Starting a blog for your nonprofit is not something you should take lightly. Based on my conversations with nonprofits, I’ve found the following “pros and cons”:

The Pros Of Starting A Blog For Your Nonprofit

1. Blogs are much less expensive to host and manage than traditional websites – and most hosting companies feature “1-click” installation of WordPress.
2. WordPress is so incredibly flexible, that you can build an entire website on WordPress – especially if you add on a premium theme like Headway.
3. Updating content and functionality with WordPress requires almost no knowledge of code, so you’ll save money on IT.
4. This ease of maintenance adds to the sustainability of your organization.
5. Having a WordPress blog includes access thousands of free software tools (plugins and widgets).
6. These plugins and widgets are easy to activate and deactivate. This means that you can try out functionality on your site without wasting time and money on custom web development.
7. Instead of waiting for your IT intern to return your call, you’ll be empowered to communicate urgent news very fast with your blog.
8. You’ll empower your board members to talk about why they love your cause and what it means to them personally. Donors tend to trust organizations that exhibit this sort of honest transparency.
9. You will experience a spike in the number of visits and depth of engagement from your fans.
10. An increase in donations generally correlates with increased engagement.
11. A blog is usually a good stepping stone to developing a private online community.
12. Your blog will enable you to deepen relationships with your fans. They’ll find fresh, relevant content that is useful them – and have a place where they feel heard.
13. You can trash your marketing theory in exchange for real insight into why donors give you money.
14. Your blog will become a powerful way to attract new visitors – especially as the blog attracts more subscribers and commenters.
15. You can more effectively enable content for the sharing web with sites like Posterous and Facebook.
16. Your blog can be a tool to enhance valuable partnerships with other non-profits.
17. A blog can enhance SEO with fresh content and inbound links.
18. You’ll be able to refine your nonprofit’s story over time through regular blogging.
19. Asking staff to share their thoughts on the blog is a tangible way to enhancing retention.
20. A blog will help you refresh and refine your passion – which is the whole point anyhow. Right?

The Cons Of Starting A Blog For Your Nonprofit

21. Updating versions, plugins and themes is extremely easy, but still requires someone to complete these tasks regularly.
22. Even though measuring engagement is relatively easy, you’ll need to have someone consistently measure the effectiveness of your blog posts.
23. You’ll need to make a commitment to regularly updated content on the blog. Even if you post only once a week, it’s still a task that will have to be completed – consistently.
24. Blogging requires focusing on specific goals – getting found in search, engaging with constituents – for the long term.
25. Even though there are plenty of great sources, blogging requires understanding and keeping up with best practices.
26. You have to constantly come up with creative ways of producing fresh, exciting content.
27. You’ll have to be willing to respond to and manage comments on the blog. As with content creation, responding to comments on a blog takes up staff time and resources.
28. There may be difficult questions that require transparency. Once you start a blog, you’ll notice that in addition connecting better with supporters, you’ll also find a few critics.
29. Blogging can means a steep learning curve. Managing a WordPress blog, and writing quality content may take time. Particularly if you have SEO goals.

What pros and cons can you share?

During the TechSoup webinar on Facebook yesterday, one question that came up was about creating a custom URL for your Facebook Page.

There are three reasons to create a custom URL for your Facebook Page:

1. It’s easy for supporters to remember.
2. Creating the custom URL prevents someone else from registering it. And if someone else does register your brand, it may be costly to claim it as yours.
3. Improve SEO – especially if you use keywords in the URL name. For example, facebook.com/greatburgers will be better than facebook.com/bobsgrill.

Create A Custom Facebook Page URL In 70 Seconds

On Monday, I asked you for feedback on a presentation I gave in Boston to the American Burn Association. The presentation went very well (thank you!), and was followed by a lively discussion about using social media to help prevent burns (check out http://igot2kno.org/).

Sally recommended that I add a a picture of a balancing scale or bank to communicate the idea of social capital. She wrote: “Stephen Covey speaks to the concept of Emotional Bank Deposits — and how critical it is to make lots of them before asking for, or expecting, withdrawals”.

Here’s what I came up with:

[click to download full-size version]

Thoughts? Is this off?

Tomorrow morning at 7:30AM, I’m doing a presentation in Boston for the American Burn Association 2010 Annual Meeting. I’ve been asked to give an overview of social media, Facebook and Twitter, and include time for Q&A. And I only have 60 minutes.

After trying to compile slides from other presentations I’ve given, I decided to create a challenge for myself.

10 slide limit

I realized that it’s much better to present a few ideas that might stick rather than too many ideas that they’ll forget. So I set a challenge for myself: No more than 10 slides.

WWYD?

If you had ten slides on social media to talk about, what would you do? Which ones would you include? Mine are below. I’d love your input! Please comment below.

I’ve been following Ash Shepherd on Twitter for quite some time now because he always seems to have something important to share. Following is an email “interview” I conducted with Ash about a service he offers called “Social Media Planning and Analysis”. Enjoy!

_______________________

What is social media planning and analysis?

Social media planning and analysis is really about two things:

1. Creating frameworks that keep social media activities mission focused in a sustainable manner.
2. Taking the time look at if what you are doing is working.

After all, none of us have the time or resources to do anything that is not helping us achieve our mission as an organization or company.

Can you explain what this looks like in practice?

There is obviously a lot that can go into explaining this but the simple breakdown is this: Goals, Strategies, Tactics, Tools and Metrics. The biggest point I think to make here is that picking your tool comes as one of the final steps, not as the first and only one.

This practice of keeping things tied to larger communication goals with specific actions and ways to measure successes as well as shortcomings is the key to sustainability for groups.

If you chase the tools what are you going to do when (and I do mean when not if) they change? You have to start over. With a solid plan and framework the worst case scenario is that you have to adjust that last two steps of the process but everything else can remain consistent.

Can you give us an example?

I worked with the Oregon based nonprofit group “Mad As Hell Doctors” a few months ago to develop a strategic social media campaign.  The primary focus was around a month long car-a-van tour across the country with 26 town hall style events culminating with a major rally in Washington DC before a vote related to healthcare reform.

They had a significant need to build a sense of community and momentum behind their issue in a very short period of time (they came to me 2 weeks prior to the campaign launch). In the end we set up a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account, YouTube Nonprofit Channel and blog that all integrated through the Fan Page.

By developing and using a social media plan they were able to realize three major benefits.

1. They redefined the community. Social media allowed them to connect, chare and hear from supporters not only from around the country but also from around the world which help drive great participation through a few of their petition and email campaigns.
2. Increased participation – It allowed them to create avenues for participation and ownership for the campaign with people who were not able to physically participate in the month long car-a-van or town hall meetings due to geographic barriers (or time-off barriers from work).
3. Stay connected – Accessibility of social media through mobile technology actually allowed them to manage and stay connected with the campaign even while on the road. The power to tell the story as it happened by everyone involved was a major contributing factor to the success of the campaign according to the group.

Questions for Ash? Comment below

__________________

Ash Shepherd is a technology consultant at TACS & NPower Oregon. He is one smart guy. Following him at @TACS_NPower.

If you’re using a blog to promote your nonprofit (or small business), a large part of your strategy is getting found on Google – otherwise known as search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is the practice of improving the traffic to a website from your website’s organic results on Google. If you don’t quite understand the value of SEO for your nonprofit, ask yourself the following question:

“How would sending people to our website precisely when they’re interested in our cause, impact our online fundraising?”

Simply stated, SEO is about getting more high-quality leads with your blog.

What is WordPress SEO?

The problem is that most nonprofits know very little about WordPress SEO. What are title tags? What is a meta description? And how important is the prevalence of keywords, anyhow?

On top of this, blogging is only 1% of your job. You also manage your Facebook Page, organize events, write the email newsletter, and explain what Twitter is to board members.

CopyBlogger SEO

Last month, Brian Clark (@CopyBlogger) announced the Scribe WordPress SEO plugin (yes, that is an affiliate link). I purchased the plugin as soon as it was announced for four reasons:

1. I write 12-20 blog posts a month.
2. About 30% of my clients find me through search. Getting higher rankings on Google means more business.
3. My time is extremely valuable. Amen, if SEO can be streamlined.
4. Brian Clark is a leading authority on SEO copywriting and publishes CopyBlogger. In short, smart cookie.

The Scribe SEO WordPress plugin is not free, so I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re only writing 2-3 posts a month or have SEO expertise. I also wouldn’t recommend it if your primary goals for blogging do not include ranking higher in Google searches.

If you are interested in Scribe, I’ve included a few screen shots of how I used it for this blog post.

WordPress SEO Score

Scribe gives you a ist of recommendations to improve the findability of your content on major search engines. You can also re-analyze the effects your edits have on the content analysis SEO Score.

Google SERP Preview

Scribe allows you to see how your title tags and meta description will appear on Google:

Scribe also gives you instant feedback about what SEO elements need to be completed in your blog post.

If you want to learn more, visit ScribeSEO.Com

Keeping up on blogging best practices is crucial to creating a successful blog for your nonprofit. And although a large part of the work I do is implementing blogs and developing blog strategies for nonprofits, I can’t be all things to all people. So I tell folks to subscribe to the blogs of my “competitors”.

The nonprofit blogger diet

Most likely, you already subscribe to a few blogs about nonprofit social media. The best ones include Selfish Giving, Midcourse Corrections, Community Organizer 2.0, Wild Apricot, SocialBrite, SocialFish, NTEN, Kivi’s blog, Katya’s blog, Amy’s blog… oh and Beth’s blog.

These blogs should be the substance of what you’re reading – your main course, if you like. But as with any diet, diversity is a key element for health.

Three sources of blogging tips I personally guarantee

Let me recommend these three sources of blogging tips, that you may not know about. I’ve been reading them all for a couple of years now.

Blog For Profit

Blog For Profit, written by Grant Griffiths, is essentially a free online blogging manual. I give this one a 100% money back guarantee on learning. In fact, subscribe now and if you don’t get any value from it, I will send you a brand new shiny $10 bill to pay for your wasted time (try me).

Chris Garrett on New Media

Chris Garrett lives in the UK. He is one of the world’s most influential bloggers that you’ve never heard of. He co-wrote “Problogger”, the book that changed how businesses view blogs. He is incredibly modest, well-spoken (Duh, he’s English) and does a lot of work promoting nonprofits. This one get’s my money-back subscription guarantee as well.

Remarkablogger

Michael is one of the smartest guys on the planet, or at least in Vermont. He can teach you how to increase subscribers, write content for your ideal customer, and how to manage the business of blogging. This one get’s a $20 money-back guarantee (I sent Michael an email about paying half. Hopefully he’ll get back to me).

What’s in your diet?

Getting an army of Facebook fans for your nonprofit is not an easy feat. It takes lots of planning, hard work, and time. But just because you have a lot of Facebook fans doesn’t mean that you’re any closer to meeting your fundraising goals. Especially if you’re unknowingly creating barriers.

The ask path

When potential donors go to your donation page, is it immediately clear how they can donate and what amount they can donate? Do they have to search around your site? How many mouse clicks does an entire transaction require?

Seven things to keep in mind:

1. Show Them Impact – One thing that worked very well during the Tweetsgiving campaign was showing people what their donations would buy. It created a direct line of site between donation and impact.
2. Make It Fun – Red Nose Day is a huge hit in the UK, precisely because it’s so damned much fun! Think of creative ways to make sharing fun for your fans.
   
3. Make The Dollar Amount Specific – The ever-present “donate now” button with no recommended dollar amounts, gets far less results than an ask with a specific dollar amount.
4. Make It Easy To Share – The moment a person donates is the best time to ask them to share that action with others. Applications like Giving Impact and givezooks do this really well with their social fundraising apps.
5. Target The Ask – Similar to most email marketing services, Facebook allows you to target your messages to a specific subset in your fanbase. You can slice by location, gender and age.
6. Measure The Ask – Measure traffic, clicks, average donation amounts and number of donations. With enough data, you’ll be able to refine your approach over time. Also, Facebook provides great analytics for their Facebook Pages.
7. Keep It Simple – Frank Barry wrote an excellent guest post on optimized social fundraising. Go back and check it out.

One last thought. Don’t be discouraged if your first attempts to spur fans to act don’t get the results you expect. It takes time to build an active community.

What’s been working for your org?

You’re curious how Facebook Groups can compliment the work you’re doing with your Page. Or, you may have a Group and want to “move your fans” over to your Facebook Page. Or, you mistakenly created a Facebook Profile for your organization and now realize that you should have started a Facebook Page.

If you’re confused by all the moving parts within Facebook, you are not alone. Last week, I presented a webinar on for a small group of nonprofits, and wasn’t surprised that the most popular slide was a cheat sheet on Facebook Pages and Groups.

The Difference Between Facebook Pages and Groups

The best way to think about the difference between Pages and Groups is to consider the users they serve.

Groups serve the needs of individuals just like you and me. Pages on the other hand, serve the needs of celebrities, businesses, brands and nonprofits. If you keep this basic framework in mind, Facebook will make a lot more sense.

What Are Facebook Groups Used For?

I’m no expert on the short history of Facebook, but I’m guessing that Groups arose out a need for individuals to organize around common interests. Facebook fulfilled this need with functionality that enabled users to organize and communicate quickly and easily.

• Represents a cause or idea – Without groups, organizing on Facebook would be impossible.
• No customization or apps – Connection is the prime point, not branding.
• Received as “message” – The same as if a friend sent you a message.

If you ever wondered why Groups get to send messages directly into your Facebook Page inbox, but Pages have their updates sent into a secondary inbox, watch “Why do Facebook Page updates and Group messages go into two different inboxes?” on the Inbound Zombie Facebook Page (become a fan).

• Wall - Everyone like to share, be seen and comment on what others have shared.
• Users share many media types- And they like to share many different things.
• Some private, some public - Groups can be private (invite only, not publicly viewable to non-members), semi-private (invite only, publicly viewable to non-members), or public (anyone can join, anyone can view). Feel free to download this cheat sheet on Facebook Group settings.

What Are Facebook Pages Used For?

Facebook Pages are intended for brands, businesses and nonprofits who want to reach users. Page functionality focuses on creating brand awareness, targeting specific types of users (35 year-old men living in Boston who spend their money on sushi and live music, for example).

Some features unique to Pages include:

• Customized user experience – Pages allow administrators to build custom tabs using FBML and add widgets to create a unique experience for their fans. My Facebook Page displays two custom tabs.
• Target updates – Updates can be targeted by gender, location and age.
• Received as “updates” – As demonstrated in the video above, Page updates are received in a separate inbox.
• Wall – Same as Groups and Profiles, although admins can parse posts by fans into a separate stream.
• Fanbox and Facebook Badge – Enables admins to easily promote their page on their website or blog.
• Custom URL – If you have more than 25 fans.

Facebook Page and Group Cheat Sheet

Download the full-size image

Comments? Questions?

Two weeks ago, Google Buzz came out of nowhere and instantly turned 175 million inboxes into a Twitter-Facebook devil child. Small non-profits didn’t see it coming. Even many of the the big brands didn’t see it coming.

The same thing happened during the second half of 2009 with Twitter. Companies were busy trying to wrap their heads around the implications of outspoken customers on Twitter.

Two large nonprofits I spoke with last week felt that their 2010 social media marketing plans they worked so hard on were now all but useless.

Kudos for them for recognizing the clunking sound of a shoe on a hardwood floor.

The Speed Of New Media

Social media technology will continue to change even faster with the real-time web, which is essentially gives instant feedback for social media tool development. For example, Google was able to quickly respond to privacy concerns about Google Buzz because they were able to hear them very quickly.

Concurrently, the number of people using social media to share content is exploding. Just last week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Facebook directs more traffic than Google!

But you still need a plan, right?

TV and print media, virtually unchanged for decades, is rapidly being replaced by social media. But the way we plan marketing strategies hasn’t changed to deal with a medium that changes on a weekly basis. Darwin would bet his theory of evolution on the demise of the 50-slide strategic marketing plan.

The wisdom of the housefly

The common house fly navigates by sensing the extremely subtle changes in air pressure with thousands of tiny hairs all over it’s body. With a lighting-fast nervous system, it’s able to instantly adjust direction away from the hovering rolled up New Yorker.

Imagine if the housefly relied on the location of the north pole to navigate? Splat – no more house fly.

The Housefly Social Media Marketing Plan

Highly Tuned Sensors – How does your organization learn about new media? Is there a single person who is responsible, or do you have systemic way of learning? Do you have a compound eye like the housefly, or are do you have a patch over a single eye?

Lighting Fast Response – Can your organization respond quickly to news and events with social media? Instead of running everything by an executive board or legal council, how can decision-making be more decentralized? For example, give your online community manager complete authority over how comments are responded to on your blog, your Facebook Page, and especially Twitter (based on guidelines, of course).

Shorter Plans – Focus on plans for events or campaigns instead of quarters or years. Google Wave is a great collaboration tool for campaigns.

Gather Info By Moving – How willing is your organization to act with incomplete plans? Waiting for info on best practices should be mixed with higher levels of risk taking. This way, you get results sooner which can then help you fine-tune your strategy.

Wingless Buzzing - Gmail allows you to create contact groups which can now be used in Google Buzz to publish private streams to specific people. Try using this in your organization to buzz about the buzz on your cause or nonprofit.

Tiny Hairs – Using a social media playbook throughout your organization allows staff to be highly tuned to listen and act in response to mentions about your organization. Check out this post on creating a social media playbook.

Gary Says It Best – If houseflies make you sick, check out what Gary has to say about housefly strategy:

How has your organization adapted?