The Haiti earthquake wasn’t the beginning of mobile fundraising, but it certainly was the first time it popped into the national consciousness at such a large scale. Since then, it’s continued to gain traction and popularity with NGOs and your average Joe alike – and even your occasionally political fundraising event. Custom apps are expensive, and the simple text-to-donate service the Red Cross used during the Haiti earthquake can be too bare bones unless you have a compelling, high profile cause to back it up. So, what’s an organization to do? Luckily, there are a few neat apps out there that can be valuable tools in an overall fundraising strategy. I’ve gathered some neat examples of different types of apps below.
1. Location Based Fundraising App
Name: Causeworld
Works On: iPhone and Android
Why It Works: Donors check into different locations, from grocery stores to coffee shops, to earn “karma points” which they can then use to donate money to the charities Causeworld partners with. It’s free for donors to use, and karma points are turned into actual donations by Causeworld’s sponsors. Downside? Causeworld is selective of the charities it includes. At the moment there are only 29 charities for donors to choose from, so while being included in the list is sure to bring donations, it takes more than a snap of the fingers to be added.
2. Political Fundraising App
Name: Blueswarm
Works On: iPhone
Why It Works: Actually, Blueswarm is for non-profits and higher education as well as political fundraising, but that’s where it first caught on big – a July TechCrunch article states that 50% of U.S. Senate races and 30% of gubernatorial races were using Blueswarm at the time. Blueswarm isn’t just a mobile app – its main functionality is based around the social web. With Blueswarm comes a handy widget to place on various websites, a Facebook app, and inbuilt analytics. Last but not least, it only takes a 2.9% cut. Downside? The real power of Blueswarm comes with mobilizing your fundraisers to mobilize more fundraisers beneath them – inspiring that type of dedication requires some serious strategy.
3. Mini Fundraising App
Name: Square
Works On: iPhone, iPad and Android
Why It Works: Square isn’t a comprehensive fundraising app, but it does make one, very important task a lot easier: accepting donations. Running your average event means using volunteers to collect credit card information by hand. With Square all you do is sign up, and use their very small card reader (which attaches to any device with an audio input jack) to accept donations. A once painstaking process made very simple. Your info is available and downloadable, no monthly fees, and their card swipe rate is 2.75% + 15¢. Downside? It’s not going to do you any good unless you already have a fundraising event planned, your device must have an internet connection to authorize each payment, and some fundraising activities require comprehensive info from each donor to begin with, which Square does not currently collect (some independent add on apps that allow that are in the works).
4. Text-to-Donate App
Name: Mobile Cause
Works On: iPhone, iTouch and iPad, soon to include Blackberry and Palm.
Why It Works: The Mobile Cause package is a collection of apps, between which non-profits can collect mobile donations, message donors, send polls and surveys, and even create a simple app themselves. There seems to be a lot of functionality and tools for a not over the top price of $99/month for a starter plan. Downside? In addition to the fee of $99/month, there are various minor charges associated with most their apps, like a 50 cent charge for every successfully collected donation through Text2Give etc.
5. Peer-to-Peer Fundraising App
Name: JustGiving iPhone app
Works On: iPhone
Why It Works: JustGiving is a larger service that enables supporters to raise money for their charity. They just came out with a nifty iPhone app that lets donors/fundraisers see who’s donated to their cause already, who they can still ask, share their JustGiving fundraising page with their iPhone contacts, and more. It’s like a mini fundraising manager to offer to your supporters to keep them exited and keep them going. JustGiving charges a 5% fee for each donation. Downside? JustGiving is U.K. based, and though they have a U.S. counterpart called FirstGiving, I don’t see a comparable app on their site. FirstGiving’s transaction fee is also higher at 7.5%
Are there any other micro fundraising apps out there you’d like to call attention to? Please share them in the comments below.
Social Media encourages transparency. It encourages sharing. It encourages feedback. It is dependent on User-Generated Content.
It is every company’s worst day at the office when a consumer or detractor attacks their company or product publicly on a blog, a forum, or on twitter.com. It is one thing if the complaint is based on experience versus if it is baseless, untrue and, well, just plain old vindictive.
Most marketers don’t know how to deal with a public slight. And there are degrees of hecklerhood on social media:
3rd Degree: A onetime complaint, usually through twitter.com: “Company X sucks”
2nd Degree: A lengthy, misinformed expository comment. Most commonly, this is seen on your blog’s comment stream or a Yelp! Review
1st Degree: A foe actively seeking out the organization and disparaging it or its products. Tools for this include the comments section of online newspapers, an entire blog post dedicated to their grievance, or worse yet, the purchase of CompanyXsucks.com domain name that fills the first page of returns on Google.com.
Mambo Media has handled and neutralized all three levels of reputation management. Each level requires different methods, but the most important thing is to react, respond and engage. It is tempting to just ignore the slight. Don’t – most of the time, the heckler just wants to be heard.
The chart below captures the recommended strategies for each variation of the heckling:
| Deg-ree |
Attributes
|
Ways to Respond
|
| 3rd |
* One-time complaint
* Usually on Twitter or via email
*Example: “Company X sucks” |
* Publicly Acknowledge
* Appreciate the feedback
* Indicate changes you will make, or have made as a result of the complaint |
| 2nd |
* A lengthy, misinformed expository comment
* Usually one comment on a blog or Yelp! Review
* Ex: “This Company steals customers from local vendors, and they charge way too much. I wish my city would just ban them.”
|
* Publicly reply to the post, acknowledging the author’s concerns. Read: http://www.yelp.com/business/review_response
* POLITELY present the facts, in a measured tone. Refer them to online third-party resources
* Request an offline phone conversation, meeting, or email exchange |
| 1st |
* A foe actively seeking out the organization and disparaging it or its products
* Usually will comment on all blogs related to the company or industry, write their own blog post, comment on news articles, and create a Facebook or webpage dedicated to their campaign.
* Ex: “This organization mismanages its donations. And the people who work there don’t know what they’re doing. How do I know? I use to work there, until they fired me. But, I care about starving children in Africa and am offended they are stalling change. So, I started this blog to detail how backwards the organization is.” |
* Reach out to the heckler and set up an in-person meeting.
* Make it on neutral territory, preferably with others in tow. Making your heckler see that there is a human on the other line of their communiqués is critical.
* Treat them like a thought leader or power-user (a valued customer). Let them vent, ideate and share their POV. Then encourage them to participate in activities related to shared goals. |
Yes, the strategies above rely on old-time “man to man” tactics. If that is not possible, then set up a meeting. Bring in the “bigwigs” so they realize the heights their criticism has circulated within the organization. Lastly, determine how much of this discussion is public vs. private. Each situation is different, with different factors, but Mambo Media endorses transparency whenever possible.
Lease Crutcher Lewis is a family business with a rich history dating back almost 125 years. With offices in Portland and Seattle, they are responsible for countless high-profile and landmark building projects in the Pacific Northwest including the still-used main terminal at Sea-Tac Airport. A company with a strong vision and solid values, Lease Crutcher Lewis is employee owned, which enables them to attract and maintain the best talent in the industry.
Mambo did a complete site redesign for the company, with special focus on showcasing all of the amazing work under their belt. It’s a corporate website with a very approachable feel, incorporating gritty black and white photography of workers on the job site, as well as oodles of spectacular photography of completed projects.
The site is built on the Drupal platform, and features:
- A dynamic project gallery that is sortable by 14 different market sectors and 3 regions
- Case studies
- A news section that acts similarly to a blog, highlighting awards, articles and press coverage
- A gated area where clients can log in to view progress and details on projects in the works
Visit the site.
In my role at Mambo I have the distinct pleasure of meeting marketing executives from a wide variety of organizations – from non-profit to B2B to consumer brands. And almost without fail, each one will stop me in mid-sentence as I’m waxing on about the benefits of social media, online marketing and the like, and say “what does that word mean”? That’s when I check my jargoned-tongue at the door and remember that I am supposed to be a communicator, an educator; but if my words are laced with industry slang that is indecipherable unless you’re an avid reader of the IAB SmartBrief or Jeremiah Owyang, I might as well be speaking in tongues. And really, that’s just not very helpful is it?
So this became the inspiration for our Jargon Dictionary. The Mambo Team will pick often-used but often-misunderstood terms in our industry and try to distill them down into the very basic, and helpful, definition and include an example that just about anybody can understand.
Our first word is CROWDSOURCING. I love this word because it’s a relatively new term, first coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”, but it is such an OLD concept. The official Wikipedia definition is:
Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.
Do you remember the insatiable silly rabbit in the Trix Cereal campaigns that spent his day trying to trick kids into giving him a bowl of cereal? In 1976 General Mills ran a crowdsourcing campaign to find out if kids (and maybe some silly adults) wanted the rabbit to actually EAT a bowl of cereal, or if we enjoyed this relentless torture and preferred the tension in our lives. The results, collected by mail (with a stamp!), were overwhelming and the silly rabbit was rewarded with a big bowl of high fructose corn syrup-laden Trix.
That’s crowdsourcing. It’s been done since the dawn of marketing because a good marketer doesn’t forget who is number one – the audience. And anytime you can elicit, provoke or compel an audience to tell you what it wants, FOR FREE, then you should do it! The reason this term is so often used now is because crowdsourcing doesn’t take a million dollar TV campaign to work, it just takes asking the question of your audience, your fans, your followers. Odds are, they will appreciate that you asked.
Mambo Media has recently completed a number of short video production projects to support both external and internal messaging goals for our clients, and it has struck me how much time it takes to develop the script for even a short (2 minute) video.
Our client usually starts with an ambitious, high-level goal such as “Create a memorable, humorous piece that may or may not mention our product but has the potential to go viral.” (Great—isn’t that what everyone wants?) We may get examples of existing videos our client wants to mimic, or at least some that they hate and want to avoid replicating, but sometimes this is their first foray into video and we start from scratch.
Mambo starts by brainstorming ideas for general themes and approaches, trying to establish the boundaries of what might be too tacky/risque/inflammatory. At this point, client input is crucial so we don’t invest more time in pursuing ideas they don’t like. If we have a couple directions that seem promising, we have one of our illustrators create simple story boards illustrating the possible major scenes for each video. This has proven really useful for some clients that need help visualizing the finished product. While brainstorming can be done in a day or two, the illustrations can take up to a week, depending on the number of scenes and the number of stories we’re trying to communicate.
Revisions at the storyboard level are quite easy, as a pdf of 10 illustrated scenes can be easily passed around a client team, and we find it worthwhile to invest a good deal of effort here to be sure everyone has the same expectations once the reviews are complete. Depending on the deadline, we allow a couple weeks for this review, to be sure we don’t get derailed later by some VP who too-late reads his email.
Once a storyboard has been approved, our team will take on detailed scripting: writing dialogue, determining characters and locations, and even deciding on a production style (location, studio, real sets or green screen magic, background music, etc). Client review of the scripting is of course necessary, and this is where things can really slow down as everyone likes to wordsmith. Again, ideally we’d allow a couple weeks here to be sure all the project stake holders get to weigh in before we hire actors, book studio time etc.
Finally, even once the client has approved a script, we’ve found that last minute changes are the norm. Actors will make on-set suggestions that improve the clarity or funniness of a scene, and occasionally we’ll find that a scene really drags and cut chunks out as we go. (It’s proven valuable to note these changes somewhere so that you do have a written record for the editor to work from and for additional approval from the client before you get too far into post-production).
So if you add it all up, you may be looking at 6 weeks from brainstorming to finished script, depending on how quickly your client can review and approve. This is the most crucial part of the process for developing a compelling video product, so allowing ample time to do it right will pay off in the end.
You’ve heard of the term “Social for Search,” right? The idea is that your social media marketing efforts can be used to improve search engine rankings for your properties. How?:
1. Use a listening system to find keywords that are being used in your space
2. Research those keywords and find others around them:
- What keywords are people actually using in searches?
- How are your competitors using keywords?
- What does recent trending look like for those keywords?
3. When you’ve narrowed down your top keywords, use them everywhere in your social media marketing content.
Sounds like a foolproof plan! Except it isn’t. Here are a few examples of how social for search can go terribly wrong:
1. Awkward blog post title
When you try to include too many keywords in your blog post title, it can become long, awkward and confusing:
2. Tweets full of hashtags and links, with no content
It’s a great idea to use your keyword hashtags (or keytags, as I like to call them) in your tweets, but it’s also possible to take it too far. If you don’t include an actual viewpoint in your tweet, why would people retweet it…or even click on it?
3. Multiple URLs
If you want to rank in Google for all of your keywords, you should register false user names and create a separate Facebook or Twitter page for each keyword, right? Wrong. As Siouxsie likes to say, “Transparency is the new black.” Don’t underestimate your target audience. People who have been around social media for a while can tell when an account isn’t genuine. Any SEO gains you might make will be negated when your accounts are forcibly closed.
Have you seen any examples of how social should NOT be used for search? How do you use Social for Search?
Hubspot recently gave a great webinar on the Science of Facebook Marketing. Whether you didn’t have a chance to catch it, or the Zarrella’s speed left you reeling, here’s a recap of the best of the best. You’ll find a link to the webinar at the end of the post.
1. Be entertaining, be positive, be sexy.
Using Facebook stats to your full advantage is all about knowing what and when Facebook users like to share, and the data shows that:
- Positivity wins over negativity.
- Avoids the buzzwords of doom – casual, coffee shop talk wins over technical, marketing lingo.
- Write well, but simply. The higher grade level required to read, the less it will be shared.
- Facebook users aren’t crazy about abstract hoo-ha. Statistics, numbers, and videos are well received.
- 51% of businesses block Facebook at work – time your campaigns and posts accordingly.
 Click to view full-size
2. Facebook users are normal folk.
Twitter may still be for geeks, but with 400 million users and counting, your average Facebook member looks more and more like your average Joe. Dan Zarrella summed it up well on this one (paraphrased):
“What magazine headlines attract everyday people as they pay for their groceries? That’s the same type of language that’s going to catch their attention on Facebook.”
3. Tailor your strategy to fit your customers.
The way different demographics on Facebook behave is available, and you can use that information to your company’s advantage. Men and women act differently on Facebook, and so do different age groups. Are your customers teens? Teens are more likely to post on their friend’s walls – so give them something great to share. Late 20s? They put a lot of energy into creating profiles that say something about who they are – interests, activities, quotes, and favorite shows. Give them a compelling reason to make a statement by liking your page.
4. Everyone is on display for an audience on Facebook – discover the power of helping your customers perform.
This was one of my favorite take aways, perhaps because of all the times I’ve clicked “like” with a certain group of friends in mind, or almost clicked “like” only to pause to think what impression I’d be making on all those 200+ people I never see in person, but still oddly care if they think I’m awesome. We all want to project a certain image to our friends and some of the most successful Facebook campaigns out there have leveraged the power of that desire.
View and download the webinar:
http://www.hubspot.com/webinar-the-science-of-facebook-marketing
 GigaOM published a summary of the Syncapse study that estimates the value of a Facebook fan – in real dollars. Syncapse, a marketing measurement firm, took the top 20 brands on Facebook, then polled the fans about their purchase behavior, brand perception and referral levels. The study can be read in full here.
Mambo’s Take:
The Syncapse study is one of the best we’ve read – in terms of methodology and delineating behavioral indicators. But, the authors do not address why this sort of exercise is important: to build brand advocates. That may seem like just another buzzword, but it is a critical strategy when a company endeavors a social media effort.
Organizations have limited resources (money, talent and materials) to market their goods or services in this competitive market. If they build strong relationships and a loyal following, organizations can activate these “brand advocates” to help market the company through word-of-mouth activities and sharing with their personal or professional networks. Viola! Without spending an additional dime, the company has gained exposure to a new audience and has the chance to convert other prospects. This is Branding 2.0.
So, when Syncapse reports that:
- On average, fans spend an additional $71.84 on products for which they are fans compared to those who are not fans
- Fans are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using the brand
- Fans are 41% more likely than non-fans to recommend a fanned product to their friends
the stats quantify the successful brand advocate strategy described above.
Marylhurst University’s mission (located in Portland, Oregon) is to “embrace business education as a transformative process.” Their MBA program in sustainable business is doing just that – transforming the way people approach the concept of “doing business.” Being GREEN isn’t an option anymore, its a necessity.
Mambo recently launched a microsite for Marylhurst’s Green MBA program – taking Marylhurst’s branding and giving it a fresh and, of course, GREEN, look and feel. The site gives users a great introduction into the program, admission requirements, curriculum, and student/faculty spotlights.
The site was fun to design as well as to code – and it gave our developer a chance to play with some really fun front-end javascript effects – be sure to check out the top navigation! Visit the site.
The Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) is a passionate group of scientists and conservation professionals based in Corvallis, Oregon. CBI created an online system that connects users with spatial datasets, creating a knowledge-sharing environment for scientists worldwide – called Data Basin.
Short story, it’s cool. It’s very cool. It’s geek-out cool. So one scientist studying the migration habits of whales in Oregon can share data with other scientists doing the same thing in Japan, Russia or Argentina for that matter. It’s taking what was once localized data and breaking it out worldwide.
So that’s the big concept behind the site that Mambo built for Data Basin. Mambo designed and built a website to be Data Basin’s public face. We also assisted CBI in carrying the same design and UI into their tool creating seamless user experiences.
The details:
- Built a complex site, powered by Drupal, that interacts with the data that users are sharing via the tool
- Within that site, there are (to date) four microsites or “centers,” focusing on different key areas of conservation science
- Dynamic integration between the centers
- A robust blog with CBI team bloggers and guest bloggers
- Social media integration throughout the site
Visit the site.
|
|
GET THE BEAT! Enter your email address below and we'll send you our monthly newsletter and event invites.
|
