I hate that I haven’t been updating recently, but I’ve been working on a new aspect of this site.  I’ve wanted to publish an ebook for quite some time now and I’ve finally done something about it.

About two weeks ago I started laying out the ebook.  I realized that I’d done quite a few articles about using Twitter and the best and most effective ways to engage your customers or fans using the service and decided to bring it all together and expand quite a bit on the content.

I’ve started writing the book, tenetively and creatively “Business Guide to Using Twitter.”  I hope to do better with the name before I publish.  I’ve written about half of the Twitter guide now, but I want to finalize the layout before giving out an outline.

In the next two weeks, I’ll publish a detailed outline of the book and a final release date.  Please use this newsletter signup link to be notified as soon as the book is available.  I promise not to spam you.  The plan is to finish the by the end of October.  Of course, the book’s free and will be released under my Un-Copyright.  Please see here for details of my Un-Copyright.

Please forward this along to anyone that might be interested in the book.

A few weeks back The Wall Street Journal released their policy statement and guidelines for employees using social media.  For a few weeks before that, I had been working on the ideas for this post and the publication of the WSJ guidelines has prompted me to hit the publish button.

As expected, there are plenty of ‘experts’ weighing in on the document.  One of my favorite sites, Mashable.com, published an article that took the WSJ to task for making the policy too restrictive and asking “how can social media harm us and what we can do to prevent it?”  Totally off base here, with all due respect.  Stan Schroeder, the author of the post, takes issue with a few main sections of the policy.

• “Let our coverage speak for itself, and don’t detail how an article was reported, written or edited.
• Don’t discuss articles that haven’t been published, meetings you’ve attended or plan to attend with staff or sources, or interviews that you’ve conducted.

The first part is simply respect for your co-workers and serves to present a ‘united front’ against reader feedback.  Not that you have to agree with everything your co-workers print, but you don’t want to find yourself being cited as a critic of your fellow WSJ employees.  Second, as a traditional news organization, the WSJ places a value on breaking stories.  We could argue about the validity of this concern, but it is what it is and the second bullet point addresses that.  Some of the other complaints were with a section that suggested not friending or following potential sources.  Again, this is simply journalistic ethics.  You need to protect your sources, both from poaching by other journalists and from exposure.  To ding the WSJ for these decisions is to miss the basics of journalistic ethics and privacy.

Though I disagree with a few points in the WSJ document, I have to give them kudos for codifying a policy.  My company, LexisNexis, does not have a global social media policy.  Some of our individual business units do, but there’s no LexisNexis or ReedElseiver policy for those without a unit level policy.  Mashable has another good article on this subject, “Should Your Company Have a Social Media Policy?“  In a word, YES!!

Businesses need to get with the program on this one.  Specifically, they need to realize that people use social media and in most cases, they show their employer by default.  Facebook, for example, allows me to connect with other LN employees while LinkedIn allows me to solicit recommendations, connect with other employees, and comment on other LN employees.  At least the WSJ has a policy in place.

There are benefits to both employers and employees.  First, having a codified policy allows employers to sanction any employee that violates their policies.  Without a policy, it will be challenging for a company to sanction or terminate an employee for a perceived violation.  Let us not forget the cases of Heather B. Anderson or Jessica Cutler.

In addition to the benefits to employers, having a social media policy in place provides piece of mind and guidance to employees.  Without a written policy, employees are on their own to determine what is acceptable and what isn’t.  While a little common sense is great and should provide sufficient guidance, people make bad decisions and a written policy removes the ambiguity from the situation.

Bottom Line:  If your company does not have a policy, you’re behind the times.  It is essential that every company or nonprofit organization provide employees with social media guidance and direction.

I’m not a journalist, nor was meant to be…  So this isn’t a journalistic piece, but a short note about something going on at Clemson University, where I finished my master’s degree in 2005.

The site Inside Higher Ed ran a story today about Clemson’s quest to raise it’s U.S. News and World Reports rankings.  If you’re not involved in higher ed, you might not appreciate how important these rankings can be to a college.  Think Consumer Reports but for colleges.  Now, there is a lot of discussion about if these ratings are actually important or valid, but that’s an issue or another time.

Basically, Clemson’s been gaming the system a bit.  Not violating rules, but playing it close.  You can read the whole article here.  They’re raising salaries, reducing class sizes, increasing fundraising participation, and raising admission standards.  But, they’re doing this by raising tuition on already overburdened parents, raising some classes to above 50 students and reducing others to below 20, getting people to make only token donations to increase participation, and excluding all but the top third of graduating seniors.

You tell me if this is ethical or moral.

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I have just had the time to review and digest a new report from NTEN about Social Media and Non-Profits.  The report, The Non-Profit Social Networking Survey Report, was based on interviews with 980 nonprofit professionals during a month and a half period.  I’m going to focus on a few of the more interesting results.

First, Facebook is used by a whopping 74% of survey respondents.  Now, this was an online survey, so respondents might be predisposed to be online and connected.  Even allowing for this slightly distortion of the sample data, this is a pretty amazing number.  According to the survey the most popular use of Facebook and other commercial sites was a traditional marketing role: creating and defining a brand and promoting events.

The next bit of very interesting news was that 80% of organizations surveyed dedicated at least one quarter of a full time employee to social networking activities.  Of course, for a large nonprofit, a quarter of a FTE is not significant, but even then, it signifies that organizations are taking it seriously.

Next, I found it interesting how nonprofits promoted their social networking adventures.  Offline PR and a traditional website were the most popular ways to promote a social network, which should be no surprise.  A full 44% of respondents used Twitter to promote their social network.  Really?  44% seems awfully high especially when only 43% of respondents claimed to use Twitter as a social network.  Not questioning the validity of the data, just noting that most people who are on Twitter are using it mostly as a marketing tool for their ‘real’ social network.

This survey is, overall, great news for nonprofits and their supporters.  This is a pretty amazing penetration level for Facebook; slightly less impressive for YouTube and Twitter.  What I find interesting is that nonprofits are leaving quite a bit of ‘money on the table.’  This report specifically shows a failure to use these social networks in new ways.  Most of the nonprofits using Facebook use it as a marketing and promotions tool.  Less than 40% of nonprofits are using these social networks for fundraising and development and of those, most reported raising less than $500 in the last 12 months.  Also interesting is that almost 60% of nonprofits admit that they are not allocating external resources to social networking.

My opinion is that most nonprofits are approaching Social Media the same way they approached websites in general a decade ago.  Websites were viewed as non-essential and secondary to the mission of the organization.  Most organizations chose to handle all the webmaster duties in-house and did not use design or web professionals.  Unfortunately, many organizations still view the web as secondary to, not an essential part of, their mission.  My previous article on the Suckiness of Nonprofit Websites chronicles this mistake.

The simple truth is that Social Media is straightforward but far from simple.  Organizations that choose to go it alone will have some success, to be sure.  Some may even have a great experience and provide valuable information to and connections with their supporters.  However, just as with websites a decade ago, the organizations that take Social Media seriously and dedicate resources, money and time, to a successful program will reap the rewards.  This doesn’t require hiring a consultant but does require a social media plan or strategy and the successful execution of this plan.  Organizations cannot be on all networks and expect a decent ROI.  They must focus on one or two networks and dedicate their efforts to those networks, be it Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or others.

And it will pay off for the smart organziations.  The numbers don’t lie:  Excepting a few outliers, the NTEN survey respondents averaged over 1300 Facebook friends or fans.  While there is a cost in acquiring these friends, once friended, the cost of contacting these supporters is almost nothing.

I just found this article at Search Engine Land by Eric Ward about a potential “Twitter Reputation Algorithm” and how it should work.

The article is very interesting on a number of levels.  First, Twitter’s real potential is as a real time search engine.  When Gmail crashes, I check Twitter to see if it’s just my account or if it’s a global issue.  When the USAir plane crashed into the Hudson, the news broke on Twitter.  So, now that Twitter is starting to index links, this will create more value for the real time search aspect.

However, Eric’s article is also useful for those of you new to Twitter.  Eric discusses what should and should not influence the potential algorithm:

• Follower Count Shouldn’t Matter
• Age of Twitter Account Shouldn’t Matter
• Frequency of Tweets Shouldn’t Matter
• Co-Follower Rate Should Matter
• Followers of Your Followers and Their Tweets Should Matter

I completely agree with Eric on these main points.  If you’re new to Twitter, head over to SEL and read the whole article.  Think about why Eric makes these suggestions and, as you develop your Twitter presence, keep all of these suggestions in mind.

Just received a comment on my Flickr vs. Picasa post and thought it was important to post about it.

It seems that Matt Blasi has experienced a bit of trouble using Flickr for organizations. Instead of trying to retell his story, you should just head over to his site, BlasiBlah.com and check out this article.

Thanks for the heads up Matt.

On Tuesday, The Nonprofit Technology Network, NTEN, released a report produced by ForeSee Results called “Trends in Constituent Satisfaction with Nonprofit Websites.”  This is an excellent report and should be reviewed by all nonprofit directors and technology focused employees.

Overall, the picture is pretty bleak for nonprofits.  The overall satisfaction rate for nonprofit website visitors is 73 of 100.  Online banking is at 83, while government sites are a 74.  It’s a bad day when the government is producing better websites.

Some of the key points:

• Satisfied website visitors are 49% more likely to donate
• Nonprofits need to encourage more people to donate online
• Visitors coming from a media story about the nonprofit were most likely to donate

What Does This Mean to Your Organization?

Well, first off, you need a website.  If you don’t have a site, get one today.  Period.  Full Stop.  I wrote a short background piece on WordPress that you might find helpful.  Though originally a blogging software, WordPress has become a great Content Management System.  I also discussed the use of WordPress in my Technology Startup Guide and finally in Why Your Non-Profit Needs WordPress.  Using WordPress, you should be able to get a basic site up quickly.

If you currently have a website that hasn’t been updated in years, change this immediately.  If a grandmother can’t find your donate button, you’re doing it wrong.

Next, your site should be heavily focused on driving donors to your online giving system.  I can’t give you specific advice on how to do this for your site, but a good start is making the “Donate Now!” button prominent on your site.  Next, don’t miss an opportunity to explain how donation are essential to your program.  If you publish a story about your services, make sure to include links to donate from that article.  Even better would be to link to a populated form with a pre-defined giving amount and a note about how that specific donation will be used.  Use personal examples when asking for donations.

Finally, get in front of the media.  Reach out to local interest reporters.  Subscribe to Peter Shankman’s mailing list, Help A Reporter Out.  Send out press releases for upcoming events.  Make the job easy for reporters: provide all the necessary information for a solid, well researched story.  Don’t wait for someone to call you.  Be proactive with the media.  Reporters always need experts for stories so make yourself available to answer questions for unrelated stories.  How many local interest stories have been written about the impact of the economy on charitable giving?  Were you quoted as a source?  Why not?

Don’t depend on my analysis of this report.  Head over to NTEN and download it yourself.  I’d love to hear your comments on this report.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a mystical and often misunderstood aspect of the web.  I have mentioned SEO in a few posts (here and here) and am a bit skeptical of many SEO consultants.  SEO is more of an art than a science.  There are certain things that you can do to improve your Search Engine Rankings, but there’s no silver bullet.  I hope that this post gives you a bit of background on SEO and a few tools to incorporate into your blogging routine to increase your rankings.

SEO refers to any  series of actions taken to improve your sites search rankings.  There are two types: white-hat (or ethical) SEO and black-hat (deceitful) SEO.  In this post we will only discuss white-hat SEO and internal SEO.  Internal SEO is focused on improving your site based on actions taken on your site.  This does not include listing your site in directories or receiving links from other sites.

First, let me tell you what SEO cannot do.  I don’t care what the consultant tells you, he or she cannot guarantee that your site will do better on a Search Engine Results Page, or SERP.  Period.  Full stop.  Search engines are controlled by complex and secret algorithms.  Unless your SEO consultant has access to these, which they don’t, they cannot assure you that they will be successful.

That being said, there are techniques that, generally, can drastically improve your ranking in SERPs.  The first is a real no brainer: create quality content.  I’ve said this over and over again, both in the context of SEO and as a general rule on your blog, Twitter, etc.  This is the most important aspect of any SEO work.  If you have a great looking blog, awesome widgets, dozens of links, and no quality content, you fail.  I don’t think I need to get too specific here, just write accurate and strong content related to your firm or organization.  Make sure you use important keywords in your content, but do more than just list popular phrases.  Your writing should sound professional and keyword rich.

Second I highly recommend tagging your content in WordPress.  I use a WP plugin called Simple Tags, but there are many others that have good reviews and recommendations.  Simple Tags can show you local tags that you have already used and incorporate tags from Yahoo and a few other sites.

Another plugin that you must have is the All In One SEO Pack for WordPress.  This robust plugin allows you to add keywords, descriptions of content, and excerpts for each post.

I also highly recommend Google XML Sitemaps plugin for WordPress.  This plugin creates an easily digestable sitemap for Google to index.  No WordPress blog should be without these three plugins.

If you’re feeling a bit brave, I’d also recommend Zemanta.  This plugin, according to it’s description, provides contextually relevant links, pictures, and tags.  I’ve been using it for a few months and it’s pretty awesome.  However, it does take a bit of memory to run and can slow down your posting.  However, I find that it’s completely worth the performance hit.

Finally, for the sake of SEO and for your readers, I highly recommend the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.  Based on your settings, this plugin creates links to other relevant content on your site.  It’s a great way to increase the interlinking of content on your site.

This is a great start for SEO on your WordPress site.  However, this is only a start.  SEO is a complex and ever-changing field; what worked last week might not work this week.  I mentioned these plugins because they are ones that I use for a basic WordPress install.  With the exception of Zemanta, I would not launch a WP site without the listed plugins.

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If you arrived here from Sea Island Presbyterian, you can skip on to the next paragraph.  For my regular readers, this post will seem a bit out of context.  As many of you know, Heather and I moved to Beaufort, South Carolina in September when she accepted the position as Associate Pastor of Sea Island Presbyterian Church.  During the spring and the fall, the church has a Wednesday night gathering called Kirk Night.  During spring and fall, there is dinner, fellowship, and small group meetings after dinner.  During the summer, however, attendance falls a bit and in place of the standard Kirk Night, we host four Wee Kirk Nights with a smaller menu and only one class, presentation, or activity.  For the first Week Kirk Night, Heather and I, along with the Director of Christian Education and her husband (my triathlon partner) did a short presentation on technology and ministry.  Instead of giving people dozens of links and details, I simply created this post and have provided the link to the group.

Blogging

As I mentioned in the presentation, there are numerous free blogging services for beginners and for advanced users.  My personal favorite is WordPress.com.  This is a hosted version of the software I use to operate this site.  Additionally, you can register an account with Blogger, LiveJournal, Tumblr, TypePad, and dozens of others.

For new users, I highly recommend checking out Lorelle on WordPress.  Lorelle is one of the best, if not the best, resource for all things WordPress, especially for new users.

Another great resource for new users is WordPress.tv.  This site, operated by WordPress, provides video tutorials for WordPress.com users.

I also found this video tutorial on YouTube.com that you may find useful.

Twitter

Since my fascination with Twitter has been growing a bit recently, I’ve published a few articles on Twitter that should provide a great introduction.

First, you can check out my Do You Twitter? post which provides a short introduction, a short discussion of the usefulness of Twitter, and a few resources for new users.

Shortly after that post, I realized there was a need for a Concise Guide to Twitter, so I published one, drawing heavily from some more exhaustive guides that needed a bit of updating.

In addition to discussing the fight at Beaufort High, I wrote this post after the fight to address the impact of Twitter and it’s usefulness as a news source.

I know this can all be a bit overwhelming, so don’t hesitate to give me a call or shoot me an email if you would like any more information or if I haven’t provided sufficient detail in this post.

Even if you’re not a webgeek, I’m almost certain that you’ve heard of Twitter.  For those of you that have missed the recent buzz, here’s a quick primer:

Twitter is a micro-blogging service.  To be precise, Twitter allows you to update your “status” in response to the question “What are you doing?”.  There is also a huge social networking aspect to the site.  You can update your status via the Twitter website, SMS text message, or a myriad of third-party programs.  Your friends, or “followers” in Twitter-speak, are then notified of your new status.  However, there’s more to Twitter than telling folks what you’re currently doing.

Some people question, rightly so, why anyone would take the time to update the site.  I have felt the same way for quite a while.  However, in the past month or so, I’ve really tried to use Twitter and am finding it a bit addictive.  Here’s why:

It’s Quick:

You don’t have to spend too much time writing a full blog post.  You’re limited to 140 characters, so you have to be brief.

It’s Easy:

What could be easier than 140 characters?

It’s Current:

I think this is the most vital part.  Twitter is fast.  Your updates are almost instant.  You can search the entire site and quickly identify emerging trends and breaking news.  When the US Airways plane crashed in the Hudson River, Twitter was the first source of breaking news.  If you visit Twitter Search you can easily view breaking news and popular trends.

Google Loves Twitter:

If you search for me on Google, the fourth result is my Twitter homepage.  For some users, you will see their Twitter page in position one or two.

OK, so you know why I like Twitter, but why, and how, can you make it useful?

Personally, I use TweetDeck, a great, if slightly overwhelming, desktop program.  The default install shows you the status of all your friends, any replies to your messages, and any Direct Messages sent to you by your followers.

To become a real power user of TweetDeck, you need to set up a few searches.  I currently have one for DMOZ, Beaufort, and triathlon.  This allows me to see any posts that contain these words.  I have about 200 friends and have trouble keeping up with their updates, so I generally only review my search tweets.  By doing this, I can stay on top of any news related to a few hobbies and interests in real-time.

As a DMOZ editor, I use that search to answer any questions folks might have on getting listed or having submission problems.  As a budding triathlete, I can view updates, breaking news, and new products for triathletes.  As an example, I spent a lot of time yesterday shooting down a yellow journalism piece about triathlete deaths.

Notice that I don’t just read the tweets.  To be a serious member of the community, you have to create value, not just consume information.  If you sign up for Twitter and don’t engage in conversations, then you’re not being a good community member.

One of the more interesting uses of Twitter is a company called BinEndsWines.  They publish reviews and tasting notes via their Twitter page and offer deals available only to their followers.  This generates traffic to their webpage while creating value, that is discounts, to their followers.

How to Get Started on Twitter:

My recommendation is to download TweetDeck.  Once installed, set up a few searches for your hobbies or interests.  I’d recommend starting with unique interests, not Search Engine Optimization or Web Design.   TweetDeck will display the 200 most recent posts containing your search term.  Simply review the posts, maybe click on a profile or two if you find the tweet interesting, and start following people.

You can also check out WeFollow, a Twitter directory.  WeFollow allows users to submit their names in up to three categories.  Search for your interests or hobbies and you’ll find plenty of folks that believe they’re experts on, or at least interested in, those subjects.  Most people will return the favor, that is, they will follow you after you follow them, so be prepared to start having a real conversation.

A word of caution:  If you have no followers, are not following anyone, and don’t bother to post any updates, it’s highly unlikely anyone will follow you.  On the surface, this is because you might be a spam account, but the deeper reason is that you don’t create value.  If you’re not participating in the conversation, you’re not worth following.  So, just as with a regular blog, don’t expect people to show up unless you have good, original content.  So put a bit of time into your profile, your first dozen tweets or so, and your Twitter goals.

If you’re not already following me, you can view my Twitter profile here.

Anything I missed?  Have a comment?  Feel free to leave any feedback below.  I always read and answer your comments and questions.