#SM4NP: Beware Not Of SM But Of SM Snake Oil & Silver Bullets
Should you? Must you?
If we aren’t careful, we might be entranced to believe social-media networking platforms have been around for quite a while. I mean, if Facebook is valued at $5 billion in its Initial Public Auction, then surely it’s a tried-and-true company that still has room to grow. Right?
Before you jump over to your E*Trade account, you might ask yourself “What has Facebook (or Twitter, for that matter) done for me?” That query, if you are a nonprofit or a small business, can be tricky to answer, unless you started with a plan and with some measurable goals that can be stood next to what you have in fact done. And sometimes, what you want done can get a nice push from social media but social media won’t necessarily do the heavy hauling. And that’s ok!
Popularity: 1% | Category Advice, Blogs, Cause Marketing, Communications, Community Gardens, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, Interview, Marketing, Marketing Budget, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Site Administration, Social Media, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Technology for Nonprofits, Tweets, Twitter | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner
#Interview: Nicole Harrison is the founder of SocialNicole.com and host of #nptalk
Nicole Harrison is the founder of SocialNicole, a Minneapolis agency that provides online and social media communications services for businesses and nonprofits. She is also the host of a weekly Twitter chat about nonprofits, #NPTalk. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
MKC: Does your agency provide only online services?
NICOLE: Actually, no. What you see on our website is pretty much geared towards online, but we’re actually doing some strategic on-the-ground fundraising help for small nonprofits, such as sponsorships and building their base. A lot of clients come for social media but they need all these other pieces as well. We try to offer solutions and help them see how these different pieces tie together.
Popularity: 46% | Category Blogs, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, Interview, Marketing, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Perspectives, Perspectives, Social Media, Strategic Marketing, Tweets, Twitter, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#Communications: Fine Tune Twitter Use To Enrich Outreach
The idea of using Twitter can overwhelm some, and how to use it as a smart tool for strategic engagement seems downright contradictory to many. Yet as the social-networking platform matures – Rather, as the people who use it explore that myriad ways to make it work for them – an ever growing number of provable strategies are being developed. A significant part of what can bring success to your nonprofit or small business is not simply the adoption of the platform, but the honing of the strategy that makes that makes it work for you.
One of the leaders of the use of social media in the business and nonprofit world is Brian Solis, whose most recent book is Engage! Revised and Updated: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web. Brian has also shared some of his most successful tactics in a recent article in FastCompany magazine – and we want you to be aware of some of them.
Popularity: 38% | Category Advice, Book Review, Campaigns, Case Study, Communications, Community, Fundraising, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Public Relations, Publications, Reviews, SEO, Social Media, Technology, Tweets, Twitter | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner
#Interview: Mike Kujawski, VP at CEPSM, Blogger & Speaker on Social Media
Mike Kujawski is Vice President of Strategic Marketing & Digital Engagement at the Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing (CEPSM). Mike blogs at Public Sector Marketing 2.0, speaks frequently on social media and serves public sector and non-profit clients internationally. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVEnonprofit blog.
MKC: I noticed that you deal not only with nonprofits but the public sector. Do they have the same kind of problems?
MIKE: No, definitely different, but there is this common theme of wanting to do social good – not pushing a product or service down people’s throats with the sole aim of making money. There’s a difference between a nonprofit of five people, with one person wearing multiple hats, and a government organization with multi-million dollar budgets, of course. It’s like night and day. But when you look at the individuals, the actual people involved in running the programs and services, there is much less difference.
Popularity: 4% | Category Advice, Blogs, Campaigns, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, Facebook, Interview, Marketing, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Perspectives, SEO, Social Media, Strategic Marketing, Technology, Tweets, Twitter | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#Interview: Michael Stein, Author, Blogger, & Veteran Nonprofit Technology Strategist
Michael Stein, Senior Account Executive for Donordigital, is a veteran nonprofit technology strategist whose areas of expertise include online fundraising, email messaging, email list growth, blogging, website content, mobile messaging, and social media. With Nick Allen and Mal Warwick, Michael wrote the groundbreaking 1997 book Fundraising on the Internet: Recruiting and Renewing Donors Online.
The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVEnonprofit blog.
MKC: How did you get into this field?
Michael: About 20 years ago, I was working for an environmental group just as the Internet started to emerge. I got in on the ground floor, building bulletin board systems for Greenpeace activists and others tracking toxic chemical emissions around the U.S. I helped build the pioneering Internet provider called IGC.org that trained nonprofits to use the Internet, which then morphed into the first experiments in online fundraising on the Web for Rainforest Action Network. In the mid-1990s, I hooked up with legendary direct mail fundraisers Mal Warwick and Nick Allen, and we started to think about what the future of fundraising might look like with the evolving Internet. Together we wrote the first book about fundraising online.
Popularity: 8% | Category Advertising, Advice, Blogs, Branding, Campaigns, Communications, Community, Copyrighting, Cross-Post, Database, Development, Donor Acquisition, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Interview, iPad/Tablet, Major Gifts, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Perspectives, Public Relations, Social Media, Storytelling, Technology, Tools, Tweets, Twitter, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#SocialMedia: Turns Out, Twitter Can Start Revolutions Mr. Gladwell
What a difference a year can make – not always for the better, mind you. But in today’s post we see grounds for optimism when it comes to the development of social networks and of social movements through those networks as they force political and economic change.
Last fall we wrote about the incisive and incendiary thesis of Malcom Gladwell, who wrote in The New Yorker magazine that social media gives us an inflated sense of social and political engagement when, in fact, little changes. His argument was that though social networks are critical for social change those networks must be personal, not virtual, and the ‘friends’ must be willing to put themselves in a high-risk situation – something that a retweet does not require. He contrasted the revolutions of Moldova and Iran in 2009 (and largely unsuccessful) with the civil-rights movement that began at a Woolworths lunch counter in Greensboro, NC in 1960.
But what about now that dictators have fallen in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and perhaps Syria – and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement has gone global this past weekend?
Popularity: 2% | Category Banking & Finance, Blogs, Civics, Communications, Community, Facebook, Facebook, Geo-Location, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Newspaper Article, Politics, Social Media, Tweets, Twitter | | 1 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner
#SocialNetworking: How Can You Improve Your Tweet Stream?
Follow MKCREATIVETeam!
The statistics of Twitter’s growth since 2006 are staggering, and Twitter has every right to brag about the numbers. Although research shows that most people use Twitter to follow, not to post, that statistic should be encouraging, not discouraging, nonprofits to sharpen their skills and beef up their presence on the social-media platform. Let us suggest a few things to help. Perhaps the first thing to appreciate if you are a neophyte to Twitter is that no one tweet is likely to break your reputation (Well, there are exceptions). Many folks are learning the medium, and the atmosphere is pretty cordial. In fact, the bigger danger might be playing things so safely that your voice simply gets lost among the millions of daily tweets.
Popularity: 2% | Category Advertising, Advice, Communications, Community, Fundraising, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Relations, Site Administration, Social Media, Technology, Technology for Education, Tweets, Twitter | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner
#Interview: Syam Buradagunta, Blogger & Co-Founder of Blue Sky Collaborative
Syam Buradagunta is president and co-founder of Blue Sky Collaborative, a company that offers online pledge event software (Sweet) to nonprofits for walkathons, bike-a-thons and similar peer-to-peer fundraising events. The company also provides custom websites and a content management system. Syam and his co-founders worked in nonprofits before starting their firm in 2003. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
Popularity: 2% | Category Blogs, Communications, Cross-Post, Crowdfunding, Development, Donor Acquisition, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Interview, Major Gifts, Marketing, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Tweets, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#Interview: Marc Pitman, Owner of the “Fundraising Coach” Blog, Author, and Fundraising Consultant
Marc A. Pitman writes the Fundraising Coach blog, in addition to writing books, giving seminars, engaging in social media and consulting with clients. His own fundraising career began at a small New England liberal arts college, but by 1999 he found the consulting life fulfilled his desire to teach and help people. Marc was interviewed from his home in rural Maine by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
Popularity: 3% | Category Blogs, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, Development, Donor Acquisition, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Interview, Major Gifts, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Resource, Social Media, Study, Tweets | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#Aging: Resources For Issues Concerning Older Americans
Numerous resources are available online and in print for information about elder care, aging, homes for older Americans, etc. We would like simply to touch on a few that we think are quite valuable, and which we hope you will as well. We would love to hear from you if you have some favorites that are not yet on our radar as well.
We begin with a few online networks, blogs, and resources. The first is the LifeSpan Network based in Columbia, Maryland. The network consists of over 300 affiliated organizations, nursing homes, and health-care providers in the Maryland/DC/Northern Virginia region. The website offers information on products and services (including reviews), a jobs-posting page focusing on work in the health/elder-care economy, and on numerous conferences and events as well. The network has its own annual conference coming up this October 30 – November 2 in Ocean City, MD, for those who want to hear directly from the good people who are a part of it.
But wait, there’s more.
Popularity: 3% | Category Aging, Assisted Living, Blogs, Communications, Community, Health, Healthcare, Independent Living, Nursing Home, Retirement Living, Seniors Life, Social Media, Tweets, Twitter, Web and Print | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner
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