Beth Kanter and Ritu Sharma want you to make walking part of your work day. Not for a break. They share how to work while you walk, including walking meetings, and they swear you’ll be more productive, more creative—and feel better. Beth is a master trainer, author and blogger. Ritu is co-founder and executive director of Social Media for Nonprofits. We talked at NTC, the Nonprofit Technology Conference, hosted by Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN).
A website redesign is expensive, time-consuming and overwhelming. Starting on day two, how do you keep it current? Farra Trompeter is vice president at Big Duck and Kira Marchenese is senior director, digital strategy + platforms for the Environmental Defense Fund. This is also from NTC.
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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent of your aptly named host we have a listener of the week, daniel trust in bridgeport, connecticut. He tweeted me that he just found non-profit radio and says good stuff, man he’s, our newest listener and our listener of the week i’ll send you a video, daniel, and you can pick a book from the non-profit radio library. Congratulations, daniel. Trust oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with prayer ago if i had the itching idea that you missed today’s show, walk to work beth cantor and re to sharma, i want you to make walking part of your work day, not for a break. They share howto work while you walk, including walking meetings, and they swear you’ll be more productive, more creative and feel better. Beth is a master trainer, author and blogger re too. Is co founder and executive director of social media for non-profits we talked at ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference, hosted by an ten non-profit technology network and keep current after launch. A website redesign is expensive, time consuming and overwhelming starting on day two. How do you keep it current? Farah trompeter is vice president at big duck and kira marchenese is senior director, digital strategy and platforms for the environmental defense fund that is also from ntcdinosaur on tony’s, take two. Have you seen my videos responsive by opportunity, collaboration, the working meeting, the unconference on poverty alleviation that will ruin you for every other conference from ntcdinosaur are beth cantor and re to sharma on walking. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage over the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen, hosted by intend the non-profit technology network. We’re in austin, texas, at the convention center and my guests are beth cantor, master trainer, author and blogger at beth cantor dot org’s. And also metoo sharma, co founder and executive director of social media for non-profits their workshop topic is walking is work. Don’t call it a break. Beth metoo welcome, welcome, thank you. Welcome back, beth, that has been on the show before you to his new welcome first time. Thank you very much with us. Metoo why? Why? Why should we be paying attention? Teo walking from my perspective, i’m an accidental walker, i think one hundred times better i started. Walking more extensively as part of my work, i’ve always been a walker, but as part of my work, i started about seven months ago and it was accidental because i got a new puppy and the puppy needed to be walked every three hours. That’s how it started with practical, it was very practical decision, but as i started walking, i needed to take some calls and then i started taking some of those calls on my and my box, and i found that i was paying a lot more attention. In those calls, i was not distracted by a number off social media pings and emails and other people entering in those conversations, i was really more present and then the other thing that i noticed, which is what started us making a lot more content at social media non-profits is, i am i started having a lot of ideas about different topics to write about different opinions on the current topics and that got me kick started is walking is work alright on beth, we shouldn’t if we haven’t fallen into it. Luckily accidentally metoo did we actually should be deliberate about it on dh we have some research to back that up? Yeah, as a matter of fact, i know. I got into it. Actually. The right after the last time. I was on almost two years ago. Really? I went into my doctor and i got my cholesterol tested. You know, we’re getting there. We have to get our cholesterol tested. It was three. Ninety nine. You had cholesterol of blind ninety nine. Right, which is closer to the mike. You get too excited. Okay, you know, three hundred ninety two and healthiest on one fifty or less. Right? So i decide to get walking. You know, obviously, i was not eating too many cheeseburgers, and i was sitting at my desk and i could see that you know, the house effects. So i bought one of the use of health. Fitbit. And i got out there and i started walking and writing about it before i knew it. I was walking twenty thousand steps per day, and it became this little game. How could i work? Work it into twenty thousands, like double the thie average. Ten thousand ten thousand. I’m up to now ten miles a day. Yeah, and you know what happened? My cholesterol went down to ninety nine my trig lyssarides, but something else happened. I noticed i was more president, i could pay attention and i was happier and more creativity. And so what would happen is i got really excited about this, and i’ve been blogging about it. I’ve been doing workshops, i’ve been kind of this evangelist for walking as work was people would say to me, how do you fit this into your day? You know? And and the mindset is really about, like, ok walking it’s the separate thing it’s for exercises for the health benefits, but really, i think it’s key to your productivity, we know we know something about walking versus sitting while we’re while we’re working, don’t we? Yes, we dio slideshare well, think about how much time you spend sitting at work. The average person spends nine point three hours sitting that’s more than we sleep, which is seven point seven hours and you know what all that sitting is doing to our bodies and our minds? Well, it’s, physically it’s collapsing our spines, it’s collapsing our spines it’s causing calling cancer it’s calling, causing heart disease brain fog, neck problems muscle generation, you know, it’s enough to make you want to stand up your desk, head to the door and never come back to your office. But you don’t have to do that. You know, you just need to start to think about ways to integrate movement into your work, okay? You know, maybe it’s, first of all, change your mindset, it’s thinking about different ways that you can start adding more steps, more walking, you know, park the car far this away from the door. We’re gonna get to all that time together. We’re still the motivations thing, okay? The motivation so obviously health reaches say more about the creativity. I know that was really important to you. I think when we are in close spaces and spaces, every normally sitting at nineteen hours a day, our mind gets closed almost. It only sees what we have in front of us. It becomes very reactive. It’s just reacting to emails that are coming in phone calls that are coming in and putting off fires. When you get out of that stunning and you walk in the nature, you walk in the grass, you walking the party, it doesn’t matter where. You walk when you start moving a little bit, your your brain starts to disengage from a reactive mode to a much more proactive and creative more, and what i’ve noticed for me is some of these things come to me, they’re like brilliant pieces isn’t incredible. I wrote a couple block post that we had the males traction ever, and i was just walking the dog. You know what? You have the most traction traction ever in our in our work, and those entire pieces were conceived while walking i just idea hit it, and i started flashing it while i was walking in and i came back, you had granted out in twenty minutes, and we’ve seen most likes shares, comments and really some great pieces that have come out of walking. So from a creative standpoint, i find the reason behind that is that you get a distance and you’re not constantly just addressing a pressing problem anymore. You’re able to actually give your mind a little bit of brake to process all the stimulation, all the stimuli and act activities and all the information that we were exposed to, in fact, over exposed to we have a time to process it, we have a time to just put it in different places where it belongs, and then start to see greater trends and start to see how this piece fits with some of the other stuff we’ve done. And if you’re in a reactive in front of your computer mode, you just don’t have that create this space to a process i know time is constantly belongs to other people as e mail comes in, and as much as we’re supposed to, i know a good practice for email is only react to it a set number of hours a day or set time today, but that’s very, very hard to do, and you end up being all fragmented and distracted constantly. Exactly. And, uh, the other thing is going to get a flow going way also have these phones that are full of notifications, any ping you get any tweets, you get any tax message, you get all the e mails there, these things that were changed, you know, technology. While it can be a great, great accelerator, it can also hold you back and hold you in chains because you’re constantly attacked on your head? Yeah, go ahead. Back-up let’s, go say this sort of gets us away from the topic about walking his work, but the with the walking does physiologically in your brain. Is it it’s fire synapses, you know? So if you were to look at there’s actually, researchers that are looking at the impact of movement on the brain and so if you look at a brain of a person who’s been sitting for twenty minutes, it’s all dark, okay? And if you look at a person’s brain, you know, doing a brain scan after a twenty minute vigorous walk it’s all lit up because the endorphins are flowing, connections are being made, and then we hear, you know, the proof of it from what metoo was talking about. And it’s also been proven in a number of studies. I think the most famous one has come from stanford, where they actually studied. They measured creativity of people who took walks, a brisk walk at lunch and creativity improved. Andi, just to make it explicit. We’re talking about walks without your phone or it’s turned off. Maybe you know you’re not you’re not allowing the distractions of your mobile device. While you’re walking, unless you use it to take notes. Okay, take note, but that’s you gets you in putting. Yeah, but metoo it sounds like you’re saying, you know, we don’t we’re trying to eliminate these distractions and also be vigorous in activity that’s true and when you’re walking it’s kind of hard to be as attached to a phone without tripping or knowing where you’re going, so i usually just go have it handy with me. Should there be an emergency that really needs me. But unless it’s an emergency, i actually have it handy if i need to answer a call or something. But for the most part, it’s. Hard to be that attached. As as you are in an office, i see people in new york city giving it a go, though yeah, there they are walking and lots of walking and texting, but but that’s not what we’re talking about here know what we’re talking about here is turn off the yarn device and go for a walk damaged overhead. Clear, clear your head. Don’t go further than that. Yeah, i think is notorious for the f word on non-profit radio a long time ago. But its memories linger. You know, world leaders. You know, obama is really famous for taking walks, steve jobs and, well, there’s a rich history of of of walking as work. I mean, think about like charles dickens. Did you know that he walked twenty miles a day, twenty miles a day? He hated being tethered to a desk. And on gina freud? No. Okay. Freud and analysts, you know? Yeah, they said, and their patient lies on the couch. But he’s fate, he was famous for walking with his patients to get to breakthroughs. I know, i know. A famous stander we stood on his desk was donald rumsfeld. He did not have a traditional desk. He stood as he worked. Now i don’t do politics on non-profit radio, so maybe that’s a counter example. Wait. Decided either way, but i know he, uh he stood and that’s that’s, that’s something that you were suggesting that you, khun, stand and work aside from walking, but standing versus sitting, yeah, standing desk. And, you know, other researchers come in, you know, it used to be okay. Go the jim. You know, i go the gym so i can sit on my backside for eight hours and i won’t suffer those how harmful health effects, but you know what? It doesn’t matter whether you’re at the top of your game physically, you still can reap the harmful effects of sitting. So what some researchers recommended this comes from the mayo clinic is the twenty eight, two. So every twenty minutes, if you sit, you work, you concentrate, you get up and you stand for eight minutes and two minutes stretching. Really? And that the idea, the mind shift is that you sit to rest your body from standing. Uh, okay. Rather than sitting being the focal. Yeah. Focus of the day. Yes. Okay, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g. Before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website. Philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Okay, we got you. Sometimes it can be hard to follow structures like that one that i think is very worthy. And i use it in a different way. If you’re starting out and your tender session tomorrow. Are you here today and you inspired to do that? What i would recommend doing is doing something that i’ve done is pomodoro matter-ness it really allows you to set these intervals. If you just rely on your own free will to help you do this, sometimes it can be hard to create habits. They take about ninety days to form habits for something to really gel into your daily life style change at the very least, so well you may want to do is look at things like pomodoro, matted and you can and you can design that for me. It’s every twenty five minutes of sitting, i get a five minute break and then after two or three of those, i get a twenty minute walk and and that actually forces you and it’s. Incredible, you’re doing this in your day to day work day today i have a knife in you two so obviously i do want your day. Well, i do it. Yes, it is. And i do it slightly differently. I not only measure my time in increments body also measure my energy and my ability to concentrate. And i try to design my schedule so the tasks fit my ability to concentrate and always working in these smaller chunks. I do things like i do it a slightly different method of pomodoro. I’ve experimented with paula joran for a couple of years, but there’s no place pomodoro. We call it pomodoro. Yes, it’s tomato in italian because that’s the reason it’s called this because it came with an old tomato timer. And so and time yeah, you set up for twenty five minutes. And originally the context for it is that if you’re overloaded like this, you’re going to suffer consequences of procrastination and work avoidance. So pomodoro is a method for you to like eat that frog in the morning and just start get something done metoo ago you were you were sharing. I really enjoyed that. Because what i do is i get teo something i take take a project with twenty, twenty five minutes. And then even if i’m in the middle of doing this. I take a five minute break and i actually either stretch or ideo pushups or i just do a plank. And i tried to increase my duration for that. And then that’s sort of every two or three generations. And then i go and take a walk. And i will tell you that in the last year of doing that, the days that i do mamatoto matted very religiously are the days that are that i can get in one day over two weeks worth of work. And i’ve tested it several times now. In what amount of hard work in one day you feel you could do the same as you would have. That’s a maze in the dark days into weeks? Yes, including i even fit some laundry and folding some laundry in between weeks in a day? Yes, there’s. A lot of reading time. What i found is there’s a lot of closure. I want to do things that i actually make a big list before i take on a pomodoro day. Actually, you know, i make a huge list of things that i need to absolutely get done in a night. That’s my weak. Leaders and i’ve tested it several times. Normally i will be able to hit three or four or five of those because there’s so many reactive thinks about when i’m in the pomodoro matter mode, i basically check things off age of and the forced break no matter where you are in the process, it really prevents you from going into procrastination from reading one block post that takes you into another block post that takes you into yet another blood pools and that takes you to facebook and then to twitter. That doesn’t happen on pomodoro for me at least, so i would just recommend experiment with finding whatever is right for you not just mattered that works for me, but what works for you and use some technology to hope you get in the mode don’t just rely on free will to follow this palm adores it’s really not about like trying to get everything done and taking it off your to do list, but really it’s about focus and training your attention as somebody who has been doing the technology for twenty years or more like i’m like i was like that dog and up, you know. Doug squirrel. Oppcoll you know, so i consciously this about seven or eight years ago, like, trained my attention, like like i have on ongoing dialogue with myself on my opening up, another taba, my following, another social thread. And is this the task or something i should be doing? Would be doing is the best use of my time in this room, right? The eighteen minutes a day method with david berkowitz? I don’t know. What can you can you summarize it? Sure you spent. Okay. This will change your life. A change mine. And i’m right. That’s. The only reason i finished my second book. Okay, like changes. Okay, so, it’s, five minutes in the morning, you write down. What are the two or three things that you need to have done? What? Your priorities. And you reflected five minutes on the end of day. Did i get to my priorities? And then throughout the day, every hour on the hour, you beat yourself to remind yourself, am i on task? Okay. And what? Your set and you would think, it’s counterintuitive that you’re beating yourself? You’re distracting yourself, you know? Would you get distracted? Bring yourself to a center to a center center of the focus for that day. Exactly. And then you if you do that over a period of time, it really according to cubby takes what is it? Twenty one days to make a habit. Then you’ve internalized it and then used it stops beeping and you’re focused. And this helped you finished your second book? Yes. Okay. The two of you have great outcome stories. Really terrific. Impact of love. We still have some more time together. What have we not shared that we well, did we cover getting yourself out of the culture of sitting through the pomodoro method? Or so are very any variation of that. Is there maura around? Well, what? We started with this. Okay, so if we think divide this topic into the i and the weak. So we i think we have covered the you know, what do i have control of in my work life that i can change? Ok, ok. But many of us work in organizations and with other people. And we work in a culture where there’s lots of meetings. Sure. And the culture around those meetings is to sit. Yeah. All right. So that’s the challenge. Okay? We’d like to have walking meetings? Yes. Okay. And now you’re doing this tomorrow at twelve. Thirty and we’re gonna talk more about what we’ll bring it back to the office setting. I’ve forgotten, but just tell us what you’re doing tomorrow. Twelve. Thirty go ahead, return. We have a session tomorrow at ten. Thirty to twelve, where we’re going to talk about walking his work when we lay out the framework and then we’re going to take a big walk around twelve thirty with a number of conference attendees and give them an experience of discussing a specific topic while they’re on a walk with a large group. So they get to actually experience how to have a meeting while they’re walking out standing. Do you know what the topic is? Where you’re going? Decided in the session for the topic for the war. Walking comes for the ten. Thirty meetings. They’re going to be talking about planning a walking meeting. Okay, on our meat up, it will be open. It’s over that people choose what they want to do. Okay, are there all right, so let’s, bring it back to the office now. How can we help the the sitting meeting culture? Teo, get out of that. Well, you know, it’s interesting, because sometimes first of all, i think there needs to be some education around the links to workplace productivity and workplace wellness and that, you know, it isn’t a break. It really is important to productivity. And then this is not a zest your topic right at sung his work exactly. Don’t call it a break, right, it’s not like it’s not going to the gym and it’s not goofing off. Okay, okay, you’re really getting work done. So the next thing is to think about what? What are all the meetings in your life? And think about what could be done as a stand? You know, as a meeting, you know, walking, meeting and it’s. Probably best to start with a one on one meeting. Maybe a weekly meeting with your supervisor, maybe jet or somebody who reports to you and suggests that, you know, bring your sneakers to work. And you do that. Weiqing meeting as a walking meeting and maybe institute is the standing meeting ifyou’re going tio do a meeting with more people requires a little bit. More planning than a regular meeting in addition to the agenda, the purpose. Any pre reading you have to think about what your route is. You have to time the route. You have to be prepared if there’s bad weather, you know, we’re going to walk inside. You have to let people know to bring the right shoes at where their coats if it’s going to be cold and then you had to sort of make some modifications in the way that you take notes, people are you know, maybe this meeting is one where you’re discussing something. And the only thing you need to take down is the decisions as opposed to being in a meeting where you need to be looking at a lot of papers and a lot of yeah, tasking people on dh specificity, you know, okay, but you can take notes. You know, you can remember those things called pens paper. I’ve heard of them, you know, a most skin and can also now is it violating anything? If if if i suppose i get tested with something in our walk and i have my phone and i do a voice note to myself is that okay? Yes. Yeah. No, i’m we suggest a little side convo. Just we’ll just wild just for myself. Okay, so, like, well, one good thing to do in a walking meeting with a group is not to do. They spend the whole meeting walking and discussing like, you always have a little space of time at the end of the meeting to, like, summarized what the delivery bals are. And maybe you do that when you get back into the conference room. Okay, you know, and and and do that for note taking and people are fresh. Endorphins have been flowing and remember them, you know, another way to get started. It’s a little bit easier than the walkie meeting is a standing me kayman okay, we take this in increments, maybe. Yeah, depending on the culture and how willing your supervisors are to participate in your colleagues, they will do it incrementally. Yes, right. Standing, baby sitting half and then standing house, you know, crawl, walk, run, fly, ritu anything? Well, sure, i’d say that. Take it slow. Take it according to your culture and find different ways to do it. And there’s one common criticism, i hear. When we talk about walking his work, well, we have so many things we can get it done, it’s, like when you’re taking this on, start slow to start with one or two meetings and see how you’re doing don’t try teo enforce the really big culture change, you know, from the beginning do little things. Hey, do you mind when we do these meetings that we do the first portion of introductions and check ins? And when we’re reporting in what our week was like and what we’re doing, do that and maybe in a walking session and come back and take some notes as that just recommended in coming back? So find those the other couple things i would say that i have personally done that have been really helpful in and coming with from a change of culture in our organization is my default for all meetings is walking meeting now if you want time with me, it’s a walking meeting unless there’s a compelling reason why you can’t be so on. My default is no longer let’s sit down for coffee at starbucks my default is hey there’s, a park next to my office you want to meet, then let’s talk. And if somebody has an objection like, well, how are we gonna take notes again? I go back to now abets famous line. Have you heard of those bill old things called pen and a little pocket most qin and the other thing i’d say too. And the way i work with it, it’s, you know, walking meetings or subset of overall good meeting practice, and i would also talkto leadership and ask, don’t don’t you want more effective meetings in your organization? What if you were able to replace ineffective meetings that waste people’s time with meetings that are highly productive and that makes people feel great and get work more even more work done in less time when you want to do that. And that should really try it. Yeah, let’s. Try it and see you at least try. Okay, we got a couple more minutes. What have ah, not asked you yet about this. That, uh, you want to you want to share? Get a couple more. If i can cheer when quick thing. The second thing that i do besides defaulting to walking meetings is i do not take any phone. Call unless it’s absolutely necessary sitting down and that’s a very easy switch to make. Just grab the phone and start pacing, you know? Yeah, i’ve been doing that for years because i’m a kinesthetic learner, so it teach me it just helps me if i move, i think better and just and i found that if i’m like, when i wasn’t standing for phone calls, i’m sitting at my desk, checking my email and getting distracted, so standing walking on and also i think i want to emphasize to people, you know, i got started with this web stuff in the early nineties, and i had our side by the nineteen, ninety five repetitive stress is right, and one of the things i learned there was about stretching and taking this break, that it’s really important, and sometimes we get so addicted and where were you know, we use our computer keyboard is a lunch train, and we don’t get up because we think, you know, we’re not getting work done. So the one thing i would leave people with us really think about what you’re doing to your body and what you’re doing to your mind and don’t think of it as wasted time and trust us. You’ll be more productive and you’ll be happier. Absolutely okay. Productivity, creativity. Good health. Good. Reduced cholesterol. Substantially it’s. All it’s. All excellent. All right, we do anything you want to wrap up with. No, just thank you for the opportunity and happy walking, everyone. Yes. All right. Get out there and do it. Metoo sharma is yes. Is co founder and executive director of social media for non-profits and beth cantor, master trainer, author and blogger walking is work. Don’t call it a break. Listening to and joining with tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen. Thank you so much for being with us, ladies. Thank you. Great thanks to you. Pleasure twenty steak too, and keep current after launch are coming up first opportunity collaboration it’s an unconference in x top of mexico in october for everyone working in poverty alleviation, there’s a lot of free time to meet the non-profits from around the world that are there, who you can learn from and who can help you do your work wherever it is you’re working it’s over ninety three percent sold out i’m going to be there? I got my reservation in if you are helping those who live in poverty, check out opportunity, collaboration, opportunity, collaboration, dot net, i have over one hundred seventy videos on youtube. There are dozens of conference interviews, all the conference conferences where i’ve interviewed speakers on topics like fund-raising events, marketing, communications, technology, board relationships, lots of board topics, the non-profit radio knowledge based videos are there everything i’ve done on plant e-giving and charity registration? My stand up comedy clips are there, too. My channel is riel r e a l tony martignetti and there’s also link from tony martignetti dot com to the youtube channel and that’s tony’s take two for friday seventeenth of july twenty eighth show of the year. We’re pre recorded this week, but you know how sincere i am in sending live listener love if you are one of the live listeners today, thanks so much for being with us live listener love to you podcast pleasantries wherever you are, whatever device washing dishes or otherwise, whatever it is you’re doing pleasantries to the ten thousand over ten thousand podcast listeners and affiliate affections to everybody listening on those am and fm stations throughout the country. Our affiliate network. Thank you so much for being with us. All our affiliate station listeners. Here are farrah trump, peter and cura marchenese from anti seizure keeping your website current after launch welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen we’re at the austin convention center austin, texas with me now are farrah trump, peter and kira marchenese sarah is a vice president for big duck and kira is senior director, digital strategy and platforms for the environmental defense fund. Sarah sarah, welcome, welcome you welcome. Thank you. It’s. A pleasure to have you both here. Let’s. Start let’s. Start with you. What are what are non-profits not really planning around enough when they do a web redesign or maybe even a launch. Everybody gets so excited about having the new site that it’s like you bring home your brand new car and you never think about putting gas in it, much less getting the tires changed or oil put in it. And so what we focus on our session focus on in our session is all of the things that you do need to keep track. Of after you’ve brought home your shiny new website and concrete tips on how to do so, uh, what are what are some of the things that you’ll be talking about? Just tick off a few topics. How does stretcher resource is further so that you can fit more smart updating in you in your regular schedule? We’ll talk about structuring your sight to minimize the need for updates, and we’ll talk about how to keep yourselves accountable and make sure that you actually do the updates that you’ve planned on doing. Okay, farrah anything i think you want to add at this early stage, just that i think just to build on this care and i did a session three years ago at the ntc twenty twelve called is a time to rethink your website, and that session was all about, you know, first, starting with a clear understanding of your goals and audiences before you go and change the design change, the content changed the technology, wait a really great conversation with staff and everyone and non-profit staff consultants who attended and we’ve since done it and other conferences, and it spread a lot of good thinking about do i rethink my sight? So i have to completely overhaul it? Are there incremental changes i can make? Well, we realized, as we were sort of reconnecting on this topic recently was again a sort of cure was saying there’s, so much energy put into building a site, you know, redoing your sight can take six to nine months for some organizations a year, and then all of a sudden it launches you like great done seeing three years check off. Exactly, and what we have found is especially, you know, your your website. Still, even the web sites have been around for over twenty years. It still is the one of the main places supporters will go to find information about you, and it is important that that site represents who you are and what you’re about on also is somewhat current with user experience and what people are looking for in a basic website so responsive, for example, on other things, and and that means that your sight’s still has to be dynamic. It can’t be a brochure, so if in organizations made it past this idea that their website is not a brochure that step one but i still, even though that happened let’s say, non-profits and organizations got that over ten years ago. And, you know, our website needs to be engaging. Great. I still think that there are lots of non-profits out there. They build their sight, they set up the information, they walk away from it. So this idea of this session is how do you keep that site current and think about it being a living, breathing representation of your organization and a way to connect with your community beyond that launch button day. Okay, care. I see you nodding a lot. So total agreement, your did this three years ago. So you know, the beginning of this three years ago, this is this is this is the sequel, and this is how we’re keeping it current. Okay, this is the electric boogaloo part duitz. Yeah, exactly. Remember that break in electric boogaloo? I don’t know, eighties. Um, okay, so, let’s, stay with you. Ah, farah what’s your wee. Where should we start with this? Start this process. Well, karen mentioned stretching resource is further. Is that is that a good place for us to start? Yeah, i mean one of the things that we often hear when we say, well, wire websites not kept up to date or wire people, you know, aside from this feeling of okay, it’s changing a belief, certainly that i do have to think about my sight beyond launch, but more than that, we always get this conversation that, well, i don’t have enough time. I’m busy getting the next email out, i have to worry about my fund-raising campaign, we’ve got all this advocacy, this petition, we’re running, so everyone sort of caught up in the day to day their communications that they want the website to be on autopilot. Eso what we’re really looking at is, yes, we know you don’t have enough staff time, we know you don’t have enough money, what are some things you can do once we get past that acknowledgement? And so we’ve got a lot of suggestions about how you can, you know, take those limited resource is and be smart about you want people to stop saying we can’t way have this other stuff, so we’re just gonna throw up our hands and website just we’ll have to suffer exact what can we do with the limited? Resources that we do have exactly. Okay, exactly. Xero what can we start to do? Well, the first thing that you can start to do is evaluate what resources you have and how much you need, and so we’ll go through ah quick little math exercise on our site. We have about one hundred pages that need some kind of maintenance there, not a press release or a block post that has a date on it, and nobody ever expects those to be updated. We’re talking about the page, the about us, paige, our privacy policy pages about certain projects that were working on those need a little bit of care and feeding, and one of the first things you do is you say, well, if i’ve got a hundred of those and i think it’s going to take a couple hours of time, tio, get each of those updated one hundred times a couple hours that works out to five weeks of solid work time in is that reasonable? Do you have five weeks? You know, some organizations do and that’s great, and they’re a head of a lot of the rest of us, but a lot of us. Will say, oh, in two hours, that’s really not enough to update this page because i’m going to have to talk with the program’s staff who managed this manages the project, and then they’re going to have to approve the changes that i make and all of a sudden you’re like, man that’s, eight hours so that’s one hundred days and you know, where am i going to find that hundred days? So the in a lot of organizations, you never have that conversation, and you just have an out of date website in a stressed out staff. So the first thing that you can do is try teo, get it? Well, why’re we stressed out, is it because we don’t have enough help? And maybe we can hire a temporary writer to help us? You get on top of this, or have we just really taken on more than we can handle? And we need to reevaluate how many pages we have on the site. So if we can find a concrete place to start that conversation, we can start solving the problem you have in one of the things that we were talking about is like, what does? Your website being out of date really look like so that could look like everything from your board listing just doesn’t you know, you added somebody on the board two months ago, but they’re still not listed on your site so that’s kind of a minor out of date. But one of things that drives me crazy is when i go to an organization’s website and i see, like, save the date for her upcoming conference in december twenty fifth eleven but i mean, maybe that’s a little exaggerated, even last a month out exactly. And it’s like no, come back. You know, the next day i should see conferences from the pictures from the event i should see what happened. I should see the tweets, the storify, whatever it is. But i think when organizations say, like what’s new and you go to the what’s new page and it’s talking about things from six months ago again your donor, your activist, your participant is going to think you’re not keeping things up, and then they that will actually impact your reputation. So, you know, at big duck, we think a lot about your brand, so so our angle on a lot of this is hacking you your user website as a way to really continue to build a relationship with your supporter. Your website. Visitor. Whoever that is and make sure that you have said, is just enhancing their perception of you and not eroding it. And so, you know, when your website is out of date, it will start. People won’t think they’ll think a lot less of you, it’s, like coming by to your office and see that there’s paint chipping on the wall. What else? Anything you want to add to ah, what kira suggested about howto evaluate what? What? What? The task is that’s ahead of us. Yeah, i mean, i think here is laid out of really thinks about it so smartly, which is why i love presenting with her we’ve a love fest, but i think not, you know, it’s great to think about what are the pages, how we maybe minimize those number of pages we have to keep up today, but then layering in again, this idea of goals and audience is coming back to that, which is saying, okay, let’s say there are a hundred pages we’ve built the site, i can’t change it, it is what it is. I only have twenty days and not one hundred let me then focus my twenty days on the twenty most important pages, and those most important pages were the ones that maybe get the most traffic are most critical to any initiatives you’re running and are really the ones that your audience are looking for. Not necessarily the page at the executive director of the board chair tell she was most important, which is another congressman, we’re definitely gonna get into the board and senior senior leadership, they have their opinions as well, but it becomes very difficult and even your own staff. You know, one of the things that we’ll talk about is that editors and writers really like making things that are new, and there i won’t forget the first time that my online writer realized that it wasn’t it she’s pushing the rock up the hill, and it comes rolling back down and she’s got to push it back up again. We got a page lunch and she had really worked hard on it, and it came out great, and i made the mistake of saying to her right after it launched like, oh, great! And then the next time we come back and revised this page, we can look into this bit of it, and we’ll have data about that and the look on her face, who’s, just don’t make me do it again. You don’t have to do that again. And so it’s, not just the senior executives who are pushing us to do things that may not be really what’s most needed no it’s, always fun to do something new and it’s. Not as fun to go back and redo something that you thought was done a year ago let’s probe this little deeper when we’re getting of suggestions from boards, senior leadership, how do we how do we manage that on anybody? When, when, when their suggestions are misplaced, right about priority? It all goes back to what sarah said about goals and audiences, and if you’ve built a strong understanding with all of your stakeholders about what your priorities are and how you’re going to connect with your audience is then it’s easier to go back to that is a foundation and you know, if you can say yes, i understand that this is important to you, and when we’ve when we look at what people are looking at, there is a mismatch here you khun service that and have that conversation with them if you haven’t reached that agreement, it’s a lot harder to shift that conversation later, and i think when they come to you and say we want to change its pages, ask questions, why? In who? You know, why do we need to change it on dh who really needs this page? Updated who’s looking for something new that’s not already on there and let me tell you a little bit based on those thinking about the wise and the who’s, what i think we should be focusing on now, at the end of the day, i could say all i want to say about that as a consultant, but you live in an organization, and sometimes you have to listen to the senior leaders, but i think you can at least try and have a strategic conversation as much as possible, and you can set the agenda as well. You know, we don’t wait for our senior communications executive to find a page on the website that he thinks need to be needs to be updated. We tell him here the pages that we’ve decided to focus on for the next three months and here’s what you’re going to get from it. And so by framing the conversation again, back to the goals and audiences, you can take more control of it. I’m being proactive with that, i think you know, the other thing i’m thinking about us were talking, and we spoke again a lot about this previously, which is, i think organization non-profits have to make the shift of thinking about their website as a program, right? So you know what i mean? Like so if you think about the programs you’re putting out in the world, whatever those those maybe whether they’re in person, whether their, you know, whatever services you’re providing, if you think about your website as a service you’re providing, then maybe the idea of giving it, you know, love and attention and care and feeding feels a little bit more comfortable. I think when people still think about their website as this, you know, printed, you know, like the statics for tools, the support tool, but not a living breathing mechanism that could help advance your mission and connect with people. That’s what we’re really talking about. Excellent. I love that love that idea think it seems very simple programs, and it is so fundamental reputation, right and reputation and brand that all sang like that we’re thinking about exactly let’s move teo structuring the site two to help to minimize updates who was firing? One continues, i’ll speak briefly, but i think here has a lot of great things to say here i think you know when it comes to when your first structuring your site it’s important to think about what are the priorities that my audience is looking for again? Not necessarily what i’m what the senior staff for any staffer looking for, but it really ask the questions if you have an existing site doing user testing, finding out really what the community wants from your website again thinking about it as a program, and then once you’ve structured the site, i mean again asking those questions that, you know, in six months from now on, we’re looking at all those pages we have to keep up to date how we done ourselves a disservice. Certainly i’m not saying you should build your sight in a way that it doesn’t have to be updated. I think it’s important again for that website to be a living representation of your organisation, but maybe minimizing the number of pages that might have to get those updates and think about, too. What are the pieces of the site that need to be time sensitive and need to be up to date if it’s the description of you know your mission around a particular project area that’s probably. Not going to change. And you should probably structure it in such a way that that part of the page is is evergreen. And there might be things around it that change. There might be a little news box next to it that has blood posts and press releases saying the newest things about that program. But if you don’t have tio embed it all together so that you have to rewrite the entire text, you know, every three months, you’re going to save yourself a lot of time. 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You must have other ideas about that physical structure around around timesaving go ahead, please. So another one is, and this one is a little harder to explain without the screen shot in front of me, but what we used to dio is, you know, every page had a bunch of sub pages, and anytime self they needed to be updated on one of the sub page you work on the sub page, it would be this longer, bigger piece, and then, you know, you’d have to go to the page that was above them and like you had all these updates in different places, and what we’ve done is just eliminate a lot of that, and so will have an overview page that has, again the evergreen overview of here’s, the work that we’re doing and why it matters. And then we’ll link off to a few more timely things, like a block post about it or a press release, some kind of statement or testimony, and when that piece ages, we just delete the link. And so we keep that high level overview of what we’re working on and why they’re little supplementary pieces of it that give you a sense of what’s going on right now? But we haven’t built it in the structure of the site. We haven’t created extra pages, we haven’t, you know, built it into the menu, and once you build something into the menu that’s really tough because if you have four things in the menu, every one of them has to be updated. But if you could just have an overview page that refers to for things, you give yourself a lot more flexibility. Excellent, excellent! You got more that’s, a that’s, a great one, i think that’s about it for a structure there. I missed anything. No, that sounds good. I mean, one of the other things i knowthis is neatly under structure that we talk about is sort of using the work that you’re doing another channel. So let’s say you’ve got this great instagram presidents or you’re really active on facebook or you’re tweeting a lot and thinking about how to embed or bring that content in as a way to keep your sight feeling dynamic and what’s the right places for those things. Where should that live on your site? How should it live on your site? That’s another thing that we have people think about, okay, so it’s possible to have more than just a little little box recently sent tweets exactly what more can we didn’t mean? You could just have the most recent tweet you could, depending on how sophisticated your twitter ah, you know your your twitter tweeting is if you use specific hashtags, you can connect those hash hoexter appear on specific program pages or bio pages if staff members are mentioned by name or by twitter handle okay, yeah, things like that so just being like taking it up a notch, being a little bit more sophisticated with how you bring it in, but while we’re talking structure let’s also go into deep structure, which is actually the platform that you’re on. And this is another part of website e i love that i asked you before you kind of threw up your hands and and then a man came back and now now it’s come back in a deep strike now we’re getting deep deep here throw this goes into the category of invisible ways that your sight can be out of date, you know you can come to my site and you can’t tell easily if i’m running word pet press three point seven or four point two, but it matters, and if you fall too far behind on those updates, you open yourself up to security risk as well as not being able to take advantage of the latest developments on your platform. And this is something that i think a lot of the content specialists just don’t have on their radar and it’s something that you need tio have a sense of how often your platform updates, which are the updates that are important for you to take advantage of and then work with your vendor or your in house team to make sure that, you know, you’re sticking to a schedule and you’re not falling too far behind. Yeah, i mean, i think websites have sort of two sides, right there is the front end, which is what the user experience is what the person sees, what they can tell is happening with the organization based on your site, then there’s the back end, which people love when i say back in, then there is the back and that’s where they’re headed, right? And, you know i think you think people are thinking that because i’ve had people say it’s, because your mind is in the garden sometime sometime, i here i am back in altum now, maybe i don’t i don’t have the same day, and my body studio is okay. So the on the back end of the website, we’ve got your content management system and your constituent relationship management system, and sometimes the cms sincere amour love lovingly integrated sometimes they are two or twenty different systems that are connected to your site, depending on how you have it set up and it’s important again to think about as a staff you’re worrying about how those things work in secures point, you need to make sure you’re paying attention to both sides of the equation s so that the site is not only again representing you well, but also doing all the work it can for you and and supporting your fund-raising your outreach, whatever it might be that you need those systems to be working well and up to the latest date of what they can do for you care. When we did an overview, you mentioned accountability keeping you’re keeping yourself accountable, what’s what’s this about. Well, once you decide that you are going to stick to a certain update schedule, i mean it’s like sticking to a diet, right who’s going to be able to do that completely on their own without any sort of reminders or accountability, some of us can, but most of us can’t, and i can tell you one thing that definitely did not work for us, which was having the systems and automated reminders, you know? Hey, tony, this page is out of date, you might want to check it out just became anxiety producers and it’s so easy to ignore them because the system won’t know if i don’t do anything about ignore exactly. And so one of the things that we found is that in order to hold yourselves accountable, you really need a person to be part of that and there’s usually somebody on your team or associated with your team in some way, who is going to be open to taking on that roll. And, you know, one of the things that i encourage people to do is figure out who that person is embraced that about them, you know, used. There, there their charm and organizational skills. Thank you. Fair lovingly nudging. Yeah, and you know that that’s going to be the person who has all the spreadsheets and gets really anxious when deadlines are approaching, you want that person sharing that that skill with the rest of your team? Because otherwise it’s just too easy, like farrah was saying in the press of all of your communications and email schedule on all of that to just let this thing that feels not as urgent slide, but, you know, you do that too long, and all of a sudden you have five weeks of work backed up that you could have been tackling a little bit like a project manager function. Okay, the other thing we talked about this is about accountability, general, with all sorts of things is the racy model? Do you know that the r a, c i so that stands for responsible, accountable consultant informed, and the idea is that at the start of every project, you think about those different roles, so for example, we may be accountable to the executive director, but they don’t need to know they’re not they’re not responsible for things. That they don’t even have to be consulted are informed they just want their they’re ultimately accountable. Maybe they have to be informed, but the communications director has to be consulted, and then the communications manager is the person who’s actually responsible for getting it done. So thinking about those different levels of where people have to weigh in so that you’re not, you know, waiting on this, you’ve got this long list of pages, you have to go through ten people thinking about people’s different roles on that accountability scale could be very helpful, okay? And then another thing that you can do in addition to getting a person involved is think about how you’re presenting to yourselves, the work that needs to be done. So, like i said, it doesn’t work to just have a system generated email land in somebody’s email box, and nobody knows it’s there one of the things that has worked for us is to do a chart and the amount of red on the chart shows how many pages have past their expiration date on the site and visual yeah, eso to share that publicly and then there’s a sense of sort of shared accountability like, oh, how did the red get so big? And i’ve actually had the editors say, wait, can we wait just a couple more days before we make the next charge? Theo? Yeah, exactly out of the rain. It looks so much better if we could just getting forty eight, forty eight hours. Yeah, exactly. And so figuring out what the right tools are to motivate and and get your people feeling the urgency about it, i think it’s going to be different for every organization that’s one that’s worked for us. All right? We still have another couple minutes together, like, another three minutes or so. What? What else do you want to share that we haven’t talked about yet? I mean, one of things that we sort of end the session on is that people should make a road map for themselves. What? What should they be doing? As you know, is a result of thinking about this. What do they think they need to do immediately? That might be doing a sort of friend and sweep of the site and figuring out like, oh, my god, we have that, you know, what’s new section that hasn’t been updated in two years or, you know, put out the immediate fire is the low hanging fruit, as we like to say, so make a road map of what do i need to do this week? This month? What do i need to do over the next six months? What do i need to put on a schedule for next year and just really plotting out? What did you and making yourself unorganized way to think about it cause there will be it’s like anything? Lots of anxiety around this issue? Oh, god, and it really is i was doing it wrong, or i’m worried about it, but just really just try and plan it out, map it out and think about where is the biggest thing you need to put your attention on with the resources you have, kerry wanna add anything? Just that this is never challenged, that anybody has completely conquered, and even though i’m up here, you know, sharing tips and wisdom that have we’ve come across our site is not up to date entirely, you know, we haven’t gotten rid of the red on that chart, it’s, very brave of you and well. I’m sure if you poked around hard enough, you could find something that was obviously out of out of date. So it’s also being kind to yourself and acknowledging that this is something that you’re going to be working on for a while. All right, we have to do a shout out. Tio sarah, sarah, durum who’s the cold herself president or ceo and president the grand poobah i call her the big big duck of big. Alright and today your birthday have hurt the chariots. March forth it is four. So happy birthday sorrow they sarah happy twenty nine. Yes, of course. And she’s been on the show. She’s wanted me to get you for some time now. Here we are. Here we are. All right. We’re gonna leave it there. Thanks for having us. My pleasure. Thank you very much. Kira farrah trompeter is the vice president? Maybe someday i don’t know. I don’t know. I like it. So it spread like vice president you do. Alright, vice president of big duck. They’re consulting agency thinks a lot about brands and reputation in new york city. I’d like to visit your office any time. And kira marchenese very good, thank you. I names are important. See she’s, the senior director for digital strategy and platforms at the environmental defense fund and again farah kira, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you, stony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen at the austin, texas convention center thanks so much for being with us. My thanks always to everybody at inten the non-profit technology network loved being at that conference each year, and i’m sure i’ll be there next year. Also next week it’s our twenty fiftieth show next week we’ve got giveaways in studio guests all the regular contributors have a comedy sketch, live music, a new sponsor and lots more going on two hundred fiftieth show fifth anniversary of the show we’ve been doing this each week for five years be with me next week are two hundred fiftieth show july twenty fourth. If you missed any part of the two hundred forty ninth show, find it on tony martignetti dot com opportunity collaboration with world convenes for poverty alleviation it’s an outstanding unconference that will ruin you for every other conference it’s over ninety three percent sold opportunity collaboration dot net our creative producer is claire markoff. Sam labor, which is the line producer show social media, is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. Thank you, scotty, with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Hey! What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist. I took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe. Add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gifts. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.
