For the mobile social media manager, Instagram is a must-download photo-sharing smartphone app – and with more than 80 million users who to date have shared over four billion photos – its quickly becoming a community that early adopter nonprofits have added to their regular list of must-do’s. The social networking component of Instagram is smartphone-based and most of the interactions...
Large nonprofits usually have the expertise and resources necessary to launch and maintain successful online communications and fundraising campaigns. They’ve been able to hire some of the most well-trained and experienced staff, consultants, and designers that work in the nonprofit sector. Small to medium-sized nonprofits with small to medium-sized marketing and communications budgets may not have the resources that...
Contrary to its title, the last four chapters of Social Media for Social Good: A How-To Guide for Nonprofits are dedicated to mobile technology and mobile fundraising. I am firm believer that social media will be the foundation of the Mobile Web and the book was written to help prepare nonprofits for the coming shift from desktop and social to social...
At long last, the new LinkedIn News Feed is here! For years I have been completely baffled by LinkedIn’s partnership with Twitter to allow a mass automation of tweets to be published the LinkedIn News Feed. All those robotic tweets rife with too many hashtags and bad punctuation essentially rendered the LinkedIn News Feed useless, gave it the appearance...
It’s been challenging for the nonprofit sector to create iPhone and Android Apps that people want to first download and then repeatedly use – at least in large numbers. In general, your supporters have minimal interest in downloading a budget-friendly app that only includes a news or blog feed, a link to your YouTube Channel, and “Donate” option. For...
Watch Video Via BBC News Magazine: The internet was once considered a great equaliser, a platform that could bring strangers together, even across racial boundaries. But internet users of the same race have recently begun clustering on certain social media websites. Micro-blogging website Twitter has seen an upsurge in traffic from Hispanic and African-American audiences. These groups now claim...
To follow up on Monday’s post about why nonprofits should consider hiring a social media manger, below is an excerpt from Social Media for Social Good: A How-To Guide for Nonprofits that helps further explore the time commitment necessary to create and sustain a comprehensive social media stategy for your nonprofit. The estimates below allow for the time required to...
My last full-time, Monday-through-Friday job was as an outreach director for a small international development organization in San Francisco. Working within the confines of an almost non-existent online communications budget, my primary responsibilities were to maintain our website and publish a twice-monthly e-newsletter, quarterly print newsletter, and numerous print fundraising appeals through out the year. It was also my...
Blogger, LinkedIn and Myspace all launched in 2003. We’re almost a decade into using social media and yet one of the most striking realities when I give in-person social media trainings is the wide variety of experience of the nonprofits in the room. Some nonprofits are just getting started and perceive social media as cutting edge online communications and...
My Return on Investment (ROI) from using Pinterest to promote Nonprofit Organizations is somewhere between minimal and better-than-expected, but using the site on a regular basis has fundamentally changed how I think about social media and the people who use it. In the same way that Twitter forced me to rethink online messaging in 2008 and onward, Pinterest has...
There’s a sixth upgrade I want to add to the recent blog post Five Recent Upgrades That Nonprofits Need to Know About – you can now request to change the name of your nonprofit’s Facebook Page by visiting: Edit Page > Update Info > Basic Information > Name > Request Change: Until recently, you could only change your Page name if...
Like nonprofits, I am generally thrifty. Spending $30 on one “Promoted Post” on the Nonprofit Organizations Facebook Page felt like a significant expense. Was it worth it? Would I do it again? Sorry Facebook. The answer is no. Not for $30 anyway. The Return on Investment (ROI) was not significant enough to make me a convert. For $3? Absolutely!...
If there is one thing that nonprofit social media managers are learning (or should be learning) from utilizing new media it’s that technology is now constantly in flux. As soon as you learn and become comfortable with a tool set, it’s replaced with a new one. The best social media managers will adapt quickly, embrace a state of constant...