Entries in Social Networking (89)

Sunday
31Jan2010

Nonprofit Social Media Benchmarks Study

DateSunday, January 31, 2010 at 07:28PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Interested in setting Facebook and Twitter benchmarks for your nonprofit but don’t know where to start? Check out M+R Strategic Services first Nonprofit Social Media Benchmarks Study, which includes sample research by groups such as Easter Seals, Oxfam, Human Rights Campaign, League of Conservation Voters, and more.

Facebook Key Findings:               

  • Organizations posted to their Facebook Pages about six times weekly.
  • 2.5% of each organization's Facebook fans took some sort of an action weekly such as contributing wall posts, "likes," or comments.
  • Generating a high fan rate is important, since news feeds carry that activity to potential new fans.
  • Facebook fans grew by 3.75% monthly. However, it’s important to note that 2% of Facebook fans either removed themselves or chose to hide the news feed monthly.
  • The overall fan churn rate is 24% per year, which is higher than the eNonprofit Benchmarks Study email churn rate of 19% per year.

Facebook Recommendations

  • M+R recommends that nonprofits find their Facebook fans' "sweet spot" between too many and too few posts.
  • Measure your organizations stats and engagement now and focus on improving those results over time.
  • Engage and provide interesting and useful info to your fans.

Be sure and also check out Frogloop’s "Five Tips to Ramp Up Your Nonprofits Fan Page."

Twitter Key Findings

  • Organizations tweeted four to five times daily.
  • Twitter followers grew by 9% monthly, much higher than average monthly growth on both Facebook fan pages at 3.75% and nonprofit email lists at 1.4%.

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Monday
25Jan2010

Online Communications Planning for Nonprofits

DateMonday, January 25, 2010 at 06:17PM | by AuthorSuki Lee

Is building your nonprofit's online community a priority for your organization in 2010? What about expanding your outreach? Here are my top seven ideas to consider implementing this coming year.

1. Blogs: Building Your Online Community
If your organization doesn’t have a blog, you should consider launching one in 2010. Search engines, Facebook and Twitter reward valuable blog content with expert status and donor support. As your organization’s communicator, you may want to appoint yourself the Editor-in-chief of your blog. Take Frogloop’s Editor, Allyson Kapin, as your muse and build a community of bloggers. Start with your nonprofit's team. Having a venue from which your organization can share its knowledge will expand your audiences, and build a robust internal culture. If writing doesn’t appeal to everyone, you may want to enlist your colleagues to publish photos, audio or video.

2. Building Your Nonprofit’s Community on Twitter
One of the most important roles of a communicator is to build community around your nonprofit. A
good place to focus your efforts is search.twitter.com, where you can see what people are chatting
about, trending topics and join in on the conversation. Developing relationships should involve talking about the great campaigns that other nonprofits are working on as well and responding to @replies. That will make it more likely that others will want to spread the word about what you’re working on, and collaborate with you.

3. The Perfect Match: Social Media Relations and Traditional PR
Success will come to those communicators who engage in both new and traditional communications
channels. Consider building a Social Media Release (SMR) in which you consolidate photos, embedded
video and presentations.

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Friday
22Jan2010

Does Your Nonprofit Need a Social Media Guide?

DateFriday, January 22, 2010 at 12:22PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Guess what one of the biggest challenges nonprofits face today when adding a blog to their website or diving into social media? Giving up control.

Does this sound familiar?

  • Should blog comments be moderated?
  • Should we even allow public comments on our blog?
  • How do we handle negative comments? Just delete them?
  • How do we deal with trolls?
  • What if the opposition takes our tweets and twists our words?
  • What happens if some of our Facebook fans disagree with what we have to say in one of our status updates?

These are all valid questions and concerns and point to why it’s important that nonprofits develop and implement guidelines for blogging and managing social media. However, it should not be a guide someone in HR or Communications drafts and then distributes at a staff meeting. It should be a living document that is flexible and empowers staff to:

  • Blog or tweet about policy issues that your organization advocates or analyses of upcoming legislation.
  • Talk with people on Twitter or Facebook about the mission of your organization.
  • Respond to constructive criticism online.

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Tuesday
12Jan2010

Comeback Lines to Collaboration Objectors

DateTuesday, January 12, 2010 at 09:24AM | by AuthorAmy Sample Ward

Last year, my friend and colleague Debra Askanase posted her responses to frequently used objections to using social media that she was fielding from clients. It was a great start to conversations about what fears or misconceptions still exist about using social media in nonprofit organizations. Taking that conversation as a lead, I would love to examine objections and corresponding responses around collaboration (within organizations and across organization/sectors/geographies). Collaboration is one of my focus areas to explore this year so I hope this will be the start to an evolving conversation!

What are the objections to collaboration at your organization?

Some of the general objections that I've experienced firsthand and know others have heard time and again as well, include:

Collaboration is great in theory but doesn't work in practice.

When I get this objection, it's usually rooted in the fact that potential partners don't share a definition of what collaboration is or how it works. There are so many buzzwords in our sector, or words that used to have a meaning but are now used so often and in so many diverse contexts that it's hard to keep them straight. I have a definition of what collaboration means to me, but that might be interpreted differently by someone I'm collaborating with!

It's incredibly important to define:

  • what your particular collaboration includes and how it operates (including the work no one wants to do, as well as accountability for all partners)

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Monday
04Jan2010

Surprise! Only 5% of Websites Have a Twitter or Facebook Link

DateMonday, January 4, 2010 at 10:09AM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Factual, an “open data repository” analyzed 4 million websites via data from Common Crawl, a non-profit group designed to crawl the web and provide data for anyone to use. Check out the stats below.

*28% of sites have Google Analytics

*5% of sites link to their Twitter or Facebook profile

*2% of sites display both a Twitter and Facebook link

Danny Sullivan, a search engine expert analyzed another chart by Factual that showed additional stats but without exact percentages. After reviewing the charts he estimated about:

*20% of sites use Flash

*19% of sites have an RSS feed

*6% of sites show a sitemap file

*1% of sites have Quantcast tracking code

*0.5% of sites have a Creative Commons attribution

It would be fascinating to see a similar study done for nonprofit organizational websites and compare how nonprofits data measures up to the data from the 4 million random sites that were selected for this study.

You should follow Frogloop on Twitter.

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Monday
28Dec2009

Best Nonprofit Strategies to Utilize in 2010

DateMonday, December 28, 2009 at 06:37PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

As nonprofits scramble to meet their year-end fundraising goals, this is also a great time of year to reflect on what online fundraising and advocacy strategies worked well in 2009. But what's coming up in 2010?

Frogloop asked some of the best nonprofit experts what should organizations focus on in 2010 to be successful in fundraising, online advocacy, online marketing, and social media? Here's their advice.

Cheryl Contee, Fission Strategy: In 2010, nonprofits need to get serious about mobile outreach. A July 2009 Pew Internet study found there is no digital divide for online when you factor in mobile access. 2010 is the year to make sure your WordPress blog has a plugin installed to make the site mobile-friendly. 2010 is the year to begin asking for supporters for their cell phone numbers at the same time they collect email addresses.

Jocelyn Harmon, Care2: Now more than ever nonprofits should not only be thinking but planning to diversify their income.  A new report from the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers shows definitively that grantmakers expect to give fewer grants in 2010 than in 2009. 

According to the report, "More [foundation] respondents expect their grants budgets to decrease than increase in 2010. Nearly half expect a decline; roughly one in six expect a decline of 5% or less. Nearly one-third expect grants budgets to increase. Approximately one-quarter are not sure." 
 
I can't help but assume that this echoes budget realities of other foundations across the U.S. 

What this means for nonprofits:
It's imperative to build new income streams whether from individual or major gifts and/or earned revenue - now!  Another possibility is for nonprofits to merge and/or collaborate to achieve greater economies of scale in programmatic impact and administrative costs.  In short, it's likely we've only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the decline in foundation funding for nonprofits.  In order to survive and thrive, charitable organizations must start now to build new and diverse strategies to bring in the money.

Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog: Keep on learning in incremental ways to improve results of what you're doing to build your network using social media while keeping in mind your ultimate your outcomes - what is the change in behavior or call to action you hope to accomplish? Don't have your schedule so filled with so many things in your to do list that you're so focused on getting things done that you can't make things happen. Make room for strategic serendipity.

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Saturday
26Dec2009

Useful Stats Every Nonprofit Should Know Moving into 2010

DateSaturday, December 26, 2009 at 11:41AM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

The Rise of Politicians Using Social Media

Are politicians finally understanding the value of being social via social networks? Chris McCroskey, founder of TweetCongress says that in 2009, the number of Members of Congress using Twitter has gone from two dozen to more than 160. However, about 90% of them still view Twitter as a one-way communication tool rather than having conversations with constituents, said McCroskey. #Fail

 Why it’s Important to Nonprofits?

  • Twitter is another great way to reach Members of Congress. As Congressional staff becomes more comfortable using Twitter and understanding the value of truly engaging their followers, constituents should see more two-way conversations.
  • In addition to paid marketing, leverage online outreach opportunities and use Act.ly or “tweet bombs” to petition Members of Congress.

Internet Usage by Latino’s Grows by 10%

According to Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, Internet use among Latino adults rose by 10 percentage points, from 54% to 64% between 2006-2008. In comparison, the rates for whites rose four percentage points, and the rates for blacks rose only two percentage points during that time period. 

“The rapid increase in cell-only populations, particularly for Latinos and African Americans, coupled with the fact that people in cell-only households tend to be slightly more likely to use other forms of technology than people who are reachable via landline telephone, suggests that if anything, the results shown here may underestimate increases in internet use, especially for Latinos and African Americans,” said the Pew study.

Why it’s Important to Nonprofits?

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