From Our Brains to Yours
Guidelines for Online Content
If it’s Thursday… you know the drill! This week, we’ve got three things about developing online content:
1. Make it scannable. All of the available evidence is conclusive: people don’t read online content, they scan it. Your beautifully constructed sentences and artfully worded deep thoughts are for naught. In fact, if you’re [...]
Big picture checklist: web redesign
Designing or redesiging your web site is rarely easy. There will be tons of little questions related to design details, what specific pages say or don’t say, etc., etc, etc. But too often, people are ready to agonize over the size and color of logos and buttons before they’ve decided a few of the big [...]
Presentation: Strategy for Communications
This morning I gave a presentation at the NACCDO/PAN Marketing Conference on strategy for communications: what it is, how to diagnose if you’ve got it, and what do to to be more strategic. It’s a fantastic group of talented folks – the Communications Directors, Marketing Managers, and Public Affairs professionals at the nation’s cancer centers [...]
It’s Urgent!
If it’s Thursday… it’s time for Three Things!
On Monday, I wrote about evidence that urgency is a necessary (but not sufficient) element of any call to action. In emails and conversation since I put up that post, several people have mentioned that the prescription is all good and well in theory, but quite difficult in [...]
Put a Deadline on that Ask
The latest edition of The Atlantic includes a dispatch on the psychology of separating people from their money: The Gift-Card Economy.
More specifically, the article goes into the connection between urgency and action: to wit, there is no action when there is no urgency. The article examines the differences between preferences and behavior when it comes [...]
Spring Cleaning Edition
If it’s Thursday, it’s time for Three Things. This week: Three spring cleaning shores for your online presence.
Every spring many folks try to clean out a room in the house, get their office organized and refresh for the summer. The same idea can certainly apply to your web site and email lists. Ideally, many of [...]
Back to the basics – Fundraising Online is like Fundraising Offline
The Network for Good Learning Center is a great fundraising resource for any non-profit. They have a great article up: “Five Things We’re Forgetting When We Take Our Fundraising Online.” Rebecca Ruby Higman reminds us that the same basic principles apply to fundraising online as they do offline. She uses these five principles:
People like to give [...]
Do you have a strategy?
If it’s Thursday – whoops, Friday! – it’s time for Three Things!
The most important lesson of the class I teach at Georgetown is this: a plan is not a strategy, and you need a strategy to make your planning and execution as effective as it can be.
The first few weeks of class is vocabulary and [...]
Thinking beyond the cycle
In politics it’s difficult to think beyond the next electoral cycle. What good is it to think about five years from now if you lose your seat – and therefore the ability to make play a part in decision making, period – in eighteen months?
I’m as guilty as the next guy and gal working in [...]
Worthy goals for using social networking
If it’s Thursday, it’s time for Three Things. This week: Three worthy goals for using social networks to help your non-profits
On Monday, Shayna had a great post: “Tools are not strategies.” So true. As Shayna said, “Neither websites nor Twitter, not Convio nor social networks, not even email will yield results for your organization if [...]