It’s the Friday Edit, aka, things I’ve been reading or watching around the web that I found interesting, useful, or downright funny. I hope you enjoy them, too.

I have to start with the funny because, well, it’s needed this week! I saw this movie trailer for NGO – Nothing Going On from Poverty to Power and it seems both hilarious, cringe-worthy, and painfully true in parts. Give it a watch below to see what I mean.

The current global cyber attack, built on ransomware, could wreck your communications impact and a lot more. Here’s a great, short post from the Getting Attention blog by Nancy Schwartz on how to protect yourself.

A great recap on the State of Digital Diplomacy by Nancy Groves – Head of #socialUN @UN Dept of Public Info

Here’s a quick two-minute recap on the takeaways from the World Economic Forum on Africa by Devex:

Here’s four creative summertime fundraising projects to focus on over the ‘lazy’ days of summer. ;)

This made me laugh: A guided meditation for nonprofit professionals. Also, Nonprofit AF is both an informative, often thought-provoking, AND hilarious blog. Recommended reading for us nonprofit unicorns.

Have a great weekend!

The post The Friday Edit – Links I’m Loving appeared first on Socialbrite.

Sometimes it’s the little things that count. Often I come across nonprofit professionals who keep an online calendar and want to share events, content or information with some of their colleagues.

Well, it’s pretty easy to create a collaborative calendar and to make it private or public.

In the 45-second video above, I’ll show you a super easy and helpful way to create a shared content calendar using Google Calendar.

The post How to create a free content calendar with Google Calendar appeared first on Socialbrite.

Tell stories of impact, use humor & cultivate relationships for more powerful email marketing

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

Are you looking to breathe new life into your nonprofit’s e-mail marketing?

If so, you will love these tips three from my peers:

Tell stories about your impact

Rachel Hope Allison, Senior Strategist at Big Duck:

The most exciting opportunities for smaller nonprofits are around the stories they tell with their campaign. Being small, they are in more direct, personal contact with their community, and they can tell stories about how the organization is responding to needs within its community.

Supporter stories and signers for these campaigns generated not only gifts but enthusiastic anecdotal responses from their communities.

2. Use humor to humanize your message

Annie Lynsen, Director of Awesomeness at SmallAct:

The campaigns I find most intriguing are the ones that make good use of humor!

Yes, humor must be handled carefully in your nonprofit communications: you don’t want the humor to be at the expense of the organization or the cause. But when handled well, humor can both humanize your cause and your organization AND get people’s attention, compelling them to donate.

3. Cultivate relationships first

Pamela Grow of Simple Development Systems:

I don’t think “campaigns” so much as building relationships via email.

An organization will think they’re going to raise big money with email through some magic campaign, when the reality is that haven’t taken that first step of growing their list and cultivating those relationships through warm, consistent messaging.

Growing your list takes commitment. Commit to one or two list-building activities a year. Commit to consistent (and frequent), real email communications. For campaigns, repetition, focus and integration is key.

What now?

If you are ready have a strategy for how you use e-mail, congratulations! If not, developing a plan that might be a good start. Here’s some recommended reading:

• Five Places to Capture Emails on Your Website
• Four Human Factors That Increase Email Open Rates
• Nine Powerfully Simple Ways to Build Your Email List

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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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The key differences between nonprofits and for-profits

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

My good friend Jon Loomer and I chatted the other day for the Social Media Pubcast. Check out the video above to glean some insights on some of the topics we discussed.

You’ll find out more about:

• The key advantage nonprofits have over for-profits
• Differences and similarities in approach to and struggles with Facebook between nonprofits and for-profits
• Facebook Insights and the stats that matter (Demographics, Talking About This, Frequency)
• Tips for Promoted Posts

Check out the video from our chat and share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post Building a loyal Facebook fan base appeared first on Socialbrite.

Create more effective calls to action with personas

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, marketers, Web publishers, video producers.

Marketing personas are powerful tools to help you create more effective call-to-actions, social media content, landing pages and email messages.

This free e-book will walk you through eight steps to creating and using effective marketing personas for your nonprofit.

You will learn:

• What marketing personas are and why you should care.
• How to discover the emotional triggers that motivate your supporters.
• Four questions that will breathe life into your personas.
• Resources for finding photos you can use for your personas.
• How to use your personas to improve your website content.

Also included is a six-page template you can print out and use to create your own personas.

Download this important workbook now:

 

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