Playing the online marketing game without a game plan is the equivalent of shooting in the dark, except shooting in the dark presents a greater chance of hitting your target.

I  had the pleasure of presenting at the Temech Conference in Jerusalem today on this subject. You can find my presentation below.

The overall impression I get is that budget is the resource that often defines the approach marketers will take. Based on available funds, it seems logical to choose the options that will yield the greatest ROI. Brands are often thrilled to see their ranking, traffic, conversions, or other marketing goals start to show an upward trend. It is not uncommon for companies to approach a marketing vendor with the mandate, “Do what you can for this amount of money.”

Of course budget will be one of the criteria that shape a strategy, but it cannot be the only one. And even if budget is the primary consideration, this is a stunted approach to choosing a course of action that will best benefit the brand.

It’s like shooting the arrow first and then drawing the bull’s-eye: It doesn’t mean it isn’t on the mark, but it is hardly a great shot.

The post Strategic Marketing: Taking it to the Next Level appeared first on Pixel/Point Press | social media & SEO.

I am the first to admit that I didn’t initially understand the lure of Pinterest,  “What’s the big deal, its just a digital bulletin board!”  But I was soon drawn into its beautifully curated world – you can find my pins here. It is like a visual filing cabinet that I use for recipes, decorating ideas, and adorable pictures of tiny animals (don’t judge me).

Pinterest Marketing for Business

With all of the social media platforms out there, it can be a challenge to decide if the new networks are worth investing time in. Here are some reasons in favor of Pinterest:

• There is no fear of a pin getting “buried.” As a user adds a new pin, the other pins stay on the board, and simply shift over to make room for the new pin. It’s estimated that 80% of pins are repins, so popular content recirculates frequently.
• Pinterest now offers a web analytics suite that allows you to see your most popular content and which pages from your website are pinned most often. You’ll need a Pinterest account and a verified website in order to see this. Alternately, you can see the most popular pins from your site by visiting this URL (http://pinterest.com/source/yourdomain.com) – sub in your website’s domain for “yourdomain.com” (you can also use this to research your competition).
• Complimentary boards can capture traffic that might be otherwise missed. If you have a tea shop, you can have a board dedicated to beautiful china tea cups, novelty teapots, or adorable tiny animals in teacups (just a suggestion).
• It’s pretty! Do not underestimate the power of a beautiful visual interface.
• It’s mobile friendly! With sleek apps, Pinterest is a great fit for mobile visitors.

If you are interested in learning more about Pinterest, and how to use it as an effective marketing tool, this is a great podcast to get you started:
And this infographic below gives some insight into the people behind the success of Pinterest. Happy Pinning!

The post How I Learned to Love Pinterest appeared first on Pixel/Point Press | social media & SEO.

Teach them young with a great kids’ t-shirt

Our pals in the United States are celebrating National Grammar Day on March 4^th. My personal affinity for using words and punctuation correctly has already been documented on this blog, so I am going to pick up my banner for punctiliousness and focus on one point. (One of yourdictionary.com’s top 5 most common grammatical errors.)

His, Her, Their

In the name of fairness, who hasn’t made this mistake?

“Anyone who wants to pick up their tickets in advance should call to make arrangements.”

Anyone is a single subject. Their (not there or they’re – a whole other set of mistakes) is a plural form of the possessive pronoun.

The correction for this problem is to use a singular possessive pronoun: “his or her.” In rare cases, the writer may actually be speaking to all women or all men, and then can simply use “his” or “her.” Using just one or the other, however, has fallen out of favor (in English – other languages are happy to default to the masculine).

But “his or her” seems clunky and disruptive to the sentence! Absolutely true. This error is, I would venture, a contemporary one; in the 1950s, nobody would have thought twice about assigning the masculine in this situation. Contemporary politeness and inclusion brings us all down!

His or Her? His? Her?

Once we’ve eliminated “their” from the list of possibilities, what’s left is probably awkward at best, or inaccurate at worst.

What’s a grammarian to do?

Rework the sentence! Change the subject of the sentence, rearrange its parts, or write in the plural to use a plural possessive pronoun instead:

• “Call in order to make arrangements to pick up tickets in advance.”
• “Pick up of tickets in advance can be arranged.”
• “Do you want to pick up your tickets in advance? Call to make arrangements.”

Let’s All Agree

It’s a fine point, but one that makes your writing looked polished. Pronouns and subjects must agree! Put on your copyeditor cap and rewrite your sentence to avoid falling into this common trap.

The post Stop being polite, and start being accurate appeared first on Pixel/Point Press | social media & SEO.

Welcome to Non-Profit Week on the Pixel/Point Press blog! We’re featuring guest posts this week from around our community. Our fourth post comes from Ephraim Gopin. Enjoy!

In normal times, the job of U.S. intelligence agencies is to mine data in order to thwart attacks, carry out tactical operations and keep American interests safe at home and around the world. Remember Benghazi? Remember General Petraeus? The word “intelligence” took a beating.

Businesses mine data for “competitive intelligence” (CI), allowing them to learn as much about the competition as possible. In the past, securing this vital information sometimes came under the heading of industrial espionage. But thanks to Google and, especially, social media (SM), it’s all there for the taking–and 100% legal.

None of the above means you should steer clear of other NPOs. Far from it! I am a strong proponent of NPOs working together on specific projects aimed at helping more people. A partnership allows you to pool resources to reach a wider audience and potentially increases your chances of receiving funding from donors.

The post Using Competitive Intelligence to Stand Out appeared first on Pixel/Point Press | social media & SEO.

In an ideal world we would all do what we love, and love what we do. Imagine being one the lucky few who are paid to do what they truly enjoy, and happen to be doing all the time anyway. It’s perfect. Well, it’s almost perfect.

When your favorite leisure activity becomes your work, it can blur the lines between them and raises some unique questions. Is it really ‘leisure’ any more, now that it’s your vocation? Since your employment is what you do naturally all the time anyway, are you ever off the clock? Do you need to be? When work and life naturally overlap, it is a challenge to find the right balance. I know; my work and life are so intertwined that I’m often confused about where one ends and the other begins.

Making Aliyah to Israel was a defining moment for me. Ten years later, I still view our Aliyah, on the very first Nefesh B’Nefesh flight, as one of the most significant – and best – decisions we could have made. As a social media aficionado, you almost couldn’t pick a better fit for me than managing the social media for Nefesh B’Nefesh. Naturally I have very strong feelings about Israel, Aliyah and Nefesh B’Nefesh, so for someone who spends the amount of time on social media that I do engaging in these passions, it means I am always ‘on’.

Photo courtesy Laura Ben-David

One challenge is what I like to call justified procrastination. Naturally, no matter how much you love a job, there will be those responsibilities you like less. Since I’m always ‘working’ it is easy to put off those less preferable tasks until I finish doing something I enjoy more. Of course this practice doesn’t hold up very well when a deadline comes and goes and I am still caught up doing what I didn’t actually have to be doing that moment.

The biggest challenge for me, though, is that I’m often unsure when my work persona ends and my personal life begins. For example, when communicating with some of the many friends I’ve made through my professional interactions, sometimes we talk about work, other times we just talk. Am I networking or just shooting the breeze? Am I on the clock or off?

Often when I’m checking Facebook or twitter, inevitably I will find and relate to personal items during work hours, and work items after-hours. Then again, what are my hours? The work that I do is certainly not bound by any traditional business hours. In fact there are so many things I do in my day that could be for work, but maybe it isn’t. How do I quantify it? How do I separate it? Do I even need to?

Happily I am salaried and not worrying about calculating every moment of work; that would be a full time job in and of itself. With my work and private lives overlapping as they do, I will naturally always be struggling to find the balance. Often I don’t even try, but I know I must because as a wife, mother and community member, I have other obligations outside of the computer and smartphone – much as I enjoy using them. . It’s not perfect; but these days it’s perfectly normal. We may not have an ideal world and there may not be an ideal job. But I love what I do and that’s why I do it. And I never forget what a blessing that is.

Inspired by her Aliyah experience, Laura Ben-David began writing and never stopped. Hailing from Boca Raton, Fla., Laura is the author of the book, MOVING UP: An Aliyah Journal, a memoir of her move to Israel. She has spoken about Israel and Aliyah all over the United States and Israel. When social media came onto the scene she took to the new medium naturally and is currently the social media coordinator at Nefesh B’Nefesh. Find her here on Twitter.

More posts from NPO Week at Pixel/Point Press:

• Using Competitive Intelligence to Stand Out
• Perfecting the Act of Not-For-Profit Task Juggling
• Content is King – Help Yours Reign Supreme

The post How to Stay Sane When Social Media is Your Job appeared first on Pixel/Point Press | social media & SEO.

“I’m the marketer. The fundraiser. The volunteer coordinator. The case manager. The…”

Anyone who works in the nonprofit sector can relate to this laundry list of responsibilities. When we add social media into the mix, do we also have to throw all of our time management skills out the window?

We’re all jugglers. Juggling is not easy; it takes a lot of practice.

When balancing so many different roles in an organization, it’s hard to excel in anything. It seems as if we’re always working hard to maintain the status quo without really progressing or completing our tasks.

If social media truly is such an integral part of the nonprofit marketing mix, how do we incorporate its strengths and stabilize a schedule without getting sucked into it all and causing our other ‘juggling balls’ to land on the floor?

Here are 5 ways to achieve non-profit marketing balance

1. Strategize: The best tool is a clear plan. Use the tactics and platforms that generate the best results for your organization to succeed. In this case, it’s ok to “drop” the rest. In most cases, there are tools that help streamline your social media workflow.

2. Identify: Before you can really focus on the important things, you need to pinpoint distractions. Turn off alerts from Facebook and Twitter . If you get the urge to be distracted, take note, pause and return to your task. Hold yourself accountable to stay away from social media when you know that you should be concentrating your efforts in other areas of your work.

3. Socialize: social media requires active listening. It’s not about posting a clever tweet or spamming. In order to continually see growth, don’t forget to make time to meet new people on Twitter, leave comments on new blogs and add Facebook friends. Build time in your daily schedules for expanding your network, too.

4. Be Consistent: Whatever time you can allocate to social media, make it count. The point is not to give up, but keep your presence visible and genuine. Checking social media, for a limited amount of time in the morning, noontime and in the afternoon before the end of day is a good recipe.

5. Share: This is a tough one. Rather than try to continue to juggle alone, try passing some of the responsibilities or sharing with a co-worker. With social media, sharing can actually have a positive ROI. Others in your organization can help increase the number of posts by finding their groove at different times than yours.

Has social media been added to your juggling routine? If you’re spending too much time on social media marketing and not seeing a return on your investment, it’s time to reevaluate your strategy.

Take control of your day and get more done! Be accountable and in charge of your time.

Mordecai Holtz is an experienced nonprofit professional in the fields of community organization, program development, administration and management for almost 8 years. Mordecai is well versed in social media and enjoys consulting with small businesses and nonprofit organizations to reach their fullest online potential. Follow Mordecai by reading his blog noholtzbarred.com or on twitter@mordecaiholtz.

More posts from NPO Week at Pixel/Point Press:

• How to Stay Sane When Social Media is Your Job
• Content is King – Help Yours Reign Supreme

The post Perfecting the Act of Not-For-Profit Task Juggling appeared first on Pixel/Point Press | social media & SEO.

Welcome to Non-Profit Week on the Pixel/Point Press blog! We’re featuring guest posts this week from around our community. Our first post comes from Florence Broder, an independent consultant in Tel Aviv, whose prior experience includes work with the UJA-Federation New York and The Jewish Agency. Enjoy!

Congratulations! Your organization has decided to move forward in launching an online community. It’s time to launch a Facebook page, Twitter feed, YouTube channel, and a Pinterest board to stay current with online trends. Both lay people and professional staff are on board about the value that this new marketing channel can provide. You sense that this new venture has great potential, so you have earmarked a full-time position rather than appointing an intern to run it. You feel like you thought everything through, but it doesn’t seem to be working as you had hoped it would.

This scenario is one that I have observed at many nonprofit organizations. They realize they need to have a presence on all social media channels but forget one thing: content. Organizations often underestimate its importance. The person hired to manage the online community doesn’t always have expertise in content development but knows how to engage loyal supporters. This Web expert knows how to connect the various social media channels, when to post content, and how to measure engagement. But if there is no content, the community manager doesn’t have any work to do. Content development is truly a field in and of itself and should not be taken lightly.

So, what kind of content should you be posting? Here are some things to consider:

1. Who is your audience? Are you addressing supporters or donors?

2. What are your goals? Are you “friendraising” or fundraising?

3. What can you provide on social media that you are unable to do solely on your website?

These guiding questions will help you create your content strategy. However, it is clear from Facebook’s purchase of Instagram, and Pinterest’s emergence as a successful social network, that all of the social media channels are emphasizing visual content. Even LinkedIn and Twitter have recently upgraded the company/profile pages and now allow organizations to feature a prominent cover image. The good news is that users are actually more engaged with this content, which helps search engine optimization and referring traffic back to your website, according to a recent Mashable article.

When selecting a cover image, consider the message you want to be sending to your target audience.. Another thing to leverage is your Facebook timeline. Are you using it to tell your organization’s story and mission properly? Highlight some of your organization’s successes and milestones. This is important to build your organization’s credibility; it demonstrates how you fulfill your mission. Part of the challenge today is that new Facebook pages are not showing every page’s update.. Now organizations need to invest in promoting posts, a feature that is only available if you have more than 400 fans on your page. This makes it considerably more difficult to connect with your audience. Many companies and social media experts are reporting drops in their Facebook page interaction. So if your organization has determined that Facebook is a cornerstone of the social media strategy, the budget for promoted posts needs to be in the mix.

Pinterest allows you to create a range of boards highlighting your work. Create boards that align with your organization’s mission and pin content from your website. Also try to post supporting content from other sites and partners that work with you. Also remember that YouTube videos can be pinned, giving your videos another opportunity to go viral.

Many nonprofits do not take advantage of visual opportunities on YouTube. You can apply to become a YouTube Nonprofit partner. This allows you to customize the header of your channel, have pop up ads on videos, and allow annotations to external links. Yad Vashem’s YouTube Channel is a great example of an organization maximizing the features that YouTube provides. It categorizes videos using playlists, making content more relevant, and also links to a range of foreign language channels.

Social media is an amazing communication tool. It helps you get the message out there to the people you are trying to access. Just always keep in mind that “content is king” — without quality content no one will want to stay engaged.

Florence Broder was formerly employed at both UJA-Federation New York and The Jewish Agency and is now an independent consultant living in Tel Aviv. You can follow her on Twitter @flogolightly.

More posts from NPO Week at Pixel/Point Press:

• Using Competitive Intelligence to Stand Out
• How to Stay Sane When Social Media is Your Job
• Perfecting the Act of Not-For-Profit Task Juggling

The post Content is King – Help Yours Reign Supreme appeared first on Pixel/Point Press | social media & SEO.

It was great to catch up with so many familiar faces and meet some new friends too. After that, we got down to business.

I think I can say that a lot of great information was learned, some new ideas were created and everyone will go home with something new to pursue. But – perhaps best of all – we all had a lot of very good laughs while we learned.

My presentation is available below and I hope you’ll consider sharing it.

The post Going Social in 2013 appeared first on Pixel/Point Press | social media & SEO.

Conversely, the wrong way to do social media is easily spotted.

A shining example of not-best-practices came to light via Best for Babes. Nursing mothers at a Delaware mall refused to move to the bathroom at the request of mall security, and were within their legal rights according to Delaware breastfeeding statutes. Although state police were called, the troopers rightly allowed the women to continue nursing. When a mom contacted the mall through its Facebook page to ask about the incident, the “official” response included insults and inappropriate remarks.

A snapshot of the response on the Concord Mall Facebook page.

Unfortunately for Delaware’s Concord Mall, anyone with the capability to take a screenshot (which is standard on all computers and mobile devices) could now use this however they wished.

The administration of the mall then removed the page and denied it had ever had a Facebook presence in emails, despite more screenshot evidence to the contrary—a prominent Facebook button on the mall’s website.

Email replies from the mall denied having a Facebook page.

Notice the Facebook icon on the mall’s website

Savvy diggers found cached images of the page.

At SMX Israel this week, lawyers Yoram Lichtenstein and Baruch Bebchick took on some of the issues that can arise for people who work in social media, digital marketing and SEO. But, from my perspective, the two most important takeaways can apply to anyone.

Point one: Nothing is private. Before you post anything, think once. Then think twice.

Even when you use “private” messaging or intend to keep messages, statuses, or photos restricted to a small circle of people, things happen. Ask Randi Zuckerberg.

Sometimes, it includes potentially bad, career-ending things. Ask Anthony Weiner.

Remember when a Facebook bug supposedly revealed years’ worth of private messaging on people’s timelines? Good times!
It just takes one screenshot to fully reconstruct a lapse in judgment.

Point two: Know the law.

In the SMX session, Baruch Bebchick intended this in terms of how people are using social media, not only the terms of service but also adherence to local and federal laws for things like contests and giveaways. I would extend this to knowing the law for anything you may discuss on social networks. Luckily, living in the age of search, information like this is readily accessible.

We will leave the nursing angle to more well-versed bloggers, but from a social media angle Concord Mall’s response to the breastfeeding moms was disaster for the mall for myriad reasons.

Minimally:

• A callous, caustic (and public!) response to a sensitive issue will be never be acceptable.
• When you err in judgment, don’t delete it and attempt to pretend the event never happened.
• Know where you stand legally before you respond. In this case, mall security was on the wrong side of Delaware state law. From there, mounting a defense becomes extremely difficult.

The post What’s Wrong With This Facebook Screenshot? appeared first on Pixel/Point Press | social media & SEO.

Thanks to all the participants who attended my session and peppered me with great questions before and after my presentation.

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