By Jessica Scadron
Social Harmony

As communications professionals, we need to be agile and forward-thinking to stay competitive. We’ve come to accept that the future is unpredictable—and that we need to prepare ourselves for the unexpected.

With technological advances, fake news and virtual reality, we started to see accelerated change in 2017. We can expect that 2018 is going to move even faster. So limber up, expand your periphery, and take a look at what I predict will be the trends to prepare for in the coming year.

Activist CEOs

I am happy to report that CEOs are coming out of their corner offices with important social messages. What a breath of fresh air to see Tim Cook and Elon Musk speak out against injustices, and hundreds of CEOs resign from Trump’s business advisory board in protest. This makes my activist heart glow.

The time is here: Customers and investors now insist that companies engender a social sense of purpose that goes beyond delivering profits to shareholders. It’s a popular trend, and one that resonates with a much wider audience. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer: “Three out of four general population respondents agree that a company can take actions that both increase profits and improve the social and economic conditions of the community where it operates.”

You’ll see growing corporate pressure in 2018. With it, keep your eyes open for CEOs taking public positions on social issues—stepping in where policymakers are failing. It will be the communicator’s job to advise these business leaders on how to build trust and confidence with their stakeholders.

Integrating communications with business functions

Throughout my career, communications has traditionally stood on its own as a service to other departments within a company or organization, which are often seen as “clients.” For example, a comms team will be called when a sales department needs to promote a specific product or a program manager wants to run a campaign for maternal health. Historically, communications has responded by providing the needed content and design to implement these initiatives. I’ve seen this slowly change over time. In 2018, we’ll see that paradigm shift dramatically.

Organizations and businesses are catching on that communications is most functional when integrated across the company—with marketing, sales, finance and programming. Look out for the consolidation of positions like “Digital Communications Manager” and “Financial Communications Account Executive.” Companies will create new positions like these to more closely associate people with the work they do. We’ll need to work closely with our colleagues in each department and understand their functions so we can effectively communicate and elevate their work internally and externally.

Data

I’ve seen time and again how important it is to make data-informed decisions. But what is a data-informed decision?

Organizations need employees trained in data analysis, such as programming, visualization and statistics, to understand their audiences, cut costs, improve customer service and reach the right funders. Companies in the wireless, healthcare and software industries are using big data in this way, and nonprofits can similarly reap huge benefits from big data. The Foundation Center manages a grand database for nonprofits to find out what and where donors are funding, and how to use data to advance their missions.

As data becomes more integral to operations, communicators must work side-by-side with data analysts to simplify the language so everyone across the organization understands the meaning, and uses it to make better decisions, like personalizing content.

We also need to be honest about data. It doesn’t lie, but how it gets translated can skew meaning. And, if you’re measuring likes, clicks and shares, understand exactly why you are using those metrics. Will they help you get closer to your goals?

Augmented reality

As a social do-gooder, I’m skeptical about our ability to control our technology impulses. Frankly, it gives me mild anxiety. But augmented reality (AR) is here to stay, with the promise of making our lives easier. According to International Data Corporation, “AR revenues will surge ahead [of virtual reality], hitting critical mass in healthcare delivery and product design and management-related use cases.”

AR has come a long way since being invented in 1968, and it will continue to evolve (check out the full history). Existing museum, decorating and travel apps are already creating convenient and fantastical experiences for the citizenry.

What does this mean for communicators? We need to think differently about how we create and deliver content, from a 2D reality to 3D, and using voice, face and object recognition. Think back to how we changed our approach to writing for websites when the Internet took off or how we learned to create for mobile. AR is going to be our next big content challenge.

Video

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, video is worth a million.” – Miranda King, digital media strategist

I couldn’t agree more. Video has been the most shared form of digital content for years, and you can expect it to explode in 2018. Around the world, people collectively spend a billion hours a day on YouTube. In addition to the well-researched fact that people are drawn to video over text, video gets better search results: “Social media algorithms prefer video content because it generates higher engagement and more click-throughs than traditional static content,” according to Stern Strategy Group.

Virtual reality, raw footage, 360 video, and live streaming will boom in 2018 as people not only want to watch video, but be completely immersed in the experience. And as Facebook becomes more mobile and video metrics more available, there’s greater reason to invest in this medium.

As a communicator, you’ll want to figure out what types of video will be the most useful for your organization, and the right platforms to showcase them. Then decide how to shape your content into the most compelling video people will want to share.

Video will increasingly become a necessary communications tool. With strong communications direction, it’ll be exciting to see how video producers use new technologies to deliver fresh video experiences.

I’m exhilarated about what 2018 has in store for us communicators. It’s a new frontier to develop new skills and tell our organizations’ stories in new ways.

What are your communication trends predictions for 2018? Tweet me your ideas!

Jessica Scadron founded Social Harmony, a social impact firm that provides communications strategy and implementation to organizations changing the world. Find her on LinkedIn, Twitter and email.

The post The 2018 communications trends to watch appeared first on Socialbrite.

By Guest

Are you curious how your nonprofit’s marketing stacks up against your peers? Which marketing channels are most important to your peers? Do you share the same challenges faced by your peers?

All of these questions are answered in the Nonprofit Marketing Guides’ 2016 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report.

Highlights include:

• Top goals for nonprofit communication directors in 2016: brand awareness & engaging community.
• Your website is still the most important communications channel.
• Facebook, Twitter and YouTube remain the top three social media sites for nonprofits.
• Your peers are posting to Facebook at least once a day.
• The goals of Executive Directors are more aligned with Development than Communications.
• 59% of nonprofits will pay for Facebook advertising in 2016.
• Recipe for nonprofit comm success? More dedicated staff, bigger budgets and more internal cooperation.

What’s changed over the past three years?

With 6 years of data, the Nonprofit Communications Trends report also shows how things are changing for the better! For example:

• Retaining donors has become increasingly important to Executive Directors. Retention is also a top goal for Development and Communications.
• For Development Directors, retaining donors is now more important than acquiring new donors.1
• The “Big Six” communications channels – websites, email, social media, in-person events, print marketing, and media relations/PR – won’t change in 2016.

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Live streaming has been thrust into the limelight recently with the release of Periscope — a free mobile app that allows any user to live stream from wherever they are. The whole concept of Periscope is to virtually place you somewhere in the world you would never be if it weren’t for the app.

Even as a nonprofit techie, I tend to look at new apps and platforms with a bit of skepticism because I don’t always think nonprofits should jump on the bandwagon of the next new shiny app that promises a lot and underperforms. That said, I do feel it’s important to keep updated on new tools, make an educated decision on whether it’s right for your nonprofit, and have a strong reason either way as to why or why not your nonprofit is using that social tool. I’ve noticed that having a well prepared answer at the ready is especially handy at board meetings when conversations start to drift to why your npo isn’t leveraging a certain social platform.

So when Periscope came along, I did what I normally do — I downloaded it to my smart phone and started playing with the app and paying attention to how others were maximizing its potential. I quickly realized Periscope could be a powerful broadcasting tool for nonprofits.

But how do you know if it’s right for your nonprofit and if it is, how do use it effectively?

THE GOOD (and what you need to know to get started):

• Periscope is a free downloadable mobile app that works with either iPhone or Android
• It’s Twitter owned, so you can sign up using your existing Twitter account and have instant access to all of your Twitter followers.
• You can share live broadcasts with your Twitter/Periscope following and the app sends a notification to your followers that you’re streaming live.
• There’s a very small learning curve on this app. I found it very simple to set up my account and start streaming.
• When you’re watching a live stream, tap on the screen to give the broadcaster hearts. On Periscope, hearts act as applause or ‘likes’ to show the broadcaster you like what you’re seeing. Visually, the hearts float up the right-hand side of your screen when you’re streaming. Hearts also measure popularity on Periscope.
• There is a chat function that lets you interact with your audience, and them with you. In shoty, viewers can comment on your livestream. It’s really great for Q and A’s and commentary in real time. You also have the ability to turn comments off.
• Once your broadcast is over, your analytics come on the screen and show you number of views, retention rate, duration of video, and number of hearts received. So great for data-driven organizations!
• When you end your broadcast, you can save the video to your camera roll and share it or watch it later.
• The lock button allows you to live stream a video for only certain people to watch. If you want to live stream an event for only your team or small supporter group to see, you can choose which people will be able to see your broadcast.

THE BAD:

• It just launched in March 2015, so it is still a little buggy.
• Your livestream is only available for 24 hours before it disappears on Periscope, so make sure to download it if it’s a video you want to keep.
• Periscope shoots only in vertical mode, not landscape, which has now become intuitive for anyone shooting any type of video on their smart phones. Lets hope that changes soon.
• Periscope needs better immediate control over trolls, spammers, and innapropriate comments during a live broadcast. As it is now, you have go to the user’s profile and then press the block button. This is too complicated when you’re in the process of broadcasting live. If Periscope doesn’t find a better remedy for this soon, it is going to be a dealbreaker for many, many nonprofit users.
• It forces you to begin your broadcast with only the option to shoot outward facing. So, if you’d like to begin your broadcast by speaking directly to camera, you can’t. You have to start outward facing, then double tap the screen to switch it inward facing. We should have the option to start a broadcast using whichever view we prefer.
• The ability to comment is limited to the first 200 people viewing the broadcast. Viewers can tap hearts but not comment if they are late to the broadcast and the livestream has over 200 viewers.

5 WAYS NONPROFITS CAN MAXIMIZE PERISCOPE

1) Live streaming from “the field”

If the connectivity is there, we just opened up a great way for communications and program officers to broadcast field visits abroad and beneficiary interviews (when appropriate). The same goes for local nonprofits who really have the capacity to live stream important “mission moments” that might otherwise go unshared.

2) Q and A’s

Periscope offers a great new way to connect with your supporters by having the ability to conduct livestream Q and A’s with your program participants, executive director, program director, celebrity ambassadors, and others. The chat function allows Periscope users to ask questions or post commentary as you’re live streaming, so it’s exceptionally interactive and fast. Think about Periscoping in a series, like doing a series of fun ‘Meet the Staff’  Q & A’s, or designating a portion of your weekly staff meeting to a Periscope Program Update and short Q and A afterwards. That’s a great way to let your supporters know ahead of time what you’ll be doing and what to expect.

3) Events Broadcasting

Periscope is a great way to let your supporters in on events that they’re interested in but can’t attend. That $500/plate gala dinner can now be accessible via Periscope. How great would it be to have a staff correspondent at your next gala, benefit, fundraiser or conference that’s in charge of showing viewers around and chatting with honorees and guests? It’s a fantastic way to share these exclusive events with your community.

Attending a rally, friendraiser, or other on site event for your nonprofit – bring your supporters along with a live stream on Periscope.

Another way to break the fourth wall, is to do an office tour led by your staff and interns. Showing the inner workings of your organization and the people behind the status updates has been shown to increase engagement and trust for nonprofits.

4) Crowdsourcing

If you’re looking to get some quick feedback on a new project, logo, initiative or maybe just some input on what your supporters like and would like to see more of, Periscope is a great tool to survey a clearly social media savvy focus group.

5) Announcements

Have an announcement to make? Did you just receive a big grant from USAID or added an awesome new hire to your team? Expanding your work to a new country? Added a new program? Did you host a contest and want to announce the winner? You can use Periscope to go live with your big news and involve your community in the excitement.

Nonprofit Best Practices for using Periscope:

• Be prepared BEFORE you click the “Start Broadcast” button. Given it’s an amateur live broadcast you do get some leeway, but try to be as steady with the shots and as well-prepared as possible. You don’t have to script the broadcast but remember that you’re telling a story. So what is the story you want to tell? Why have you asked people to come and watch this broadcast? What value does it have? What’s in it for them? Make sure you can answer these questions. Also, provide some guidance to your viewers as to what type of questions or feedback you’re looking for. Viewers may be hesitant to use the comments on Periscope, so make it ok by prompting them. Any good story has a beginning, middle and end to it, so it’s a really good idea to create a bullet list of what you want to happen during each stage of the broadcast, to ensure everyone on your team is on the same page. Above all, remember, all good media production rules still apply.
• Title your live stream broadcast well. Tell us what it’s about in a concise way.
• Be wise about using your hashtags to promote your live stream. Hashtaging allows people to find your stream via Twitter when searching that topic.
• To reach as wide an audience as possible, share the broadcast and location on Twitter. You’ll be able to reach far more viewers, and having the video present on Twitter gives it a much longer shelf life.
• Use the top third of your mobile screen, as  the comment function will block the view of the lower part of your broadcast.

Final Thoughts:

I think Periscope is one of the latest platforms to come along that has the greatest potential for nonprofits. Live streaming can take engagement to a whole new level and if the bandwidth is there, give nonprofits and global NGO’s the ability to share the on-the-ground work that is being done. Perisope has the potential of upping the levels of engagement, transparency and trust. From another perspective, I wonder how many nonprofits will be comfortable with the risk inherent in livestreaming? While we’re seeing so many nonprofits using social media wisely and experimenting, most nonprofits still want to have tight control and management over any content they produce. As we have seen in the past, nonprofit teams that are more comfortable with risk and social sharing will help pave the way for other organizations who will wait until the app is less new and seemingly less risky. Ultimately, lack of complete content control and the inability to quickly seed out inappropriate comments, will present the biggest barriers for a nonprofit’s use of Periscope.

Lastly, from a citizen reporting and journalism perspective, Periscope is and will continue to be a real game changer. I believe we’ll be seeing much more ‘Periscoping’ in parts of the world seeing political and social unrest — giving us unprecedented access into areas otherwise unseen by most.

I will be featuring nonprofits and NGOs using Periscope on this blog, so please let me know in the comments below of any npos you know that are using Periscope to engage their supporters.

*Blog post updated on 7/5/15.

The post Periscope for Nonprofits: A Quick Guide & Review appeared first on Socialbrite.

By Caroline Avakian / Photo above courtesy of Facebook

It was just a few hours after I found out about the devastating Nepal earthquake that I noticed an alert on my Facebook feed that I hadn’t seen before. My colleague who works in Nepal had been marked “Safe” in Facebook’s new “Safety Check” feature, that instantly let me know how many of my Facebook friends were in the “affected area”, how many had been “marked safe”, and also allowed me to mark myself safe in the event I was in the “affected area”.

The Safety Check feature was quickly followed up by a “Donate” feature, so if you log into Facebook today, you’ll notice a message at the top of your news feed that lets you donate to International Medical Corps, a humanitarian organization Facebook has partnered with to provide emergency aid. Facebook is also providing matching funds of up to two million to provide immediate and ongoing relief. The IMCs emergency response teams are operating mobile medical units in Nepal, India and Bangladesh, to deliver critically needed medical care and medicines to the regions hardest-hit by the earthquake. They’re distributing hygiene kits, water purification tablets and other supplies to the most devastated areas.

The post How social media platforms are responding to the Nepal earthquake, and how you can help appeared first on Socialbrite.

As a consultant and trainer in the nonprofit community, I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the Nonprofit Communications Trends Report. And it’s here! Kivi published the first Nonprofit Communications Trends Report back in 2011, surveying 780 nonprofits.

For the most recent report, Kivi surveyed 1,535 nonprofits – mostly in the US.

Highlights from the 2015 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report are presented in an infographic (below), which includes the following eye-openers:

• Nonprofits no longer have new donor acquisition as a primary goal. Instead, retaining current donors and engaging their communities is becoming more important.
• Communications Directors and Development Directors have conflicting goals. Development, of course, wants to retain and acquire donors. Communications wants to focus less on fundraising and more on brand awareness and engagement.
• Nonprofits are planning on sending more email and direct mail appeals in 2015. 45% of the participants said they will send monthly appeals, and 36% said they will send quarterly direct mail appeals.
• Facebook is still the king of social media channels. 96% of participants have a Facebook page.
• Nonprofits still say their website is the most important communications channel, followed by email and social media. This is as it should be.
• Communications Directors are challenged with lack of time to produce quality content.
• Facebook takes up more time than blogging or email marketing.

Check out the full infograph below, and download your copy of the report here.

The post Nonprofit Communications Trends Report for 2015 appeared first on Socialbrite.

Tips to make Facebook work harder for your website

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

How you reach people is not limited to your Facebook Page.

You reach people with your e-mails, your YouTube videos, mentions in the local newspaper.

And you reach people with your website content.

In the same way that people share your Facebook Page updates with their friends (via likes, comments and shares), they can also share your website content. For example, someone sharing a blog post by clicking a Like button. With both a Facebook Page and a blog, your ability to reach people gets amplified!

7 Facebook hacks for your website

Think about how your webpages look on Facebook.

• Is it easy for people to share your website content on Facebook?
• Do you know what links look like in the NewsFeed?

If you said “no” to both of these questions (or don’t know the answers), you’ll find these seven tips useful:

1) Add Facebook Like Buttons to Content

We all know the like button. A single click generates a story in the news feed, which is great for website traffic! To add the Facebook like button to content, follow these steps:

• Visit the like button plugin page.
• Configure as shown
• Note preview
• Click “Get Code”
• Add code to webpage

If you use WordPress, check out the Facebook Plugin.

2) Embed Facebook Sharing in Text and Images

Let’s say that you write a blog post about an upcoming event. In addition to having a like button for the post, you embed a call-to-action for people to share the event on Facebook. When people click on it, a Facebook sharing window appears.

To embed Facebook sharing in text and images, follow these instructions:

• Visit https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=
• Enter your website after the equal sign (?u=)
• Embed URL into text or image (target new window)
• Test sharing

3) Optimize Images for Facebook Link Posts

Link images are now bigger in the News Feed (desktop and mobile), which means that your website images are now more important than ever!

Some guidelines for your images:

• Facebook’s default image is the largest one associated with the URL
• Images that are at least 1200 x 627 pixels look awesome on Facebook – desktop (full screen) AND mobile
• Aspect ratio for all link images is 1.9:1 (1200 X 627 pixels)

Note: If you plan on posting links as photos, huge images will also look beautiful in full screen.

4) Debug Your Website for Facebook Graph

You also want to make sure that your website code plays nicely with Facebook. You can run a quick audit with the Facebook Debugger:

• Enter your URL
• Click Debug
• Show the results to a developer
• Keep in mind that you may need a web developer to help you

5) Track Facebook with Google Analytics

Make sure you’re tracking how people share your website content on Facebook with Google analytics. You can quickly see your most popular content on Facebook by following the instructions below.

• Visit Google Analytics
• Click on Acqusition
• Click on Social
• Click on Facebook

6) Embed Top-Performing Posts

You may already know that you can embed Facebook updates into a webpage or blog post. But are you doing it? If not, try it – you’ll kill two birds with one stone:

• Increase reach for your best Facebook Page updates
• Source blog content that’s already been vetted by your Facebook fans

7) Make a Likebox Web page

Most marketers use the LikeBox to turn website visitors into Facebook fans. But with a few tweaks, you can use to highlight your latest Facebook Page updates on a single webpage. This “Likebox webpage” increases reach for your Facebook Page updates, and gives your website visitors content that’s awesome.

What do you think? Have you used any of these tips for your website? If so, let us know in the comments below.

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Make the most out of your time and blog more often

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, marketers, managers, journalists, general public.

One thing I’ve learned from years of blogging is that a blogging process saves time and headaches. My approach uses creative momentum at the beginning to blow through tasks that require linear thinking.

Above you’ll find a 6-minute video demonstration of exactly what I do, step-by-step, for each blog post:

Make an Outline – Assuming you’ve selected useful topic to write about, all you need at the beginning is a basic framework to support the copy. I use MindMiester to map out an outline.

Dictate Copy – I use the built in speech translator in my Macbook Pro to write copy. Begin with a brain dump, and then edit what you’ve written.

Edit the Copy – Eliminate as much copy as possible without eliminating your voice. Write like you speak, but keep it short and sweet.

Transfer the Copy – Copy the content from your plain text editor, and copy it in your blogging software. Most people use WordPress.

Tweak SEO – It’s my belief that when you write content that’s highly specific and useful to your audience, the SEO takes care of itself. That said, here are a few bonus tips on ranking higher in search.

Add Tags and Categories – Next, select the appropriate categories and tags for your blog post. Categories should represent the larger topics within your blog, and tags should represent specific elements that are within various categories.

Add Images – Images are honey, your readers are bees. They should trigger readers on an emotional level to stick around and read more.

Add links – Depending upon your goals, you might link to internal pages, or link to external pages. For example if you’re trying to promote an event, you might write a series of blog posts linking to the registration page.

Schedule the Post – Finally, schedule the blog post for a morning within the next day or two (bonus points if you know what time is best for your community).

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Avoid 3D charts, extend bar charts to zero & other key tips

Target audience: Data designers, metrics and analytics experts, nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

Guest post by Beth Kanter
Beth’s Blog

Earlier this year at the Packard Foundation, I facilitated a peer learning group based on my book Measuring the Networked Nonprofit and focusing on the sense-making step of measurement.

This part of the measurement process is most the fun because it covers visualization, pattern recognition, and reflection. I wanted to take a deeper dive into resources out there that provide useful tips about how to do this step for folks who were not data scientists or data nerds.

I did a quick scan of data visualization resources to look for practical advice on the process of thinking visually and some technical information on what chart to select and data storytelling. Here’s what I discovered.

1Data Visualization Survival Guide: This resource (including the 176-slide deck at top) was suggested by Devon Smith. The deck was part of a workshop facilitated by Gregor Aisch, who combines data visualization, information design, and journalism in his work. The deck provides specific practical advice on charts, color, and maps. I like the chart advice:

• Avoid 3D charts at all costs. The perspective distorts the data, what is displayed ‘in front’ is perceived as more important than what is shown in the background.
• Use pie charts with care, and only to show part of whole relationships. Two is the ideal number of slices, but never show more than five. Don’t use pie charts if you want to compare values (use bar charts instead).
• Always extend bar charts to zero baseline. Order bars by value to make comparison easier.
• Use line charts to show time series data. That’s simply the best way to show how a variable changes over time.
• Avoid stacked area charts, they are easily mis-interpreted.
• Go with direct labeling wherever possible. You can safe your readers a lot time by placing labels directly onto the visual elements instead of collecting them in a separate legend. Also remind that we cannot differentiate that much colors.
• Label your axes! You might think that’s kind of obvious, but still it happens quite often that designers and journalists simply forget to label the axes.
• Tell readers why they should care about your graphic. Don’t waste the title line by just saying what data is shown.

2The Functional Art: This is the title of a book by Alberto Cairo who also teaches infographics at the University of Miami. I discovered him through Upwell’s shark lover, Rachel Dearborn. You can get a quick overview of the ideas in the book from the deck above (and listen to a recent lecture), but I definitely need to read this book. His approach is less about the drawing part of information design and data visualization, but the thinking part. How do you think visually? How do you tell stories with data?

3How To Tell Stories With Data: This is a deck from Edward Segal that combines the best practices of storytelling narrative with data visualization. The slides that resonated with me were the principles (slides 19-29), but especially like the advice in Slide 26 (above) about “sexy charts.” I found this from a very well curated list of data storytelling resources that will require a deeper dive another day.

4Data for Radicals: My longtime colleague and friend, Lisa Williams, is working on a book about data visualization for beginners. I’m looking forward to the book!

5The Power of Infographics by Mark Smiciklas. Chapter 11 has a simple and clear visual guide to selecting key shapes, icons, symbols, graphics, and charts to communicate data visually. I like the simplicity. But, I wanted to go a little deeper on how to decide which chart format is best — and found this useful piece.

6Data Points that Mean Something by Nathan Yau – The process of creating meaningful data visualizations means combining the skills of a designer, statistician, and storyteller. The author writes the flowing data blog. The book has a section about exploring data visually and the process. He suggests asking these questions:

• What data do you have?
• What do you want to know about it?
• What visualization methods should you use?
• What do you see and does it make sense?

He makes a good point that to avoid “drowning” in data, learn to swim in the shallow end of it and work you way towards the deep end. The key is to come up with some questions, particularly from the point of view of the reader or audience. On his blog, he has a good list of tips for selecting the right chart and graph and making sense of the data – “Basic Rules for Making Charts and Graphs.” The book also has a useful guide to detecting patterns in your data: Increase, Decrease, Combination, Outlier, Noise. And the way to communicate those patterns visually: position, length, angle, direction, area, volume, and color.

What are your favorite resources for data visualization for nonprofits?

The post 6 best practices in making data visualizations appeared first on Socialbrite.

Infographics & data visualization turn data into stories

Guest post by Julia Reich
Principal & Creative Director, Julia Reich Design

Most organizations have important data to present to their clients, members, boards of directors and other constituencies. Yet who has time to read or understand the reports, charts and diagrams created by your overworked staff?

Infographics are a communication trend that’s all about displaying data in an attractive, easily digestible format. With their unique combination of images and words, infographics are a powerful storytelling tool. It’s a way to take all that data you’ve collected about the great things your organization does and use it for social good purposes – to illustrate timelines, histories, relationships, the impact of a program and much more.

Removing a barrier to understanding

Ceci Dadisman, the director of marketing and public relations at Palm Beach Opera in West Palm Beach, Fla., used an infographic to promote her group’s 50th Anniversary Season. She says, “Opera, ballet and symphony are such complicated art forms. We are always trying to explain it simply in a nonthreatening way. Infographics  are a good way to explain what opera is with some facts anyone could understand.”

Jeff Ferzoco should know. As the creative and technology director at Regional Plan Association in New York – an 85-year-old advocacy group focused on urban research and planning in the tri-state area – it’s his team’s job to sift through mountains of data and figure out the best way to arm policy-makers and citizens with the knowledge they need to move the conversation forward about a particular project.

“Busy people don’t want to spend too much time to unravel complicated information, so if it’s explained at a level that’s instantly understandable and emotionally satisfying, you’ll have a lot more success getting your message across. It removes a barrier to understanding,” he says.

Infographics for reports, newsletters, videos, blog posts

Nonprofits are using infographics in a multitude of ways, such as in reports, newsletters, with a blog post, or in a video.

The marketing team at Open Arms, based in Minneapolis – an organization that  cooks and delivers free meals for individuals too ill to provide for their own nutritional needs – created several infographics last year for their 2010 annual report.

Kelly McManus is creative director at Open Arms and Susan Pagani is the Communications Director. They say that scattering the report with several infographics was a strategic decision they made together. “We wanted it to be more accessible to everyone – not just those who read the entire report cover to cover. Before, it was onerous to read. This has brought a level of fun to it.”

Kelly and Susan state they made the annual report more engaging by mixing up the serious statistics that are required to be reported, with more quirky facts – such as how many cookies were baked. This warm, welcoming approach reinforces their brand as well.

How to get started when creating an infographic

To begin an infographic project, it’s important to determine at the outset what your overall goals are, who your audiences are and what message you want to convey. Find the story you want to tell with graphics, and mine your data to locate the facts that support that idea. You will also need to provide text that accompanies the graphics, such as headlines and conclusions.

McManus supports this idea. “Infographics are a team effort. We got started by creating an outline on what messages we wanted to convey and those certain things you have to report on as an NPO, and then there are things we bring in to warm it up in a way our audience would find inspiring. We worked together with different departments to obtain the statistics we needed. Finally, we sketched it out and started creating designs.”

Infographics as a way to boost your site’s SEO

The more compelling the information in your infographic, the more people are likely to share it, like it, mention it – so more traffic gets driven to that page, thereby boosting your page rankings.

By promoting your piece thoughtfully, you can increase the likelihood of this happening:

• Optimize with keywords: “Bots” can’t read the text in your graphic (typically a jpeg or png file), but any image inserted on a site can be optimized by adding a title, 3-5 sentence introduction, and “alt text” (that’s text you see in lieu of an image on a site if the image loads slowly) into the HTML code. Use the word “Infographic” in the title. The actual file name should be keyword-rich too (rather than some file naming convention you may use internally). Tip: Google *can* read content in a PDF, so consider posting an alternative file your audience can download.
• Incoming traffic: Since they are easily shared via email and social networks, infographics drive people back to your site to see the graphic in context to possibly learn more, or get a better, larger view of it. Make it easy for users to share the piece by adding the following buttons: Twitter, Facebook Like, Google +1 and StumbleUpon.
• Time spent: An informative piece on a topic with wide appeal makes a Web page more interesting, so visitors are more apt to spend time on that page – and that’s a good thing, according to Google’s ever-shifting page-ranking algorithm.

Measuring efficacy is tricky business

The nonprofit marketeers and designers I talked with agree that measuring an infographic’s success is difficult. Instead, Dadisman has a different set of expectations: “We knew we weren’t going to get direct ticket sales from it; it’s more of a mission to further our presence in the community and about opera  in general.” She admits, “It’s hard to measure ROI. The evidence is anecedotal. It’s more of a long-term effort to build brand awareness. We can watch the infographic make its way around the internet with very little effort after the initial posting, so we know people are sharing it and spreading the word.”

At Open Arms, McManus and Pagani agree. “Donations went up last year but we can’t pin it directly to our infographic efforts. We hear a lot of comments – people from other organizations are using the infographics we created to show their own nonprofit how to convey information for donors and volunteers in a way that hasn’t been done before.”

The value of data visualization

The ubiquity of mobile devices means more and more data streams are flowing all around us, with a need for that information to be processed, delivered and understood. And with people becoming more design-savvy over time, there’s a demand for visual clarity and accessibility. Infographics are a tool that can use data in an attractive and engaging way to provide value to your organization.

Dadisman appreciates the impact infographics have had on her marketing efforts and plans to create more in the future. “It is the vernacular right now. Most people are visual learners. The arts are perfect for this form of communication.”

Especially for nonprofits, McManus and Pagani concur that “Infographics make it possible to tell a complex story in a few words that people can grasp right away. They’re great for nonprofits to tell a  story that will resonate with your audience. Telling people their dimes are being put to good worth – that is the ultimate value.”

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Highlights of 2013 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study (infographic)

This is the second of two articles on NTC 2013. Also see:
• Highlights of 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, educators, journalists, general public.

Every year, Socialbrite takes a look at the annual study of online nonprofit trends put out by the communications firm M+R Strategic Services and the Nonprofit Technology Network. This year, we waited a couple of weeks after the report’s release to hear directly from Madeline Stanionis, creative director of M+R, who dissected the annual survey of the nonprofit sector at last week’s Nonprofit Technology Conference in Minneapolis.

The 2013 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study offers the sector’s only in-depth look at how nonprofits fared with email marketing, online fundraising and nonprofit advocacy over the past year. The report studied data from 55 generally large nonprofits in the environmental, health, human rights, international and wildlife and animal welfare sectors. As I’ve said in the past, a study of 55 large organizations — which sent 1.6 billion emails to 45 million list subscribers and raked in more than $438 million online donations during 2012 — is hardly representative of the 1.5 million mostly small nonprofits in the United States. Still, the trend lines are worth examining.

Here, then, are a few of the top-line takeaways:

• Online revenue was up 21 percent last year. One-time gifts continue to make up the bulk of online giving, with monthly giving programs across all groups bringing in 43 percent more revenue than the previous year.
• The average monthly gift was $19, while the average one-time gift was $60.
• Twitter had a big year. Nonprofits began paying serious attention to their social channels, and their Twitter followers increased by 264 percent in 2012.
• But perspective, people: For every 1,000 email subscribers, participating nonprofits reported just 149 Facebook followers and 53 Twitter followers.
• Email had a Jekyll and Hyde year. Subscriber lists grew by 15 percent. And open rates remained steady at 14 percent overall.
• But email response rates — the percentage of people who responded to a call to action — were way down. Click-through rates for all sectors stood at 1.7 percent (down 22 percent), and fundraising message click-throughs stood at 0.42 percent (down 27 percent).

Infographic shows email, social media trends at a glance

You can download a PDF version of the study at e-benchmarksstudy.com. Here’s an infographic that summarizes some of the findings:

“The world is changing,” Stanionis told the packed room. Some 33 percent of online donations to nonprofits come from email (down from 35 percent last year). I asked about the 67 percent that doesn’t come from email solicitations — how much of that is from social media? M+R and NTEN don’t know, partly because reporting of online donations is hard to track in a reliable way. (Next year, folks? Please? Please?)

Secrets from the Obama campaign

Stanionis shared these surprises from Obama’s new media staff about what worked — and what didn’t — during the most successful online fundraising campaign in history:

• Segmentation based on donor behavior is the only fundraising segmentation worth doing. Donor behavior turned out to be far more significant than demographics, past history and the like.
• Novelty works, until it doesn’t. “Try new stuff,” Stanionis advised. “But you may have a short lifespan of only two weeks before it gets old.”
• Short emails. Long. Whatever. No patterns were discernible.
• The same email sometimes elicited the highest donation rates — and the highest unsubscribe rates. “Push the envelope to elicit emotion and responses. Touching a nerve is a good sign,” she said.

Some final lessons learned

Participating nonprofits also saw a healthy spike in their Facebook fans — a 46 percent increase over the previous year. Nonprofits posted about once per day on Facebook, though larger organizations posted more frequently. Photo posts were the most popular content for users to like, share or comment on. But photos were ineffective at driving people to webpages beyond the confines of Facebook.

The median number of Facebook fans, across all nonprofit sectors, was 35,538, which tells you only that the survey is skewed toward larger organizations. The median number of Twitter followers? 21,788 or, again, probably far more than your organization has.

Interesting factoid shared by one of the attendees, who works at Edutopia: “This year for the first time, our website’s referral traffic is pulling in more visitors from Twitter than from Facebook. And we spend a lot more time on Facebook than on Twitter.”

There are tons of interesting datapoints in the study. Download it and check it out for yourself.

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