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Janet Fouts, author of Social Media Success!, and Beth Kanter, author of The Networked Nonprofit, have recently collected a selection of ‘how to’ tweets related to social media and non-profits, and compiled them all in #SOCIAL MEDIA NONPROFIT tweet. I got a copy of the book yesterday, and it’s a quick read, as the authors’ intended, but chock full of inspiration.

A few of my favorites:

“Focus on sharing your cause. The money will follow.”

and

“Create a relationship first, and then ask for support.”

This is a great book for traveling, or if you’d like to see bite-size examples of successes in non-profit social media.  Either way, I’m recommending this one, especially if you’re involved with a non-profit.


Nick Bilton on Facebook Privacy

In this ‘off the record’, or ‘unattributed’, or whatever you want to call it, Tweet, Nick Bilton gets the nitty-gritty on how Zuckerberg feels about user privacy.  Now, to be fair, I’m sure he’s not totally against some user privacy, but it’s the internet people!  Other than your date-of-birth, emails, social security number, and your address/phone number, nothing you put on the internet really needs to be private.

Less private content means better archival options (I can link directly to what you said), transparency among identities, and less trollery.  Remember, anonymous comments are the bane of the internet, and in no way contribute to a discussion.  Making real people, with real identities, a possibility means we can really cut down on asshats and spam, and that’s what all this Identity 2.0 stuff is trying to do.

My two cents… Don’t expect anything on the net to be private. If you want to keep your opinions to yourself, don’t post them to Twitter or Facebook. If you feel the need to only share them with a handful of people, just group text them or email them. Otherwise, I see no problem w/Facebook, or any company, pushing the limits of so-called privacy on the net a bit. Remember, Blippy couldn’t even keep your Credit Cards safe (Techmeme), so you should assume that if your content is out there, it may one day see the light.


Know what you want…

Seems simple right? In my experience, dealing with hundreds of clients over the last 12 years, very few can actually quantify what they want.

Some tell me they want marketing help (far too vague), but when I ask about success metrics, they almost invariably cite traffic as their primary success measure. Now, not to discount traffic, but that’s not what pays the bills is it?

ROI shouldn’t be calculated on traffic*, but by counting other other measures. If your aim is engagement, count comments, reviews, buzz. If your aim is sales, count overall revenue increases, direct conversions, increase of average sales…

In an SEM campaign in particular, knowing what you want is vital, because every click costs you. Your campaigns should be highly segmented, helping you know where each dime goes, how each ad performs, how each keyword you’re buying contributes to the goals you’ve set.

Search Engine Guide has an excellent post up today about segmenting your keywords:

There are four distinct keyword segments each representing a different phase of the searcher’s buying cycle. After going through the process above you should be left with one or more groups of keyword that can be optimized into a page or several pages. The next step is to take each group and segment them even further based on those keyword segments.

Once you know what you want, you can do A/B testing to determine where your money’s going and whether or not your plan is working.  Know what you want and you have a heck of a lot better chance at getting it.

*there are a few, rare exceptions to this rule


We give out way too much information online. You know it, I know it, but it’s fun and we so push the fear out of our minds and continue to chat about our kids, our friends, how annoying so-and-so is at work on Facebook, Twitter and more. But we’ve been conditioned to share, and it’s not a recent evolution.

Supermarket ‘clubs’, like those in place at CVS, Safeway, Publix, and virtually every chain supermarket, save Walmart, already share your data with telemarketers and email marketers.  The swipe saves us a few bucks so we agree… Upromise, by Sallie Mae, has already gotten into big trouble with not disclosing the truckloads of data they collect from their toolbar to their users.  Still college students add that toolbar and hope for the best. WE SHARE TOO MUCH!

A Mashable post on Data Mining in Social Media digs a little deeper, but still not deep enough. They don’t even mention the new iPhone app that’s being called a ’stalker’s dream’ nor the freaky 123People that lets you check the government documents that other people have filed (or had filed against them).

I’m big on social media, I love it, but this trend toward over-sharing, both purposefully and unintentionally, frightens me.



At work, we do these status reports and they’ve been helpful keeping everyone briefed in a large org w/o wasting time. I’ve been doing them w/my kids in the afternoons on the way home from school. Their feedback was that we needed another section for complaints. ;)

Grace listed several complaints and I had to keep telling her to stay on track!

Also, note how important food is to them! Each of them included it in their successes…

Cady (12) — The drill sgt got hers out in 2 mins, and then critiqued everyone else’s ;)

Successes

  • Got 4 desserts on her field trip today
  • Spoke her spanish conversations almost perfectly
  • Won Battleship game after school

Needs to Improve

  • Falls too much (up the stairs today, landed on her butt Tuesday)
  • Shy

Burning Issue

  • Objects to being put in the front row during gym

———–
Grace (9)

Successes

  • Everyone liked the presents she made for her friend’s birthday
  • Had cake after lunch
  • Wrote a song on the piano

Needs to Improve

  • Talks too fast (ironically she had to repeat this so we could understand it)
  • Doesn’t drink all of her drink at lunch (no idea why she wants to improve this)

Burning Issue

  • Struggling w/multiplication

————
Jacob (7) — I loved how pithy his responses were. All boy…

Successes

  • Didn’t hit anyone today (I guess this is considered a success… LOL That one really made me laugh)
  • Got a perfect score on his quiz
  • Enjoyed after school snack (then came promptly home and ate a huge bowl of cereal)

Needs to improve

  • Patience
  • Running in school

Burning Issue

  • None

——-
Ruby (4)

Successes

  • Enjoyed nap (she never enjoys naptime)
  • Ate all of her grapes at lunch

Needs to Improve

  • Going to bed without arguing (she got mad at this point and refused to continue—she keeps this up I’m going to have to fire her)


(via Mixergy)



(via Wired)



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