#INTERVIEW: Craig Lefebvre, Designer of Public Health & Social Change Programs, Discusses Social Marketing
R. Craig Lefebvre, Ph.D., is an internationally known designer of public health and social change programs. He is chief maven of socialShift, a consulting practice, and is a Research Professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health. His blog, On Social Marketing and Social Change,” has been ongoing since 2005. He is the author of On Social Marketing and Social Change: Selected Readings 2005-2009 and a forthcoming textbook on Social Marketing (Jossey-Bass, 2013). The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
MKC: You got into blogging back in 2005. You must have been one of the first ones.
CRAIG: I was in there pretty early.
MKC: Does the blog get much response? Is there a conversation going on?
CRAIG: I would say there are periodic conversations going on. In the neighborhood of 4,000 people a day are coming on to it. It’s a long way from six years ago, when we were getting readers by the ones and twos!
(more…)
Popularity: 3% | Category Advice, Blogs, Campaigns, Case Study, Cause Marketing, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, Facebook, Health, Interview, LinkedIn, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Perspectives, Pinterest, Posterous, Scoopit, Social Marketing, Social Networks, Tumblr, Twitter, Wellness, YouTube | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#ADVOCACY: Make Sure Pitch Has Call To Action, Not Just High Concept
What happens when you get corporate assistance to launch a new campaign, or pro bono development from a commercial ad agency? You can get some fabulous ideas and some valuable insights on establishing your brand. You can get your materials into some of the best publication and on some of the most visited sites on the web.
But as some of our colleagues at Sofii.org have discovered, you can also get a good deal of expensive nothing. The commercial backer or ad agency might not be sensitive to the constituents who want to be involved with various types of nonprofits. They might encourage outreach through channels that are quite unlikely to reach the people your charity traditionally reaches. They might give you a fabulous product on the design board (Indeed, I think it’s safe to say that they certainly will give you a fabulous design.) that falls flat in the real world. Let’s look at a couple of examples from Sofii.
Popularity: 1% | Category Advertising, Advice, Advocacy, Blogs, Campaigns, Case Study, Cause Marketing, Communications, Copyrighting, Crowdfunding, Design, Development, Donor Acquisition, Fundraising, Graphic Design, How-to, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Media Review, Newspaper Article, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Relations, Publications, Publications Design, Resource, Reviews, Sponsorship, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Study, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#INTERVIEW: Debra Askanase, Socialbrite.org Strategist, Offers Useful Advice To Nonprofits Using Social Media
Debra Askanase, founder of Community Organizer 2.0, is an “engagement strategist” who consults with nonprofit organizations on digital media. She is also a strategist for Socialbrite. Her background includes a decade of community organizing experience, followed by seven years in community economic development. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
MKC: How did you get into digital media? Did you reinvent yourself?
DEBRA: Yes, but it also seemed a pretty natural progression. I started off as a relatively traditional community organizer with multi-issue/low-income organizations. I moved into tenant organizing as well, then into economic development. I saw many of the same skills in leadership development that I saw in community and economic development. I worked with low-income immigrant entrepreneurs to start businesses. After doing that for seven years, I became very interested in business, from the perspective of how business can change society. So I went to business school and there seemed to be a confluence at that point. Social media was just gaining traction – this was 2007 and Facebook had just opened up beyond the college crowd – and I made that leap, intuitively, that social media is really community organizing. Here’s an opportunity where I can use my expertise in business strategy that I had been doing for seven years and my understanding of how people come together to change things. And I wanted to bring that interest to nonprofits. My entire experience had been working with nonprofits, so I understood that world from the ground up.
Popularity: 2% | Category Advice, Blogs, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, Development, Donor Acquisition, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Interview, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Social Media, Social Networks, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Twitter, Twitter, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#COMMUNICATIONS: Make Your Next Fundraiser An Online Conversation Too
A Twitter Wall adds dynamism to even the smallest event
Though weather in the mid-Atlantic continues to flirt with spring while staying surprisingly loyal to winter, it is the season to be planning summer festivals, fundraisers, and rallies. And if you really want to stay on top of your nonprofit’s schedule, start planning your end-of-year banquet as well (and use Tungle). But in this day and age, a nonprofit’s fundraising festival should be but one component of a multi-media plan to engage constituents, volunteers, and supporters both at the event and in the social networks of those attending.
We have recommended ‘Tweet Tables’ in previous posts, and today we draw on a really useful compendium of ideas from Trevor Jonas at Mashable.com.
Popularity: 2% | Category Advertising, Blogs, Cause Marketing, Communications, Community, Crowdfunding, Events, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, Gala, Geo-Location, How-to, iDevice, iPad/Tablet, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Media Review, Mobile, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Media, Public Relations, Reviews, Site Administration, Social Media, Social Networks, Storytelling, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits, Twitter | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#SOCIALMEDIA: Online Communication Is A Team Sport
Prep your staff for social media success
Difficult not to start this post with a shout-out to the Baltimore Orioles, who beat the Red Sox at Fenway last night after 17 innings. One of the best of the many anomalies of the game is the fact that the O’s Designated Hitter, Chris Davis went 0-for-8, with 5 strikeouts − and was the winning pitcher, throwing two shut-out innings when the rest of the staff was used up. It takes a team, and everyone contributes something critical to the overall success.
And it should be that way for your nonprofit or charity as well. Whatever the extent of your staff, you need to structure a social-media team who are dedicated to listening, contributing, and monitoring your outreach both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Popularity: 2% | Category Advertising, Advice, Blogs, Campaigns, Cause Marketing, Communications, Crowdfunding, Development, eBook, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Public Media, Public Relations, Publications, Resource, SEO, Site Administration, Social Media, Social Networks, Strategic Marketing, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#HOWTO: Get Guidance From Google On Simple SEO Success
Is your site worth searching for?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a social media buzzword: gotta have it, gotta work at it, gotta pack it in to your website or blog! And it is true that SEO needs to be a part of your nonprofit’s online and outreach strategies. Why develop a new site or even update your outdated one if people will struggle to find it, much less relevant information on it? The go-to standard for web searches (including images and videos) is, of course, Google. Even as the e-behemoth develops Android and G+ and even augmented-reality glasses, millions of us use it simply, almost exclusively, for web research.
So why not find out what the folks at Google recommend to bolster the searchability and discoverability of your website?
Popularity: 2% | Category Advice, Blogs, Cause Marketing, Communications, How-to, Marketing, Marketing Budget, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Media, Public Relations, Resource, SEO, Site Administration, Social Media, Social Networks, Storytelling, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits, Video, Web and Print, Web Design, Writing, YouTube | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#TECH: Designing A Mobile App? Design For A Mobile Device!
Who needs an app for that?
The nonprofit world is going mobile. The move might be slower than in the corporate world, but it’s steady, and nonprofits are developing ways to get around software or contractual walls. Mobile apps encourage supporters to stay engaged with your organization and its programs, and the apps also can give volunteers and staff in the field access to necessary information from the home office and/or report developments to that office. Best of all, mobile apps could links developments on projects directly to the mobile donors who can instantly see the link between their support and the progress the charity is making.
But before you get all buzzed about the synergy, you should be aware of the challenges of developing an application for mobile devices, including the fact that there are so many kinds of mobile devices.
Popularity: 2% | Category Blogs, Communications, Design, Desktop Apps, Graphic Design, Hardware Review, How-to, iDevice, iPad Apps, iPad/Tablet, iPhone Apps, Marketing Skills, Mobile, Nonprofit, Resource, Reviews, Site Administration, Software Review, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits, Web Design | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#ENVIRO: Spring Is The Time To Build Rain Barrels & Community Gardens
A community garden in Montreal, Canada (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The weather in the mid-Atlantic states has been, well, awkward this spring. April temperatures have been cooler than February temperatures, and drought conditions are already a concern. But with spring comes new buds, rebirth, baseball, and the opportunity to establish that community garden that you and your neighbors have been talking about all winter. The University of Missouri Extension Program has released one of the best guides we have ever seen about getting your community garden out of the dreams of you and your neighbors and getting it into the ground for everyone to enjoy. We also found some great advice to keeping it well watered as the summer approaches.
Popularity: 2% | Category Blogs, Community, Community Gardens, eBook, Environment, Greening, How-to, Publications, Resource, Sustainability | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#SOCIALNETWORKS: Kony 2012 Covered The Night. Did It Jump The Shark?
Youth cover some of the evening
The sensation that is/was ‘Kony 2012′ has been a part of the nonprofit social-media landscape for six-plus weeks now. The hundreds of millions who made the original video a viral sensation in March were not all supporters of the message, though, and challenges to the drive launched by the San Diego nonprofit ‘Invisible Children’ continue to be made. The original and ostensible goal is to have Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) brought to justice by making Kony ‘famous’ enough that world leaders will be inspired or shamed to dedicate the resources to get him. The effort to make him famous has been done and the culmination of the effort was this past weekend’s ‘Cover The Night’ campaign. How well did it go? Whether the night got ‘covered’ probably depends on where you are and what you want ‘covered’ to mean, but Invisible Children have ratcheted up their campaign with, frankly, the oddest video yet.
Popularity: 3% | Category Blogs, Cause Marketing, Civics, Communications, Community, Crowdfunding, Event Review, Events, Fundraising, Marketing, Media Review, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Newspaper Article, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Opinion, Politics, Public Media, Reviews, Social Media, Social Networks, Storytelling, Video, YouTube | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#HOWTO: Setup A (Free) Scoop.it Magazine For Your Community
We introduced Scoop.it and Pinterest earlier this week because we think these information-sharing sites offer a great platform for nonprofits and charities to share their own news as well as related images or stories in their sectors. As promised we have returned to round out this mini-series with a guide to help you setup a Scoop.it e-magazine site. Unlike Pinterest, you need not wait for an ‘invitation’. In fact, if you have a Twitter or Facebook account, you are already good-to-go. And if you don’t, where have you been these past five or six years?!
Popularity: 2% | Category Blogs, Cause Marketing, Communications, Community, Dashboards, eNewsletter, How-to, Marketing, Media Review, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Media, Public Relations, Research, Resource, Reviews, Scoopit, Site Administration, Social Media, Social Networks, Software Review, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#INTERVIEW: Mark Van Gurp, Osocio Blog — Showcases the Best Advertising & Marketing For Social Causes
Mark van Gurp is the founder of Osocio, an international blog devoted to showcasing the best advertising and marketing for social causes. Mark began an earlier blog, Houtlist, in 2005 as a personal collection of nonprofit ads. Overwhelmed by the response, he began Osocio in 2007 with more than a dozen regular contributors. He has kept his day job. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
MKC: Can you explain what you do in your day job?
MARK: I’m webmaster and web designer for a big publishing house. At the unit I’m working for, we write about advertising and marketing. It is like Ad Age.
MKC: What first inspired you to curate nonprofit advertising and create Houtlust?
MARK: It was a coincidence. I was thinking about working as a freelance designer. And because I’m interested in designing for non-profits, I started collecting inspirational examples in the field. Those were the days before Pinterest and other networks, so I started a blog just for myself. It was my online album accessible from anywhere.
(more…)
Popularity: 2% | Category Blogs, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, Interview, News and Current Affairs, Nonprofit, Opinion, Perspectives, Perspectives, Politics, Social Networks, Storytelling, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#SM4NP: Scoop.it! For Information ‘Curation’ & Social Interaction
Yesterday we explored Pinterest, a social network that puts a premium on visuals and offers ‘pin boards’ of topics collected/bookmarked/’pinned’ by the user. The metrics on the platform show amazing growth over the last few months, and many are still waiting for an invitation to join up. Scoop.it! has, on the surface, a strikingly similar mission: to provide a webspace to present ‘magazines’ of (hopefully) related materials based on a user’s interests and what information she or he has ‘curated’ for his or her site.
Let’s look at Scoop.it, and to do so we must appreciate what this notion of ‘content curation’ means.
Popularity: 2% | Category Blogs, Branding, Cause Marketing, Communications, Community, Design, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Media Review, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Media, Public Relations, Research, Resource, Reviews, Scoopit, Site Administration, Social Media, Social Networks, Storytelling, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits, Web Design | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#SM4NP: Are Pinterest & Scoop.it Part Of Your Social-Network Arsenal?
Staying up-to-date with developments in the social-networking world is no easy task. Facebook engages most of our oxygen/eyeballs, but plenty of other services are available. Most of them are designed around a particular kind of presentation rather than a particular set of topics or audiences (Of course, certain kinds of presentations − photos, for instance − will draw markedly from certain kinds of audiences). Part of our vocation and business mission is to keep tabs on such evolution so you don’t have to (quite as much). This week, we want to focus on Pinterest and Scoop.it, with a How-To follow up on Scoop.it later this week. Interest in Pinterest has exploded only in the last few weeks, so let’s catch up with that one first.
Popularity: 2% | Category Blogs, Communications, Community, Design, How-to, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Pinterest, Resource, Scoopit, Site Administration, Social Media, Social Networks, Technology, Web Design | | 1 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#TECH: Google+ Gets Redesign To Emphasize Visuals & Customizations
This morning Google announced a striking rise in income that beat stock analysts’ predictions for this first quarter of 2012: $10.65 billion for this past quarter. The number represents a 24% increase from last year’s Q1. Just before the search giant released these huge numbers, it announced a redesign of its social network, Google Plus. Though little if any of this influx of cash came from the social network, Google seems to be heavily invested on making their platform a vibrant competitor to Facebook, and the redesign seems geared to emphasize photos and video (Google owns YouTube) just as the new Timeline does on the competitor’s platform.
Let’s take a little tour.
Popularity: 2% | Category Blogs, Communications, Dashboards, Design, How-to, Media Review, Newspaper Article, Resource, Reviews, Site Administration, Social Media, Social Networks, Software Review, Technology, Web and Print, Web Design | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#FUNDRAISING: Paul Jolly Warns Fundraisers To Expect The Unexpected
We are proud to welcome Paul Jolly of Jump Start Growth, Inc. as a new contributor to the MKCREATIVEblog. Paul has spent 25 years as a development professional and consultant to small and mid sized non profits. His focus is helping organizations create transformative relationships with their top donors. You can contact Paul at [email protected].
About twenty years ago, I was walking across the living room and saw something flying across the room just behind my shoulder. As I turned, I saw that my three year old son Travis had leaped off the armrest of the sofa, and landed on the floor behind me and burst into tears. I picked him up to comfort him, and through his sobs, he said, “I forgot to warn you.” (He hadn’t mastered the “r” sound yet, so it sounded like “woan”.) Which got me thinking about how donors sometimes do things that the charities they are supporting didn’t expect. But we still want to catch them!
Popularity: 2% | Category Blogs, Cause Marketing, Communications, Crowdfunding, Development, Donor Acquisition, Fundraising, Nonprofit, Nonprofit | | 0 Comments
Written by: Paul Jolly
#ADVOCACY: Kony 2012 Sequel Not Going Viral, Nor Ending Debate
Too little too late?
Last Thursday, Invisible Children released their tepidly anticipated sequel to the stunningly viral video Kony 2012 (over 100 million views). The sequel, “Kony Part II – Beyond Famous,” was almost destined not to make as big a splash in the nonprofit/video/social-media ocean because the impact of the message had already been made, and those millions who responded − positively or negatively − probably don’t need to see a sequel to be re-convinced. Since the first video came out, just over a month ago, the ‘media packages’ people were asked to purchase to support the campaign were quickly sold out and the video’s director/narrator, Jason Russell, was arrested and committed to hospital for mental and emotional fatigue.
We still await the climactic ‘Cover The Night’ campaign of 20 April, but what all this has done to bring Kony to justice remains to be seen. What we want to focus on today, though, is how social networks inspired the explosion of interest around the original, and how those same networks might be dampening the responses to the sequel.
Popularity: 3% | Category Advocacy, Blogs, Campaigns, Cause Marketing, Civics, Communications, Community, Crowdfunding, Fundraising, Marketing, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Newspaper Article, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Opinion, Politics, Public Media, Social Media, Social Networks, Storytelling, Video, YouTube | | 1 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#HOWTO: Tumblr’s Advanced Features Won’t Overwhelm Ease Of Outreach
We have been working our way through Tumblr now for a few weeks in the hopes of inspiring you and your colleagues to consider creation of a Tumblr presence for your nonprofit. Tumblr got going in 2007, and really took off a couple of years later as twenty-somethings found in the platform a sweet spot of posting stories longer than those allowed by Twitter but short and quick enough to make sharing a breeze. Since then, organizations − especially those who want to present a lighter and strikingly visual face to their followers − have also gotten on board. See, for examples, Doctors Without Borders and Good Neighbors USA (whose Tumblr page is featured above). Both charities do critical work in the areas of health and economic support around the world, and yet their Tumblr sites put the visceral joy of such work front-and-center.
To develop your organization’s site, you might want to explore some of the more advanced features of Tumblr that offer all kinds of customization of look and behavior. We want to introduce a couple of those features here.
Popularity: 4% | Category Blogs, Branding, Cause Marketing, Communications, Design, How-to, Marketing Skills, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Posterous, Public Media, Resource, Reviews, SEO, Site Administration, Social Media, Social Networks, Software Review, Storytelling, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits, Tumblr, Web Design | | 1 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#HOWTO: Facebook Timeline Goes Public Tomorrow! Ready?
Are you ready? It goes live tomorrow!
Facebook has been rolling out its new ‘Timeline’ feature for a few months now, and we hope we have given you a helping hand with the changes. Timeline redesigns your social interaction into a chronological sweep that is also distinguished topically and physically (that is, by being placed in different sections of your FB home page). It allows an individual, a nonprofit, or a company to present a visual banner or ‘Cover’ to introduce themselves, and it offers greater opportunity to control the ‘Story’ on the page by giving users means to ‘back fill’ their histories.
And the fact is, Timeline becomes the default interface of all Facebook accounts tomorrow! If your charity is on Facebook, you need to be prepared. We found a couple of great sources to help you tidy up your page in preparation of the final stages of implementation.
Popularity: 4% | Category Advice, Blogs, Branding, Cause Marketing, Communications, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, How-to, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Media Review, Nonprofit, Public Relations, Resource, Reviews, Site Administration, Social Media, Social Networks, Software Review, Storytelling, Study, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits, Video, Web Design, YouTube | | 1 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#INTERVIEW: Phyllis Freedman, President of SmartGiving and Author of The Planned Giving Blogger
Phyllis Freedman is President of SmartGiving and author of The Planned Giving Blogger. For the past eight years her consulting practice has focused exclusively on planned giving. She previously has held senior management positions in fundraising for several large organizations. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
MKC: How long have you been blogging?
PHYLLIS: May will be three years.
MKC: What was your thinking on why to blog?
PHYLLIS: I’ve always had strong opinions – about everything, not just fundraising – and especially in planned giving, there had been some long-held views about how planned giving should be marketed and talked about and how donors should be stewarded, that I didn’t necessarily agree with and that my work with clients suggested might not still be valid. So I thought, why shouldn’t I start communicating my views more widely? As I traveled around in my consulting role, it became increasingly clear to me that planned giving practitioners were looking for a new point of view.
Popularity: 3% | Category Blogs, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, Fundraising, Interview, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Perspectives, Planned Giving, Planned Giving | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#HOWTO: Tumbler Can Be Social Media Hub, But Other Tools Are Available
We have sung the praises of Tumblr for the past few Thursdays, and we will continue to do so. Tumblr offers nonprofits and charities a free platform (with some themes and extensions costing a few bucks) and host to establish a web presence that is just a couple of clicks away from integrating with your Twitter account and an RSS feed. Tumbr offers elegant simplicity to est up a look and post as quick or as richly developed media-laden posts as your organization cares to produce via its Dashboard.
But most use Tumblr to pursue ‘Tumblogging’. The word morphed from ‘tumblelog’, first used in 2005 but briefly eclipsed by the rather dry ‘microblog’ for a while. It refers to a blog that consists of an ongoing series of focused, but brief, posts that include various visual, aural, and textual media. These tend to be short entries that simply state the immediate context of the subject/object of the post with no effort to tie it to a larger story.
Well, why would a nonprofit want to do that?
Popularity: 2% | Category Advice, Blogs, Campaigns, Cause Marketing, Communications, Fundraising, How-to, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Nonprofit, Resource, Reviews, SEO, Site Administration, Social Media, Software Review, Storytelling, Technology for Nonprofits, Twitter, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD