Tag Archives: marketing

What is impressive, what is not

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Things I’m not impressed by:

  • How many Facebook “likes” or “friends” your organization has
  • How many times your organization “tweets” or your tweet has been retweeted
  • That your organization received an “award” from one of your VENDORS
  • That you “gave up” a corporate career to work in the nonprofit sector
  • How many hours your volunteers contributed last year
  • How many hours of overtime your organization’s employees work most weeks
  • That you are hiring a Rock Star-anything (Rock Star Membership Coordinator, Rock Star Social Media Manager) unless you are PAYING a Rock Star salary and providing Rock Star benefits.
  • Your web site’s use of stock photos
  • That your new web site is coming soon and all your descriptions of how great it’s going to be.

Things I am impressed by:

  • Online activities leading to offline action
  • How your organization handles negative comments on your Facebook page
  • That your organization was recognized by your Governor’s volunteering awards
  • That your tweet last week resulted in a $5000 donation (or more) than you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise
  • What your volunteers accomplished last year, in terms of tangible results (literacy among your clients increased, trees planted, perceptions changed, legislation passed, etc.)
  • Volunteers in leadership positions at your organization (leading a project, serving on an advisory board regarding marketing and outreach, producing a publication or online video, etc.)
  • Happy employees that love going to work and supporting each other, that love collaborating internally and sharing information and resources with each other
  • A competitive salary and benefits package for employees
  • Photos of your own organization’s actual volunteers or clients, however out-of-focus such may be
  • That your new web site is launched, on time, that it’s easy to navigate, that I can quickly find what I’m looking for without having to sit through a video or shut down your blaring audio that starts up automatically, that it works with any browser, and that you obviously incorporated the suggestions of others into the new design.

 

When mega-news strikes

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You’ve got an event or major announcement planned for today. You’ve had the blog and the tweets and the Facebook status updates and the press release all ready to go for many days. You were ready to start posting at 9 a.m., and have a schedule for messages for the rest of the day.

And then – mega-news strikes. Not just big news – MEGA-news. that kind of HUGE event that pushes everything else off the news cycle for HOURS. Even days. That people will talk about for years to come: “Where were you when you heard about such-and-such?”

And you know that absolutely no one is going to read your messages, no one is going to retweet you, no press people are going to call you, and, perhaps, no one is going to attend your event.

What to do?

A lot of you are facing this today. I’m seeing some of nonprofits trying to insert their important announcements amid the endless messages relating to Osama bin Ladan. They probably know it’s a lost cause, but they did all this planning, they hate for it to go to waste…

What should you do with your event or major announcement when mega-news strikes?

It depends…

If your announcement was meant to generate press coverage, retweets, signups, etc., consider pushing the announcement a day or two later, even for a week, if at all possible. If that’s not possible, then revamp your schedule to include a reminder blitz in two or three days, and push your event signup deadlines as late as possible.

Do not cancel your event unless you are absolutely sure no one is going to show up or that the press is absolutely NOT going to cover your announcement.

And consider this: your event might actually be a gathering that people are needing, particularly if the mega-news is tragic. Consider what happened to Knowbility in 2001:

Knowbility is a nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas, and their signature event is the Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR), where volunteer teams of Web designers and developers with nonprofit organizations get together and build new Web sites (or enhance existing ones) to make them more accessible for people with disabilities and/or using assistive technologies. The teams meet the nonprofits they will work with mid week, spend an evening together, and then the web-building day is two or three days later, on a Saturday – all the teams come together in one place and go crazy with the one-day web-buildling. You’ve heard of barn-raisings? This is a web-raising! But in 2001, the day the teams were supposed to meet the nonprofits they were matched with was — the evening of September 12. The day before, on September 11, there was talk of canceling AIR. But someone said, “No, let’s do it. Maybe people will need this.” And so the events were held, as scheduled. And attendance was not only excellent, but the event evauations were filled with comments about how grateful people were to have had the opportunity to do something at a time when they were filling quite helpless. The event became one of the most special Knowbility ever held.

If you go ahead with your event in the midst of a mega-news event, be ready for the mega-news to come up and be discussed at your event. You may need to provide some time for that to happen. But it’s also okay to say, at some point, “Okay, let’s focus for the next hour on the reason we are here today…”