Today constituent management firm Convio announced a major suite of applications designed to make it easier for non-profit organizations to tap the power of Web 2.0. I wrote earlier about the software that allows fund-raiser participants to create their own personal pages to solicit gifts. The new applications allow customers to create their own APIs, integrate various member/donor databases and take advantage of social networks like Facebook and Flickr.
At first glance, many of these applications are not DIY. It’s going to take some programming to turn your logo into a live connection to your website or to a landing page that registers new acquisitions. Once you have it, though, it is easy to post it—and to ask loyal members of your community to post it on their websites, blogs, and social network pages. That will work for non-profits in a way that it won’t work for corporations. And that’s DIY. Once you have the logo or another API, ask your supporters to post it and to encourage their friends to do the same. Corporations have to pay for that (the Amazon or eBay affiliate programs, for example). Non-profits will get it free from people who care about their cause.
Some social networks are offering special services to non-profits. It’s another traffic builder and it doesn’t hurt their public image. ASPCA, with its channel on YouTube, continues to be a leader in use of these techniques. Many of their videos feature individual animals available for adoption and, looking at them, one has to believe they result in successful adoptions. They also offer informational videos and ones like the one featuring Tony LaRussa, which was originally a PSA spot.
The channel also includes entertaining user-submitted videos that are tagged “aspca” like “Charm School.”
MySpace offers “A portal to all that is good on MySpace.” There are a lot of pages on politics on MySpace, remember The Obama Girl?” That was a supporter’s offering; the campaign has its own MySpace page, as do many others. And no, I didn’t check how many “friends” each campaign has there as a measure of its appeal to young voters. I’m not going there.
For-profit marketers take note. As long as these pages are on the “free” networks, they are going to offer advertising space. That’s a useful way to target specialized audiences with ads and sponsorships that align the corporation with good causes. Is it better than having your own commercial-looking page? Time (and marketing experiments and good metrics) will tell.
In the meantime non-profits are going to continue to explore Internet frontiers, and they deserve our support.
Sphere: Related Content
Showing posts with label weblogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weblogs. Show all posts
Blog Transparency
Thursday, October 11, 2007
One shouldn’t believe everything they read in blogs—except mine of course! But seriously, blog posts are the product of individuals and they may or may not be factually correct, complete, or unbiased. In evaluating user generated content of any kind, I think triangulation is the best approach; if two, or better three, sources agree, then you can have some credence in the content. Do you, for example, read just one product review before making up your mind to buy or not to buy? If you need a quick read on a blog, try Nielsen BuzzMetrics new blog profile tool.
What if you are blogging or participating in some other social media? How do you build trust? The operative word today is “transparency,” but what does imply about our actions? As you might guess, user generated content and its impact on information has been an important topic among journalists. Here’s a recent post that summarizes journalistic issues nicely.
I recently became aware of guidelines posted by the Ogilvy PR group that are worth the attention of all content creators. Some are relevant to people posting in a corporate environment. Companies could use them as a foundation for their own policies. Some are also relevant to the unfettered individual blogger. We should pay careful attention to the following:
• Acknowledge and Correct Mistakes Quickly. We all make them. Acknowledge them, correct them, and move on.
• Know Thy Neighbor. To make your blog authoritative you need to know who else is blogging about similar subjects. Find out who is blogging about what on search engines like Technorati, Google Blog Search and Nielsen Blog Pulse. Ogilvy suggests introducing yourself and trying to form alliances. Good idea!
• Use a Disclaimer. Make it clear where you are coming from and what your affiliations are. Even on a personal blog, you may need to separate your personal views from the official positions of your employer. Or your employer may require it. You should check.
• Conduct Quality Assurance. This is the standard advice to all writers, and we all forget it sometimes. Make your posts focus, concise, logical and don’t forget to use spell check. To my disgust, Word’s little green lines are usually correct when identifying grammatical errors.
Ogilvy has gone further and issued guidelines for its PR people when contacting bloggers. All bloggers should read and heed to avoid being used by unscrupulous publicity seekers.
Accenture has been studying trust, especially on the Internet, for some time. A good article is “The Economic Value of Trust.” Prof. John Urban has a step-by-step approach complete with case studies. Everyone makes the point that it takes sustained effort over time to build trust. It can be destroyed with one ill-advised action.
Remember the Wal-Mart blogs and the PR company behind them? The “Wal-Marting Across America” blog purportedly recounted the journey of a couple who parked their RV in Wal-Mart parking lots to shop and take pictures of happy customers and employees. It was all a fake. Wal-Mart pulled the blog and Richard Edelman, president of the PR firm, apologized publicly. Bloggers quickly labeled them "flogs."
In this age of user generated content, if you are not truthful, someone is likely to find it out quickly. And they’ll post it on the Internet.
Sphere: Related Content
What if you are blogging or participating in some other social media? How do you build trust? The operative word today is “transparency,” but what does imply about our actions? As you might guess, user generated content and its impact on information has been an important topic among journalists. Here’s a recent post that summarizes journalistic issues nicely.
I recently became aware of guidelines posted by the Ogilvy PR group that are worth the attention of all content creators. Some are relevant to people posting in a corporate environment. Companies could use them as a foundation for their own policies. Some are also relevant to the unfettered individual blogger. We should pay careful attention to the following:
• Acknowledge and Correct Mistakes Quickly. We all make them. Acknowledge them, correct them, and move on.
• Know Thy Neighbor. To make your blog authoritative you need to know who else is blogging about similar subjects. Find out who is blogging about what on search engines like Technorati, Google Blog Search and Nielsen Blog Pulse. Ogilvy suggests introducing yourself and trying to form alliances. Good idea!
• Use a Disclaimer. Make it clear where you are coming from and what your affiliations are. Even on a personal blog, you may need to separate your personal views from the official positions of your employer. Or your employer may require it. You should check.
• Conduct Quality Assurance. This is the standard advice to all writers, and we all forget it sometimes. Make your posts focus, concise, logical and don’t forget to use spell check. To my disgust, Word’s little green lines are usually correct when identifying grammatical errors.
Ogilvy has gone further and issued guidelines for its PR people when contacting bloggers. All bloggers should read and heed to avoid being used by unscrupulous publicity seekers.
Accenture has been studying trust, especially on the Internet, for some time. A good article is “The Economic Value of Trust.” Prof. John Urban has a step-by-step approach complete with case studies. Everyone makes the point that it takes sustained effort over time to build trust. It can be destroyed with one ill-advised action.
Remember the Wal-Mart blogs and the PR company behind them? The “Wal-Marting Across America” blog purportedly recounted the journey of a couple who parked their RV in Wal-Mart parking lots to shop and take pictures of happy customers and employees. It was all a fake. Wal-Mart pulled the blog and Richard Edelman, president of the PR firm, apologized publicly. Bloggers quickly labeled them "flogs."
In this age of user generated content, if you are not truthful, someone is likely to find it out quickly. And they’ll post it on the Internet.
Sphere: Related Content
Corporate Blogging--The Good and The Ugly
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Many of us remember Dell and its customer service problems. One customer’s issues were highlighted on Jeff Jarvis’s popular blog and spread like wildfire across the web during the summer of 2005. His original post had 253 comments and some of his later posts had even more.
This is a “listening (not) to the voice of the customer” problem. My sense is that Dell was very good at it when their customers were large B2B enterprises. When the Internet allowed them to profitably sell to individuals, they took advantage of it. However, they didn’t recast their customer service operation to deal with consumers. Worse, they ignored the 2005 firestorm on the web for several months. When they did respond, it seemed a bit tentative.
But they were learning. When laptop batteries began to spontaneously erupt in flames in the summer of 2006, they were paying attention. They posted news of the recall on their blog, as well as on the Dell website, although critics argued they should have acted more quickly.
The Direct2Dell blog remains active and generates quite a bit of customer response. But Dell is looking for more. Their IdeaStorm minisite actively solicits ideas from customers, responds to them, and creates a community environment. Can this approach work in, say, a consumer packaged-goods environment? How can companies deal with the legal liability “you stole my idea” issue?
That’s the good, when we can learn from our mistakes and oversights. On to the ugly. Many of you know that John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, was ‘outed’ for posting negative comments about competitor Wild Oats on a Yahoo! bulletin board under an assumed name. The problem came to light when Whole Foods made an offer to acquire Wild Oats. It looks as if the fall-out for Mr. Mackey personally and perhaps for the Whole Foods brand reputation may not be over. The case was made a poster child for bad corporate behavior at a recent NARC conference, with a representative from the FTC giving useful guidelines for staying out of trouble. Corporate bloggers should read (Media Post, free registration required) and heed.
This is a “listening (not) to the voice of the customer” problem. My sense is that Dell was very good at it when their customers were large B2B enterprises. When the Internet allowed them to profitably sell to individuals, they took advantage of it. However, they didn’t recast their customer service operation to deal with consumers. Worse, they ignored the 2005 firestorm on the web for several months. When they did respond, it seemed a bit tentative.
But they were learning. When laptop batteries began to spontaneously erupt in flames in the summer of 2006, they were paying attention. They posted news of the recall on their blog, as well as on the Dell website, although critics argued they should have acted more quickly.
The Direct2Dell blog remains active and generates quite a bit of customer response. But Dell is looking for more. Their IdeaStorm minisite actively solicits ideas from customers, responds to them, and creates a community environment. Can this approach work in, say, a consumer packaged-goods environment? How can companies deal with the legal liability “you stole my idea” issue?
That’s the good, when we can learn from our mistakes and oversights. On to the ugly. Many of you know that John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, was ‘outed’ for posting negative comments about competitor Wild Oats on a Yahoo! bulletin board under an assumed name. The problem came to light when Whole Foods made an offer to acquire Wild Oats. It looks as if the fall-out for Mr. Mackey personally and perhaps for the Whole Foods brand reputation may not be over. The case was made a poster child for bad corporate behavior at a recent NARC conference, with a representative from the FTC giving useful guidelines for staying out of trouble. Corporate bloggers should read (Media Post, free registration required) and heed.
Blogs Are a Mature Medium
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Blogs and their predecessors have been around for awhile (Wikipedia has an interesting history), but many of us only became aware of them in the early years of this decade. We watched with interest as several blogging services gained traction, specialized search engines and advertising networks were introduced, and, recently, blog audience metrics were developed. These are all signs of a mature medium, and one might expect businesses to take advantage of this low-cost way to reach their customers directly.
The sheer size of the blogosphere has clearly exploded. According to Technorati, in April 2007 they were monitoring over 70 million blogs. 120,000 new blogs were being created every day—1.4 per second! True, most of those are personal, political or news blogs. eMarketer’s newsletter (May 1, 2007) quoted a study that found that only 8% of the Fortune 500 firms, and 4% of their Global 1000, have public blogs. Reason given: they did not have policies governing the use of social media and were concerned that employee comments would damage their brand.
Policies can be established, and it doesn’t take much technical savvy to establish a blog—I’m living proof of that! Is it that most marketing managers--who aren’t part of the social-networking demographic--are not aware of the potential benefits of direct interaction with customers? Or is it a reasonable fear that the brand could be harmed? Or is it purely the fear of making a mistake, of looking foolish in the eyes of one’s colleagues and peers? What have your experiences been?
Tomorrow we’ll see one example of learning to use social media effectively and another that represents just the opposite.
The sheer size of the blogosphere has clearly exploded. According to Technorati, in April 2007 they were monitoring over 70 million blogs. 120,000 new blogs were being created every day—1.4 per second! True, most of those are personal, political or news blogs. eMarketer’s newsletter (May 1, 2007) quoted a study that found that only 8% of the Fortune 500 firms, and 4% of their Global 1000, have public blogs. Reason given: they did not have policies governing the use of social media and were concerned that employee comments would damage their brand.
Policies can be established, and it doesn’t take much technical savvy to establish a blog—I’m living proof of that! Is it that most marketing managers--who aren’t part of the social-networking demographic--are not aware of the potential benefits of direct interaction with customers? Or is it a reasonable fear that the brand could be harmed? Or is it purely the fear of making a mistake, of looking foolish in the eyes of one’s colleagues and peers? What have your experiences been?
Tomorrow we’ll see one example of learning to use social media effectively and another that represents just the opposite.
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