The Agitator

Our previous posts this week have been pretty positive about social media, their penetration, and their potential marketing (and for us, that means fundraising) contribution. Here are some additional views. Take a look at them and then give us your opinion in a quick three-question Agitator ...  Read more

Here’s yet another agency white paper on social marketing … this one, from Serengeti Communications, addresses the challenge of measuring social media impact. Everyone from marketing veteran Seth Godin (see his recent Clout post) to the newest hire on your web team (just walk down the ...  Read more

Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report is one of the most provocative pieces of work I’ve seen on marketing via social media. While it’s a business-building white paper, from one of the biggest and most experienced interactive marketing and technology companies in the ...  Read more

Last week Seth Godin, as he often does, posed an important ‘what if?’ with huge implications for fundraisers and advocacy campaigners: What if you knew which of your constituents had “clout” in terms of their capacity to spread ideas and help your organization break ...  Read more

OK, summer is over, you’ve had a week to get back into work mode, and so The Agitator is ready to offer some heavy lifting this week. We’ve been saving up some important stuff on social media. First up is a new report from the Pew internet Project, called The Internet & Civic ...  Read more

Judging from the number of "Out of Office" bouncebacks we’re getting this week, I’m assuming that lots of folks are "at the beach." That means they’re missing Steve MacLaughlin’s (of Blackbaud) Netwits webinars this week. One a day, with these topics ...  Read more

Or at least that’s what Jason Falls claimed on his blog, Social Media Explorer. Then he proceeded to pass along the advice he had offered in a webinar on behalf of National Safe Place. The organization is headquartered in Louisville and started as a program of the YMCA there in 1983. They ...  Read more

A study by Anderson Analytics of online social net use, reported here on MediaPost and here in Business Week, contains good news for  cause marketers and fundraisers. According to the study, which followed 5,000 online users, those who belong to a social net are four times more vocal about ...  Read more

For some nonprofits, fundraising can be quite sensitive to the headlines … a natural disaster here, a Supreme Court nomination there. I once had a client castigate me, rightfully, for "sitting on" an urgent appeal opportunity until Monday, triggered by an event that occurred the ...  Read more

Alexandra Samuel, writing in Harvard Business Publishing, says Yes! In her article, Why Nonprofits Are So Good at Social Media, she notes that social media are all about relationship building and points out: "In the nonprofit sector, relationships have always been the key currency: the ...  Read more