Are you saying pretty please?

Dan Zarrella is a great thinker on social media. He mines massive amounts of data and bases his recommendations on hard science. This is relatively rare yet needed in the field of social media marketing, and so he’s well worth following.

He recently analyzed 2.7 million tweets and concluded the following that people retweet when they are asked nicely as part of the original tweet. Conclusion? If you have something you want people to spread, ask them - with a pretty please.

As a nonprofit leader, do you understand the benefits of personal use of social media?

As a nonprofit leader, do you understand the benefits of personal use of social media? There are many benefits both to your organization and professionally. While it may initially take some time to learn and acquire the habit, there are ways social media usage can make our time investment both more efficient and more fruitful.

“In my experience, I have found that by engaging on twitter, I have actually saved time. In the past, I made an effort to visit various blogs, websites, and other online information sources to stay apprised of my field (both philanthropy and the areas where the Irvine Foundation works). I have found that by following the right feeds, both institutional and individual, I get that same information more easily and, frankly, I am exposed to far more that I would never have found on my own. To be sure, it’s an investment of time, but I actually think it’s a more efficient use.” ~~Jim Canales, CEO of the Irvine Foundation

 

How Nonprofit Leaders Make Time for Social Media: Get Started With Small Steps

As a nonprofit leader, the best way to get started on social media is to make the commitment to make the time – like anything new whether it be a new exercise regiment or a diet and especially for learning a new tool, habit, or skill.

Pick something small and an easy win and repeat for 3 weeks. Maybe you want to get started with Twitter – start by summarizing an article you have read and want to share. Don’t say you have #notimetotweet.

Just do it.

5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Nonprofits

According to David Bakke, a contributor for Money Crashers, there are a number of ways you can market your nonprofit, one method you shouldn’t ignore is using social media. Social media marketing allows you to reach a worldwide audience, and is very cost-effective. However, there are several “do’s” and “don’ts” you must keep in mind.

More here: 5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Nonprofits | GuideStar Blog.

Are you leveraging the power of your influential nonprofit followers on social media?

So, you have a Facebook and Twitter for your nonprofit. Great, so does everyone else.You also post content and updates several times a day. Wonderful, so does everyone else.

The point Artie Patel, VP of Business Development for Attentive.ly is making in this article is that having a social media presence and creating posts for existing followers is today’s baseline. Merely having a presence is not enough if you seriously want to further online advocacy campaigns and raise money for your nonprofit. It takes work and effort to do this, but it pays significant dividends for those organizations that are committed to actually devoting resources and time towards social media.

More here: Are you leveraging the power of your influential followers on social media? | GuideStar Blog.

The Wilson Nonprofit Report for Friday, April 5, 2013

Operational Excellence, Meet Constituent Intimacy: Most nonprofits continuously strive to achieve operational excellence, but they spend less effort understanding constituent needs — and few marry these two sources of constituent value effectively. While a focus on lowering costs, improving quality, and providing consistent, reliable service will continue to be important, this HBR article author sees a shift in the coming decade to combining operational excellence with constituent intimacy: tailored solutions for individual constituents based on a deep understanding of their needs. More …

The state of the nonprofit sector?  Not so hot it seems. The Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) has released its annual State of the Sector survey, and it shows nonprofits like yours are struggling with a tough funding environment and increasing need for the services you provide.  This is requiring tough choices - and changing the way you do business, according to the survey. Here’s a summary of the report from the NFF.  Does it capture your situation?  Are you better or worse off than your peers? More …

How Nonprofit CEOs Use Social Media (Enthusiastically) for Personal and Organizational Leadership: As the leader and voice for your nonprofit organization, should you use social media as part of your organizational or personal leadership tool set?    Certainly, your marketing communications staff has talked about the benefits of effective social media integration that personalizes your organization’s brand with the voice of its leader – you.   But getting into the habit of regular tweeting, Facebooking, or experimenting with new tools like Instagram is another story. If you don’t, will you regret it 5 years from now? More …

4 practical tips to help your nonprofit grow: No one knows the challenges a nonprofit faces better than its employees. Day-in and day-out, you’re trying to move the mission forward, encourage volunteers and raise donations, usually on a shoestring budget. Running a nonprofit is full of challenges, and fortunately, there are a number of tools at your disposal to help your nonprofit grow.

Donations from big donors dipped somewhat in 2012, as seen in the Blackbaud Index on nonprofit donations. And while the market’s tight overall in regards to donor contributions, AllianceTrends.org reports big donors are more apt to give higher amounts of money to organizations that are looking to grow rapidly. If your nonprofit can grow quickly, then you may be more interesting to large donors. It’s a situation akin to the types of investments that small tech startups have seen in recent years. If your nonprofit is struggling in a still-sluggish economy, here are some tacks nonprofit leaders have utilized to better market themselves.  More …

Steps for Developing Constituent Journey Maps: What is a CJM? It’s a representation of the steps and emotional states that a constituent goes through during a period of time that may include some interactions with your organization. CJMs are valuable because they help identify how a constituent views an organization by putting the interactions with a nonprofit in the context of the constituent’s broader activities, goals and objectives. The output often includes an easy to understand graphic such as this example that has been used from Lego for many years: More …

Customer experience trend: The rise of text analytics

Companies are learning that some of the richest insights from customers come from unstructured content like comments on surveys, calls into the contact center, social media conversations, and chat sessions with agents. Companies will shift more of their focus towards collecting and analyzing these types of feedback. Tidbit: Nearly three-quarters of large companies with Voice of Customer programs are using or considering text analytics.

There are also a lot of great solutions out there. It seems relatively cost effective to begin experimenting right now. You can select a tool to analyze comments captured in call center conversations and see the trends on a real time basis. It probably could be up and running withing 6 to 8 weeks.

Do you need a multi-channel messaging strategy?

This is a very good blog on how disruptive social media has become for a business focus on the Customer. If you haven’t been convinced yet, this blog is for you.  The world has changed. Consumers have changed. We have to change to meet the needs and expectations of our customers. Are you ready?

Social media and smartphones are disrupting the established patterns and practices for B2C interactions. To be successful, businesses have to engage with customers through their preferred channels, whether that be mobile, IM or social networks.

The link between technology and consumers is, however, a two-way street. Take, for example, Facebook notifications (the auto-generated email or text alerts you get when someone posts you on your wall or comments on a photo). These alerts constitute B2C dialogue, though they operate under the guise of a C2C interaction.

The initial attraction of social networks like Facebook and other pioneers in the space was bringing groups of people of shared interest together on the web. Adding a messaging capability to the basic web presence extends the social experience beyond the website. Without notifications, you’d have to go online to Facebook to hangout with your friends. With notifications, your friends — and the Facebook brand — come and check in with you throughout the day via your inbox.

This kind of messaging lets businesses participate in, inform, and add value to the social interaction (wall post/sharing) without ever forcing users back to the site.

Why Businesses Must Adopt a Multi-Channel Messaging Strategy

Related articles

• 6 techniques to improve your SEO social indicators (raventools.com)


• UK Companies Exposed To Social Networking Risk (misco.co.uk)


• Facebook Testing Sound Notifications (blogherald.com)


• Stop Those Annoying Email-based Social Media Notifications With NotifyMeNot (makeuseof.com)

How did being on-line change things for you so far this year?

We are all online now more than ever. So how did being online change things for you this year?

Here are some questions to help get the answers:

1. What business opportunities have you discovered through social media or other online channels this year?


2. What online tool did you start using this year that changed the way you work?


3. What online project helped you develop new knowledge or skills this year?


4. What is the most important business or personal relationship that began or grew online this year?


5. Which of 2012's entertaining online discoveries have helped you bond with friends, family or colleagues?

I would love it if you would share your thoughts on any of these questions. What do you think?

Related articles

• The Underestimated Power of Online Relationships and the Implications for Population Health Management (diseasemanagementcareblog.blogspot.com)


• Does Technology Change Relationships? (ou.uloop.com)


• Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - 5 of 6: Internet Safety and Responsible Use (olliebray.typepad.com)


• Sociology and Social Media (compukol.com)

The mobile war, transforming customer expectations and business capabilities ...

The Mobile War CEOs should be aware of an approaching tech war -- because its outcome is going to change their customers.  As the Web becomes the AM radio of digital, the mobile App Internet will rise. This market will be dominated by two or three ecosystems -- semi-closed worlds built on a closely fitting set of apps, phones, tablets, computers, operating systems, and partners. An ecosystem owner will possess extraordinary market power -- able to dictate terms to content providers, customers, and application developers. It doesn't matter what you sell -- insurance, pills, cars, energy, bonds -- you'll be reaching many of your customers through these ecosystems in the future.

Social Media Has Transformed Customer Expectations At Every Step Of The Customer Journey After moving to a new apartment, do you need to get a new TV. The first instinct may be to gather information from a few sources. Do you browse online retailers to get an idea of prices, and look atoked at manufacturers' marketing content to understand the latest technologies like 3D TV. After all of that, you may turn to consumer reviews and discussions to get a feeling for whether you would actually find those features valuable. (For example, some customer reviews may help you confirm that you don’t want 3D TV.)

Where did you find those reviews? Everywhere -- there are star ratings and comments on product pages at retail sites (like John Lewis and Amazon.com), technology media sites (like CNET) and manufacturer websites. Interestingly – you get the feeling that the manufacturers still aren't entirely comfortable with the transparency that social media brings. They'd like to put a spin on the message, even if they can't entirely control it -- For example, Panasonic's UK site has a page that promotes "5 Star Reviews Of The Month". Can you think of a situation when you’d want a firm to guide you only to the most positive reviews of its products. Can you?

Business Capabilities Are The Strongest Foundation For Tech Strategy In developing a technology strategy for your organization, what will be your basis for deciding which technologies to pursue, when to pursue them, and how to implement them? In other words, what will be the foundation for your technology architecture and strategy? In considering this question, I assume we agree that technology strategy should directly support improvement of business outcomes, both now and over the long haul. To provide for the long haul, your technology architecture and strategy must be crafted to support a continuous stream of business change, both small incremental steps and large radical shifts.