JournaMarketing

Kidscast, Video, and Communicating

My Learfield buddy Steve Mays took this video inside the studios of Kidscast. Kidscast is a podcast/radio show we produce at Learfield for the Missouri Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse. It's not all about alcohol and drug abuse, though. It has a joke of the week, and information about famous kids in history. and lots of other cool things kids are interested in. In fact, it's the perfect example of how you can communicate more effectively with people when you offer them something they want, instead of offering what you want to give them.

Incidentally, Steve uses his little Casio digital camera to capture video like this. I have something similar from Nikon. Less than $200. If you don't have something like it for your organization or small business, run to Costco or Sam's Club and buy one. It will exponentially increase your ability to tell interesting stories to the people you want to engage. It'll be the best $150 you ever spend.

Your new is not news

Wow, I really love this nugget from Katya's Nonprofit Marketing Blog:

Your “new” is not “news.” You should not communicate what is new in your universe. You should communicate what matters to your constituents.

The whole idea behind this blog was that I wanted to show people it's possible to combine aspects of journalism with their marketing and communications. And good journalists don't just write stories they want to read. They write stories their audience wants to read. The same applies to every single bit of communication you're doing for your nonprofit or small business. If you're talking about yourself without anything valuable to your readers, you're spamming them, plain and simple. Give people something of value and they'll love you for it. Once they love you (because you've helped them) they'll actually want to hear about what's new in your universe.

Technorati Tags: marketing, PR, communications

Social networking contest for nonprofits

Here's something really cool from The National Networker Blog.

Everyone's debating the effectiveness of social networking tools for fundraising campaigns. A new social networking site, Razoo, seems to want to cut to chase: they're going to give $10,000 to a nonprofit organization that signs up at least 100 new members by September 15th. And it's not just a numbers game, as the winning nonprofit organization will actually be selected from the community based on their social change projects.

What a great promotional idea, and a wonderful opportunity for your nonprofit organization! Here's the contest info from Razoo.

Photoshop Toolbox

Mashable has put together a Photoshop Toolbox, with 80+ Photoshop tools and resources. If you use Photoshop to edit images for your website, you'll want to take a look.

Optimism, pessimism, and why you should participate online

I'm not usually a motivational 1-liner sort of guy. But this one from Uwe's Blog hit home with me. It's the difference between success and failure:

Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success.

It resonates personally because I'm the kind of person who can see 100 possible outcomes, each worse than the one before -- and within 5 minutes convince myself I will be homeless and alone by next Tuesday. But I think this 1-liner also explains why so many people are failing to take advantage of the online space for their business or organization.

When something new comes along, most of us tend to believe the worst. That's true whether we're talking about airplanes or computers or online media. We're unable to visualize the rewards of success because we don't have the experience to do that. We don't have any grasp on how jumping into an online conversation with people will improve the work we do. Only after doing it can we really understand just how work- and life-changing it is.

But it's pretty easy to visualize the penalties of failure. We'll get overwhelmed by extra work. We'll say something silly on a blog and embarrass ourselves. People will leave mean comments or otherwise undermine the goals we're working for.

Here's the secret to this -- the negatives almost never happen. And when they do, they're not a catastrophe -- they're no different than the bad things that happen to you in your everyday work life already. But the positives -- those things you can't even imagine yet -- they happen all the time for people who simply make a commitment to participate in this online space. And with patience, those positives start spinning at them faster and faster, so that they can't imagine having done their work without that resource.

And one more thing. Those people and organizations who are successful in the online space -- who have thriving blogs or podcasts, or who use social networks to help their work -- they are not any different from you in talent or time or personality. The difference is that they've jumped in when the negatives seemed daunting, trusting that the positives would follow.

Sometimes you gotta kiss up...

Ryan Caldwell at Performancing notes that sometimes you have to do a little kissing up. Anyone who runs a small business or works in the nonprofit field understands this. People are not going to fall all over themselves to give you business or money or attention unless you earn it. You earn it with a good product or service. Ryan applies this specific point to blogging:

"I call it selective (back)networking and here's the idea: the internet is just like any other human network. There are hierarchies of authority. If you want to be successful, you need to move up the hierarchy."

In other words, kiss up to people who are a little higher on the "authority" scale than you. How do you know those people? You know them because they're probably the people you're reading a lot. Or you can go to Technorati and look at the bloggers in your "space." Technorati's "authority ranking" is flawed, but it's not a bad tool for guaging the relative influence of bloggers.

As Ryan points out, this sounds much more sinister than it is. We do this all the time. In business, we demonstrate to people that our product or service is valuable and offer to help them before they give us money. In the nonprofit sector, we demonstrate that our organization is improving people's lives -- and that our work is going to improve the lives of potential donors (even if very indirectly, by improving the community). If you want others to notice your online communications effort, you can't merely talk about yourself all the time. Show yourself to be a valuable contributor to the conversation in your space. Reach out to others, offering to help them by answering questions or helping them in other ways.

2 audiences? 2 podcasts. Don't water down your message.

Yesterday I met with the folks at the Missouri Bar Association. I'll be helping put together 2 podcast series for them, starting in a couple of weeks -- and I'll have more to share as the start date rolls around. But a couple of things from yesterday's meeting have some application for you and your organization:

1. They understand that even though this is legal stuff, they should make it informal and conversational. They really want to talk with people in this effort -- not just talk at them.
2. They understand that they want to communicate with two very different groups of people -- lawyers and members of the public. And they're going to create 2 podcasts, instead of one, to achieve that goal.

That second point may seem obvious, but it's not. Most people decide first that they want to do a podcast, then decide who they want to talk to, then decide what they want to tell those people. Even if those people are in completely different groups. They treat their podcast as a catch-all for all the messages they might want to get out to anyone, anywhere. By doing that, they simply guarantee that at least 50% of their podcast will be boring to everyone, every time.

Instead, you should go about this like the Missouri Bar. Identify who you want to talk with. Figure out what those people want to hear. And give it to them -- without a lot of other stuff thrown in. And this applies to your overall communications effort, too. Never water down your work here by trying to reach different groups of people with different messages at the same time. Your podcast, like every other piece of communication, is only valuable to people if you're engaging them in a conversation they want to have.

Technorati Tags: nptech, podcasts, communications, PR

New Bloggers' Toolbox

Just a couple of days ago, I talked about social networks as tools, not tasks, and I used an illustration of a toolbox. Now, a couple of days later, Drew McLellan has pulled together a "new bloggers' toolbox." He's got some great contributors and offers these categories:

* Are chock full of practical tips
* Act as a living lab on how to write compelling blog posts
* Demonstrate how to build a community
* Teach marketing tools
* Are welcome wagons - bloggers who spotlight newbies

Go check it out!

Build credibility before you build a clientele

Greg Howlett, at Marketing Pilgrim, has six reasons not to become an online retailer. What do you think of them?

1) Startup costs for online retail now exceed startup costs for offline retail.
2) It takes far more knowledge to compete online than it used to.
3) SEO is becoming more out of reach for small companies.
4) No paid advertising options are lucrative for small companies.
5) Inventory costs are climbing.
6) The trends indicate that startup conditions will get worse rather than better.

Here's my response at Greg's blog:

"Breaking into the e-commerce space and trying to advertise your way to the top is almost surely not going to work today, as you say. But I wouldn’t advise a small businessperson to try to advertise their way to the top with Adsense or Yahoo. I would advise her to use the Web to serve people who share her passion for the product she sells. Once she’s done that for a while, she’ll have people who view her as an important resource of information and expertise. She’ll also...have a large archive of searchable content on the topic, which will be growing larger and more complete every day.

"For small businesses at the beginning of their online experience, it’s much easier to build credibility than to build a clientele. People online are more willing to take a chance on a new retailer when that retailer can demonstrate it knows what it’s talking about. So worry about building credibility first, and customers will follow.

I'd love your thoughts -- is it practically impossible to make a go of it as an online seller, if you're not already well underway?

Technorati Tags: ecommerce, marketing

Social networks are tools, not tasks

This is a good follow up to my earlier post about social networks and personal relationships. Holly at NTEN writes that Facebook and Twitter are changing the world.

Whether you like it or not, these tools are CHANGING THE WAY PEOPLE BEHAVE. And really, as nonprofits, isn't that what we're all about: breaking people out of their inertia to volunteer, write a letter, buy a different light bulb, write a check. I know that when I have a question, the first thing I do is send a Tweet out on Twitter now. And every morning, I log into Facebook to see what my network is up to. I didn't do those things before.

What I love about Holly's post is that she uses a simple example to show how online social networks have made her life easier. Participating online is not just a bunch of extra work. It's an extension of the kinds of things you already do -- souped up to make your personal interactions with affiliates, customers, donors, or volunteers more efficient and more effective.

Technorati Tags: socialnetworks, socialmedia, NTEN, nptech