Freelance Social Media

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As budgets and fundraising levels for non-profits get smaller, more organizations are turning to using social networking online as an essential part of their overall marketing strategy. Non-profits see online social media as an inexpensive way to build relationships, increase involvement, and help out with publicity and education efforts.

According to the Nonprofit Social Network Survey conducted in March 2009 by NTEN, Common Knowledge, and ThePort, social networking has become an increasingly important part of nonprofits’ online strategy.

This survey provides a rare snapshot of how non-profit organizations are embracing and using social media online, and provides concrete evidence that the use of social networking is becoming essential to a successful non-profit marketing plan.

• Of the 929 survey respondents, nearly three-quarters (74.1%) of non-profits reported having a presence on Facebook, with an average community size of 5,391 members. YouTube (46.5%) and Twitter (43.2%) were cited as alternate social networking tools.
• Despite having decreased resources, staffing and budgets for social network marketing on commercial social networks, like Facebook, are real although relatively small. Over 80% of respondents are committing at least one-quarter of a full-time staff person to social networking online. Additionally, more than half (55%) of survey respondents intend to increase social networking staffing over the next twelve months.
• Funding for external resources dedicated to helping social networking online is also expected to increase, according to nearly one-quarter (24.1%) of respondents.
• The survey revealed that social networks provide little real revenue for non-profits via fundraising, and are mainly utilized for traditional marketing efforts (promoting their website, email lists, and events.)

Non-profit organizations are realizing that while social networking online may not directly translate into fundraising dollars, by using social networking as a part of their marketing plan, they are able to engage supporters and prospective donors by building relationships, as well as gaining trust and loyalty towards their cause. Social networking also allows non-profit organizations a cost effective way to promote events, educate and raise awareness, and ultimately, create an ongoing conversation and involvement between the organization and its supporters.

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The Sandbar is a bar in beautiful downtown Lawrence, KS that offers tasty drinks, like the Bahama Mama or Shark Attack, in an atmosphere that makes you think you’re in Key West. It even throws in an occasional simulated hurricane so you get the full effect.

So, what’s it doing with social media?
First of all, they’re on Twitter. Sandbar on Twitter
It’s tweets consist of daily updates of drink specials, what bartenders are on duty, and an occasional link to their webcam. If you’re in the bar and TwitPic a picture, there is a good chance the Sandbar will retweet your tweet. You follow?
What’s great about their use of Twitter is they interact with other twitterers.

They’re also on Facebook! Sandbar on Facebook
1400 fans and counting. They recently asked their fans if they should carry Guinesses’ new anniversary brew. They also have a Facebook app that lets you send Sandbar toys and gifts to your friends. Just other examples of the Sandbar interacting with customers and not just creating social media and letting it sit.

Grade: A

They have a blog, webcam, and official website.  They could probably use a website upgrade with a site that wasn’t made for a screen size of 800 x 600 and some better SEO.  Overall, very well done!

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I’ve seen recently that some advertisers are starting to use Twitter’s hashtags in their advertising. Land Rover used it in a recent campaign as mentioned on the Stuff That is Relevant Blog. Is this something that other advertisers will start to do as well? It reminds me of a time when advertisers only put their phone number or address on their advertising or products. With the creation of the Internet and corporate webpages, advertisers began adding their website URL’s to their advertising. Many also added their AOL keyword to their messages much in the way that some are beginning to add their Twitter hashes.

When I find old boxes I usually check to see how they display their company information, if I don’t see a website I know that it’s pre-Internet if I see an AOL keyword I say, “I remember that”. If advertisers use Twitter hashtags on their advertising and the next social media tool comes along to replace Twitter will we someday find an old ad or product and say, “Oh yeah, Twitter, remember that?”

Have you witnessed hashtags in advertisements? Please share!

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Distributing articles can help build links to your website.  Below is a list of distribution sites with a PR of 3 or better. If you have any to suggest that meets this criteria, leave a comment. We are planning to update this list periodically.

updated on 4/23/09-took out those lower than pr2

Amazines - www.amazines.com - PR4
Article Alley - www.articlealley.com - PR5
Article Base- www.articlebase.com - PR3
Article City - www.articlecity.com - PR5
Articles Factory - www.articlesfactory.com - PR4
ArticleWarehouse - www.articlewarehouse.com - PR3
AuthorConnection.com - www.authorconnection.com - PR3
Business Know-How - www.businessknowhow.com - pr6
BusinessToolchest.com - www.businesstoolchest.com - pr3
Buzzle.com - www.buzzle.com - PR5
Connectionteam.com - www.connectionteam.com - PR3
Constant Content - www.constant-content.com - PR5
Ezine Articles - www.ezinearticles.com - PR6
FreeTrafficTip.com - www.freetraffictip.com - PR4
GoArticles.com - www.goarticles.com - PR5
Home business Tips Newsletter - www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com - PR3
HowToAdvice.com - www.howtoadvice.com - PR3
IdeaMarketers.com - www.ideamarketers.com - PR3
isnare.com - www.isnare.com PR6
Jogena’s - www.jogena.com - PR4
jorbins.com - www.jorbins.com - PR3
Li’l Engine - www.lilengine.com - PR4
LinkSnoop.com - www.linksnoop.com - PR3
Main Street Mom - www.mainstreetmom.com - PR3
PromoteNewz.com - www.promotenewz.com -PR3
PromotionWorld.com/articles.html - www.promotionworld.com -PR4
SearchWarp.com - www.searchwarp.com -PR5
UniTerra.com - uniterra.com -PR4
upromote.com - www.upromote.com - PR3
WebMomz.com - www.webmomz.com - PR4
WorkAtHomeArticles.net - www.workathomearticles.net -PR2
Work911.com - www.work911.com - PR5
zinos.com - www.zinos.com -PR4

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There are a lot of Twitter plugins for Wordpress but I couldn’t find one to simply retweet our blog posts.  Actually, that’s not true I found some but most weren’t as compact  and simple like the one we are now using.  It also displays how many people have retweeted the blog post.

Download Tweetmeme’s wordpress plugin here

I highly recommend it

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Dear Newspaper,

Are you online?

I’m tired of hearing about you going out of business.  Local, college, national…you’re all hurting.  If you aren’t online then make it happen.  Ellington CMS can provide everything you need.  It’s a good CMS and I know people that are involved with the development. Some of the best developers in the country!

Maybe you should create a League of Extraordinary Newspapers, all join, and all decide you’re going to charge a once a year fee that’s affordable to the readers.  You’ve spoiled us by giving it away for free, and I know you’re worried we’ll bail on you by making us pay now but I think this is the best solution.  Until we subscribe you should just tease us with those sexy headlines ala WSJ.com.  We’ll eventually break down and pay a small subscription fee.  And think about the information you could gather during the sign-up process that you could then provide to potential advertisers.  I know it’s easier said than done, but I think you should try it.

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I signed up for GrandCentral last summer before they stopped accepting new accounts. I didn’t have any need for it at the time but I felt it was a pretty awesome application and it sparked my interest.

Jesse and I now use it for LangfordSevier. When a client calls it rings both of our phones displaying the GrandCentral number. If we miss the call our GrandCentral voicemail picks up, the caller leaves a message and then we receive an email with a link to listen to the voicemail on the GrandCentral site. Pretty awesome and very organized.

By integrating with Google Voice it now allows conference calling which for the time being allows up to 4 people on a call, voicemail transcription, and the ability to record calls and store them online.

This allows us to have a business number without having to buy new phones and deal with monthly payments.  I highly recommend it for small businesses!

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Over on the Official Google Blog Google discusses and showcases several favicon submissions and the evolution of their current favicon. This one isn’t my favorite, I like it better than the previous purple lowercase one but not as much as the Google analytics favicon I mentioned earlier.

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I was browsing popular hashtags a couple of weeks ago and found the tag #gno to be the most popular. Of course the first thing I wondered was what gno meant. After some researching I found that it stood for Girls Night Out and was created by founders Carissa Rogers and Jyl Johnson Pattee.

According to Jyl, “In mid September, Carissa suggested we get on twitter for a “girl’s night out” with a couple of online friends to learn the twitter ropes together. We thought it’d be more fun to practice while tweeting to each other than to some unknown tweople. Since Carissa had been on twitter for a whole 2 weeks LOL!, she was our mentor.”

The next Tuesday night, which they referred to as Girls Night Out, 10 people showed up. It wasn’t until the third week when they learned about applying a hashtag that they added #GNO and 50 more showed up.

“At the end of October, #gno gals asked for a place where we could capture each other’s names and twitter IDs, so party goers could follow each other. This resulted in the birth of the Mommy Gossip—GNO blog. My personal blog is called Mommy Gossip and we thought it’d work perfectly for the name of our blog. So, we called it Mommy Gossip—GNO (http://mommygossip-gno.blogspot.com). Carissa and I have not written much on the blog. Instead, we wanted to use it—when we weren’t using it to promote #gno parties or capturing RSVP info—as a way to promote community members’ blogs. The blog has now been up for 4 months and features five guest bloggers a week in addition to promoting the #gno weekly events. Also, it has a couple of other pages, including the “Cares” page (http://mommygossip-cares.blogspot.com), which highlights past, current, and future ways the newly named Mom It Forward community is reaching out and changing the lives of others.”

What Is Mom It Forward and how does it tie into #gno?
“We get this question all the time. In a nutshell, #gno and its weekly parties started because of a few girl’s desire to learn twitter. Mom It Forward started when Carissa and I noticed an amazing trend during those parties. We started choosing weekly party topics in October and asking guest tweets (”experts”) to tweet with us during the events. We noticed that some topics were hotter than others. We were amazingly surprised when service and giving and random acts of kindness seemed to be the hottest topics of all. We found this out first, by having an online virtual food drive to raise money for feedingamerica.org in November and second, when we issued a random acts of kindness challenge to community members in December. We noticed that if we chose a fun topic like shopping and discussed it at #gno, it would be fun for the evening. But, when we chose a topic or event that was service related, it stayed hot for weeks at a time. That is when the idea to focus the community on a service-related mission—of “changing the world one mom at a time”—was created. We came up with the name Mom It Forward in December.

But again, how do the two tie together? Mom It Forward has three purposes: 1) to strengthen moms, 2) to help moms strengthen their families, and 3) to provide moms with ideas for and opportunities to strengthen their communities and beyond. We see #gno as a great way to achieve all of these. We choose monthly themes with weekly topics that support those themes. We are careful in choosing themes and topics we feel help to achieve these three purposes. So, although a specific #gno topic may seem trivial, it is all very calculated and well balanced—physically, socially, emotionally, spiritually, and/or mentally.”-Jyl

How many people follow #gno now?
“I can tell you we have well over 300 followers on our Mom It Forward website. We have well over 100 people who RSVP for a Tuesday night #GNO directly on the website, and then there are 150+ who RSVP via facebook invites, but do they overlap? I’m not sure?
There are around 350 members of our Mom It Forward Facebook group.”

On Tuesday nights we tweet as high as 500 tweets per minute, and often hold at around 2-300 tweets per minute well into the night! How many more are watching and not participating? Who knows!” -Carissa

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“Today, we’re launching our first social widget for Facebook Connect, the Comments Box. The Comments Box is a great way for any website, blog or photo gallery to add social comments to their page in just a minute with a few lines of code. We want to help bring you social widgets that make it easier for users to communicate and share across your site and with their friends on Facebook. ” -Facebook Developers Blog

How To: Create a Comments Box with Facebook Connect in 5 Minutes from Pete Bratach on Vimeo.

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