It’s really easy for nonprofit communicators to get overwhelmed with all of the choices they have to reach out to current and potential supporters. The 2011 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report confirms that, as if there was any doubt. But don’t get sucked into a lot of tactical decisions about which tools to use without first ensuring that your bigger-picture game plan is in place.

It’s best if you can set aside time to create a real marketing strategy, but if you can’t, give yourself 15 minutes of peace and quiet to contemplate how you can take your organization down each of these three paths that I think are essential to nonprofit marketing today.

Be Your Own Media Mogul. Take control of the content you produce and how it’s distributed to your supporters rather than relying on others (like the mainstream media) to do it for you. You are the publisher, the broadcaster, the media mogul for your good cause. Don’t focus on a single channel; look at all of them and how they are connected. Repurpose the content you create so it works best in each place you put it. (Here’s a great article from MarketingProfs on doing that with video). Curate content (pass on good stuff you find from others) on topics your supporters care about, but you don’t have the time, talent, or expertise to produce yourself.

Connect the Dots for Your Supporters. With so much information available in so many places, it’s often difficult for your supporters to really understand what’s happening on your issues and with your organization. Make connecting those disjointed and scattered dots of information for your supporters a priority. Help people see what’s most important and why it matters. Try to make sure the content you produce doesn’t confuse people, by making sure your own messages merge well. For example, if you highlight a particular program in direct mail or you get some good press coverage on it, make sure that program is also on your website home page too.

Wear Your Personality and Values. One of the easiest ways for your nonprofit to stand out is to stop acting like a monolithic organization and start acting like a band of passionate people working toward a mutual goal. Let your supporters see who you are and what you stand for (in marketing speak, we call that your brand.) Don’t be afraid to take a stand. Show us the ups and the downs (that’s where we often see real character). Always sound, look, and be human, even when you are really speaking for your 501(c)(whatever).

Does this make sense to you? Do you think there are better ways to talk about big-picture approaches to nonprofit marketing in 2011? Please share your ideas in the comments.

P.S. Today is the last day to register for 20 Days to More Powerful Nonprofit Writing.

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You have to be genuine, generous, and grateful in social media to succeed, which means you have to be a real person. But if you go too far in putting yourself out there — what some people would call building your personal brand — you can overshadow the nonprofit cause that you are representing. Finding this right personal/professional mix is challenging, especially for small nonprofits.

I interviewed Geoff Livingston of Zoetica Media yesterday to get some additional perspective on this for you. During the conversation, we talked about how several nonprofits are handling this, including the National Wildlife Federation, the Humane Society of the United States, LiveStrong (Lance Armstrong Foundation), and Goodwill of Greater Washington DC, as well as some corporations.

Personal-Professional Mix in Social Media with Geoff Livingston from Kivi Leroux Miller on Vimeo.

Kivi Leroux Miller interviews Geoff Livingston about the personal – professional mix in social media, including the notion of personal branding. Cases discussed include National Wildlife Federation, Humane Society of the United States, LiveStrong, the Goodwill Fashionista and more.

What’s your experience with finding the right personal – professional mix? What do you see in the nonprofit sector that’s working, or not working?

Share your thoughts and stories in the comments.

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Yesterday I attended a workshop organized by one of my favorite bloggers (and NTC roomie) Nancy Schwartz on how you deal with branding issues for your organization within social media. The panel featured Danielle Brigida, National Wildlife Federation; Felicia Carr, National Parks Conservation Association; and Wendy Harman, American Red Cross.

Nancy created a wonderful guide to the session (Word doc) that contains even more great stories and tips than came out in the live event, so download that. What I found most interesting is the debate about whether to centralize or decentralize your brand online. Of course, there is no right answer and you need to sort out what’s best for your organization. Here’s how these three groups are dealing with it.

Danielle at NWF says they are branding many of their individual programs online (Ranger Rick, a campus ecology program, Green Hour for families, etc.). While they hope all the talk about these programs feeds back up to the overall NWF brand, they believe that allowing their supporters to segment themselves and talk about their very specific interests within NWF is a good thing, even if it dilutes the overall NWF brand.

Danielle says that because they are decentralizing their social media presence, they are also empowering and trusting their staff and giving them the ability to represent their own programs online without a lot of heavy handed management. One additional benefit of this approach is that various programs within NWF retweet and link to each other, introducing fans of one program to many others.

In contrast, Felicia at NPCA believes that brand confusion for her organization, particularly with the National Park Service (a federal government agency) is a big problem for them online. She would prefer the NPCA logo to be on everything and does not want individual program managers to set up microsites or their own pages on Facebook. She prefers the more centralized approach.

Felicia also shared a story about how a fan had created a fundraising Facebook Cause for NPCA, but had included a huge National Park Service logo. In contrast to what Clay Shirky suggested – that people will not blame the nonprofit when fans get their facts wrong – she found the opposite to be true. The National Park Service was quite miffed with NPCA, even though they had nothing to do with the Facebook Cause page and had already asked the fan to take off the logo (without getting a response.)

Wendy at American Red Cross says that chapters and individuals had created so many different pages and groups on Facebook that Facebook actually asked the central office to consolidate the American Red Cross presence. There were so many different pages that it was actually hard for users to find what they were seeking. She has worked hard to make sure that there is a consistent look and approach for the American Red Cross across multiple social media sites, and after a brand revitalization project, has created a handbook of standards and is now teaching employees about how to use it.

Need more on nonprofit branding? Nancy is your source.

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Photo by mattlogelin on Flickr

I received this question via email this week:

Our organization has gone through a huge transition in the last year. We are in a new neighborhood, with a new, beautiful building, new development staff (like myself, hired for the first-time by the organization) and a new, more sophisticated look – a rebrand.

Internal dynamics made the rebranding process a frankly, painful process. But, the process is almost now complete and I’ve come down to one last step: convincing staff to use the new rebranded look with their e-mail signatures.

We had the graphic design company design e-mail signatures for us, but only two staff (and one is me) have agreed to change over to this more formulaic signature. I personally think it looks more sophisticated and team-like. We have people use all sorts of fonts outside of our brand style guide and colors. Their argument is that to enforce from the top-down a mandate on something as seemingly petty as e-mail signatures is intrusive to the personal freedom of each staff member.

Any thoughts on this battle?

Here is how I replied:

I can see both sides of this argument — it’s good to be consistent, but you also don’t want to force the brand on people to the point where they rebel against it. A brand won’t succeed with the public if your own people aren’t behind it.

I would try to find some middle ground about using the brand overall — pick your battles. If you can get everyone to agree to use it consistently on all of the high-visibility pieces, I would be willing to let the email sig slide — within reason. Maybe you can come up with a range of options in fonts and colors that are still somewhat consistent with the brand look. That way, you aren’t all over the map, but you are also allowing some personal choice. Or is there a way people can customize the sigs provided to them with their own little messages about their particular programs?

I really do think finding some middle ground will be the best result long-term.

How would you have responded to this situation? Click on the comments link to add your thoughts.

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