A reflection from two talks

In the past week I’ve given two talks to two different groups on the same subject – social media and fundraising. The first group was a group of 32 professionals who work or volunteer for nonprofit organizations through the Foundation Center located at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. The second group was a group of 18 graduate students in a Nonprofit Communications course at Point Park University. Some of the students already work at nonprofits while others hope to when they are done with the program.

A couple of key questions that arose with both groups were:

1. Should you schedule future posts to social media?
2. How do you measure success using social media?
3. What platform is the right one to use?

Well, the correct answer to each is what is usually my least favorite answer – it depends. Scheduling future posts is great idea if you don’t want to be tied down to your social media account 24/7. But, if you do use scheduled-posts to social media don’t forget about them. You need to be able to reply to questions and inquiries for people who respond. You still need to be social. Some people think that scheduled tweets are bad. That doesn’t have to be the case if you remember the posts!

How do you measure success using social media? It’s not always the number of posts retweeted or share, number of likes, number of people following you on social media or even the number of comments. Sometimes it’s the number of people who took the call to action you wanted, whether that’s making a donation or calling a legislator. Sometimes it’s what is spelled out in your strategic plan, your marketing and communications plan and your development plan.

Is Facebook the right platform? What about LinkedIn? In addition to the major social media networks there are so many niche social media networks and tools and its hard to say. It depends on your intended audience. Just because you have an agency page on Facebook doesn’t mean everyone will interact and engage with you on it. Just like some people prefer email to phone calls, others preer Facebook to Twitter or Tumblr to Facebook or something you may not have heard of before like BlueLine (a social network for cops). What you need to do is try a network to see what type of engagement you receive in addition to just surveying your constituency to see what they use. Just because one network is best of agency X doesn’t mean it will be the same for agency Y.

If you want to see my slides from the two talks just look below

Social Media and Fundraising – Guest Lecture at Point Park University from Dave Tinker, CFRE

Fundraising and Social Media – Davethecfre at CLPGH Foundation Center from Dave Tinker, CFRE

It depends.

Four things for 4th of July

Since it’s the 4th of July tomorrow, here are four things that are trending in social media right now.

1) Instagram video. Earlier this summer Instagram released it’s video component to compete with Twitter’s Vine. Some say it hit Vine hard. Others say, not so fast. In my opinion I like the filters you can use on Instragram but the 15 seconds seems too long compared to Vine’s 6 seconds. Chalk it up to another Facebook imitating what is popular elsewhere instead of creating their own new innovation. can you say #hashtags?

2) Countries again want to block social media because of the political unrest they cause. Countries like Turkey have tightened their control and want offices for the social media giants to be located in their own country so staff may be summoned to government offices when needed. When you have countries insisting on offices and blocking posts you have a very powerful tool at your hands. Use it wisely.

3) You must use Social Media to replace the RRS Feeds that Google and others have dropped. RSS Feeds were a great tool to aggregate news from many sites into one place and you could make it your own. Now you have to use a Web 3.0 social version of it. If someone likes a link and shares it all you have to do is refresh your social media feed. Since Google and others have decided that RSS feeds are no longer necessary, boo hiss, you can use social media in its stead.

4) Here are some APPs picked for you for the 4th of July. From Grilling guides, to beaches and fireworks. Ejnoy!

Top Ten for 2011

It would be the end of the year without another Top Ten list. NCE Social Media is no exception.

Here are the top 10 posts from the past year.

10. Google+
9. Social Media Etiquette
8. 10 Commandments of Posting Online
7. Facebook’s EdgeRank
6. Megaphones
5. Social Media as a Fundraising Tool for 2011
4. Setting Up Facebook Fan Pages
3. New Facebook Groups
2. Share Buttons and Bars
1. Is YouTube Making You Money?

What were your favorites?

Google+ Opens Up to NPOs

Google+ finally is allowing charities (and businesses) to have their own pages on the Google+ platform. No more work arounds.

Beth Kanter has already started pulling together a circle of all charities who have a page. Another reason why I love to read Beth’s work.

John Haydon has created a video explaining how to create a Google+ page for your website. This video is one of the reasons why John Haydon rocks! John, thanks for your work on this.

Do you have a Google+ page for your agency? If so let us know so we may add you to our circle and let Beth know so you’re in hers, too.

Pecha Kucha

I gave a talk yesterday explaining Pecha Kucha to a group of nonprofit executives. Pecha Kucha is a variation on your typical PowerPoint presentation. I’ve seen people call it the intersection of a business meeting and a poetry slam. This Japanese style presentation (created by a British architect and an Italian architect living in Tokyo) was created in 2003 but has grown in popularity to be a worldwide mainstream business presentation style.

How it differs from your traditional PowerPoint presentation is that the speaker uses 20 slides and has 20 seconds per slide to speak. The slides are set up to auto-run so they advance automatically. Then after the 6:40 is up (20 slides x 20 seconds = 6 minutes 40 seconds) the presenter sits down. Questions are only asked at the end. That’s it. It forces the presenter to focus and choose the most important item(s) to discuss and leaves the chaff behind.

As a nonprofit you can use this style presentation to share program information, use of donations, training staff and volunteers, advocacy, and really any topic that you can think up. It causes the audience to pay attention. A couple of tricks to consider when creating a Pecha Kucha style presentation include: using strong images, using timely information, and if you use text and or chart, make sure the audience can read them in 20 seconds or less.

Pecha Kucha style presentations were invented 8 years ago as 1) a fun way to showcase knowledge and products while placing presenters who are beginners or advanced professionals on a level footing and 2) an innovative and disruptive alternative to the boring PowerPoint presentations.

You can do Pecha Kucha with a live audience. You can also post them to the web if you videotape your live presentation or if you record audio of your talk to match the slides. Places to post them include your YouTube channel, your own website, your intranet, or you can even burn them on discs or thumb drives to hand out to people. Here are a few videos on Pecha Kucha as well as a link to my slides. You may find addition Pecha Kucha videos on YouTube or on the Pech-Kucha.org website. I haven’t posted the audio for my slides but will do so and will share the updated information with you. Until then enjoy the videos.

Posting User Social Media Guidelines

Beth Kanter, who I’ve written about before (1)(2)(3), recently shared a copy of the AARP’s Facebook Community Guidelines. These are a set of guidelines letting people know what they may and may not post on the AARP Facebook page(s). It’s short, simple, and straightforward. As you are considering social media guidelines for your agency, are you considering how the person on the other end uses social media as it relates to you, e.g. your official agency Facebook page?

Here’s the AARP Facebook Community Guidelines:
“Welcome to AARP’s official Facebook fan page! Here we’ll share breaking news, interesting stories and the latest member benefits. We want to keep our Facebook page an open forum, but we’re also a family friendly group, so please keep comments and wall posts clean. We want you to tell us what’s on your mind, but if it falls into any of the categories below, we’ll have to remove it: – We do not allow graphic, obscene, explicit or racial comments or submissions nor do we allow comments that are abusive, hateful or intended to defame anyone or any organization. – We do not allow third party solicitations or advertisements. This includes promotion or endorsement of any financial, commercial or non-governmental agency. Similarly, we do not allow attempts to defame or defraud any financial, commercial or non-governmental agency. – We do not allow comments that suggest or encourage illegal activity. – You participate at your own risk, taking personal responsibility for your comments, your username and any information provided. Also, the appearance of external links on this page does not constitute official endorsement on behalf of AARP or our members. Whew! Now that all THAT is out of the way, let’s get to know each other. Post, share and tell us what you’d like to see more of from AARP.”

Create your own Daily Newspaper

Paper.li is a web-based tool, that is free, that you can use to create a daily paper of your Facebook and or Twitter feeds. The paper could also have a morning and evening edition or be weekly. You may also even set up a paper for a specific hashtag or keyword that is of interest to you such as this one. You may also have multiple papers.

I like Paper.li because it organizes the posts made by people you follow into categories. When people post links to photos or videos, it adds those too. Paper.li allows you to embed your daily paper on your website. It also pushes a daily notification letting your followers on Facebook and or Twitter know it has been updated. Here is a link to a copy of my Paper.li daily paper.

Here’s a video on how it works.

If you sign up for it, let us know. I’m happy to share your Paper.li daily news links with others.

Setting Up Facebook Fanpages

Okay, so you haven’t set up your agency fan page on Facebook just yet. Fear not. Here is a 2 minute video with easy to understand instructions on how to do it.

Once you’ve set up your fan page, you can embed them on other websites. A previous post of the NCE Social Media Blog discusses how to embed fan pages.

10 Commandments of Posting Online

Here are 10 commandments of posting to social media. If you follow them you will avoid trouble (most of the time).

10. Thou shall not post someone else’s content as your own.

9. Thou shall not complain about work online. Everyone has a bad day at work but bad days last forever online.

8. Thou shall segment your feeds as appropriate so your posts only go to those you want to see them.

7. Thou shall not post embarrassing or inappropriate photos on line, they are on-line forever.

6. Thou shall post unto other’s feeds as you would have them post onto your feed for all to see.

5. Thou shall spell check before your post.

4. Thou shall keep posts to 100 characters or less when wanting them to be retweeted.

3. Thou shall not lie or libel.

2. Thou shall not post to personal social media accounts while at work.

1. Thou shall think twice and post once.

Beware the Chaff

An article from TalentZoo written by folks at HootSuite got me thinking about how to separate out the good stuff on social media from the bad. It also got me thinking on how to make my own social media posts wheat and not chaff.

Here is a list of things you stated in the article that you can do right now to help you in this endeavor.

• Begin Listening – hear what people say
• Outreach to Influencers – engage people that influence you online
• Amplify by Sharing – find a good story – share it with others through your stream
• Ask Opinions of Your Followers – your followers are a built in focus group, use them
• Use it as an Early Warning System – see any complaints about your agency? Head them off here.
• Be the Party Host – keep things in check and moving to your desired outcomes