Madera Group » Blogs

Social Media for Nonprofits (presentation)

Manny Hernandez — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:49:31 +0000

Recently, I had the great opportunity to deliver a couple of sessions of a workshop titled Social Media for Nonprofits to approximately 20 small nonprofit groups in the Bay Area.

These are the slides from the presentation (with a few enhancements I made to them thanks to the feedback I got from participants). You can download the presentation if you prefer watching it offline.

Social Media For Nonprofits

View other presentations about the use of social media.

References:

What the f**k is social media (one year later)
Web Communications Strategy

Photo credits:

On the state of mobile advocacy

Michael Stein, Senior Internet Strategist — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:04:37 +0000

I liked Matt Wilson’s article in the July edition of the NTEN e-newsletter on the State of Mobile Advocacy, having written on this subject myself. Matt works for Mobile Commons, one of the vendors innovating with mobile advocacy. He writes: “There are now several vendors working in the nonprofit sector who have built target-matching applications for voice calls, similar to the district-matching features in the online advocacy arena. This is allowing organizations to connect their constituents directly to the phone lines of Congressional offices, skipping the Capitol Switchboard. This leads to longer average call times, as advocates are more likely to abandon the call when they are connected to the switchboard.”

Matt mentions several nonprofits that are seeing good results with mobile advocacy, such as American Federation of Teachers, The Humane Society of the United States, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. For example, “NCLR had a lot of success tweeting out messages asking people to text “nclr to 69866” to sign up to get the California Supreme Court’s ruling on Prop 8 via SMS the moment it was ruled upon. The advantage of the SMS is that, like your email list, you can then own the data on your list, you can segment your list, and you can start building a relationship with individuals who have opted-in to your list.”

Read the full article

New “Engaging Volunteers” Blog Targets the Volunteer World

Michael Stein, Senior Internet Strategist — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:12:20 +0000

VolunteerMatch has launched its first ever blog for the nonprofit community called Engaging Volunteers: The VolunteerMatch Blog for Organizations, which is targeted at the VolunteerMatch membership of more than 75,000 nonprofit professionals and the greater community of organizations that work with volunteers.

This is a wonderful blog that offers a unique view of community engagement:

News about the volunteer world

Ideas about volunteer engagement

Success stories from nonprofits who are effectively partnering with people who care about their cause

Innovative approaches to service and volunteering

Using technology and social media to extend recruitment and engagement

Posts from guest bloggers with ideas worth sharing with volunteer coordinators

Strategies for effective storytelling through volunteer opportunities

Social media tactics to extend volunteer recruitment into personal networks

Reviews and interviews with service providers and vendors for nonprofit engagement

Recaps of service days and volunteering conferences

Tweets from @VMConnect, their Twitter feed on volunteering and service news

News about cause marketing initiatives that include engagement programs

And of course tips and best practices for using VolunteerMatch, the Web’s largest and most popular volunteer resource

I’m happy to welcome this new blog as a important new voice in the growing community of online publications that are helping nonprofits to learn, grow, and achieve their missions.

Visit the Engaging Volunteers blog

Madera Group Supports United4Iran’s Global July 25th Day of Solidarity

Erik Johnson, Creative Director — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:51:59 +0000

" width="150" height="150" />

The Madera Group supports United4Iran.org ’s global day of solidarity on Saturday, July 25th. Untited4Iran is a non-partisian group of individuals working to end the widespread and systematic violations of the people of Iran’s human and civil rights. In just three weeks United4Iran participation has grown to over 110 cities worldwide.

The Madera Group has been assisting United4Iran.org with website strategy, social networking and video production and coordination.

Nobel Peace Laureates, prominent Iranian poets & artists, and many others support the global day of action including: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Shirin Ebadi, Sean Penn, Dariush, Jody Williams, Betty Williams, Mairead Maguire, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Simin Behbahani, and Ismael Khoii.

Please watch this excellent video, produced by a participant in Amsterdam to support the event.

How Do You Increase Blog Traffic?

Michael Stein, Senior Internet Strategist — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:31:35 +0000

My colleague Britt Bravo, who writes the Have Fun Do Good blog, is a never-ending source of thought-provoking inspiration to me. Not only is she interested in social innovation, but she has a fascination with online social networking and online marketing. Her wonderful in-depth interviews with people doing good online with new media tools offers me a unique weekly view into the intimate work of someone using the Internet to raise money or advocate for a cause. This week, Britt blogs about blogs, more precisely how to increase blog traffic, and she offers a wonderfully detailed list of recommendations for how to make a blog successful on today’s Internet. If I had to capture a few key lessons from Britt’s list it would be to encourage bloggers to write about what they’re passionate about, to connect with your existing community of colleagues online, and to not neglect the many little details of blogging that combined together will make an impact on your success.

I’m copying Britt’s list below, but you should visit her blog to follow the many links that she’s embedded in the list:

Post regularly.
Link to other bloggers in your posts.
Comment on other blogs.
Have a blogroll.
Make it easy to comment. It’s ok to have comment moderation, but don’t make people register.
Allow readers to email posts to other people.
Enable subscription to your rss feed with Feedburner.
Enable subscription by email with Feedblitz.
Include images or graphics with every post to catch the reader’s eye. Blogs are a visual medium.
Add your blog URL to your email signature.
Tell Google you have a blog.
Tell Technorati you have a blog.
Write titles with phrases that people are searching for (i.e. How to Bake a Cake).
Write about current events.
Ask a question in your title.
Post a list (i.e. Ten Ways to Frost a Cake).
Provide a way for people to easily share and bookmark your posts by using something like AddThis or Add to Any.
Twitter.
Bookmark your posts in del.icio.us, and other social bookmarking services.
Try writing shorter posts (200-300 words). That’s about how many words the average person can read in a minute.
Leave more space between paragraphs. Use bold subtitles. Catch the reader’s eye.
Participate in memes, blog carnivals and challenges.
Tags your post with Technorati tags.
Let ping servers know when you have a new post.
Interview people who have blogs or email lists, and will post a link to the interview.
Have guest bloggers post on your blog
Include videos in your posts.
Install web analytics tools like SiteMeter, StatCounter and Google Analytics. Look at what kinds of posts get the most traffic. Write more of those!
Highlight your most popular posts in your sidebar.
Create a MyBlogLog community.
Participate in social networks like Facebook and MySpace, as well as niche social networks related to the theme of your blog.
Participate in online forums and communities.
List your blog in blog directories.
Run a contest.
Finally, write posts that people want to read!

Read Britt’s complete blog post with embedded links.