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Happy Friday the 13th!

Friday The 13th Isn’t Really Unlucky, But You Still Might Have Friggatriskaidekaphobia

1. From Beth’s Blog: Facebook Custom Landing Tabs + Measurement = Best Practice The why’s and how to do it, some great examples and resources.

The default welcome page for your Facebook Page is your wall.   There is a more inviting welcome mat. Facebook landing pages give people reasons to like your page.   Debra Askanese pointed to a study that shows Facebook pages with custom landing pages have a higher conversion rate than those without landing pages.

2. And more: from John Haydon: 29 tips to improve your nonprofit website’s landing pages

A landing page is a page on your website where you want visitors to complete a specific transaction, such as donating money or joining an email list.

Obviously these are some of the most important pages on your website. In Seth Godin’s words, “Landing pages are the new direct marketing, and everyone with a website is a direct marketer.”

As you can imagine, this is always harder than it sounds. Bad design, uninspiring text, and slow load times are just a few challenges. Below are tip you can steal to improve the results on your landing pages:

3. Non-Profit Tech 2.0 shares Five Nonprofits That Have Found Their Twitter Voice

Finding your Twitter voice is an accomplishment only earned through a process of trial and error and conscious experimentation. Even the best social media managers often go through an initial period of puzzlement and frustration as they try to figure out how Twitter works and what to tweet.

That said, the nonprofits below have discovered a nice balance of tweets, retweets, and mentions. They vary their content – it’s not all just about them. They have personality and its obvious that there is a human being behind the avatar.

4. From CompassPoint: Next Generation Organizations: 9 Key Traits In this paper, CompassPoint  identifies a set of 9 characteristics that  demonstrate how next generation leaders are transforming their organizations to operate in a fundamentally different way to raise the bar on mission impact. Report here, a self assessment here

5. From NTEN: Data and Storytelling: 6 Ways to Use Data to Move Your Mission by Kurt Voelker, CTO, Forum One:

Data is the new black. These days everyone is releasing it, visualizing it, aggregating it, and mashing it up. And for good reason. Data is so much more than a stack of numbers or a server filled with client outputs. It can justify the work that your organization is doing, help others understand why it is critical, and offer exciting new ways to motivate others to help solve the problems your organization is working on….

Given the attention that Data gets from the media, influencers, and the hill, we believe that every communications department is obligated to look closer at their data and how they are using it – and should be tapping into it to get work done towards your organizations goals.

One effective way to transform your data from an afterthought into a powerful communications product is through visualizations that help tell your story.

Here are 6 ways to tell your stories with data that you can apply to your own web and communications work.

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We are so pleased with our line-up of speakers for the Mini-Conference on Tuesday, and as we have counted down, we have featured many of the talented and experienced people that will be there to talk to you and answer any questions you may have on a variety of topics.

Our #1 Reason to come to the Mini-Conference has to do with 2 of our outstanding speakers:

Timothy S. Bell

Tim Bell will be opening out Mini-Conference with a topic that we all may not want to hear, but we need to hear TAXES.

Tim is with Malloy, Lynch, Bienvenue, LLP, a local CPA firm located in Norwell and Brewster, MA.

Tim will be speaking about recent tax changes including: Massachusetts Form PC Filing Changes, IRA Charitable Rollover, What’s FIN 48 got to do with Form 9907, Small Employer Health Insurance Credit.

So if these are things you don’t know about, maybe you better come to the Mini-Conference tomorrow!

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Steve Dubin, President of PR Works

Steve Dubin of PR Works will be speaking about: PR – Visibility and Credibility for your organization.

Steve believes that PUBLIC RELATIONS provides a third-person credibility not obtainable through paid advertising. Editor-approved information is said to have 10 times the impact of traditional, paid advertising. In effect, the media blows your horn for you and, if well orchestrated, you can name the tune.

Find out from Steve how PR Works.

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What is GiveCamp?

GiveCamp is an opportunity to provide nonprofits with the technical skill they need (pro bono) over the course of a single weekend. Organizations needing design collateral, websites and simple applications will be paired with a team of developers and designers to build that project.

New England GiveCamp brings together non-profit organizations and developers, designers, and other technical professionals for a weekend of developing web sites and other custom software to benefit the participating charities.  Last year, 100+ volunteers donated an estimated $170,000 of services to 24 New England non-profit organizations, with solutions developed in WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Quickbooks, Salesforce.com, Silverlight, ASP.NET and more.

The second New England GiveCamp is happening April 29-May 1, 2011 and they are looking for more organizations from across New England to work with. In the end GiveCamp will aim to help 20 or so nonprofits from around New England reach a project goal.

Perhaps you haven’t had a chance to get a website started and don’t have the funds to contract with someone to do so. Maybe you are in desperate need of an updated logo. Or maybe you need a bit of office automation, such as keeping track of your own volunteer or donor registration lists? Well,that’s where New England GiveCamp comes in.

What is required of the nonprofit?

Before the event there will be a little time commitment in order to help organizers and facilitators scope out the work needed in order to help determine if it can feasibly be accomplished within a weekend, as well as the type of team needed to accomplish it. You can expect 2-5 phone conference calls before the event to determine this. You will also be asked to gather materials before the event to make it easier for your team to work.

In addition, a representative will be asked to attend the event, this will make it easier for the team to get answers quickly and efficiently complete the project. There will also be informative sessions throughout the weekend which maybe of interest to you or your organization.

So do you have a project for GiveCamp 2011? Fill out the form here.

Questions about GiveCamp?  Contact: Jim O’Neil and Kelley Muir New England GiveCamp Co-organizers negc2011@hotmail.com

Follow @NEGiveCamp on Twitter, Like them on Facebook.

Photos from event photos on Flickr

This is a clip from our last Networking for Nonprofit event held at Summer Shack in the Derby Street Shoppes by Steve Dubin, President of PR Works on the South Shore of Massachusetts. He talks about the powerful stories that nonprofits have to tell and the importance of telling them in many mediums on a consistent basis.  Steve works with several nonprofit organizations and is a great resource.  The hand out he gave follows the video.

1.THE NEW PR LANDSCAPE

• Boston Glo
• TV personality shuffle
• Streaming radio/Internet radio
• Blogging
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Twitter
• WordPress
• Four Square/Groupon
• Texting

2.INTRO – FREE, YES, THE FREE AD

Often referred to as the “free” ad, public relations provides a third-person credibility not obtainable through “paid” advertising.

3. REACHING THE RIGHT EDITOR – PRESS LIST

The key to publicity is getting it in the hands of the right person.

Consumer publications (Example – Boston Globe, Worcester Telegram, Nashua Telegram)

Business publications (Example – Boston Business Journal, Inc., Wall Street Journal)

Trade publications (Example – NonProfit Times)

Niche (Example – Boston Parents, Bay Windows – gay, Neponset Valley Senior News)

Electronic (Example – TV, Radio – Producers and Assignment editors)

4. NEWS RELEASES – TIME RELEASED EXPOSURE

Your local daily newspaper may print the article this week. Your community weekly may run it next week. The regional business journal may not have space for it until next month. Yet, the cumulative effect is “time released” visibility.

5.WHAT IS NEWS

• Dog bites man
• Grants/Funding
• Events (Announce event, call for auction items, update on auction items, awards, summary of success)
• Strategic partnering
• Milestones (Years in business, # served)
• New locations/grand opening
• Trends
• Innovations
• Off-beat angles
• Human interest
• Rags to Riches
• Useful tips
• How to pieces
• Financial news
• Survey results
• New technologies
• New wrinkle in methods of doing business
• Seminar
• New R&D projects
• New or never announced products
• New personnel, promotions, additional training
• Strategic partnerships
• Financial news
• Seminars/Workshops
• Community involvement
• Speakers Bureau
• Awards and recognition
• Special day or event (Tie in with holiday or season)
• Events (Blood Drive, Food Drive, Groomathon, Ugly Driveway Contest, Gun Buyback Program, Safe Driving, Bikathon)

6. PHOTOS FOCUS ATTENTION

Photo can sell and illustrate the story

8. BLURBS TRANSFORMED TO BIG HITS

9. PITCHING THE PRESS

• Follow up is essential.
• Don’t call “on deadline”.
• Get to the point.
• Don’t ask the editor to send you a copy of the publication with your story in it.

10. RIDING THE COATTAILS OF A PRE-EXISTING STORY

For example, the Associated Press writes about “obesity in America” or “new lifestyles of seniors”. You contact the press to provide the “authoritative” word, the local angle and examples.

11. CASE STUDIES

Draft case studies to humanize your story.

12. BYLINED FEATURES STORIES

Objective, informational stories are often welcome.

12. EDITORIAL CALENDARS

Tie into existing special sections.

13. CONCLUSION

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Brands for Greater Good focuses on Donor Retention

Branding in at it’s simplest is a consistent, unique look, tone and feel.  It should be consistent across all media platforms – print, and all areas on the web.  You need to understand what makes your organization unique and explain it simply.  Here are some questions to ask yourself.

• How do you differentiate your mission from other organizations that have similar missions?
• Can you explain your mission to a six year old?
• Can you explain what makes your mission unique to a six year old?

After answering these questions and you have successful fund raiser it’s important to make them feel special.

• What do you do to make donors feel special so they will give more donations in the future?

Brands for Greater Good quotes on their website that in 2009, for Every Five New Donors Recruited by Non-profits, Six Existing Donors Were Lost Through Attrition (2010 Fundraising Effectiveness Survey Report by AFP & The Urban Institute).  Does this sound like your organization?  How about sending a nice thank you note, or connecting with them on facebook or email to give regular updates on how their donation is being used to help your mission.  How about giving them a free gift like a free membership from a company like Brands for Greater Good?  These ideas may seem simple, but it’s the little things that make people feel special and connected.

Join us for our next Networking for Non-Profit Event in Plymouth November 3!

Stephen Melanson, from Melanson Consulting, gave a great presentation on Verbal Branding and the Networking for NonProfits Fun Night Out on May 6, 2010. This is part 6 of his presentation.

A transcript follows the video:

Here’s how I teach people in the beginning. You develop your one or two ideas that truly tell the marketplace you are different and better, the best option hands down. The plain language test is you might tell what your name is, you certainly are telling them what category the business or the nonprofit is in, and then you know what, plain language we’re different from our competitors, here’s why. Reasons number one number two, one is better than two by the way but two fine. Here is the crazy test. Now you don’t say this unless you really want to. You might choose to do that. The crazy test you tell them your name maybe, you tell them what category you’re in, and if you don’t use us if you don’t support us you are crazy, here’s why. It’s actually a different filter if you think of it that way. How would you dominate the marketplace, how would you absolutely marginalize the competition? Why they are crazy to not use you. Do you know? I do. Do you? You need to develop that.

By the way it’s OK to speak normally, you can talk about the weather, you can talk about the sports, you know, whatever you feel like. Don’t do this, never mind hello we’re different. Don’t bash people over the head with your positioning, you’ll get to it. There is a moment in every interaction when somebody says, that magic moment, they either ask you literally, what do you do? That’s one, don’t miss that. But there is always a moment, don’t miss that part. Because this turns into this, and that’s not what you want people to remember, that’ll become your brand. That person who was rolling around on the floor fighting, that’s not what you want.

OK very quick, I’m almost done. Verbal branding platform, now we’re talking this, about it’s actually done, you literally have a verbal branding platform now. Here’s the vision. You know what it actually is? It’s a platform to think and speak, that’s what it is. Thinking comes first, if you don’t know what to think you will not be able to say it, and you will not be able to unify your team around it, however large the group is. It’s a platform to think and speak. That’s what you push out through the organization and remember where I started the very beginning I said simultaneous improvement of sales culture and brand density, and I’ve explained brand density.

I’m even going to add management modeling I call it. How does a manager or a leader make a decision? Well if you don’t know who you are in a marketplace, if you know what your positioning is, what do you base your decisions on? Simultaneous improvement, all the sudden these become integrated as well, based on one platform. Everyone is all the sudden going in the exact same direction. Do you know how hard that is to do? It’s very hard, but it needs to be done as best possible. One platform. One platform of one or two ideas at most or it’s not branding anymore.

I’ll guarantee that the brand that you develop, if it’s done decently or very well is the way this the way to sell ,is the way to raise money. Ever heard of Occam’s Razor? Who’s heard of Occam’s Razor? Look it up on Wikipedia if you want. Occam’s Razor there’s a couple ways they describe it, the simplest solution is what is usually the right answer. Ever hear of that? Maybe you’ve heard that said that way. That’s called Occam’s Razor, it’s a scientific principle. But it’s appropriate for talking about because if it is not simple it will not work, period. That’s why I’ve designed verbal branding the way I have because I try to work with companies of all sizes but the larger the organization the harder it is to unify. If it isn’t simple it will not work. And then you have all the other criteria that talked about.

Couple quick reminders, no elevator pitches, ever, please do us all a favor and yourself most importantly, forget about it, forget about it. Do some ritual, throw it down on the ground and burn it. I don’t know. Do something with it but don’t ever use an elevator pitch again. You’ve got five seconds and two concepts at most. That’s how to position and will lead your conversation in the correct direction. One or two positioning ideas only, different and better use that as a filter. Why are we different and better? Different and because of that difference a better option. And you always want point, if there is more than one person around, it doesn’t matter how many. Always point the results of that work internally first, so you can then push out the marketing messages through spoken, electronic, whatever goes on in your organization.

I’ll finish with this. Patrick Lencioni , if you’ve ever heard of him. He is a recognized guru for teamwork. He wrote the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Have you ever heard of that book? Good book. “If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.” True.

That’s me, thank you very much for your time.

Join us for our next Networking for Non-Profit Event in August!

Stephen Melanson, from Melanson Consulting, gave a great presentation on Verbal Branding and the Networking for NonProfits Fun Night Out on May 6, 2010. This is part 5 of his presentation. As you work on creating your Verbal Brand, you are actually creating a strong foundation for your brand.  Stephen gives a couple examples how this works in this video.

A transcript follows the video:

Alright, very quickly. Verbal branding is also a redefined foundation for the development of brand itself. You must add a spoken criteria to your branding effort, and I’ll show exactly what I mean. Geico, everybody knows the Geico commercials, right? Fifteen minutes can save you fifteen percent. Now if somebody said to somebody at Geico, “Hey why should I why should I care about you”? And that’s the question when you’re asked what he’d do at an event like this or any where you go, “Hey what do you do?”. Do you know people are actually asking you? They want to know if they should care about you. That’s the question. Hey, who cares about Geico? Well you should care about us for that reason, because fifteen minutes will save you fifteen percent. That’s the reason. That’s an idea that has spoken criteria. Fidelity, are you familiar with the “Turn” kind of brought out their new marketing campaign? Turn here. Hey who cares about Fidelity? Turn here, that doesn’t make sense. See there’s no logic there, there’s no conversation a logic, right? So Geico can advertize that way, and they can say it. Spoken criteria to their branding effort. Fidelity, I guarantee you I know, that their field people to not answer the question why should we work with you, they do not say “turn here”. Anybody disagree? Hey who cares about Fidelity? Turn here. It doesn’t work. So they are losing capability in the productivity of their brand. Believe it or not, as famous as they are, they probably spent a zillion dollars on that.

Alright, very quick I’ll show you this, traditional branding or traditional marketing campaigns is a vision that the company will have or the organization. Let’s pretend that the circle there is the campaign and it’s meant to go out into the marketplace. Right, sounds fair enough, and as a vision that it hits the market in a very dense complete uniform way. Well strangely, there’s really are these really odd things that happen every single day. Direct spoken interactions. So this campaign hits these bumps in the road, presentations, selling, networking, partner, referral… All these things are spoken interactions. Right? Well the bad news is that they have not been accounted for and there is total chaos in organizations having to do with the spoken interactions part of their business or their nonprofit. Total chaos, and this blows a huge massive holes in the productivity of their brand and by the time the brand hits the marketplace there’s all these holes in it and it’s like Swiss cheese. And guess what, all that effort blown right out of the water. That’s not good, that’s not a good result.

Add a spoken criteria, and this is how to do it, so the positioning can be said naturally. If you ask me what I do, I say I teach Verbal Branding. If you look on my business card, it says I teach Verbal Branding. If you look at my web site it says I teach Verbal Branding. That’s all I ever talk about. Even if you ask me details for two hours, it doesn’t matter, still talking about verbal branding. It’s all a spoken logic. So, instead of this, you create density internally. I want to make sure I mention this, I don’t care if there’s one person, or two, or ten, or ten thousand, create a natural spoken criteria for the understanding of the brand internally first. Non-negotiable, and then push it out into the marketplace and all the sudden these get filled in and the next thing you know you do in fact have a dense brand out in the market. What do you think of when you think of Volvo? Safety, that’s it. You can say it, it’s logical right? Walmart is cheap. That’s how they operate, that’s how they advertize, that’s what people can say, it all makes sense. It’s all the same. That’s what your brand should look like. I call it density branding literally. It unifies sales and marketing and culture internally because everybody understands why you’re different and better than the competition. Imagine that, they can say it, they can write it. By the way the interaction between a person outside with you whether spoken or if they read your Web site or marketing slick for instance the dynamics are essentially the same. They have to become curious right away there ought to be the brand in context I talk about, mostly the same.

Stephen Melanson, from Melanson Consulting, gave a great presentation on Verbal Branding and the Networking for NonProfits Fun Night Out on May 6, 2010.  This is part 4 of his presentation.  As I listened to the presentation I could hear myself making this exact error that Stephen describes.

A transcript follows the video:

Here is something that I want to make sure you also remember. I hope you remember some of these things forever, because they’re true. I know that they’re true, you can fight with me all you want. Describing is not branding. Everybody describes, describes, describes what they do and it’s feels like your doing your very best job and it might be so that you are doing your worst. Describing is not branding, you need to position versus the competition describing as you get down into the weeds of everything you do and offer. It feels good, it feels like you are doing a good job. Hey I was so on my game today now I’m going to Starbucks and taking the rest of the day off. Well actually you lost the deal and you can’t believe they didn’t call you back. It’s because you described everything in detail rather than position versus the competition to be different and better. The more you describe, the more you sound like the competition. See that guy in the back? That’s you. We’re going to marginalize the competition.

What I’m going to show you right now, I get as much or more feedback about this than anything I ever teach anybody. How do you actually marginalize the competition and have it be real? This is how, that big guy in the back is you, that little guy in the front is your competition. We don’t want to be all that mean to them but we sort of want the attention that they get we want it for ourselves. We want to get that money, sponsorship, identity, all the things. Here’s my Pyramid again but if you notice, I’ve left the tip where the positioning goes outside of what I’ve highlighted. I call this the ninety five percent rule. Ninety five percent, listen to this, think about this, ninety five percent of what everybody does is ninety five percent the same as their competition, and that’s conservative.

I call it the “of course” category. People use this immediately after I teach it to them, even before their positioning is developed. They start using this anyways, and it works. Hey do you do X Y and Z something that’s down at the lower level? Of course we do. Of course we do. Everybody that does our kind of work does that. Do I train salespeople? Of course I do. That’s not my best offer to you. Whatever is down the lower level you can say and legitimately so. When asked “Do you do it?” “of course”, and that’s all our competitions offering you, well you know what that’s not that great. Does that make sense to you guys? Of course we do it. You can marginalize, if not eliminate your competition by using this of course category because this ninety five percent rule is real, it is true, it is indisputable. See I don’t always say things exactly right even though I do verbal branding. But if they want what you’ve offered them at the tip of the pyramid, you’re the guys to work with. Everyone else is the same, you’re different.