Don’t you just love it when you spend a meeting coming up with ideas, and then NONE of them go anywhere? Brainstorming is seriously over-rated — when you do it wrong, which is most of the time! Beth Kanter shares her tips here on how to do brainstorming right. As Beth points out, asking the…
Last week, in Part I of this post, I asked this question: What do you do with people on your print and email lists who haven’t responded to your content in a while? And exactly how long is “a while?” In Part I, I talked about ways to approach this question with your email list. …
If email engagement is the goal (see last week’s posts here and here on why that is) and snail mail keeps getting more expensive, it makes sense in both channels to more carefully manage who is on your mailing lists so you only send to people who may actually consume that content, right? That means…
I am working on a new webinar on “simple rules” for communications teams. Simple rules help you break down and speed up complicated processes so that you can make better decisions more quickly and get better work done faster. You can see some examples here and here. I would love to hear about what’s too…
On Tuesday, I shared with you the “new” metrics for email engagement, which include whether your emails are read before they are deleted and whether people are replying to or forwarding them. It’s this engagement rate more than whether you have spammy content or design that affects whether your emails are delivered to the inbox…
When Facebook changes its news feed algorithms, it’s all nonprofit communicators want to talk about. But much more important algorithm changes are underway elsewhere: Email inbox providers like Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo have been changing the algorithms that decide which emails get delivered and to whom. These changes started a few years ago and are…
On Thursday, I’m teaching a new webinar called Streamlining Communications Decision Making: From Strategic Planning to the Daily Grind. We’ll talk about all kinds of communications decisions that nonprofits have to make and everything that goes into making the best possible decisions. Of course, who makes the decision is one of those key elements! In nonprofits…
We are wrapping up the 13th session of the Communications Director Mentoring Program this month and preparing to work with the 14th class (yes, we still have space available!). One of the key lessons that participants took away from this session was understanding that nonprofit communications work entails many more possibilities and opportunities than any…
We are planning to refresh our website design later in the year, but there’s one thing we decided to get rid of sooner than later: the image slider we had at the top of our homepage. Image sliders and carousels were all the rage several years ago, and MANY nonprofit websites (maybe yours) have them…
Communications directors have to make A LOT of decisions. We also get information and input from lots of places, and that can make decision making even harder. I think it’s helpful to keep in mind some fundamentals that apply regardless of the kind of decision you are making — this goes for personal decisions too!…
Today we opened the CALM not BUSY Book Club Group on Facebook. We have all kinds of fun stuff planned. including new content, live Q & A sessions, and more. We are trying out the new Social Learning tools for Facebook Groups too. Here’s my quick video announcement if you can’t see it above. If…
How many people do you think really watch cooking shows just for the recipes? Most are watching because they like the chef/host or at least want to see what they will do next. They may dream of making the recipes (and occasionally will), but most viewers are drawn to cooking shows because of the personalities…
