Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog

And Other “Stupid” Questions You Were Too Afraid to Ask!

Photo by B Tal on Flickr

The “Be the Media” project led by the Nonprofit Technology Network and Beth Kanter starts today. The project will ultimately be the “go-to” spot for people who are both learning and teaching about the use of social media in the nonprofit sector.

Beth invited me to participate and I’m looking forward not only to sharing what I know through the project, but also highlighting its growth here for you on this blog and asking for your input on various questions and ideas as Beth leads us through the creation of the various modules.

This week begins with “Why Your Nonprofit Organization Should Be the Media.” Beth kicked off the conversation here.

But before we can get into why social media is so great for nonprofits, let’s back up a step and answer some basic questions that people have asked me quietly under their breath when they were fairly certain no one else was listening, usually after I’d given a talk on online marketing . . .

1) So “Web 2.0″ isn’t software you buy from Microsoft? (Usually said with a slight deer-in-headlights look).

No. Web 2.0 is not a single piece of software, but a whole new way of looking at how we use the Internet. Now anyone, not just the fat cats or tech geeks, can put just about anything online and we can all discuss it, build upon it, and share it with each other. The power of the back-and-forth conversation and the collaboration that comes from that is what’s new and exciting about Web 2.0 over old Web 1.0, which was more about just putting information online. That’s still valuable, but it’s not the same as being able to talk about the information and debate its meaning with others across the street or around the world, all at the same time.

2) Do we really have to have a website? (Usually said by a face sagging from the sheer exhaustion of an already way-too-long to-do list).

You have to have some kind of online home base to work from. It can be a traditional website or a blog, but yes, you do need some kind of page that you can edit at will and where people can find you, without any special membership requirements. In other words, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are great, but I think every nonprofit should start with a site that anyone can visit without a username and password. If you are completely clueless, start with Wordpress.com or Blogger.

3) Do we have to get on MySpace/Facebook? (Usually said with a profound look of worry about having to venture where all the younguns’ are).

Definitely not right away, and maybe never. It totally depends on who you are trying to reach. If the people you are trying to reach — your target demographic — are on a particular social networking site, then at some point, yes, you should work on being there too. But if the people you need to talk to the most don’t use those sites, then there is no need to make them a high priority. And it’s much more important to have your home-base website or blog in good shape than to start creating additional outlying pages that will be hard for you to keep updated.

4) Why should I be excited about letting some random person we’ve never heard of before raise money for our group? This is a nightmare! (Usually said with a look of great alarm after hearing me talk about online fundraising widgets like those individuals can create on Six Degrees).

This question is usually coming from one of two fears: (1) the person will go way off-message in raising the money and (2) the money will not actually be turned over to the charity.

Think about the best in-person conversation you’ve had in the last year with friends or family. Did you both have a script and did you both follow it exactly? Of course not! To realize the greatest benefits of social media, you have to let the conversation happen naturally, off script. Yes, you have to give up control of the message (which, honestly, you don’t have anyway). But why not embrace these fans and give them a little help, gently correctly any mistakes as you give them loads of praise for helping you? And people who use widgets from the established organizations like Six Degrees don’t actually see the money themselves — it goes through a processing company that cuts the check to the nonprofit directly.

5) I love the idea of using photos on our website or sharing through Flickr, but how do I get the photos off of my digital camera? (Usually said by someone laughing at herself for not being able to figure it out).

Your camera has some kind of memory card in it. That card is like a little hard drive where your pictures are stored and you need to let your main computer see that little hard drive. You can usually do this in one of two ways. First, your camera may have come with a cord that allows you to plug the camera into your computer through a USB or firewire slot. Or you can take the card out and plug it into a card reader that’s already built into your computer or that’s plugged into a USB slot. Your computer will give your memory card a drive letter. Find that, and then you simply copy and paste (or move) your picture files from that drive to your hard drive, just like you move any other file from one folder to another.

OK, with all of that out of the way, let’s have some fun talking about nonprofits and social media!

This week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is now online at Sam Davidson’s Blog. Sam has highlighted posts on fundraising, online marketing, and more.

Next week the Carnival travels down under to Priscilla Brice-Weller’s Solidariti Blog.

I’ve just added some new webinars to the schedule for this summer and early fall.

July 16 - Nonprofit Writing Stinks! How to Bring Your Writing Back to Life

July 30 - Attracting More Website Visitors: Traffic-Building Tips for Nonprofits

August 14 - Online Writing: Dos and Don’ts of Writing for the Web and Email

August 20 - Nonprofit Publicity 101: Great PR Ideas that Get Attention

August 28 - Online Marketing Basics for Nonprofits: From Email to Social Media

September 4 - How to Write a Press Release Reporters Will Love

September 10 - Nonprofit Storytelling: How to Write Your Nonprofit’s Best Stories

September 25 - Email Newsletter Basics for Nonprofits - From Start to Finish

October 2 - Ten Captivating Ways to Start Fundraising Letters, Newsletter Articles & More

You can attend every single webinar I’ve listed here (or view the recordings 48 hours after the live event) for just $97 when you purchase the All-Access Pass before July 16. Otherwise, you can register a la carte and pay $35 per webinar.

If you are looking for affordable training on how to market your nonprofit and gain more supporters, donors, and advocates for your cause, the Nonprofit Marketing Guide All-Access Pass is the way to go.

I’m presenting “Must-Have Features for Nonprofit Websites” as a webinar on this Wednesday, June 25, from 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. ET, and the first must-have on my list is a clear domain name and multiple variations on it. Not multiple websites. Just one of those will do. What you need is multiple domains that all point to your main website. It’s like having more than one door into your house. In your domain registrar account, you simply forward all of your secondary domain names using a 301 permanent redirect to your main domain that holds all of your website content.

Why is this so important? Because when people guess what your website is or try to dredge it up from their memories, if they get close, wouldn’t it be nice if they went straight to your website instead of getting an error page or someone else’s site?

And what about those fingers on auto-pilot that type .com instead of .org but otherwise get your domain name right? Again, wouldn’t be nice if they got to your site anyway?

Multiple domain names not only help visitors who don’t have it quite right; they also help you protect your brand. If you build a great .org site, you don’t want to give up traffic or the goodwill you’ve created to someone who uses your name as a .com site.

Get the .com, .org. and .net versions

Here’s what you should do. First, if they are still available, buy the .org, .com, and .net versions of your main domain name at GoDaddy or your favorite registrar.  I’m working with one nonprofit who was using a .com domain name. The first thing I did, before even talking about their design or content, was to have them buy the .org and .net versions, which (luckily) were still available.

In theory, .com is for businesses (commercial), .org is for organizations, and .net is for networks. But unlike .mil (military) and .gov (government) which are reserved for those institutions, .com, .org. and .net can be purchased and used by anyone. Go get them. There’s nothing stopping you except the price, which is usually less than $10/year.

Get the reasonable guesses and typos

Next, think of reasonable variations that a site visitor might type into a web browser. The Nature Conservancy uses the very short and memorable nature.org as its main domain. But natureconservancy.org and thenatureconservancy.org will take you to the same place. Those domains are forwarded automatically to nature.org.

If you think your site visitors might be prone to replacing a word in your domain name with another, you should also consider purchasing those variations.  When I started Nonprofit Marketing Guide, I thought to myself, “OK, if someone heard about a site like this, but couldn’t quite recall the name correctly, what guesses might they have?” As a result, I also purchased the domains for “Nonprofit PR Guide” and “Nonprofit Communications Guide.” Those all forward to NonprofitMarketingGuide.com.

If your website address includes a commonly misspelled word or name (e.g. Cathy or Kathy?), you should also consider buying those variations.

What do you do if the domain names aren’t available?

Many registrars offer backordering services. For a fee, you can backorder the domain names, and if the current owner fails to renew the domain on time, your registrar will try to snap it up for you.

For example, when I started NonprofitAnnualReports.net in January 2004, the .org and .com versions were already gone. As I recall, one was a consulting firm and the other was an ad site. Using backordering, I obtained the .org site at the end of last year and the .com earlier this year. Both are now forwarded to the original .net domain where the site is hosted. I also purchased nonprofitannualreport.com, .org, and .net (without the s on reports), since that seems like an reasonable typo.

Obviously, you can take all of these tips to the extreme, and end up spending a fortune. You don’t need to go overboard with it.  Brainstorm the most obvious choices and then get as many as you can reasonably afford.  If you can only afford a handful, I say get at least the .org, .com, and .net of your main domain name.

Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog has posted this week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. It’s the usual interesting mix of posts that you’ve come to expect from the Carnival. Next week’s host is Sam Davidson.

Starting August 15, the Carnival will shift from a weekly format to a twice monthly format, publishing on the 1st and 15th of each month. I am now accepting hosting requests for the August 15, 2008 - February 2009 slots. If you would like to host the carnival, please send me a note.

Several nonprofit friends have forward me Daniel Gross’s column on the “Coming Charity Crisis” which appears in both Newsweek and Slate.

Yes, it’s likely that charitable giving will drop because of the recession. If you think it’s already hard to raise money for your cause, it may feel even harder before it gets easier again.

But these are the times when it’s important for you as a nonprofit communicator to remember that today’s dollars are not the only measuring stick for your work. All kinds of other important benefits, short term and long term, to your cause and to your organization come from your marketing work.

You can increase the number of people you are talking to now, by growing your email newsletter list, direct mail list, or blog subscribers, who may give someday when the economy is better.

You can educate more people about your issues, and they can act on them now and later as advocates for your cause or by changing their own behaviors.

You can develop deeper, more personal connections with the donors who do continue to give to you now, despite the price of gas.

You can find new and more interesting ways for people to contribute to your organization in ways that don’t involve cash, including volunteering, in-kind gifts, and advocacy on your behalf.

In summary, you can continue to bring new supporters into the fold and move them along the path from showing a passing interest to becoming a passionate patron. The value of the conversation and the relationship is just as important as the donation.

P.S. Speaking of growing your email list, that’s the topic of Thursday’s webinar.

During last week’s webinar on “How to Write a Quick and Dirty Marketing Strategy” (recording now available on-demand for $20), I worked through the three most important questions with three volunteers, while all of the other participants chatted in their suggestions too.

Those three questions are

1) What you you trying to do — specifically, what are trying to get someone else to do?

2) Why should they care?

3) What’s the best way to reach them?

Cindy at the Los Angeles Conservancy wanted to reach everyone in Los Angeles with the historic preservation message. After I pointed out how unrealistic that was (which was a big relief to Cindy), we worked on narrowing down her audience and figuring out why they might care about what she had to say. We talked specifically about low-to-middle-income, Latino homeowners.

Webinar participants suggested several good answers to question #2 — why these homeowners should care about historic preservation. Suggestions included protecting their investment, since their home is likely their single largest asset; increasing the value of their homes through restoration; and improving the way their neighborhoods look for their families. Going through local churches and using radio were two suggestions for the best ways to reach them.

In less than 10 minutes, Cindy went from trying to do way too much and thus probably accomplishing very little to narrowing in on a specific group of people to talk with, crafting her message in a way that’s meaningful to that group, and finding proven ways to deliver those messages to that community.

When you are going the quick-and-dirty route, it’s really that simple. Of course, when you have more than 10 minutes, you can go through a more thoughtful process. I started the webinar by outlining what I consider a full-blown marketing strategy and then explaining how you cut that back to get to the quick and dirty version.

During the webinar, we also worked on how the Watershed Agricultural Council could encourage donations to its new endowment fund and how Hearts Adaptive Riding Program could recruit more young adult volunteers and more senior volunteers — and the different communications tactics that could work with each of those two groups.

If you missed the live webinar, you can still get all of my tips and see how they were applied to these real-world cases by watching the recording on-demand. Registration is $20 for two weeks of access to the recording. Or you can get the All-Access Pass for $97 and get 12 weeks of access to this and a dozen other recordings, plus all of the live webinars coming up for this rest of the summer.

You can read this week’s edition of the Carnival at Get Fully Funded Blog. You’ll find posts from Donor Power Blog, Getting Attention, Connection Cafe, Everyday Giving Blog, and Cause Marketing Blog.

Next week, we’ll visit with Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog. It’s an open call, but Jeff will give bonus points to posts that contain the phrase “the longest day” in celebration of the summer solstice. Submit your blog post to the Carnival here.