Get Hand-Selected Green Events with Green Around the City

It's Tuesday morning. You're sitting at your desk, scratching your head and looking at your calendar. Are you considering what to do with your week? How about this: make it memorable and change the world! We can help you make it look easy and stylish. 


Green Around the City launches in June 2011 in London and New York City and planning to expand to over a dozen cities by 2012. Green Around the City has numerous types of green events, including corporate social responsibility, green building and even green festivals. 


From parties to networking events, Green Around the City covers your back. Get in-the-know about the latest, greatest green events. 


On Facebook, Twitter and eNewsletters, you get the freshest, most interesting and valuable green events across your city. Want to move forward the green economy and have fun while doing it? Here's all our information below. Follow, Fan and soon--subscribe to our eNewsletter. 

@FindGreenEvents, Green Around the City HQ

Follow @FindGreenLDN for green events across London

@FindGreenLDN for sizzlingly good, green events in London!

On Facebook! 

Visit Green Around the City NYC on Facebook. Get in the know!

Fan Green Around the City London to find out the best green events. You'll be glad you did!

Contributor: Erica Grigg is Partner and Director of Marketing and Digital Marketing at Carbon Outreach. Erica has trained hundreds of social enterprises, not-for-profits and corporate social responsibility executives on social media tools including Twitter. Erica recently co-authored, "Facebook for Social Enterprise" in June 2011. Erica speaks internationally on responsible business and marketing issues, and blogs for Treehugger.  

Facebook for Social Enterprise launch: Get yours free!

Carbon Outreach Graph representing Facebook as the 3rd largest populated 'country' internationally

Social media tools have captured the attention of numerous green businesses, not-for-profits and corporate philanthropy programs since acquiring over 350 million users in 2009. 

Prominent not-for-profits such as the World Wildlife Foundation, Sierra Club or Red Cross International continue to influence social media campaigns today. On the other hand, green businesses like Seventh Generation, Terra Cycle and Timberland have effectively used social media to garner the eyes of customers, media and competitors.

After obtaining over 600 million active users in January 2011, Facebook continues to attract the attention of social enterprises wisely choosing to invest in social media. In February 2011, Facebook continues to grow steadily as the third most populated 'country' internationally, see the graph above. 

We’re excited to see more not-for-profits and social enterprises than ever investing in their online presence. Many have seen great successes in acquiring donors, media attention and an enhanced brand online. For example, the Facebook Causes Application alone has raised $30 million for 500,000 member-created causes since 2007. 

In May 2011, Carbon Outreach has come out with a book particularly around using Facebook for Social Enterprise. Whether you are considering using Facebook for personal or business brand development, Carbon Outreach has recommendations and tools for unsurpassed community management, as well as targeted campaigns. 

Full of 17 case studies such as the World Food Programme, (RED), Timberland, Patagonia, 350.org and California State Parks, and many others, this book reviews ways to make sure executives and community managers are making the most of your social media effort. We also address top recommendations for features such as Facebook Pages, Advertisements, Questions, Groups and numerous others.

We are delighted to offer a complimentary online copy of our upcoming book to Carbon Outreach blog readers. To register, visit here and don’t forget to ‘Like’ Carbon Outreach on Facebook. 

Contributor: Erica Grigg is Chief Marketer at Carbon Outreach. Erica has trained hundreds of social enterprises, including top not-for-profits, green business and corporate philanthropy executives about social media. Erica speaks on cause-based marketing and social media internationally. Learn more and connect professionally at http://linkedin.com/in/ericagrigg or follow Erica on Twitter @ericagrigg.

WeFeedBack Helps Solve Global Food Crisis

The following is an article we published in Treehugger earlier this week.

Did you know over 1 billion people will be persistently hungry in 2011? For our already overpopulated world, food prices continue to rise due to a variety of reasons, including the raising cost of petroleum. This leaves even more people hungry.


Lots of action has been taken internationally to combat this coming food crisis. In April, the World Bank held the Open Forum about that "pressing issue - raising and volatile food prices." However, nothing seemed to get accomplished besides a very active social media conversation.


Now the questions remain. Which business or not-for-profit will help solve this life or death problem? What are social enterprises doing today to help feed that 'Bottom Billion'? Will communities wait while government stalls?


The short answer is that social enterprises internationally are starting to provide answers, especially around energy and agriculture. One such country is India, a country that knows about hunger; over 40% of children are malnourished according to the World Bank. Recently, the Sankalp Forum was held in Mumbai, India to celebrate social entrepreneurs in four key areas including food and clean energy.


Reading about the winners was inspiring, but I also realized the United Nations case study I was reviewing was part of solving the global food crisis--through social media! In response to our looming global food crisis, the United Nations is taking to the internet like never before, including creating the WeFeedBack social network.


WeFeedBack is simple and resounding idea. Join the social network, Estimate the food you will eat tonight, and donate that amount to feed someone else. Instead of waiting on political action, they are mobilizing to try to feed those who need it most. The site has fed nearly 200,000 so far since starting early April 2011.


Wonder how they did it? Social networking; the organization has been effectively reaching out through Facebook and Twitter, especially using the World Food Programme as a platform. This is the second in a series of successes for the World Food Programme, including their Free Rice Word Game that has helped feed 4.2 million.


That's why this Monday, I'm going to donate my dinner to someone who needs it more, and I suggest that you do, too.


Contributor: Erica Grigg is Partner and Director of Marketing and Digital Marketing at Carbon Outreach. Erica has trained hundreds of social enterprises, not-for-profits and corporate social responsibility executives on social media tools including Twitter. Erica recently co-authored, "Facebook for Social Enterprise" in June 2011. Erica speaks internationally on responsible business and marketing issues, and blogs for Treehugger.  

11 Ways to Make Your Social Enterprise Facebook Group a Success

During our many conversations with social enterprises internationally, we've encountered many questions along the way; for instance, how should I use Facebook for personal development? How can my organization leverage the power of our users to win over more donors?


We hope to answer these and numerous other questions in our thoughtful book on, "Facebook for Social Enterprise," to launch May 16 in New York City; RSVP via Facebook today! You can also get a complimentary copy of our book! Be one of the first 250 by reserving your copy today!


There are many reasons your organization could consider using Facebook groups. Numerous green businesses are using Facebook groups successfully including HUB NYC and Go Green Expo, and numerous collaboratives and co-operatives use Facebook groups, including the Green Design or Ethical Fashion Forum. Facebook groups are increasing opportunity for social enterprise because they are more conversation-oriented.


If you have not considered using Facebook groups, or have questions about how to integrate your next Facebook campaign within your marketing strategy, give us a chat at +1 646.233.3265.


Without ado, below are the top 10 recommendations for using Facebook groups for green business or not-for-profit.


1. Depending on the content of your Group, make sure you enable participants to recommend others to join the group through inviting members. You can do this by making sure yours is an 'Open group'.


Note: There are three privacy settings for your group, including: secret, closed and open. If you’re creating a Facebook group for your business or organization, open groups are recommended.

2. Create a group name including the name of your company if your target message is around your company or not-for-profit. Go Green Expo did this effectively, also while fostering conversation within the American green community.

3. Invite contacts who would be interested in joining the conversation. Don't invite a member you would not think would enjoy the conversation, but if members are uninterested, they can leave the group easily.


4. Provide an e-mail address for the administrator and now you have more opportunities to connect and have conversation with your participants. This was effectively used in the HUB NYC group below.

5. Create a conversation topic to start discussions. The conversation could be about a recent event your organization will speak at, recent or noteworthy news, recommendations from other businesses pages or groups, as well as industry-related content that keeps your community engaged.


6. @Mention individual users, as @mentioning business pages and other groups is not yet enabled. This can inform other users to join the group and promote conversations to other users; whether promoting conversation about a specific event, campaign or new product, this is a great place to cross-promote.


7. Create questions using the question feature and encourage friends and/or group members to answer by suggesting the question--make sure, though, that it's interesting and relevant to their situation. You can also let others create their own answers by selecting the 'add poll options', and 'allow any user to add options'. The Ethical Fashion Forum helped create an environment that fosters great conversations and posts by members.

8. Create your own content so you are not constantly sharing others’ content. The key to creating and sharing content is about 1) being interesting, 2) creative and 3) relevant within your industry .


Ideas for creating your own content includes blog posts, pictures of your companies’ representatives speaking, or videos to accompany your current campaigns or launches.


9. Get your Twitter community involved in promoting your conversations. Tweet about updates happening on your Facebook group, especially when interesting events or topics are promoted.


Side note: Currently, you cannot connect your updates directly to Twitter. However, you can recommend others join the group with the call to action for potential members to request to join.


10. Tell others to recommend their friends. Again, if you ask individuals to ask their friends, tell them if they want a favor from you, they should feel free to ask you. Being the friend who always asks for favors can be a precarious place to be.

11. Publicize offline. From your promotional material to e-mail signature, you should put links to your social networks (including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and/or your blog) in as many places as possible to advertise your online presence. Ultimately, in the long term, more active users means more opportunities to win their donations or purchase dollars!


Contributor: Erica Grigg is Partner and Director of Marketing & Digital Marketing at Carbon Outreach.  She is co-author of Facebook for Social Enterprise and writes frequently for media outlets such as Treehugger. Follow @EricaGrigg on Twitter or visit Erica Grigg on LinkedIn to connect professionally. She has spoken to hundreds around the world on using social media for green business and not-for-profit, and organizes and chairs the Marketing & PR for Social Enterprise Meetup.