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!

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As I’ve said before, presidential campaigns are great for nonprofit marketers and fundraisers because they give us a sneak peek into how we’ll be engaging our supporters and motivating them to volunteer and donate in the years to come. The current edition of Newsweek has a very interesting description of what the Obama campaign is cooking up, including these especially noteworthy observations.

It’s All About Hyper-personalization and Targeting

If you don’t have some kind of system in place to keep track of what your individual supporters care about, this is the year to figure that out. You are going to want that information. Look at what the Obama campaign is doing (I added the bold):

“The campaign can do a much better job of “treating people like people,” according to Michael Slaby, Obama’s chief integration and innovation officer—provided it harvests the right data. Don’t ask a disenchanted Ohioan for money; woo him first. Don’t reach out to a supporter who donates $5 during the State of the Union the same way you’d reach out to a supporter who donates $5 during a Republican debate; they respond to different incentives. To figure out who each of us is, and what each of us wants, Slaby and his team are constructing a “microlistening” and computer modeling program that will comb online and off-line behavior patterns for voter information, then use it to personalize every interaction we have with the campaign: fundraising, volunteering, persuasion, mobilization.”

“In 2012 the Obama campaign won’t send its backers a video and say, “Share this with everyone you know”; it will say, “Share this with your four Facebook friends in Pennsylvania’s crucial Lehigh Valley swing district who are worried about the president’s tax policies.”

Need help with this? Start with Idealware’s constituent management recommendations and case studies.

Go Where Your Supporters Already Are

Rather than investing in creating its own social network, the campaign is going where everyone already is — Facebook — and leveraging all it offers for their own purposes.

“In 2008, the campaign encouraged supporters to create profiles on a social networking site called MyBarackObama.com. But while MyBO was advanced for the times, it was also weirdly detached from the actual field structure—and from Facebook, which has since become the world’s default social network. So for 2012 Slaby decided to ditch the site and start from scratch. “We’re not building a social network,” one insider told me. “You don’t need to create an account. You don’t need to upload a photo.” Instead, by logging in with their Facebook ID, volunteers get immediate access to “any tool that you can get in a field office.”

Need help with this? We are offering our “Social Media Starter Kit: Facebook for Nonprofits” webinar next Thursday, January 19 for All-Access Pass Holders. CharityHowTo also offers good Facebook training.

Make It Work in Mobile

You can’t ignore it . . . people are looking at your website and reading your email on something that’s often smaller than a business card.

“Last November, the campaign redesigned its website so that it would look and work the same on every platform: PC, mobile, tablet. The motivation wasn’t merely aesthetic; a site that renders properly on a smartphone makes it easier for volunteers to register new voters and call undecideds on the go, and that kind of efficiency translates into extra votes.”

Need help with this? Stay tuned! I’m excited that Tonia and Susan from TheMGen will be joining us this spring with blog posts, a free webinar, and an e-book on mobile.  Also check out Google’s How to Go Mobile initiative.

It may be many years off before your nonprofit reaches the level of sophistication described here, but it will get there eventually. Start doing what you can now, by understanding what’s happening and taking baby steps in those directions.

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Kristina Leroux

A few Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com readers have asked about QR codes so I thought it would be a good idea to get my assistant, Kristina, to explain what they are and how you can use them.  ~Kivi

Guest Post by Kristina Leroux of Kristina Leroux.com

QR Codes have actually been around for a while. They just took a while to catch on here in the U.S. Our friends at Wikipedia tell us that QR (Quick Response) Codes were originally created by a Japanese corporation to track car parts. It’s a two dimensional bar code that was designed to allow for quick decoding, but honestly, I know you don’t really care about the science behind it, right?

You just wanna know what’s the big deal and what the heck it does, right? Well, that little box stores information such as addresses, contact information, or website addresses. Anything you’d like it to, really. So, if you have a QR Reader on your cell phone (and there are several apps available), it will scan the code with your phone’s camera and automatically take you to, let’s say, a website on your cell phone’s browser. Pretty cool, huh?

How to Create One

It’s easy! You just need a QR Code Generator. I have used Kaywa and QR-Server before. I’ll be using QR-Server’s generator, called GOQR.ME, for this post since it gives you a few more options.

Once you have downloaded the image, you can add it anywhere you could add a photo or other image.

How to Read One

You will need a QR reader for your phone. Some phones have them installed, but you may have to download an app. You can find them in your carrier’s app marketplace and there are a lot of them.  I have a Droid X and use QR Droid.

Each app will vary, but basically you will be prompted to scan the QR code. That sounds all sci-fi, but it really just consists of you using your phone’s camera. Just hold the phone still until it is done scanning the code. Once it has “read” the code, you should be prompted to either visit that website or download whatever information was in the code.

What to Do With One

The possibilities are pretty much endless. Ask yourself:

• Where are the folks I want to reach?
• What do I want those folks to do?

Some ideas:

Fundraising: Direct potential donors to your “Donate Now” page.
Business Cards: Contact info could simply be scanned into your phone.
Marketing: Put QR Codes on brochures or fliers at your events or any place where people will be out and about.
Services: Add a QR code to the front door of your facility that sends people to your services page.
Calendar of Events: Link to your event’s page.

Now keep in mind, people scanning your QR codes will then be using their phone to look at what’s linked to the cod. If your website or donate now page is difficult to navigate on a mobile phone, rethink sending them there.  You can create simple pages that are better for cell phone browsers and use those.

I recently received this direct mail piece from Samaritan’s Purse. That QR code takes you to a video about their mission.

How might you use QR codes? Leave your ideas in the comments.

Kristina Leroux is Kivi’s little sister and executive assistant. She also runs Kristina Leroux.com, a virtual assistance service that provides online administrative support to nonprofits and entrepreneurs who need to spend more time focusing on their passion to help others and less time worrying about administrative and technical issues. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter or email her at kleroux [at] kristinaleroux [dot] com. For more “how-to” posts, check our her blog also.

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Timothy Spell of nonprofitcms.org

In this guest post by Timothy Spell of nonprofitcms.org, you’ll pick up some great advice on doing keyword research, which is the first step toward applying for and using a Google Grant.

Does $9,500 or even $40,000 of advertising spend per month sound alluring? That is what Google is offering any non-profit willing to abide by a few guidelines, and learn how work with their Adwords system. Google Grants is a tool non-profits can utilize in order to place ads within Google search results. From personal experience this system can be gangbusters, and in other cases it is not always helpful. Here is one invaluable tip before considering the program.

Research Search Trends First: It’s not best to simply hurry up and apply. For starters, the application will take months to be reviewed, worse if you are rejected or unsure how to manage the grant, anticipate additional time before actually realizing any results. Grant recipients must understand how to use Google’s Adwords system, target keywords, and create ads that direct visitors to pages on your website that are relevant to the ad.

Above and beyond learning the Adwords system you’ll first need to find out if search based advertising is going to work for your organization. Here is how to find that out:

To begin, ponder the reason why your organization needs exposure on search engines. A bad answer to this question is along the lines of, “Well, it’s good to be on Google, because everyone is on Google.” Search marketing means that you’ll need to target search terms, or specific keyword phrases commonly typed into Google. For example, if I’m an Italian restaurant owner based in Ballston, VA (which is a smaller neighborhood within Arlington, VA) I want to connect with Google users typing in “Italian Restaurants in Ballston” or “Best Italian Restaurant in Arlington VA.”

Based on this example, consider what terms you believe your non-profit needs to show up for? It’s best to brainstorm this question for some time and create a list of possibilities. For instance, if the organization I’m with delivers grants to green businesses I would want to target a term like “sustainable business loans” or “financing for sustainable companies.” If I work with an animal shelter, possibly I target terms like “puppies for sale in Ballston,” or “fox terrier dog for sale in Virginia”

Once a complete list of terms is created the moment of truth arrives. Are people actually searching for my desired terms? Without search traffic, your grant will be meaningless. To find out if search traffic exists use this free keyword tool provided by Google . Here are some tips for using the tool:

> Checking the box labeled “only show ideas closely related to my search terms” will limit results so that the tool only returns phrases that include keywords you specific. Not new ideas for related terms.

> Exact targeting (a filter option on the left after results appear) returns the exact number of estimated searches per month.

> Broad targeting returns the estimated searches per month that include your keywords. For instance, if the keyword “hot dog with relish” was entered into the tool it’s likely the exact estimate will be smaller than the broad estimate. On the broad setting the term “hot dog with relish” may also count results for such phrases as “hot dog relish” or “relish dog.” Broad targeting ignores the exact order of keywords and returns estimates including any combination of the phrases entered into the tool.

> The local column vs. global column: Local is US based, Global includes estimates from all of Google search portals.

> The competition column is less useful, or indicative of the actual competition. Use it as a light indication of how many other sites are targeting the term.

Conclusions:
If the keyword search tool shows considerable traffic for your targeted terms the grant will be of value, without solid indicators of traffic the grant can waste valuable time better spent on other marketing objectives.

Timothy Spell is the president of nonprofitCMS.org, a company whose mission statement is to develop amazing websites for non-profits. In addition to the 100+ nonprofit web sites developed under his supervision, he serves the community through a multitude of webinars and educational events in coordination with other nonprofit leadership groups such as Nonprofit Spark, NP Solutions, CAN, and the Center for Nonprofit Advancement. To read more about non-profit web development and non-profit web design, go to www.nonprofitcms.org/blog.

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A dashboard is a visual way to bring lots of data together easily (hopefully automatically) into an at-a-glance overview of a situation. Nonprofits can use dashboards for all sorts of purposes, including fundraising results, program participation, management reports to boards, and much more.

One very popular use of the dashboard concept is to monitor social media conversations about your organizations and issues. Sure, you can spend all day logging into and searching  Twitter and Facebook and Google to see what’s happening, but why not have all of that data sent to you automatically instead?

Christina Johns

Christina Johns, online media manager for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews uses Netvibes. Here’s Christina’s explanation of how it works for her organization:

“I use the  dashboard ever morning when I get into the office. Each tab is customizable for your organization. I’ve dedicated a tab for important topics to my organization. I pull in RSS feeds from the various websites that contain information relating to our mission.

I’ve also dedicated a tab to my organization’s Google Alerts. This pulls all alerts for the various keywords into one place and updates automatically. I’ve also used Google Translate and set up Hebrew keywords to monitor our organization in Israeli media well.

I created Twitter searches and then grabbed the RSS feed for those terms, and made a tab in my dashboard for Twitter mentions and lists of relevant topics to my organization happening within Twitter. I use the same RSS concept to pull in Flickr alerts, Myspace and Facebook. Basically using RSS feeds, I’m pulling anything that relates to my organization or topics related to our mission into one place. It saves me an incredible amount of time when the info comes to me instead of me trying to locate it on each individual site.

Netvibes also allows you to share your dashboard with others (Google Dashboard is very similar; I just prefer Netvibes). This has been an excellent resource for us. I share my dashboard with our editorial director and other members of the communications team. We can easily forward stories or Google Alerts to one another right from the dashboard.

Did I mention it is also free?”

Thanks, Christina, for sharing your dashboard with us!

Here are some resources to help you create your own social media dashboard:

Say What? Build a Social Media Listening Dashboard for Your Nonprofit (from NetWitsThinkTank)

Top 10 Social Media Dashboard Tools (from Socialbrite)

Make Your Own Conference Dashboard (from Chris Brogan)

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Feeling a little overwhelmed by your nonprofit marketing job? Who isn’t?

On Tuesday, I’m teaching a one-hour webinar full of tips, tools, and advice that will help you get a handle on your workload. It’s called Time and Sanity Savers for the Overwhelmed Nonprofit Marketer.

One of my favorite tips is building a Marketing Bank. It’s a single location where you store all of the stuff that you need, and that you are often asked to provide to others. Building your marketing bank will save you tons of time, because you’ll always know where to look for that logo, program description, color palette, etc. And you can also send staff and volunteers right to it, so you aren’t constantly forwarding files to others, saving even more time. You can store your bank on a shared drive, ideally where others can access it remotely.

What belongs in the Marketing Bank? Here are some suggestions:

Logos, in various sizes and colors, e.g., online and print resolution, color and black-and-white. Include resolution, size, and/or colors in the file names so it’s easy to see which is which.

Photos, with captions, sources, and any restrictions.

Bios and Head Shots, for all key staff and board members — anyone who is considered a “public face” of the organization.

Boilerplate Text e.g., taglines, mission statements, program descriptions or background, history, etc.

Calendars, or links to organizational master calendars as well as editorial calendars.

Style Guides, full of editorial and design guidance, e.g., what gets capitalized, when to spell out numbers, what fonts and colors to use where.

Templates, especially for pieces like flyers that program staff are likely to produce on their own.

Checklists, to help other staff help you, e.g. a checklist for drafting an email newsletter or a press release.

Publication Archive, including back issues of newsletters, flyers, annual reports, brochures, invitations, press releases, etc.

Facts and Stats, e.g., up-to-date facts and figures about your cause and your organization, with sources where appropriate.

Your Links, such as your org’s accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

Links to Others, e.g., your favorite resources that you want others to take advantage of too.

What else belongs in your marketing bank? Leave your list in the comments.

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Over the last month or two I’ve received lots of questions from communications and development directors about third-party fundraising applications like Jumo and Crowdrise. The same question came up this morning at the Nonprofit Marketing in 2011 workshop I did this morning for the Georgia Center for Nonprofits.

I’m personally taking a wait and see attitude with these newer kids on the block. But I know that’s not particularly helpful to those of you who are debating whether to try them now or not.  So when Cheryl Black at Convio told me she was presenting on this very question at a conference this week,  I asked her to write  a guest post for you.  Thanks, Cheryl!

Guest Post by Cheryl Black, Convio

You’ve heard that any publicity is good publicity. Does the same apply to donations? Is any donation a good donation?

Well . . . sure (ethics, morals and such granted). Any dollar, no matter how you receive it is equally green and spends just as well.

But when a donation goes through a third-party does it retain all its elements of good? Or does it lose some of that intrinsic goodness?

This was the essence of what we tried to answer today at Convio’s “Is 3 a Crowd?” panel at Social Media Week in NYC.

In 2010 we saw what many nonprofiteers and marketers are calling “the year of social media for social good.” This catchy phrase can be credited to the increasing popularity of social media sites that connect people to causes and encourage philanthropy. The Big Three, if you will, are Jumo, Crowdrise and Causes.

• Jumo, founded by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, is in their words, “a social network connecting individuals and organizations who want to change the world.”
• Crowdrise uses a combination of crowdsourcing, incentives and social networking to raise funds and create awareness while “having the most fun in the world.”
• Causes, created in 2008, is a Facebook application that harnesses that network’s powerful relationship infrastructure and has raised $30 million to date.

Food Bank for New York and Planned Parenthood have both experimented with these sites. In a nutshell, they see potential but like so many organizations, are still feeling out how to harness it.

To get your organization started, we recommend considering these three questions:

• Does it make sense for your organization?
• Can you leverage existing content?
• Can you access the individual fundraisers and donors for further cultivation?

Our team at Convio has answered the third question for you in regard to The Big Three. The answer? Yes!

Jumo and Crowdrise both use Network for Good to process the donations. Organizations can visit the Network for Good website to gain access to their donors’ information.

Causes uses its own system and provides organizations with a downloadable csv file which includes name, mailing address and donation size. Email thank you notes can be sent through the Causes system but make note, the downloadable csv file does not include email addresses.

Knowing this makes us think that yes, a donation received through a third-party social media website can maintain its intrinsic goodness. It can actually exceed goodness and reach greatness if you grab hold of the donor information, incorporate the donors into your constituent relationship management system and then apply fundraising best practices.

Consider sending a thank you letter, sharing an inspiring story and suggesting they follow you on Twitter or like your Facebook page as best practices to help your one-time social media donor turn into a lifelong supporter.

To see highlights from today’s Social Media Week panel, flip through the slideshare below. For more information on fundraising best practices or effective use of social media, check out the free guides available on Convio’s website.

Cheryl Black is the Social Media Marketing Specialist for Convio, a leading provider of on-demand constituent engagement solutions that enable nonprofit organizations to more effectively raise funds, advocate for change and cultivate relationships with donors, activists, volunteers, alumni and other constituents. For nonprofit news and best practices, follow Convio on Twitter at @Convio and for nonprofit news mixed with personal tid-bits, follow Cheryl at @Cheryl_lynn425.

It’s Kivi writing again . . . have you tried Jumo or Crowdrise and if so what did you think? Are you using Facebook Causes actively? Share your experiences in the comments.

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A flurry of questions came in at the end of today’s webinar on Writing for Social Media, so I’m going to try to quickly answer a bunch of them here. I didn’t get permission to use people’s names, so I’m sharing these questions anonymously.

We have both the Facebook Page and the Group.  I know you said stick with the page.  Do we somehow fold our group members into the page and close out the group?  Does that sound like the right way to proceed?

Now that Facebook has made Pages more like Profiles, they are the way to go. Unless you have a subgroup of folks who really want to talk with each other about something specific (groups can be private, for example), I’d say ditch the group. Just post to its wall and send a few messages to members to explain that you are shutting it down on a certain date in favor of the Page.

When writing blog posts, I am asked to always link it back to our organization so it is the focus.  Should this be the case?

It sounds like your blog might not be on your website? If it is on a separate domain, than frequent linking back to the main site is important. But be sure that you are linking to others just as much, especially to other blogs. It’s fine to have lots of links in a post, both to your site and to blogs or websites of others.

What kind of frequency do you recommend for Facebook posting? What’s enough and too much?

Of course, it all depends on your strategy and what you are using your page for. But as a default starting point, I’d say once a day is good. You could even get away with every other day. On the other end of the spectrum, I’d say more than two or three times a day might be too much, unless, again, there is a real strategy behind it. The culture of Twitter is quite different, where multiple updates during the day are the norm.

There are often concerns about compliments and retweets being seen as endorsements. How do we get around this?

This sounds to me like there might be bigger issue with someone not really appreciating how social media works and how it is different from other more traditional forms of communication. To address this issue, I would sit down and look at real examples and scenarios and try to get a better sense for what people think is OK and what is not. We have two webinars coming up in February that will help with those conversations: Social Media Fear Factor-Getting Over What’s Holding You Back and Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Nonprofit.

I set up a Page for my nonprofit. When the nonprofit does anything on Facebook, it shows up as me doing it, not the nonprofit. For example, I just “liked” a few pages, and it shows up on my personal profile, not of the nonprofit’s page. However, when I add another page as a favorite of nonprofit’s,  it shows up on nonprofit’s page as a favorite.

(2/10/11 Update: Big changes at Facebook! I recommend this post by John Haydon to understand those changes. The answer below no longer applies.)

Unfortunately, what you have described is exactly how it works! While Facebook has made organizational pages act much more like personal profiles do, Facebook does not recognize the Page as a person who can go around and do things on Facebook. So, while you may think you are “liking” something as the Page, you are really doing it as an individual who just happens to also be the Admin of the Page.  You can, however, have your Page mark other Pages as favorites so they appear in the sidebar on your page. It’s confusing, and annoying, but that’s how it works, at least for right now.

We are a research based intermediary so we don’t have pictures of kittens. How do we make facts interesting on Twitter w/out stories? Trivia?

Trivia could be a good approach. Even though you are an intermediary, I would encourage you to work with your organizational partners to identify some stories you can tell that highlight the importance of your work. Even stories about how you help the staff people at your partner organizations is better than nothing.

How much overlap is OK between Facebook and Twitter? Can you post the same stuff in both places?

You’ll find people who will argue with me on this, but I say, yes, you can post the same stuff in both places as a baseline, as long as you aren’t overdoing it on Facebook (The Twitter community is more accepting of frequent updates than the Facebook community.) Then you might supplement with additional material that is really best on Twitter, and do the same with Facebook. But I think some repetition is fine, and actually a good thing.

How do you set up a custom shortened URL?

I use a service called ShortSwitch, which turns links at kivilm.com into my custom short links. You have to have a dedicated URL of your own to use the service.  There are a few others services like that, as well as several programs that you can host yourself on your own server. Search on “custom short URL” and you’ll see a bunch of options.

Thanks for all the great questions!

P.S. Here’s what’s coming up next in our weekly webinar series . . .

January 27: Writing to Raise More Money

February 3: Writing Thank-You Notes That Inspire Future Gifts

February 8: The New & Improved Nonprofit Annual Report

February 16: Social Media Fear Factor: Getting Over What’s Holding You Back

See the Full Webinar Schedule through Mid-March

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I woke up this morning and saw a tweet from Drew at Throwing Light, asking me if I ever deal with information overload. In his own post today, Drew talks about how he blames all the blogs he wants to read for his recent creative slump and explains what he did to overcome. Since I was debating what I wanted to blog about today, I’m seizing this chance to answer Drew’s question. It’s such a common question from nonprofits too that I have several slides on it in my social media presentations.

The first step is to accept that there is waaaaay more good information out there than you can possibly absorb. The second step is to realize that there is no great public punishment coming your way if you don’t absorb it. In fact, as Drew learned, if you try to absorb it all, your punishment is much more likely to be self-inflicted, like Drew’s creative slump.

Then what?

For me, it comes down to two strategies: the Lists and the Lottery.

The Lists

Spend a little time upfront creating lists that help you see the people who history tells you are most likely to having something good to say in the future. I use a custom page at Alltop to keep track of my favorite blogs. I use multiple lists within Twitter and Facebook (both public and private), and columns within Hootsuite (partner link), to parcel out various people and topics. Within those lists, I have a few must-reads (or my primary lists) and everything else (the secondary lists).

Now, list-making in and of itself can consume enormous amounts of time if you let it. Don’t. As you happen across various people who make you pause or think or laugh, add them to a list. Also add people who are good sorters of information themselves. A person may not have all that much original to say themselves, but if they are a good curator or editor, they are just as valuable to me, because they bring really good stuff to my attention that I would have missed otherwise. Don’t feel like you have to categorize every single person you follow on Twitter. That was an early mistake of mine, and I’ve let that go.

I look at these lists first thing in the morning, along with my email box, not because I think it’s the single most important thing to do in the morning, but because it’s an easy task for my sleepy brain to accomplish. I’m not a morning person. I also do it on my Droid X, which is helpful in two ways: first, because I’m usually still slumped in the big comfy chair in my living room, and two because that little screen forces me to look at just one thing at a time — no dozen tabs open at once like on the PC.

I try to take another peek at the must-reads twice more during the day, usually as a mental break in between blocks of my own work. This is where my tagging strategy becomes really important, because I don’t want to get sucked into having to absorb everything at the first moment I see it. This time is meant to be a break, not a whole task itself.

When I do come across something like a blog post that piques my interest, I rarely read the whole thing right then. Instead, I usually tag it. I’m transitioning from Delicious to Diigo for this, but the idea is that I somehow label it so that when I really am ready to think about that topic in more depth, I can go back and actually read it then and think about it.

The Lottery

This is where those secondary lists come in. If I have a few minutes here and there during the day, I go look at those other lists that are interesting, but not musts. I think of it as playing the lottery. Sometimes this skimming produces nothing; other times it produces really great stuff. Others like Beth Kanter call this leaving room for serendipity (which does sound a lot nicer than playing the lottery).  Beth says she’ll be blogging a lot this year about social media time management, so keep Beth on one of your lists!

This is not a perfect process. I’m sure I do, in fact, miss some stuff I wish I had seen. And sure enough, I still end up seeing a lot of things that are completely useless. But overall, I feel like I am seeing enough to keep up with the people and topics that I want to keep up with, and just enough of everything else to allow for some pleasant surprises.

Most importantly, this process lets me get stuff done. I believe I strongly benefit from reading what others are thinking and doing. This morning, and this blog post, are a perfect example. If Drew hadn’t tweeted me about his post, I wouldn’t have written this one today.

You also need to do exactly what Drew did, which is to find that thing — whatever it is — that sets your mind free for awhile. For Drew it was taking pictures of snow-covered statues in downtown Philadelphia. For me it’s often curling up on the couch with a pen and paper in my hand. It’s extremely rare for me to get a brilliant idea at the computer. They almost always come when I’m curled up comfortably somewhere, taking a hot shower, or working out. I know that about myself, so when I’m stuck, I do one of those three things.

It’s your turn. How do you deal with information overload, and what do you do to ensure that you don’t let it bury your own creativity? Please share in the comments.

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I’m a content creator. In any given week, I’m creating content for my own blog, e-newsletter, webinars and e-clinics, and upcoming in-person workshops. I’m also frequenting writing guest posts for others, drafting new e-books, and creating materials for clients. Last year, I wrote a paperback version of The Nonprofit Marketing Guide.

It’s no wonder that people often ask how I keep everything organized. My answer is that it’s always a work in progress. What I’m doing today if different from what I did six months ago and will probably be different from what I do six months from now.

But for today, here’s my list of favorite tools that I use daily to keep everything I need organized. You are a content creator too, so I hope you’ll share your favorite content and project  management tools in the comments.

Google Apps

I use Google Apps email, calendar and docs daily (more like hourly).

I use several labels within Google Apps Gmail to get emails out of my inbox while saving them to a specific place so I can find them later. To keep my most important labels at the top of the list (instead of the default alpha order), I use symbols like @ or | before the label name.

I have different Google Apps Calendars that I use as editorial calendars for my blog, email newsletter, and book marketing. Those are layered on top of additional calendars for my schedule, my family’s schedule, and recurring tasks (mostly personal, like giving the dog her monthly heartworm pill). At first having all of these calendars felt like overkill, but I love it now. It’s so nice to be able to hide all but one calendar when I need to focus on a specific slice of my workload and to turn them all on to see the full picture.

I also store lots of information, such as instructions on how to do lots of different things behind the scenes (e.g. like setting up webinars) in Google Docs. This is especially helpful for jobs that I only do once every month or two and usually can’t remember the most efficient way to do them off the top of my head. It’s also handy for boilerplate that I often need to cut and paste for others to use (e.g. like different versions of my bio).

Google Apps syncs perfectly with my Droid X, including all the labels and calendars, and I can control which I see on the Droid independently of which ones I see on the desktop.

Email, calendar, and tasks are the holy project management triumvirate for me, and Google is great for two of the three. It’s just plain awful with tasks, however. I’m currently using two different tools to fill in the gap: Basecamp and Remember The Milk.

Basecamp

I use Basecamp to manage tasks that I’m working on with others, primarily my assistant. We mostly use the Project and To-Do features, which allow us to assign tasks to each other and to make notes on those tasks as we go along. We are still working out the kinks, but my hope is that this will minimize the amount of daily email we send back and forth, which is how we were previously (and badly) managing all of the to-dos.  I also use the Droid app, Beacon, to manage Basecamp on the go.

Remember The Milk

While I should probably be doing this via Basecamp too, I am experimenting with using Remember the Milk as my personal daily to-do list. Whereas I put anything and everything that needs to get done into Basecamp, no matter how far away the deadline might be, I am trying to use Remember the Milk for items that need to happen in the next few days. Everything in Basecamp is professional to-dos; RTM includes work and personal tasks that need to happen within the next 72 hours.

Delicious and Diigo

4/12/11 update: I’ve transitioned from Delicious to Diigo for bookmarking, because it has a few more nice features and has better support than Delicious.

Delicious is my bookmarking tool of choice. I use it to tag web pages I want to save by topic but also by how I will use them later. Then if I want to share my bookmarks on a specific topic with webinar participants for example, I can give them one URL for a specific tag instead of giving them links to all of the individual articles. For example, you can see all of the articles and examples I’ve saved on nonprofit storytelling at http://www.delicious.com/ecoscribe/nonprofit-storytelling

I know there are lots of Evernote fans out there and I have tried it a few different times. While it looks amazing in theory, for whatever reason, I just haven’t been able to make it a habit. But definitely check it out if Delicious is too simple for you.

Hootsuite

This is my favorite Twitter management tool, after trying just about all of them. It lets me not only manage my own tweets, but also group all the incoming tweets in various ways. I highly recommend that you use not only the List feature within Twitter but Tabs in Hootsuite to group everything in ways that make sense to you.

My Alltop

I oversubscribed to too many blogs in my Google Reader and now I can’t go near the thing without fear of my head exploding (sound familiar)? So, what I do instead is scan my personal Alltop page where the headlines of the last five posts from my 40-or-so most favorite bloggers appear. This tool has been a total lifesaver in helping me feel like I’m keeping up with what the people I respect most are saying. It’s about time to go through and take some off and add some new voices, but I highly recommend that you create your own Alltop page as a way to manage your high priority blog reading. Or feel free to visit mine if you can’t get around to creating your own.

WordPress

Every website I manage is now in WordPress, including this blog. I use the .org version for all of my content, but also help some small nonprofits manage their websites via the hosted .com version as well. It’s my favorite content management system.

Dropbox

When I’m creating and sharing lots of files with others, I’ve found Dropbox to be the easiest way to go. While you can file share through both Google Docs and Basecamp, Dropbox leaves everything in its native format and automatically gives people access to the most current version of a file both online and on their own computers.

I’ll share my favorite tools for actually creating the content another time (e.g. PowerPoint, Flickr, SnagIt, Vimeo, etc.). Also check out the October Nonprofit Blog Carnival that also focused on tools.

What content organization tools do you like best?

P.S. Join me for How to Create and Reuse Your Online Content on Thursday, November 4, 2010 to learn more.

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.