Kalena Jordan, New Zealand’s own Search Marketing Guru (she hails originally from Oz, but we can claim her as our success – that’ll make a change!) and founder of the Search Engine College is offering free courses in Search Engine Optimisation or Search Engine Marketing to 25 Charities and Not for Profits.

These courses are very user friendly, and I know from Kalena herself that she has already given away 5 courses since announcing the campaign, and about 3 of those are to Christchurch Charities that we recommended it to.

She also told me that not-for-profit organisations can also apply.

For more info see her blog post: Free SEO/SEM course for charity sites.

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They have won a free one hour intensive with Hot PJ’s resident Social Media expert, Mark Lincoln, to help build the on-line presence of their organisation.

• Charlotte Murphy of Eating Awareness Team
• Heather McDonald of YourRightHand on behalf of Sumner Lifeboat
• Diana Saxton, Community Recreation Adviser for CCC
• Emily Adcock of Women’s Health Information Centre
• Liz Ford of Relationship Services
• Alison Cousens of Science Alive
• Fiona Wills of Antarctic Heritage Trust
• Judith Wakelin of Heart Children NZ – Canterbury
• Linda O’Dean of the Brain Injury Association
• Vaughan Utteridge of Serious Fun

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• a web log,
• provides commentary, news, opinion on any topic the author chooses to blog about
• is authored by a single person, or small group of individuals
• provides the ability for readers to post comments under posts in order to interact
• includes microblogs like Twitter, photoblogs, vlog (videos), linklog, Qlogs (Q & A blog)

How they came about

• First started to appear in the 90s as manually updated pages on websites. The only difference was the type of content – a mix of links, commentary, personal thoughts all rolled into one.
• Blogging platforms soon followed
• Blogs evolved into online journals or diaries, updated regularly, and connecting others with similar interests.
  Example of early blog post
• Were picked up by journalists to publish news more quickly
• As user-friendly blogging tools became available, blogs were adopted by businesses to stay in touch with their clients/customers

Source: Where the heck did blogs come from

Some blogging platforms available:

• WordPress
• b2evolution
• Blogware
• Typepad
• Movable Type
• Expression Engine

Blogging Stats and Demographics:

• Most blogs are abandoned after they are created
• More bloggers are male than female
• Way more bloggers in the USA than other countries
• Most bloggers are in the 20 and over age bracket
• Most bloggers blog for pleasure, followed by those who blog to promote their own business
• by 2008 World wide, 188 million had started a blog.
• 346 million read a blog
• 77% of active internet users read blogs

Source: Technorati – State of the Blogsphere

Pros and Cons of blogging:

Pros:

• Blog content generally picked up quickly by search engines.
• Hot PJ recently did a series of posts prior to Easter about the ‘best hot cross buns’ – totally irrelevant to our business and just a bit of fun. Within days of making the first post of 10 we were on the front page of Google.co.nz. I think we are still there. It just so happened that this was a hot topic in the media too which would have increased interest in the topic.
• Now imagine if instead of being a marketing communications company we  were a charity or not-for-profit, running an Easter campaign to raise money through the sale of Hot Cross Buns.
• Blogging software, like WordPress, can be used to content manage static pages on your website as well as the blog.
• Creates a personal connection between your organisation and its visitors
  For a good example of this see the Metservice blog
• Quick, easy and low cost to set up a blog and to post.

Cons:

• “so, so yesterday and all my friends are on Facebook”
  Some believe blogging has had its day and is less popular than other social media, particularly amongst the under 25s.
• The blogsphere is polluted with ‘sploggers’ (spam blogs) and spam bloggers.
• Takes time to write, manage and promote your blog

What to do:

1. Set a strategy for your blog. What do you want it to achieve?
   • educate new readers about your organisation
   • keep supporters in touch
   • fund raise
   • disseminate up to date info quickly
   • grow supporter numbers
2. Spend time on other blogs that are applicable to your organisation / not-for-profit. Leave comments and links on their blog that link to yours.
3. Visit message boards and forums that relate so you can talk about your blog and organisation.
4. Use your blog to share stories and campaign updates
5. Encourage social bookmarking (RSS feeds  – updates emailed to readers from sites and blogs they are interested in)
6. Llike other social media, let your personality shine through as readers connect more with people, not faceless organisational blogs
7. Befriend other active bloggers so they spread the word for you. You can do this via their blog, through twitter, facebook, etc. Plenty of bloggers are happy to spread the word about their favourite charity. See blog ‘do you blog for charity?

A Not for Profit Blog in Action:

‘Learn As One’ works with local partners and communities in Africa to fund schools.

• Their website has visible link to their blog and visitors can sign up for RSS feeds.
• The blog has link to website donation page
• They encourage interaction with their readers by inviting questions
• They linked into other social media – Twitter

Learn As One blog

Blogging Campaign Ideas:

1. Leverage your blog using other social media sites Facebook and twitter
2. If you don’t like blogging, find someone in your organisation who does. Don’t do it if you don’t enjoy it.
3. Encourage your supporters and your sponsors to blog, but give them guidelines.
4. Befriend other Bloggers, find a popular blogger who has a connection with your organisation/cause and get them to blog about you.
   You may remember Telethon, well now there are Blogathons where bloggers blog for 24 hours raising funds for charities.
5. Don’t think you have time to write a blog? Look at what you already have, i.e newsletters, support material (how to brochures), stories from your supporters/clients, and don’t be afraid to reuse the content on your blog. One of our clients writes regularly for his local paper, these are then posted on his blog.
6. Put in place some way of measuring the success of your blog (traffic plug-in, ask readers to leave a comment on your post).

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How many people have setup a Twitter account? Probably a fair few again. There are a massive amount of people who have opened Twitter accounts in the last few months alone.

How many people have posted more than 10 updates and regularly return to the site? Ah, now that’s where the number drops off slightly. Twitter has just a 40% retention rate, i.e. 60% of the people who visit Twitter think, “This isn’t for me,” and never return.

My hope is that those people, and those who have never been to the site, return for a second look. Twitter really does have its uses like no other provider can offer. And best of all, it’s free, quick and simple!

Why was there a need for a site like Twitter?

In 2005, a fella by the name of Jack Dorsey joined a blogging site called LiveJournal. Despite being “Live”, Jack felt that the posts weren’t updated frequently enough for him to get a good idea of people’s daily lives and the entries were often so long that he really couldn’t be bothered reading through them. Jack saw the need for a quick, short, more frequent update and so Twitter was born.

What is it?

Twitter is a facility for posting short (140 character) text updates to an online page. When you log on, you’ll see the last 20 posts from your network and you’ll be able to quickly add your own post to the Twitterverse.

Your network consists of those people that you “follow” and those that are your “followers” (although many will fit into both categories).

Twitter allows you to add personality to your brand and create a personal face for your business. It’s used by many corporations as a facility to generate two-way communication with clients.

Who uses it?

Twitter is becoming the next big thing. It’s trendy AND geeky, which is the new cool! It’s used by lots of celebrities and politicians, but most commonly it’s used by mature business professionals.

Twitter experiences the highest social network growth of over 1,300% in the last 6 months leading up to February this year, and it’s most popular with the over 30′s age groups.

How can it be used?

Generally, the people that use Twitter are part of a new wave of information sharers. They value information from others and so freely give it when asked.

As any other social media tool, the Twitter community loves network building and also loves to show their support for a particular cause. There are millions of users out there and many of those users will happily connect with an organisation that shares a common interest in supporting a particular cause. For this reason, non-profits should find it fairly easy to build their network.

An example of a possible use: Once a network of supporters has been established, a non-profit could ask its followers if they would prefer to see their money spent on one thing or another simply by asking the community. Responses would be echoed throughout the community and so, by default, would encourage more attention, more awareness and more of a following.

Any non-profits already using it?

An example of Twitter use by a non-profit in New Zealand can be seen at http://www.twitter.com/tearfundnz and also at http://www.twitter.com/anzacpoppy

The RSA have used Twitter for a short ANZAC campaign to increase donations. Tear Fund are different in that they maintain a continuing online presence by constantly updating their Twitter account with relevant news stories and information about countries in need. They also encourage traffic to their own site by posting links and giving updates on recent additions to the Tear Fund website.

10 Best Practices:

1. Create your Twitter account with either your own name or the name of your organisation (if you need authority to do this, be sure to obtain it from the relevant parties).

2. Post 3 or 4 messages. Something along the lines of “<your organisation or cause> is now on Twitter!” and a couple more posts about your cause, and perhaps something you have been involved with recently. This means you have something “pre-entered” on your account so anyone checking you out will see a little of what you are about before they decide to follow you. If they see a blank screen, they may move on without following you.

3. Head to the likes of “www.twitter.com/marklincoln” and “www.twitter.com/donatenzwishes” and “www.twitter.com/tearfundnz”. If you are logged into Twitter, you will see a “follow” button next to their name. Click this to add them to your network and begin recieving their updates.

4. Take a look at the people following the accounts in step 3 (by clicking on followers). Find people who may be interested in your cause, i.e. people who are in New Zealand and perhaps in your home city, or people who are already following other causes (such as Tear Fund NZ) and click “follow” next to their name. Their updates will now show each time you log on to Twitter.

5. Observe! Before posting too much, be sure to observe what others are doing and get a feel for the updates that get the best response.

6. Use material that may already be available to you. If your site has a blog, or an online newsletter, write the heading in your Twitter update and add a link to the article on your site (use www.tinyurl.com if you want to make your links shorter to fit in the box).

7. Participate. Once you have an understanding of the basics, get communicating! Add relevant updates about your cause and you’ll find your network growing. You can also communicate directly with your followers by adding an “@” sign in front of their name before your message, or by clicking on the small arrow next to their post. Note that these “replies” are public. To communicate privately, click click the envelope icon.

8. Use the search tool. Find out if conversations are already taking place about your cause or your organisation. See who are posting the comments and join them to add value to the conversation.

9. Give it time. Many people are put off by Twitter in the first few attempts at using it. Put some time into seeing how people interact with other and the extra tools that are available to ensure you get the most from Twitter. If you use Twitter in the right way, your network will grow itself.

10. Enjoy it! But realise it’s not for everyone. If you find you are really not getting into it, find someone in your organisation who is a champion for your cause and will enjoy interacting with your supporters through Twitter and then set them up with an account!

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• Users join networks to connect and socialise online with other people who share common interests or locations. Networks are organised by city, workplace, school and region.
• People can also add friends and send them messages, update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves, add photos and video, set up pages to support their favourite charities.

Wired described Facebook as “a fully functioning social hub, where users can keep track of one another’s favorite music and videos, share and compare movie reviews, and hit one another up for contributions to pet causes.”

“Facebook promises to become an online identity for recruiters, bosses, and colleagues looking to hire and promote; a souped-up business card for job hunters; and a dossier of people’s likes and dislikes that vendors can use to provide targeted products and services. ”

Bizarre webfacts:

• 5th most popular site
• Second most popular thing among undergraduates in the US, tied with beer
• On 16 March 2009 a  New Zealand judge approved the serving of court documents using Facebook on a man being sued over his business dealings
• In December 2008, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory ruled that Facebook is a valid protocol to serve court notices to defendants

Source: Wikipedia.com

How Facebook came about:

Facebook was first developed in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg (described in an article by Wired as a ‘snot-faced upstart’ and a ‘dotcom deity’)  and his roomies whilst at Harward Uni.

It was called ‘The Facebook” in reference to the hardcopy book that his prep school gave out to introduce new students. It was a  kind of student directory which was called the ‘Photo Address book“, but referred to as the face book.

It initially was only available to Harvard students, but as it gained ground it expanded to other universities, high schools, work places, and now everyone.

Stats:

• More than 130 million active users
• More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
• More than 30 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices

Business Model:
Principally revenue generated through advertising.

Zuckerburg told attendees at a recent Web 2.0 summit that Facebook utilises ‘Social ads’, which broadcast the users’ behavior to their friends. For example, if they watch the preview of a movie, and comment on it, that information will be broadcast to their friends on the service.

I’d liken this to a type of automated viral marketing.

Demographics:
Overall:

• 35-54 year old demo is growing fastest, with a 276.4% growth rate in the second half of last year
• 55+ demo 194.3% growth rate
• 25-34 year population doubling every 6 months
• more females (55.7%) than males (42.2%) on Facebook
• largest demographic concentration remains the 18-24 year olds (40.8%) down from (53.8%) six months ago
• Women communicate with more people in all cases than men

NZ stats mostly reflect this, as of Friday April 17th 2009:

NZ Facebook users: 774,120
58.7% female, 41.3% male
age 14-17, 6.6%
age 18-24, 34%
age 25-34, 33.9%
age 35-44, 14.6%
age 45-54, 6.4%
age 55-64, 3.0%
age 65+, 1.0%

New Zealand numbers per head of population:

Rank: 17th
Population Figure: 4,304,509
Facebook Users: 768,100
Penetration: 17.84%

Pros and Cons:
Pros:

• User focussed.
• Low cost – helps to reach a younger and wider audience at a much lower cost than traditional media.
• Good ‘awareness’ building tool (draws attention but not necessarily donations).
• Promotes referrals from friends.
• Helps to reach a younger and wider audience.

Cons:

• Privacy issues for users.
• According to Facebook’s terms and conditions, they have the right to use the material you upload, including photos, as they see fit. See our blog post ‘Giving it away’.
• Donor fatigue, brought about by the share volume of requests for help bombardment with messages.
• Needs a really novel idea that people will gravitate to, i.e: “(Lil) Green Patch,” a facebook app where users build, share and tend a virtual garden. Sponsors donate money to save Rainforests each time the app is used.
• Must update your profiles regularly. Add new material several times a week.

Facebook Causes:
Most of the apps on Facebook are designed for users rather than for charities or not-for-profits themselves. Users can play games or buy virtual gifts that contribute to Facebook charities. However there is one app that can be used by charities and NFPs to build awareness, recruit new members or volunteers, drive traffic to their website and donate.

Facebook has a third party app called ‘Causes‘ which it says any “user with a little passion and initiative can create a cause, recruit their friends into that cause, keep everybody in the cause up-to-speed on issues and media related to the cause, and, most importantly, raise money directly through the cause”.

Donations can currently only be made directly from Facebook to registered partner charities in the US and Canada, however it is possible, when a user sets up a ’cause’ to include a  link in the description or media board of your Facebook cause to encourage people to donate directly on the charities website.

Users can set up a cause, join a cause, invite friends to join a cause, do a fundraising pledge or a invite pledge to increase a causes membership, make a birthday wish so your friends will donate to your cause in honour of your birthday. A fairly simple way for you to get existing supporters who are active uses of Facebook to assist your cause.

My search for New Zealand based causes returned 220 results – mostly serious. Some are able to take direct donations through FaceBook but if the donor is not aware, they may not notice that the donations are not actually going to a NZ charity, and of course the amounts are in US dollars, not NZ.

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Links to more resources:

• Facebook stats by country
• Facebook numbers per head of population
• Protection your privacy in Facebook
• Human Society of the United States, Spay Day Campaign Facebook page
• Human Society of the United States, Spay Day Campaign webpage
• Cancer Research UK – Using Facebook Groups to Fundraise

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1: Increase your linkability
Static sites, those that do not have regularly updated content, do not attract repeat visitors, they are also of little value when it comes to linking to.

To overcome this your site has to be regularly updated. Sure, some material will not change, and it is fine to keep that static, but the addition of a blog, of news and article pages, ‘white papers’ will change a static site into one with potential linkability.

2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
Include calls to action for users to tag, bookmark and Digg* your stuff.

* Digg is a “place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web”.

3. Reward inbound links

Those of you who know a bit about search engines will know that inbound links from quality sites are one of the goals of SEO.  It is the same for blogs.

If you don’t have inbound links yet, start by providing your site visitors with useful relevant outbound links. You increase your site’s value to your visitors and overtime this is more likely to be relevant to search engine results when you are seen as a quality source of links to information in this area.

4. Help your content travel
Don’t waste good content. Recycle and Reuse it -  submit pdfs, video, sound files to other relevant sites.

5. Encourage the ‘mashup’
Mashup is a web app that combines data / functions from multiple sources into one application. i.e using Google Maps embedded into external sites. YouTube providing code to enable you to embed a video on your website.

By encouraging mashup you allow others to use your content or tools to create something new and different for users.

Getting started – dipping you toe into the Social Media waters

But the best way to start is to get involved yourself, even if you are just a participant and not authoring fresh content yourself. This is the best way to understand how it all works and how you could use it to promote your business or not-for-profit organisation.

When you understand the medium you are then in a better position to develop a SMO strategy – define your objectives and set goals for your Social Media campaign. Be fully aware of what your desired outcome is – reputation, sales, influence, credibility, charity, traffic/page views, etc.

For more rules on social media optimisation check out:

• The 5 rules of Social Media Optimisation by Rohit Bhargava

• Rules 6 and 7 by Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang
• Rules 8, 9, 10 and 11 by Cameron Olthuis of Pronet Advertising
• Rule 12 and 13 by Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal
• Rule 14, 15 and 16 by Lee Odden of Online Marketing Blog

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Blogging, wikis, tweets, mashup, pings, digg it… the list goes on.

Social media, sometimes called ‘user-generated content’ has helped to turn anybody with enough time on their hands into a publisher, journalist, video producer, actor, photographer, entertainer…

It is wonderful – somewhat suddenly, the tools that were only available to those with lots of money (generally businesses) became available to anyone with access to a computer and an internet connection.  And the GenY and Gen Zs took to it like a duck to water.

Of course like all good things that start out of somebody’s garage or dorm room as a bit of fun, they soon draw the attention of venture capitalists, and it is only a matter of time before users start to see ads for Russian brides, weight loss or other supposedly targeted offers whenever they visit the site.

Businesses and organisations in NZ are typically behind those in the US when it comes to marketing themselves online.

What exactly is social media?
Below is a great video from commoncraft that is aptly called ‘Social Media in Plain English’

The two tenants of online social marketing: SMM and SMO

1. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

SMM involves the “creation and distribution of content and other messages through the social web by some form of viral marketing”.

For example:
- participating in online communities where your customers, or the the case of the not-for-profit, your supporters hang out
- spreading a viral video by putting it on YouTube
- creating a ‘Cause’ on Facebook

These are things that are created ‘off-site’, i.e. not on your company or organisation’s website.

2. Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

SMO happens on your site. Embedding a YouTube video on your site would be a tactic of SMO. SMO came out of SEO (Search Engine Optimisaton), a technique which also involves work on your site so it will drive qualified traffic to your site from search engines.

For more on SMO visit the Hot PJ blog post on social media optimisation.

Like SEO, both Social Media Optimisation and Social Media Marketing, will spawn a whole new knowledge-based industry, where people are actually paid to waste time on Facebook, Twitter, LInked in – a bit like Mark at Hot PJ!

Selecting your target social media channel

In order to select the right tools to use in any social media marketing strategy it is important to know the demographics. There is no point wasting resources setting up a campaign in Facebook if it is not going to be seen by your demographic – those that fit the profile of your target audience.

It is also important to look at the origins of the social media site, its business model, and any issues surrounding its use that can and do attract bad press. For instance, Facebook has been under pressure for allowing holocaust deniers to use it’s services to ‘spread hatred’, contrary to Facebook’s own service terms, which state that users may not “post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.” Facebook has also been criticised for hosting ‘anti-gypsy’ and ‘white-pride’ groups on their site.

It is often hard to anticipate how users will react to material posted on a site. Not everyone is going to love what you do and social media makes it easy for them amplify their opinion! Make sure you have a plan for how to deal with bad social press as well as the good.

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I’m one of the slow adopters of these favourites. I don’t have a Twitter account, and my Facebook page only got updated when I was working on this project. I trot out the same excuses many other business owners of my generation use – I just don’t have the time!

But hang on -  there are many elements of social media in most of the sites I participate in. I’m researching my family history so have signed up to sites like ancestry.co.uk, genesreunited.co.uk, oldschoolfriends.co.nz – all of which have some method of facilitating social interaction between their users. I’m also a member of the geocaching.com site which again has the facility to socially network (even if I don’t use it!). So chances are, if you have a computer and an internet connection, you are participating in some form of social media even if you aren’t regularly tweeting or obsessing about the number of ‘friends’ you have in Facebook.

Out of this research exercise has come a whole host of great resources, useful for any business wanting to test the waters with social media, but in particular for not-for-profits. So in the spirit of the medium, over the next few posts I’ll cover my ‘take’ on social media along with those considered the ‘gurus’ in the field,  and some useful links and resources. And so you get a view from a more active social media user, Mark, our in-house GenY, will also provide his insights.

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