Oprah Winfrey likes a book. BOOM! It’s a best-seller and a big movie. Justin Bieber retweets something that catches his eye. POW! It’s trending huge for forty-eight hours! Who wouldn’t want that kind of attention? Well, often nonprofits and charities don’t want that kind of attention. The best/worst case of this kind of virality is […]
#MARKETING: Build Your Search Engine Marketing Strategy With Solid Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) includes numerous tools and plug-ins that help (first) web crawlers and algorythems find your organization’s website, so that human web searchers can then find your site via Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc. Optimization means (in part) key words are placed in specific parts of the website’s code and banners to ensure that […]
#CIVICS: Nonprofits Should Watch Their Politics On Their Social Networks
As the now-famous comic writer Andy Borowitz has posted on Twitter: “Only a billion more lies until the election.” Not only is it easy to get swept up in the horse-trading, haranguing and name-calling during an election, it’s what you’re supposed to do. We live and thrive in a government “of the people, by the […]
#DEVELOPMENT: Social-Networking Is Good, But Conversation-Building Is Better
Difficult to say that social networks have already grown to be mature means of communication. Moreover, some platforms shoot wide and far (vis Facebook for everyone), while others target a specific subset of the social-media community (vis Epernicus for the scientific community). Figuring out how to negotiate those platforms can seem daunting. But we have […]
#SOCIALNETWORKS: Unifying Your Strategy By Diversifying These 5 Key Points
As we move into the second half of 2012, especially into planning for the fund-raising campaigns of the holiday season, nonprofits also should do a checkup on the face they are presenting on their social networks. Get yourself in the mood to question, re-align, edit… and then get into your Facebook account. The folks at […]
#FUNDRAISING: The Holiday Season For Donations Begins Now. Ready?
The pools are open and busy. The grill has cooled down since the July-4th Picnic. The MLB All-Star Game is tonight. It’s July. One of the traditional/old-fashioned ways to disrupt the heat is to hold a “Christmas in July” party, and your nonprofit or charity should be having one. Why? To celebrate the good work […]
#COMMUNICATIONS: In Outreach, Less Can Be More If You Avoid 3 Common Mistakes
With the still-growing panoply of social-networking platforms out there, one can easily feel overwhelmed with trying to keep up with all the hottest topics on the coolest sites. To add to the pressure, each new platform has its own subset of skills to master, which requires time and energy you thought you’d spend raising donor […]
#COMMUNICATIONS: Break The Sound Barrier To Encourage A Conversation
We welcome back Paul Jolly, Director of Jump Start Growth, Inc., a nonprofit fundraising and consulting firm in Washington DC. Today, Paul tells about the importance of breaking the sound barrier. Back in 1947, US Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 rocket/plane. Fighter jets break the barrier with […]