular–but when you add up all the time and effort by agency and client, it probably comes out to around that number.

So, if we pitch a blogger on writing about this non-profit campaign, we’d ideally like to get 85 petition signatures to “break even”. How many visitors does that blog post need to send to the petition to generate 85 signatures? A good petition might convert at 15 to 20%, on average. However, traffic from blog posts is usually quite high-value, so let’s set a conversion rate of 25%.

That means that the blog we pitch would need to send 340 visitors to our client’s petition page in order for us to achieve a positive result.

Of course, that traffic doesn’t necessarily come all at once–it can continue to trickle in for months or years (though probably not for a petition, which is typically time-sensitive).

For a typical blog, 340 visitors is still a lot. Consider that last year we got a client covered on the world’s most popular environmental blog, TreeHugger, and that blog post sent 364 visitors over the course of 2010 to the client site.

Selling Widgets Works the Same

You can do similar math for a for-profit organization that’s selling products online. The conversion rate there is much lower–2% might be considered nirvana–but a national online retailer I know is willing to spend $40 to acquire a new customer. In that case, a blog still has to send at least a couple hundred visitors to the client site to make the outreach worthwhile.

We’re aware of an emerging set of metrics around “return on engagement”, but we remain focused on where the rubber meets the road. We work with our clients to do this kind of math on all their marketing activities, online and off. It enables them to decide what marketing mix to deploy.

Photo courtesy epSos.de

In early June, Capulet had the opportunity to attend Mobile for Social Change, a two-day conference in Toronto at the MaRS Centre for Innovation. It was part of Net Change Week 2011, a weeklong conference for non-profits and tech enthusiasts.

We’re hoping to write more about what we learned at this conference throughout the summer months. For now, we’re going to focus on what was an obvious source of inspiration — the Mobile for Social Change component which featured some of the mobile technology projects going on in developing countries.

Here in North America popular mobile devices include the iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry. Apps developed for these devices are designed to help us run our lives more efficiently. Often, they’re meant for our entertainment and enjoyment.

But most of the world doesn’t use smart phones. Instead, feature phones — simple flip phones that use SMS (short message service) instead of data plans — are what people in developing countries are using to communicate with one another. The device itself is inexpensive and users can pay as they go, topping up their minutes when they need them. This has developers looking at ways for communities to connect with each other via SMS. The needs of a farmer using a mobile device in Guatemala are going to be radically different than the needs of a marketing professional with a data plan in Vancouver. Developers are exploring how that farmer can receive daily market prices via SMS, or get the weather forecast for the next week.

An extraordinary example presented at Mobile for Social Change was a story about a Japanese medical aid worker who used SMS to log her daily activities and to keep a diary during the Japanese earthquake crisis. She sent messages to her blog via SMS using her Nokia feature phone. The blog itself lacks the bells and whistles of an interactive website, but the writing and quality of storytelling is remarkable.

In Brazil, a global project called Wikimapa is taking off in Rio de Janaero. Citizens are using SMS to log and send information about unmapped roads and bottom-up infrastructure. Organizers collecting this data are then building maps with it. People living in homes previously without an address can now locate themselves on a wikimap. In turn, the civic government can now account for families and households. This data informs civic policy, laws and emergency needs. And all of it is being done without data plans.

If you’re interested in these projects and mobile technology developments taking place in countries like Brazil, you can follow sites like Mobile Without Borders, 49 Pixels and Mobile.org — all offer examples of online communities interested in programs, wikis and campaigns that leverage citizen engagement in some of the poorest countries on the planet.