Productivity

Make the Most of Your Holiday Week

Office a little dead this week with the 4th of July holiday? Hearing crickets instead of coworkers (and no, I’m not talking about the Austin cricket infestation)?

Sometimes…OK most of the time, a slow week like this can be great for knocking through projects. But sometimes it can bring you to a standstill if everyone you need to work with is out enjoying an extended holiday. If you fall into that latter category, this blog’s for you! Here are 5 things you can do, sans coworkers, partners, donors, anyone at all, that will keep your mission on track.

1. Data Hygiene: Data nerds rejoice! This is the perfect opportunity to do a little merge/purge on your constituent records. If your merge/purge is complete (give yourself a high five), take a minute to add more detail like the preferred title (Ms, Mrs., Miss, etc).
2. Clean Your Desk: It’ll make each workday seem so much less hectic going forward. Promise.
3. Thank You Calls: Whether catching up on long-overdue thank yous or just reaching out to your board and committee members with an extra thanks, these will go a long way in building relationships.
4. Professional Development: All those on-demand webinars and how-to blog posts you have bookmarked, this is the week to actually learn from them. And if you don’t have any bookmarked, check out these guides on nonprofit best practices.
5. Me Time: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. That’s right. If the whole office is on vacation, leaving you high and dry on projects, this might be your perfect opportunity to catch some R&R yourself. Go play some golf, get a pedicure, have a mojito by the pool. Do whatever it is that will rejuvenate you and leave you ready to hit the ground running next week.

Happy Fourth of July!

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E-books for Social Strategy

E-books and e-readers are a growing part of the attention ecosystem. Long-form journalism is finding new legs through social recommendation (#longform, #longreads) and time-shifting apps. Nonprofits struggling to communicate complex issues in 140 characters can benefit from deploying e-books and other long-form content as part of a thoughtful mobile and social media strategy.

Who is reading?

Owners of e-reading devices have similar profiles to audiences most nonprofits are trying to reach for fundraising. According to a recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life report, The Rise of E-Reading:

Compared with all Americans 16 and older, “e-reading device owners” are more likely to live in high income households and have more educational experience, and are also much more likely to be more tech-savvy in general… more likely to read in general, and to read a book on a typical day… more avid readers of newspapers and magazines than other Americans, and are more likely to read long-form content of any kind for pleasure. (emphasis mine)

29% of Americans age 18 and older own at least one specialized device for e-book reading – either a tablet or an e-book reader.

Also, it bears stating the obvious: smartphones are also e-readers. Don't think of e-books as being read exclusively by owners of dedicated e-readers like the Kindle or Nook, but instead think of any mobile screen. The audience for an e-book may be larger than you thought. 

What content makes sense?

As chronicled in Forbes.com and elsewhere, long-form writing on the web is making a comeback. Many readers are using time-shifting apps to collect web content and read it later. In addition to purposefully written longer articles on your website, e-books are an opportunity to reach your audience with long-form content. Examples of content that could be produced in e-book format or targeted to long-form readers include:

• Strategic planning documents (audience: potential board members, funders)
• Annual reports (audience: board members, major donors, individual donors)
• How to guides for volunteers
• Action kits for activists
• Extended versions of stories you already tell in abbreviated form: people your organization has helped, backstories on issues, extended interviews with volunteers, etc.
• Compilations of blog articles on a particular topic, such as work in a particular country or region, or stories related to a particular event. See this recent tweet from the White House, linking to a #longform article about the Joplin tornados.

Depending on the organization, other opportunities may present themselves. For example, distributing an exclusive work (or excerpt) by a well-known author in e-book format may be a way to generate donations or signups. Furthermore, new outlets for long-form journalism (Atavist, Longform.org, Longreads, Matter, PostDesk (UK), among others), should be part of your media planning.

TheNextWeb.com blogger Alex Wilhelm writes that "Long-form content is headed back to the business model of the pamphlet, with short works selling at low price points and in large quantity." According to Wilhelm, the key success factors for e-books are: locational convenience, formatting, and curation.

"By locational convenience I mean that people [with e-readers] often use them where they lack an Internet connection (the train). Therefore, to have something downloaded and ready to go is a real value. In regards to formatting, most ereading devices have browsing capabilities, but that doesn’t mean that they render pages well, or quickly. A well formatted ebook has none of those issues. Finally, curation means that things are assembled in a very specific way to give a cohesive and user-friendly experience."

An example of this kind of content curation is veteran nonprofit blogger Colin Delany's recent e-book, How Campaigns Can Use the Internet to Win in 2012, available in Kindle-optimized format via Amazon.com, and as a free PDF.

Why is formatting important?

As a consumer (not a standards expert), my experience is that PDF meets only the minimal requirements to be called an e-book, mainly for reasons of usability. While almost every e-reader can display PDFs, the end-user has no control over text size, background color, pagination, and other aspects of the the reading experience that make e-books a compelling medium. This is especially true for smartphones (currently your largest potential e-reader audience), where reading PDFs is possible but very tedious, with each page requiring zooming and scrolling.

How to publish an e-book?

Unfortunately, there isn't one publication standard that works across all e-readers. The major purveyors of e-book platforms (Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble) all want to make it easy for you to produce content, and make it sound as easy as uploading HTML or Word Documents. Because Amazon.com has the largest audience of e-readers, many independent publishers with limited time and energy are going the route of publishing in Amazon's Kindle-optimized format. One of the long-form content aggregators mentioned above, Atavist, offers a publication platform that looks promising.

If you are looking for deeper examination of the fragmented state of e-book publication standards, Nick Disabato fires a #longform broadside from A List Apart in two parts: the current state, and a look to the future. Nonprofits with limited resources would certainly benefit from industry adoption of standards as he urges.

Are you already making use of e-books and #longform content? Please let us know in the comments.

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Keep your eyes on the KPIs

Last month I pointed out a few of the ways you can use Google analytics, or other web analytics tools, to gain a better understanding of your audience. The next step is to keep track of changes to audience and audience behavior. Your audience can change over time, or change behaviors as they adapt to new technology. Adjustments to your website can affect your visitor behavior as well.

One great way to keep track of these elements without getting bogged down in all of the data in a web analytics tool is to set goals around online Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These are simply measurable data points that give insight into your online success. Some common examples are:

• Number of visitors
• Visit frequency
• Time spent on site
• Page views per visitor
• Percent of new visits and percent of repeat visits
• Percent of visits from your target geography
• Mailing list signups
• Event registrations
• Donations

Sometimes you will want to make your KPIs more granular. Rather than simply “donations” you might choose to track general donations and donations to a special fun separately, giving you 2 different donation KPIs.

You will always want to focus on more than KPI, because one data point will never tell you the whole picture. However, too many will just be overwhelming. Typically, you’ll want to get started with 4-6 KPIs.

For each data point you will want to ask yourself “How does this affect my organization’s success?” If there is a clear connection, for example “an increase in visitors means more people are reading about this issue we want to generate awareness around”, then you have found a good metric. Sometimes you might find your answer references another data point, like “more visitors means more people will sign up for our event.” In that case you should skip straight to the important metric and use event signups as a KPI instead.

Finally, create a process to track your KPIs, starting with your initial benchmark and then focusing on any movements up and down over time. Monthly reporting is sufficient for most organizations, although some prefer weekly. Another alternative is to track before and after snapshots when any major events happen, such as changes to the website, an acquisition campaign, or a direct mail drop intended to drive traffic to the website.

Industry benchmarks around your KPIs can be helpful for understanding what you need to improve, but the best insight comes from looking at the changes over time of your own KPIs, both in the short term and over quarters and years.

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Prepared for Change

As we join the Blackbaud team, many things are staying constant. For example, our continued commitment to our clients. However other things are naturally changing and will continue to evolve as we form our new team. These last few weeks I’ve taken time to pause and reflect. How am I prepared for change? Can I be nimble and adjust?

When thinking about your organization are you prepared for the unexpected? Do you have a change management plan? Too often development and marketing professionals are focused on getting the gift, pitching the story, making a call, but we need to step back and assess our readiness for change.

• Are staff cross trained? Is the Online Philanthropy Manager the only one who knows how to create and send an email? How are statistics being pulled for Foundation reports?
• Are policies and procedures written down? Who knows the coding structure in your donor database? What is the procedure for acknowledgement letters?
• Is the annual plan written down? Is there a chart that outlines drop dates for print publications? Launch dates for online campaigns?
• How is donor stewardship handled? Is there a matrix that lists giving levels and activities?
• What is the communication plan for a major change in leadership? If the Vice President of Development leaves, how will that be communicated? What donors will need to be contacted immediately?

So many questions, but if you spend time now outlining the plans, procedures and details you will be prepared and save time when change does happen. And saving time on details like this will ultimately save money, create stability and enable you to concentrate on the mission.

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Communication Plans for P2P Events

When I joined Convio after 5 years as an event fundraiser, I was first introduced to the Communication Calendar while working with the Event360 and Komen 3-Day Events.  It was amazing…  and I wished that I’d known about this tool while I was still managing all the communications for my special events! 

What’s a Communication Plan?

A Communication Plan is a document containing of all the communications organized by communication channel that your organization (or your fundraising event) is planning to send out during a specified timeframe.  This document often lives in a spreadsheet and should be used as guide that is edited or updated as you approach specific milestones. My recommendation (especially for special event communication planning) is that you include all your communication channels in your plan including Print Communications like Save the Date cards or team captain packets, traditional media channels like print advertising or press releases, online channels like email or website and also Social Media channels like Facebook or Twitter.

Check out two sample communication plans in our recently published Social Media Kick Start Guide for P2P Events.

 

4 Reasons Why Communication Planning is AWESOME

1. Right Message / Right Time - It ensures that you are communicating and reinforcing the most important messages at the most important times. Avoid the “How’s the weather?” Facebook post the week of your event and talk about things that are more important to your event’s overall success.
2. Reinforce Important Points - It helps you identify areas where you could repurpose content across different communication channels. Marketers often say that a person needs to hear something 7 times before they act on that information. Repurposing content across different channels helps you reinforce the messages, providing message consistency and improving the chances your calls to action will be acted upon.
3. Work Smarter - It helps you identify opportunities where you could draft communications early. Things get more hectic as Event Day approaches; these busy times are often when the most important communications should be going out to your participants. Do yourself a favor by drafting as many of these communications in advance as possible. You can always make quick last minute tweaks prior to sending. This is especially true for website updates, emails and blog posts. Social media management tools, like Hootsuite or TweetDeck, can help you schedule those updates in advance.
4. What’s Going To Work? TEAM WORK!  Recruit volunteers or committee members to help out. Having a clearly documented plan helps you better communicate your expectations and allows you to delegate responsibilities to the trustworthy staff or volunteers within your organization. Be conscious however of how many individuals are involved. It doesn’t take long before you have too many cooks in the kitchen.

 

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