By now you’ve probably read about the decision by the Susan G. Komen Foundation to cease giving grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings.

This decision, obviously politically motivated, will mostly impact women in under-served communities. The same communities that probably sold the most buckets of cancer that raised $8 million for the foundation. Seriously.

Komen gets a spanking

One of the best things I love about the nonprofit community is watching my friends serve up a well-deserved spanking!

• Alison Fine helped open the way with a Causes campaign called “Komen Kan Kiss My Mammogram!” which now has almost 1,000 supporters!
• Kivi Leroux-Miller wrote a great case study about their rebranding as a pro-life breast cancer charity, and how they awkwardly non-responded to the outcry by tweeting about prostate cancer in a 2,000 year-old mummy.
• Beth wrote an awesome post about Kivi’s newsjacking and how she (Beth) used Pinterest to drive traffic back to Alison’s Cause campaign.
• Nancy wrote an excellent timeline of the entire Koman failure, from start to finish.
• Allyson shared five key lessons nonprofits can learn from the Komen failure.
• Shonali shared seven PR Lessons Komen didn’t know it was giving you.
• Amy pointed out an article about how defunding Planned Parenthood exposes the politics of Komen.
• Joe implored supporters of Komen to put the cause first with this jab: “If you’re happy with deep fried cause marketing, brand witch hunts and punishing poor women, congratulations, you have the organization you want.”
• And I got to watch.

Take some time and go through these posts. You’ll find lessons, rage, humor, and a whole lot of riotousness.

Don’t you just love nonprofit bloggers!

If you’re like most people, you get most of your inspiration from people who are quietly changing the world each and every day.

They’re not on the front page of the newspaper, and they’re not mingling with the Gates and Buffets of the world. They’re everyday people like you and me who have shown extraordinary commitment to making this world better than when they found it.

The CTK Foundation “Heroes with a Heart” Grant Award asks YOU to nominate a “Hero with a Heart,” and give them a chance to win $5,000 – a simple thanks for the hard work that they do.

What are the details of the “Heroes with a Heart” Grant?

Here’s an overview of awards the CTK Foundation will offer and details on how you can nominate your Hero:

Go to www.communitytech.net/foundation to nominate your Hero with a Heart today!

Good luck, Heroes!

One way to increase engagement with blog readers is to remove barriers, like CAPTCHAS (hopefully you don’t have these), logging in to leave comments (Facebook, Twitter and recently Google have solved this problem) and actually having to use one’s brain by leaving a comment.

Create simple polls with Quipol

Another way to engage readers is to use a simple polling app like Quipol.

Each Quipol displays one question with thumbs-up and thumbs-down options.

Test it out for yourself:

One of the biggest challenges that nonprofits have with social media – and Facebook in particular – is being transparent without being creepy.

You already know that your social media messages should be very different from your direct mail or brochure messaging. For one thing, it should be pithier.

It should also feel more human. The reason why is that Facebook users spend most of their time interacting with their friends, which in turn establishes a sort of “native language” on Facebook. The more your nonprofit can understand and speak this native language, the more likely Facebook users will engage with you. But you shouldn’t be too personal…

Your nonprofit messaging shouldn’t be too personal

See the rub? you want to be “human” on Facebook, but not too personal. So where do you draw the line? The best way to think about this is to understand what Facebook users expect from you in the first place.

You also want to have the right people representing you on social media channels who understand the organization, the community’s culture, and also the guidelines.

Mitch Joel said it best in a recent post:

“Brands must use real people to have real interactions with the people interested in them. Those real people must know what the brand stands for and how to communicate that. It’s about being transparent without damaging the brand. It’s about being personal within the confines of the brand narrative. And, ultimately, it’s about adding value and being helpful… it’s not about becoming someone’s best friend. It’s also not about being fake or a corporate shill. It must be authentic and transparent. It shouldn’t be creepy.”

How does your org establish a human presence without being to personal?

Please share below!

Mike Lewis and Sal Giliberto of Awareness Networks, the social marketing software company, invited me to conduct a free webinar called  Creating a Breakthrough for Your Business on Facebook on February 8^th at 1 PM EST.

In anticipation of the webinar, I answered a few questions for a blog post about using Facebook for business. Below is an excerpt from the full post.

What effect does Facebook page design have on fan growth and engagement?

The design of your Facebook Page can help convert fans and increase engagement in a at least two ways ways:

• Main Profile Image – Your main image should be designed so that the thumbnail clearly communicates who you are. The name of the page and the thumbnail are the only pieces of information most Facebook users will be able to identify you by, so you have to make them count.
• Branded Welcome Tab – All Pages must have a custom welcome tab that’s set as the default tab non-fans will see when they first arrive at the Page. Studies have shown that Pages with a branded welcome tab will convert fans at a 25% higher rate than Pages that don’t have such a tab. My favorite example of a branded welcome tab is the Dog Bless You Facebook Page.

Engagement and content will always trump page design

After you’ve converted a fan, the design of the Page doesn’t really matter that much. The reason why is that everything happens in the newsfeed, NOT on your Facebook page. According to a study by ComScore, Facebook users are 40-150 times more likely to engage with Page content the newsfeed instead of Fan Page itself.

Your main job on Facebook is to keep people interested in your organization so that they spread the good word. Your primary tool for doing that job is the News Feed.

Read the rest of this post over at the Awareness Blog

Last week, Facebook announced the release of more than 60 new Timeline apps which allow Facebook users to automatically share application actions on their timeline. You first became aware of Timeline apps when all your friends were telling you what songs they were listening to on Spotify.

How do Timeline apps work?

Once you authorize an app (which only needs to be done once) a live connection is established with your timeline. What this means is that as soon as you take an action with an app, like finishing a run with the RunKeeper app, the app automatically posts that action on your Timeline (as shown below).

What is Frictionless Sharing?

Frictionless sharing is Facebook’s new model for more digestible (both psychologically and technically) social sharing. In other words, Facebook has redefined sharing.

There are two components to frictionless sharing:

1. Gestures That Make Sense – Facebook is now allowing app developers to use gestures other than“like” for news feed stories. In the example above, it says that I just “completed” a run with Runkeeper (by the way, I can run further than .27 miles…).“Completed” works better because although I definitely completed the run, I may have not “liked” it.
2. Permission Hurdles Removed – Timeline apps asks permission only once to access and share a user’s data. As shown below in the RunKeeper app, it’s easier for me to understand what the app needs to work. The app authorization also lists activities that will appear, and allows me to choose who can see your activities.

It’s important to realize that frictionless sharing is about removing both technical AND psychological hurdles to sharing.

Are Timeline Apps intended for mobile?

Facebook is not a bunch of dummies. They know the future of the web exists in mobile devices. Frictionless sharing will encourage the use of Timeline apps via mobile devices in at least two ways.

• Trust – With the old app permissions, it wasn’t really clear what your were authorizing. This created mistrust (a psychological hurdle). But the new app permissions explain exactly what personal data will be shared the first time you give that app permission. This is critical for mobile devices that previously had to ask permission repeatedly.
• Thumbs – The new gestures like “read”, “cooked”, “pinned”, “completed” and “donated” are thumb-friendly. Notice how the emphasis is NOT on writing comments, or entering data into fields (where you ran, who you ran with) in a browser. The emphasis is on very small actions – perfect for thumb-friendly mobile devices!

Finally, almost all of the 60 Timeline apps can be found in the iTunes App Store. This reinforces my theory that their ultimate use is to capture actions from mobile users and not necessarily people using Facebook through a browser (please disagree in the comments!)

Learn more about Timeline Applications

Want to learn more about the implication of Timeline apps? Read “Facebook Timeline Apps: A New Way To Engage?” by Debra Askanase and “What Do Facebook’s New Timeline Apps Mean for Nonprofits?” by Beth Kanter.

Do you think Timeline apps are about mobile apps?

If you want to increase pages views and site engagement, it’s critical that you create a more social experience when people visit your website.

For example, when people view an article from your blog they’d see which of their friends have already read that article. They’d also have the ability to share content on your site with their Facebook friends.

Gigya published data showing that web users spend 50 percent more time on websites that use Facebook Social Plugins. They also view twice as many pages.

Increase the amount of time spend on your site with social plugins

As you can see in the bar graph above, users spend most of their time commenting, which according to Giya, “allows them to share opinions on content and interact with other users – including those from their social graph”.

This makes sense when you remember that people are busier today than ever before, but still want to converse with their friends on topics they care about.

Increase page views with social plugins

They also found that page views more than doubled for sites that use social plugins. Again, commenting and sharing were the two biggest activities.

What does all this mean for your website?

The more pages people view on your website, the more chances you have to convert them into an email subscriber or donor.

View your website as a fishing net. Web visitors either keep swimming on by your site or get caught in your net (subscribe to your email newsletter, etc.). Social plugins encourage these fish to swim around a bit more, giving you more chances at catching them!

Which Facebook social plugins should you use for your website?

Putting your organizations goals aside for a moment, and viewing the data above, it’s safe to say that you should at least be implementing Facebook’s Like Button and Comments plugin.

• Like Button: When a user clicks the Like button, a news story publishes to their News Feed, and this story includes a link back to the content on your site. If your site offers a lot of content that users can like individually (such as in a blog), you’ll invariably increase referral traffic from Facebook to your site.
• Comments: This plugin allows you to add a comment box to your website content so that Facebook users can enter their comments which can automatically be published to their Facebook News Feed. These republished comments also include a link back to the comments on your site.

Facebook has excellent tutorials on installing these plugins, and if you use WordPress all you need is to install a few Plugins. The plugins I use on this site are Facebook Like and Send and Disqus for comments (users can login with Twitter or Google in addition to Facebook).

Have you installed Facebook social plugins on your site?

Today I was asked for the thousandth time what the ROI of a social network is.

I answered with my own question: “You mean the network of people who care about your cause, participate in conversations that create greater awareness (not to mention good ideas) about your nonprofit?”

Not getting that my question was intended to show how silly his question was, he replied “Yes. I want to know if my efforts are worth anything.”

It suddenly dawned on me that maybe the only reason why people seek to measure the ROI of their social network is that they can. Or maybe measuring is the only thing they feel at home with.

We now have the ability to measure clicks, shares, comments, hits, conversions, retweets and more. But all this data doesn’t really tell us the value of our network. For example, I can count how many people I shake hands with, but that won’t tell how much value I’ll get in return for my efforts.

Don’t get me wrong, measuring and monitoring will show you where to spend your time, and might give you hints about what direction you need to go.

But the value of those efforts? My answer is “yes”

What’s yours?

_________________________________

There is a new darling in the social media world and her name is Pinterest. A virtual, interactive bulletin board where individuals, businesses, and nonprofit organizations can pin their interests and drive traffic to their website.

What is Pinterest?

Pinsterest is basically a vision board or scrapbook that you put together while surfing the internet. According to the website, “Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.”

Although, the main demographic of Pinterest users are women, between the ages of 25 and 44, there are increasing number of unique visitors to the social platform — 3.3 million users logged in and over 421 million page views in October to over 4 million users today (Mashable).

I know what you’re thinking, “Argh, not another social media platform I have to manage. I can barely keep up with updating my Facebook page, or Twitter account, or the trendiest social media thing.”  But, Pinterest is different, which is extremely important to their success because the field is already crowded with so many social networks, apps and widgets, and soon-to-be copycats (MingleWing, Piccsy).

How does Pinterest work?

You build a collage of images by pinning them to your Pinterest board. It can be done in three ways: Use the Pinterest “Pin It” bookmarklet while perusing the internet, upload your own images, or repin other user’s images to your Pinterest boards that you’ve created and organized. For example, I’ve created several Pinterest boards: Social Good Marketing, Good Designs That Shine, Hugs My Soul (Motivational Quotes), Pinterest for Nonprofits, to name a few.

What makes Pinterest so pinteresting?

Pinterest can generate a lot of traffic to your website because pins link back to their original source. For example, if you pin an image of a product from your business’ website onto your Pinterest board and a person clicks on the image, they will be directed back to your website (huge SEO bonus points).

Social broadcasting by repinning other user’s images in Pinterest, tweet pins to Twitter and “like” pins
to your Facebook wall. You can also embed pins onto your website or email them to a friend.

You can pin videos too

Women, who  are usually the retail buyers in a household, have flocked to Pinterest to share decorating ideas, crafts, cooking recipes, bargain products and much, much more.

12 Tips to Pinterest Your Nonprofit’s Interest

1. Create Pinterest boards with a specific purpose in mind. Example: Humane Society of New York Woof – Adopt A Dog.
2. Follow Pinterest users with similar interests with quality pins on their boards, like, Nonprofit Organizations, National Wildlife Federation, Water.org, Jokolna Foundation.  You can follow all boards or specific boards, such as Jennifer Windrum’s SMAC! Sock Monkeys Against Cancer, Sylwia Presley’s Nonprofits and Social Media, Miranda Carter’s Cause, Jenn Howard’s Sayings or Sevenly’s Get Inspired.
3. Follow back influential people who follow you. The trick is to click “Follow All” on the individual’s profile, then unfollow specific boards that aren’t of interests to you.
4. “Like” pins or repin items that appeals to you. This action will show up on the user’s sidebar. It will also send an email notification to the user (if turned on).
5. Use the pin comments section to engage in conversation and leave your mark.
6. Collaborate with co-workers or team members to help build your Pinterest board by using the board edit feature “Me + Contributors.” Let’s say your organization has a project to build a house. You can call the board “The House That Love Built” and invite team leaders to post photos of tools needed, progress of the build, and volunteers.
7. Use eye-catching images to get people’s attention and repins. The more repins, the more chances you’ll have people clicking to the source website.
8. Create an online fundraising catalog. Add “$” symbol and the amount of an item in the pin description, i.e., $7.95 or $5.00. A grey banner with the price will be displayed on the upper left corner. Your pin will automatically go into the gifts tab located at the top of the homepage.
9. Use the search box by typing in topics, people’s names, businesses, etc. Then filter search by clicking pins, boards, or people.
10. Use the @ feature in the comment box to tag specific people (like other social networks).
11. Use keywords to name your Pinterest boards, board descriptions, and pin descriptions for search engine optimization (SEO).
12. Add a Pinterest share button to your website and URL on your business cards.

What I like most about Pinterest is that it’s visually-appealing and easy to use. If I’m perusing the web and I come across a really cool image, I can “pin” the image to my Pinterest board. Like creating my very own lifestyle catalog with the things I’m interested in.Plus, all of my friends can see what appeals to me, which is useful when buying gifts (hint, hint).

Tip: If you highlight the web context with the left button of your mouse, then click the “Pin it” button, the highlighted text will show up in the Pinterest description box.

Like the other social media networks, Pinterest is not a place to blatantly promote your organization. You will turn people away if you constantly push your cause. Instead, pin images that capture the lifestyle and essence of your organization while building a community of potential donors and volunteers who share the same interests.

Pinterest Resources:

Joe Waters  Why and How Causes Should Use Pinterest:
Beth Kanter Pinterest: A Tool to Curate Relevant Visual Content for Your Audience
Avi Kaplan Steal These 42 Creative Pinterest Ideas for Nonprofts
Mashable Pinterest: 13 Tips and Tricks for Cutting Edge Users
LinchpinSEO [INFOGRAPHIC] Ideas For Marketing Your Products Using Pinterest.Com
Beth Kanter Storify Nonprofits on Pinterest
Bcause Media delicious Pinterest Guide and Resources
Kelly Lieberman Scoop.it Pinterest

Note: Pinterest is still in invite-only mode. Many of your friends may already be using Pinterest and have invites to hand out. Just ask.

If your organization already has a Pinterest account, let us know in the comments so we can follow your inspiration.

How would you use Pinterest for your nonprofit? What types of images would you post to your board? How are you pinteresting?

Share your ideas in the comment below.

By now I’m sure you’re aware that profiles (what people use to connect to each other on Facebook) have a completely new layout called the Timeline. Briefly, the Timeline shifts the focus from a user’s most recent update, and instead focuses on important events in their life.

Ever since profiles have received this new layout, people what to know when pages will get a Timeline layout.

I say, don’t worry because it doesn’t matter much anyhow…

What will be awesome about the new Facebook Page layout

When Facebook Pages finally do get the timeline layout, there will be a few marketing advantages:

• You will be able to have a much stronger brand presence on Facebook
• You’ll be able to tell the story of how your nonprofit is changing the world
• You might even come up with a very creative way to do outreach
• You’ll be able to feature more content above the fold
• You can swap out covers that promote your latest outcomes and events

These are pretty awesome benefits, but even these benefits really don’t matter in the grand scheme of your Facebook strategy.

Why you should stop obsessing about when Facebook Pages with get the Timeline

The short answer is that everything happens in the newsfeed, NOT on your Facebook page. Your main job on Facebook is to keep people interested in your organization so that they spread the good word. Your tool for doing your job is the wall.

Now don’t get me wrong –  your branding is an important part of your overall marketing plan. It just doesn’t keep people interested.

What do you think?