To the Point: Get Ready to Rummage
Time to toss whats not working and make a new plan for 2010.
January 2010 By Jocelyn Harmon4. Stop worrying about losing control.
Every time I do a workshop on social media, I get this question, "If we let our stakeholders speak for us, how can we make sure that they stay on message?" This is the wrong question, and here's why. If you search Google for your issue or organization, you'll see that your prospective (and current) donors, members, advocates and volunteers are already talking about you. In other words, "The train has already left the station." You don't get to keep people on message. However, you do get to decide if you want to join the conversation.
5. Stop saying you're not tech-savvy.
Like any other discipline, online fundraising, organizing and marketing are learned skills. No one is all-knowing about how to use social media or run an online ?campaign. Take a course. Start your own Facebook page. Jump onto Twitter. The best way to understand online tools is to use them. Just be sure to experiment via your personal versus your organizational brand.
6. Stop flying blind.
Finally, one of the beauties of online marketing and fundraising is that you can test just about anything. For example, when doing an e-mail campaign, you can test the effectiveness of subject lines, from lines, copy, video, etc. Similarly, analytics on your Web site can tell you who visits, as well as when and where they come from. Use this empirical data to drive your marketing effort instead of flying blind.
Jocelyn Harmon is director of nonprofit services at Care2 (care2.com). Reach her at jocelynh@care2team.com
Great list! I would like to add a #7, and that is METRICS. Pay attention and measure your efforts. Adjust and re-adjust.
How insightful. There's so much buzz about available tools, but knowing how they fit into the strategy (or if they do) is a great reminder. It puts things in perspective.