Tag Archives: Non-Profit

3 Small Business Technology Resolutions for 2013 or How to Do Better Next Year! (pt.1)

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A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?”

The man below says: “Yes, you’re in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field.”

“You must be an engineer” says the balloonist.

Balloon (aircraft)

Balloon (aircraft) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“I am” replies the man. “How did you know?”

“Well,” says the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct, but it’s no use to anyone.”

The man below says “you must be in management.”

“I am” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” says the man, “you don’t know where you are, or where you’re going, but you expect me to be able to help. You’re in the same position you were before we met, but now it’s my fault.”

Read Quote of Jason Heinrichs’s answer to Jokes: What are some of the most profound jokes ever? on Quora

Does this joke strike a nerve? Which role characterizes you as a small business owner or non-profit leader?

And does it occur to you that if the two worked together, the end result might be more positive?

This is a 2 part post about 1. the lack of success for SMBs and NPOs in understanding marketing and 2. technology tools for better collaboration and productivity for better results.

Marketing

I have tried to explain marketing to many small business owners and non-profit organizations in my presentations and work with clients.  What I have come to realize is that a lack of time and understanding for marketing for SMBs and NPOs is in the denial in that it simply must be a collaborative effort.

While you can silo out accounting, maintenance, IT, stock, and other non-customer oriented tasks, the remaining roles of owner, management, marketing, sales, advertising, customer service and any other roles that “touch” a customer must work together to be the most effective and deliver the most positive ROI.

Why can’t you just delegate every role and let them be their individual success story?

  • Salespeople need to understand the goals of marketing and owner/management to understand and follow the mission.
  • Owner/Management must listen to the needs of sales to optimize customer satisfaction.
  • Marketing needs the feedback of sales and management to determine marketing effectiveness.
  • Sales needs to constantly convey customer feedback to owner/management and marketing to provide aesthetic ROI measures.
  • Owner/Management needs to provide product and sales input to marketing for consistency in messaging both on the floor and in marketing.

In other words, silo-ing will always lead to failure of some kind.

So what can you do to improve your success rate?

As for any small business or organization, lack of time is always the primary factor that inhibits productivity and growth. Therefore, I have 3 suggestions for using modern technology to make it all easier in the 2nd part of this post…

YES you CAN do it! You learned how to use your computer, this is just as important!

Use the tools that are available to help your business or organization stop being silo-ed from each other… There are so many free apps and tools, there is no excuse. And you can get someone to set it all up for you, but you must learn how to USE them if you expect others to follow suit and get tangible results.

See my next post for the suggestions…

 

[Q&A] How Do You Run a Fundraiser with Email Marketing?

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Reblogged from Constant Contact Blogs:

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As we enter the biggest giving season of the year, we thought it would be timely to talk with someone who knows quite a bit about hosting fundraisers: Hania Whitfield, the owner of Whitfield Consulting, a marketing firm that focuses on nonprofits and small businesses.

I recently spoke with Hania about how organizations can prepare, host, and promote their fundraiser through email, social media, and overall web design.

Read more… 898 more words

I'm proud to have been interviewed by Constant Contact on fundraising with email marketing. Please share your thoughts and insights into your experience with email fundraising for your non-profit organization client.

Non-Profit Organizations – Take your social media seriously and potential donors will, too!

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A lovely graduate student attending school in the UK (but from NY)  interviewed me over Skype for her dissertation. She is researching why Non-Profit Organizations do so poorly in raising funds with Social Media. (This lends itself to some of the same troubles SMBs have over developing loyal fans.)

We were supposed to talk for only half an hour, but we ran over an hour because so much of our discussion became more about human behavior rather than social media itself.

As a board member of a non-profit organization, and having helped NPOs with their social media and email marketing, here are some observations I shared with her regarding the difficulties non-profit boards appear to have using Facebook and Twitter to grow awareness and raise funds.

“You know how to do social media? Great! It’s all yours!”

This happens a lot. The majority of the board is either not using social media, or if they are, it is just Facebook for family and close friends. Therefore, they don’t understand the difference between posting on a personal profile vs managing a business or group page. Nor do they understand Twitter or LinkedIn or any other platforms for business purposes. And remember, a non-profit organization IS a business.

They are thrilled that someone is willing to take it over because they know they are supposed to have a social media presence. End of story.

You hope the person who takes it over does understand how to manage a business or group page account, but in many cases, they don’t. They just know social media tools better than most so they got elected for the job, but often fall short on knowing strategies for how to engage followers on a business page or group.

“Everyone on the board will help you with content - it’ll be easy.”

This rarely comes to be. If your members of the board are not active on social media now, how will you get them to develop the habit of passing along information tidbits and photos for posting? Unfortunately, posting usually falls totally on the shoulders of the social media/marketing board member. Why is that unfortunate?

Because the NPO social media manager typically only gets information at meetings. By then it’s not timely or maybe even relevant to the followers anymore.  And getting pictures from events? Another tough one. Even with digital cameras and camera SmartPhones, it sometimes takes people weeks to upload their photos and send them on. They often take a lot of pictures at these events, so it isn’t practical to try to share them on the spot. So the thought is that it’s more practical to wait until they can be uploaded and organized, but…

“How come we aren’t getting donations on Social Media?”

Well, actually you are getting some you aren’t aware of. If you are using PayPal for your donation link, then you aren’t sure where the click originated. And, if someone donates from your website, it could be they arrived on your website from your link on your social media. People aren’t likely to post about donating, so don’t look to that as a tracking source.

But to be realistic, unless at least several board members or volunteers are engaging, what message are you subconsciously sending the followers you DO have? If those running the organization can’t be bothered with their own social media page, why should the public?

So what can you do about it?

We arrived at several  initial conclusions:

  • TAKE SOCIAL MEDIA SERIOUSLY. And it has to come from the top down. If the upper echelon isn’t “into” social media – especially on a business level – then s/he won’t treat it as a priority and the whole board soon treats it like the red-headed stepchild.
  • Education is key. It is important to learn social media business account strategies. It has to be treated like a business to perform like one. Then you must spread that knowledge to the rest of the board and volunteers.
  • It is important to keep your donors informed of what you are doing with their money. If you need to go into detail on some information, there is nothing better than a monthly or quarterly e-newsletter to keep your donors and followers informed.

Take your social media seriously and your donors and followers will take you seriously, too.

Think vs Thought – a positive shift in Small Business attitudes toward Social Media

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Last week was National Small Business Week. Constant Contact did a fabulous job of offering Free Social Media Events nationwide with workshops in the afternoon. Small business owners from all over were talking only about one thing – the power of word of mouth marketing, i.e., Social Media.

They offered me a choice of workshop, and I chose to conduct a Twitter workshop because it is one of the most misunderstood and most maligned of the big platforms.

Why?

There is a lot of fluff on Twitter…

Celebrities have gazillions of followers, the youth pepper the feeds with profanity and inebriate comments (foolishly not believing that public exposure will ever tarnish their future), spam accounts entice followers to click on porn links, and get rich quick businesses spam the feed with teasers for their “free” info for only $99.

But there is a lot of amazing power behind Twitter!

  • Egypt and other countries turned their world around via Twitter
  • Law enforcement can solve crimes and find criminals via real-time posting of descriptions, happenings, locations, requests for help and more.
  • We have “Citizen Journalism” – on the ground updates from citizens involved in natural and man-made disasters

There are countless examples of how real-time communications makes all the difference. But for the everyday use of Twitter, you cannot overlook how small businesses and non-profits have a bigger reach then ever before – and for far less inve$tment!

Which leads me to explaining the title of this post.

In my Twitter workshop last Thursday, I was most impressed and pleased by one major shift in attitude from small business and non-profit owners:

They weren’t saying “I THINK Twitter is just for blah, blah, blah…”  Now they were saying, ” I THOUGHT…”

That’s a HUGE shift in attitude! No longer are they treating SoMe as a silly pastime for teens and ne’er do wells…  They’ve finally climbed over the hump of disbelief and are embracing it.

As a small business social media consultant, it used to be tough to “sell” the value of SoMe – especially Twitter. No more. There were people stopping me in the halls trying to eek out any information from me they could get on how business should use Twitter and other platforms. Anytime anyone introduces me in any type of networking or social event, I am immediately cornered for any tidbits of social media wisdom.

Social Media is now recognized as the serious marketing tool that it is.

Finally!

If you’ve followed this blog, or my social media accounts, you’ve already been learning that…

Btw, I’m always open to your suggestions for social media posts…

DIY Marketing? No such thing unless you don’t care about results…

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You’re a small business owner or non-profit. You are successful because you know your business inside out and eat, drink, and breathe it. You’re a busy person and your success is a result of being immersed in your business.

Wouldn’t that be true of other professionals as well? It took time for you to understand your business to the degree you became successful. The same goes for other professionals.

You don’t let distractions keep you from your business and when there are problems, you could fix them yourself, but understand that paying someone else to do it properly and efficiently actually costs less than you taking yourself away from your business.

Therefore:

  • Your roof has a bad leak, you call a roofer.
  • Your toilets clog, you call a plumber.
  • Your carpet’s dirty, you call a carpet cleaner.
  • You need an airtight contract for your biz, you call a lawyer.
  • You’re paying too much in taxes, you call a CPA.
  • …But when you finally get on board with social media, you DIY.

HUH?

I was chatting with one of the VPs of a National Non-Profit and when he found out I was a Social Media Consultant, he says he couldn’t believe how many Facebook business pages he goes to that haven’t posted in months. He then says, “There’s no excuse. All you have to do is go to Hootsuite and schedule posts and you’re done!”

He’s wrong! And I told him so – politely :)

That’s not the right strategy and that’s not engagement and your insights and analytics will reflect it. After some conversation about it, he did have to agree and had to admit he had no idea of the different strategies, the purposes each avenue held for different businesses, and more. He said, “I guess that’s why we need consultants like you to help us figure it all out.”  Well, yeah?

You wouldn’t ask a lawyer to do your accounting, would you? A Social Media Marketing Consultant (worth their salt – there are always bad apples in any professional bunch) can point you to which of the many Social Media venues is best for your type of business, and what kind of strategies to use to attract customers and build awareness.

How well did it work when you tried to do your own newspaper ads? Pretty good? How good could it have been? You don’t know what you don’t know – period.

You didn’t just open a book on your type of business and successfully open shop the next day. Do you have time for the Social Media learning curve that professionals have already spent?

Since I couldn’t say it better myself, I am giving you a link to an excellent blog post by Joellyn Sargent on How Much Does Marketing Cost?

Thanks for listening!