Notes from the affinity session on nonprofit marketing balance on March 17, 2011

1. Thanks for attending the session on finding balance among priorities in nonprofit marketing Here are the notes! From KiviLeroux Miller, Nancy Schwartz, Sarah Durham & Katya Andresen

2. Your Bright Ideas: Getting Priorities Right Make a marketing strategy; it’s better to have a plan because you’ll work smarter. Align audience, objectives and tools. At the end/beginning of every day, take 5 min to identify the goals for the day Put your big goals & high impact activities on a white board in your office Keep to-do lists Say no: What you refuse to do is as important as what you take on! Focus on what are the top things you need to accomplish with each of your audiences; if the item in front of you doesn’t do a lot to accomplish your aims, put it aside Go to where your supporters are and feature what your supporters say rather than feeling you have to create and build everything yourself Use your networks. Learn from others so you don’t reinvent the wheel; seek pro bono resources Ask for help or ask a manager to choose among priorities when you’re overloaded Block off time away from email, computer Communicate early and often with staff and external partners; it avoids time-consuming confusion later No meeting Fridays Keep social networking time spent in line with its importance – most attendees put that at less than 2 hours/day Don’t take on something you can’t do well; better to have no Facebook page or blog than an inactive one in which you don’t respond to supporters

3. Your Bright Ideas: Cool Tactics Editorial calendars and shared messaging boilerplates Time-saving Twitter techniques: http://twitter.com/twtroid/status/45568670839218176 Applications like Launchy.net, Quicksilver Care2 Socialnetworkcalculator.com Chatter.com Google for Nonprofits Greatnonprofits.org Facebook: Search engine within Facebook with filters for users, matched with options from NPO, enables communication www.facebook.com/masaisrael Have several people who handle social media, and assign comments to them Use “Share this” and other tools to let your supporters spread the word for you Test, do A/B campaign emails so you can work smarter Block off time when you’ll do email rather than answering it every time it comes in Encourage staff to send fewer emails to each other! Read “Getting Things Done” by David Allen

4. Question: How do you manage up and convince your boss of priorities? Frame your priorities according to your boss’s goals Bring competitive examples to your boss – of other nonprofits doing well – spark, don’t lead the conversation. That makes it your boss’s idea Know who influences your boss (admin); look to other messengers and gatekeepers Show results and changes made in pilot Early intervention – before there’s a plan

5. How do you balance incoming requests when you have your own job to do? Create editorial calendar – Lightbox Collaborative blog post Google Calendar: multiple, overlaid calendars Sharepoint Have formal, shared marketing plan that you train people on, make decisions – make them show how drives goals on plan

6. How do you consistently communicate about priorities and what you’re doing? Once have common, shared plan, report on progress on goals, brainstorming Write up a dashboard tool (green, orange, status, who responsible) – Google docs good place to post the dashboard Post progress on walls (dashboards) Daily stand-up (10 min) meeting – face to face briefing

7. Working with communities that aren’t tech savvy, or people off the grid KNOW YOUR AUDIENCES GO WHERE THEY ARE Go to trusted agents and voices that ARE on the grid and have them reach people who are not Don’t use technology if they’re not using it – won’t connect, may alienate Low bandwidth tips: no images, plain text Consider mobile rather than online (farmers/ranchers) Pew Internet & American Life research findings – ground your decisions in research and real data Match goals to audience that is online (social media=future online donors); (traditional media=coverage where older donors are) Training/walking through audience in how to use technology (iPad, Facebook) Think about future: 3-5 years from now; no one will be off the grid; look at frequency how are you preparing? Tailor online content to audience: Google translate tool for website; write web content at fifth grade level

8. I have to drop a channel. How do I make this decision? Look at marketing strategy you used to select channels that are most critical Check your channels next to your metrics; find out which tools have the most impact – look at your metrics and data; use the most effective Talk to people you want to reach and get feedback from them Reduce the scope of channels rather than the number of channels; retain multichannel but scale back

9. How do you break up with social media if ROI isn’t there? Try shifting voice/management to address poor performance; ask how you can be doing better Make it campaign-based on social media with clear goal/end point so you have an exit strategy if you need it Don’t do a channel if you can’t do it well Setting goals are important Quality, not quantity Frequency

10. Getting communications and marketing people to work together Collaboration between departments needs to be culture of org

11. How do you get into social media if visibility for constituency is a barrier? Be open about stigma and address it directly in a campaign (@endstigma on Twitter)

12. #11NTCBalance Rate this session