Are you doubtful of the value of Pinterest to nonprofit fundraising and marketing efforts?

Have questions that need answered?

Join me and GiftWorks on May 23 for a free webinar on how nonprofits can use Pinterest to raise money, create awareness and do good.

The free webinar, “Pinning for Good – How Nonprofits Can Use Pinterest to Raise Money, Create Awareness and Do Good”, will be held at 3 PM EST and should run for about an hour. (It may surpass one hour depending on the Q&A session immediately following the presentation.)

During this webinar, I will teach you how to use Pinterest to promote your cause, to gain a dedicated following and to raise more money.

Topics to be covered include:

Why your nonprofit needs to get on Pinterest, now;

The difference between a personal profile and a Company profile;

Examples of nonprofits that are kicking butt on Pinterest and why;

The nuts and bolts of viral pinning;

The qualities of a highly re-pinnable image;

Ways to integrate your Pinterest marketing with your other social media platforms.

I hope you can join me next week! Sign up here.

How is your nonprofit using Pinterest? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Thanks for reading! 

The post How Nonprofits Can Monetize Pinterest appeared first on J Campbell Social Marketing.

If you know me then you know I am a huge fan of the marketing wisdom of Seth Godin.

He wrote a blog post on Monday that really resonated with me:

The certain shortcut

The shortcut that’s sure to work, every time:

Take the long way.

Do the hard work, consistently and with generosity and transparency.

And then you won’t waste time doing it over.

Short, sweet and to the point.

He could be speaking about life, careers, parenthood, relationships, anything or everything.

When I read this I thought about this philosophy as related to using social media.

The “certain shortcut” in social media is a misnomer – it’s not a shortcut at all.

There are no shortcuts.

I get exasperated when I hear and read social media experts saying that you have to spend X amount of time per day or per week on social media.

Problem Number One – How can they determine how long you need to spend on social media when they have never met you?

When they do not know your industry, your organization or your goals?

When they do not know your target audience or what you are trying to achieve?

Problem Number Two – As if there is a magic number for the minimum amount of time you need to spend on social media to achieve “success” (whatever that looks like for you).

Hint – There isn’t a magic number that will work for all people in all circumstances.

Problem Number Three – Rather than thinking about treading water and maintaining the status quo, imagine what you could achieve if you went above and beyond.

So I ask you.

If you are looking to do the bare minimum, if you are looking for the easy way and the shortcut, why bother doing it at all?

What do you think about the “certain shortcut” as it pertains to social media? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below. Thanks for reading! 

photo credit: kenny_lex via photopin cc

The post The “Certain Shortcut” in Social Media appeared first on J Campbell Social Marketing.

Many nonprofits have a business page on Facebook, but oftentimes do not know how to use it effectively.

Print out this handy infographic and keep it at your desk.

In this post I will elaborate on the 10 ways to make the most of your Facebook page.

1)     Facebook page administrators should make sure to check their notifications daily. That’s right – every day. Weekends too. You can easily check the notifications from your Smartphone via the Facebook Pages app or get them emailed to you (however, there is serious lag time when getting notifications via email). Most Facebook users expect a response within 12 hours when they ask a question or make a comment on a business page.

2)     Check your Messages every day. “Messages” refers to the inbox feature on your Facebook page where fans can send you a private message. These are people who want to ask you a question privately and depending on your mission, they may need immediate help, so make sure to check this frequently.

3)     Post every day. There is evidence that shows that posting on Facebook daily increases engagement and fan growth on your page – because of a little thing called EdgeRank. For examples of great nonprofit Facebook posts, visit John Haydon’s great board on Pinterest.

4)     Use Facebook as your page. I’ve written about this before – make sure to engage with other pages as your page at least 4x weekly (I recommend every day). This increases camaraderie, good karma and exposes your organization to people who may not have heard of you.

5)     As your page, find and Like other business pages. These pages can be your vendors, your sponsors, your partners and other nonprofits in the area. Show them love and you will get love back.

6)     Post articles at least once per week. Not just any articles, however. You should always be on the lookout for information that is relevant and interesting to your Facebook fans. What questions are they asking? What do they want to know more about? What current events are trending that tie in some way to your mission?

7)     Request testimonials weekly. This is so important. People can share their experiences, either with volunteering, donating or working with your nonprofit. If you have confidentiality issues and cannot identify your clients, ask for testimonials from Board members or volunteers.

8)     Share! Share all content from other sources on your Facebook page. Share your blog posts, your email newsletter, your event flyer, your photos and videos. The more varied the content the better.

9)     Use photos and videos. Much has been written about the effectiveness of photos and videos on Facebook engagement, so make sure you are sharing your organization’s best stuff frequently. You do not need to be a professional photographer or videographer to succeed in this area – use your Smartphone or flip camera and viola, instant visuals!

10)  Build community by tagging other Facebook pages. You can do this by putting the @ symbol in front of the name of the business you want to tag – for example, @J Campbell Social Marketing – and the page name should appear. This lets the other page administrator know you mentioned them, and tagging puts your post on their Facebook Wall, increasing exposure for your page.

Full infographic below

Do you have any tips to add to this list? Please leave your thoughts in the Comments. Thanks for reading! 

photo credit: SalFalko via photopin cc

The post 10 Quick Tips to Make the Most of Your Facebook Page [Infographic] appeared first on J Campbell Social Marketing.

“Slacktivism” can be loosely defined as sharing a post online, signing an online petition and tweeting a link to a charity’s website.

Cynicism Exhibit A: Brian Moylan wrote a provocatively titled post calling everyone who posted the red marriage equality sign on their Facebook profiles “useless”.

Cynicism Exhibit B: UNICEF Sweden, in a controversial new ad campaign, features a stereotypical, poverty-stricken  child from the developing-world with the captions: “My mom got sick, but I think everything will be alright. Today UNICEF Sweden has 177,000 likes on Facebook. Maybe they will reach 200,000 by summer.” (Rather ironically, they posted this video on social media site YouTube.)

Moylan’s point is that everyone should be out there pounding the pavement and calling their elected representatives if they support marriage equality.

The point of the UNICEF campaign is that people who Like them on Facebook don’t give them money. (Whether or not Moylan or UNICEF have actually researched these alleged connection is not discussed.)

UNICEF Sweden’s campaign against “slacktivism”

I have worked with many nonprofit organizations on their social media strategies. They have dedicated many hours to connecting with stakeholders, engaging community members and educating the public about their cause and their impact on the world.

Moylan’s and UNICEF’s attacks on so-called “slacktivists” (anyone who takes action online) are harmful to nonprofits for several reasons:

1)     It encourages the unhelpful, unproductive and antiquated nonprofit notion that spending time and money on social media is a waste of time. (Educating a fan base and engaging directly with stakeholders is NEVER a waste of time, in my opinion.)

2)     It minimizes the reality that more and more charities are effectively using social media tools to advocate, raise awareness and yes raise money for their causes.

3)     How do they know that people who take action online don’t actually donate money or time to nonprofit causes? Where is this shown with actual, hard data? In fact there is hard data to disqualify this POV: A 2011 study found that “Most evidence in recent years suggests that being active online promotes off–line participation as well. Although this link is not necessarily very strong, there is certainly no evidence of a negative effect from Internet activity.”

4)     Social media efforts cannot exist in a silo. Ideally they should exist hand-in-hand with the marketing, fundraising, community services, human resources and programmatic efforts of the entire organization. Therefore, social media cannot solely be blamed for a lack of donations this year.

5)     This attitude assumes that all nonprofit marketing, social media or otherwise, should be 100% on the bottom line of raising money. This is misguided for several reasons.

6)     Browbeating, guilt mongering and shaming someone into giving a donation may work once, but it is not a sustainable fundraising strategy. This might be the reason for the abysmal donor retention rates in recent years.

7)     Where does it stop? Do we criticize people who give us their email address, right before we email them for a donation? Do we sneer at volunteers who give of their time, if they don’t give us a sizable monetary contribution?

Yes, it is true, Facebook Likes do not directly save children’s lives. (Neither do those posters or that video you created, but that’s besides the point.)

Effective fundraising is about telling a story and showing the donor the impact their contribution will have on a cause that they care passionately about.

It’s about evoking positive emotions – saving children, protecting the environment, building a school – not about creating a shame spiral where your supporters are made to feel terrible.

Rather than fighting the alleged effect of “slacktivism”, nonprofits should re-examine their fundraising, marketing and social media programs.

UNICEF Sweden – If you are really against this form of passive activism, why not make a real statement and delete the Facebook page?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

What do you think about UNICEF’s campaign? Please share your thoughts in the Comments section. Thanks for reading!

photo credit: slworking2 via photopin cc

The post In Defense of Social Media Slacktivism appeared first on J Campbell Social Marketing.

photo credit: Denis Dervisevic via photopin cc

Email can be a very effective tool for engaging your community.

It’s been proven time and time again that email is NOT dead and that it has the most ROI (return on investment) for nonprofit fundraising and marketing efforts.

When combined with social media, the ROI of email marketing skyrockets.

Any time your organization communicates with stakeholders and the community should be seen and embraced as an opportunity to get them hooked in to your social media networks.

Here are 5 simple ways to use email to get more Facebook fans:

1) Use email signatures. Ensure that the Facebook URL (example: www.facebook.com/yournonprofit) is hyperlinked at the bottom of every email signature associated with your organization.

That includes all staff, associate staff, volunteers and Board members (if they agree to it). I don’t suggest using the little blue Facebook logo picture, because most email clients (like Gmail) strip images out and people may not see the link.

A simple, bright blue hyperlink works best, preferably with a clever call to action: “Find out how you can save lives and help abuse victims by Liking our Facebook page!”

2) Ask your email subscribers. Make sure to create a call to action in your “welcome to our email newsletter” auto-responder.

If you use an email system like Constant Contact, Aweber or MailChimp, you can customize this Welcome email.

I suggest using language such as: “Thanks so much for becoming a part of our email newsletter group! We send emails out twice per month on topics related to our organization and how you can help save the environment. In the meantime, if you want to get started saving the planet with us, Like us on Facebook for tips and tricks to be more green!” Make sure to hyperlink the Facebook page!

3) Ask your online donors. Use the “thank you for your donation” email in the same way as the “welcome” email.

When people make an online donation, you can set up the thank you email that they receive to ask them to join you on Facebook.

They like you enough to donate to your cause, so it’s low hanging Facebook fruit.

4) Use your out-of-office settings. Set up all vacation auto-responders with a Like us on Facebook call to action and link.

Sample language – “I’m on vacation, but our organization is still saving lives every day. To stay in touch and keep on top of all the great work we are doing, make sure to Like us on Facebook!”

5) Put it all together by using custom Facebook landing tabs. Use ShortStack or another online program to create special landing tabs on Facebook for each of the emails listed above, to make the experience even more personalized.

The landing tab should refer to the place from which the person arrived. F

or example, if they clicked on the Facebook link from the “welcome” email, the landing tab would read something like: “Thanks so much for joining our email list – we are so thrilled to have you here on Facebook too! Please Like us (arrow pointing above) to get up-to-the-minute updates   on the impact you are having on the children/animals/women/people that we serve.”

Examples of customized landing tabs are here and here and here.

Debra Askanase of Community Organizer 2.0 created a wiki to share best practices in nonprofit Facebook tabs, citing a May 2010 BrandGlue study that found visitors to Pages with a landing tab converted to fans at a rate of 47%, while those without a custom landing tab converted at a rate of 23%.

What do you think? Do you use email to acquire more Facebook fans? Any tips for us? Please leave your thoughts in the Comments section. Thanks for reading! 

The post 5 Simple Ways to Use Email to Get More Facebook Fans appeared first on J Campbell Social Marketing.

photo credit: Scott Beale via photopin cc

OK. We need to have a serious sit down discussion about your blog. (NOTE: If you have a wonderful, perfect blog with thousands of regular readers, then this post is not for you.)

Your blog can use some improvement.

Sorry to say it, but it can.

I’m here to tell you why.

Disclaimer!  I am certainly not the be all, end all master blogger who knows everything.

I don’t do everything right. I don’t have all the answers.

I don’t have millions of readers, and I don’t have the best blog layout known to mankind.

But I do have some helpful advice, based on blog best practices and industry research, which clearly demonstrates why you need to improve your blog strategy, starting today.

Ready to get started?

Here are 5 ways you can improve your blog right now:

1)   Add photos. If your blog only has text (and big, unbroken blocks of text at that), it makes it that much harder to share, to pin and to post. Images are key. It’s a visual world, so get with it!

2)  Add categories. How am I supposed to find anything?  John Haydon wrote a great post about categories and tags (yes, I know that I need some help in this particular area), so read it and clean up your act.

3)  Add share buttons. When I come across a blog post that I really enjoy, but there are no social share buttons anywhere to be found, I get frustrated.

See, I want to share your wisdom with my friends, either via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and I want it to be as easy as possible.

Your reader (i.e. me) is lazy. We do not want to have to cut and paste links and search around to find the Tweet button.

Put the social share buttons prominently next to EACH blog post to make it easy to spread your good word.

4)  Enable comments. Why have a blog if the comments feature is disabled? What is the point? I’m not sure, but I see this all the time.

You want people to interact with your blog and to add their thoughts and opinions. This creates community, and loyal readership.

Another pet peeve are comment sections that are filled with spam. Get Akismet or another spam-preventing plug in and stop that mess already.

5)  Write more blog posts. I get it – you’re busy. You are running a business, raising a family, saving the world. You don’t have time to blog regularly.

However, without regular content, you won’t build your readership. Google won’t find you and index you.

You will get frustrated with your lack of progress, and blog less – it’s a bad cycle.

In conclusion, I hope you don’t think I’m being harsh, or that I am the pot calling the kettle black.

My only intention is to help you make your blog all that it can be and all that you want it to be – one small step at a time.

What do you think about this post? Agree or disagree? Thoughts to add? Please leave them in the Comments section. Thanks for reading! 

The post 5 Ways You Can Expand Your Blog’s Reach Starting Today appeared first on J Campbell Social Marketing.

Many brands and organizations have a big problem on Facebook – getting engagement on their posts. 

Engagement is absolutely critical to Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm - the equation that determines what your fans see in their News Feeds.

When I say “engagement”, I don’t mean numbers of fans, reach or number of posts on the Page.

Engagement measures real time reactions to your Facebook activity – whether or not your fans Like, comment on and/or share your posts.

It begs the question: Do our Facebook fans care about what we are posting?

If you are in the same boat as most business Facebook pages, the answer is a resounding NO (most of the time).

This doesn’t mean that you should resort to posting inauthentic, fake and pandering content just to get a few Likes.

There is help. Take a look at this great infographic from American Express OPEN Forum on ways to improve engagement.

Highlights:

• Posts with images receive 39% more interaction than posts without images. (Interaction = engagement, in case you were wondering.)
• Short posts (defined as those containing 80 characters or less) get 24% more engagement from fans.  So keep it short and sweet.
• 25% of people who use Twitter and Facebook to complain about brands expect a response within an hour. And 6% of users expect one within 10 minutes! So, yes, you need to be responsive, in real time. (No checking in just once a week!)
• Some food for thought: For every Facebook fan you get to engage (Like, share, comment), there are 34 more reachable friends around the virtual bend. That’s just an estimate – I have over 500 friends and the average Facebook user has 130 friends.

Leave your ideas and advice for creating engagement on Facebook in the Comments section. Thanks for reading!

The post How to Get More Engagement On Your Facebook Page appeared first on J Campbell Social Marketing.

Image from Sports Illustrated

Monday’s horrific events have shaken all of us.

We all have stories of running the Boston Marathon or going to cheer a friend or loved one on as they completed (or attempted to complete) the rigorous, demanding 26.2 mile course.

Going into the city on Patriot’s Day is a rite of passage, an institution in Boston – whether you are going to the Sox game, observing the runners or just taking in the sights and sounds.

To think that someone, or some persons, would want to destroy the innocence and inspiration of this cherished event is unspeakable, unimaginable.

However, amongst all the bad news, there are hopeful stories about the best of human nature.

There are many ways to help and many ways to heal, and that is what I am writing about today.

Healing:

Read about all the good people that risked their lives to save others in the aftermath of the two explosions. (Buzzfeed)

Read Erin Gloria Ryan’s incredible piece about The People Who Watch Marathons (and why the perpetrators of the attack have clearly never met any of them).

Read Era Klein’s reflections on what it takes to run a marathon, and why “If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon”.

Helping:

“HeartsForBoston” campaign:  Preorder a “Hearts for Boston” pin ($5), patch ($5) or t-shirt ($20) designed by local artist Dan Blakeslee as both a symbol of solidarity for the victims and to ensure a concrete measure of financial support for the Richard family.

My friend Jill Beilke designed a cool t-shirt. Her sister ran the marathon on Monday. Thankfully they are both safe and sound, but let’s help them raise some money for the survivors by purchasing this shirt. All proceeds go to The One Fund Boston, Inc.

The nonprofit TUGG (Technology Underwriting Greater Good) and Boston-based Fundraise.com (@Joinfundraise) are raising donations to support the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. Donate here: https://www.fundraise.com/technology-supports-victims-of-boston-marathon-bombing

North of Boston (where I live), attend tonight’s Salem Stands With Boston walk and vigil, or Saturday’s The Last Mile celebration in Boston.

Another great way to help others is through participation in National Volunteer Week next week (April 21st – April 27th). Check the Massachusetts Service Alliance page for details on projects in your area.

Don’t let the evil doers win. Go out, shop, eat, play, walk, run, help others.

Good people will always prevail.

The post How to Help and to Heal after the Boston Marathon Bombings appeared first on J Campbell Social Marketing.

Boston. Fucking horrible. 

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”

But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths. 

But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness. 

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago. 

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

The post The good outnumber you. And we always will. appeared first on J Campbell Social Marketing.

The post Social Media for Social Good: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media Marketing Tools to Accomplish Their Missions [PRESENTATION] appeared first on J Campbell Social Marketing.