Nonprofit Expressions

The answer is not as simple as your check book might tell you. Because while a talented designer can whip something up in no time, it is important to remember that a logo will give a first and last impression of what you want your publics to think about you!

Does it reflect your purpose? Does it reflect your organization’s personality? Will it appeal to the characteristics of the specific target market you are appealing to, and your donor audiences?

I recently read an article titled, ‘Do you REALLY want a logo that only costs $100?’ by MarketingProfs. The article made the argument that “A good logo requires substantial effort: Research, brainstorming, sketches, four or five options and final tweaking. With a $100 budget, meanwhile, it’s likely the designer will produce something generic, and even resort to non-proprietary clip art that could easily appear in other logos.”

My immediate reaction was,’ Hey! We only charge $100.’ But it’s true! I couldn’t agree more with the article. You have to spend money in the beginning or pay for it, literally, down the line with redesign and rebranding - which also affects your audiences!

Although our company is not like a logo-mill who produces clip-artish logos that are pre-made and cookie-cutter, the point is that organizations need to make sure their logo is well thought through, researched, and includes more than one designer in the process.

My designer and I go through a process of brain storming ideas of the kind of designs that would motivate someone, or make a lasting impression - and certainly reflect an organization’s purpose. FREE International (Under Design Examples at http://www.nonprofit-expressions.com/portfolio.html), for example, was a logo that - yes - only cost $100, but my designer and I went through many drafts before we finally found something that truly reflected the characteristics needed: the innocence of young women involved in modern day slavery, while still portraying their captivity. By standing hand-in-hand we are given a sense of power and passion.

But FREE International is one organization who knows their audience. We went through detailed conversations with Director Mike Bartel in order to find a design that suited them. In cases where organizations need more research and and analysis to understand their target, I would suggest a Situation Analysis before even thinking about starting on a logo!

Of course there are other factors that might affect how much  you pay for a logo, like the size of your budget or the size of your audience. If you are a small food bank you might use something more cookie cutter, versus a corporation with plans to go public within the next year.

One of the most common challenges that nonprofit organizations face is being able to clearly define what they DO.

Can I get an Amen?

Please don’t misunderstand, I do not mean that what they do is not important, but simply that they do so many important things that it is difficult to distinguish a purpose.

I used to coordinate grant writing trainings for SAMHSA, and the trainer (now director of Compassion by Design) used to ask “the million dollar” question: “If you had to compete for 1 million dollars in one sentence, what would that one sentence be?”

How does this have anything to do with branding?

It has EVERYTHING to do with branding! A brand is much more than a logo (although images is a huge part of it). A brand is the overall impression that an organization’s audiences have about that organization.

Just stop a second… what do you think about when you hear your organizations name?

It should be clearly defined, distinguished and one-sentence worth!

We can relate

Nonprofit Expressions is currently undergoing a lot of change. A LOT of change. We moved into a new office (Amen!), are starting a PC repair business, digging into the local web design market, and are having to re-define our purpose!

Our passion is still churches and nonprofits, but we have branched out to small businesses and individuals. So now what? “Nonprofit Expressions” isn’t going to cut it anymore. And when asked… “what do you do?”… it is hard to even know how to respond without spouting out a thousand verbs at once.

But with launching our new sister businesses this May, this is the perfect time to begin defining our brand.

Check out our new all-encompassing website: www.expressions-lab.com

So how can we begin clarifying our brand?

Start with a communications audit. Have a professional look at all of your communications materials: print, online, broadcast, etc. This will help evaluate your organization’s current capacity or performance of essential communications practices. It will tell you what is working well, what’s not and give you some important recommendations for next steps.

Next, define your publics: who has influence on your organization, and who does your organization influence (staff, members, customers, stakeholders, etc).

Then, do a survey (something simple). You can use surveymonkey.com for free, for example. Send the survey to a variety of key publics and ask them to define your organization. You will get to see your organization through the eyes of the people who matter. They might even have some great suggestions on improvement!

Other steps in this process can be a full situation analysis and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and even some strategies you can implement to improve your brand.

For more information on a communications audit or survey, contact Jennifer!

Do your email newsletters get read? Do they go straight to the SPAM filter? Do you get a lot of people unsubscribing?

There are plenty of factors contributing to the effectiveness of email campaigns. We are going to examine four main criteria and formulate a report card for you to use on your email campaign: first impressions, value of content, SPAM prevention and convergence effectiveness.

The purpose of an email campaign is to create convergence with the end user: build top of mind awareness, increase sales, drive people to a website or create warm leads. There are many different aspects of an email newsletter campaign which play into the effectiveness of that campaign. Of course, the ultimate test is the converge rates after an email has been mailed, but there are many methods of increasing click through rates, as discussed below.

1. First Impressions

The look & feel of the e-newsletter should match that of your organization’s branding. It should draw the reader in and create a feeling that matches it’s purpose: for example, if you are The American Red Cross, it should be professional and serious. If you are a children’s athletic organization, however, it may need to be fun and friendly. Brand repetition and top of mind awareness are very important!

The newsletter should be conventional with other types of online news sources. It should include a newsletter title, date and maybe an edition number.

The SIZE of the email should fit inside the average email inbox. An average email is 500 pixels wide, and your newsletter should not exceed the length of two page scrolls. The size of the email alone can drastically change a user’s experience. A newsletter which is so large that it is overwhelming may prevent the user from reading it at all.

Pleasing to the eye:
Dimensions in Pixels:
Reflection of branding and purpose:
GRADE:
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2. Value of Content

This is where you want to make sure you give readers a reason to stick around: a place to  donate, volunteer, visit your website, etc. News Flashes create a sense of urgency while a Tip of the Day suggests valuable solutions.

The newsletter may also includes a letter from an individual in the organization that helps the newsletter to be more personal.

FREE RESOURCES are an excellent method to pick up warm leads (people who are interested in your products). If someone will pick up a free resources by clicking through to go to your website, they may also want to donate or contribute in another way.

Sense of Urgency:
Timeliness:
Relevancy:
Engaging:
Develops Trust/ Credibility:
Offers valuable resources:
GRADE:
———————————————————————————–

3. SPAM Prevention

It is extremely important that your emails, especially if they are sent regularly, get past SPAM filters. SPAM filters rank incoming emails on a scale of 1-10. If the newsletter has too many “red flags,” for example, using words like “free,” “$$$,” “Save,” “Discount,” etc, then the email will be sent straight to a user’s junk mail.

Audience Acceptance:
Subject Line:
‘From’ and ‘To’ Lines:
Non-use of SPAM alert words:
Non-use of SPAM alert colors:
Use of bold, blue, plain text links:
One-click Unsubscribe:
GRADE:
———————————————————————————–

4. Convergence Effectiveness

As discussed in the beginning, the most important item at the end of the day is whether or not your purpose was met. I would suggest sitting down with a few staff members, defining a purpose for the campaign, and brainstorming about how you could increase your click through rates.

We have chosen criteria based on proven methods of effectiveness. It is also important to note that although you may have a number of click through links, the likely hood of readers actually clicking through is based on the value of the content combined with giving readers a reason to converge.

Inclusion of a Navigation Bar:
Forward to a Friend Link:
Placement of Images vs. Copy:
Personalization:
Placement of Most Important Information:
Click-through Links:
Subject Line:
GRADE:
———————————————————————————–

BRAIN STORM ON WAYS TO IMPROVE!

Notes: Although it is good to have the newsletter match the branding of your website, it should be different enough to identify it as an email newsletter. Another rule of thumb is that newsletters should be conventional to web standards. For example, many websites and newsletters offer click through links in their headers!

Now wait a minute.. this blog is not about people like Heath Ledger dying…. Is it?

No, but his death mere hours ago in his New York apartment is lighting up the blogosphere, and although this is a very sad story of drug abuse and a life of excess leading to ultimate destruction, it is relevant here because it is a great example of the quick response of the bloggers.

The current top Technorati (a blog search engine) blog on the sites entertainment page was posted just two and a half hours after the actor was found by a masseuse who came for an apointment to the SoHo apartment.

This is incredible if we think closely about it. Before the nightly news, and long before the next newspapers will have printed it, and before some news websites had the news posted, a blogger had all the details online.

That blog is actually a part of the New York Times website. This is also very interesting when we consider the fact that many people who never would have visited the NY Times website will have read this blog. In fact without this blog being written and posted in the NY Times blog section they would have missed out on a lot of traffic and exposure.

The lesson we can take from this is that blog search engines like Technorati are looking for the most current and relevant information to dish out. In fact by writing this blog about Heath Ledgers passing (only because it is relevant at this moment) will probably drive more readers to this blog in the next 24-48 hours as his death is big news and the masses move to search for information about it.

This principle can always apply when writing current or up-to-date content. One blog article or website story can in fact produce volumes of website traffic if the article is current and relates to something people have a lot of interest in.

This article is also an extreme stretch. When I decided to write the article I needed to find something very current in the news, including Heath Ledgers name in the article only applies because any current news could in fact be used.

The best time to write new interesting and insider content is when it is likely to be news or highly interesting to the largest group of people. If you run an organization that feeds the hungry and you see a best selling author on world hunger doing an interview on the news, that moment is a great time to write on your blog about the author, or to post a review of his book on your site.

When your sector of society or industry makes news, you should be using it to your advantage!

By Jennifer

Forget the lead paragraph, watch our ‘Elf Yourself’ video. (A Christmas treat from Nonprofit Expressions).

Office Max gives internet consumers the “miraculous ability to turn themselves into elfs,” according to the www.elfyourself.com website. The program lets you upload up to four pictures of your friend’s faces. The result? A hilarious video of your friends, coworkers, boss or family members that you can share with them!

So let’s get to the point: what makes it a viral ad, and why is it so effective?

Wikipedia defines viral marketing and viral advertising as “marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.”

According to George Silverman in ‘The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing,’ a satisfied customer may tell an average of three people about a product/service that they like, but ELEVEN people about a product or service which they didn’t like. In the case of Elf Yourself, however, people may tell 4 ore more people every time they make a video - multiply that by the number of videos each person makes (I made 5 versions for family and friends).

Other well-known viral ad campaigns include the Aqua Teen Hunger Force campaign which caused a bomb scare in Boston. Although this was not an internet campaign, it obviously created a lot of brand awareness. Other types of viral promotions include funny video clips, interactive online games called “advergames” or text messages, for a few examples.

Viral Marketing as Cause Marketing

Let’s think about viral marketing in nonprofit terms. We don’t necessarily have a product or service, but we do have a cause. If a viral ad for a specific cause is self-replicating, that means that a user is feeling connected to a cause or purpose. They start to have a feeling of ownership with the cause. TheNewJew blog talks more about maximizing social networking tools.

For more information contact the author.

By Aaron1.
Get listed in the Search Engines. This is maybe the most simple of the ideas in this article - but its a good place to start. Most websites receive over 80% of visitors from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. For that reason alone many of the strategies I will discuss relate directly to how to get in the top search results of the search engines. You cannot spend to much time or energy making sure you show up in the search engines. For starters check and see if your site is listed on google and yahoo. In the search bar type “site:yourdomainname.com”. What should appear is every page indexed by that search engine. If you do not show up, you do not exist in that search engine. If only a few of your hundreds of pages show up it means the search engine didn’t index all of your pages. We will get into why later.

2. Keyword Phrases are “Key.” Every time someone looks for something in a search engine they usually type in a word, or several words. We call this the “keyword phrase.” You need to figure out what keywords really work for your site, by knowing what people actually type into search engines to find the information or products you offer. This is too complex to explain here, but a good Search Engine Optimization company can tell you exactly what phrases you need to know.

3. Every Page Needs a Title. The title of your page is the first thing a search engine reads, its also what appears in many search engines. If you’re home page is titled “Home” it actually can show up as Home in the search engine results. Be specific with your page titles, and use your keyword phrases in them.

4. The first Heading on your page should read like the title of the top story of a newspaper. Make it big, bold, understandable, and most of all use your keyword phrases. This is the second stop on the search engines visit, and may also appear in the search result pages when people find you.

5. Heading’s are bigger than subheadings. This is not only common sense, but the search engines feel that your h1 heading tag is more relevant to the page content than your h2 heading tag. So make sure your code actually uses semantic XHTML (the code should describe the document contents). If you use your website title in big h1 on every page you are making a big mistake. Use your keyword phrase in your heading, and related words in your subheadings.

6. META its important. You have probably heard of a META tag before if you own a website. No its not a birth defect or a medical bracelet. Its a piece of code that is hidden in your website. Every single page of your site needs them. The first one it needs is a description tag. This tag tells the search engine what the page is about. The text you put here will often end up in the search results page as well.

7. Keywords in the META. You keywords also belong in the meta section. You should have a keyword tag with the relevant keyword phrases in every page of your site. Each one should represent the page its on. (hint: every keyword phrase in the tag should exist on the page itself) for an example of a keyword tag and a description tag see the following:

8. Make Your First Words Count. When you begin any web page article or text you should make sure that your keyword phrases are right in the first couple sentences, somewhere in the middle once or twice, and again at the end. You are trying to make sure the search engines know what the article is about, while still writing for people to read.

9. Anchors are Not Just for Ships! Anchor tags (xhtml tags that create a link between two documents or pages) are very important in telling search engines what a document is about. Search engines assume you will link to other pages and sites with relevant content. So make sure your links use keyword phrases, and are descriptive. Example of a good link: (Blue mountain bike maintenance) where the entire line is a link. Example of a bad link: (read about blue mountain bike maintenance here ). where the word “here” is the link, leaving out all the describing text.

10. Make Sure the Crawlers Can See Your Entire Site. When search engines “crawl” a website they can only read text. They can’t see images, video, or flash. So make sure your site has plenty of text, and VERY CRITICAL, make sure your links are in text somewhere. If you only link from one page to another in a flash movie, or using images the crawlers may not even try to take a look at the pages you link to. If you want to see what pages the search engines have index type “site:http://wwww.yourwebsite.com” into the search engine you want to check.

11. Map it! If you want to make sure google and yahoo get to take a look at all of your pages you need to create an XML sitemap. This is really a very simple process use the sitemap generator.

12. Send Your Sitemap. Google and Yahoo want to see your sitemap so they know what pages to index. Submit to google here, and submit to yahoo here.

13. Every Page for Itself. In the world of “search” - every page on every website in the universe is competing for the same search traffic. That means unless google and yahoo can figure out what your page is about you will often be left out in the cold on page 1,234 of the search results for your search keyword phrases. Make sure you remember its every page for itself, not every site for itself. Every page should be a complete thought. Every page should have specific keyword phrases associated for it in the META tags, content, headings, and links. If you always remember this you are a step ahead of the competition. (Are they really even competition if you show up as result number 4 on page one and they show up as result number 1 on page 64?)

14. Do Some Reading. If you want to get good at the search engine game read some authors who have had success with them.

15. Get Local. If you are a local business who needs local business (you don’t sell watches online to people in china) you should get local with the search engines. Local Search is somewhat new, but very important to local businesses. You need to poke around and make sure you are listed in google’s directory results for local search. You should also check on yahoo, yellowpages.com, and other local search websites. Make sure you show up the same way you expect to in the local phone book. In todays world many people don’t pick up a paper phone book very often when they have search at their fingertips on the work computer, on the cell phone, even on people’s tv’s.

16. Get Some Links. This is a double edged sword in internet marketing. Not only can a visitor click on a link from another site to find you, the search engines assume your website is more important the more links you have pointing to your site. So ask websites that are not your competition but still relevant to your business. Remember to ask them to use descriptive text when creating your anchor’s, even better yet email them the text you want them to use. (NOTE: you can offer to link back, but its not as great an idea when thinking about search rankings.)

17. Get Listed in Online Directories. Directories like Google’s are free to get listed in, and they can count as links! Not many people actually search directories these days, but they do produce some traffic, and the links are worth their weight in gold. (NOTE: Yahoo’s directory is a complete ripoff. Unless you have a million dollar web marketing budget just forget it and move on to the free listings like google.)

18. Write an Article… or 30. Writing articles people can use in newsletters, and on websites is a great way to earn some links, introduce yourself to some readers who might grow to like you. You should write short, concise, fun articles about a topic that relates to your organization. You can them list them in an article source directory for people to use for free. These are a great way to get links because you can write a three or four line bio at the bottom of the article and put a link to your website in it.

19. Start an Industry Blog. Blog’s are the communication tool of the future. I mean who really knows whats going on in an industry like the people working there? Skip past the PR pro’s and the spin doctors and read a blog. Better yet - start a blog! What do you know intimate personal, in-depth information about? If it relates to your business you should be blogging about it. People in your field of work, and people interested in your business will want to hear what you have to say. Blogs are also a great way to earn some links because people will start linking to your articles.

20. Are You Newsworthy? Here is a tip, when you submit a press release “over the wire” it ends up on computer screens all over the world. If what you have to say is truly newsworthy it could end up in publications like CNN, Fox News, USA Today, the local paper, or on blogs. If your organization does anything newsworthy you should let the world know. Not only is the news a great form of advertising, but its free. Make sure to include your web address on any and all press releases you send out.

21. Does Your Business Card Advertise Your Website? How about your office stationary? What about all your printed materials? You spend money on your printed materials so remember to make the most for your dollar and advertise your website URL on everything you can print it on. I have even visited a few websites I saw on the side of car doors.

22. URL on the Television. Many times companies forget they can advertise their website in other advertising. It gives people an immediate place to get more information or read further about your organization. So if you are going to be on the radio, TV, or even in the newspaper anytime soon remember to advertise your website URL.

23. Install Your Signature. Microsoft Outlook is like today’s mail room. But what is a good mail room without stationary to write your letters on? If you forget to put your key information in your emails via signature, you are missing out on free advertising. Put your name, position, organization, address, telephone number, fax number, email address, and URL in your signature. Its like having your business card in every email you send.

24. Give Something Away. A great way to drive some traffic to your website is by giving something away for free. As a nonprofit a great way of doing this is to get a local business to donate it. Offer the business advertising in return, and you shouldn’t have to much trouble finding a willing donor. Then advertise your giveaway on your email contact list, your mailers, in the newspaper, (NOTE: If it is for a cause it is newsworthy) and even on a sign out front.

25. Start an Internet Newsletter. One of the best forms of advertising I have had personal experience with is email advertising. If you develop a good list you can send out a newsletter and drive hundreds if not thousands of people to your website. At one point earlier in my career I corresponded with over 7 thousand people a week via email. I was having conversations with over three thousand of them via email using personalized form responses. If you do not have an email list you can send a newsletter to, you should start collecting addresses today. I know many clients who advertise almost exclusively through email newsletter. It just works.Stay “tuned” for Part 2 of ‘Website Marketing Strategies’ - we will discuss guest blogging, rented email lists, and more!