For the last 4.5 years, I have been providing lots of little tips on how nonprofits can increase their ROI through my Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace Best Practices, but now that the vast majority of nonprofits utilize social media and have been for awhile, I think most of us are ready some more advanced strategies. My Top Five...
The Web is going mobile. Faster than anyone thought. Smartphones are transforming the Internet and how individuals access the Web. One in five Americans now access the mobile Web daily. Some through Apps. Others through mobile Web browsers. This means nonprofits and their web communication strategies need to transform as well. One of the most – if not the...
Reconsider. To think about again. To reassess. To reevaluate. I have been mulling this post over for months, and with some recent changes made by Facebook, the time has come. Some of the opinions I express below I have had for a while and speak to them in my webinars and trainings, but some are so recent that I...
“A survey of 200 charity and foundation professionals revealed that nonprofits are finding it difficult to determine how valuable social media tools are for their organizations. Seventy-nine percent said they hadn’t found ways to do so.” – Chronicle of Philanthropy, November 12, 2009 For those 79% of nonprofits out there, I have listed 10 social media metrics below that...
I normally try to leave politics and religion out of my work with nonprofits, but this time I need to make an exception. A month ago I launched a Facebook Page called Accomplishments of President Barack Obama. In just that short time it has become abundantly clear that I have been living and working in social networking bubble of...
Good news! In addition to the United States and the United Kingdom, nonprofits in Canada and Australia can now also take advantage of YouTube’s Nonprofit Program. The benefits of the program incude: Premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity (View Example) The option to drive fundraising through a Google Checkout “Donate” button Listing on the Nonprofit channels and the...
There are currently 133 million blogs worldwide. The world doesn’t need another blogger, right? Wrong. In the short 6 months that I have been blogging, I have come to the conclusion that blogging is the missing piece in a successful social media strategy. Here are five reasons why: 1) Blogging allows your nonprofit to have a consistent stream of...
While there are a good number of tech-savvy hipsters out there that understand terms like “Static Web”, “Dynamic Content”, “User-Generated”, “Cloud Computing”, and “Semantic Web”, the majority of nonprofits don’t talk or understand such tech speak. So, to simply for the nonprofit masses, I present and frame very simple definitions and interpretations of Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web...
The use of iPhone Apps that benefit the nonprofit sector is going to explode in 2010. Hundreds of iPhone Apps created by nonprofits and nonprofit service providers are quietly preparing for an early 2010 launch. That said, there are three iPhone Apps currently live and available for download that give us a good picture of how iPhone Apps can...
During 2009 I created and promoted 34 TwtPolls to help better understand the needs of nonprofits. The TwtPoll results are often surprising and can be very useful for nonprofits as they forge ahead with their 2010 communications strategies. Below are the 11 TwtPoll results that I think are the most telling: 1) Is your nonprofit planning on utilizing mobile...
As I spent the Thanksgiving weekend pondering gratitude, MySpace made the top of my list of things to be grateful for. When I first started myspace.com/nonprofitorganizations almost 4 years ago I had no idea that it would evolve to become as large as it has, or that the brand/community/concept would spread to Facebook, then YouTube, and now Twitter. If...
Recent studies have revealed that the vast majority of nonprofits do not know how to measure ROI (Return on Investment) from utilizing social media. Below are 5 simple, low-cost ways nonprofits can measure ROI with a minimal time investment of only a couple of hours a month. 1. Monitor your website traffic. During the Era of Web 1.0, nonprofits...
If used correctly, #hashtags can be very useful to nonprofits on Twitter. Hashtags allow your organization to participate and inspire conversations (and in the process get new followers) and organize the Twitterverse around campaigns (#climatechange) and events (#openwebawards). The problem is that there so many hashtags floating around on Twitter, that’s it tough to keep track of which hashtags...