Social media has forever changed how nonprofits and journalists distribute and consume news stories, yet the format of nonprofit press releases has not evolved at all. Almost every communication medium out there has been impacted by the rise of social and mobile media, but not press releases. I think that enterprising nonprofits would be eager to try something new...
Until recently the nonprofit pioneers of the Social Web had to mostly rely on their intuition that their social media campaigns were resulting in more dollars raised online, an increase in brand and cause awareness, and higher rates of volunteer recruitment and retention. However, as LinkedIn, Blogger and Myspace all celebrate their 10-year anniversary this year, nonprofits have now...
My e-newsletter is by far the driving force behind Nonprofit Tech 2.0. Those 27,000+ subscribers produce more return on investment (ROI) in terms of bringing in new clients and webinar attendees than my 600,000+ Twitter followers and 40,000+ Facebook fans combined. And even though a recent report pointed out that email open and donor response are dropping in the nonprofit...
Hopefully your nonprofit has grown accustomed to the fact that Facebook is a constant work in progress. That said, some recent upgrades to Facebook Pages have a big impact upon your nonprofit’s presence on Facebook and with the site-wide launch of the new News Feed and Social Graph Search coming soon, many more changes are likely to come. Before you fall...
Nonprofits that have the capacity to be early adopters have learned that early adoption in and of itself is a wise social media strategy. Followers tend to grow the fastest during the early adoption phase and being one of the first nonprofits to have a presence on a new social network tends to solidify their popularity on the social...
What I love about my work more than anything else is that I never know what is going to happen next. Every day is different. Today, I discovered that @NonprofitOrgs had been named one of TIME Magazine’s Best Twitter Feeds of 2013: Every year, TIME recognizes those who exemplify the very best wit and wisdom Twitter has to offer....
Nonprofit website design and online fundraising have dramatically changed in recent years due to the rapid rise of social media and mobile communications. Using the Wayback Machine – a website that allows you to view archived screenshots of your website all the way back to 1996, below is an exploration of how the World Wildlife Fund’s website and online...
Thanks to the Social Web, there is no shortage of possible topics for your nonprofit to blog about. From 10-paragraph editorials to 2-paragraph commentaries on breaking news, when you use the ideas given here, you should have no problem publishing the required minimum of one blog post per week (less than that and your blog starts to look abandoned)....
Last year when Myspace announced that it would be launching a redesign, I was very intrigued. Even more so when they released a video last September teasing what the new Myspace would look like. The design was good – very good, in fact. For months I was anxious, excited even, for the new Myspace to launch. For those who...
YouTube has begun rolling out a new YouTube Channel design entitled One Channel to a very small small group of YouTube users. A sitewide roll out is expected in early March. The new design offers much less customization, but enables more efficient browsing of your videos and the channels that you are subscribed to, and is more tailored for...
Each year I select 31 Favorite Nonprofits to which I donate 10% of my webinar income. Part of the reason is a commitment to altruism, but I also use (for lack of a better word) these 31 nonprofits to study how nonprofits are progressing in online fundraising, social media and mobile communications. That said, over the last few days...
Many nonprofits need social media training – they just don’t know it. There’s always room for improvement and unfortunately overconfidence in social media skills prevent many nonprofit staff from getting training that could significantly increase their social media ROI (Return on Investment). Social media best practices are constantly in flux as tool sets change and algorithms are modified. Unless you study...
A long overdue follow up to my post on 29 Nonprofit Bloggers to Follow on Twitter, below are 29 nonprofit resources that tweet regularly on subjects ranging from fundraising to social media to mobile communications. Of course, there are many other resources deserving of being listed – if you would like to add one, please do so in a...