Nonprofit Communications

I’m going to try something new next week - instead of a weekly webinar, I’ll be hosting live “office hours” on Tuesday, May 20th, from 2:00 - 2:30 p.m. Eastern, right here on my blog.

Using a service called CoverItLive, I’ll be taking your questions and answering them in a live chat format. You don’t need any special software or accounts. Simply come to the blog home page on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. ET, and you’ll see the chat taking place.

You can submit questions right then and I’ll answer as many as I can on the spot. This won’t be an unwieldy chat where you can’t keep track of the conversation. I’ll choose which questions to answer, post them to the screen, and then answer them, so it’s all organized and easy to follow. Afterwards, you’ll be able to view the transcript of the entire session.

If you’d like an email reminder about “office hours” closer to the actual time, just fill in the form below. Select when you want the reminder from the drop-down menu, then enter your email address and hit enter. I hope you’ll stop by on Tuesday and submit a question!

Have you heard the one about the breast cancer patient on Twitter and the frozen peas yet? If so, you can skip the next paragraph and move on to why I think this is such a great lesson for do-it-yourself nonprofit communicators. If not, here’s the quick summary:

Susan Reynolds gets a breast biopsy and then a mastectomy. She is an avid social networker, so she’s tweeting and blogging the experience at Boobs on Ice. She posts a photo of herself easing the pain with a bag of peas on her breasts. Long story short, the crowd goes wild, she’s got people all over the place taking photos of themselves with bags of peas, and now there is a Frozen Pea Fund that’s raised over $7,000 for the American Cancer Society. I learned about this story from Craig Colgan, who wrote a great feature for the Washington Post called “How Frozen Peas Started A Movement: Cancer Patient’s Blog Builds Web Community,” which you can read on his blog. Oh, and this all took place in less than five weeks.

The lesson here is not how social networking lets you make friends and influence them to part with cash. We’ve seen tons of examples of that working. The big lessons are instead (1) be completely human and (2) let others run with your ideas. That’s how to build an online community that actually accomplishes something.

While I have never spoken with Susan, I seriously doubt that posting a photo of herself with frozen peas sticking out of her camisole was some calculated move to raise money. Instead, it was authentic, natural, and also a bit funny. In other words, it was completely human. And that’s what people respond to. They don’t respond to monolithic nonprofit organizations with mission statements and action plans. They respond to human beings.

Then, she let it take off. People started taking the pea photos. A online friend suggested donating the price of two bags of peas to breast cancer research. Another suggested setting up an actual fund to group the donations. And another, who just happened to be doing consulting on social media and working with the American Cancer Society brought it all together. Lots of people are doing lots of different things and something tells me Susan is not chained to her computer trying to micromanage it all. She’s got better things to do, like fight her breast cancer. She doesn’t need to do anything else but what she’s been doing all along on Twitter and her blog. It’s happening, in some ways now, without her.

My guess is that the being human part will be much easier for most nonprofit marketers than the letting go part. But if you are willing to run a bit of risk of people going completely off-message, you might find they come up with something that’s way better than you ever dreamed.

After trial runs with both GoToWebinar and ReadyTalk this fall, I’m launching my 2008 webinar series on nonprofit marketing topics using ReadyTalk. And after hearing from a woman in one of my Duke classes that her nonprofit adoption agency paid a ridiculous sum of money (in the several hundreds of dollars) to host a webinar for less than a dozen prospective adoptive parents, I realized that nonprofits are looking for cost-effective, easy ways to deliver training and information too.

Here is my take on these two services.

GoToWebinar

What I Liked:

-The user-interface was very easy to follow and figure out.

-They offer fully integrated tools for promoting your events, tracking registration, sending automated reminders, etc., although not all of the system emails can be customized as much as I would like.

-The fixed monthly fee was very appealing, because it would allow me to budget for the expense regardless of how many webinars I did per month, or how many people attended. I see that as a big bonus for some nonprofits too.

-They have advanced tools to monitor participants during the webinar. For example, you can tell how long your webinar was the top window on someone’s computer and how often they were working on something else.

-I could start the trial immediately through their website.

-GoToWebinar lets you poll the audience live by presenting multiple choice questions on the screen that participants can click on, giving you instant, compiled feedback about what people think about various topics. Several participants in the webinar I did said they really loved the instant polling feature.

What I Didn’t Like:

-While all the data on participants is nice after the fact, for me, all of those monitors and icons were in the way during the live event. I couldn’t present the webinar and monitor all those panels at the same time, so they were distractions more than anything else.

-Other than sending in chat messages, there was no way for me to know which specific participants had questions or would like to participate in exercises with me.

-To record the webinar for later viewing, I had to record the audio on my own hard drive, and then allow GoToWebinar to integrate the files. It worked OK, but seems fraught with potential for problems. I understand that GoToWebinar is fixing this in its latest upgrade.

ReadyTalk

What I Liked:

-The “Raise Hand” feature allows me to see the name of the person who has a question, allowing me to ask that person to unmute their line and ask a question or participate in an exercise.

-The system uses Java, instead of its own program requiring a download (like GotoWebinar), which makes it very easy for everyone to use (although no one complained about the GotoWebinar download).

-The audio and video recordings are fully integrated.

-You can show your presentation slides from your desktop (as GoToWebinar requires), or you can upload your presentation and run the slides through ReadyTalk. Not only does the upload eliminate bandwidth issues, but it also allows me as the presenter to preview slides and skip around much more easily without the audience seeing everything I’m doing. And I can still show my desktop or specific applications when I want to.

What I Didn’t Like:

-I had to wait on a customer service rep to start my trial run. While my rep ended up being very helpful, he insisted on talking to me on the phone and then was out sick, so I had to wait several days before I could really get started. I do a lot of online tinkering after my kids are in bed, so I prefer fully automated trials.

-The ReadyTalk website doesn’t include pricing information and you have to wait for your sales rep to come back to you with pricing packages. That always feels a little bit like used car buying to me. I’m not unhappy with what I’m paying, but I do prefer upfront, fixed rate pricing options, which GoToWebinar offers.

-ReadyTalk offers virtually no support (except for some ugly email invitations) for promoting your webinar and registering participants. I understand that they will be introducing a new module that will take care of many of these tasks later this year. But for now, you have to use another system for everything.

-The user interface is rather sparse. It’s easy enough now that I have figured out where everything is, but it is not as intuitive or rich in features as GoToWebinar.

-Their security system for preventing unregistered people from participating is not as rigorous as GotoWebinar’s.

Why I Ultimately Chose ReadyTalk

I decided that ReadyTalk’s technology works better for my needs than GoToWebinar’s. ReadyTalk has also made significant inroads into the nonprofit community, which means that many of you who will be registering for my webinars will already be familiar with their system. For me, these two reasons outweighed GoToWebinar’s far superior tools for webinar promotion and management. But not by a whole lot, especially given that GoToWebinar is cheaper given how much I plan to use the service.

While ReadyTalk did offer me the NTEN membership enterprise deal for unlimited web connections, no flat rate is available for the audio connections. For me to be a full-blown ReadyTalk evangelist, they need to unveil their new event management system and they need to develop better flat-rate pricing packages that are more competitive with GoToWebinar’s rates.

I just learned about this very cool site and I wish I’d known about it sooner, as it could have saved me HOURS of piddling around: ColorBlender.com

If you have ever struggled to decide what colors go together when designing anything for print or the Web (or decorating your office, for that matter), this tool will be a life-saver. Simply click on the first box, change it to one color you know you like, and then see how the program fills in the other five boxes.

Play around with the color sliders until you get the exact palette you want, and then copy down the HTML and RGB values for use in your design programs. You can also save them in formats that will import directly into Photoshop and Illustrator and get approximate PMS values too.

If you are in a big hurry and don’t want to pick even the first color on your own, you can “browse blends” for a bunch of combinations.

I see lots of great uses for this tool:

–Finally figuring out what colors look good with your logo color

–Developing your newsletter design style sheet, with headline colors matching text, boxes, folios, etc.

–Reigning in overzealous marketing volunteers by limiting their color palette to one that works

–Improving your branding by using a consistent color palette

–Creating a complete color palette for your annual report

–Finding the right color mat when framing photographs (simply sample a dominant color in the photo)

–Customizing your PowerPoint template so it looks professional and fresh

Thanks to Teaching Sells for the tip.

This afternoon at the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits Annual Conference, I attended another great session called “Social Media Technology: How to Raise Money, Recruit Volunteers, and Spread Your Message” by Chris Meade, COO of NPower, Charlotte Region.

NPower is a nonprofit consultancy that helps other nonprofits with technology. It has 13 affiliates around the U.S. Chris did an amazing job covering a huge topic in a little over an hour.

He opened the presentation with some general definitions and examples of what social media is and how it differs from traditional, linear communication. After going over some of the implications of using social media, Chris reminded everyone that social media is not a replacement for traditional forms of communication, but an add-on.

He broke down the field into four categories: Communications (podcasting, vlogs, blogs, rss, listservs), Organizing and Networking (event management, mapping, aggregators), Knowledge and Collaboration (wikis, bookmarking, discussion forums), and Hybrids (mashups, social shopping).

He then described the three ways that nonprofit can use social media.

(1) Raising Money: Friends asking friends for donations (sponsors for a 5K run), affinity shopping

(2) Recruiting and Engaging Volunteers: Friends getting others involved, self-service scheduling and participation (invitation management, meeting handouts), where knowledge is the volunteer’s contribution (support groups sharing stories and creating a body of experience and knowledge), training for staff, volunteers.

(3) Spreading the Message: Campaigning and advocacy, marketing and storytelling about mission and programs.

Next he shared some specific examples.

Komen effectively uses the “Friend to Friend” fundraising model for its walks/runs/events. You as a volunteer can use their template to ask friends to support you and you can chart your progress, including an honor roll of givers. You set a limited goal and your personal relationships help you meet it. They also do a ton of affinity shopping (all those pink products, the Garth Brooks Pink CD, etc.)

Kiva, the microlending network, lets donors lend to specific entrepreneurs in the developing world in very small amounts. At end of the loan period, you can get your money back. Default rate is less than 1%. It’s a very good way of taking wealth and helping other people on a one to one basis. The social media technology allows these very personal investments and connections to be made between people who are worlds away from each other. Volunteers have created a whole community around microlending.

wikiCancer — Allows people to create and edit the content of the site with stories and “what to do when diagnosed” tips. Wikis allow you to bring others in and compile resources and the latest thinking on an issue. You don’t have to wait for someone else to tell you the answer, because you are creating the answers yourself as a group.

Volunteermatch — A match-making site for nonprofits and volunteers that has grown into an online community, so you can hook up with other people who are interested in the same things you are.

NPower uses Sharepoint as a portal for its board, so they can share documents, calendars, etc. You don’t have to mail that board packet if everyone can easily access it online. Npower also uses Sharepoint as the CMS for their website.

Greenpeace is doing great work with viral videos on YouTube. (The hotel wireless blocked YouTube, so Chris couldn’t show the videos he wanted in the session, but I found them.) Share your message in 1-2 minutes. Well-linked videos allow you to dig deep and explore.

In closing, Chris offered these questions for nonprofits who are thinking about social media:

Is your audience online? More and more people will be, so it’s good to start now, even if your audience isn’t really there yet.

Are you willing to let others shape and morph your message?

Are you willing to share the “secret sauce?” You have to be willing to share strategy before it’s fully baked.

Do you have the time and interest to seed the process?

Chris suggests experimenting with social media as a new means of communication or volunteer engagement before using it as a fundraising tool. Move in slowly. Explore the various free sites, then procure and explore paid tools and technology that you can manage, once you have a good feeling for how it can work for you.

Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project asked about our favorite learning resources and what gets us excited about learning new things. I get tons of great information from reading other people’s blogs, but I saw that Rosetta Thurman wrote a great post about that already, so I’ll go with another favorite learning tool of mine: playing around with new software and online services via free trials.

As I’ve explained here before, I am a do-it-yourself nut and often try multiple solutions to a single problem. Free trials help fuel this habit. (Before you recommend that I enter self-employed consultant rehab, rest assured that I am getting better about hiring others to do the really important or really hard stuff, rather than trying to learn how to do everything myself.)

Still, I’ve found using free trials is a great way to learn about the abilities and limitations of various systems and how they could impact my clients’ work and my own business. By seeing what software and services can do, you also open up new possibilities you may not have considered before. Most free trials limit quantities, but that can match up just fine with a test run of a new campaign.

Along those lines, here are some free trials you might want to try, if you are considering ramping up your nonprofit communications, while learning something new along the way.

Hobbling along with Publisher or PageMaker?

Adobe is now offering 30-day free trials of all of the products in the Creative Suite line, including InDesign, which is the far and away the best layout program out there. I hung in there with PageMaker for several years because a couple of clients used it, but I’ve told them I’m done with it and going with InDesign 100%. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it, and there are ways to get it for less (TechSoup has it right now for $60). If you want to test-drive the full CS line, which also includes DreamWeaver, PhotoShop, Illustrator and several other programs, you can get a CD for $9.99.

Still pondering an email newsletter?

If aren’t sending out an email newsletter yet, simply because you are afraid of the tech side, relax. It’s really quite easy these days. I use iContact for clients and some of my own newsletters. They have expanded way beyond e-newsletters to offer RSS feeds, surveys, autoresponders, and the like. Their free trial is for 15 days and you can send 1,500 messages to up to 250 subscribers. That’s plenty of room to test drive a new e-newsletter. Just make sure that you have your list together before you start the trial so you don’t waste free days.

I’ve also used ConstantContact and know several people who like their service, even though I’m not using it anymore (because I like iContact better). But since we are talking free trials, why not sign up for this one too and figure out what you like best? They offer email newsletter and survey services. They’ve got a 60-day trial offer.

Looking for a way to manage online photo galleries?

Of course, if you are simply looking for ways to share photos online, I recommend Flickr. But if you want more control over how your images appear in a gallery and you want that gallery integrated into your own website, I like Shozam, which I wrote about earlier this week.

Forget photo galleries — Do you need actual photos?

I highly recommend that you use photos everywhere, but especially on your website, in your print newsletter and in your annual report. My favorite site for stock photography, and it seems I use it almost daily lately, is iStockPhoto. They don’t have a free trial per se, although you can browse and download comps (photos with their logo on them) for free. You can purchase credits for as little as $12, so it’s close to free.

Considering a postcard mail campaign?

I use VistaPrint for business cards and also for postcards. They give away lots of free samples, customized with your logo, etc, including 250 business cards, 10 note cards, 100 postcards, one pad of post-its, and a rubber stamp. You pay shipping and handling. Why not get the postcards and run a small trial mailing for a campaign you’ve been considering? You could match it up with that new email campaign your test-driving too!

OK, that should keep you busy for awhile!

One last tip on the free software downloads . . . be sure to keep track of what you install and uninstall anything you decide you don’t want. I ended up with five different photo galleries on my computer and it was a mess to clean up.

I’ve played around with lots of different photo galleries, both free and for a fee, for both clients and for my personal blog, where I keep my far-flung family happy with lots of kid photos. I’ve decided that I like Shozam the best (formerly Web Gallery Wizard) and here’s why.

It gives me complete control over how the photos appear and offers several nice templates for the photo galleries. Some of them are a little cheesy, but most are tasteful templates that can work well with many website designs. It’s got a step-by-step process (Steps #1 - 6) that’s really easy to follow, so you don’t get lost in the process of moving your photos from your camera to the web. I don’t have to do anything to my photos before placing them into the program. It takes care of all the sizing, rotating, creating thumbnails, etc. Adding captions is simple and you can also add audio and video clips.

I also like that it comes in several different versions, allowing me to pick the version with the number of tools I needed, and not pay for the ones I don’t. I bought the advanced version for $99.99, and it’s the mid-range version. The Lite version (the most basic version) is $24.95. Naturally, I recommend that you start with the free trial. It will let you test drive the various options before you spend the cash, which is always nice. It took me awhile before I coughed up the money, but after trying several of the free or cheap solutions and being really unhappy in the end, I’m glad I spend the bucks to get the product that works for me.
If you know of a program that does all that Shozam does for the same price or less, let me know by leaving a comment.

Only 37% of nonprofits are tracking the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, according to a new survey by Nancy Schwartz at Getting Attention. This is, of course, a real shame, because tracking is what helps you figure out what’s working, what’s not, and how you can be more effective over time. The great news is that there are some very simple and cheap tools you can use to track your online marketing campaigns. In fact, most online marketing tools have tracking built into them — you are already paying for them. You just have to use them.

Websites

Any half-way decent hosting package will include a basic statistics package. Idealware just did a report on web analytic packages that’s definitely worth a read. If you are pressed for time and only want to track a few elements on a monthly basis, my top five would be

- Visits - the number of people looking at each page. This tells you the most popular pages on your site.
- Unique visitors - how many different people are visiting your site, regardless of how many times they returned.
- Referrers - where your visitors were before they came to your site. Are they finding you through Google, by typing in your URL directly, or by clicking on a link from someone else’s site?
- Click Path - where people come into your site, where they go, and where they leave. You can also look at top entry and exit pages, but the full click path gives you a better sense for how people typically use your site.
- Keywords - which words people are using in search engines to find your site (and conversely, which words are important to you that aren’t bringing people in).

Email Newsletters

You really should be using an email newsletter service like Intellicontact or Constant Contact (both of which I recommend) for your e-newsletters and not trying to send them out of Outlook or Thunderbird. More on that some other time. When you use a service like this, you get all kinds of great tracking data. Again, my top five to track would be

- Released or Sent Successfully - your total list minus bounced messages. This helps you track the quality of your list over time. The fewer bounces, the better.
- Open Rate - how many people are opening the email (HTML email only).
- Click Throughs - how many people are clicking on a link in the email. This shows they are reading it and taking action or looking for more information. You can also see which links they are clicking on.
- Forwards - how many people are forwarding your message to someone else.
- Unsubscribes - how many people are getting off your list. Don’t be alarmed if you regularly lose a few people. But if your unsubscribes spike, carefully examine what in that particular message sent people fleeing from your list.

Blogs

Why are you blogging in the first place? The answer will determine what you should be tracking. Register with Feedburner and Technorati to get whatever stats you need that your blogging platform doesn’t provide it. All of the stats above for websites also apply to blogs. In addition to those, you might also track

- Subscribers - how many people have affirmatively shown interest in your blog by subscribing to your RSS feed.
- Technorati Rank - where you rank in the greater blogosphere, as determined by the number and variety of links to your blog.

As you read this list, you may have said “Doh! How obvious!” But are you actually using all of these tools to the fullest? It’s like when I walk around my house on hot summer days looking for the source of that strange smell. After looking in every room for some kid-induced odor source, I usually end up saying, “Doh! It’s the neighbor’s barnyard!” I know it’s there, but it’s become part of the background, and I forget about it. Get these tools back into the foreground and your marketing campaigns will surely improve over time.