Welcome to the Internet & Media Strategies for nonprofits blog. This blog will have topics and tips that I am using or testing out. The internet is constantly evolving and new ideas and approaches give us all new opportunities.
The tips and strategies on this blog I hope will help with improving the management, marketing and communications of nonprofits, associations and organizations through effective planning, design and development of Internet, Technology and Video.
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Denise Davies
My name is Denise Davies and I work with nonprofits to plan and implement internet and media strategies that are effective in growing your audience, increasing donations, building your network, creating a credible web presence and providing education and training to use Internet and media tools effectively.
If you have any questions or suggestions please do send in a comment. You can keep in contact also by signing up on the right for our email newsletter.
I quite often get this question as people are interested in trying out social networking for their business, but are not sure how to go about it or if they are comfortable with the idea and possible lack of privacy.
There are a few pointers that may help in clarifying this issue and seeing how the personal and business fit together – and how to keep them separate.
Your PERSONAL page
When you post something on your personal page – it only shows up to your “friends” that are on your personal page
When people sign up on your personal page they are called your “friends”. Now in actual fact once your personal page grows people will ask to become your friend, your friends will suggest other friends to you and you will be requesting others to become your friend.
I personally think that once you decide that you will be using Facebook for business – that even your “personal” page and profile should try and stick to a business focus. So personally I stick to postings about things related to business with only an occasional social thing like a movie or some activity.
When a person requests to be your friend:
Click on their name and look at their INFO tab. What groups and pages do they subscribe to, do you have friends in common. If you can see their WALL tab then look at the type of postings they do. Does the person look like they have similar interest to you? If YES – then click on the “RESPOND TO FRIEND REQUEST” and if you are using the facebook “List” function – add the person to the appropriate list(s). For example I have lists of people by the type of interest we share – e.g. web, film, photography etc. More on lists in another posting. You could send the person a message if you want also.
If NO – you can ignore the person. They don’t receive any notification about that so you don’t have to feel bad. Note that at any time you want to REMOVE a person as your friend you can do so.
Also in your personal page – click on SETTINGS – PRIVACY – and you have control over who can see what information.
Look on your Facebook area and click on PROFILE tab. See if this how your profile looks is going to help you to grow your “friends” (business friends). Plan in future how your postings and comments and groups / pages you join show your business focus.
Your BUSINESS page (your “Fan” page)
This is your business “Fan” page. It is not connected to your personal page. If you post something on here it does not show up on your personal page.
You might decide to have more than one Fan page if your business has different audiences and products / services
You can do some cool things on your FAN PAGE. Most of these are accessible through the “Edit page” function when you are the administator. You can get someone to help you get your page setup and then take over admin if you find it confusing.
Integrate your blog using Networked Blogs
Setup discussion forums
Create photo albums and upload videos about your business
Setup events
Message your fans
Allow people to comment on items
Setup “Widgets” to feed back to your website and build your fan traffic
Growing your Fan Base
So how do you get people to “Become a fan”?
Of course the first thing is to have something on your page that people would find interesting. Before you invite people to join your fan page – add some postings. If you have an event coming up add one. Add a few photos. Make the page look inviting. Add some “Discussion Forum” topics that people can respond to.
click on the “SUGGEST TO FRIENDS” – your friends (on your PERSONAL page) will get an invitation to look at and if they want to join the page. If you have used the Facebook “LIST” function – you can select a specific list to invite. NOTE – when you send out invitations and people join, you will see that the next time you do this that the names are greyed out or don’t appear for the people who already joined. Do this “Suggest to Friends” once a week so that new friends you have on your personal page will get an invitation.
What I do is build my “friends” on my personal page – that are related to my business interests. once a week I invite people to my PAGE by doing the “Suggest to friends” – only new people would get the invite. So you aren’t annoying people sending it out multiple times.
So even though your PERSONAL and FAN page are separate – building your PERSONAL page will help you in building your FANS for your business.
I work with individual business owners and nonprofits to make effective use of the Internet. Contact me for details if you require assistance. davies@alephinc.com
What are things to consider when determining the value of your investment in your website, email newsletter and other Internet activities.
Question
What are your costs?
Design and development of your website
Domain name
Hosting
Fees for online software services (e.g. for email management)
Maintenance and updates of content on the website
Consider not only the amount of money – but also the time committment – your time, and your staff time.
The time factor is a significant one. What is the value of your time and if you are working on an unfamiliar area such as programming a website is this a drain on your time that you could be spending with clients.
ROI – Return on Investment
When considering the return on investment on your website consider the following factors
Each time a person uses your website to find you when they are in need – what would be your AVERAGE that you would charge
For each NEW customer that you get – what is the LIFETIME value of the client (i.e. what would they pay you over 5 years, 10 years,)
For each question that can be answered via the website vs calling a customer service person – how much of your staff time do you SAVE
For each inquiry on the website where the person fills out the details e.g. on a Request a Quote form – how much time do you save? Also consider the convenience and accuracy of the details.
How much more PROFESSSIONAL do you look in the eyes of your customers to have an up to date and professional looking website that is available to them 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week?
For each REFERRAL that you get from someone that refers new business to you by forwarding your email news – think of the VALUE of this as a new client.
For the relationships that you build through your website, email newsletter and social media – how many new clients and customers do you create?
Each business and organization is different. You may be a sole proprietor, a small business or have a staff. You may want to do all the work in-house or partner with an outsource individual or company that specializes in Internet work.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. davies@alephinc.com or post your comment here.
I have been using Constant Contact since 2001 and use it for my own businesses and also do setup and management for clients as a business affiliate. I have seen so many improvements and enhancements over the years. Here are just some of the great features that make it fun to use and a great communication tool.
Pricing: I love the fact that the price is based on the size of your LIST – not on the number of emails you send out. You can send out any number of emails and you have a fixed cost. The price is also very reasonable and with a 60 day free trial anyone can test it out without obligation.
Online Signup: The wizard helps you to setup a signup that will look good on any website. You can also add a signup to your email signature or your blog. This helps you to build your list.
List Import: You can import lists in different formats and there are plugins that you can use to add names and emails from your desktop or integrated with Outlook or other applications. Once these are setup they are very simple to use to add new emails to your list.
List Management: You can setup different types of lists – e.g. volunteers, donors, clients, or any type of category that makes sense for your nonprofit or business.
Email Templates: Hundreds of email templates with different styles and designs. These are very customizable to brand matching your needs. Newsletters, announcements, specials, seasonal greetings, cards, notes and much more.
Links and Tracking: Add links to your website pages, your blog, your facebook page. The administrator reporting will see tracking on each link. This is a real help in seeing which topics and links have the most interest. You can also make sub lists based on link tracking.
Auto Responders. You can setup up to 15 auto responders. These are emails that will be received by people as they sign up on your list. Since an auto responder is based on the timing that you setup – the person would receive an email on a scheduled basis and you can setup the text and links to keep in contact and build a relationship with your list.
Reports. See reports on the emails that were delivered and opened, bounce backs and undeliverable emails, links and history. Reports on your auto responders tracks number of auto responder emails sent and results.
Help. Online webinars, recorded tutorials, and a searchable knowledge base all provide excellent tools. Customer support is very responsive by phone or by email.
These are a few of the key features for email newsletters – there are many more for the image gallery, event management and survey tools. Try out Constant Contact for yourself with the 60 day free trial.
Aleph Consulting offers services on setup and managing Constant Contact emails for businesses and nonprofits if you choose to outsource that service instead of doing it yourself. Contact me for details davies@alephinc.com
Well it is now December and a good time to look at your website and see how well it reflects your business or organization. Has it kept up to you and the services and products you are offering? Does it speak to your target audiences?
Every business changes over time. Every organization grows and morphs and has twists and turns while moving and growing. Plan some time between now and the end of the year to review:
Your website
Your social networks – Facebook, LinkedIN
Your newsletter – email or paper
Some questions to ask:
What areas need improvement?
Are they up to date?
Do they communicate your objectives?
Do you have good “Calls to Action?
Is the design, layout and navigation making a good user experience?
Is your contact list growing?
Do you have a schedule for updating and communicating with customers, clients and prospects?
Do you look at your website tracking statistics and learn from them?
As a special offer for the season – send me your website URL and I will provide you with a website review. Send it to davies@alephinc.com and put SUBJECT = WEBSITE REVIEW so that it pops up in my email program and not in junk mail. Feel free to add any questions or comments in your email.
“Building Website Traffic: Strategies for Your Success” will guide you on steps you can take immediately with very little cost. One of the biggest concerns that people have about their website is that they want to build traffic and get more visitors.
The eBook “Building Website Traffic ” includes in depth instructions, examples and how-to for over 20 methods. These include Search Engine Optimization, Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIN, Articles, Press Releases, eNewsletters, building links, Google tools, RSS feeds and more.
Building Website Traffic: Strategies for Your Internet Success
The “First Things First” section of this book is a review of your website setup, objectives and foundation. This section gives important points regarding your website to be sure that as you build traffic you will be able to be successful in converting your visitors and achieving your business or organization objectives.
Learn how to bring more targeted visitors to your website.
See and learn from examples of specific businesses and organizations that use a variety of these techniques and methods to effectively promote their brand and engage the visitors to their website.
The book includes links to the resources you will need to use all the techniques as you build your web presence.
Learn from specific examples of successful businesses and organizations.
This book has over 100 pages of explanations, examples and how-to on bringing more traffic to your website.
Increase your ROI of your website. You have already invested time, energy and money in building your website. Now capitalize on your investment
The number of people using Facebook continues to rise and businesses and nonprofits are learning to use it to reach their current friends and build a broader social network.
An active Facebook user will often share links to an interesting web page with their social network. You can make it easy for them to do this by having your webmaster add a “Share this page on facebook“
Facebook Groups have a new look. The layout is easier to use – both for the group administrator and for the members of the group. It has more the look of your personal Facebook or FB Pages.
Now when you visit a FaceBook Group – the Wall shows postings by the administrators and the members of the group. On the left side as the Admin you can display information about the group. Adross the top are tabs to different areas setup for the group.
You can create an EVENT for your group and send out invitations to people in your Facebook friends, or invite by email.
Check that you are linking to your website – and on your website that you include a “Share on Facebook” link to get more interaction between your facebook group and your website.
One of the things that I find helpful in creating new content is to listen and look at the comments and questions that people ask you about their website. A big question is about content and time. It takes time to write a new blog, or add new content to your website. There are some ways that will help you to maximize your time and effort and get the most visibility for your thoughts and ideas.
A few content areas that you may be using include:
Your website
Email Newlsetter
Blog
Facebook
LinkedIN
Twitter
Articles
Here are a few suggestions on maximizing your efforts:
Use your blog to write about topics of interest to your clients and prospects
On your blog add a “SHARE” button that makes it easy for readers to post something of interest on their own social networks
Add a “FEED” from your blog to your website.
In Facebook – setup a “Networked Blogs” in the Facebook Applications – register your blog and in the setup area set it to pull new postings from your blog onto your Facebook page. You can invite your Facebook friends to sign up to receive notices and you can send out messages to those signed up.
Setup your Twitter account to pull new postings from your blog.
Add the “BLOG” app to your LinkedIN profile. Then register your blog – this will pull your posting and display it in your LinkedIN profile
When you are writing your email newsletter – look at your blog and identify topics you might want to include in the newsletter – then give exerpts and links back to your blog to read the full posting.
Review your blog postings when you write your articles for ezine Articles or other article posting sites.
These are just a few suggestions for maximizing the reach and value of your content. Feel free to send any other suggestions.
If you have been using Facebook for a while you likely have a variety of types of friends. You may have family and professional contacts, school friends, work contacts and people who share your interests in a hobby.
There are excellent methods in Facebook for managing the different types of friends and it is worth spending a bit of time to organize these. The benefits are:
You will be able to select the people you want to view on your wall
You will be able to send messages or invitations to a specific group of people
Steps to get started:
Click on the “FRIENDS” tab – and then click on “Create a new list”
Give the list a name – e.g. “family”
Then you can click on the people on your facebook friends that you would like to add to this list. You will be able to have people on more than one list. You will also be able to add more people later.
When you have selected the people for your list – click on the “Create List” that is at the bottom right of the box.
Using Facebook Lists
Once you have created your list, click on HOME. Look on the left side of your facebook page and you will see this list. If you dont see it – click on the “MORE” button.
Then click on the list you made – and you will see ONLY the postings from that list.
If you want to send a MESSAGE that just goes to people on that list – click on the INBOX – COMPOSE NEW MESSAGE. In the “TO” box, type in the name of your list. When you put in the subject and text this message will be sent via Facebook only to the people on your list.
You can send invitations to your list to view a particular posting.
Here are a few suggestions that I have found to be useful in organizing and writing the content for your website.
These are useful when you are first building your website or if you are doing a redesign.
First – decide on the structure and hierarchy of the website. What are your top level pages? Your website navigation will depend on how well you organize the information. Make your top level headings general enough that you will be able to continue using this structure – and add additional pages as you need them as sub pages.
I will be using MS WORD as an example of the word processing program to use as this is most common. If you are using something else look for similar tools that you can use.
Start a new document in MS Word
Click on VIEW – and put a check mark next to “Document Map” – this will then show you on the left a view of your document as a map.
Click on FORMAT – STYLES – and this will show a pane on the right side of your document with a list of styles.
Next – type in all the top level pages and sub pages. Just use normal text and dont bother adding any formatting.
Then click on a top level page – and highlight HEADING 1 on the styles menu and click on it. This assigns the level 1 style to this and you will see that heading appear on your Document Map.
Continue doing this for all the Level 1 headings (the top level of your structure)
Then do the same thing for all the SUB PAGES – assign them as a Level 2 style.
Now you have a view on the document map on the left pane, and you can easily click and access the specific pages.
You now can easily move through the document and add content on the pages.
A couple of other useful things
Add a Table of Contents at the top of the document. This will be a good view for people who see the print out.
Do the editing and draft of your content in MS Word – and then add this to the draft view of your new website. Read it again to see for any fine tuning needed on the editing.
Remember that it is a good idea to review and update your website on a regular basis. This helps with your website traffic, and makes sure that your website stays current with your activities.
Please contact me with any suggestions and tips that you have.
Facebook Groups have a new look. The layout is easier to use – both for the group administrator and for the members of the group. It has more the look of your personal Facebook or FB Pages.
