Wired Causes

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Note from Beth: By the time you are reading, I’ll probably have been on a jet plane for far longer than I want to be and maybe have landed in Rwanda.   Once I recover from the journey, expect read reports about the Networked NGO in Rwanda and use of social media to support Women’s [...]

Your website is still your most important digital presence, according to a fantastic Wikibrands post.  This certainly applies not only to consumer brands but also to nonprofit marketing and fundraising.  Most donors visit a nonprofit website before deciding to give online OR offline, and it’s where most people searching for your cause will first encounter your brand.

So spend at least half your digital time on your good old website.

What makes a great website?  Wikibrands has a nifty rating system that assigns weight to different attributes of a solid site:

  Overall Impact   25pts
  Content 15 pts.
  Navigation 15 pts.
  User Experience 15 pts.
  Findability 15 pts.
  Socialability 15 pts.

Check out how to improve your site in this presentation. 

Your website is still your most important digital presence, according to a fantastic Wikibrands post.  This certainly applies not only to consumer brands but also to nonprofit marketing and fundraising.  Most donors visit a nonprofit website before deciding to give online OR offline, and it’s where most people searching for your cause will first encounter your brand.

So spend at least half your digital time on your good old website.

What makes a great website?  Wikibrands has a nifty rating system that assigns weight to different attributes of a solid site:

  Overall Impact   25pts
  Content 15 pts.
  Navigation 15 pts.
  User Experience 15 pts.
  Findability 15 pts.
  Socialability 15 pts.

Check out how to improve your site in this presentation. 

Note from Beth: By the time you read this post,  I’ll be in the air enroute to Rwanda for a training project.   As a parent of wired kids, I think teaching digital literacy is very important for parents to do.  Here’s some great advice from my colleagues at CommonSense Media.   Three reasons kids [...]

If you are marketing on a shoestring, you need to focus your resources on one point in time: your audiences’ open-minded moments.

What’s an open-minded moment?  It’s a time, place or state of mind when people are most likely to hear your message, find it relevant and act upon it.  For example, last month was an open-minded month for TurboTax marketers.  Miller cleverly realized 5 pm is an open-minded moment for potential beer drinkers, so they branded happy hour as Miller Time. 

Think of the brain as a camera.  Open-minded moments are the ones where our mental shutter opens, lets in light and focuses on something specific.  If we can predict when our audience’s mental shutters will open, then we can show up for the photo shoot, thrust our offering into the picture and succeed in being seen.  This is a better strategy than trying to force off someone’s lens cap and demand they zoom in on our beautiful cause. 

No matter how nicely we dress up, if our audience isn’t looking for our message or finding it easy to take action, we stand a poor chance of getting noticed.

A great example is the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which encourages volunteers to spray paint the message, “Don’t Dump - Chesapeake Bay Drainage” on storm drains.  That’s placement of the right message, at the right time, at the right place.  At the moment when someone is contemplating dumping a can of antifreeze into a storm drain, the warning is there to deter the dumper.

What are your open-minded moments?

If you are marketing on a shoestring, you need to focus your resources on one point in time: your audiences’ open-minded moments.

What’s an open-minded moment?  It’s a time, place or state of mind when people are most likely to hear your message, find it relevant and act upon it.  For example, last month was an open-minded month for TurboTax marketers.  Miller cleverly realized 5 pm is an open-minded moment for potential beer drinkers, so they branded happy hour as Miller Time. 

Think of the brain as a camera.  Open-minded moments are the ones where our mental shutter opens, lets in light and focuses on something specific.  If we can predict when our audience’s mental shutters will open, then we can show up for the photo shoot, thrust our offering into the picture and succeed in being seen.  This is a better strategy than trying to force off someone’s lens cap and demand they zoom in on our beautiful cause. 

No matter how nicely we dress up, if our audience isn’t looking for our message or finding it easy to take action, we stand a poor chance of getting noticed.

A great example is the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which encourages volunteers to spray paint the message, “Don’t Dump - Chesapeake Bay Drainage” on storm drains.  That’s placement of the right message, at the right time, at the right place.  At the moment when someone is contemplating dumping a can of antifreeze into a storm drain, the warning is there to deter the dumper.

What are your open-minded moments?

If you are marketing on a shoestring, you need to focus your resources on one point in time: your audiences’ open-minded moments.

What’s an open-minded moment?  It’s a time, place or state of mind when people are most likely to hear your message, find it relevant and act upon it.  For example, last month was an open-minded month for TurboTax marketers.  Miller cleverly realized 5 pm is an open-minded moment for potential beer drinkers, so they branded happy hour as Miller Time. 

Think of the brain as a camera.  Oepn-minded moments are the ones where our mental shutter opens, lets in light and focuses on something specific.  If we can predict when our audience’s mental shutters will open, then we can show up for the photo shoot, thrust our offering into the picture and succeed in being seen.  This is a better strategy than trying to force off someone’s lens cap and demand they zoom in on our beautiful cause. 

No matter how nicely we dress up, if our audience isn’t looking for our message or finding it easy to take action, we stand a poor chance of getting noticed.

A great example is the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which encourages volunteers to spray paint the message, “Don’t Dump - Chesapeake Bay Drainage” on storm drains.  That’s placement of the right message, at the right time, at the right place.  At the moment when someone is contemplating dumping a can of antifreeze into a storm drain, the warning is there to deter the dumper.

What are your open-minded moments?

Your website is still your most important digital presence, according to a fantastic Wikibrands post.  This certainly applies not only to consumer brands but also to nonprofit marketing and fundraising.  Most donors visit a nonprofit website before deciding to give online OR offline, and it’s where most people searching for your cause will first encounter your brand.

So spend at least half your digital time on your good old website.

What makes a great website?  Wikibrands has a nifty rating system that assigns weight to different attributes of a solid site:

  Overall Impact   25pts
  Content 15 pts.
  Navigation 15 pts.
  User Experience 15 pts.
  Findability 15 pts.
  Socialability 15 pts.

Check out how to improve your site in this presentation.