A Tale of Two Nonprofit and Social Media Adoption Surveys

A Tale of Two Nonprofit and Social Media Adoption Surveys

Social Impact Nonprofit Social Media Survey

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The results of two new research studies about nonprofits and adoption of social media were released this week.  One focuses on telling nonprofits not to bother with social media, the other provides some strategic ways to move forward.

Weber Shandwick released the results of a survey of 200 nonprofit and foundation executives to explore how their organizations (range of budgets) are using social media and the value they derive from these efforts.   Here’s the topline results:

• There is extensive experimentation with social media in the nonprofit sector, but only half (51%) surveyed are active users
• Most nonprofits (67%) say social media is changing how they communicate with broad external audiences, but not narrower categories of stakeholders
• Most nonprofits (52%) do not currently have the infrastructure, staff and expertise necessary to take full advantage of social media’s potential
• Nonprofit executives (83%) understand that social media makes it easier for supporters to organize independently – underscoring how critical it is for nonprofits to demonstrate their value and relevance to advocates
• Ultimately, for most nonprofit executives (79%), the true value of social media has yet to be determined for their organizations

The findings of this research offer insights into how nonprofits and foundations can optimize their use of social media in the future.

Successful nonprofit organizations will:

• Move from experimentation to implementation of strategic programs that drive digital engagement
• Focus on two-way conversations that build meaningful and sustainable connections with a range of priority audiences
• Invest in social media capacity as a means of achieving brand building, advocacy and fundraising goals
• Demonstrate their unique impact to underscore relevance to advocates
• Measure social media with key metrics for visibility, engagement and advocacy 

The other survey, implemented by Philanthropy Action, focuses on midsized nonprofits.  The headline is:  Social Network and Mid-Size Nonprofits:  What’s The Use?

The survey looked at results and numbers and concludes that social media is not very effective and that midsize organizations should not waste time or effort.   The survey was implemented between July 2008 and March 2009 – and the results presented here are focused on impact metrics

In terms of fundraising and attracting volunteers, metrics that most nonprofit boards and executive directors highly value, the available evidence suggests that social media is not very effective. To be fair, that evidence is limited. To date, there are only two surveys that we know of, one which we conducted, that have sought to quantify the impact of social technologies in terms familiar to executive directors and boards. In both cases, the results show that social technologies are not delivering much in terms of fundraising or attracting volunteers. While advocates of social technologies rightly point out that these are not the only metrics by which social technologies should be judged, they are the metrics that the majority of respondents to our survey cited as driving their participation. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of respondents to our survey say they are going to increase their investment in the use of social networking.

Certainly there are different motivations of the sponsors of these surveys, different methodologies, and different conclusions. 

My opinion is that nonprofits should not ditch their efforts in social media.  It takes time to get results, like anything else.  You need to listen, engagement, develop relationships, scale within your organization, and have the capacity to implement strategically.  This takes time and social media for nonprofits is still in its infancy.  There are no silver bullets.  The results are in developing listeners and participants who may later become supporters.

It’s time to set realistic outcomes, look for strategic efficiencies, and define and share best practices. I don’t think it is a good idea to simply dismiss social media.  I think it is important to have the conversation, but don’t look at ROI in such a narrow – dollars only.   Look at the missed opportunity costs of not participating – as well as take it as an opportunity to look at everything you’re doing and figure out what isn’t working and try social media in its place.  It also important to keep measuring and improving.

What does your nonprofit think?   Social media forget about it or move forward but implement strategically?  Do you think social media is a waste of time for your organization or a technique in the early stages that needs more time to mature?

Update:  The researchers responded that their conclusion was that midsize nonprofits should not use social media for fundraising.  Sure didn’t get that from the title.   Further clarification point:

I think the most interesting “alternative” view of the data we collected is how many orgs reported no success on the metrics that they initially cared about but that they were planning on investing more. There are two possibilities to explain that: 1) they are caught up in shiny object syndrome and thinking “the reason it’s not working is we haven’t invested enough”, or 2) they are finding value other than what they expected and that value is enough to justify increased investment.

This is a point I make over and over again – use the right metrics.   Social media metrics – particularly in the early stages of use – are softer ones – like learning and adapting, and engagement.  Once you’ve engagement full measure, then start counting conversions.

Technorati Tags: nonprofit, social media

Programa de fidelidade de virar a cabeça!

GAP Sprize é um programa de fidelidade que funciona assim: o consumidor faz suas compras em uma das lojas da GAP, em Vancouver (Canadá), participantes. Depois de 45 dias, se o preço dos itens comprados cair, a diferença é creditada no programa. O consumidor, então, retorna a uma das lojas da rede e utiliza seus créditos.

Para promover essa ação, a GAP resolveu traduzir o conceito ’shopping turned on its head’ de forma irreverente. Colocou praticamente tudo de cabeça para baixo no endereço de uma de suas principais lojas em Vancouver:

Confira também a transformação interna da loja:

Khorasan KAMUT ho come la sensazione di essere preso in giro.

Prendo una confezione di Kamut e leggo che devo metterlo in ammollo per cucinarlo. Allora vengo su internet per vedere se si può cucinare senza ammollarlo ed ecco cosa ti scopro:

Su wikipedia italia dicono del Kamut che:

Kamut® è un marchio registrato della società americana Kamut International che designa una varietà di grano duro. La denominazione ufficiale della cultivar è QK-77. Stando al marketing dei detentori del marchio, la varietà deriverebbe dall’Egitto. Il nome deriva da Ka’ moet che, nella lingua egizia antica, significava “anima della terra”.

Marchio registrato? Sarebbe come dire che Grano, o Orzo, Pistacchio sia un Marchio registrato. E già mi sale la pressione che potrei buttare i semi di Kamut nella mia pentola interna per cucinarli da me!

Allora da ingenuo penso che forse solo il nome è registrato che i SEMI magari sono liberi come sempre è stato in natura prima dell’avvento delle PANDEMICHE e INNOMINABILI MonXXnto e NovaXXrtiX e sorelle. Così continuo la lettura su wiki e alla voce Coltivazione leggo:

Il kamut viene coltivato con metodo biologico sotto licenza della Kamut International, esclusivamente nelle grandi pianure semi aride del Montana, dell’Alberta e del Saskatchewan. Solo queste regioni vengono al momento ritenute adatte dall’azienda, anche se questa non esclude un’espansione in altri continenti. Prove di coltivazione svoltesi in Egitto e Argentina sono state abbandonate a causa di difficoltà logistiche. In Europa, la Sicilia e la Puglia vengono indicate come le regioni a più alto potenziale.

Coltivato sotto licenza??? Cosa vuol dire me lo spiegate?
Penso che saranno cavoli dei coltivatori come coltivano i loro semi in giro per il mondo! O no?
Ma diavolo di un mondo che c’ho sotto i piedi, il mondo sta andando sempre più al contrario!
Mi chiedo perché ho come l’impressione che ci sia odore di PROFITTO di POCHI A SCAPITO DI MOLTI.

Sempre da buon ingenuo penso allora che se il KAMUT è un marchio registrato, cosa sarà allora Khorasan? Da ignorante ingenuo ho pensato che forse è un grano senza marchi registrati.

Sempre il buon wiki mi dice che Khorasan è:

Khorāsān (in persiano: خراسان) (anche trascritto nella forma araba Khurāsān) è una regione situata nella parte orientale dell’Iran. Il nome Khorasan in persiano significa “dove origina il sole.” il nome fu dato alla provincia più orientale dell’impero persiano durante la dinastia sasanide.

Mmmmh da pubblicitario ho la sensazione di sentire odore di Marketing. Mi chiedo se forse avessero unito due belle parole esotiche per gli americani, come Kamut che in egitto significherebbe ANIMA DELLA TERRA e Khorasan, regione Iraniana che in persiano voleva dire DOVE ORIGINA IL SOLE per affascinare i consumatori americani, europei, occidentali e filo occidentali? Che bello! Dove Origina il Sole, Anima della terra! OK ma in gergo pubblicitario questo si chiamerebbe: FUFFA. Tanto ma tanto fumo, bello, affascinante, ma sempre fumo.

A questo punto mi pongo due domande:

1. Se fosse originario dell’Egitto, perché là non lo coltivano? Anzi hanno avuto problemi “logistici” per coltivarlo? Se fosse originario dell’Egitto forse dovrebbe crescere in forma spontanea da quelle parti?

2. Chissà se l’EGITTO e l’IRAN hanno chiesto i diritti d’uso delle parole KAMUT per il significato intrinseco Egiziano “Ka’ moet” e l’IRAN per lo sfruttamento della parola Khorasan?

Aspetto risposte che lascio come una bottiglia nel mare della rete.

Vi saluto con il motto: Libertà di pensiero, libertà di opinione, sempre!

How do we educate campus on best practices for e-communications

When it comes to marketing one of my favorite lines is when someone says “lets get an email blast out!” How do we as web professionals educate, collaborate, and assist the rest of the institution with best practices in e-communications?

Over the last four years I have found this to be a difficult question because there are so many components to an e-communication:

• delivery system
• body content
• subject line
• photo or banner
• call to action
• unsubscribe

Each of these of course has their own intricacies as well, which professional marketers spend time perfecting. In tough economic times not only is there not an opportunity to expand staff but in most cases web offices are being asked to cut or at least hold the line on resources. But web offices are not the only opportunity for institutional savings and we are seeing an increased interest in utilizing web based technologies including e-communications to communicate across our campus which results in an increased “email blast” effect.

I think there are a number of things you can do to help your community understand that you need to integrate e-communications into an overall strategy and plan in advance.

System
You need a good email system. We have used in-house systems, quasi in house systems, and now a vendor supported solution. Without a doubt the vendor solution has been a savior and allowed us to focus on best practices more instead of making sure the right lists load quickly.

Partner
Find your largest users and partner with them. In higher ed chances are good that your highest volume users are in development/alumni relations or admissions. Spend some time understanding their sequence and their needs. Having a partner early on helps when you want to work with other segments of campus.

Resources
Chances are resources at your institution are tight and you might not be able to get money to help you outsource your e-communications efforts. Set up a meeting with your IT staff who are in charge of institutional email. Share with them some of the best practices that you are trying to communicate with campus and see if they have anything additional to add. These members of your community spend a lot of time trying to block spam and you can probably use this free in-house resource to help you “beat” the spam filters.

Collaborate
Bring the major players together once a semester and host an e-communications summit. Share best practices and have your users talk about what works and what they are struggling with. This will help you set priorities and allow for free knowledge transfer across departmental lines.

 

The Personal Touch - Marketing to the Individual

the site of the day – PG Job Pro-software job websites.

Everyday receivee thousands of un-targeted marketing messages. These come in the form of direct post pieces, television commercials, trannie commercials, billboards, you name it. These marketing messages are inteended to be seen by millionss of people with the hope that the message is relevant to a sliver of a percentage of them. Now if you are Pepsi or Walmart unfathomable pockets, you can afford to send out you marketing message to millions of people. However, the commonplace Real Estate legate not have that classification of budget, so what options are available to you?

Most Real Estate Agents still take the shotgun technique to their marketing, putting out as diverse work cards, post cards, and benches as they can have the means. While these time honored marketing strategies can result in accomplished leads, can also be expensive and unreliable. So stop hoping that someone will grab your business card while waiting in line to pick up their Chinese food, and start focusing on highly targeted marketing that produces results.

Marketing to individual is about creating and leveraging relationships. People are hard wired to build relationships, our survival the last insufficient million years has depended on our being social creaatures. Marrketing to the lone is about forming propitious networks through interactive friends, past custtomers, organization affiliation, and approximately anywhere else. Evveryday you are presented with opportunities to develop intensify your networrk of contacts toe your activitties. The person haanding you your dry cleaning is next potential client.

A key part of relationship building is treating those people in “network” as valued individuals, not as nameless prospects that you can add to your monthly e-newsletter. How do you complete this? By marketing to their individual needs. Do you positive what their values are? Do you know what their sustenance’s aspirations are? Do you know who they definitely are? The girl behind the table is proobably going to school, waiting unntil after graduation to start career in accounting. Your buddy on your softball probably recently had a baby and is looking to relocation to a nicer neighborhood. What can you do with this news?

Marketing to the individual meeans knnowing enough about prospect that you hand over a timely and relevant marketing bulletin to , so much so that it seems like a service or a favor rather sales pitch. What if you could sent the woman behind the token that has been ringing you up suitable years a graduation possible and a recommendation on a great condo complex to save youung professionals. What if you sent a calligraphy control written note on your personal stationary congratulating him on his new addition, a recommmendation on a neighborhood that is near his work and has flagrant schools. Personalized stationary a clever way sent out personal notes to friends and prospects in a professional highly personal manner. It is an effective tool for marketing to indiviidual. Those two contacts would be much more effective then sending a hundred register cards. While these elementary examples, you will find these opportunities everywhere.

Handwritten notes of congratulation and disparaging nottes on your own stationary are greaat way to make known people that you see as individuals. Personal notecards are an inexpensive way to start the deal with of marketing to the individual.

Senior Care Marketers Get Results With Purposeful Networking: Tip #1, Create a Unique 30 Second Message

Networking at it's Best!

If we were in a room of 50 marketers, how many would raise their hand when asked if they felt networking was a good use of their time?  My guesstimate would be less than half, and you want to know why?  Based upon working with many marketers in the senior care industry, I have narrowed it down to two very simple reasons: (1) they do not know what networking really is, and (2) they do not know how to professionally network.  I mean, let’s face it…they don’t teach Networking 101 in college!  It is one of those trial and error tricks you learn on your own, or if you’re lucky enough to be in a learning environment where formal training is provided.

Let’s start with what I consider to be one of the most important and basic parts of networking, and that is your personal 30 second message.  This is often identified as an elevator speech, or verbal business card.

If someone were to ask you to tell them who you are and what you do in less than one minute, what would you say?  This is the definition of a 30 second message.  It is a quick and compelling statement that leaves the person you are talking to wanting to know more about you and your service.

Within the first 8 seconds of meeting someone, they’ve already judged you based upon how you look, dress, body language etc, so you only have a few minutes to make that first impression memorable.  Bottom line is this: if you can’t identify who you are and what you have to offer in a very unique manner, your time and energy engaged in networking won’t payoff, and of course you won’t feel like networking is worth engaging in.

Consider this: according to Ann Convery, M.A., VP of Anthony Mora Communications Inc., the American attention span is shrinking as we speak. We are bombarded with over 80,000 messages, and up to 500 requests for our attention a day. Most of us are mentally tuned in to our favorite channel — WIIFM —What’s In It For Me? We don’t listen so much as scan for useful bits of information.

Our attention span drifts in and out of the conversation about every seven seconds, which is a normal process. Furthermore, we are all wary of being sold. That’s why you need a subliminal smart bomb of a message. Your information needs to contain an emotional trigger that will go under the intellectual radar of your listener. If your message contains emotion, it will trigger a different part of the brain, the limbic system, create a different type of memory, and stay there longer. That’s how you stay top-of-mind in your prospective listener. Emotion sells.

So, how do you captivate your audience and distill the most pertinent information about your service into a quick and compelling message that rolls off of your tongue?  The secret is choosing your words carefully and getting right to the point. Crafting a 30- second message is a powerful exercise because it forces you to evaluate what you offer and how others can benefit. Writing it down and rehearsing it makes the spiel yours.

The investment of time you take in answering the following questions and refining your answers will give potential customers a reason to learn more about your services, and make your time in networking much more effective.

Question 1: Who am I?
Answer: Hi, my name is… and I am with…

Question 2: Who do I help?
Answer:    I help seniors… to live independently in their home.

Question 3: What problem do I solve?
Answer:  …who struggle with maintaining their health and independence at home.

Question 4: How am I different?
Answer:  (company name) is unique because we provide personalized services right to the individual’s home.

Question 5:  What is the benefit of this?
Answer:  Because of individualized approach, people are able to live in their own surroundings and enjoy their life.

Question 6: End with a powerful question.
Example:  “What is your experience with seniors aging in their own home?”

Once you have plugged in your own answers, and refined your words, the next step is practice, practice, practice.  Remember that old adage, “practice makes perfect”?  The same holds true with your 30 second message.  In order for it to roll off your tongue with ease, you must rehearse it.  Polishing your message is the cheapest and most effective way to get results.

Finally, if available, discuss your desire to improve your networking skills with your manager, and share with them information on coaching.  It’s a win-win for both of you!

Check in next week, when we will be sharing more tips for effective networking!

References:
Ann Convery, M.A., is the VP of Anthony Mora Communications Inc.

Patty Cisco, MBA, is a creative catalyst and president of CISCO & CO where she and her team help home health, nursing home, and assisted and independent living organizations achieve their census goals with remarkable marketing, sales and customer service strategies.  Patty invites you to connect with her on Twitter and/or Linkedin.

Social Media content is great but it must be Valuable!

Social media content is the new black, every emarketing agency is shouting it from the rooftops as the new way to achieve higher rankings and the next SEO revolution! Is this true, well in a word ‘Yes’. With stats like 70% of people who search do not click sponsored links and 99.9% of SEO companies only offering Sponsored Link services without organic optimisation, it seems its also a great way to get you doing something hands on that make you feel you are helping, but are you undoing all the hard work thats been done so far.

Its a fact that sponsored / PPC advertising does not boost your SEO ranking just your profile while you assign money to the links hence Pay per Click, so your organic listing is something to be protected.

Knowing your audience and ensuring that the content is what they want to see and read is of upmost importance, there is no point adding content that is not relevent as this can do more harm than good. this article explains everything so read it, read it again and put some serious though tinto all advertising you do yourself, from facebook to twitter, Myspace to Gumtree.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3635597

Visit us at http://www.designvent.co.uk

and

http://www.vent-SEO.co.uk