Google Trends: getting a handle on topical conversations.

Post by Daniela McVicker

Content creation is a critical part of getting exposure and spreading awareness for your nonprofit’s message. While content creation may sound challenging with a limited staff and resources, it can pay off in a big way if you use the right tools.

Below we outline seven tools and resources you can use for free or minimal cost as part of your organization’s content creation strategy.

Google Trends

1Let’s start with the basics. Google Trends is a tool that helps us find the inspiration we need for writing appealing and interesting content.

Our target audience will want to read about topics they’re interested in. This means we need to do some research to see what are the trending and most searched topics or keywords — and how it may tie to your nonprofit’s mission.

Google Trends is a tool that can help us do just that. You can:

• search for a term or topic
• analyze the interest for that term by region and period of time
• find out which subregions are interested in the term the most
• get the data necessary for choosing the perfect topic

This tool will make the brainstorming phase more guided and results-oriented. It helps you arrive at a decision about which topics to focus on and backs it up with evidence and data.

BuzzSumo

2Similar to Google Trends, BuzzSumo is another tool that can help us understand which topics are trending online. It can also help learn what people are searching for the most.

The tool allows us to:

• explore ideas and get inspired
• track the current situation within our cause or niche
• find influencers and see what they’re doing
• analyze popular articles and posts to get insight

The tool does all the analysis and all that’s left is to draw conclusions and apply them to your content. It’s a valuable tool that provides the right data for your content or marketing team to draw from.

Canva

3When we search the Web, we look for interesting blog posts or social media posts to read. So your content team will want to make sure your posts are accompanied by an appealing visual.

A visually arresting image can make potential readers stop scrolling and pay attention. This is why it’s highly important that you make your content rich in visuals.

The No. 1 tool people from around the globe enjoy using is Canva, a free graphic design tool.

Canva makes it easy to:

• create stunning social media posts
• create attention-grabbing infographics
• make your content visually rich
• add brand identity to your content

The tool is easy to use. It has endless options and features that are simple to master. So it’s a worthy addition to help with executing your content creation strategy.

Grammarly

4If we want people to take us seriously, we need to act like true professionals. That means that the quality of our written content needs to be a top priority.

A tool that analyzes and helps you polish your sentences, Grammarly should be a part of your team’s content workflow.

Here’s what Grammarly does:

• corrects spelling mistakes
• corrects grammar mistakes
• suggest sentence structure corrections
• suggest synonyms
• gives an analysis of the written content

Every nonprofit needs content that is impeccable and highly professional. All we have to do is upload the Word document to Grammarly. Then, we correct the mistakes and download the improved version. While the basic version is free, Grammarly Premium costs $19.98 to $29.95 per month.

You have other options as well, such as the online service Top Writers Review, which can provide professional help for more demanding tasks.

Hemingway

5Another brilliant tool you might consider to make your content more readable and suitable for your target audience is the Hemingway app.

The app lets the users paste the text and then analyzes the following features:

• readability
• number of adverbs
• passive voice usage
• complicated phrases
• sentence structure
• sentences that are hard to read

The tool suggests changes to beef up content to make it leaner, to the point and digestible.

Pixabay

6When we think about content rich in visuals and appealing to the eye, we can’t imagine it without beautiful images. Not every nonprofit can afford to hire a professional photographer who can create images specifically for its needs.

Luckily, there are royalty-free images you can use, and Pixabay offers a wide range of these photos.

All you have to do is:

• visit Pixabay
• type the term you’re looking for
• choose an image you find most suitable to accompany your content

A wide range of royalty-free images is available for you to snag, download and use in your content.

SE Ranking

7SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the key elements of any content creation strategy. When writing articles or blog posts, you’ll want the content to rank high in Google searches. This will bring more organic traffic and expand the number of people who’ll see your post.

That means that we have to pay attention to SEO and how to improve our content to make it perform better.

SE Ranking is a tool that can help improve your SEO efforts and make the content more SEO friendly. Here’s what it does:

• analyzes keywords
• provides insight into search volume and popularity
• suggests other similar keywords
• shows popular keyword ads

By using this tool, you’re gaining valuable insights into the terms that help you gain more visibility for your content.

How about you? What strategies have you used to streamline your content production process?

The post 7 tools to make content creation for your nonprofit easier appeared first on Socialbrite.

A scaled solution for nonprofits looking to create video content

By Kyle Shannon

Stories are the lifeblood of social organizations. To a large degree, your ability to tell stories is directly proportional to your ability to succeed and grow. While charts and graphs of success are important, the stories of people you impact is the best proof there is.

Video is an increasingly powerful and in-demand way to share these stories, and yet a major challenge remains. How do you increase your ability to produce video content without dramatically increasing your budget?

If you want to create video, you effectively have two major options. There’s professional video, which is typically high quality but is limited in its scalability. It can be expensive, slow and logistically complicated.

On the other side of the coin is user-generated video, which seems great in theory. It’s authentic, often engaging and you can have as much as you want, since there are now billions of devices with high-quality cameras. The problem? User-generated video is completely out of your control, and the storytelling quality is unpredictable at best.

There is another option. Think of it as professional user-generated video. By using the best attributes of both professional video and user-generated video, you can create a hybrid approach to creating video content. Storyvine is a Guided Video platform that is designed to live in the space between the two worlds of Pro and User-Gen video, and will be discussed here, but there are numerous tools that can assist in the activities that must be managed to effectively scale video storytelling.

Here are two examples of Pro-UGC Video created using the Storyvine platform. The first video is from the National Association of Public Charter Schools:

Here is a grassroots presidential campaign video created with Storyvine:

Content strategy is key

Regardless of which tool(s) you use to create and manage your video content, it’s critical to understand that “more video” is not a strategy — video is simply a tool. Your content strategy should emerge organically from your goals as an organization. What are you trying to accomplish? What are your major initiatives? How are you measuring success? Who are your stakeholders and what do they need to feel taken care of and connected to the organization?

Answers to these questions will lead naturally to important content strategy questions. Who’s stories do we want to capture? Why will they share them with us? Who are the audiences for these stories? What are the communications initiatives we have in place that this video content could augment? And finally, whose job is it to create, capture, curate and connect these stories with relevant audiences?

Now you’re ready for the 4 C’s of creating video content in a scalable, sustainable way:

• Create
• Capture
• Curate
• Connect

Here’s a 3-minute video on how to create a video on Storyvine.

Step 1: Create the story program

Once you understand the kind of stories you want to capture, you can design everything from the kinds of question you want people to answer, to the visual design and branding of the videos that will be produced, to the communications you will share with your constituents to let them know their voice is important and might be reaching out.

By asking the right questions and eliciting a series of answers, you end up creating content that is consistent and well-structured. Here are some questions you might ask to get things rolling:

Intro: Share your name, location and why you got involved.

Q1: What was you most impactful experience with the program?

Q2: How has being involved with the program changed your outlook about it?

Q3: Give a shout-out to someone you engaged with who made a difference.

With Storyvine, we create a story template that consists of a VideoGuide (the coaching prompts) and a visual Storyboard of what the final video will look like. The video segments are captured via an iOS or Android mobile app that prompts the user what to say in a step-by-step capture process. The videos themselves are then “automagically” edited into a fully branded video within minutes.

Outside of Storyvine, you can use this same structured approach to improve the quality and consistency of your video content.

Step 2: Capture the video content

Because smart phones and tablets are so ubiquitous and contain high-quality cameras, you can capture content at events by having your team members capture the raw assets of answers to the prompting questions you created, or even have people film the clips selfie-style. There are a number of techniques to get the people you want to film to increase your ability to capture the stories you want.

Friends and close colleagues

With video, most people have a basic fear of looking silly. No one wants to go first. That said, once people see that others have done it and realize it’s socially safe, they’re much more willing to participate. So leverage the relationships you have with your friends, colleagues and even superfans whom you can cajole into getting the ball rolling. You can then show off their videos as examples for others to follow.

Events

Even though events can be noisy and chaotic, they are also often high concentrations of people who’s stories you want to capture. With a little bit of pre-planning, your team at the event (or even volunteers who can be trained at the beginning of the event) can “wrangle” participants at the event and capture more content than you can imagine.

Here’s a good example that was captured an education-centered event:

A lot of Storyvine clients use events as the launchpad for creating their first video content.

Gamification

We’ve had good success with clients creating “Video Challenges” where Person A films her story and then “calls out” Person B to film his. It works. So do friendly competitions for most creative stories.

Deadlines & assignments

Let people know they have one week to capture their content, and follow up with them one day before the deadline. Also, let Sally know that it’s her job to film two people this week, and hold her to it.

Build it into a process

This is by far the most effective approach. Let’s say you want people in your org to film testimonial videos. Build the video capture task right into the process, like so:

• 1. Sign person in.
• 2. Make sure person is taken care of.
• 3. Sign person out.
• 4. Ask if he or she will give us a testimonial.
• 5. If yes, film him or her.

Another variation on this theme is something like “It’s Thought Leadership Thursday”… make the creation of content an event.

Step 3: Curate the stories

If you successfully increase the quantity of video content, you now have a new challenge on your hands. Namely, who is looking at what was created and what are the criteria to determine which videos should be shared far and wide.

Our experience has been that when you use a tool like Storyvine to increase the number of videos, not every video will be perfect — and that’s OK. We see a normal bell curve of quality with the videos that come into the system. If 10 videos are created, one might not be usable, most are fine to really good, and one or two are terrific, maybe brilliant.

The highest-quality stories can even be elevated and leveraged into other kinds of content, like compilation videos of the best soundbites for a website or gala presentation.

Here are two examples of compilations created from the structured approach to capturing content as I just described. Age of Agility is a four-minute short from America Succeeds:

I Stand with PP is a 75-second short that shows the power of Planned Parenthood:

Step 4: Connect the stories to relevant audiences

The final step is relatively straightforward. In a world with as many digital channels as we have today, there are increasing number of options where you might share your newly created video content. Short videos might be used as “snackable” social content on Twitter or Instagram. Videos longer than 60 seconds might live on your website or your YouTube channel. Business-focused social networks like LinkedIn are featuring more and more video, and it’s often longer-form video.

Especially when it comes to fundraising and development efforts, don’t be shy about sending a video link directly to a person whom you feel will relate to that story. “Here’s a story of one of our people I thought you might enjoy.” That kind of personal outreach and connection will go a long way to keeping donors engaged.

Experiment and see what works for your organization. Compelling video stories will drive social engagement, and when you find a kind of video that works, make more!

Kyle Shannon is the co-founder/CEO of Storyvine, a Guided Video platform and allows companies and organizations to create professional, authentic video content … at scale. You can find him on LinkedIn or on Twitter at @kyleshannon.

The post Video storytelling to amplify the impact of your organization appeared first on Socialbrite.

Whether face to face, by email, or with trained carrier pigeons, how you ask for donations makes or breaks your fundraising campaign (note: carrier pigeons are a guaranteed attention-getter).

Your message, and how it makes your potential donor feel is mission-critical. If they feel nothing, they will give nothing.

But let’s face it, writing effective fundraising emails is not easy. But it can be done, if you follow a process to develop your own email messages. And if you’re patient.

8 steps to writing a good fundraising email

Here are eight steps you can follow to write or even rewrite fundraising emails for your next campaign:

STEP 1: Tell a good story

A good story is the foundation of any effective fundraising appeal.

Begin your fundraising appeal with a story that pulls at the reader’s heartstrings. Talk about a real person who benefited from your work.

Make the donor the hero, not your organization.

For example, charity:water talks about a woman who fell down into a well with her baby. And she was stuck in the well for over 2 days! See? Doesn’t that grab your attention?

STEP 2: Make it about them

Fundraising works best when it’s one to one, between to people who share a common passion.

E-mail is always one-to-one (no one gathers their friends around a computer to read their e-mails). View your fundraising email as a unique opportunity to develop a relationship with someone who wants to receive your emails, and is possibly open to making a donation.

Start by imagining a specific supporter that you’ve met a few times. Write your e-mail as if you’re writing a personal appeal this person.

Tell them why their support is invaluable. Connect their support to the outcome. Use their first name, And write the e-mail in second person narrative (use the word “you”instead of “we” or “I”).

STEP 3: Talk about the money

Gain the trust of potential donors by being transparent about your funding gap (the gap between funds that cover admin costs, and what is needed to pay for specific programs). NPR are masters at this with their on-air fundraisers, which I’m sure you’ve heard.

Their asks usually go something like this: ”Sponsors and grants cover administrative costs, but we need your support to make sure programs like Science Friday continues to reach people like you”.

This approach communicates transparency and responsibility – making donors feel confident about how their dollars will be spent.

STEP 4: Tell them what their money will do

$50 will not save all the chimpanzees. But it will help, and it is doable. Tell potential donors exactly how the money will be used, and what outcome will result from their $50. This approach helps donors connect the dots between their donation and the outcome they seek.

Another great example is from No Kid Hungry, In their “Build a Breakfast” campaign, they tell potential donors: “For just $40, you can connect a classroom of 20 children with a healthy school breakfast for an entire month”.

This ask is very specific, immediate, and doable! This gives the donor a sense of realistic, personal impact.

STEP 5: Keep it short

No one has time read a long fundraising email. In fact, most people will just skim it first, then either delete it or keep reading. Here are four tips:

1. 1. Limit paragraphs to 2-3 sentences.
   2. Limit the overall email to 2-3 paragraphs.
   3. Break up the text with headlines.
   4. Enter your email copy into this readability tester.

STEP 6: Ask three times

Don’t forget about the call to action! In fact, make sure you ask three times in your fundraising appeal. But don’t just repeat the same phrase over and over.

Ask different ways. For example, at the beginning of the e-mail you can say “you can make a difference”, linking to your donation page. In the second and third paragraph you can ask again: “Join others like yourself to make a difference”. Also, try asking once in between two paragraphs, in bold text.

STEP 7: Tell them they can say no

A good friend, who’s also fundraising consultant, told me her secret to success: People will often give bigger donations when they feel their personal free will is respected.

According to a recent fundraising study, giving people the choice of NOT donating almost doubles the likelihood that they will donate!

STEP 8: Don’t ask for money in the first email

No one likes to be asked to make a donation if they haven’t heard from you in a while. If that’s the case with your nonprofit, your first e-mail should encourage your potential donor to learn more about the campaign.

For example, charitywater often asks supporters to watch a video or read an article, before asking them to raise money.

Leading off with a powerful story says that you’re not all about asking for money, which helps builds trust. It also helps you connect with your potential donor on an emotional level – where fundraising happens.

The post How to write your best fundraising emails appeared first on Socialbrite.

If you’re anything like me, then that week before New Year’s Day can sometimes throw you for an existential loop.

All those end-of-year memes on social media seem to be true, given the amount of laugh emoji responses from my friends and family that they’ve received. Truth!

We all want to begin the New Year feeling full of energy, clarity, and direction, but it’s not always how we start off.

One of the ways I try to ground myself for the New Year (while still enjoying all the cheese and champagne), is to fill out my yearly personal strategic planning chart.

I spend a lot of my time as a consultant creating strategic plans, so it’s a format I’m familiar with and with a little simplification, readily lends itself to a personal plan.

While some people enjoy vision boards (which are awesome!), there’s something about a strategic plan that for me feels more tangible.

And I need tangible these days.

So below I’m sharing my personal and professional strategic planning process.

By the way, I’m still working on mine, so don’t feel like you’re in any way behind. Truth be told, I usually get to finishing mine around mid-January.

So we’ll just work on it together! Much more fun that way, anyway.

Five areas of focus

My plan is be focused on five key areas of my life:

Personal – my personal goals, which focus on the intellectual and physical aspects of daily life

Family & friends – the goals I have for my relationship with my husband, my daughter, my parents, and my close friends

My business – what realistic and bold goals will I reach with my clients and partners

Leadership – what goals and objectives do I need to set to develop myself as a consultant and servant leader in my field(s)

Community – What are my community-centered goals focused on mentoring, advocacy work, and elementary school volunteering

Charting my plan: (Don’t make it complicated!) You want to be able to post this up on the fridge if you’d like. 

The Plan

Get the Google Docs version of the chart here!

As you can see from the chart, I’ve really tried to simplify the plan. The simpler the plan, the more you will look at it, the easier it will be to achieve or at least get closer to your goals.

And that’s genuinely the aim. I never really get to doing everything on my plan – especially my personal goals (working on that!), but it’s there for me to guide me back during times I feel I need to get back on my path.

Some people like to create a mission and visions statement for themselves before they even start their strategic plan, and that’s great.

I’ve found it helpful to wait until after I’ve finished my strategic plan to create my mission and vision statement since a lot of the priorities are already written down for me after filling out the plan.

I’m thinking of creating a three-part series this month on personal strategic planning.

The next two posts would be about writing your mission and vision statements, and the third and last post would be about how to hold yourself accountable to your goals.

If this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, let me know in the comments below and I’ll get to work!

Happy planning and give me a shout @CarolineAvakian if you have any questions!

The post Your 2019 personal & professional strategic plan appeared first on Socialbrite.

Content marketing has risen to the forefront in recent years as an important tool (if not the most important) in the nonprofit communication toolbox. It’s about creating great content on your blog, through social media messaging, email, quarterly and annual reports, case studies, whitepapers, etc.

At its core, content marketing is about communicating wisely with your supporters. The nonprofit, social enterprise or organization is providing value by creating and sharing information, innovative ideas, and insights that makes your supporter smarter and in the know. You become a resource. The result, much of the time, is that you earn the trust and loyalty of your supporters and donors. You no longer interrupt them with “messaging” but invite them into a conversation they find value in, that resonates, that they deem worthy of sharing with others, that makes them come back and ultimately invest in you.

The issue with creating great content is that often change-makers and nonprofit leaders are unsure about how to activate the most powerful resource they have: their intellectual capital. Nonprofits can be treasure troves of insights, experience and expertise, just waiting to be unleashed and shared with the world, but often the best of ideas and expertise lies dormant within the walls of an organization.

The Readiness Dance: Share your insights despite the misgivings

There are many reasons why organizations keep their most valuable thoughts and findings internal. I call it the Readiness Dance. People will say, “Our data isn’t completely ready yet – we’re not 100 percent clear internally on our direction with this project,” or something similar. While I completely advocate for presenting breakthrough insights that are research-based and clearly thought out — in fact, that is the essence of true thought leadership — very often it’s more about that “readiness” variable. It’s less about how analyzed the data is and more about how comfortable and confident we are in sharing our ideas and insights with the world.

When nonprofits hone in on their years of experience, research, collaborations and discoveries, they can advance their mission by using those same valuable thoughts and insights to lead. Many people call this thought leadership, and I’d like to see more organizations build their capacity to lead with their thinking.

Especially for smaller to medium-sized nonprofits, thought leadership can be one of the most effective and least expensive ways an organization can build awareness of their cause and support for their ideas and programs, and influence the communities they need to reach, including decision makers, policy makers and donors. By harnessing the power of their collective insights, an organization can shape its thought leadership to inspire and move its supporters to action.

While building a thought leadership program for a nonprofit should be thought of as an organization development exercise and not just a communications/PR job, communications teams often and appropriately lead it.

Below is a short primer to help you get the conversation started with your team. I recommend getting your group together around breakfast (or Google Hangout!) one morning and running them through this little primer. I promise it will get the conversation started and make for an interesting talk about how you approach your work and the insights and ideas that lie just below the surface.

Start with the big idea or revealing insights

Every big idea starts with a vision. It has a strong viewpoint and brings new insights and problem solving to an issue. Ask yourself what original, innovative and valuable perspective you and your organization bring to the table. What do you want to achieve from it?

Overcome culture shock

Effective thought leadership programs are an organizational development function, not just a public relations function. Powerful thought leadership campaigns need to be embedded into the culture of an organization to be truly successful. Teams need to be on board with sharing those ideas and insights with the world. They are your greatest ambassadors. Does your culture support that? If you encounter resistance, ask them what about it makes them uncomfortable?

Tell a great story

Concentrate on telling one focused and clear story and communicate it using channels you know your audience engages with. Social media, online communities, associations, traditional media and speaking events like panels and conferences are all fair game.

Become a resource

People don’t like to be sold things, for the most part — even when what you’re selling is a noble and brilliant cause. That said, they do buy into solutions, expertise and problem solving. Share your insights. Spread your idea. Offer guidance and people will follow.

Inspire action

Powerful thought leadership can inspire people to act. Whatever your idea is, make sure that it is actionable. What do you want people to do? Be brave. Ask for what you want.

What are some of the ways your team is leading the conversation on the issues that drive your cause? I’d love to hear some examples. If you’re not quite there yet, I would love to hear what some of the barriers are that you’ve encountered.

The post Building your nonprofit’s thought leadership capacity appeared first on Socialbrite.

Well, we all knew this day was coming.

Facebook has finally decided to pull the plug on almost all types of public content from pages.

Why?

Because Mark Zuckerberg wants to make a better Facebook. One with less clickbait, engagement bait, and hopefully less fake news.

The News Feed’s goal is shifting from “helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.”

How is the News Feed changing?

To inspire meaningful conversations, the News Feed ranking will now prioritize:

1. Posts from friends that spark back-and-forth conversations.
2. Videos and news articles that spark back-and-forth discussion.
3. Posts from friends and family over posts from Pages.
4. Posts with longer comments over posts with shorter comments.

Facebook will continue to reduce click bait, engagement bait, and other types of passive content.

Less Buzzfeed quizzes and more posts from mom needing help with Facebook.

Why did Facebook make this change?

First of all, this change shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Pages that don’t engage have had diminished exposure in the News Feed for years.

The bottom line is that without happy users, Facebook can’t sell ads. If your posts don’t inspire, Facebook won’t put them in the News Feed.

What does this Facebook News Feed change mean for your nonprofit?

First of all, don’t freak out.

Nonprofits have a clear advantage over consumer brands and businesses. People talk more about the causes they care about more than the clothes they wear.

All these changes to the News Feed require a shift in your nonprofit’s Facebook strategy.

Here are just a few recommendations:

1. Stop posting passive content: Stop posting content that doesn’t engage. For example, links to your latest blog post, event announcements, or pics from your board retreat (yawn).
2. Inspire meaningful conversations: Posts that ask followers to share their advice and recommendations will naturally spark more meaningful conversations than that link to your latest blog post. Keep in mind, your followers are waiting to share their own stories, their journey. For example, diabetes organizations should publish more posts that encourage followers to share their own diabetes experiences and tips.
3. Focus more on Facebook Groups: Be helpful, put the members first, and create meaningful conversations between members. And if your Group is public, make sure it’s connected to your Facebook Page.
4. Put your Page first: Make sure supporters who want to see your posts see them first in the News Feed. Especially core supporters who might worry about missing posts from your Page.
5. Mix email and Facebook: If you have an email newsletter, you’re ahead of the game. On a regular basic, feature your most engaging post from the previous week. Invite subscribers to join the conversation by commenting on that specific post. Also a great way to grow your fanbase.
6. Use Facebook Live to generate massive engagement: Facebook Live video is the #1 type of content on Facebook, getting 6X more reach and engagement than videos and pictures. During your live broadcast, get people commenting by asking for their tips, stories, advice. Read this post for more on getting started with Facebook Live.
7. Invest in Facebook ads: If you don’t have a Facebook ad budget, you’re really not serious about Facebook. Start investing more in Facebook ads to give your most conversational posts more exposure.
8. Create content designed to make your fans look awesome: People share content on Facebook, whether it’s a video from your Page or a blog post from your website, because they want to appear entertaining, informed, connected, etc. to their friends. Creating content that helps your supporters achieve this goal leads to more engagement and organic reach.
9. Share news your people are already talking about. Create meaningful conversations around trending news your community might already be talking about. It’s much easier to join a conversation than it is to start one.

Facebook will always put friends and family first when it comes to the News Feed. The more you adopt the same mindset with your strategy, the more successful you’ll be with Facebook.

The post Facebook news feed overhaul – how your nonprofit can prepare appeared first on Socialbrite.

You already know that Facebook Live lets any nonprofit live-stream fundraising events, breaking news, impact stories, and more, directly from their Facebook Page.

But did you know that Facebook lets nonprofits add a donate button to their Facebook Live broadcast?

How to Use Facebook Live to Raise Money

If your nonprofit is based in the US, and your Facebook Page is verified, you can fundraise within a Facebook Live broadcast.

For example, in this screenshot from Facebook, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals adds the donate button feature to their Live broadcast.

Two things to remember about fundraising with Facebook Live:

1. Your Page needs to be verified. This feature is still gradually rolling out on iOS to admins of verified Pages in the US.
2. Your nonprofit must be approved to accept Facebook payments. You can apply here.

To add the donate button, click on more options at the bottom of the screen (“…”). Next, select your nonprofit from the options (as shown above).

Viewers can donate to your cause during the live broadcast, and supporters who missed the live broadcast can always donate from the broadcast recording.

But is just having a donate button enough? Of course not! Fundraising is about building trust, sharing stories of impact, and growing a community of supporters.

Here are a few pointers as you fold Facebook Live into your fundraising plans.

Use Facebook Live to tell donors about the impact THEY made

More often than not, donors hear about impact second-hand (through your newsletter, website, etc). Rarely do they get to witness, first-hand, the impact of their support.

Facebook Live is a super effective way to bring the impact to your supporters.

For example, Best Friends Animal Society introduces their cutest residents to supporters from all over the world. Without Facebook live (and other live broadcasting tools), supporters would have to travel all the way to Utah to witness, first-hand, BFAS’s impact.

Make donors the heroes

If you want your donors to give over and over again, you need to tell them the truth: that for your nonprofit, they are the true heroes.

Feature donor stories in your broadcast. Tell your viewers the impact that one donor made. Recognize and praise this donor sincerely. Viewers will no doubt want the same praise and recognition.

For example, Stand Up To Cancer broadcasted news about a high school raised money during a “Sports Day For Charity”.

Don’t ask people to “Donate”

This one sounds a bit unintuitive, but let’s face it, asking people to donate money to your nonprofit is a buzzkill.

The reason why is that the word “donate” doesn’t place the donor in the role of the hero.

Instead, ask viewers to make an impact that’s meaningful. For example, ask them to “Give clean water”, “Feed hungry children”, “Stop human trafficking, etc. Each of these asks is associated with a problem that donors ultimately want to solve.

Tell donors when you’re going live

Facebook live isn’t that exciting if no one shows up. Make sure your core supporters show up when you go live.

• Post an update on your page the week before and the day before
• Send an email to your email list
• Share your broadcast date / time in your email newsletter
• Tweet about it immediately before you go live
• Facebook Live Tip #6: Make an outline for your broadcast

Call out commenters by name

The cool thing about Facebook live is that you can see comments as they’re posted real time during your broadcast. Engaging commenters real-time increases engagement even further, creating massive reach for your broadcast.

• Call out commenters by name
• Read their comment
• Reply to their comment
• Say thank you

Ask for action

As your broadcast reaches more users, your viewer count will increase. This is your captured audience. Seize the moment to ask for action!

• Ask participants to follow
• Ask supporters to support an issue
• Ask supporters to sign a petition

Share the recording with your supporters

You’ve put a lot of time and effort into your first Facebook a live broadcast. Congratulations! Make sure this investment goes further by sharing it with your supporters.

• Send a follow-up email to subscribers
• Link to your recent broadcast in your newsletter
• Reshare the broadcast on other social channels
• Embed the broadcast in a blog post

Remember, if you have added the donate button to your broadcast, it will exist in the broadcast recording. As you continue to broadcast stories of impact, you’ll accumulate a whole series of fundraising videos on your Facebook Page.

Repurpose the recording

When you finish a live broadcast, save it to your mobile device. Then open the file in your favorite video editing software and create several videos to be used on other social networks.

Select key moments that are less than 60 seconds but still convey a powerful story. These short videos can be used on Instagram (which requires videos to be less than 1 minute), YouTube, Facebook, etc.

Get inspired by these creative ideas for Facebook Live

If you’re not sure what topics or events you should broadcast, check out this list of 35 Facebook Live ideas for museums, animal shelters, youth organizations, and more.

The post How to use Facebook Live to raise money for your nonprofit appeared first on Socialbrite.

For many nonprofits, text messaging as a communications and fundraising tool can feel daunting. I’ve worked with nonprofits who grapple with understanding if text messaging is even right for them.

Below is a graphic shared with me by TextMagic that can help you better understand what an SMS campaign could look like and if it’s right for your nonprofit.

What do you think? Had your nonprofit worked on an SMS campaign? What were the results? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

The post How to Attract & Keep Donors Using Text Messaging appeared first on Socialbrite.

This week I was re-inspired by technology. It sometimes feels like we spend a lot of time criticizing or glorifying tech, and honestly neither of those descriptions seem or feel right most of the time. But Trickle Up, an international nonprofit, told me a story this week that reminded me of the basics of why technology applied wisely, in collaboration, and with great heart, can be the thing that transforms and improves so many aspects of people’s lives.

The story goes something like this: (via Trickle Up) 

As Lopamudra Manjhi unboxes her smartphone, a smile appears on her face. She delicately holds the phone in her hands, a little uncertain of what to do next.

Over the next couple of hours, she learns. Lopamudra then confidently demonstrates how to switch the phone on, make a call, take photos and videos, and keep it charged. In between, she also manages to take a selfie. “I can do so many things with it,” she says.
Lopamudra is among 1,800 participants in a pilot project, “Mobile Connections to Promote Women’s Economic Development” (M-POWERED), aimed at empowering women living in extreme poverty in eastern India with custom-designed mobile technology. With newfound access to information about weather predictions, market prices, and best practices in cultivation, women become more successful farmers and marketers, and are better equipped to meet their family’s basic needs.

Watch the video to see all of it in action:

Facebook is previewing new page templates for nonprofits. If you manage your nonprofit’s FB page, you might have received one or several notifications about it. Here’s a great post that explains it all.

How do you excel in a time when modern strategic communications is so rapidly evolving? This piece by The Communications Network talks us through this process: How to Build an Effective, Modern Communications Shop

Still looking for a Father’s Day gift? These fancy and soft socks from our friends at Conscious Step are a great option. I have a pair that I love and can tell you they definitely don’t stink – see what I did there? :) Through partnerships with three of the world’s most impactful organizations, their sock box supports the movement against illiteracy, supports solutions for the water crisis, and provides treatment for child malnutrition.

In case you missed it, earlier this week I wrote about The Hidden Magic of Conferences.

The title of this post made me laugh and the piece within is quite insightful.
How Many Times Can You Mail Your Donors Before They Rise Up and Kill You? Worth a read.

You’d Be a Better Communicator If You Weren’t So Afraid of Embarrassing Yourself is an interesting piece by the Science of Us that gives you some key takeaways, advice, and techniques applicable for anyone who has to give a presentation at work, or just wants to connect with their dinner date.

A thoughtful piece on how Diversity Without Inclusion Is Only Skin-deep, and can certainly be applied to nonprofit-landia, which can often pride itself on wanting and demanding diversity in the workplace, yet lacks the tools for proper integration and not just representation.

The 2017 Global Trend in Giving survey gives us a better understanding of how donors worldwide prefer to give and engage with nonprofits, NGOs, and charities worldwide. You can help out and take the survey here. They also shared their 2017 Global NGO Online Technology Report here.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Caroline Avakian

The post My Friday Edit: Restoring My Faith in Tech appeared first on Socialbrite.

Relief Web, a humanitarian information source on global crises and disasters, and a digital service of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), recently released four mobile apps that aim to serve different members of the humanitarian aid community.

Each of these app aims to solve a problem or address a challenge that will meet specific needs of humanitarians.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the apps:

ReliefWeb Crises App

– Information gathering and making sense of a fast-paced humanitarian crisis can be challenging. This app provides key figures, access to latest reports and maps, real time financial status, as well as a comprehensive overview for each crisis. All of this is kept updated in real time.

– The app allows you to quickly compare different crises and gather the history of each event, so you can follow the evolution of a situation. Some recent examples: Haiti’s Hurricane Matthew and the crisis in Syria.

Headlines App

-Humanitarian situations evolve rapidly. Headlines App provides a general overview of the latest humanitarian developments globally.

– It is a tool that allows you to follow a person or location, i.e., “Ki-moon”, “Aleppo”,
“Gender”, “Refugees”,etc., and see what has been published on ReliefWeb that matches your search.

Videos App

– Videos allow you to get a much better sense of how things look in the field better than most reports usually can. It is a resource for complex , quickly changing situations, such as the ones in Syria and South Sudan, as well as for sudden onset disasters.

– Video is becoming a preferred reporting format for humanitarians, but prior to this launch there has been a gap in specialized video platforms that can gather these videos quickly and make them easy to access. ReliefWeb editors select relevant videos from more than 300 humanitarian sources, organize them, and make them available.

Jobs App

– Job finding can be challenging in the humanitarian system due to short-term appointments, short application deadlines, and fast paced recruitment. However, finding the right people quickly is key to the success of any humanitarian operation. The Jobs App provides access to most available jobs in the humanitarian sector.

– You can create a job search that matches your interests and skills and see when there are new jobs matching your search, i.e. communications officer, jobs in Sudan,
internship, etc.

All the apps allow you to bookmark reports to read later, and importantly, to share their content via social media.

Mobile visitors to ReliefWeb have increased significantly in the last few years, according to Adrian Ciancio, product manager at the digital humanitarian information service. “In 2015, mobile visitors to our site increased by an overwhelming 71%, of which over 90% were new visitors. Although we have a mobile version of the website, we believe that the apps allow us to package, curate, and organize content in ways that better serve the needs of our audience,” Ciancio said.

The team will also be conducting an impact evaluation on all the apps and plans on gathering user feedback in the upcoming months to improve and expand on the apps.

You can download the apps here: http://labs.reliefweb.int/apps

This piece was originally published on The Huffington Post

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