The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect the natural ecosystems that plants and animals need to survive. With over a million members, The Nature Conservancy has protected more than 119 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of rivers worldwide.

Evan C. Parker, the Manager of Digital Membership at the Nature Conservancy, heads up the organization’s online communications efforts. For the past twelve years, Parker has specialized in mobilizing online audiences for nonprofit and political causes. Prior to joining the Conservancy in 2005, Evan led Congressman Bernie Sanders’ online outreach efforts.

BB: What was your biggest achievement on the social media front in 2008?

EP: Our social media efforts are really more about lots of small efforts over a wide area, as opposed to a deep dive in any one particular pool. As a result, our achievements tend to be targeted, and more distributed, as opposed to any one "big thing" to be singled out.

For example: this year we’ve past $100,000 and 50,000 friends on Facebook, our Flickr community saw it’s 100,000th picture posted, and we launched a really successful widget campaign through Plant A Billion Trees. They’re all great accomplishments, but they are built on a sturdy social media foundation that we’ve been developing — slow and steady — over the last three or four years.

BB: Tell us about your organization’s marketing/communications strategy for 2009. What big hairy audacious social media goals will help you achieve your objectives next year? Do you foresee any particularly enticing opportunities that can help nonprofits/causes reach their social media goals in 2009? Any advice for how to take advantage of related trends?

EP: It sounds so dull, but we are really looking for more of the same — we want to keep engaging our community of conservationists, on whatever networks/platforms that energize them. Obviously, that will mean a lot of work in the more traditional social media spaces — the Facebooks, the Flickrs — but we will certainly keep an ear to the ground for where our current/future supporters will be congregating next.

There seems to be a lot of real traction around online donation affinity programs lately, and that certainly looks promising to an organization like the Conservancy. People are looking for easy solutions to everyday problems, and that includes everyday ways they can support the causes that are most important to them.

BB: How do you plan to integrate your social media efforts with the rest of your marketing mix (e.g., direct mail, email marketing, mobile, media relations, etc.)?

EP: We’ve seen first hand that integrated marketing messages across channels is really a rising tide that lifts all boats. That being said, each element of a marketing mix appeals to a very specific audience, so the trick is all about figuring out which audiences can be best reached through which channels. So, as we kick off each marketing effort, we will think through the channels vs. the audiences, and roll our messages out to as many as we can.

BB: What is one challenge you face when executing new, social and/or digital media strategy? How are you overcoming this hurdle? What will be the final measure of success for your digital plans?

EP: In my mind, the biggest challenge in this space is always going to be time. Right now, our digital teams could easily put together a list of social media spaces that vastly outstrips the collective hours in our day, so we have to prioritize as best we can.

This, unfortunately, highlights the second biggest challenge inherent in social media, which is metrics. Unless we have good metrics, it’s impossible to gauge the success of social media efforts. Without success, it’s impossible to measure ROI. Without ROI, it’s impossible to figure out where we should be focusing our attentions.

It’s a bit of a vicious circle, but we will be focusing a lot of effort figuring out how we measure social media engagement, tie it back to traffic, and then track the long term value of our social media audiences over the next few years.