If you haven't yet read Erik Qualman's book Socialnomics, close this window and order it now! Better yet, open this YouTube link (or see below) and pick up some of his most powerful points. We are in the middle of a transformative moment and Qualman (bless his soul and his enthusiasm) helps make sense of the dramatic shift that is causing everyone to rethink how and where they and how they communicate. Did you know that Boston College is doing away with issuing email accounts to its incoming Freshman Class? They discovered that 18 year olds don't use email so much anymore, preferring to text or catch up on Facebook instead. Did you know that one out of every eight couples married today met via social media? Or that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world? Did you know that people … Continue Reading
How to Structure Listservs
from Frogloop: Tips for Managing and Engaging Online Communities Before Web 2.0 took over the world, people were part of smaller online participatory communities called listservs. Remember them? Though not as sexy as Twitter, people are still active on listservs and they continue to be valuable tools for nonprofits and community groups to connect with people who are passionate about discussing issues, sharing resources, and engaging in thoughtful and sometimes heated debates. Yet even after all these years, many organizations still haven’t mastered how to use listservs in building successful and engaging online communities. … Continue Reading
Email: RIP or Not?
from Giving in a digital world: Social Media is not killing Email - so what’s your next excuse for not using Email as well as you could? Each time we see a significant evolution in the way consumers communicate there is always a temptation to jump to the conclusion that the latest method will surely kill-off the previous methods. Presumably such predictions were bandied about after Alexander Graham Bell made his first telephone call back in 1876 - yet the mail service didn’t die-out as a result of the adoption of telephones. Rather more recently, there have been suggestions that email will kill-off traditional mail ever since I got my first email address back in the early ’90s (remember Compuserve?) - but it hasn’t happened yet (although that debate does continue). As such, … Continue Reading
Is Your E-Mail Awe-Inspiring?
The New York Times February 9th article by John Tierney, titled "Will You Be E-Mailing This Column? It's Awesome" offered some fascinating insights from a recent University of Pennsylvania research study. The researchers, Jonah Berger and Katherine A. Milkman intensively studied The New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles, checking it every 15 minutes for six months in the period between August 2008 and February 2009. They determined that people preferred emailing articles that a) had positive as opposed to negative themes and b) were lengthy and on intellectually challenging topics. But more revealing was their analytic conclusion that "readers want to share articles that inspire awe.." Based on prior research the Penn researchers had conducted, they determined that people were more … Continue Reading
Nonprofit Websites Play Influential Role in All Holiday Giving
Nearly two-thirds of Americans plan to give online to charities in November and December, and their donations could exceed $4-billion, $1-billion more than they donated during the holiday season last year A new study conducted by Forrester’s Technographics® on behalf of Convio, reveals that in the US more than 63% of online consumers plan to use the Internet to donate to charities of their choice during the upcoming holiday season, up from 51% in 2008. Nearly 6 out of 10 people surveyed plan to give the same amount or more, while the current state of the economy will lead 23 percent to give less to charity this holiday season. A full 20 percent are still undecided about the size of their gifts as we enter the final four weeks of the holiday giving season. While 65 percent of the survey … Continue Reading
New Links
Some recent additions to our Resource library: The Role of Email in Your Communications Mix Nonprofits have a lot of choices when it comes to communications - from direct mail, to websites, to social networking sites and more. With Spam on the rise and open rates down, what role should email play in a successful communications strategy - and when should nonprofits choose to use it? Spam Reports Aren’t All Bad News No one who follows the rules and best practices of permission-based email marketing wants to get branded as a spammer. However, sometimes even the most reputable, best-intentioned businesses and organizations can send email communications that trigger spam reports. 4 Keys to Building a Successful Nonprofit Web Site Before we go too far, let me start by saying, … Continue Reading
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