2012 March

Designated Editor teaches nonprofits new media time-savers

Nobody knows the bottom line better than those in the fundraising and development industry. To remain connected to donors, sponsors, and other key publics, nonprofits must use weigh resources wisely and efficiently.

The Rhode Island chapter of the Association for Fundraising Professionals centered its March education session around these challenges.

Content and Social Media Strategist Suzanne McDonald shared her insights on how to make the most of limited resources within an organization through social media.

The first step is to be able to identify the best ways to use these tools. Designated Editor has worked with many clients to help make sure strong, concise message reach the intended audience.

You may be asking: “How do I not just reach, but ENGAGE my current donors and constituents?” There are many tools to engage current donors, but also ways to use social media to reach new ones. Some free tools (based on your needs) include:

Saves you time Great for analytics easy website updating

SEO, Google rankings

Professional, easy to use Easy to share

Sponsor-partner research Representing your brand visually

Engage with media Engage with advocates and supporters

& major influencers make it interactive, use photos & video.

on a public platform

How can you equip your advocates with the tools to create income for your organization?

Try creating video contests and sharing Facebook invites with friends
Email tools like MailChimp can bring the relationship closer (email converts better and people are more likely to see it than social media or on the web)
Make the time to access these easy – and often FREE – tools to gain efficiencies that will save your organization time and effort.

Which time-savers do you use and recommend?

Mad Men: More lessons to mine for Social Media

Don Draper Mad Men

Mad Men illustrates our evolution, but have we?

The Mad Men countdown clock is ticking down (too bad there’s no widget to post here), and I’m thrilled. Sadly, no time to use Betty’s party planner, but cheers to AMC for another season of lessons that can be applied to Social Media.

While the social media integration was widely commented on at South by Southwest Interactive 2012 (highlight posts forthcoming BTW), there’s so much more to contemplate.

Mad Men was also mentioned on a panel at the SES (Search Engine Strategies) New York conference yesterday. The panel discussed integrated marketing and mentioned the pitch Don Draper gives to Kodak when the slide “wheel” is introduced.

My Tweet about kicking off the Social Media Strategies course I teach with the Mad Men Carousel clip became a top tweet. Sorry there’s no embed, but click to watch: http://bit.ly/MadMenCarousel

Very evocative, no? This is how I want my students to think of the class: interesting, ever-evolving, which reflects where we are in this industry today.

The Sterling Cooper pitch provides a perfect frame for today’s students — and professionals: It illustrates how technology changes, but the desire for human connection pervades.

Meanwhile, my 2012 conference circuit is echoing: We’ll soon be dropping all the prefixes: e-marketing, online marketing, search marketing new media. It’ll just be straight-up marketing. I read a recent OMMA post that Social Media staffs are being fully integrated into the marketing departments. This make sense, no? You wouldn’t have an email department all by itself and only thinking about getting into inboxes (then what?)?

In essence, we’re all here to align what the company has to offer with customer expectations.

I can’t help but wonder what’s really going through the minds of the Millennials who’ve signed up for Social Media Strategies when I show them a pitch for a product that took consumers by storm decades before they were born. It’s an ideal starter to a class the focuses on engagement and interaction, and we start practicing these fundamentals on Day 1.

I’m eager to see how Mad Men keeps the conversation going, both in my class and in my mind.

What other lessons have you learned as Mad Men shows us a reflection of ourselves in another time?

Archives for March 2012

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