Marketing, Fundraising, Online Engagement: Tying it all Together

I was struck this weekend by a beautiful metro car ad featuring the Partners in Preservation campaign to support 24 historical places in the DC metro area. My interest was naturally piqued by the combination of historic sites (I love history, worked for a museum) and social media engagement (I may or may not be completely in love with Twitter). This campaign has it all for me, the user.

According to the sign and responsively designed website (perfect for my mobile viewing as I continued to my metro station destination), I can engage via social media, on the website, and by visiting the sites and submitting photos of them in order to help my favorite site compete for and win preservation grants. Oh, and there’s a sweepstakes in it for me, the user, as well. Brilliant!

Here’s what I love about this campaign:

1. Marketing – Historic sites are supported when visitors engage with them and about them on social media. While the user is motivated by this competition, you are also doing excellent work helping to spread the word about these great historic sites. Your act of digital advocacy just told all your followers about a great space in the DC metro area, and now a few more people know about it and will visit, compared with before the campaign launched. Historic sites have chronically small budgets and few staff, so they really appreciate the free marketing you provide for them. Plus it’s User Generated Content coming from you, the visitor, so people are more likely to trust it.

2. Fundraising – And if the free advertising wasn’t good enough for these sites, how fantastic is it that there are some preservation grants waiting for the winners? This funding opportunity incentivizes the sites and staff to get engaged on social media, while incentivizing those of us highly competitive people to vote for and engage with their favorite sites. You as a user are doing a philanthropic deed and it’s not even costing you anything. Great, right?

3. Online Engagement – In addition to the above two points, I am simply thrilled to see this kind of online campaign. When funding partners and good causes can come together, connecting various places to support, online and outreach tools, and incentives, something beautiful can come of it. I look at this campaign as a model for other organizations to investigate. One voice may not be enough, but many voices with powerful allies can help your organization make an impact. This campaign is yet another indicator that advocacy, education, and fundraising will continue to shift to online platforms, so if you are not already on social media and considering digital outreach strategies, now is definitely the time.

Are you looking to organize a campaign like this but are not sure where to start? Are you still trying to build a following on social channels? Wherever you are in your digitization process, let us know. We can help.

Great News! LinkedIn Company Pages Now On HootSuite

In case you missed it, we wanted to make sure you saw that HootSuite now allows users to connect and manage their LinkedIn Company Pages directly through the browser platform or mobile app.

This is fantastic news for organizations looking to build professional networks or using LinkedIn for donor prospecting. It also continues to streamline the workflow of Communications Managers responsible for publishing audience-targeted messages across platforms.

Rather than crashing your browser by opening a window for every platform you’re on, why not use HootSuite to manage conversations? Scheduling and updating channels is easy, plus you are really in control of conversing with your supporters and responding to inquiries—critical in times of crisis communications but generally a good way to practice social media community engagement.

Thinking about HootSuite? Think it sounds good but want to see more? Join OmniStudio on June 5^th to learn more about the great offerings from HootSuite and get some tips on the best social media channels for your organization.

Social Media Analytics Tools for Data-Driven Non-Profits

With recent changes to Facebook’s timeline and Pinterest’s rollout of analytics for businesses, non-profits are no doubt looking to invest more time and energy into social media tools as a means of raising awareness and informing the public about their cause. But as with any outreach tool, it is increasingly important that social media strategies are supported by solid data that tracks outreach, engagement, and return on investments. Are you in the dark about what tools to use? Let’s shed some light on some free and low-cost tools for analytics.

Facebook offers Page managers the ability to download an excel spreadsheet full of data about visitors to that page through the “Insights” feature. The data goes far back and most points are tracked daily, so you can view the day-to-day changes in shares, comments, and other forms of engagement. Exporting data on a regular basis and running your own analysis may be a bit time-consuming, but fortunately there are other options.

Twitter does not currently offer analytics directly on its platform, although there is always a bit of chatter that this may change. In the meantime, there are a variety of tools for measuring impact.

Twitalyzer is an excellent tool for quick assessments of a Twitter handle’s recent impact and engagement. In addition to measuring Twitter activity and Klout scores, this service will track Hashtags to measure engagement around an organized conversation. Twitter managers can get a quick assessment for free, and paid plans are available for more than one handle and for users who need more robust services.

Twitter Counter offers a few more features, including customized date ranges for analysis and comparison tools to see how up to three handles fare on engagement and follower rates. The free version covers the basic needs for tracking followers and ranks compared with other users. Paid versions offer metrics on retweets and comments as well as other advanced tracking and historical data.

SimplyMeasured harnesses the power of data and Excel spreadsheets to deliver colorful charts with analytics on Facebook and Twitter engagement as well as a variety of other channels. While there are paid plans, the platform offers a number of free reports, but there’s a catch: to access a free report, the handle or page you assess has to push out a promotional message about the tool.

SocialBro combines Twitter handle management with analytics to provide a strong platform for sending targeted and maximized messages around Twitter-based campaigns. Unfortunately the tool does not work with other social media channels, but the plans start at a very reasonable $7/month, so if Twitter is a primary messaging tool for your organization, this may pack a lot of punch for you.

Hootsuite manages outreach and engagement across a variety of platforms – everything from Facebook to Twitter, Tumblr to LinkedIn profiles (LinkedIn Company Pages are not available for management on any social media platform, and there’s no word as to when they will become available). The capacity of this tool to manage and track engagement as the conversation happens is incredible, and the RSS reader makes posting news updates a breeze. Unfortunately the only strong analytics packages offered in this tool are for Facebook pages and Ow.ly shortlinks, so engagement across users isn’t measured as easily as click through rates on shortened hyperlinks. That said, this tool give managers a much clearer view of activity across all channels, and is available for free or at a low monthly cost.

SproutSocial is actually one of the most thorough and impressive tools for tracking analytics on Facebook and Twitter, with a few caveats. While the tool allows managers to post and schedule messages, recommends influencers, and provides downloadable reports, managing engagement in the tool is a challenge. While Hootsuite allows managers a view of the channel with incoming, outgoing, and follower messages side by side, Sprout’s publishing tools are optimized for watching a single channel. Since their analytics are so informative, this tool is worth serious consideration. No free version of SproutSocial is available.

There are many social media analytics tools available online, but none of the free or lower cost options offer the full package of analytics and channel management. The tools highlighted above are some of the best that we’ve worked with here at OmniStudio, and we recommend them to our clients while using them ourselves.

Do you think there’s a great one missing from this list? Is one of these your favorite tool? Let us know!

This blog was originally written for and posted to SalsaLabs blog

Social Media and Events: Five Tips to Ensure You Engage Others

I attend and present at conferences, workshops, and informal events often enough to know that while we all have the speech pattern, PowerPoint visual supplement, and branded schwag routines down, none of us are doing enough on social media to elevate the message of our content. Here I will briefly outline some simple tools and tips for integrating these plans into your conference presence.

Twitter. The single best thing you can do to engage while attending/presenting at a conference is to live-tweet your experience on Twitter. Use the conference hashtag (or make one if there isn’t one promoted) to collect your thoughts and track the ideas of others. Not only will you be able to virtually meet other session speakers and attendees, but you can use this tool to track and capture information and summaries from other sessions you missed.

If you are hosting a conference, make sure to pick a short hashtag (something that can fit in a tweet along with as much of someone’s thought as possible in 140 characters).  If you’re organizing the NEA 2013 Convention, for example, your hashtag should not be NEA2013CONVO or anything longer – try NEA13. Ask presenters to post this or session-specific hashtags in their presentations and list them in the conference program along with the Twitter handles for as many presenters as possible.

Facebook. Friends and page fans love images of people doing things. Showing action, especially conference participation and social gatherings, brings a human face to your brand or cause. When posting photos, be sure to get other attendees to tag themselves or friend them and then tag them to expand your reach. Use Facebook Event Pages to collect photos from all attendees, and make sure you’re consolidating photos into properly labeled albums. Don’t forget to share textual content, too, so that your followers can learn along with you or read about what you’re doing. Re-posting blogs and articles is always useful here.

If you’re running the conference, encourage attendees to use Facebook to check in and post updates on schedule changes or “Happening Now” information to help guide folks to the proper room or space.

Finally, when a keynote session or a major presentation is about to begin, you probably have someone walk up on stage and ask everyone to turn off his or her mobile device. BEFORE you have them turn off their devices, take an extra 30 seconds and ask them to sign into Facebook and check into the event. Your conference will now show up in the news feeds of all those attendees, and no marketing budget was involved!

Instagram. Not only can Instagram save you money on hiring a photographer, but by crowdsourcing images you could get a ton of shots from a broader variety of perspectives. These photos may even show you something about the event you need to fix or realize was a good choice. Attendees will love sharing photos via a promoted hashtag (and good news—you can make it the same as the event Twitter hashtag) and they will get to see shots as well as take them.

Blog: Tumblr. Not everyone has the capacity to live blog events, but sometimes your followers or folks who couldn’t attend want a chance to catch up and read more about the topics than can fit into a single tweet. Tumblr actually works relatively well as a live blogging tool, and is incredible for sharing. Blogs can be short and tagged with the same hashtag as Twitter and Instagram (simple). They can also be shared, so your content or that of your attendees can easily be spread to others on Tumblr. Tumblr can hold links, videos, and photos too, making it an excellent outlet for all kinds of content.

QR Codes. Major corporate brands think QR Codes are no longer in vogue, but I believe QR codes are great! There is one simple rule for QR codes: you MUST send visitors to a mobile friendly web page. But with your responsive design site flexible enough to be viewed across a variety of devices, you’re all set. Now the paper products you hand out at the event can focus on design and engagement, and put more content behind the QR code.

The next time you attend an event, take stock in how the organizers successfully utilize some of these key social media tools. And if you’re hosting an event soon, please create and promote a hashtag at the very least.

Cross-Cultural Communication through Social Media

Source: We Are Social

Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms are not just social, they are global. Even though US users tend to make up the largest proportion of social media users on these and other sites, the internet makes reaching a global community more and more feasible. While attending a workshop hosted by Social@Ogilvy on this topic, I was struck by the fact that global social media forces brands and organizations to re-examine their cultural awareness. The benefit for marketers is that they can micro-target culturally relevant messages to specific communities, even segmenting within countries. The benefit to society is that we will all learn to be more conscientious and respectful of the differences between cultures (a win in the mind of this progressive, inclusive thinker).

Three Best Practices for Social Media from #SMWDC

Marketing agencies and branded organizations presenting at and attending Social Media Week DC all seemed to agree on three best practices for social media:

1. Select the correct platforms for your content: If you don’t have a lot of image assets or your story is not told through images, don’t use Pinterest. If you do not have the technical capacity to produce or purchase audio content, don’t start a podcast. Focus on platforms where it makes sense to host your content and where there is a community in which your content resonates.

2. Maintain regular activity on your chosen platforms: Twitter is meant to be updated often, and daily Facebook posts have become the norm for brands on that platform. Make sure you have the resources to maintain activity on the platforms you use and do your best to build a strategy that does not neglect your listeners on those platforms. Unless you’ve given up on a channel, don’t go silent on it.

3. Be authentic in your voice and content: People follow your organization or product on social media because they like it and want to engage with it. If a children’s museum used the same tone on Facebook that staff would use in a report to the board, audiences may find that tone to be too professional and caged, and not authentic enough to be trusted. Make sure your voice on all channels is authentic and representative of the brand, not the individual staff member or a voice used for other purposes. The more authentic and familiar the voice, the more likely audiences are to engage with the channel, and that will increase awareness, sales, and most of all trust. What do you think?

Social Media Week DC: Three Take-Aways

If you’re like me, you’re still recovering from and trying to absorb and sort all the content shared during Social Media Week last week. There was so much information and so many ideas presented at each session that I found myself consistently over-stimulated, but in an exciting way. As I wait for all of the ideas to gel, I wanted to say something about all of the topics touched upon and items learned.

Here are three of my take-aways from Social Media Week:

1. QR Codes and Non-Profits: The commercial world seems to have written off the utility of QR Codes for their simplicity, lack of flexibility, and inability to facilitate instant sales. But this technology should be viewed as potentially highly successful for non-profits if used correctly. Here are the ingredients:

Finding the Soul in Social

The heart of every social media campaign is its content. Increasingly, audiences are tuning out what doesn’t ring true to them or strike a personal chord.   Key resonators for people—writing style , entertainment value, and emotional connection—are crucial to every aspect of online material.

At one of last week’s Social Media workshops that ran throughout DC, Rohit Bhargava, the author of “Likenomics,” said content creators should emulate screenwriters. “Read every word you write out loud,” he advised. Do the words sound true?  Do you hear a person talking and not a jargoned sales pitch? Try
it out.  Plain English and a conversational approach “inject more humanity” into your communications and this builds trust, Rohit said.

And curators of social media content are “king,” according to Rohit. Like traditional magazine or news editors, their talent in selecting, refining, and packaging material for specific audiences becomes more critical as everyone’s time for consuming content continues to shrink.

I think one of the most creative curators today is Maria Popova, the publisher of BrainPickings She weaves together stimulating excerpts—words and images— from art, history, literature and philosophy. Her carefully selected morsels are the kind you want to savor with a good cup of coffee, or maybe a 12-year-old single malt.  As our time becomes more scarce and valuable, will we gravitate towards meaningful collections like this blog?

Another way to capture and distribute good content is through podcasts. Richard Harrington is an expert podcast producer. He led a workshop at the National Press Club’s “Get It Online” series the closing day of Social Media Week.

Podcasting is a 15-year-old technology that hasn’t changed in 10 years, Richard said. That makes it stable, well tested, and reliable.

Richard’s company, Rhed Pixel, helps organizations produce podcasts, which can be video or simply audio, like a radio show.  As the use of mobile devices has skyrocketed, podcasts are making a comeback.  Think about airplanes, the gym, the metro…places where internet connections are not reliable.  Podcasts are the perfect medium for how-tos and longer format audio and video programs.

I love NPR’s Fresh Air, but when I can’t listen at its usual air time, which is 99% of the time, I know the archived shows are available as podcasts. One of my favorite Fresh Air broadcasts was Terry Gross’ interview with Maurice Sendak.  A wonderful exchange, filled with words of wisdom that will be with us forever.

The elevation of content and curation as the most important elements in social media is good news for our industry. Most of us were drawn to communications because of the connection we felt with words, photography, design—the pleasure of presenting information in a way that would draw people in and keep them coming back. Thoughtful time was taken in the way we brought everything together as content producers.

One of my favorite songwriters, Stevie Wonder, talks about his album, “A Time to Love” in this NPR podcast. He says to composers, “take responsibility for your lyrics,” because their meaning can change the world. Let’s say the same for our messages online. Take good care of your content, it’s the soul of social media.

#SOTU and Tweet Promotion: Lessons Learned

Last night’s State of the Union (SOTU) address joined a growing number of national events that was critiqued, promoted, and shared via social networks—especially Twitter.  Twitter conversations for major events, discussions tracked along a hashtag, have increasingly become as entertaining as the event itself. Now with promoted tweets, major events like the Super Bowl and the SOTU offer marketers the opportunity to promote products and raise awareness for issues and ideas at a moment when they know people will be paying attention.

But the easy access to large audiences does not necessarily guarantee the promoted tweet will pay off. Some tweets last night seemed aptly timed for the SOTU. The NRA promoted a tweet encouraging Twitter users to call their Congressperson and demand a rejection of the President’s gun control agenda. Some promoted tweets seemed to directly relate to the section of the speech where the tweet appeared or were at least very relevant to the content and topics.  For example, Americans for Prosperity purchased a promoted tweet supporting their policies almost in response to the SOTU as it happened (see image below).

But some tweets really missed their mark.  Promoted tweets encouraging users to tune into the SOTU “tonight” were seen in the middle of the speech, and some marketers promoted legislation and products that did not even relate to the content of the speech. Discounted flight sales and conference registration were the types of promoted tweets that really missed the mark of an audience focused on discussing the SOTU.

While some marketers capitalized on Twitter’s massive conversation (an estimated 1.36 million tweets were issued, according to Twitter), others fell short. In the aftermath of what could be called a national tweetathon, a few off-message promoted tweets may not seem like that big of a deal, but what is critical is that these brands risk losing the trust of their buyers by interrupting a conversation and completely changing the topic.

Promoted tweets, when used correctly, can effectively draw attention to the item or topic being promoted. For marketers willing to gamble, promoted tweets can be a fantastic advertising tool. Impressions are free and the tweets are priced at Cost-per-Engagement (reTweets, clicks, replies, and favorites; estimated at costing between $.50 and $5 per engagement). But buyers must beware that they can just as easily damage their brand as promote it.

Social Share the Love – Four Ways to Help Your Favorite Cause

It’s 2013, and non-profits are on – or getting on – social media platforms to promote their cause or service.
That’s a lot of content, and a lot of time and energy put into creating that content. News summaries and action alerts from your favorite groups help keep you in the loop and offer you the chance to make a contribution, even if small, to help improve the world in which we live. But are you really giving back to those organizations while you sign the petition or email your representative? Here are some ways you can show your love for a cause this Valentine’s Day.

Like – Between Facebook’s new Graph Search tool and ongoing updates to SEO and search algorithms, social Liking continues to help optimize an organization’s digital presence and broaden its reach.  As groups turn to measuring analytics and tracking ROI, your Like becomes even more valuable, so go ahead and give a thumbs up – it’s such a sweet gift.

Share – Liking is a one-click step, but if you really enjoyed signing a petition and want others to know about the issue at hand, share the link from an organization’s page to your own Facebook page or other platform. This helps broaden the group’s audience because now you are asking your friends and followers to take action, so your action amplifies the voice of the organization you support.

ReTweet – Everyone is pushing out information on Twitter just to make sure that their stream stays active, but once in a while, it is generous to pause, listen, and retweet articles you find interesting, comments you agree with, or ideas you want to spread. The organization you followed will see that you retweeted and if they’re nice enough, they should send you a shout out as well.

Pin –As the web turns to more visual content, Pinterest has become an exciting playing ground for posting and sharing graphic designs and photography collected on boards and visible to others.
While not all organizations are on Pinterest, those that are put time and energy into their pinning strategy, so please reward them by commenting on or pinning one of their images. The added visual on your board will remind you of your social love.

What are some other simple ways for sharing the love of causes through social media? How will you show your love on February 14th?

(Icons courtesy of Smashing Magazine)