Eric Squair’s blog

I am a big fan of Web Analytics, and I feel like it is the cornerstone skill of any work you want to do online.  I find that people speak about their websites in an entirely different way when they are regularly monitoring their site performance. And I feel like you can’t help but improve your website once you actually  have a sense of how people are using it (and NOT using it)

That’s why I am offering a five-session hands-on course on Google Analytics I call “How to Make Smarter Decisions About Your Website“

I am organizing an event to introduce some amazing free tools from Google to Toronto area non profits.

Normally, I don’t like giving workshops focusing on specific tools. Often, it’s a case of recommending specific tactics before people have defined the larger goals of an organizations’ online efforts. Second Life, FourSquare or Twitter do not necessarily fit the particular needs of your organization.*

But Google is different.  You have no choice but to make decisions more strategically when using these tools for measuring and improving your online work. I don’t feel reluctant to recommend these specific tools to anyone who is publishing anything online – a website, email newsletter, blog or social media campaign.

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This weekend more than 30 people came together over two days to learn more about, work with and improve some free open source tools for running online campaigns in Canada.

There aren’t a lot of website tools for organizations in Canada looking to create effective online petitions, build their email lists or put supporters in touch with their Members of Parliament.  Make Poverty History Canada has helped develop open source software to do exactly these tasks, and wants to share it with other organizations for free.

So Make Poverty History sponsored a workshop for activists to learn more about the tools on Saturday at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto.  A Hackathon was organized for the Sunday, where open source software developers gathered to work with the code to improve it, learning and sharing with each other in the process.

Here’s a few key learnings from the weekend Continue Reading »

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There are a lot of interesting campaigns with online components happening here in Toronto at the municipal level, including this recent amazing victory for a more beautiful city. Campaigns like this could be even more effective if they had simple and effective ways for citizens to get in touch with their elected representatives (or their candidates during the upcoming election).

As it stands now, online campaigns either spend a lot of money to purchase advocacy software, or ask participants to use government websites to find and contact their elected representatives, with no way to record how many messages have been sent, or stay in touch with participants. There is a better way.

The Make Poverty History campaign, who I work with on several projects, has software that makes it easy for people to send a message or sign a petition to their Member of Parliament based on their postal code.  The software also allows people to opt to join an email list to keep up to date on a campaign – a useful way to build a list of supporters. You can see an example of an online action here.

The best part of this story? Make Poverty History wants to share this software with other activist groups across Canada. So they are sponsoring an event in Toronto on February 27th & 28th so you can learn more about it and contribute to it’s development.

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For the past two weeks I have been running a workshop I am developing called “Blogging for People Who Should”.

The long-winded title begs the question “So who SHOULD blog?” This course is designed for anyone with an important story to tell: activists trying to change the world, filmmakers and authors with stirring stories to share, independent consultants whose work makes positive contributions to social change, anyone doing inspiring works that they want the world to know about. Continue Reading »

I recently got an email from an organization I love: they do great, strategic and effective environmental work with minimal resources. They are having their strategic planning sessions here in Toronto this week, and wondered if I could come by and talk to them about improving their online work.

One goal in their online communications strategy, a bit tongue in cheek, is to “Join the 21st Century”. They are not doing too badly with their communications – in old and new media – and they are a super-smart bunch, so I was a bit intimidated, truth be told. I had limited time to pull this together, and this is a no-bullshit crew. I can’t show them some campaigns that worked, repeat a few pat phrases about social media and be done with it – these folks have been doing effective communications work for years – they know their stuff. Continue Reading »

I have had the pleasure to work with the great crew at a Canadian environmental NGO over the last few weeks, assisting them with their broadcast email. The part of this work I enjoyed the most was creating a workshop for the campaign staff on email best practices.  Download the checklists for the sessions here (PDF). Continue Reading »

I am presenting at Social Tech Training 2009, the second year of this great event in Toronto. It’s an intensive training session for profit organizations who want to build a solid online program.

I love the approach. It’s not about ‘How to Twitter’ or ‘Create an awesome Facebook page for your organization’ (although you can probably learn some of that at the event). It is structured around an ongoing process of creativity, testing and exploration that will help you get results no matter what new technologies pop up (or ‘old’ ones die). Continue Reading »

I gave a talk about “Online Advocacy Campaigns – The Basics” this week as part of Net Tuesday, organized by Techsoup Canada.  It was a revised version of the presentation I gave in the spring. The attendance was a little lower than expected – there was a serious snowstorm – but otherwise the session went well.

You can download the session notes here.  [PowerPoint, 1.97 Mb] Continue Reading »

Martin Anderson gave an excellent hour-long workshop on Drupal themeing at DrupalCamp Toronto back in the spring. Drupal themeing, for those of you who don’t speak Nerd, is the process of designing and configuring a site built on the Drupal open source Content Management System.

Martin’s presentation was really good, and well attended. I asked him if he was interested in expanding the workshop and presenting it again. We decided organize the workshop for the fall, once the weather turned nasty. The event is free, happening on Saturday, November 22nd at the Centre for Social Innovation, and is generously sponsored by Avatar Interactive, CSI and Lullabot.

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