Archive for the 'marketing' Category

Good rules for using Twitter

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on September 29, 2008
in issues, marketing and socialmedia
. 5 Comments

Is your organization using Twitter?  Are members of your staff using Twitter to representat your organization?  The wave of companies and nonprofits joining the growing Twitter community is increasing rapidly.  That doesn’t mean every group signing on has a good set of rules though…

Jeff Trexler asked if nonprofit staff using Twitter, Facebook and other social media during the election are doing so responsibly.  On the uncivilsociety blog, Jeff writes:

One effect of online social networking technology is that it intensifies the environment that Marshall McLuhan called “all-at-onceness.” Old divisions fall away–near and far, high and low, word vs. picture–in favor of composition.

Part of this integrative process is the fusion of the personal and professional. Topics that were once taboo in polite conversation–money, religion, politics–are now a salient feature of the connected self.

In most respects I have no problem with this. I see myself primarily as a Watcher when it comes to organizational technology–I’m interested in seeing what happens but have little to no personal stake in any particular tool.

But there’s something going on that’s gotta stop.

Namely, political campaigning in social networking accounts connected to 501(c)(3) organizations.  Read more…

Jeremy Pepper, a friend and PR-Social Media guru, coins a new term with Twitteriocy, claiming too many companies joining Twitter are doing so irresponsibly.  He suggests six rules for organizations adopting Twitter (and really, these rules can be expanded to work for most social media tools):

1. Don’t have your PR firm set up and be your Twitter account.
2. Don’t follow everyone willy nilly.
3. Get Tweetdeck.
4. Be engaged. Be personable. Be responsive.
5. Be a person.
6. Twitter is not for everyone.

You can read more of Jeremy’s post as well as explanations to all of these points on the POP! PR Jots blog.

What concerns has your organization had with using social media?  What policies has your organization adopted that really work for helping staff use social media tools responsibly?

Make your messaging fun!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on August 27, 2008
in case studies, marketing and storytelling
. 0 Comments

Originally posted on the Net Squared blog.

Sending out yet another email to your members can be painful sometimes when you really want to say the same thing you’ve already tried to tell them countless times. We’ve all been there, either on the sending or receiving end of those messages. But, making something fun that delivers the message means you get to make something new and interesting, your members get to enjoy what you’ve created and the message is in there without any more of the boring blah blah blah. But, how do you do that?

Earth Day Networks’ Lesson in Making the Message Fun

Lesson learned: engage your members first, and actions (both service and donations) will come more naturally.

EDN sent out an email message announcing the new ecological footprint calculator. It doesn’t talk about any other programs nor does it ask for anything other than checking out the tool. (To see the original email, see file below.) With five links back, the messages says:

Earth Day Network has just released its newest tool to combat climate change: The new, updated, and much more fun Ecological Footprint Calculator.

In this new tool created by Global Footprint Network, you can create a three-dimensional avatar of your choosing, and tour your virtual neighborhood. Then you will be asked a series of questions about your food consumption, energy use, favorite mode of transportation, type of residence, recycling commitment, and spending habits. You can even choose to take a long version or a short version of the quiz!

The Footprint Calculator will tell you how many “planets” would be necessary to sustain human life- if everyone lived just like you, and how many acres of land and tons of carbon necessary to sustain your lifestyle. You can even revisit your quiz to see where she “went wrong”, and find out how to reduce your carbon footprint.

If you are a teacher or professor, encourage your students to take the quiz and experiment with the answers. An interesting, engaging and highly educational way to teach sustainability and inspire change.

The message isn’t the most important part of the package, though it is important (and anyone who has tried to write copy for an email announcement knows how true that is). What is important to consider here is what you can do when you click through to the calculator. In a Second Life-like way, visitors create a virtual-self (choose hair, skin, and clothes colors) that walks through a virtual land. As the virtual-self walks down the street, questions pop up asking about consumption, travel and housing. The answers determine what kinds of structures are built up and factor into the carbon footprint calculation. I’ve never had so much fun facing the reality of carbon usage!

After answering all of the questions and determining a score, visitors are provided with a few options, including editing the footprint questions, exploring scenarios to change the footprint in real-life, learning more, taking action, and joining the network. These are all great options for further engaging a now more-knowledgeable visitor, and further building a relationship based not only on the organization’s mission/work, but on what he or she can get out of the relationship with the organization that further supports that mission/work (more of the changing the world business!). Engaging with new (and return) visitors first is the key to building a lasting relationship with members/funders online.

Check out the Earth Day Network’s Footprint Calculator!

What unique techniques have you or your organization used in sending out a message in a new way? Is there an organization you think does this well?

Leave a comment on the Net Squared blog, too!

Do you have cold feet for social media?

Published
by
amysampleward
on January 10, 2008
in marketing and socialmedia
. 1 Comment

Lisa McNeill, over at the Ignite Social Media blog, posted great list of five steps to get over the cold feet you may have about social media marketing. Her list includes:

  • Set up and RSS Feed Reader and Subscribe to Feeds
  • Start Twittering
  • Start Studying
  • Start Filtering
  • Start Social Bookmarking

My favorite part of the five steps is the emphasis on learning and listening. Social media tools are really great BECAUSE of the opportunity to hear from and learn from your community and the larger community you probably didn’t realize you had.

So, warm up those feet and jump right in! Have you already checked of some of these steps? Which ones did you do first?

Forrester helps you create a social strategy

Published
by
amysampleward
on December 12, 2007
in marketing and socialmedia
. 3 Comments

POST is Forrester’s terrific new model for step-by-step strategy development using social media tools. With the ever-growing list of new media tools available for the for- and nonprofit organizations to use, picking the best tool for the project becomes a big issue.

Last Friday, my colleagues and I put on a training event for nonprofits on using social media. As part of the day’s workshop, participants split into small groups and were provided with a scenario about a nonprofit facing a certain dilemma and prompted to create a strategy that involved social media tools. Nearly all of the groups in the jumped right in to discussing tools available and consequently how they might use them. This lead to a lot of circular conversations and frustrated, not to mention overwhelmed, participants. With direction from the group leaders, though, the planning was quickly back on track.

Forrester’s POST approach, keeps you on track by making sure you don’t jump to the icing of the cake before you have decided what you are even baking.

In the POST process, you have four steps including: People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology. Addressing the issue of People means looking first at who the audience before doing anything else.

After you are confident about who you are reaching and some of their online characteristics, you can move on to Objectives. This is where you really think about what you are trying to do. Think small. Saving the world is on everyone’s list, but probably not quite as doable as provide event participants with collaboration and conversation access.

With your audience and goals in check, start thinking about the Strategy. Strategy doesn’t mean the social media tools, though, don’t rush! In this part, you want to focus on what the technology tools will change for you and your audience. How will things be after you have implemented the tools?

Okay, now you can pick the most applicable technology tools to use. It will be easier to see the right tools from the plethora that exists because you are looking through a specific lens that has the audience, goal and strategy layers. You will now be able to also have a more constructive view of why some and not some other options.

I wish that I would have had handouts of the POST method for our event for participants! Conversations and planning could have been much more focused. I am confident that in the future, the POST method will be able to help organizations across the spectrum fine tune their social media strategies and help get more direction to the new technology integration.

The POST process is a terrific way to help nonprofits and for-profits in their media decision making. Forrester, and specifically Josh Bernoff, has done terrific work on this. You should head over to Forrester’s website or to their blog to learn more about POST and the great work happening at Forrester.

POST will be featured in Forrester’s book Groundswell. The book is on pre-order now to be available in April. You can place a pre-order now if you are interested.

For-profits using your cause for marketing?

Published
by
amysampleward
on November 19, 2007
in marketing and reports
. 1 Comment

As more organizations in the for-profit sector take on the causes of nonprofits, reports like the one from PRWeek and Barkley Public Relations emerge. This survey of the field shows the view growing importance of cause marketing in the for-profit sector, from Whirlpool and KitchenAid to Newman’s Own. More consumers are basing their decisions of where to put their money on where a corporation is putting its money.

Corporations enjoy the benefit of giving back to a cause that aligns with their established brand and “heart,” as well as the attraction and retention of consumers drawn to the same cause. Nonprofits targeted through these cause marketing campaigns gain added financial support and recognition.

But what about the millions of nonprofits that are working throughout the country but are either too small to gain the attention of potential corporations or are working in the same field as a much larger organization with more visibility? If your organization provides special meetings and events for children with life threatening diseases but serve only those patients in your local county’s hospitals, a corporation may choose to market with Make-A-Wish Foundation instead because there is a much larger consumer base that already knows that organization and its work.

Cause marketing can really benefit all three parties involved: The corporation, the cause/nonprofit, and the consumers. Everyone can feel good for being a part of positive social activism.

But back to those very small nonprofits…Contact local corporations and discuss how they could sponsor an annual event, fundraiser, or even commit to a 5 or 10-year cause campaign. Be sure that the corporation is one that your nonprofit feels comfortable aligning with, has a mission and public presence that is similar enough to align with your organization, and you are ready and willing to commit to the partnership on your end, too.

What do you think about corporate cause marketing? Is it an entirely different kind of philanthropy?