Are You Missing This Secret Ingredient in Your Sustainability Initiative?

Have you ever encountered the following situation?

• "We started a recycling program, but nobody seems to be sorting their trash."
• "Yeah, we have a matching charitable contribution initiative, but only 3% of employees took advantage of it last year."
• "People are really enthusiastic about going green, but we don't really seem to be making much progress."

We see this all the time with clients who have implemented sustainability programs, but aren't reaping the results they hoped for.

What's the missing ingredient?

Hint: It's a trick that marketers use to convert prospects into clients. It's called a "Call to Action" or CTA.

A call to action is the section of a marketing or sales message which tries to convince a person to perform a desired action immediately. Omitting a call to action from marketing communication typically leaves the target audience unclear on the appropriate next step, which may result in dismal results and less than optimum ROI.

- Call To Action By Mindy Lilyquist, About.com Guide

The same thinking holds true for sustainability initiatives. Too often we stop the "pitch" just short of telling people exactly what we want them to do, leaving them unclear what exactly their role is in a new program or initiative.

Here's our tip: take a look at your last sustainability initiative roll-out. What “Call to Action” did you use? If you can't quickly identify a CTA in your communications, then chances are you are missing out on additional participation. Try some of these on for size:

• Contact Betty for a simple sign-up sheet.
• Click here to take the recycling pledge.
• Watch this short video on choosing a charity matching option.

The options are endless, but the key is to clearly and simply tell people what action you want them to take. Make your expectations clear, and you'll be amazed at how much further your initiative goes.

If you found this information helpful, you'll love our Social Media for Sustainability Professionals, an 8-week, online and self-guided program that provides everything you need to make the most of social media in 2012.

Is LinkedIn the Best Place to Find Sustainability Professionals?

At Strategic Sustainability Consulting, we spend a lot of time networking with other sustainability professionals--including sustainability consultants, companies that sell some kind of "green" product or service, journalists, trade association representatives, environmental engineers, and other in-house sustainability personnel.

We meet them in person, at green conferences, local business networking events, and sometimes while running errands.

We meet them online--through Facebook, or Twitter, or inquiries to our website, or through direct emails.

But the best place we meet with other sustainability professionals--hands down--is on LinkedIn. Over the last two years, it has become the go-to place for sustainability professionals.

Here are three reasons to log into LinkedIn to expand your professional sustainability network:

1. LinkedIn connects you to individuals, not companies.

Sustainability professionals move around at an astonishing pace, and so connecting with them personally is much more strategic than trying to get an "in" through a company's sustainability department (or a general email to their website or blog). You can easily look up people by name, company, or keyword (think: sustainability consultant, or renewable energy).

2. LinkedIn allows you to refer people, or ask for referrals.

Instead of foisting yourself upon an unwitting person, LinkedIn allows you to harness the power of your network to get introduced via "a friend of a friend." Similarly, when someone contacts you, you can see whether you are already mutually connected (up to several degrees of separation). There are a lot of people calling themselves "sustainability consultants" so this ability to do an informal reference check can be invaluable.

3. LinkedIn lets you continue the conversation in groups.

Once you're connected to people (or even if you aren't connected to them) you can join thousands of different groups--and literally dozens of sustainability-related groups that range from CSR to Green Packaging to Sustainability MBAs. Jump in and get involved -- post comments, suggest articles, link to Twitter, etc.

We're not knocking other social media platforms, but trust us -- if you're looking to connect with sustainability professionals, may we suggest you spend a little time with LinkedIn?

If you found this information helpful, you'll love our Social Media for Sustainability Professionals, an 8-week, online and self-guided program that provides everything you need to make the most of social media in 2012.

How Sustainability Professionals Can Use Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups are another new feature on the social media scene (yes, yet another feature to keep up with the ever-changing online social crowd) … so we thought we’d take a minute to reflect on whether or not they are of use to the sustainability professional today. 

First, let's define what a Facebook Group is.  Think of it as a new private space you can easily create to chat and share things with a specific group of people.  Facebook says that, “by creating a group for each of the important parts of your life — family, teammates, coworkers — you decide who sees what you share.”

We “like” Facebook Groups because they allow:

• A group of people who want to interact online

• Chatting to many people at one time within the group

• Sending Facebook messages direct to all member’s inboxes rather than sending individual messages or hoping that they read a post

• Sharing documents with others – documents can be uploaded to one spot where others can view them

• Creating a secret or approval only space.  Secret groups are by invite only and can’t be found by searching on Facebook, approval only groups can be seen in search but not joined without approval.  Your group will feel so special! 

Facebook Groups aren’t really so good for:

• Promoting a business, let’s face it … they are an intentionally small subset so your outreach is stifled unless your intent is to make a select few feel loved or create an group-think team of collaborators.  Worse yet, Google doesn’t show groups in search results, making you even harder to be seen or heard.  You can’t get a nice looking URL for a group or get it customized to reflect your brand, like you can for a page.  Albums can’t be created, making it hard for people to find images, and there are no photos at the top of a group to help with branding like a page offers. 

• Using geo-tagging.  Really, this is just  annoying. Be thoughtful about tying your location-specific apps (like Foursquare or Gowalla) to a Facebook group update, because it generally does not add value to the group's conversation.

• Getting to know your audience.  There are no demographic insights into your members, apart from their names (you can find out by clicking on each member individually, but who has that kind of time in sustainability consulting!).  Also, there are no insights into how many people have viewed a post, making it hard to tell if you are hitting or missing the mark.

• Scheduling posts, because on a page there are various tools you can use to schedule posts to come out at a certain day and time and with groups you simply can’t do this for the time being.

Bottom line, we think it’s important to get your social media strategy in place and carefully select what tools really help you to meet your goals … if they don’t answer all your needs you’ll want to spend your time on the one’s that do (trust us, there are plenty!).  First and foremost, you want a page if you are using Facebook to promote your business, especially sustainability professionals out there.  A group might be a way to communicate with a group of friends, employees on a project or even a group think team … but it is not a way to grow your business on Facebook. 

Need more help getting your strengthening those social media muscles for 2012? Check out our 8-week, self-guided, online course called Social Media for Sustainability Professionals. It includes an entire section devoted to Facebook (with additional sections focused on websites, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging, Google+ and more!)—including the difference between a Facebook profiles and pages, privacy issues, tactics for growing your fan base, and mistakes to avoid.