Social Media

Embrace Social, I Did.

So, I admit it - social media is here to stay.  I was a late adopter.  My Twitter account created simply because I had to have one for work.  Facebook because my mother wanted a minute by minute account of my daughter's life (yes, that's right, at one point my mother was more social).  But, both in working with nonprofits and in my role as a marketer, I began to grudgingly adopt it.  

I'm not sure when it happened but I now get it.  It is a part of how I think about reaching people, some that I can't reach any other way.  It's fun.  It's interesting.  It isn't just about having to consider it, it sometimes is the first thing I consider.  Why?  Because it presents every marketer, every fundraiser, every nonprofit, with a way to have a conversation, to allow people to be heard, to be passionate, to support you and rally other people to support you.   

I needed to get that off my chest.  I feel cleansed of the guilt of not believing.  So, now with a clean conscience, I get to tell everyone about Common Ground Social.  And, I am so excited, I refuse to restrict myself to 140 characters.  

That's right - true social fundraising!  Take your peer-to-peer fundraising efforts, integrate it with your donor database and combine that with the kind of exposure only social media can deliver, and voila - Common Ground Social.   It's so easy to use - for both you and your supporters. 

In 3 steps supporters can register, personalize and share a unique fundraising page with their personal story on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.   The data flow between donor gifts and your database - instant.  You can track and interact with your supporters and their networks.  

To truly appreciate how easy, cool, and awesome it is, you should see it in action - we've just posted a quick 6 minute video.  Or visit www.commongroundcrm.com  to learn more about social fundraising and Common Ground.

The Business Impact of Twitter

The following post is an excerpt from Constant Contact's "The Business Impact of Twitter: It’s Come a Long Way [New Data]" by Josh Mendelsohn, originally posted October 20, 2011. The findings listed here are from their recent research with Chadwick Martin Bailey regarding consumer interactions with Twitter.

The truth is that today’s consumers want interactive content from not just brands, but from the people behind the brands so they can be better in the know and help support the businesses and organizations they like. Good marketing, regardless of the channel, is about creating connections that result in sales and increased word of mouth, and this study shows that Twitter can be a huge asset in doing so.

Personally, I love Twitter (find me at @mendelj2). I follow the brands that I care most about and use it as a way to find and filter the information I need to do my job. But it is a big time commitment that needs to be seriously considered if you are doing it on behalf of your brand, and it needs to be done well if it is going to be done at all.

Here are 10 things you should know about how consumers use Twitter as you decide whether or not it is right for your business or organization:

1. 60% of brand followers are more likely to recommend a brand to a friend after following it on Twitter
2. 50% of brand followers are more likely to buy from a brand after following it on Twitter
3. Consumers follow brands on Twitter for exclusivity, promotions, and to be “in the know” 
4. 50% of consumers on Twitter go online more than once an hour
5. Nearly half of consumers on Twitter have been tweeting less than one year
6. 79% of consumers on Twitter follow fewer than 10 brands
7. 75% of consumers have never “un-followed” a brand on Twitter
8. One-third of brand followers are interacting with brands more this year than last
9. Consumers on Twitter read posts from brands much more than they tweet about brands
10. Consumers on Twitter under age 35 are more likely to follow brands than older users

Want to learn more? Read the full report here: http://ow.ly/72Ver.

Google Analytics - Annotations

This post is the sixth in an ongoing series about Google Analytics. As we proceed, I’ll share tips on how you can use this tool to gain more insight into your online marketing.

If you’re not yet familiar with Google Analytics, it’s a free tool from Google that you can add to your site to give you information about how people are coming to your website and how they behave when they get there. Read the first post for an overview of the Dashboard or go to my profile to see all of my posts on Google Analytics 

If you’ve been following these Google Analytics posts, you’ve probably come to see website analysis as a sort of sleuthing. You look at a report, notice a pattern or anomaly & try to understand why that is occurring & what you can do about it.

Sometimes you’ll see something out of the ordinary that seems surprising at first, but then makes sense once you use your detective skills to figure out the cause.  Sometimes the cause is obvious, or sometimes it takes a bit of digging around into internal operations like marketing or events, external influences like news articles, or historical website changes.  Things like:

• A big spike in traffic last week? That was the national news article everyone was so excited about.
• The change in pageviews last month? That was the homepage redesign that you’ve been preparing for months.
• The drop in traffic that never recovered? That was when you started filtering out traffic from internal IP addresses.
• The increase in traffic that wasn’t associated with any events? Your SEO efforts started paying off & you started ranking on page 1 of Google for an important search term.

Whether the answer was obvious or a tough case to crack, it’s likely that it will become a mystery again in another year or two (or maybe in a matter of months).

Did you know that you can make notes right on the graphs in Google Analytics?

Just go into any graph, hover over a date, and click “add new annotation”.

You'll see a short form

You can make your note private, or make it available to anyone with access to your organization’s analytics account. This can be really helpful if multiple people at your organization are using Google analytics. The marketing person can make notes about campaigns and the web person can make notes about website changes, stopping confusion before it even happens.

Even if you’re the only person at your organization, annotations are often a lot easier than searching through old emails to see why that weird spike happened this time last year.

The annotation is tied to the date, not the graph or metric.  Once you put an annotation on a date, you will see it on all graphs that cover that date. So no matter what graph you are looking at, you will be aware of important events that might have affected the data.

Leave a comment if you have an interesting way that annotations could help you in your work!

Innovator Spotlight: HRC

Earlier this month, we recognized The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) with an Innovator Award in the Best Use of New Mediacategory for its “Coming Out for Equality” Facebook application which allowed supporters of equality to use social media to express their support for the rights of LGBT Americans and raise awareness around National Coming Out Day. 

Their Facebook app was wildly successful. Just check out these stats

• 12,000+ new followers on HRC’s Facebook page in two days;
• 125,000 people donated their Facebook status for equality, which resulted in ~16.3 million newsfeed impressions;
• 340,000 likes and comments in response to status updates;
• 6,000+ Tweets for equality sent through the application; and
• 117,000+ new email addresses, saving $200,000+ in new prospect list acquisition costs.

Impressive right?

While Facebook apps aren't right for every organization or campaign, the core message is: instead of reinventing the wheel, make some innovative tweaks to your long-standing and successful campaigns. (They are long-standing and successful campaigns for a reason right? No need to fix what ain't broke.) Tie in social media to empower your constituents, offer new forms of engagement and more by taking advantage of the new media available to you. With a few updates, good to great is possible - and I think we'd all agree that HRC's results are nothing shy of great.

VIDEO: HRC on HRC's Campaign

Spread the Love and #BAD11

Once a year, Blog Action Day unites bloggers around the world to focus on an important global issue and to create a dialogue that transcends international borders. This year, Blog Action Day’s focus is FOOD as it coincides with World Food Day that aims to increase awareness, understanding and fuel year-around action to alleviate hunger.

The stats on world hunger are staggering:

• According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, close to one billion people are chronically hungry.
• Hunger is the world’s No. 1 health risk and kills more people every year that AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
• There are more hungry people in the world than the combined populations of the US, Canada, and the European Union.

The stats on how many Americans are hungry and undernourished are equally troubling given our abundant resources:

• According to the Department of Agriculture 15 percent of Americans go hungry or specifically are “food insecure” meaning they can’t afford to eat right or eat enough.

Taking a closer look at a particular region of the US, hunger affects close to 1 million individuals throughout the Delaware Valley (area surrounding Philadelphia). That’s the service area for Philabundance, an amazing Convio client that provides food to approximately 65,000 people per week through direct services and network of 500 member agencies. The organization serves low income residents at risk of hunger and malnutrition, of which 23 percent are children and 16 percent are senior citizens. As a small contribution to Blog Action Day and World Food Day, I would like to recognize the achievements of Philabundance in helping to reduce hunger in their service area and highlight an innovative campaign that has increased awareness, raised funds and helped to grow their body of supporters.

About the Campaign

For the past two years, Philabundance has promoted the Spread the Love campaign as a two week virtual food drive that matches every new fan on Facebook with a jar of peanut butter or jelly donation from the org’s food industry partner, Wakefern/ShopRite. The concept of ‘spreading the love’ was inspired by the PB&J (a staple item that is in high demand by the community due to its richness in protein and affordability), the viral nature of the campaign, and the Valentine’s Day time frame, February 1-14.

Results
The launch of the campaign was an immediate success resulting in ShopRite donating a total of 3,800 pounds of PB&J to the community and Philabundance increased online donations by 100 percent. They also added and mobilized 2,265 Facebook fans during a 14 day period — 155 percent increase from start of campaign. In 2011, the results keep getting better! ShopRite donated 4,750 pounds of PB&J, increased online donations 111 percent over 2010 and in the first few days alone, and they were able to beat last year’s Facebook fan growth by nearly 114 percent.

Philabundance along with so many other food banks are helping reduce the level of hunger and food insecurity in the US. The ‘Spread the Love’ campaign is just one of the great programs that Philabundance offers throughout the year, and is a true reflection of the power of paying it forward and establishing supporter momentum that has helped build their online community and overall supporter network.

Take Action Against Hunger

• Live in the Delaware Valley or just want to stay tuned into the amazing work of Philabundance? Become a part of their community.
• Here are five ways to act against global hunger from the ONE campaign
• Learn about Oxfam America's GROW campaign a celebration of food with daily blogs, photo roundups, competitions and loads of ways to get involved and take action. 
• Whether you blog, host an event, Tweet about #BAD11 and World Food Day continue to participate in the discussion on October 16, 2011 and beyond