Welcome to another round of Mixed Links! We’ve got some great social media and communications posts today.

This post by Kari Saratovsky not only sheds some light on the recent rise in Pinterest, but also shares some great infographics on Millennials. Check out The Millennial Story, Told By Infographic(s).

Think Facebook was confusing before? Beth Kanter shares What Do Facebook’s New Timeline Apps Mean for Nonprofits? Make sure you are fully awake (having a big mug of coffee, not a mixed drink!) when you get into this one. It’s powerful stuff, but not necessarily easy to understand.

When I released my 2012 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, I found that creating and sharing videos gained more in importance for nonprofits from 2011 to 2012 than other social media channels. Nonprofits are definitely beginning to see the benefits of being able to tell their story visually (more on that in my e-newsletter next week). If you are looking to jump on board, YouTube has just released even more features and tutorials in their YouTube Nonprofits Program.

For more ideas on using videos, Lori Jacobwith gives us an Awesome Example of Using Technology to Keep Supporters Engaged.

The folks at Throwing Light ask the question, Email Tsunami: How Much Is Too Much? Leah has some great ideas on how to find what’s right for you and your organization. I know this is a big question for many of you, so if you are curious what other nonprofits are doing, see what our Trends Report showed.

And for email’s staying power, Allyson Kapin proclaims Email: Still Not Dead! I love the point she makes about Mark Zuckerberg proclaiming that email will die, while requiring that people have an email address to sign up for Facebook. Be sure to check out the great infographic she uses to make her point.

Katya Andresen shares some new and interesting statistics in Why You Need Someone Else to Be Your Messenger. She explains why only letting your executive director or CEO speak for your organization may not be the best idea. People’s trust in these positions has gone down recently as folks rely more on recommendations by “regular” people.

Last but not least, Jeff Brooks writes How to Handle “Great Fundraising Ideas” From Your Board. And by “great fundraising ideas” he means “horrible fundraising ideas.”

I’m off to hang out with 35 Girl Scouts for a Camp-In (so I’ll be saving my Happy Hour for later in the weekend). Anyone want to guess how much sleep the adult chaperones will get tonight?

See you next week!

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

Happy Friday! Join me for some Mixed Links . . .

Let’s start with some free webinars. Nancy Schwartz is hosting  The 4 Keys to Pitch-Perfect Messaging on February 7 at 1:00 p.m. EST. During this webinar, you’ll learn how to create relationships with your supporters through strong messages.

Atlas of Giving released a report indicating that total giving to U.S. nonprofits in 2011 rose 7.5% over 2010. They are hosting a free webinar to highlight more findings from their report as well as the forecast for 2012. To register, go to http://www.infiniteconferencing.com/join and type in the participant code 79508108.

In other  fundraising news, Network for Good has some good insights based of a new study by Pew on mobile giving. According to the study, mobile donors are impulsive, social, and tech-saavy.

Lori Halley also provides some insight into a different Pew report — and specific community that may be critical to you — with her post Report Finds Church Membership Active Technology Users.

Jeff Brooks gives us Hints Galore on How to Raise Money with Newsletters.

My regular readers know I am always on the look out for alternatives to the boring lengthy nonprofit annual reports. Debra Askanase has some great examples of video annual reports in her post.

Have you been hearing a lot about Pinterest lately, but not sure why you would need it? 17 Things You Can Pin on Pinterest that Are Not Pillows and Dresses is a great post on how you might be able to take advantage of this new social media channel.

The 2012 Millennial Donor Survey needs your help! Achieve and Johnson, Grossnickle and Associates are conducting a nationwide study to assess the current perceptions, attitudes and preferences of Millennial donors age 20-35. The survey will run until January 31, 2012. If you are interested in working better with Millennials, take a few minutes to complete the survey.

Finally, here’s what’s coming up next in our Nonprofit Marketing Guide Webinar Series . . .

Jan 26: Nonprofit Writing Stinks! How to Bring Your Writing Back to Life

Feb 8: Help! My Logo Sucks! (featuring Julia Reich)

Feb 16: Helping Your Staff and Board Become Great Nonprofit Marketers

Feb 23: Building Your Credibility as an Expert

See you next week!

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

Getting back into the swing of things after the holidays is tough. Let’s have some Mixed Links.

We get a lot of questions about project management so I thought I would share one of our readers’ suggestions. Dana Wilson recommends a tool called One Page Project Manager.  It lets you track any project on a single one page document. Let me know if you like it as much as Dana!

If you haven’t taken a look at the December Nonprofit Blog Carnival, you’ll definitely want to check it out. December’s theme covered all the trends for 2012.  Submissions for January’s Carnival are being taken until January 27th over at Nancy Schwartz’s blog, Getting Attention. This month’s theme is “What’s Your Dream?”

While your at Nancy’s blog, check out How to Create Enough Good Content (Case Study) by Holly Ross of NTEN. Holly discusses NTEN’s e-newsletter strategy and how it has evolved over time. Great case study!

For fundraising advice for the new year, check out the Best Practices to Kickoff 2012 Online Fundraising.

5 Tips for Turning Small Change into Bigger Change discusses how to make the best of your small-change fundraisers.

Nonprofit HR Solutions and the Improve Group have launched the 2012 version of the annual Nonprofit Employment Trends Survey. Go to www.NonprofitHR.com/survey to participate or for more information.

Finally, if you have noticed that your Facebook page just doesn’t have the activity it did when you first launched, John Haydon gives you 17 Ways to Resuscitate a Fading Facebook Page.

See you next week!

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

It’s cold out, so time for some hot Mixed Links! (If you are new here, this is our close-to-weekly Friday Happy Hour link roundup of good stuff we don’t want you to miss.)

What’s the biggest marketing lesson you learned in 2011? Nancy Schwartz wants to know. Share your thoughts and you will be the first to receive a free copy of Nancy’s 2012 Nonprofit Marketing Wisdom Guide.

Nancy also published a great blog post called Transform Your Message from Inside the Box that reminds us we have to know what’s inside the box before we can think outside of it (and to maybe stop using that phrase).

Another great piece from Dan Pallotta . . . I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore. Dan points out the absurdity of what has now become normal business conversation.

For those of you frustrated by your boards or bosses trying to sabatoge your direct mail appeal with their lame comments, read Tom Ahern’s What Happens When Know-Nothings Are Allowed to Outvote the Fundraiser? A Sure-Fire Recipe for Disaster. This is why Tom is the master, and why we are so thrilled that he is teaching our Direct Mail for Small Nonprofits e-clinic twice a year (next session in May 2012)!

Curious to know what cause is talked about the most on social media? Craig Newmark and Rad Campaign created this infographic called Who Rules Social Media? A Look at Social Media Impact by Nonprofit Issues. You will have to like Craig’s Facebook page to see it.

For more information on social media, Cause Marketing Forum released a white paper on Facebook and cause marketing called, Facebook and Cause Marketing: Truths, Tips and Trends from Pioneers. You can download the executive summary for free or purchase the full report which also comes with a webinar recording.

As a big proponent of segmenting your email lists, I enjoyed this post by Mike Snusz called “Raise More by Avoiding ‘One Size Fits All’ Email Appeals.”

Another tip for sending emails: consider mobile phones. Check out this infographic posted by Justine Jordan called Anatomy of the Perfect Mobile Email. If you aren’t convinced about this whole mobile marketing thing, check out this statistic from IMPACTMAX’s Top Mobile Social Media Apps for Nonprofits: It’s predicted that by the end of 2014, mobile (smart phone and tablet) access to the web will have outstripped desktop access.

In another infographic, this one posted by Jocelyn Harmon, you can track The Evolution of the Online Donor.

The November Nonprofit Blog Carnival is up! The host was Pamela Grow and she has put together The quintessential guide to giving thanks.

Finally, be sure to subscribe to NTEN’s new free journal NTEN: Change.  As Annaliese at NTEN puts it, “This publication is designed for non-technical, nonprofit leadership staff, and we hope it will inspire and inform them about the ways that technology can help their organizations create the change they’re working so hard for.” I’m on the editorial board for the journal, and it rocks.

See you next week!

P.S. Our final webinar of the year is next week on Wednesday: The New and Improved Nonprofit Annual Report.

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

It’s Friday, so it’s time for Mixed Links.

Let’s start with some Facebook advice…

If you are looking to add a custom tab to your Facebook page that only your fans can see, but feel like you just aren’t “techy” enough to figure it out, John Haydon has a video tutorial for you.

For more on what the recent Facebook changes mean specifically for nonprofits, we have a post from Amy Sample Ward and the slides from a recent webinar Danielle Brigida did with Care2.

And now for some fundraising . . .

Geoff Livingston explains the genius behind the big winners of Give to the Max Day: Greater Washington. Small is beautiful, people!

Jocelyn Harmon shares her slides and other tips from a recent presentation she gave on how to say thank- you to your donors. For more on writing thank-yous, check out my upcoming webinar on the topic. The Nonprofit Blog Carnival will also cover thank-yous this month, so stay tuned for that.

Margaux Smith shares an “a-ha moment” she had at a recent fundraising conference while watching a group of  ”stupid nonprofit ads” (courtesy of our friend Jeff Brooks)  in I Am the Comms Devil.

What else . . .

What do you do when all of a sudden you find yourself in a creative slump? Check out this post by Todd Henry on how to spark that creative drive by activating  your Red Zone.

Ready to do some newsjacking? That’s when you pounce on news as it is happening, so you get your message embedded in the stories, and there’s a new book out all about it. MarketingProfs provides a quick summary.

Have you taken our 2012 Nonprofit Communications Trends Survey yet? We’ve heard from about 600 nonprofits so far.

Finally, as the holiday season approaches, couldn’t we all use a little extra time? Here are 10 Time Management Tips for Nonprofit Communicators.

See you next week!

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

Before I pour this week’s Mixed Links, here are a few training opportunities happening next week at Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com:

Would you like an expert to offer feedback on the direct mail appeal letter you’ll be sending soon, before it goes out? This is your last chance to sign up for this month’s e-clinic Direct Mail for Small Nonprofits with Tom Ahern, which starts Tuesday, 11/8/11. This is a great opportunity to get the guidance you need fine-tune your direct mail appeal so it gets the results you want. Register here. I’ll close registration Monday evening.

On Wednesday (11/9/11), I will be be presenting my popular webinar, Taming Your Editorial Calendar and Content Creation Process. I am offering a special package for this webinar only. Anyone who registers will have the opportunity to purchase my e-book, The Nonprofit Content Marketing Cookbook for only $25 (regularly priced $37).  Just look for the check box in your shopping cart.

Now, let’s dive in to those links!

First off, the October Nonprofit Blog Carnival is up. The theme was Improving the Volunteer Experience and is chock full of terrific posts.  Also, Pamela Grow has posted the November call for submissions with a holiday theme on one of my favorite communications and fundraising topics – How are you giving thanks?

In social media news, learn how to develop a thicker skin when dealing with negative comments on your Facebook page.

Katya Andresen of Network for Good overhauls one nonprofit’s website. Check out the results. Katya also has a great post called, The Cure for the Nonprofit Crisis? Focus. I’ve met so many nonprofit communicators who can’t answer the basic questions in Katya’s post. Can you?

Lindsey Bealko has a great post with NTEN called “Learning in the White Space: 5 Unintended Lessons from a Marketing Class.”

Finally, if you are looking for a new nonprofit marketing job, Nancy Schwartz has posted some new opportunities on her weekly Friday Futures post.

Have a great weekend!

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

We’ve got a little bit of everything this week, so let’s dive right in to some Mixed Links!

Earlier this week, I presented my webinar “Telling Powerful Stories about Everyday People.” In that webinar I talk about avoiding “boring bio syndrome” and Nancy Schwartz has done a great job of explaining just How to Transform Staff Bios from Mundane to Magical in 6 Easy Steps.

Fundraising

Gail Perry will show you Where to Find the Donors This Fall in a free webinar Tuesday, November 1st.

Thinking about using Kickstarter to fund a project? Maureen Carruthers shares her experience in 3 Lessons from my first Kickstarter Campaign.

Online Marketing and New Technology

If you have wondered how the highest earning nonprofits use social media, Craig Newmark has condensed it into a nifty infographic for you called How the Top 50 Nonprofit Do Social Media.

Steve Heye of YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago shows how you can balance letting all of staff share their great stories online and keeping your brand and voice consistent in Enabling Program Staff to Become Digital Editors.

Has your nonprofit thought about using mobile payments to accept donations on the go? Amber Wobschall shares a few places where having mobile payment technology would be helpful.

Creativity

In this increasingly connected world we live in, Scott Belsky asks What Happened To Downtime? The Extinction Of Deep Thinking And Sacred Space. I am reading Scott’s book, and invite you to join me.

And when you find yourself completely stuck – 7 Types of Creative Block (and What to Do about Them).

For more ideas and tips, check out these training opportunities here at Nonprofit Marketing Guide:

11/8 – 11/18: Direct Mail for Small Nonprofits (E-clinic with Tom Ahern) Limited availability so register now!

Upcoming Webinars:

12/1: Trends for 2012 and Your Marketing Plan for the New Year

See you next week!

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

It’s Friday! Time for another round of Mixed Links!

First off, Happy Birthday to my assistant and sister, Kristina Leroux!

Now to the nonprofit marketing goodies . . .

Causes on Facebook has added a great new feature: Welcome and Thank You Videos. Whether you use Causes.com or not, the idea of welcome and thank you videos is FABULOUS.

John Haydon helps us keep up with the constantly changing Facebook page features in How to Use the New Facebook Insights (Video Tutorial).

We’ve got double the goodies from Beth Kanter this week. First, with more Facebook news, she gives us notes from Mari Smith’s webinar on the recent Facebook changes. Then, she gives us a great interview with Paull Young of charity: water detailing their strategy, measuring results, and tactics.

Katya Andresen shares The Limits and Virtues of Empathy and why it isn’t quite enough to get people to act.

If you’ve been hearing a lot lately about social fundraising, you should check out Dawn Crawford’s post Nonprofit Tool Box: Peer-to-Peer Fundraising that highlights BC/DC Ideas’ favorite social fundraising tool.

Want to know The Secret to Achieving 3X Better Fundraising Results? Frank Barry posts an infographic on how online and offline giving go hand in hand.

The Case Foundation released a “lessons learned” report about planning and executing a virtual convening (in other words, an online conference) based on their experiences with the Millennial Donor Summit.

Nonprofit Communicator Blog shares 7 Tips to Building and Maintaining Your Media List

And here’s what’s coming up next at Nonprofit Marketing Guide:

10/20: Telling Powerful Stories about Every Day People

10/24: Multi-Channel Fundraising: Strategies and Tools to Engage Donors through Integrated Campaigns(with Rachel Hope Allison)

11/2: Your End-of-Year Email Fundraising Plan

11/8 – 11/18: Direct Mail for Small Nonprofits (E-clinic with Tom Ahern) Limited availability so register now! (July e-clinic sold out several weeks in advance, so don’t delay.)

11/9: Taming Your Editorial Calendar and Content Creation Process

11/16: How to Write a Quick and Dirty Marketing Strategy (Free, but asking for $10 donation to Positive Wellness Alliance)

I’ll be in Kansas City on Tuesday for the Philanthropy Midwest conference, so if you’ll be there, please find me and say Hi!

Have a great weekend!

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

Happy Friday! I’m in Edmonton, Alberta today at the Alberta EcoTrust Foundation’s River Rally. I hear there will be margaritas at my evening keynote tonight  . . .  Something tells me I should skip Happy Hour! So here are some Mixed Links instead.

TIME SENSITIVE: Voting closes today for potential NTEN conference sessions. Check out Nancy Schwartz’s blog for links to various sessions and also see ones she voted for.

Seems like everyone is talking about Facebook this week after they launched some new features and a new format (again). They also unveiled more big changes coming soon.

For an update on the changes check out this HubSpot post.

John Haydon talks about the new subscribe feature with two posts that show how it can benefit your nonprofit. How to activate Facebook’s new Subscribe Button (and what it means) and 7 ways Facebook’s Subscribe Button can be a nonprofit game-changer.

Frogloop also weighs in on the subscribe button with What the Facebook Subscribe Feature Means to Nonprofit News Sharing.

NTEN gives a great case study in How a Simple Facebook Strategy Can Turn a Crisis into a Community.

As everyone is gearing up for the end of the year fundraising, here is some advice from around the blogosphere.

The Agitator shares how to Turn Fans into Ambassadors.

Katya Andresen gives some relationship advice – relationships with donors, that is.

Blackbaud lists 5 Donation Form Bad Practices.

And finally, Jeff Brooks advises To Be a Good Fundraiser, Think Like a Donor, Not Like a Fundraiser.

Here’s what’s coming up next at Nonprofit Marketing Guide:

11/8 – 11/18: Direct Mail for Small Nonprofits (E-clinic with Tom Ahern) Limited availability so register now! (July e-clinic sold out several weeks in advance, so don’t delay.)

Upcoming webinars:

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

Happy Friday, everyone! Let’s unwind with a few mixed links – good stuff for nonprofit communicators.

Social Media

For great insights into nonprofits and Facebook, NTEN has released the 2011 Benchmarks Extra: Facebook which dissects data from 34 nonprofits. Just “like” their Facebook page to receive the report.

Carie Lewis of HSUS shares a great presentation called “Why I don’t ‘Like’ You” on Prezi and reminds us it’s not about how many “likes” you have, but what you do after that matters.

Farra Trompeter gives us Quick hits from the Social Media for Nonprofits NYC conference. She provides some great takeaways for those of us who couldn’t attend.

Michael Scissons shares the biggest mistakes marketers make on Facebook in Four Things Mark Zuckerberg Should Tell Every CMO.

Events and Fundraising

Earlier in the month, I had a set of fabulous ladies guest blog for me on event marketing. Be sure to read these before planning your next event.

6 Tips for Successful Special Events by Sandy Rees
Butts in Seats: 5 Tips for Event Marketing Using Social Media by Ceci Dadisman
Dress Code Required: Slippers & PJs – How to Leverage Social Media Supporters for Your Next Event by Dawn Crawford
Why You Should Ditch Your Next Event by Gail Perry

Another must-read is Network for Good’s free e-book The Next Big Event.

Geoff Livingston gives us Confessions of a Serial Online Fundraiser. After raising more than $28,000 in the last two years, he shares some important lessons learned.

If you have never heard of cause marketing or want to know more, I suggest you check out my upcoming e-clinic with Joe Waters. Creating Fundraising Partnerships with Businesses starts September 12 and will show you how businesses will fundraise for you. This e-clinic is limited to only 20 nonprofits so grab your spot now!

Content

My regular readers know I am big into content – how to find it, how to organize it, how to make it appealing to your audience. Charlotte Hill of EARN, in a guest post on Katya Andresen’s blog, shares what happened when her organization listened to the concerns of its supporters.

And some of my favorite content? The stuff that makes me laugh. Lots of people think they can’t be or shouldn’t be funny so Leigh Anne Jasheway gives us How to Write Better Using Humor. As she puts it, “a smiling reader is one who’s paying attention and eager to read on.”

Finally, NTEN is looking for nonprofits like yours to take part in a survey about the tools you use to manage how you interact with donors, volunteers, activists, and supporters. They will release the results in the 2011 Data Ecosystem Report.

If you are looking for nonprofit training, take a look at my upcoming webinar schedule:

August 23: Building Your Lists of Email Subscribers, Friends, and Followers

September 7: Social Media Starter Kit: Best Practices for Nonprofits on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

September 13: Making the Ask: Getting People to Give, Volunteer and More

September 20: Rethinking Your Nonprofit Newsletter: Making It More Relevant for Today

October 4: Getting Started with Email Marketing and Fundraising

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.