Here are some good warnings about social media from Frogloop: Five Social Media Myths You Need to Know. The myths:
- A Facebook page can replace your website.
- Social Media is a great fundraising tool.
- Build an app.
- Social Media is a free way to build your brand and list.
- Social Media should be its own department.
I’d like to add one additional myth about Social Media: Social Media is the next big thing in fundraising.
Social Media is still a very small thing in fundraising. The jury is still out on whether it will ever be a big, or even medium-sized thing.
In the mean time, the best candidate for next big thing in fundraising is email. It’s still a fairly small thing, but it’s been growing steadily for a few years and shows no sign of losing ground.
Unlike with social media, you are not wasting your time if you’re spending it learning and perfecting email fundraising.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on Jul 1st, 2011. Comment. 
Whatever you set out to try and do, it will always be wise to have a map, a plan, a track to run on for the way you plan to do it. A high quality plan or guide or a few hints will assist you to accomplish your goals. This article will give you three suggestions to help show you how. Following these suggestions will provide you with an edge and will increase your chances of success.
When you first set out to create banner ads, you must understand that it is extremely crucial that you get on an appropriate track in the beginning, and stay focused on it. Failing to do this can lead to regrettable outcomes. You could potentially discover that you’re on the right track, or perhaps even at the brink of losing hope.
Here’s a short checklist of approaches to staying focused and staying out of problems.
1. Make sure that your banner is interesting and attractive
You should probably make sure that your banner is interesting and attractive since it avoids driving away the customers that you have. To not get this accomplished might lead you to more challenges. And for that reason please do not disregard this key pointer!
2. Make your headlines big and visible
Nearly as important as making sure that your banner is interesting and attractive whenever handling or creating banner ads, it is essential to make your headlines big and visible. You must clearly understand that this is really important. It will help to give you the advantage, a thing that almost any one attempting to succeed with their banner ads wishes for.
3. Make an effort to change your banner ads as often as you can
Lastly, when you create banner ads you want to be certain and try to change your banner ads as often as you can. This may help with gaining more advantages and results, an important part of banner ads. If you don’t, you may end up getting nothing at all — and you will most likely concur that this needs to be avoided if possible!
As was established in the beginning of this article, with regards to creating banner ads, you desperately need to try to make sure you never make mistakes that result in on the right track, and perhaps at the brink of losing hope. Your ideal result is to become a success in banner ads, and you could make that happen by considering the recommendations on this page.
Discover tips on how to do website design better from John Reese. For more info, visit our Internet Marketing blog: PromotedProfits.com
Filed under Chris Stoddard by on Jul 2nd, 2011. Comment.
The new Passionate Giving blog has been running a series of posts called “10 reasons most major donor programs suck.” You should check out all ten reasons, but especially #9: We Don’t Tell Donors How They Made a Difference:
Most non-profits do a great job of identifying problems and ASKING. Some are even pretty good at THANKING, but most have a very hard time REPORTING BACK and specifically telling the donor how they made a difference.
Failing to report back is the fast track to irrelevance with your donors. Because it sends a very clear unintended message: Your gift didn’t make a difference.
Someone who writes you a check with three or more zeroes in it (not counting the ones after the decimal) can reasonably expect to make a difference. If you don’t tell them they made a difference, that communicates one of three things:
- Their gift wasn’t important.
- Important or not, nobody at the organization took note of their gift.
- The organization doesn’t have its act together enough to know whether the gift was important.
Any of those would make future giving less likely.
By the way, failure to report back isn’t only why so many major donor programs suck, it’s why so many organizations struggle to hold on to donors at all levels.
This is one of the most important and under-appreciated jobs of fundraisers. Every donor should know that their giving makes a difference.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on Jul 2nd, 2011. Comment.
Do negative images work in fundraising?
There really isn’t a meaningful answer to that question, because it’s not a meaningful question by itself. It’s a lot like asking “Do colors work in fundraising?”
The Cause Marketing blog raised the issue at Don’t Use Exploitive Images in Charitable Appeals, Real World Results Suggest.
The post is about the Austin Humane Society, which used the image of a happy dog in fundraising, different from the typical sad animal imagery, and saw a significant increase in fundraising results.
Does this prove that positive images are better for fundraising than negative?
Not even close.
It shows that one positive image in one particular situation (and time and place) did well. That’s all we know from this information.
It would be nuts for anyone to respond by making a wholesale switch to happy images. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to ignore the information and not look into using positive images if you believe they never work.
The truth is, some positive images work. Some don’t. Same with negative images. In fact, positive and negative aren’t really meaningful categories when it comes to fundraising.
The only categories that matter are “compelling” and “not compelling.”
Here’s how to pick winning fundraising images, positive or negative:
- Remove I like and I dislike from your criteria. Those are not relevant considerations, and they’re very likely to lead you astray.
- Ask yourself if the image tells the same story as the words. So often, there’s a vast disconnect between the words and the images in fundraising.
- Ask yourself, What will a non-expert see? This is very hard to do. It can help to ask an actual non-expert to tell you what they see in the photo. Don’t ask for a critique of its quality or correctness; just have them tell you what they see.
- Is it real? This is a subjective question, but it’s important. Does the photo seem to be of a real situation, or does it look staged or fake?
I’ve found the following usually (but not always) to be true of the most compelling fundraising images:
- Color is better than black and white. (There’s also a meaningful budget consideration to this one.)
- Eye contact with the subject is good.
- One person is better than lots of people.
- People work better than things.
- Stock photography seldom works well.
Filed under Future Fund Raising Now by on Jul 4th, 2011. Comment.
It’s inconceivable to some people, but it’s quite possible that you could be concentrating way too much of your time on improper keywords when it comes time to market your small business on the internet. Everyone knows that Internet marketing is, to a certain degree, driven by keyword selection and it’s very important to ensure that you’re emphasising the proper keywords for your particular services or products. Nevertheless, keep in mind that the great unknown here is often the precise phrase that the searcher uses and in this respect we can sometimes be a bit wide of the mark, typically with no knowledge of it.
Before you set up an online presence you should always undergo an extensive keyword selection process, in conjunction with great market research. In your certain market you should look horizontally and vertically, because markets almost always overlap and you can overlook a few “golden nuggets” if you don’t do so. Because this is one of the more important components of search engine optimisation London expert organisations advocate that you devote just as much time as is necessary to check out all options and directions. Keep in mind virtual assistance today!
Yet what happens in the event you target the incorrect keyword? It might not be a “totally” incorrect choice, but could be just a bit wide of the mark. In the event you optimise your online presence to the wrong keyword however, the quantity of traffic you will get to your website, willing to purchase a product or service, will probably be jeopardised. This is why you should love analytics. By making certain you’ve got an excellent analytics program connected to your website and you take a look at it regularly, you can become aware of words which are driving traffic to your site which you may not have considered. In your analytics program you will be able to determine what keywords folks are using within the major search engines to arrive at your website and as you may see, they might be a bit different to the words that you thought represented the ultimate goal. Right near the top of the list of significance in this world of search engine optimisation London specialists will advise you is the analytical program.
Filed under Chris Stoddard by on Jul 4th, 2011. Comment.