When you do something well, and make it your own, don’t give up. The rest will follow.

Have I mentioned how much I hate the term ‘blast email?” Well, I do. A blast is something that happens in relation to a bomb, explosion or some other violent force. It does not generally bring forth the connotation of a pleasant experience.

I thought about this after reading Kyle Lacy’s post where he talks similarly about the use of the word ‘viral.’ His alternative? Echo and reverberating marketing, coined by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten.

But I digress. Email-

So how about echo or reverberating email? We already have the “Forward to a friend” feature- let’s be sure we’re crafting something worthy of it! How can we bring the echo of the social media space to a one-way communication tool? Here are 4 tips that I think can help turn email from push marketing into something more relationship-oriented.

1. Write like a human. People don’t want to spend time or effort deciphering your corporate-speak.
2. Tailor content to personal interests. Please don’t misread this as a suggestion to use fakey greetings via merge fields. I mean: know your audience, their likes and dislikes, and make sure that you deliver the content that matches their interests.
3. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid.) Don’t let the shiny graphics and design get in the way of the substance of your email. Sure, make it look nice along the way, but function (value) should win over form.
4. Listen. Solicit feedback and make it easy to give.

So what do you think? If you received emails that followed the advice above, how do you think you’d feel about them? What would you add to this list?

Flickr photo by Asheview

Twitter Grader has come out with a new bookmarklet tool, TwitSnip. “TwitSnip is a simple tool for posting small snips to Twitter. It lets you “quote” text on any web page. It does nifty things like looking up the @user for the website and linking back to the source.”

It does just what it says it does. Like the Friendfeed or Google Reader bookmarklet, you can highlight a section of text on any web page, click on the bookmarklet and the tool will do the rest. It inserts the (tiny) URL, lets you know how many characters you have left (or are over), and even looks up the twitter account associated with that website (if there is one). Hit post and it gets posted on your twitter account.

This is all neat-o and useful, but like the toys being sold this holiday season, our Twitter toys should be safe too. Alas, TwitSnip is lacking in security. After the twitterank broo-ha-ha, the fact that TwitSnip requires your password could be a little off-putting for some. Of course, as a posting tool, this is necessary n’est pas? But I also noticed that while collecting my username and password, the site wasn’t secure. Just plain ‘ol http. Granted, this is a very early iteration of TwitSnip, but this is the #1 thing I’d like to see improved on what is otherwise a fab new tool.

I am no developer, so I may be showing my arse here, but surely this is fixable. ? So how about it Twitter Grader – let’s see Twitsnip v2, flame-retardant an no choking hazards.

Flickr photo:Roadsidepictures

Nonprofits are charged with the stewardship of our donors’ dollars, meaning we always need to do more with less. In these tumultuous economic times, we’d be well-advised to be just as thrifty in our marketing and communications and deliver a focused message for maximum results.

Chris Brogan wrote a great post on “Who Cares Advertising,” reminding and encouraging advertisers to remove “your superfluous words and claims.” Nonprofits should also take that advice and stick to the messaging essentials. Our products may not sit on store shelves, but we still package them in hopes of getting consumers to buy. So let’s simply answer the question: what’s inside the package?

All too often, nonprofits go overkill in their packaging, struggling to tell the organization’s entire story instead of focusing on the product at hand. By all means, make the information easily accessible for donors who want it, but don’t feel it’s all gotta be forced onto the box! Don’t worry- if they want more, they’ll seek it out!

And as Chris asks – what would you want to see on the package (for a nonprofit ‘product’)?

No way!

Flickr photo: Whiskeygonebad

So ‘twitterank’ could be a scam. Twitterank seemed to be another twitter ranking or evaluating site, similar to twitter grader or twinfluence, that measured a twitter user’s worth in the twitterverse, but according to a ZDNet blog post, they picked up on the possible security threat after seeing a tweet that read, “@t RT @brianoberkirch Twitterank is a vast conspiracy I created to steal all of ur passwords + shame Twitter into OAuthing. + make u look vain.”

Assuming that the tweet is genuine and that twitterank is in fact a scam, I think the author of the above tweet has it all wrong, as far as the site users go. If you’re committed to social media, whether through your work or perhaps as a volunteer or maybe just as a devout user, then wanting to measure how you’re doing with the tools you use doesn’t make you vain. Nor does sharing the results of such measurements. Transparency is a far cry from vanity.

Granted, there may be a few out there who tweet their grade/rank/influence just to show how important they are, but I think the vast majority are just doing what we all do with social media most of the time anyway- share new, cool stuff.

What do you think? Are you so vain? Do you think this post is about you?

The 29-Day Giving challenge has gotten a lot harder. I have found that despite my asking myself daily, “What can I give today?” I have difficulty thinking of things when I am not giving objects or traditional gifts.

During the past week-plus-a-day, I have had some successes in giving though. I gave three necklaces of mine to my best friend’s daughters who I adore, and who I knew would get more use from them. I spent a few days giving the other drivers on the road the benefit of the doubt, opportunities to change lanes in front of me and free passes for whatever infringements they may make with their driving.

I gave a friend a little knick-knack I made out of modeling clay- a sort of rose bouquet medallion thingy with a little stand. I gave another friend my listening ears and best advice.

While at the Center for Nonprofit Excellence’s Annual Conference, I had the great fortune to meet Beth Kanter who was presenting the Social Media for Nonprofits workshop. Beth gave me a deck of Akoha cards and that really made my day! In turn, I gave out four of the cards the same day to folks who were curious about them.

I also had two days where I (quite honestly) feel that I failed to give. It was the weekend and – no excuse, just an explanation- being a little sick, I stayed in the whole time and forgot. Oops.

But I am re-focused for this weekend and won’t be forgetting this time! I am, however, running out of creative ideas, so feel free to share yours if you have some! The Challenge is harder than it sounds. Or maybe it sounded harder to you than it did to me (how silly of me).

Today I had a gift for a friend and coworker that was too fun to be left anonymously. Correction- I did leave it anonymously, but when she asked me if I was the giver, I couldn’t play dumb.

I got a necklace for my friend that I knew she would like. It wasn’t anything expensive, just costume jewelry, but I knew she’d dig it and had fun wrapping it up for her.

Ok- giving was fun today.

If you’ve stumbled onto this post and want to know what’s up, I’m participating in the 29-Day Giving Challenge. You should try it!

Photo Credit: chocolate monster mel on Flickr

I made pancakes. Today I gave my husband the gift of pancakes when he returned home from work, along with a clean kitchen and folded laundry. Once again, I feel like I haven’t done the Challenge ‘right’ or haven’t done enough, but then again, I wouldn’t have done these things otherwise, so that’s gotta count for something, right?

He seemed to like the pancakes.

Learn more about the 29-Day Giving Challenge here.

Today’s giving was a simple Heine Brothers coffee for the lucky person who came to the counter after me. Kind of a repeat of yesterday, I know. Apparently I like to give beverages.

I feel as though I may not be working hard enough at this, and yet at the same time I already feel like this Challenge is quite difficult. I guess I feel like I am not working hard enough because I am not yet seeing any grand results. I mean, okay, it’s nice to be nice, but I’m just not feeling any magic yet.

Maybe it’s too soon for that. Maybe I shouldn’t expect it?

You can read more about the 29-Day Giving Challenge here.

Today it was a little harder to complete my gift for the 29-Day Giving Challenge. It’s the weekend, and for me, this often means I am home the whole time, with no one in sight but my husband.

Of course, my husband is a perfectly legitimate and worthy gift recipient, but somehow it seemed too easy to focus solely on the people that are directly before me every day. Thus, when we went out for Steak N’ Shake, I bought a $5 gift card and left it with instructions that the cashier give it to the next person who ordered a milkshake. Congratulations, your milkshake’s on me! I also left the URL for the website on the card with a note about the Challenge.

This brings up some questions for me. Days 2 & 3 have both involved buying things. I don’t mind this, but somehow it makes me feel like I am doing the Giving Challenge ‘wrong.’ And Not until today have I given anything to anyone that I didn’t know. Somehow that seems important too. So what are the guidelines here? What would you feel compelled to do? I know there are no hard and fast rules, but I want to make the most of this if I am going to go through with it.