It’s possible that they’re right; a good blog can be a real benefit to an organization, giving you a strong voice and a controlled channel to converse with your supporters.

But not all blogs are good.  A bad blog — one that’s rarely updated, where the content is full of marketing gimmicks or spam runs wild in the comments — can do you more harm than good. If you can’t put real effort into maintaining it, it will make you look lazy, and could even hurt your reputation.

Don’t get me wrong. I love blogs. But I love  good content even more, and a blog without good content isn’t much of a blog.

Before you take the plunge in starting your own blog, consider what you’re getting into. If you can’t answer “yes” to almost all of these questions, a blog may not be the right channel for you, at least not right now.

Will one person be in charge of updating it? If you don’t have a staff member who’s excited about it, and has the expertise to maintain it (or at least the will to learn), your blog may languish without attention. They don’t need to do all the writing (in fact, a blog may work best with many writers from across your organization), but someone needs to run the show.

Can you update often? You don’t need to post every day, or even every week, but any blog needs regular posts to draw readers. If posts are few and far between, readers will lose interest. If you don’t have staff with time to devote to blogging (and a manager to oversee the schedule), along with a steady stream of potential topics, you may not be able to maintain the volume you’d like.

Do you have good content to post? A blog is a great place to tell stories and share news that don’t fit into your other communication streams. But if all your best content goes to your email newsletter, or (worse yet) you face a monthly struggle to identify good content for your emails, then a blog is just going to compete, and will likely take second place.  Without compelling and unique content, geared towards your blog’s audience, you might as well be recruiting those readers straight to your email list.

Do you have an audience in mind? At the outset, you should have an idea of who will read your blog, and what it will add that they don’t get from your other communications. It could be a demographic group. It could be core supporters who want to know more about what you’re up to. It could be other bloggers. But it should be someone.

Will you allow comments? Blogs, like any social media, are about conversations. But plenty of nonprofits don’t allow comments on their blogs. Sometimes there are good reasons, but more often, comments are blocked out of fear of negativity.  Without commenters, a blog is a one-way news stream. In that case, why bother with a blog? Why not just update a news section on your website?  Comments, both positive and negative, generate energy around your cause and give legitimacy to your voice. You’ll certainly need to develop guidelines, and take the risk that negative voices will seek you out on your blog… but if you can’t take that risk, then your blog isn’t really a blog.

Will you monitor comments? On any blog, you’ll find good comments, boring comments, unflattering comments… and junk.  It’s usually a good policy to allow and engage with commenters who disagree with you, but it’s always necessary to set some standards.  There’s nothing more unprofessional than a slew of spam comments on each of your posts.   Even comments from “real” people should be removed if they are irrelevant or vulgar.  A spam filter will take care of most of the problems, but you still need to pay attention – encouraging the good commenters, engaging the controversial ones, and shutting out the truly unwanted.

Will you promote your blog? The main reason for writing a blog is (presumably) to have readers. How will you bring readers to you?  A message to your email list might be an obvious first step, but promoting your content in an ongoing way – by highlighting popular posts on your homepage, integrating blog content into your email stream, tweeting your favorite posts – will help your readership grow.  How can you encourage your colleagues to promote and take advantage of the blog in their own work?

Flash

The best way to think about Flash – for the purposes of this discussion – is as a bit of magic, included on a Web page just like an image, that can do all kinds of really cool animations, transitions, play sound and movies, and nearly display nearly identically on nearly all browsers that have the flash plug-in installed.

Flash has been around for quite a while and has a very robust set of tools (made by Adobe, and formerly by Macromedia).  It has been used to create the sites, movies, slideshows, or multimedia players, that you see on millions of Web sites.  For the sake of this comparison, I am going to talk specifically about slideshows that are created in Flash compared to those using  jQuery because that is the vast majority of the Flash that we have traditionally used in our projects.  And ’cause that’s what this post is titled.

Flash Advantages

• Great looking fonts
• Smooth, complex animations
• Robust development tools

jQuery

You may have noticed that I have referred to “slideshows created in Flash” and “slideshows using jQuery.”  This is a fundamental difference between the two.  While Flash is an embeddable object created in a specific application, jQuery is a JavaScript library that can add a bunch of really neat-o functionality and effects to elements that already exist on the page. This means that you have HTML, and then on top of that, you have jQuery making that HTML jump through all kinds of hoops, sit, roll over, and even sometimes, though hopefully not often: play dead.  jQuery is JavaScript, which means that some experience with the ubiquitous scripting language is going to make things much easier.  There are hundreds of plugins which exist as additional JavaScript files along with the HTML they need to act on that you can simply copy and paste in to your web page to add whatever slideshow you want.  Many of these existing plugins slideshows have comprehensive documentation that even those without lots of experience with JavaScript can follow.  Basically, if you know your way around HTML and CSS, you can figure out how to at least use jQuery.

The jQuery library can either be downloaded from the jQuery Web site, or you can link to hosted versions from jQuery, Google, or Microsoft. I tend to use the Google-hosted version because it is very popular and likely in use on many other sites. Because of that, if your visitors have previously visited a site using the same linked library that you do, their browser will not have to download it again and you’ll save the 150-ish KB of download that the library requires.

jQuery Advantages

• Generally smaller, and quicker (150KB+ though, for the main library)
• Less time to create, very simple to manage
• Superior accessibility and findability
• Works on iPhones
• Free

Picking One

There are many questions to consider before you when even decide to use a slideshow (see “Parting Shot” below).  I’d say that, if you do decide to add a slideshow to your page  jQuery will be the best choice in 98% of cases.  It offers most of the abilities of Flash (depending on how adept you are at JavaScript) and has the added advantage that it is used to animate images and text that already exist in the page.  This is of monumental importance to search engine optimization, accessibility, and cross-browser/cross-platform support.  That your images and text already exist in the page means that it is basic content that you manage in your authoring system.

Even if a visitor has all styles and JavaScript disabled in their browser** the content contained in your slideshow will be present for them to see (albeit in a way that may break the beautiful layout of your page which is already the case if they have styles turned off).  This is the essence of accessibility: that all content on your page is available to all visitors regardless of how they access your page.

There is no cut-and-dried answer to the question “Flash or jQuery,” though I’d argue that in the limited scope of slideshows jQuery has a decided advantage.  In the end it really depends on what you are trying to communicate, to whom you are trying to communicate it, and how you want it to look.  If you want to be able to use any beautiful font available to your designer, utilize sophisticated transitions (though jQuery can match much of Flash’s capabilities in this regard), ensure that your slideshow works on all browsers with the Flash plug-in installed, and don’t need to support iPhone users, then Flash may be your best bet.  If you are, however, willing to limit your font options, want to be sure that your content is available to all users, on all browsers, regardless of platform, and are willing to limit slightly the sophistication of transitions and animations, then jQuery is the clear winner.

Parting Shot

And that brings us to the end, but I simply cannot leave without a final parting shot regarding putting  a lot of time and money in to designing and developing a slideshow.  I, and others in the office are looking with an increasingly critical eye toward the effectiveness of using slideshows at all to highlight important information.  A too-cursory review of too-few site analytics begins to suggest that very, very (very!) few visitors see more than the first slide of any slideshow; Even fewer engage with the sideshow controls (if present, to move forward, back, or pause);  And fewer still click on any links found on slides beyond the first.  Do not assume that the third, or even second, slide will get any attention at all.

One of the drawbacks of many new interface options presented by Flash or jQuery (or any of the other JavaScript libraries out there) is that they have offered an easy solution to a very old problem: gigantic homepages where every department in an organization demands a presence.  Similarly to simply adding more and more content to a homepage until visitors have to scroll tens of screens down to read it all, we are now asking visitors to engage more and more frequently with tabs, slideshows, accordion widgets, and more to access the same “too much content.”  Have we just shorted the all-too-important conversation about focusing an organization’s message and simply allowing “all of it” to go on the homepage?  And what about people who don’t or can’t use these new widgets? Perhaps another blog post?  I nominate Jo!

** Chances are pretty good that if styles and JavaScript are disabled in a browser, so is Flash.  If your slideshow reads its content from an XML feed, the path to which you define in the JavaScript call to the Flash object, your slideshow will not work even if Flash is enabled but JavaScript is not.

If you missed their amazing day of viral content, you might be living in a cabin in the woods (without WiFi), but ReadWriteWeb has a very good summary of their campaign. In a nutshell, they released a series of dozens of viral videos, produced almost in real-time, where their Old Spice Man, Isaiah Mustafa, responded personally to comments on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and bloggers.

There are a lot of factors you could point to as critical for their success, not all of which can be easily reproduced. For example:

• a great sense of humor (and the ability to laugh at themselves)
• an incredibly sexy, half-naked spokesman
• a now-legendary production team making ad-quality videos at a rate of 7 minutes per video
• lots of freedom from the corporate higher-ups

But what impressed me most, and the reason they became a trending topic on Twitter, is the personal attention they paid to their audience. Not everyone got flowers like Alyssa Milano.  But anyone who messaged Old Spice that day had a chance at their own video. You didn’t have to be a celebrity to get a few seconds of Mustafa’s personal attention.

Even if you didn’t get your own personal video response, you still felt like he might be talking to you. (And by “you,” I mean me.  I’m pretty sure he was talking to me.)

You can’t fake that kind of personal attention – but you can achieve it with a little hard work, no matter whether you’re a tiny non-profit or an international corporation. Maybe you don’t have the whole world paying attention to you.  But someone is paying attention, and you can pay attention right back at them. You don’t need a handsome spokesman, just a Twitter account, a Facebook page, or a volunteer with a phone.

Though, a handsome spokesman wouldn’t hurt.

Since it’s Friday, here are a couple more videos for you:

When the “Do I Care” of constituents meets with a spectacularly simple, compelling campaign message and call to action, rapid and radical growth is possible. This “perfect storm” is truly for the vast majority of organization.  For most, the break-through campaign is difficult to achieve and not necessarily something that their online marketing strategy should be based. Fortunately, the experiences of the past have taught many organizations that the “online campaign” is more like throwing the dice than a sound long-term strategy for consistent growth and engagement.

We contend that list growth is a core ongoing business practice of the organization requiring sustained staffing and financial investment over time. As with direct response fundraising, online list growth is not something you do once. Organizations need to continually recruit new online supporters to replace those who unsubscribe/go inactive. This can occur at a rate of 18-25% a year.

We are not saying that an initial campaign isn’t called for to jump-start the ongoing program of list building. Nor that one should never do an online campaign. Our position is quite the opposite – we contend that campaigns are a vital part of a larger growth and engagement strategy. Just not the only part. Further, choosing to do campaign and how should be the outcome of a strategic analysis of whether the campaign truly has a chance of achieving the goals versus an enthusiastic gamble on “a cool idea.”

We think the context for both the initial campaign and the longer journey need to be fully understood before dollars and time are spent in earnest. We have learned through our experiences on other clients that the following are pre-requisites for successful list growth:

We start by evaluating the “Do I Care” factor.

[“Do I Care” Factor] = [Personal Impact] * ([Policy Controversy] + [Media Coverage])

Within this context, comes the factor of compelling campaigns.

[Compelling Campaign] = ([Motivating Message] + [Clear Solution] + [Simple Action])*[Resources]

List growth is then the product of these:

[“Do I Care” Factor] * [Compelling Campaign] * [Marketing Reach] = [List Growth]

We lay these formulas out as a useful rubric to assess candidly and soberly whether an organization is in position to undertake a mass market list growth effort. As many of our clients know, 2009 and 2010 have presented a particularly persnickety marketplace for campaigning. Macro-level issues of the economy, jobs, and health care reform have dominated the constituent’s focus. So our calculation of whether the market is ripe for growth within certain issues areas is more complex than ever.

Example Readiness Rating

The Readiness Rating is an assessment of how well positioned an organization is for a particular campaign issue. This shouldn’t be used as a “pass/fail” scoring system to decide to more forward or not. The analysis simply provides an honest appraisal of where you are today and highlights gaps in readiness that could undermine the success of a campaign unless those gaps are closed.

As you will see, some of these gaps are internal to the organization like whether the message being put out is motivating or the online action is compelling. These gaps may be more easily closed than external factors such as whether the policy controversy is significant enough in the minds of constituents or whether the online conversation/media coverage exists in enough of a critical mass that the organization’s message and solution to the issue can tap into existing interest.

The following is a recent example from a client for their Readiness Rating as they considered undertaking a new campaign. The organization specifics have been altered to protect the innocent.

On the whole, this organization’s gaps are not insurmountable obstacles. The external personal interest passion is there (one of the hardest things to create if not present.) While the policy controversy is muddied for this organization at present, there is opportunity to pivot the campaign into a more prominent controversy in the marketplace.

Internally, the analysis revealed gaps that were not previously clear to stakeholders and decision-makers. The Readiness Rating can serve as a “reality-check” or going further, as a wake-up call that there are headwinds facing the campaign which could blow things off track. We’ve found the review enables an honest and open conversation about what the real constraints are, focuses creativity and problem-solving more appropriately to true barriers, and helps everyone involved understand the key factors the organization is going to need to manage through to achieve success.

There are likely a number of variables that could be added to this analysis to give a more complete picture. Do you have thoughts on what might be missing?

One site, which was tested using an eye-tracking study, demonstrates how a slow-loading promotional banner plus a large number of widgets on the site, create confusion for the user rather than the engagement opportunities that were intended.

Long page load times can cause user drop-off

When you think about your own site, what do you know about the load times — and the corresponding distractions that might result from slow-load times? The UseIt article gives some helpful guidance on how to get at those questions.

If you don’t read the full article, here’s a helpful tidbit:

…  From UseIt.com ….

The 3 response-time limits are the same today as when [Jakob Nielsen] wrote about them in 1993 (based on 40-year-old research by human factors pioneers):

0.1 seconds gives the feeling of instantaneous response — that is, the outcome feels like it was caused by the user, not the computer. This level of responsiveness is essential to support the feeling of direct manipulation (direct manipulation is one of the key GUI techniques to increase user engagement and control).

1 second keeps the user’s flow of thought seamless. Users can sense a delay, and thus know the computer is generating the outcome, but they still feel in control of the overall experience and that they’re moving freely rather than waiting on the computer. This degree of responsiveness is needed for good navigation.

10 seconds keeps the user’s attention. From 1–10 seconds, users definitely feel at the mercy of the computer and wish it was faster, but they can handle it. After 10 seconds, they start thinking about other things, making it harder to get their brains back on track once the computer finally does respond.

A 10-second delay will often make users leave a site immediately. And even if they stay, it’s harder for them to understand what’s going on, making it less likely that they’ll succeed in any difficult tasks.

Interesting stuff.  Check out the full article here: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/response-times.html

With your audience sitting directly in front of you, why put all that energy into a social networking tool that has the potential to distract people from listening to you? And what’s the best way to integrate tweets into the conversation?

Tweeting at conferences is one of the most productive uses of the service. Not only do audience members tweet the main points of a presentation, they can also use Twitter as a way to have conversations related to your session without interrupting.

Twitter has the power to derail a presentation, but there is the potential for a positive outcome as well. At South by Southwest Interactive in March, audience members organized a spontaneous donation drive on Twitter to fund a music project in a Texas inner-city school. One of the panelists mentioned the program during a panel about online giving, but no one suggested funding it. By the end of the session, a teacher’s fundraising efforts were over, and his music students can now record and playback their tunes to their hearts’ content.

Aware of the possibilities of Twitter, I was excited to find these Twitter plugins for Powerpoint presentations. All you need is a network connection and you can pull live tweets into your slides. If you’ve set up your own hashtag it’s a useful way to get live feedback to your session.

I tried out the tool at a recent presentation on online engagement, and was pleasantly surprised. It allowed me to keep track of what the twitterverse was saying about the conference and panel at that moment.

I stuck a tweet slide towards the beginning of the presentation to give people an idea that their tweets would be publicized, then again close to the end to pull out discussion points.

As a presenter, this was a great opportunity to check for:

• Interesting questions that had not yet been raised verbally
• Outside examples to highlight
• Misunderstandings that could be corrected
• Critiques that could be brought up for discussion

What other Twitter/presentation tools would you like to share?

I’m talking about using psychology to design better online interactions. In usability, we aim to make websites easier to use. In contrast, you can instead motivate (seduce) users to want to use your site, whether it is usable or not. That’s where the psychology comes in. If your site is funny, or playful, or surprising, visitors will be more motivated to use it.

The phrase “seductive interaction” comes from a talk by Stephen P. Anderson, who has put together some great examples and a large set of psychological techniques that can apply to the web. You can listen to a podcast of his talk from SXSW 2010, or read his slides, which are packed full of examples.

It’s a great reminder, especially to all of us who work with nonprofits, not to take yourself too seriously, or to stay too much within the mold. It’s all about standing out.

So, we asked staff:

What is your favorite example of a “seductive” interaction on the web?

Amy, Functional Consultant: Blogger does a great job with this.   “Create a Blog.  It’s easy and it only takes a minute.”  – which, even better than being seductive, is HONEST!  There it only takes a minute and it IS easy!

Marco, Software Engineer: This may be too tech focused for the blog.  But during the meeting I thought of the ZumoDrive service I use for online backup.  When you first sign up, they have this Learning “Dojo” that you go through to get familiar with the different features in your account.  And it’s presented like a game where you earn belts and there’s a reward.  When you’re done you get an extra  1GB of storage.  Check out the screenshot.

Marissa, Functional Consultant: The winner has to be Google Pacman.

Scott, Functional Consultant: I like Jeremy Keith’s narrative-style form. http://huffduffer.com/signup/.  One of the reasons is that It’s pretty simple to do.

Jo, Marketing Consultant: Every time you sign into Flickr, they teach you how to say “hello” in a random language. It makes me smile every time.

How about you? What’s your favorite example?

(update: 6/25/2010)

Mark, Functional Consultant: Found a couple of more recently that I thought would be worth sharing…

Skype advertisement to use their advanced web to phone calling feature

When you install Skype, they allow you to try their advanced web to phone feature. In doing so they prompt you to, “call someone you love.” Kind of delightful and unexpected.

Additionally, when you check out a preview of Flickr’s recent feature additions from the photo page you get a surprise. After stepping through four previous steps and clicking on the fifth, all of a sudden a panda bear appears in the bottom right of your screen and you are prompted to, “now have some fun with it.”

Final step page in new Flickr features preview

I thought this was great… totally unexpected (surprising) and delightful at the same time. Great example of bringing in several of the “sexy interaction” attributes that Stephen Anderson has been talking about.

We learned that there is only one method to test and have the conditional content work accurately in sending out emails. The following methods of sending out email will NOT work correctly with conditional content:

• Sending Quick Emails: for instance they will not identify you correctly in all groups you may be a member of when you send.
• Email Campaign emails you send as tests to ad hoc email address will also NOT correctly work with conditional content.

To get conditional content to work in your testing you need to use Email Campaigns AND send test emails to a Reviewer Group.

In general when running tests of emails, the closest you can get to simulating production sends is to create and use a test in Campaigns (vs. Quick Email) and a reviewers list. Sending to the reviewers list more closely simulates the production send than sending to ad-hoc defined emails. Reportedly this has to do with using a test mail server vs. the prod mail server for the send. So next time you’re testing your campaign emails, be sure to take the time to construct a reviewers list and test-send the email there.

Occasionally too, we’ve had different experiences in how long it takes to receive test sends to various domains. In talking with Convio staff, this may have something to do with Convio having to constantly stay on top of being on major email providers “white lists” and possibly being subjected to more scrutiny on delivery.

What single phrase when uttered aloud can send shivers down the spine of even the most stalwart organization executive? No, it’s not “Recession” (although a close second). If you guessed “Audit” you’re way off although “Website redesign” gets you warmer. Give up?

It’s “Rebranding”, officially defined as: “the process of giving a product or an organization a new image, in order to make it more attractive or successful.” Unofficially, defined as “Oh, Crap.”

Normally, it’s my job to help guide a client through this exciting, challenging and sometimes unpredictable process. I get to play therapist/subject matter expert/spiritual guide/bad guy as needed, without having any real skin in the game other than wanting the best for my client. Well, the chickens, they’ve come home to roost: Beaconfire is about to embark on this very process. And I’m not too proud to say that I’m a little freaked out. “The cobbler’s children have no shoes” ain’t just a saying, knowwhatImean?

Fueled by our 10 year anniversary next year (and a healthy dose of adrenaline/caffeine/insanity) we have decided to embark on a “LogoLift” ( i.e. not a full rebranding but a modernization of our existing brand) as we enter our next 10 years. Retaining brand equity at the same time as “re-imagining” the logo will be our first trick, followed closely by a redefinition of our voice across all communication vehicles. Piece of cake, right? The process kicks off this afternoon, and I think I’m more nervous for this “creative workshop” than for the ones I regularly lead for our clients. Why? Because my “Client” is a very smart, opinionated consultant – and we all know that no good can come from working with people like THAT.

Normally, I would offer the following helpful advice for a client starting down this auspicious path:

Simple imagery: The most effective is often the least complicated
Make a connection: Draw the audience in, don’t alienate them
Great typography: Clean, direct, engaging, but not lifeless.
Limited color palette: Pick 1 or 2 colors and work with hues to give depth and interest. Avoid applying mission symbolism to colors.
Don’t overthink it: If you cant explain how the logo represents your org to your mother in less than 10 words, try again.

Let’s hope I won’t be eating my words come Spring. As long as my blood pressure remains in an acceptable range, I will document our progress along the way, and let you know if we will celebrate our 10th with shoes on or not. Wish us luck?

• Your redesign went great – until you were running around the day before launch, trying to get content from your program staff and stuff it into your new CMS.
• Two months after your new site launched, you find a headline that says “Lorem ipsum…”  Oops.
• You leave the default autoresponders for all your most important actions, thinking “we’ll fix it later.”
• Your landing pages are ranking low in search, and have high bounce rates. You suspect your audiences just aren’t engaging with them, but haven’t figured out why.
• Your program staff are responsible for your web content, and they really know their stuff… but they don’t know much about writing for the web.
• Your design is beautiful, but once you start entering content, it’s just not fitting in the boxes that looked so perfect in the design phase.

These things could happen to you, if they haven’t already. Planning for content during a redesign often just means mapping the old content to the new, and then migrating it. But it should get more attention than that, because content is the most important part of your site.

I repeat: content is the most important part of your site.

Content — be it text, images, or video — is what people visit your site to find. Content — headlines, buttons, auto-responders, images — is what motivates people to become supporters or donors.  Content — page structure, metadata, alt tags — determines how your site will rank in search engines.  Content is important stuff.

That’s why Content Strategy, though an emerging field, is growing at lightning speed as people in the web community say, “yes, this is something we need.”  It’s been pioneered by folks like Kristina Halvorson, whose thoughts you can check out on the Brain Traffic Blog.

Content Strategy means deeply analyzing and revisiting your content throughout the redesign process, starting with a messaging strategy and letting that inform your content throughout the site.  It also means planning for content creation, curating good content, and actively improving your existing content before you migrate it.

The most natural time to do a content strategy project is during a redesign, but it can be a stand-alone effort as well. If it’s something you know your site needs, it doesn’t have to wait. Content isn’t always the first thing that’s looked at to improve a site’s performance, at least not holistically.  But in one way or another, content is often the solution, whether you need better SEO, a more emotional image for a landing page, or a more concise introduction to an important form. A content strategy project is your opportunity to look holistically at all these elements, and make sure they’re working together.

Have you done any content strategy for your organization’s site?  If so, what was your experience with it?