Listening Posts: The Six Free Listening Tools You Cannot Do Without

So many more organizations and people are engaged in social media today than they were a year ago. What that means is that so many more people are talking about your company, your competitors, your employees and your brands today than they were a year ago. At least, that’s the potential. According to Forrester Research, the number of US regular social network users has doubled since 2007. So, are you monitoring the conversation? Have you set up your listening posts? Simply put, email alerts (daily, or in real time) are the best way to make sure you are not missing out on any online mentions relevant to you or your company, positive or negative. I’ve compiled what I believe is the “do not miss,” list of (free) email listening tools your organization should use. There are a lot of great paid... Continue Reading

Don’t Start What You Can’t Maintain: The Back Side of Social Media

Social media is FUN. You get to make new friends. And pass along really interesting information. You get to ask others to help you change the world and support your cause. You meet all sorts of wonderful, generous people. But what are you really doing? You are creating gathering places, living rooms for discussion, kitchens for cooking up ideas, in order to develop real stakeholders. Social media is, after all, an engagement strategy. You want to create online ties that engage, create relationships, and move people to act on behalf of a cause, company, or organization. After you spend all that time creating those relationships, you have to commit to maintaining them. What happens when you can’t be there all the time that your stakeholders want to drop by? Or if you decide it’s just too much work... Continue Reading

Where is The Open Source Organization?

Almost a year ago, I wrote a blog post entitled “The Non-Profit Quarterly Report.” In this post, I argued that nonprofit organizations should offer online quarterly reports, and mimic the transparency exemplified by Jonathan Schwartz’ online quarterly reports. (Jonathan is the CEO of Sun Microsystems.) John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design and social media advocate, argues that “in many cases complete clarity should be a leader’s goal rather than complete transparency.” If you combine the concepts of organizational clarity with transparency and inclusionary decision making, then you create a new type of organization: The Open Source Organization One organization has stepped up to the plate to show us how it’s done: PresenTense Group. The PresenTense Group calls itself... Continue Reading

What Are the Challenges to Social Network Fundraising?

Proving that social media can be used to raise significant funds for nonprofits is “the brass ring” that every nonprofit utilizing social media wants to reach. But it is quite an elusive brass ring! There are a number of challenges to overcome before social network fundraising is as easy (and fruitful) as email donation solicitation, offline donation appeals, or the “donate now” button on the website. On the other hand, social network fundraising is growing: both by adoption, use and acceptance. This post explores the existing challenges to acceptance and raising large amounts of funds using social networks – and brainstorming ideas to overcome the barriers. Here are some thoughts about the leading challenges in social network fundraising: Cultural: Social media is still primarily Social Except... Continue Reading

How a Facebook Event Transformed an Organization

This is an in-depth analysis about how one organization used Facebook Events to tie online and offline organizing, and how it transformed the organization in the process. Sviva Israel utilizes community organizing techniques and social media to stimulate real world action and create environmental awareness. I don’t know of any other group that has mastered the art of the Facebook Event to this extent. It is my pleasure to feature for this Blog Action Day Sviva Israel’s Eco Lights campaign. Sviva Israel began as the dream of Carmi Wisemon, a veteran environmental activist, and his wife Tamar, a journalist and marketing director. They wanted to connect Jewish environmental education with youth, educators, and their families to lower environmental impact. Soon after establishing their nonprofit, they... Continue Reading

When Does Engagement Lead to Donations?

Nonprofit organizations need to raise funds constantly. Fact. They also have programs, mission and special activities that must be funded. Fact. There’s all this trendy talk about leveraging social media to raise money – and the question I get asked most often is When does social media lead to more money? That’s not the right question. The right question is: When does engagement lead to more money? Annual reports do not create a relationship. Email updates do not create a relationship. Alerts do not create a relationship. These are all examples of one-way communication. Relationships are about two-way communication. I’ve also seen a lot of nonprofit organizations using social media fail to create relationships using these tools. Automatically feeding blog posts through a twitter feed does... Continue Reading

Strategic Blogging for Nonprofits

I met with a client this week who told me that she is having trouble focusing on topics for their nonprofit blog. She asked me “what should I be blogging about?” She is a former marketing writer, and in her own words “can write about anything,” but isn’t sure whether her nonprofit’s blog posts are relevant. I asked her three simple questions: Who is your audience? Why are they coming to your blog? What do you want them to do? Inspired by this exchange, I created a small presentation embedded here entitled: Blogging IS a Strategy. Blogging should be relevant, targeted and strategic for your organization, and should move your organization closer towards meeting its goals. It should be written for your stakeholders, but also provide relevant information that attracts new fans. I’ve put... Continue Reading

Using Social Media to Decrease E-Mail Unsubscribe Rates

The direct marketing agency Epsilon just released a new study by ROI Research revealing reasons why people most often unsubscribe from email lists, and the rates at which they unsubscribe. Not surprisingly, the most often-cited reason (67%) is irrelevancy of emails. The second highest reason (64%) was high frequency of emails, and the third most-cited reason (50%) was fear that their email addresses were being sold or shared. Conducted by ROI Research, the study is based on an April 2009 survey of over 4000 consumers in 13 countries. Image courtesy of emarketer Image courtesy of Online Media Daily Continue Reading [Translate] Bookmark:  Read More →

The Facebook Page Is the New Website

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the new Facebook “page” redesign. It’s no small coincidence that pages now look like profiles. Facebook has realized that organizations want the ability to engage dynamically with their stakeholders and have offered them the perfect platform to do so. I believe that the place of the nonprofit website will soon fade in importance as social network profiles become your organization’s number one online identity. Given that, your Facebook page will become your dynamic calling card. Whether or not you have a Facebook group for your nonprofit, you need a page. The Facebook page IS the new website. Why? Facebook has the numbers and loyalty. It is the fourth largest site globally, with a page rank of 4, according to Alexa. More people visit this site, link... Continue Reading

Blog Metrics: Measure the Conversation

What is the best measurement for a successful blog? Is it number of unique visitors, returning visitors, page views, incoming links, or Technorati ranking? Do any one of these typical measurement tools by themselves tells us what we need to know: who is engaged? Non-profit organizations want to engage stakeholders through social media and ideally move them to act on their behalf. We know that, without engagement, people are not moved to act. Blogs are a particularly challenging platform for creating engagement. It’s easy to passively read a blog. How do you know if you’ve engaged? Three metrics for measuring “blog conversation” are: number of unique engaged readers, average number of engaged readers per blog post, and number of posts that engaged readers in blog conversations. Continue Reading [Translate] Bookmark:  Read More →