Derrick Mains, CEO of GreeNurture.com

The guy is built on hummus. He radiates enthusiasm. His perpetual energy is apparently generated from his drive for sustainability. Derrick’s imposing, but gracious, presence lit up the patio at Pita Jungle yesterday as we met for the first time over lunch.

Derrick Mains isn’t just an inspired green CEO. He’s a movement. And his mission manifests itself through a new website GreenNurture.com, although “website” is really too shallow a term for his project. GreenNuture is a first-of-its-kind combination of social media on an enterprise platform to generate conversation and micro eco-actions that help build sustainability in large organizations.

The concept of GreenNurture parallels the “Personal Sustainability Project,” Adam Werbach describes in his book, “Strategy for Sustainability.” Essentially, it’s a principle that encourages employees to take many small, thoughtful “green” steps that create sustainability as a whole for their company.

It’s funny, I asked Derrick if he had met Adam, since his program is such a beautiful enterprise offshoot of PSP. He said he hadn’t, but he’s pretty sure he passed him in the hallway at Walmart, while working with the retail giant to adopt GreeNurture. So I’m guessing Mr. Werbach doesn’t know Derrick either: Talk about two green battleships passing in the night.

GreenNurture makes it easy to launch a trackable sustainability campaign that quickly engages employees. Participants earn credits every time they make a suggestion through the platform, or comment on another employee’s recommendation. The more they converse and act upon sustainability within their company, the more rewards each participant earns, and presumably the more efficient the operation runs. GreenNurture has partnered with RecycleBank.com where participants redeem their rewards for free, or discounted, products or services at over 2,400 local and national retailers and brands.

We just launched our GreenNurture campaign at Park&Co

It was easy. I spent about 20 minutes setting up our profile and creating our internal sustainability campaign. Our team members will each receive a campaign launch email that will describe how they will participate. I will document our progress for the next 30 days and give you an insight as to how well GreenNurture works for us.

Our GreenNurture Goals are Simple and Doable

1. Reduce consumption of office supplies by 10%
2. Reduce our energy use by 10%
3. Reduce the use of our color copier (are greatest operational expense) by 10%

Our overall goals are to save money, increase camaraderie with the staff, and do our part to be Earth-wise citizens.

I’ll ask our staff to share their assessment of the program within the comments in my blog.

I also invite you to try GreenNurture and let us know how it works for you. The first 30 days are free, as the program is still in beta. I’m sure Derrick and his team will welcome your feedback as well.

"Beige Tree" by Natasha Wescoat

It’s nice to venture out of your comfort zone. At least that’s how it felt when I was asked to apply my knowledge of online social media strategy for sustainability and green marketing to help artists, photographers, sculptors, illustrators and musicians create their own sustainable story online.

We covered so much ground last night in our Social Media Strategy for Artists workshop at the Tempe Center for the Arts, that I told the crowd that I’d post all of the links here, as well as my slides.

The star of the show was Natasha Wescoat, or at least her online persona was. She is a renaissance woman when it comes to social media strategy and activation. If you’re an artist that wants to paint a powerful social media strategy, use Natasha as your instructor. Here’s what she’s done.

The center of Natasha’s online social media universe is her main website and blog. Then she adds horsepower to her persona with a second site, Natasha’s Art Candy, that features a live stream from her studio every Wednesday, as well as offers a veritable pallet of ideas for artists that want to tap online social media for new business.

And she’s just getting started.

Natasha is extremely active on Twitter and freely shares her tips for building your art business here.

She is also prevalent on Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, and uses each of these channels with different intent. Facebook is much more conversational and directs here friends to various showings and openings. MySpace has a younger, more frenetic and edgier feel for this crowd, while LinkedIn is decidedly more professional in tone. As I’ve mentioned before, blending these channels is a little bit like having a Mullet: All business in front (LinkedIn), party in back (Facebook and MySpace).

The fun doesn’t stop there.

To bolster her “Conversational channels,” Natasha deploys her “Utilitarian channels” including Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr. I call them utilitarian because little conversation typically happens on these sites, and they’re best used to serve media, including photos, videos and Powerpoints to the center of her social media solar system: her website/blog. They offer more visibility online, especially with the search engines. Natasha uses them masterfully.

Then she reaches outside of her own online world and connects within numerous art sites, including ImageKind.com, Art.com, and TweetyGotBack.com. This lady is omnipresent online. And what makes her even more powerful is the consistent telling of her compelling story:

“I’m inspired by the lighter side of life. Through trying times, Ive found myself coping through art and through creating things that made me happier. Brighter subjects that brought me back to life. Now, through my work I hope to be able to do that for others. I want the viewer to feel the poetry, energy, and wealth that comes from the artwork. I want my art to force people to smile again. We all need a little sweetness. A pick-me-up when the world gets too heavy. We cant be serious all the time.” – Natasha Wescoat.

What’s your story?

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.

Yesterday, I wrote about my adventure last year trekking through social media. What I’ve arrived at today is that sustainability officers and green marketers need to concentrate on telling compelling and authentic stories first, then create a social media strategy to share their sustainable stories with the world.

Case in point:  Scott Harrison of Charity Water.

He not only works the camera well, Scott’s entire organization and on-line presence is all about helping you share their story and getting involved. I can’t think of another socially charged organization that does a better job of giving their ideas handles. And it all begins with telling a great story first.

The  2009 results are nothing short of a storybook ending.

• 40% company growth
• 8.5 million dollars raised
• New projects in Cambodia and Sierra Leone
• 1,145 new freshwater projects added including 200 schools and 26 health clinics

I’ll leave you with a Charity Water PSA staring Jennifer Connelly.