This blog is all about do-it-yourself nonprofit communications and marketing. I love helping small and medium-sized nonprofits communicate more effectively with their members, donors, volunteers and other supporters, so that together, we can all make the world a better place. I do that as a blogger, trainer, speaker, coach and consultant.
I believe that even the smallest nonprofit staffs with the most modest budgets can achieve tremendous results through savvy marketing and communications. I hope this blog and my online marketing training and other resources encourage you to do just that, while helping you grow personally as a nonprofit marketer and communications professional.
This blog is all about helping small nonprofits and one-person marketing departments communicate as effectively as possible with their supporters. Sometimes the best way to do that is to outsource your content creation to a professional freelance writer.
The problem is that there really aren’t all that many writers who specialize in producing the kind of content that nonprofits need. At the same time, there are lots of freelance writers who would love to do more work for nonprofits, if they only knew how.
To help solve both problems, I’m launching a new “Writing for Nonprofits” Coaching Program. The four-week program will begin March 1, 2010 and will be limited to just 10 participants. It will include a live training or coaching event once a week and lots of tips and resources online, along with weekly challenges. It won’t just be me sharing advice; I’ve asked five other successful freelancers to serve as guest experts too.
Working directly with nonprofits is still my number one priority, which is why I’m keeping this new coaching program small, and I’m not sure when I’ll offer it again. If you are a freelance writer, take a look at the program. If you know a freelance writer who you wish knew how to produce the materials you need, pass it on to them.
P.S. I’m offering an early-bird special . . . register before February 1 and use the coupon code JAN100 to save $100.
If you ask veterans of hard-fought political campaigns which matters most, what a person feels or what a person thinks about your candidate, without exception, they will tell you that heart overrules head in the voting booth. The same goes for the way we make purchasing decisions, the way people vote on juries, and whether we support charitable causes.
Several advertising studies show the same thing. As described in Brand Immortality: How Brands Can Live Long and Prosper by Hamish Pringle and Peter Field, the UK-based Institute of Practitioners in Advertising analyzed 1,400 case studies of successful advertising. They compared the profitability boost of ads that appealed primarily to emotions versus those that relied on rational information, like statistics. Ad campaigns with purely emotional content outperformed the rational only content by two-to-one. Ads that were purely emotional also performed better than ads with mixed emotional and rational content, though by a much smaller margin.
These results affirm what Dr. Robert Heath of the University of Bath’s School of Management found in 2006. He found that U.S. and U.K. television advertisements with high levels of emotional content made the advertising successful, not the message itself. The emotional ads enhanced how people felt about brands being advertised. Ads with low levels of emotion had no effect, even when they were factual and informative.
So why do so many nonprofits still insist on a “just the fact, ma’am” approach to nonprofit marketing?
On Tuesday, September 29th, I’m teaching a writing workshop via webinar where we’ll look at ways to add more emotion into everyday nonprofit marketing and fundraising text to make it more effective with your supporters. We’ll also look at using both negative and positive emotions and discuss the differences in those approaches, while also exploring the different emotional buttons that successful fundraisers and volunteer recruiters most often push.
This is brand new webinar, so I hope you’ll join us on Tuesday! As always, registration is $35 a la carte, or it’s included in your All-Access Pass.
P.S. Check out the Neuromarketing Blog for more on “where brain science and marketing meet.”
Nonprofits have mixed feelings about marketing, branding and personality.On the one hand, we know we have to get people to notice us if we’re ever going to get them interested in our causes.On the other hand, our causes are important enough to stand on their own. Right? Wrong.
Here’s the truth. Most people don’t care about your cause and they definitely don’t care about your organization. And it’s not because they’re callous or ignorant or insensitive. It’s because they’re busy!
Think about it.Most of us spend every waking moment tending to kids, careers and home care. We don’t and won’t spend our precious time decoding difficult nonprofit collateral or websites, regardless of how noble the cause.It simply takes too much time.
Luckily, there is this thing called personality that you can use to stand out in the marketplace and break through the clutter. Personality is the sparkle you add to your marketing mix.It’s the inspired and inspiring feeling that you engender in others that makes them want to come back for more. Think Care. Think Apple. Think The Nature Conservancy. All of these “causes” use personality to make you feel like you are connected to something bigger. To make you care.
In preparation for the webinar, I’ve been searching for both good and bad examples of nonprofit websites.While websites are not your only communications tool, they are a highly visible mark of your nonprofits’ personality. Your goal is to project an image that helps vs. hinders your cause.
Above is an example of a group that’s doing it all wrong.While their cause seems worthy, they are projecting an image that detracts and distracts from their work.Here are just some of the problems I see:
A static website template – Template-based websites are a no-no because they make your organization look out of date and I’m sure this is not the image you want to project.The good news is that with blogging and other inexpensive web software you can create a good-looking website that is also easy to update.
Bad colors and fonts.– Choosing colors and fonts for your website and collaterals is like choosing your wardrobe. Do it carefully.While you want some variety, you also want the all the pieces to all fit together and resonate with what you do.So for an environmental organization, like the one above, this might mean choosing blues and greens – the colors of the earth.It also means choosing a more beautiful and friendly font.
Stock images – Like static website templates, stock images are “out.”They are also unnecessary since the birth of sites like Flickr* which make it possible to find and use amazing photographs from all over the world.No more excuses!Stop using stock images or silly graphics in Microsoft PowerPoint on your website or anywhere.*When using others’ photos be sure to give the proper attribution.
Content that is grammatically incorrect – Here’s another no-no. Don’t write content that is poo.** If you can’t afford to employ a copywriter, have someone else review your content before publishing it to the web. A good editor can do wonders for your writing and your image by catching errors that you will miss.
While fonts, images and content are only part of your brand identity, they are an important part of your organization’s personality. Choose wisely.
It’s not easy to market. You have a very short time to grab someone’s attention and people are distracted, but having a great organizational personality can help.
**Thanks to Mark Rovner, Principal of SeaChange Strategies for reminding us that bad content is bad content. It won’t work on a train or on a plane, in car or in a bar… “No I won’t read it Sam I Am!”
Register now – 249 people already have! It’s free, but you must pre-register.
Even if you can’t join us live, go ahead and register and you’ll get the links to the recordings 48 hours after the live event.
Here’s what we will cover:
Why an editorial calendar is the lithium for your content creation mania (you’ll get sample templates for several different kinds of editorial calendars)
Where to get ideas for new content (you’ll be surprised how much you have once you know where to look)
Setting realistic goals for yourself and prioritizing which content to create first
Using technology to speed up your content creation and distribution (and watching for tech pitfalls that can slow you down)
How to recycle what you create into different formats – and for different audiences
Ways to organize everything so you can find it and reuse it later
How to recruit other people to generate content for you (and how to be a kind but decisive editor when they do)
More than half of the 75 Special Summer Passes to our webinar series have been sold. Only 35 15 left! Attend live or watch the recording of every webinar we host from now until August 31, 2009 and get access to our archive of webinar recordings from the last year, all for $75. Use this special link (you won’t find it elsewhere on the website).
What’s Happening This Week . . .
On Tuesday, I’m teaching a webinar called Quickie Annual Reports: Simple Ways to Share Results with Supporters. I’ll go over my suggested 4-page annual report templates and also provide some ideas for online reports that will be more entertaining and engaging than the standard paper in the mail.
On Thursday, I’m teaching Nonprofit Writing Stinks! How to Bring Your Writing Back to Life. If you find yourself writing in jargon and 501(c)(3)-ese or foundation-ese, this webinar is for you! I’ll show you how to hunt down your trouble spots and fix them, so you write like the passionate human being you really are.
After both webinars, I’ll share some of the Q&A on the blog. You can join us for webinars a la carte ($35 each) or get an All-Access Pass (here’s that summer special link again) and attend everything we do this summer.
Three teams made up of consultants from four different agencies (Beaconfire Consulting, Forum One Communications, Free Range Studios, and Firefly Partners) got together on a Sunday for a strategy and design competition. Their challenge was to remake the online presence of Youth Speaks, a nonprofit presenter of Spoken Word performance, education, and youth development programs. They were all given the same information and amount of time to develop their programs.
Each team, comprised of 3-4 of the consulting firm frienemies, then presented their online strategy and home page redesigns for the first time at the conference. Take a few minutes to check out the slides to see what they came up with. You’ll see how some very creative firms go about a project like this, how they define online goals, set priorities and timelines, and use a blend of tactics.
loving team 2’s real focus, storytelling, bringing in rural areas, building fan base for artists
loving team 2’s thanks for attending email the day after event to get people to go online to share their impressions.
team 3’s emphasis on artist’s own pages that they can really customize is nice touch.
think I like team 3’s home page the best, but team 2’s strategy the best.
What made this session so good?
The Open Sharing. How often do we get to see four leading firms talk openly about how they would approach a real project, in quite a bit of detail? Uh, never. This one session saved Youth Speaks thousands and thousands of dollars, but it also let all of us learn about ways to approach these kinds of projects too. I admit that I feared that the firms wouldn’t want to give too much away and the proposals would be lightweight, but instead they were really packed with substance. Kudos to the four firms for really sharing their best ideas!
The Collaborative Spirit. This could have easily been set up as a firm-against-firm competition. But by blending the teams, it removed the real-world winners and losers element, and made it much more fun and less pressure-filled (at least it felt that way as someone in the audience – not sure how it felt to be on a team!)
No Right Answer. While there was certainly overlap between the three approaches, this session proves that there is no one right way to do online marketing – so don’t believe anyone who tries to convince you otherwise. Yes, when in doubt, follow the conventional wisdom or best practices, but don’t be afraid to try something new or to put your own twist on it. Although the intention was for the audience to vote on the winner, people were apparently having trouble getting a signal in the Hilton basement, so they did a “Make Noise” vote instead and called it a tie. More proof that there is no “right way.”
I would love to see more collaborative makeovers like this in the nonprofit marketing world. It doesn’t have to take on the whole Iron Chef theme. You may recall that Britt Bravo asked Nancy Schwartz, Katya Andresen, Nedra Weinreich, and me to review the Social Actions home page back in October. Here’s what we all said.
That wasn’t structured as a competition, but the outcome was similar – lots of concrete ideas that a real nonprofit can sort through and use, while also letting others learn from the analysis and strategies as well.
By the way, it was fabulous hanging out with Nancy, Katya, and Britt at the conference. (Photo of Britt and me by Nancy Schwartz. Photo of Nancy, Katya, and me by Nice Waiter at Foreign Cinema).
I’m already mulling over ways to pull them into some kind of Iron Chef / Extreme Makeover Something or Another for next year’s conference (Mark your calendars for NTC 2010 in Atlanta, April 8-10). Your ideas for a session? Or something we could do sooner online? Leave a comment.
I’m attending the Nonprofit Technology Conference Sunday-Tuesday (April 26-28, 2009) and will be live blogging throughout the event. That means that you can see my notes live as I type them in and you can communicate with me in real-time as I do it. You can send in questions, comments, etc.and I can respond live.
The problem? NTEN has a ridiculous number of sessions going on at one time (18 during the first breakout session slot Monday morning). With so much to choose from, I have a feeling I am going to be doing a bunch of session hopping. But I’d love your help in prioritizing which sessions you are most interested in me covering.
I’m only giving you the session titles — if you really want to know what the sessions are about, check out the agenda. But going on titles alone is fine.
Here is my live blogging page on NTEN’s site and I will also add the viewer here on this blog during the conference, so you can read and participate at either site.
If you are attending the conference, please be sure to introduce yourself! Nancy Schwartz and I are hosting a meet-and-greet for communications types on Sunday at 1:30 and I’ll be around until late morning Tuesday.
Ideal for anyone who contributes to a nonprofit website, blog, or email newsletter. Online writing needs to be personal, quick, and relevant to the reader. In this encore of one of our most popular webinars, I’ll share how you can transform your online writing so your web and email content work for you and your supporters.
Are you ready to start fundraising online, but not exactly sure what you need to do to make it work? Hint: A “Donate” button isn’t enough! During this webinar, you’ll learn about all of the key components of a solid online fundraising program.
Ready to kick your online fundraising up a few notches? Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies is our special guest speaker. Alia will show you how to go beyond the basics of donor-friendly websites and engaging email copy by creating a program that wows your donors into giving again and again.
What’s Coming Up in May and June
I also just opened registration for several webinars in May and June, with a few more to come soon.
You can attend all of the webinars we host in a 12-week period for just $97 with your All-Access Pass. Otherwise, a la carte registration is $35 per webinar. That includes everyone in your office who can fit around one computer.
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Questions Answered
I'll gladly answer your questions (or try to anyway), but I prefer to do so in a public way, so others can benefit from our conversation and join in with their thoughts too. Here are the best ways to ask your questions and get free advice.
Live Office Hours - Many Fridays, when I'm not on the road, you can either call in your question to Magic Keys Radio or chat with me live on this blog's homepage. Check the calendar for details.
See Your Q&A on the Blog - I'll post your question and my reply on this blog and/or in my e-newsletter when you submit your question at Ask Kivi.com.
Email Me Directly - Last resort for general questions, and probably the slowest, because I'm putting priority on answering questions in the places above first. Here's the contact form.
For questions about webinars, coaching or consulting, please feel free to email me or to call me at 336-499-5816 anytime and I'll get back to you promptly.
Magic Keys Radio/Podcast
A couple of times per month, Kivi Leroux Miller and Claire Meyerhoff host a live Internet radio show and podcast.
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This blog is all about helping small nonprofits and one-person marketing departments communicate as effectively as possible with their supporters. Sometimes the best way to do that is to outsource your content creation to a professional freelance writer.
