Claire Meyerhoff and I are hosting the second installment of our virtual book club for The Nonprofit Marketing Guide today (Friday) from 1:00 – 1:30 pm ET (10:00 – 10:30 a.m. PT) on our Magic Keys Radio & Podcast. We broadcast live over the Internet, and afterwards the recording is immediately available as a podcast. You can call in your questions over the phone or send them to us on Twitter @magickeysradio during the live show.

Today we are talking about Part II of the book: Writing a Quick-and-Dirty Marketing Plan for a Specific Program.

We’ll talk about how nonprofits need to stop thinking in generic terms like the general public, outreach, and education, and start targeting their marketing by asking three simple questions:

• Who Do You Want to Reach?
• What Do You Want to Say? and
• How and Where are You Going to Say It?

Listen to the show.

We’ve sold more than 2,500 copies of the book so far! Thanks to each and every one who has purchased a copy and especially to those of you who have shared your comments on it with me or by leaving an Amazon review. I love hearing your stories and seeing how you are using the book!

I mentioned to Sandra Lundgren, a communications specialist with the Westport Public Library, that I had yet to see the book on a store or library shelf and she was kind enough to send me a photo from her library.  I’d love to see your photos with the book too! You can upload them to Flickr or our Facebook page or email them to me.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

I’m hearing some great stories from readers of The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause (Amazon link) and I want you to be able to hear and share them too. So, Claire Meyerhoff, our resident media relations pro, and I are turning our Magic Keys Radio and Podcast into a virtual book club meeting on the third Fridays for the rest of this year, starting this Friday.

But it’s not a book club without you.

Each of the four shows will cover one of the four parts of the book. We’d love to hear from you if

• As you read that part of the book, you thought, “Kivi should have used us as an example here!”
• You’ve made a recent change to the way you approach your work based on something you read in the book
• You are struggling with a topic in the book or have a question that will help us expand on what’s included in the book

All of the shows will broadcast live over the Internet at the times below and we’ll be able to take calls over the phone and via Twitter (send questions to @magickeysradio). The podcast will be available a few minutes after the show ends. There’s no charge to participate live or to listen to the podcast.

Friday, September 17, 2010 (1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern / 10:00 – 10:30 a.m. Pacific)
Part I: Getting Ready to Do It Right (go to the show)

We’ll talk about what nonprofit marketing is, what it means to be good at nonprofit marketing today, and the importance of building market research (or listening) into your daily routine.

Friday, October 15, 2010 (1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern / 10:00 – 10:30 a.m. Pacific)
Part II: Writing a Quick-and-Dirty Marketing Plan for a Specific Program (go to the show)

We’ll talk about how nonprofits need to stop thinking in generic terms like the general public, outreach, and education, and start targeting their marketing by asking three simple questions: Who Do You Want to Reach? What Do You Want to Say? and How and Where are You Going to Say It?

Friday, November 19, 2010 (1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern / 10:00 – 10:30 a.m. Pacific)
Part III: Building a Community of Supporters Around You (go to the show)

We’ll talk about how nonprofit communicators are turning into nonprofit community builders and look at some of ways nonprofits are building community by making their communications more frequent and personal, by positioning themselves as a trusted source, and by empowering their fans to build the community too.

Friday, December 17, 2010 (1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern / 10:00 – 10:30 a.m. Pacific)
Part IV: Doing It Yourself without Doing Yourself In (go to the show)

We’ll talk about ways that you can not only survive as a nonprofit marketing department of one, but thrive. We’ll share our favorite ways for do-it-yourself marketers to manage their time, talent, and treasure.

We are looking for nonprofits to feature during each of these four shows, so let me know if you have a story to share! You can email me directly at kivi@ecoscribe.com. Put “book club” in the subject line.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

We’re back! Claire Meyerhoff and I are so excited about our new season of Magic Keys Radio, the only live Internet radio show and podcast (that we know of!) that’s all about unlocking the secrets to marketing your good cause.

On Friday, September 25 at high noon EST, we’ll be flipping the switch, turning on our microphones and talking to YOU about one of our  favorite topics: stories!

Nonprofits have the best stories, but often don’t use them to full effect. And there are so many different ways you can use them in nonprofit marketing — success stories; donor profiles; stories about the people you help; and moving, personal stories that sometimes result in donations.

And that’s where our special guest comes in . . .

Dawn Fratangelo is an expert storyteller from her years as a globetrotting correspondent for NBC News.  (Here’s one of my favorite video clips of Dawn tracking down Lee Ann Bemboom and her son, two of the iconic survivors of the Superdome fiasco during Hurricane Katrina). Dawn has won many awards for her investigative stories, yet she is most proud of a personal story she wrote about her late husband, Eric Wishnie, and their cherished times at Yankee Stadium.  During Magic Keys Radio on Friday, Dawn will tell us how simply sharing that story with friends led to a major gift to her favorite cause, The Eric Wishnie Scholarship at the University of Florida.

Like Claire and me, Dawn loves nonprofits . . .  and good stories. She hopes her personal “success story” inspires you to use your best stories to promote your good cause. Join us Friday live, or download the podcast immediately afterwards.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

I’m always talking about the power of storytelling in nonprofit marketing, and a lot of those stories end up taking the form of personal profiles of donors, clients, volunteers and other supporters and partners.

Problem is that many of them are just plain awful.  I see bad profiles falling into four categories:

1. Tedious Bio Syndrome. It’s the narrative equivalent of a resume. Or worse, it starts when they were born. Total snoozer.

2. Too Shallow and Wide. The profile brushes over so many different aspects of the person’s life that we don’t get enough interesting detail about any of them. The cardboard cutout equivalent of a human being.

3. Gushing Flackery. The worst kind of profile that is so obviously written just to kiss up (OK, we know you are just trying to say Thank You, but really, it’s too much). Be nice to your VIPs, but don’t overdo it.

4. Mildly Entertaining, But Pointless. It might be a nice story, but why are you telling it? If your reader doesn’t understand why you are telling her about this person and how it is supposed to make her feel or what it is supposed to motivate her to do herself, then what’s the point?

That’s the bad news. The good news is that I have identified seven different formats for personal profiles that are actually interesting and will therefore do what profiles are intended to do: inspire others!

I’m offering two free ways for you to get some tips on how to write better profiles.

• Magic Keys Radio & Podcast This Friday

On Friday, May 22 at Noon Eastern (9:00 a.m. Pacific), Claire Meyerhoff and I will be hosting another live edition of Magic Keys Radio and we’ll be talking about how to write good donor profiles. You can listen live and call/chat in your questions or you can download the podcast (an MP3 recording) right after the show ends.

• Free Webinar on Tuesday, June 9

On Tuesday, June 9 at 1:00 op.m. ET (10:00 a.m. PT), I’m teaching How to Write Moving Personal Profiles about Donors, Clients, and Other Supporters. It’s free, but you do need to register in advance. We’ll talk about seven different ways to write engaging, dramatic profiles about the real people around you.  We’ll also explore some interviewing techniques that will help you uncover the most interesting elements of a person’s story. Get the details and reserve your spot.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

It’s official . . . I’m writing a nonprofit marketing how-to book to be published by Jossey-Bass in Spring 2010. It will be the book version of what I’ve been doing for the last several years for clients, on this blog, and through the webinar series: giving you real-world advice on how to get more support for your good cause, without a huge marketing budget or staff behind you.

Between now and the end of August, I’ll be giving you many ways to participate in the creation of the book. I want to use lots of examples to explain the strategies I’m advocating, so I’ll be asking you to share your stories with me. I’ll probably ask you to complete a few quick surveys to help me better understand your needs and questions — after all, if you are reading this blog, you are the target audience for the book too! I’ve wanted to write this book forever, and so many of you have inspired me to really make it happen, so I want to include as many of your stories as I can.

I will not, however, force you to read posts about the writing of the book itself, at least not here on this blog. If you are interested in my book writing experience or in freelancing or consulting for nonprofits in general, I invite you to subscribe to my other blog, Writing for Nonprofits, which I’ve rescued once more from blog purgatory. You’ll get the posts about nonprofit marketing/communications here as always; you’ll get the posts about the creative process and business side of being a writer, consultant, and trainer at Writing for Nonprofits.

P.S. Claire Meyerhoff and I just wrapped up another edition of Magic Keys Radio on Email Newsletter Basics. The podcast is ready. Listen here or subscribe in iTunes.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Not raising money online yet? Or not raising enough? (How’s that for a stupid question?)

Next week we are hosting a two-webinar boot camp specifically on online fundraising. This is your chance to learn both the basics and the advanced techniques for turning your website and email list into a real, sustainable fundraising force for your cause.

Magic Keys Radio on E-Newsletters

But first, on Friday, Claire Meyerhoff and I are back with another edition Magic Keys Radio, our live Internet radio show and podcast and we’ll be talking e-mail newsletters and how you can use them for fundraising. How to do them, why to do them – whatever you want to know about nonprofit email newsletters – we’ll do our best to answer.  Join us on Friday, April 17 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern (10:00 a.m. Pacific) for the half-hour show where you listen live over the Internet through your computer speakers. You can call in your questions over the phone or chat them in on the Blog Talk Radio site. The podcast is available right after.

Online Fundraising Basics: Jumpstart Online Giving to Your Good Cause

Then on Tuesday, April 21, I’ll be teaching the “Basic” online fundraising course, where I’ll talk about the different elements you need to have in place, including the system that actually processes your donations securely. But online fundraising is about much more than just processing credit cards and big “Donate Now” buttons. We’ll talk about what you need to have on your website (and where) and what you need to send out in email to be successful. We’ll talk about creating the kind of content for your website and email newsletters that inspires donors to give more, and to give again. We’ll also touch on growing and managing your email list and tracking your success. Get the details.

Advanced Online Fundraising: Getting to WOW! in 8 Steps

On Thursday, April 23, I’ll turn it over to Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies for the “Advanced” course. Alia will show you how to go beyond the basics and, in eight steps, take your online fundraising to an entirely new level. She’ll give you the how-tos and some great examples that show you how it all works. I took a peek at her slides today, and if you feel like you have a solid foundation in place (decent processing, decent website, decent email) and are ready for the next step, you will love this webinar. Get the details.

As usual, individual webinars are an affordable $35. You can take both of these for $70. Or you can do the really smart thing and get the All-Access Pass for $97, and take these two webinars, plus everything else we offer for the next 12 weeks. Your Pass gets you access to both the live and recorded versions of the webinars, plus access to the Webinar Archive of recordings from the past year. Take a 3-Minute Tour of the All-Access Pass.

I hope to see you and your great questions Friday, Tuesday, and/or Thursday!

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

If the thought of asking someone for money makes your skin crawl, or you have a board that, despite all your begging and arm twisting, still fails to fundraise for you, tune into Magic Keys Radio on Friday. We’ll be talking about how to get over your fear of fundraising, and how you can help others, like board members, get over their fears.

Claire Meyerhoff and I will be hosting our live Internet radio show at 1:00 p.m. Eastern on Friday, March 6, with special guest Gail Perry. One of Gail’s most popular workshops is on getting boards fired up to fundraise, and a big part of that is helping people get over the fear of asking for money.

You can listen live through your computer, call in or chat in your questions, and download the podcast after the show ends at 1:30 p.m. ET. You can also get it later in the day on iTunes.

In this economy, you need your board working for you to sustain your organization financially. We’ll share even more detailed advice during our upcoming webinar “Taking the Fear Out of Fundraising” on Wednesday, March 18. How about inviting some of your board members to the office to watch it with you and then talking about how to put Gail’s advice to work for your good cause? Get the details and register.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Claire and I are hosting another live edition of Magic Keys Radio and Podcast tomorrow, Friday, February 20 at Noon Eastern (9:00 a.m. Pacific) – this time on fundraising auctions.

Our special guest will be Matt Holiday of Holiday Auctions.  Matt has all kinds of great advice on how to make your silent and live auctions raise as much money as possible for your good cause. He knows which items work and which flop. He also knows how to package your items and what to emphasize to get those bids to go higher and higher. And he’ll share it all with us on Friday! Have some vexing auction questions? Here’s your chance to get them answered by one of the top pros in the nation.

Matt was in the first group of auctioneers in the country to acquire the Benefit Auctioneer Specialist professional designation from the National Auctioneers Association. He’s run auctions for groups as diverse as the American Red Cross, Charleston Catholic School, March of Dimes,  Western North Carolina AIDS Project,  Greenville Rape Crisis & Child Abuse Center, and the National Kidney Foundation. He’s also currently president of the South Carolina Auctioneers Association.

You can listen live (note this is at Noon Eastern, an hour earlier than usual) and call in your questions over the phone or send them in via chat. Just click on the link to go to our BlogTalkRadio page, where you’ll find the streaming audio, the call-in number and the chat window. If you can’t join us live, the podcast is available immediately after the show at the same link and a little bit later in iTunes.

P.S. We’ll talk about auctions a little bit too during next week’s webinar, Turning Your Fundraising Event into the Best Party in Town, on Thursday, February 26. More than 100 nonprofits are registered already!

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Claire Meyerhoff and I will be talking about pitching – elevator pitches, pitching your story to the media, etc. – on today’s edition of Magic Keys Radio at 1:00 p.m. Eastern (10:00 a.m. Pacific). The half-hour show is live and you can call in your questions over the phone or send them in via chat. Immediately after the show, you can download it as a podcast.

Elevator pitches are also the topic for next week’s free webinar on Wednesday, February 4. Registration is required, and about 80 nonprofits have signed up so far. Get the details here and join us.

Now on to Mixed Links – great resources, ideas, and commentary for nonprofit communicators:

On Your Website . . .

Webiste useability guru Jakob Nielsen shares some tips on making your website’s press area as reporter friendly as possible.

Bryan Eisenberg suggests 33 free tools that can make your website better.

PotPieGirl talks about her five favorite free keyword research tools. Don’t know what your keywords are? It’s hard to do successful online marketing without them. (Thanks for MarketingProfs for the tip.)

On Your Email Marketing . . .

If you feel like you need to apologize in your email for possibly spamming, it means you are spamming, says Email Marketing Reports. Take note of language you should avoid and the importance of a permission-based list.

More on Online Marketing . . .

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has some fascinating new research out on the future of the Internet — “The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020, and the divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected.” They also have a new report on adult use of social networking sites — “The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years — from 8% in 2005 to 35% now.”

Beth Kanter has a great post and presentation on How to Think Like a Social Media Marketing Genius.

Mobile giving, where people donate via their phones by allowing a charge to be placed on their cell phone bills, is growing faster than online giving did in its first year, says the Mobile Giving Foundation.

Thinking about getting on Twitter? Read John Haydon’s how-to guide first.

On Fundraising . . .

Should you “pre-ask” before asking for a donation? Katya Andresen says probably not, and there’s a spirited debate on the Chronicle of Philanthropy site too, which picked up Katya’s post (I think some of the commenters are missing Katya’s point, but it’s an interesting dialogue on donor cultivation nevertheless).

Jeff Brooks and Marc Pitman show you how to use a fun tool to improve your fundraising copy — See Jeff’s take and Marc’s take.

Most small businesses give to charity – are you overlooking some potentially helpful partners?

Here’s another way that nonprofits are making money through social networking sites (this time by having their supporters include corporate advertising on their profiles).

On Keeping Your Supporters Happy . . .

Fieldstone Alliance – a great source for real-world advice – offers 8 tips for recruiting and retaining volunteers in tough times.

Heather Burton shares some great tips for ways to say Thank You to donors in this Nonprofit Times article.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy went inside the mind of one of the nation’s top donors.

And don’t forget to get your free copy of “The First 100 Days of Your New Nonprofit Marketing Job.”

That’s it for this week!

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.