Sketch by Erin Beachy, Creative Commons

Yes, online social media takes a lot of time and effort.

No, like everything, there are no guarantees of success: It’s not a silver bullet for your marketing.

Yes, it’s OK and natural to feel trepidatious about baring your sole online.

Absolutely, you have to be authentic, warts and all.

No, you don’t have to do it just because everyone else seems to be online.

Yes, you’re right, it’s not necessarily easy to measure.

Of course, you would be wise to start with a strategy on every communications tactic you add to your marketing mix.

That’s right, online social media is a communications tactic, not a strategy.

I feel your pain. It can be overwhelming. So start slowly with a channel you’re comfortable with, be it Facebook, LinkedIn, your personal blog.

No, Twitter is not going to save the world.

These are just a few of the answers to the many wonderful questions we discussed today during our online social media workshop for our friends of Social Venture Partners of Arizona. These are remarkably accomplished business people who are fairly new, or are wanting to stick their big toe into social media. Much of their interest is in helping to build momentum for causes they are associated with, as well as prospecting for their own business.

The best advice I can give them and you is to keep it simple. Start slow and build from there.

Here’s a great example that I just happened upon following today’s social media workshop. It’s called BetaCup.com. They started following me on Twitter, I was intrigued and clicked through on their link. That’s called, “Conversion,” and is one metric of success.

I took a sip from BetaCup and liked what I found. Tody Daniels, their co-founder and community organizer, greeted me with this simple, believable video, that told an interesting story about their singular goal:

“Find the best ideas to eliminate paper cup consumption and help bring these ideas to life.”

Betacup from the betacup on Vimeo.

And they made it easy for me to share it with you.

BetaCup also makes its easy for you to submit your ideas on an open source platform that allows everyone to see and comment on your invention. The best idea, judged by a jury, wins $10,000, and the five runners up received $2,000 each. Easy idea submission plus cash = more conversion windows.

Their resources page makes it fun to do your research with links to cool stuff like how-to origami cups.

BetaCup’s blog shares tales about the coffee cup mission and related stories. I thought this video was interesting as their sponsor, Starbucks, created a tree from coffee cups in New York’s Madison Square Park. They keep hammering home the theme both online and off.

And they offer some great, easily digestible, background info on their cause, including:

• 58 billion paper cups are thrown away (not recycled) every year
• 20 million trees are cut down in the process of manufacturing paper cups
• Amount of water used in the process is approximately 12 billion gallons

BetaCup is a terrific example of the power of not over-thinking your online social media project. I suppose the real effort and brilliance is in keeping it simple. The contest begins April 1, 2010, so this is a great program to follow and watch how they roll out their campaign. I think you can learn a lot here.

And remember, it all starts by telling better stories.

A wise old marketing sage once asked me, “What’s a newspaper in business for?” “To deliver timely, accurate, and impartial news everyday to their subscribers,” I proudly responded as a young ad man trying to impress his mentor. “Wrong,” he said. “Newspapers are in the business to make money! If they’re not making money, they’re not delivering the news,” he snorted. Great point, and an even better lesson.

The next time you consider asking a for-profit company to sponsor your non-profit cause, first ask yourself the question, “What’s in it for them?” Sure, they want to be a good corporate citizen.  That’s a given.  What’s really at the crux of the question is how can engagement with you and your organization bump up their bottom line while doing good for the community?

“You must get inside their heads before you can get inside their pockets.”

Acclaimed marketing professors Philip Kotler and Nancy Lee authored an insightful college textbook called, Corporate Social Responsibility, Doing the Most Good for Your Company and Your Cause. This book is filled with best practices on private/public partnerships with companies like The Home Depot, Ben & Jerry’s and Hewlett-Packard. Because it’s written for corporate managers in community relations and corporate giving and marketing, it offers non-profit leaders tremendous insight into how companies choose causes, and how to best align your mission with their mentality.

Here are ten recommendations from the final chapter: A Marketing Approach to Winning Corporate Funding and Support for Social Initiatives.

1. Start by developing a list of social issues that your organization or agency is currently charged with supporting and that would benefit from additional resources. Be specific.
2. Identify a short list of corporations that these social issues might have a connection with, something that relates to their business mission, products and services, customer base, employee passions, communities where they do business, and/or their corporate giving history.
3. Approach corporations and/or their communication agencies and find out more about their interests and experiences relative to supporting social initiatives.
4. Listen to their business needs.
5. Share with them the social issues your organization supports, the initiatives you are considering or engaged in, and your strengths and resources. Find out which, if any, they find most appealing.
6. Prepare and submit a proposal to those corporations most interested in your social issues. Present several optional initiatives for potential support, ones that are the best match for their stated business and marketing needs.
7. Participate in developing an implementation plan.
8. Offer to handle as much of the administrative legwork as possible.
9. Assist in measuring and reporting outcomes.
10. Provide recognition for the corporation’s contribution in ways preferred by the company.

If you have thoughts on how to approach companies to support your cause, or a terrific case study you’d like to share, please do so in the comment box below.