An American Opinion

Newsletters have a long tradition in organizations of all types.  Traditionally they have been composed, printed, and distributed primarily to disseminate information to organization members with the goal of building community within an organization, promoting planned activities and functions, and maintaining member interest.  It has traditionally been an internal document, designed almost exclusively for member use.  Traditionally newsletters have been printed and mailed to a recipient through the postal service, an expensive and time consuming practice that diverts important staff and financial resources away from your programs.  For those concerned with the ecology, traditional printed newsletters and direct mailings also carry a substantial carbon footprint consuming significant natural resources, creating manufacturing waste, and consuming fuels.

As part of a web 2.0 strategy, an e-newsletter should accomplish the traditional purposes of a newsletter, PLUS provide the following five additional benefits, without the ecological impact.

• An e-newsletter will save your organization money.
  The Internet is widely available in developed countries around the world.  Employing an e-newsletter only makes sense and eliminates almost the entire cost involved in newsletter distribution.  You can email thousands of e-newsletters free in lieu of paying for envelopes and stamps to mail a printed newsletter.  Organizations who are communicating with supporters in developed nations would be wise to convert to e-newsletters as quickly as possible, offering printed newsletters only to those supporters who don’t have Internet access.  Taking this action allows an organization to divert a considerable amount of the funds formerly devoted to print and postage expenses back into programs.

• An e-newsletter is a promotable  “Green” alternative to print and postage newsletters.
  Every e-newsletter that you don’t print and mail represents fewer trees harvested and processed into paper, transportation to the printer, printing, transportation to a postal facility and transportation to an address.  Eliminating these processes has the potential to save trees and fuel as well as eliminate manufacturing pollutants and waste.  It also represents less paper in landfills.  If your organization is truly sensitive to the environment, it should be communicating digitally as much as possible and highlighting the fact where appropriate.

• An e-newsletter should reach out to the digital world at large.
  Traditionally organizations published newsletters for internal communications and used direct mailings and press releases for external communications.  Your e-newsletter should serve as your organization’s private news service to the world beyond your members and supporters.  If your Staff needs an e-newsletter, create a separate one.  Your e-newsletter should serve both your internal and external readers.  By providing content that arouses the interest of all readers and avoiding content that is solely “insider” in nature, your e-newsletter can attract readers who are interested in your cause and turn them into supporters.  A traditional newsletter which reached only the household to whom it was addressed is far surpassed by an e-newsletter that can crisscross the Internet as recipients, with your encouragement, forward it to friends and family interested in your cause.  Include a free subscription link in each edition and treat it as a virtual newspaper with a broad audience.  It can become one as you promote it through the web 2.0 tools we’ll discuss later.

• An e-newsletter should benefit your organization financially. Obviously you can solicit financial support through an e-newsletter by providing a link to your website’s donation area. But with a little help your e-newsletter could easily provide a significant ongoing source of income for your organization.  If your organization accepts, or is willing to accept, financial or in-kind support from businesses, there is no reason your e-newsletter cannot be an ongoing financial resource for your organization. Corande Publishing provides free e-newsletter and fundraising services for qualifying nonprofit organizations. (Legitimate family-friendly organizations with reasonable subscriber base potential).  You simply provide them with your content and promote subscription to your e-newsletter and Corande Publishing will develop a template, compose, and publish your monthly HTML e-newsletter to your subscribers at no cost to your organization. In addition they will solicit advertising sponsorship from family-friendly corporations for your newsletter, sharing a significant portion of the proceeds with your organization.  It is easy, requires no special software and details are available free at http://www.corande.com.

• An e-newsletter should create opportunities for corporate partnerships.
  If you use the free service provided by Corande Publishing, once you have a sufficient subscribership, you will find your organization and its cause exposed to family-friendly businesses who embrace the idea of associating their company with your cause.  This will provide you with an opportunity to develop even closer relationships, gaining exposure to a larger network of contacts.  Through this free service, your e-newsletter can be a doorway to win-win corporate partnerships and a new model for corporate support of your cause, AT NO OUT OF POCKET EXPENSE to your organization

©William R. Cordle

Most nonprofit organizations have a website.  For those who don’t there are enough economical web hosting services providing attractive templates free or at a nominal charge to allow even the smallest organization to maintain an attractive website.  All in all, having a website is easy.  Providing that website with relevant content that attracts visitors, invites involvement in your cause, and encourages support of your organization’s programs is the key.

While an attractive and well organized website is preferred, I’ve seen some very productive UGLY websites because the content was great and it was easy to navigate to information that interested readers.  By all means make your website attractive but remember, CONTENT- NOT DESIGN, appears in search engines and delivers visitors.

Think about the last book you read cover to cover, and why you continued picking it up until you finished it…  I’d wager that it wasn’t because the cover was beautiful or the font was impressive.  It was because CONTENT, the story, the plot, the subject matter, drew you irresistibly.  Remember this example when you must choose where to focus your efforts, and invest it in content.  If you do, you will achieve an interesting website, e-newsletter and blog which will attract readers to your cause.  If not, your results will be limited at best.

Here are some additional Website tips.

Be absolutely honest. This should go without saying, but zeal for a cause can occasionally tempt someone to exaggerate facts to make a point.  Any fact, figure, stories, or news that is featured on your website should be absolutely true.  Once your credibility is gone, your cause is crippled.

Remember who your audience is.  Make sure the information featured is interesting to your readers.  You and your staff are not your audience.  Look at your site with the eyes of a first-time visitor and make sure to include content for them as well as regular visitors.  Ask the question: Does our homepage convey our message clearly, simply and effectively?  If it does visitors may stick around and ultimately form a relationship, if it does not, they probably won’t.

Change is essential. If your website looks today exactly like it did six months ago, it is time to make some changes.  They don’t have to be sweeping changes (unless your website is really poor); you just need to make subtle changes like changing photos or graphics, changing some colors, adding links, or updating content.  Change arouses interest and increases activity.  Why do you think they regularly shift items around in grocery stores? Make some subtle design changes to your website occasionally throughout the year to achieve this effect.

Your website is your Online Central Exchange.  Your website, particularly the home page, should link to the other tools you employ in your Web 2.0 strategy. Do not add a link to a tool such as an e-newsletter, Facebook or a blog unless that tool is active.  Visitors hate nonworking links.  Your homepage should also be designed to include links to important and relevant information throughout your website about your cause and programs.

Obey the “three click rule”. Optimally no important information on your website should require more than 3 easy clicks to navigate to from your homepage.  Review your site regularly and do your best to insure this rule is followed.  Viewers who have difficulty finding information won’t hang around.  I have visited nonprofit websites looking for an e-newsletter and couldn’t find it without opening the site map.  This has no doubt cost them subscribers when a simple “subscribe to our e-newsletter” button on their homepage would resolve this.

Make your organization easy to contact. It is amazing how many nonprofit websites there are who won’t make available staff or department email addresses to readers. They don’t even have a “catchall” email account that a real person responds to.  They employ a restrictive web contact form with an autoresponder indicating that you should get a response within 5 days.  (Probably a form letter) If your staff is too important to be bothered, you shouldn’t wonder or complain about losing support.

Remember your message. The novelty of flash graphics, etc. that were a trend on the web a few years ago has completely worn off.  Today’s web users want information and they want it NOW.  Intense graphics can slow down page loading and test your audience’s patience, causing them to abbreviate their visit.  Your cause should be your message and that’s what you want visitors to see and focus on.  If what most impresses visitors to your website is the site itself, your cause has become secondary (unless your cause is “web beautification”).

Don’t make fund raising the focus of your website. It is fine to solicit financial support through donations and corporate partnerships on your website.  In fact, it would be rather foolish to ignore these features.  BUT, don’t make it the overriding theme of your website.  Solicitations for support should be low key and simple to use.  Be sure that every donation results in a personal e-thank you note from an officer of your organization.

While CONTENT IS KING applies to all web-based communications, for websites NAVIGATION is definitely an important factor as well.  Design and maintain your website with great content and ease of navigation and you have the first building block in place for your Web 2.0 Strategy.

©William R. Cordle

THE SECOND LAW: A GOOD STRATEGY IS MULTIFACETED

Your Web 2.0 Strategy should include the following electronic media tools:

1)   A Website – Your website is the central point where all your Web 2.0 media should intersect. Through it you will connect to and serve your audience.  Through your web host you will access email service with your website’s name.

2)   An organizational e-Newsletter.  You should have an automatic Can-Spam compliant opt-in subscriber list.  Properly used this feature will constantly gather subscriber emails for you without effort on your part.  An important thing to remember is this: You should have a link to the subscription system on your homepage as well as other key pages in your website.  Your homepage is probably the first and in some cases the only page a site visitor will see.  It may be your only chance to turn a visitor into a subscriber and you don’t want to miss it.

3)   A Blog.  A blog (weblog) can be an important tool for your organization.  Blog posts may be generated by one person or a team of people.  But most importantly it must provide useful information and be updated regularly.

4)   A Facebook Presence.  Facebook can be an important and free tool for reaching out to your target audience.  Through it you can join and reach out to groups with a natural affinity to your cause, promote special events, and build your own following using the groups and pages features.

5)   A Linkedin Presence.  Similar to Facebook yet on a more professional business level, Linkedin can provide the means to connect with professionals in your industry. Through it you can network with professionals in your industry and engage in industry related discussions with peers around the world.

6)   A Twitter Presence.  Twitter offers instant communication in 140 character bursts with individuals and groups of people who have a shared interest in a subject or cause.

7)   Online video.  YouTube or a similar online video service can provide you with the ability to inexpensively add video to websites, or within social sites.  Video can be used to deliver a message, entertain, or arouse curiosity about your cause.

These will serve as the primary tools of your Web 2.0 strategy and we’ll discuss how each in-turn may be used to support your organization.

THE FIRST LAW: IT IS ALL ABOUT CONTROL

Internet based media is rapidly supplanting broadcast, cable, postal mail and printed media because it gives the consumer extraordinary control over what they see. Cable TV supplanted broadcast television by offering more channels, giving viewers more personal control over what they were seeing, Internet based media is supplanting cable because it facilitates infinitely greater viewer control.  The Internet also adds a degree of viewer interactivity that traditional media could never approach.  Comparing traditional media’s “Letter to the Editor” to today’s “click and respond” interactivity is like comparing smoke signals to cell phones.  The overriding equation for consumers is: CHOICES = CONTROL.  The Internet and digital communications provide the level of control that consumers want and that is precisely why traditional media is being eclipsed by digital media in the Internet age.  From a business perspective: CHOICES = SUCCESS, but only if you’re  offering choices.

This situation does not necessarily have to be a bad one for your organization unless you allow it to be.  Web 2.0 is, in the final analysis, only a new set of tools, and new tools can yield higher productivity if you make the effort to learn how to use them.  So remember: Web 2.0 is not your problem; how you’re looking at Web 2.0 is your problem.  For you, Web 2.0 is your solution.

When you think about it CHOICES = CONTROL applies to organizations as well as the audience.  Before the digital age your communications options were limited.  With Web 2.0 and its tools at your disposal you have more control over your message.  It works FOR you, not against you.  CONTROL = OPTIONS.  Just as control works for the viewing audience, it can work for you.

Just as Internet based media provides the audience more control over what they view and hear, by delivering information they want to view and hear through internet based media you gain an audience.  You control the message, you control the frequency, and you control interaction and response to a degree unattainable in traditional media.  The new media gives you the ability to locate and communicate directly with groups that share your concerns and interests and subsequently engage them in your cause.  Using the new media properly can waste less effort, attract more support, and actively engage more people in your cause.

Next we are going to begin discussion of various Web 2.0 tools which may be combined to create a strategy for communicating with the outside world to promote your organization and services.  Your Web 2.0 strategy, if properly executed, should result in a growing base of support, an increase in fundraising, and improved member/supporter involvement.

INTRODUCTION:

Over the past decade, the digital age has irrevocably woven itself into the fabric of society.  The Internet has become increasingly accessible, portable and relevant in people’s lives; surpassing traditional media on most fronts and capturing  increasing numbers of traditional media’s audience.  One of  the obvious results has been the financial failure of  a number of large newspapers with the survivors holding on and struggling to find a niche to anchor themselves to.  The same fate awaits traditional broadcast and cable television in the next decade as Internet TV continues to grow.  As the population continues to convert to e-mail and rely on commercial shippers to deliver goods, the U.S. Post Office finds itself oversized, overstaffed, and constantly in need of subsidy by American Taxpayers.

Traditional media appears to some degree to be struggling to grasp what is happening and those organizations which have for years relied on traditional media to deliver their message are now realizing that as traditional media’s audience shrinks, their effectiveness as a communications outlet shrinks as well.

In short, the digital age is here, it is continually growing and evolving, and it is essentially unstoppable short of a world-wide technological collapse. It embodies a paradigm shift which is leaving leaders in nonprofit organizations in the unfamiliar position of having to find and/or develop totally new approaches to accomplish their goals.  For many leaders this situation is absolutely horrifying.  Nothing in their careers has prepared them for this sort of rapid change.  After all, traditional media and traditional methods have been effective and brought them success for their professional lifetime.  Now many leaders find themselves facing the unimaginable position of no longer having the answers.  They face sitting across from younger people and having to not only listen to them, but to learn from them as well.  For many their world has truly turned upside down.

The unfortunate truth is that many of these leaders, rather than address the problem, will elect to cast blame on others or on conditions beyond their control.  Others will simply make excuses for their problems.  In either case they will refuse to learn new skills and will continue to cling to the media and methods that worked for them in the past.  The purveyors of traditional media and methods will encourage them to do so because they desperately need customers.  These leaders simply won’t accept change and change will overwhelm their organizations as it is already overwhelming traditional media outlets.

I was once taught that every problem bears the seeds of its own solution.  It has been my experience that this axiom is frequently true and  it is true in this situation  It is the goal of this continuing article to help you discover those solutions and develop a practical strategy and some specific tactics to help you effectively make the digital shift in your organization.

(More to come)