Why is Social Media Important to a Brand?

Anna Farmery wants to engage your brand...

Thus asks Anna Farmery, Speaker/Social Media Coach and author of The Engaging Brand Blog (which was recently featured in a Nonprofit Blog Carnival).

She offers 5 main reasons why social media should be part of your organization's brand strategy:

1. Social media can help bridge the gap inside a consumer's mindset of where they are now and where they want to be.
2. Social media empower consumers to be advocates for your brand.
3. Social media enable brands to communicate at all levels and to all emotions
4. Social media engage consumers in a conversation that can help brands evolve.
5. Social media -- particularly those with RSS (Really Simply Syndication) -- keep brands in their consumers lives.

Those are just summaries. Read her complete thoughts here:

http://theengagingbrand.typepad.com/the_engaging_brand_/2009/05/why-is-social-media-important-to-a-brand.html

[where: 75223]

Can I buy ya a drink tonight?

Join us tonight for the 501(c)lub!

501(c)lub Happy Hour
Last Wednesdays
5:01 p.m.
Elbow Room
3010 Gaston Avenue
Dallas, TX 75226
www.ElbowRoomDallas.com

Join us early to receive free and/or discounted drink specials, as well as some amazing pizza!

[where: 75223]

Nonprofit Happy Hour this Wednesday!

The Center for Nonprofit Management is sponsoring a FREE happy hour for all nonprofit staff and volunteers this Wednesdat. Learn more at http://www.501club.org/:

501(c)lub Happy Hour
Last Wednesdays
5:01 p.m.
Elbow Room
3010 Gaston Avenue
Dallas, TX 75226
www.ElbowRoomDallas.com

Join us early to receive free and/or discounted drink specials, as well as some amazing pizza!

[where: 75223]

Nonprofit Happy Hour next Wednesday!

The Center for Nonprofit Management is sponsoring two FREE monthly networking opportunities for all nonprofit staff and volunteers. Learn more at http://www.501club.org/:

501(c)lub Happy Hour
Last Wednesdays
5:01 p.m.
Elbow Room
3010 Gaston Avenue
Dallas, TX 75226
www.ElbowRoomDallas.com

Join us early to receive free and/or discounted drink specials, as well as some amazing pizza!

501(c)offee club

First Wednesdays
7:30 a.m.
It's A Grind
2901 Indiana Blvd
Dallas, TX 75226
www.ItsAGrind.com

Join us to receive a 10% discount on all purchases!

[where: 75223]

CNM Twitter page reaches 1,000 followers

Woohoo! Thanks to all of you who helped @CNMDallas secure over 1,000 Twitter followers within its first 90 days. Help us get to 5,000 by 2010!

See our feed here:
http://twitter.com/cnmdallas

And see my previous article, "UnTweetable: Twitter as Borg," here:
http://theraiser.blogspot.com/2009/04/untweetable-twitter-as-borg.html

Nonprofit Coffee Club tomorrow!

The Center for Nonprofit Management is sponsoring a FREE networking opportunity tomorrow for all nonprofit staff and volunteers. Learn more at http://www.501club.org/:

501(c)offee club

First Wednesdays
7:30 a.m.
It's A Grind
2901 Indiana Blvd
Dallas, TX 75226
www.ItsAGrind.com

Join us to receive a 10% discount on all purchases!

[where: 75223]

Nonprofit Happy Hour tonight!

The Center for Nonprofit Management is sponsoring a FREE happy hour/networking session tonight for all nonprofit staff and volunteers. No RSVP needed -- please join us!

Learn more at http://www.501club.org/:

501(c)lub Happy Hour
Last Wednesdays
5:01 p.m.
Elbow Room
3010 Gaston Avenue
Dallas, TX 75226
www.ElbowRoomDallas.com

[where: 75223]

Nonprofit Networking / Happy Hour next Wednesday

The Center for Nonprofit Management is sponsoring two FREE monthly networking opportunities for all nonprofit staff and volunteers. Learn more at http://www.501club.org/:

501(c)lub Happy Hour
Last Wednesdays
5:01 p.m.
Elbow Room
3010 Gaston Avenue
Dallas, TX 75226
www.ElbowRoomDallas.com

Join us early to receive free and/or discounted drink specials, as well as some amazing pizza!

501(c)offee club

First Wednesdays
7:30 a.m.
It's A Grind
2901 Indiana Blvd
Dallas, TX 75226
www.ItsAGrind.com

Join us to receive a 10% discount on all purchases!

[where: 75223]

Too Many Social Networks, Not Enough Time

Oh God, not another social networking site...

From TechCrunch.com:

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Yahoo and now Google. What does these have in common? If you’re reading this blog, you probably have a profile on all of them. And those are just the obvious ones, you probably have a bunch of other profiles on a series of other networks too. The situation has become untenable.

I agree. Yet I am complicit... the article convinced me to add yet another profile to the mix:
http://www.google.com/profiles/greggjeremy
Lord, please send us an aggregator site before all sleep is stolen for social networking...

[where: 75223]

UnTweetable: Twitter as Borg

Twitter was launched in March 2006 (source: Wikipedia). Within two years, it had over 1,000,000 total users sending approximately 3,000,000 tweets per day (Source: source: TechCrunch).

Shockingly, over the past year, they have blown these numbers away. It is estimated that by the end of this month (April 2009), they will have over 420,000,000 unique visits per week (source: TechCrunch).

This is a mind-boggling speed of adaptation. The same source above estimates that the impact of Oprah's adoption alone brought 1,000,000 additional users to the site.

As I struggle to grasp the impact that Twitter will have on the communications efforts of nonprofit organizations, I draw back on my childhood understanding of rapid cultural sea change:

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

Perhaps the attached photo-essay better explains my thoughts.

What do you think?

Blogging 2.0

Per my last blog, I've noticed it's been impossible to blog with any regularity since: a) Harper was born, b) I joined the Center for Nonprofit Management. The former is understandable, and the latter is due mostly to my intense love for distracting myself with the wonderful work of our 1,300+ nonprofit partners.

So, in an attempt to blog more often, I'll be Blogging via text (as in last post) and via email (as in this post). I've been known to write too much anyway, so hopefully this new format will keep it more brief and hopefully more effective as a tool.

Here is a question that needs more exploration: how do tools like Twitter, email blogs and other 'quick hit' communications contribute to your mission, and how do they actually take away from it?

On the latter, I hope to explore how these revolutions in communications can actually pull us away from building genuine relationships -- the core of any strong development effort -- and more towards processing transactions.

Would love any feedback on the concept.

----------------
Jeremy Gregg, CFRE
Vice President of Development
www.CNMDallas.org

Sent from my phone; please excuse brevity and typos.

Officially Launched Site for Community Hunger Day

Community Hunger Day

CDM has officially launched the Web site for the 2008 Community Hunger Day here:
http://communityhungerday.org

I had the wonderful pleasure of being a daily part of this ministry from February 1, 2005 through the end of September, 2008 -- 1,338 days that changed the course of my faith and my life! I am forever grateful to this ministry, and for all that they are doing for our community.

I want to raise $1 for each day that I was here at the ministry: if I hit my goal, that will provide nearly 10,000 pounds of food to hungry families!

Please visit my page here:
http://communityhungerday.org/profile.asp?tpgid=59830874%20

[where: 75223]

'Groundswell' Gains a Following - Advertising Age - Book Reviews

Here is an intereting article in Advertising Age about the aptly named book, "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies," which serves as a "guide to (often misguided) marketers about how to go about setting up a groundswell strategy, they offer up the acronym POST:

• People. Are your customers interacting with social technologies? Which ones? How do they use them?
  
• Objective. What does a company hope to accomplish with a groundswell strategy?
  
• Strategy. How will those objectives be achieved?
  
• Technology. Which vendor or technology can help accomplish the goals?

Read the full article here:
http://adage.com/bookstore/post?article_id=128179

The book also has an accompanying blog here, which I found pretty well designed (which should not be surprising, considering the topic of their book):
http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/

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What do you think of this article? Rate it below.

YourCause.com: Dallas-based company

Thanks to my friend Kim Young for pointing me to YourCause.com



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It's the Conversation Economy, Stupid

This piece from David Armano, VP of Experience Design with Critical Mass, is stinkin' brilliant:

It's the Conversation Economy, Stupid

Just wish I had seen it the first time around.

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