Posted by: James Young at 3:46PM EST on August 12, 2008
The name of the game, or at least one of its nicknames, is housefile for most non-profits. This translates into constituent records, or profiles.
Now, one could argue that the most important attribute of the profile is the email address, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but I believe that there is a ton of value in the other profile information as well.
This belief takes on even more meaning if you are a sight that adopts some social aspect, facilitating constituent to constituent communication, because nobody really enjoys talking with someone they don't know anything about and can't see anything. Seriously, not even these ladies really liked it.
With this in mind, I came across an ineresting post on ReadWriteWeb about social media sites and the strategies they use to get users to fill out their profiles. I know that these sites have some big differences from your typical non-profit site, but I think there are some lessons to be learned from these strategies. My hope is that you readers will think about these strategies and modify them to fit your site and your constituents. I would love to hear about the experience as well as any ideas/experiences you have in encouraging constituents to provide more profile information.
I've included the entire blog post from ReadWriteWeb here for your convenience.
Eight Ways to Get Users to Fill Out Their Profiles
"Hi,
my name is MrCucumber69, I have a gray blob for a face and that's all I
care to share about myself - will you be my friend?" Silly as that
sounds, this is the way users of many social web applications greet
each other. It's not very useful or inspiring.
Communication works better when you have a good idea who it is
you're talking to. How can new online services get users to describe
themselves, though?
Bellow, we discuss some of our favorite ways it's being done well.
We hope you'll share your favorite strategies in comments so we can all
learn about more ways to tackle this common problem.
LinkedIn = Boring but Effective
One of the most well known ways to get people to fill out their profiles is the way LinkedIn
does it. Users are shown a progress bar and told that their profile is
"X% completed." This is probably effective but some people tell us it
makes them feel guilty.
It's much better than nothing, but let's look at some more creative and fun solutions.
What's Your Most Common Username Elsewhere?
Personal search engine Lijit does a
great job of making it easy to associate your account with them with
all kinds of other accounts you own around the web. It's simple: they
just ask what your most common username is and then they check for
public profiles with that username on a long list of different
services. In just moments, with a handful of keystrokes, all kinds of
info about you can be gathered together.
It's
the first step new users take when they click the button to register on
the site. You can exclude certain accounts, add particular usernames
for accounts where you use a different one. It's incredibly elegant and
a great model that others would do well to emulate.
We suspect that social media ping server Gnip will make this kind of approach all the more powerful and easy for application developers to implement soon.
Once you've got usernames from these services, why not display
recent activity feeds on their profile pages? That's kind of how Jive Software's ClearSpace does it (see image on the left) and we think that looks great.
Did You Know...?
Another interesting approach is to offer users information about the
activities of other people in aggregate and use this as an opportunity
to prompt them to provide more information about themselves.
Social recommendation service (and, disclosure, RWW sponsor) Strands, for example, presents customers of Spanish bank BBVA
with messages like the following: "Grocery spending: A married person
spends 103% more on groceries than a single person. By the way, are you
married or single?" That's interesting to know and would motivate me to answer the question with a click.
How else could this be done? Check out categorized Twitter directory Twellow,
where Twitter user bios are categorized by interest and occupation.
It's a great way to find like minded Twitter users, but imagine if
Twello (or another app) said something like this to users: "We see that
you are an accountant - did you know that Twitter users who are
accountants tend to post more photos to Flickr than Doctors do, but fewer
than people in Defense related fields do? If you'd like to tell us what
your Flickr username is, we'll connect it to your Twitter account here."
Maybe it could be done more elegantly than that, but you get the idea.
Similarly, eco-credit card company Brighter Planet tracks your personal ecological impact but starts each user out with the median numbers for people in their geographic area and works backwards.
Messages like the following greet users when they login to their
Brighter Planet account: "You live with one other person and you use
15% green electricity. Improve your profile by telling us about the car
you drive and your flights."
You Look Like George Bush
Brand spanking new social news site SocialMedian
assigns a big picture of a famous (or infamous) person as each new
user's avatar. My default profile was graced with a photo of Bill
Gates, but other people start out with George Bush - something that
must get a lot of new users to click the "change my photo" link. It's a
witty idea and we wonder just how far it could be taken.
"You are 15 years old, clean up after circus animals for a living
and love Britney Spears videos on TV. (unverified - not true? click
here to edit your profile.)" Oh yeah, that could work.
I Heard About You On Twitter
If you've used red hot social lifestreaming app type thing FriendFeed,
you've probably wondered why, with everything the service knows about
you, there's no place to see bio info about other users on their
FriendFeed user pages. Enter Hao Chen's FriendFeed Profile
script for Greasemonkey. Every time you visit a the user page on
FriendFeed of someone who has associated their Twitter account with
their FF account (everyone) - this script grabs their bio info from
Twitter and slaps it up on their FriendFeed page. It's fantastic!
Why not let users of your app opt-in to populate their profiles with publicly available profiles from other accounts? (I'm here on FriendFeed by the way, if you'd like me to feed you like a friend.)
Still More Ways to Do It
OpenID accounts usually have some
profile info associated with them. Some apps pull that info. The OpenID
community is working hard, if slow, on "attribute exchange" - a
protocol that would flesh this out all the more.
MyBlogLog is a widely used social
network for blog readers where you can find headshots of millions of
people, their demographic info, interests and many associated accounts
from other social networks. Have you tried out the BlogJuice bookmarklet to see the job titles or your blog's most recent visitors, via LinkedIn? It's SO much fun!
If you don't mind renting users from Facebook, the new Facebook Connect login and profile system
looks pretty hot too. For some reason people don't appear to put as
much fake info about themselves into Facebook as they do other places -
it's a rich source of user profile data and comes with the added
comfort of extensive privacy controls. The downside is that putting
this much control in the hands of Facebook is pretty creepy.
Conclusion: It Doesn't Have to Be Hard Anymore
There's
not a whole lot of excuses any more for asking users of your brand new
website to fill in a whole lot of information about themselves. Nor is
there for having super anemic user profiles, which leave new users
totally uninspired to connect with each other. You need users
connecting as quickly as possible in your apps and rich profiles really
help.
What other ways have you seen apps solve this problem? We're sure
there are many more creative examples and we'd love to find out about
them!
The handsome devil at the top of this post is Flickr user thomas pix.
Posted by: James Young at 7:22PM EST on August 5, 2008
A while back, I saw a great presentation given by Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation concerning her success using Digg to promote the content from www.nwf.org, and drive more traffic to the site. One of he key tenets to Danielle’s success was “profile development,” the art of making profile on Digg an attractive profile to other Digg visitors. This is not a new concept, as there have been numerous posts on the topic (two great posts: Search Engine People and Cracked.com), all of which mention that you have to be “somebody” on Digg in order to get your content on that front page, but Danielle is a dedicated non-profit lady, and I trust her advice to work for you other non-profits. So, without further ado, Danielle’s tip and tricks:
Tips to a Successful Online Profile
By Danielle Brigida, Associate Operations Coordinator at National Wildlife Federation
When using social networking and bookmarking sites for online outreach, it’s important to do the following things:
1. Establish your brand
Your picture, username and personal information should reflect how you want to be perceived by the community. Sometimes it makes sense to give it all away up front. Tell people who you work for. They’ll respect you for it and may come to you later when looking for a resource.
2. Seek out like-minded friends
Learn from your friends and develop your own personality that can serve as your niche. Also don’t be shy to ask for advice and be sure to support those who have taken you under their wing.
3. RELAX and learn
Make sure you observe before you take the leap. If you come on too strong, too fast, it will be a turnoff to the community. By observing you can find exactly where you fit in, as well as make powerful connections that help you become successful in the community. Be realistic about the time frame that goes along with respect. Sometimes you must wait it out.
4. Update regularly
It is important to keep your profile fresh with consistent, solid updates. This helps you gain recognition and make your presence known.
5. Follow the Golden Rule
Don’t come off as selfish by only trying to push your agenda, instead serve as a resource for people and treat them how you would want to be treated. Also, ask lots of questions, don’t just assume people want to receive every bit of information you are ready to dish out.
6. Don’t be afraid to get personal
Online doesn’t have to mean impersonal. In fact, it’s important that you show as much of your true self as you are comfortable with. It’s good to remember that while our daily actions are getting less personal (*self checkout, pump your own gas, etc.) the online world is connecting more people than ever.
No matter what type of social site you are on, it’s good to remember that the people you are trying to reach are real, feeling individuals who are looking for a way to support messages like yours. The best way to reach them is to be open and honest, and most importantly, be yourself.
Thanks to Danielle for these great tips. If you have any other ideas, tips, or tricks to cracking the front pages of sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, and Newsvine, please share.
Posted by: Markus Beeby at 6:00PM EST on August 4, 2008
I'm often amazed how many non-profits either don't know about, or haven't spent the time applying for, a Google Grant.
Simply put, your organization is eligible for $10,000 a month in free Google Adwords spend if you:
Are a 501(c)(3)
Have a website
Do not have a religious or political focus
Let's look at that $10,000 in practical traffic terms. Given a competitive space and the maximum $1 bid, this works out to a minimum of 10,000 new, targeted visitors per month. Say your space is bit less competitive, and you can bring your bids down to $.50, that's 20,000 new faces arriving at your website each month. Start focusing on making your site relevant to the broader and negative search terms, and further down come your bids. That $10,000 a month starts to stretch into the 1,000 visitors-a-day neighborhood.
Now, none of this is rocket science, but many non-profits never get the ball rolling on this great SEM opportunity. Either they feel that they don't have enough AdWord expertise in-house, or they simply don't know that the program exists. Well, at the risk of sounding like the nice man below, THIS IS FREE MONEY to build your website traffic.
Posted by: James Young at 12:28PM EST on July 21, 2008
Because I spend so much work time immersed in this area, I tend to assume that other people I talk with know what constituent empowerment is and why it is important. But then I remember my 8th grade science teacher who has a saying about the word “assume.” He said that when you assume, you make an ### out of U and ME. So, I’m going to stop assuming that everyone knows about constituent empowerment and why it is important, and I’m going to do it right now.
I always say that constituent empowerment is allowing your constituents to do your work for you. That’s the simplified version. The reality, of course, is that you can’t just hand over work. If that were the case, I would never have to take out the trash or fold the laundry (ahhh…a man can dream). No, in order to get others to do your work for you, you need to do a few things first.
First, you need to have a group of people who are at least willing to consider the idea of doing your work for you. I think there are two parts to this. You need to explain why you need help and then you need to watch and listen to identify the people who are sympathetic to you plea.
Second, you need to make it easy for these people to pick up your work and run with it. This means tools that are readily available and easily mastered. No one but the most committed person is going to spend a ton of time learning a whole new skill just to help you out.
Third, you need to make it known that helpers will be recognized. Let’s face it, there is a very short list of people who are completely self-less and do good deeds without any expectation, even at a sub-conscious level, of recognition.
Fourth, to be really successful at this, you need to make sure that people have some choice in what work they take on for you. Nobody, not even in the military, just loves being told what to do.
So, let’s assume you buy into this constituent empowerment fad, and you think you can handle the four criteria above. What is in it for you? Reach and Context.
Reach
Empowering others with your message and the tools to spread the message is the cornerstone on viral marketing. And how quickly can that spread occur? Well, let’s do some math.
Most people have a close circle of people that numbers 12. This extends out to about 40 well-known acquaintances. So, we’ll start with each person being able to reach about 40 people relatively easily.
If each of those 40 people reaches out to their 40 people with the message, roughly 1,600 people have now heard it.
If each of those 1600 people reaches out to their 40 people with the message, roughly 61,000 people have now heard it.
And then 2,370,000 and then 92,360,000.
You get the point.
Context
Have you ever seen one of those commercials where the uptight parent tries to talk to their kids about drugs by performing some very bad rap? As marketers, this is our worst nightmare, right? Trying to reach out to somebody without any clue as to how to deliver the message in a meaningful way is destined to fail.
By empowering your constituents, you have just recruited one of “them” to speak to “them.” You constituents know how to position the message in a way that is meaningful to their friends, because they are friends.
Some organizations will balk at the idea of putting the words into the mouths of constituents, for fear of losing control of the message. All I can say is, unless you know how to clone yourself, there is no better way to reach more people.
Posted by: Molly Brooksbank at 6:41PM EST on May 27, 2008
Expanding on Sally’s post last month, Online Advocacy - Using Petitions for List Building,
here are a few of my favorite nonprofit pledges. Unlike petitions,
which are specifically political, pledges can promote any kind of
action or invite general participation. Pledges can be a very effective
outreach tool and the lists tend to be of a very high quality.
Are pledges really just a smokescreen to gather emails?
I suppose they can be, but I think these examples demonstrate another possibility. Like any other nonprofit communication, your pledge has to be authentic. Just like newletter subscriptions, these pledges act as tools to educate and engage, and serve as an entry point to broader participation.
To make your pledge work, you have to be prepared to respond to your
signers' enthusiasm while it's fresh. If you have a stated goal, update them on your progress. If you can, tie the pledge into a broader campaign. But above all, make sure you're prepared to
follow up signatures immediately with offers of other, deeper ways to
engage with your nonprofit.
What can you genuinely ask for in a pledge, and what can you offer in return?
Education: Elucidate the need you address and how supporters can contribute.
Emotional Connection: Find common ground with potential supporters through your most compelling stories.
Participation through Outreach: With a pledge, you give current supporters a reason and a means to share your mission with their friends and family, as well as a non-financial way to support your organization.
Readiness: A pledge can help you build a base and keep your organization front of mind for the moment when a timely response is critical. Be clear in your pledge about your goals and about any communications the signer is opting in to.
Got any great pledges to share? Post them in the comments!
"Hi,
my name is MrCucumber69, I have a gray blob for a face and that's all I
care to share about myself - will you be my friend?" Silly as that
sounds, this is the way users of many social web applications greet
each other. It's not very useful or inspiring. 
One of the most well known ways to get people to fill out their profiles is the way 
It's
the first step new users take when they click the button to register on
the site. You can exclude certain accounts, add particular usernames
for accounts where you use a different one. It's incredibly elegant and
a great model that others would do well to emulate.
If you've used red hot social lifestreaming app type thing 
A while back, I saw a great presentation given by Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation concerning her success using 
