I am doing a session with Bill Lester of EngenderHealth and NPOKI at my organization's annual member's meeting.  The topic is:  Personal Productivity Tools.  I thought I'd share my list of tools at large.  It comes from months of finding tools that help me implement GTD.  For our session, I am going over the list below and the GTD quick reference.  (Here's my secret:  my fav tools are still a legal pad and pen).  What are the tools you use?

Further Reference

www.lifehacker.com
www.zenhabits.net
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Upgrade Your Life by Gina Trapani

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You need a home to read all of the things people say about your organization, field, and competitors.

This video shows you how to set up a custom social media listening station - a one-stop place to read how people are talking about your organization and issues you care about via Twitter, blogs, news, and discussion boards.

Once you watch this video and set up your station, you will save A LOT of time by reading everything in one place. 

I'll show you how to grab feeds from:

Twitter Search
Advanced Twitter Search
BackTweet
Google Blog Search
Technorati
Omgili
Board Reader

Then you can customize your own.

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If you work for a U.S. based international NGO, there is a good chance you have a job because of USAID.

Did you know there was recently a subcommittee hearing on the future of USAID?  My director, Michael Walsh, who just retired from USAID, gave testimony at this hearing.  It's now on YouTube and only has 25 views as of June 27 (today).  If you care about the future of USAID, your project and programs, and your partners in the field, you should view this video and react (like Rep. Bilbray did after the hearing).

I'd encourage you to post a video reply - just click the link at the bottom right of the video on YouTube.

That would be one way you could say you used social media for social good.

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Do you need a fantastic tech guru?  Who's a woman?  And knows non-profits?

InterAction recently hosted a roundtable on the ROI of social media.  The presenter, Allyson Kapin, was excellent.  She founded Women Who Tech, which brings to together and empowers women in technology, which is absolutely necessary right now.  I want to go to their next event!  If you want to take your organization beyond interns on Twitter, hire her.

The most important thing I learned from her at the roundtable was that nonprofits should be involved in social media (Facebook, Twitter) for branding purposes only at this time.  Social media does not have enough results on return on investment to prove the time invested will get you volunteers or fundraising dollars.  Just set up your accounts on the services and get started to get your name out there and in front of the next generation of volunteers and donors.  That is all you can expect at this point, but it is necessary.  It's about presence and branding.  Also, don't build your own SM network on your site - go where the people are, like LinkedIn, FB, Twitter, whatever SM site may be popular internationally where your partners are, etc.

She did get us started on Social Media Metrics 101:

• Measure Click-Through Rates: On links to action alerts, online fundraising campaigns, blog posts, latest studies, etc. You can track CTR’s by setting up unique urls/landing pages back to your websites or calls to actions.
• Review your website referrals through a web stats package such as Google Analytics. What percentage of traffic is coming from social media sites you have an active presence on?
• Number of friends/fans/followers on a particular social network.

And for the more advanced:

• Bit.ly: A URL shortener that tracks information such as number of clicks, traffic sources, and even at what time clicks occur. http://www.Bit.ly
• Xinureturns: Provides a dashboard overview of your website’s standing in social media.
• Run a report and you will receive information on Technorati, Google, Diggs, and links back to your website. http://www.xinureturns.com/
• PostRank: Provides detailed information on Tweets, stumbles, diggs, and FriendFeed all in one place. It’s best for blogs and websites with a lot of content. http://www.postrank.com/
• SocialToo: A comprehensive tool for creating social surveys and tracking social media stats. It also will send you a daily email describing follows and unfollows on Twitter. http://socialtoo.com/
• Summize.com: Tracks topics and hashtags, twitter user names, and top trends on twitter.
• RSS Feeds: You can setup RSS feeds on social networks like Twitter, Digg, Flickr, etc.
• Yahoo Pipes: You can create your own monitoring tools using Yahoo Pipes which lets you quickly set up your own RSS tracking, complete with filters. http://www.pipes.yahoo.com/

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Trust is a HUGE part of doing business - especially in non-profits.  I can't wait to read Chris Brogan and Julien Smith's new book Trust Agents.  Looks like it comes out August 24.  I'm already a fan.

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