Netsquared September Events: Boost Online Fundraising with Social Media and Wading into Your Online Community Data

This September, I doubled-up on my dosage of “Do-Good Geekery” with back to back Tuesdays at Netsquared events.  First, I helped organize the Houston September meetup and then I added a trip ‘Down Under’ to speak at the Melbourne Netsquared in Australia.  Here’s my recap from both events, plus links to extra goodies including presentation decks, a resource guide for getting your social media strategy created and driving fundraising dollars through your website, and of course, tons of “Aussie-ome” photos from Australia!

NET2 Tuesday in Houston

Houston Netsquared

The September Houston Netsquared meetup had guest speakers from the Houston CleanWeb Hackathon and Sustainable Houston.  Both of these organizations are newly formed nonprofits and are working to grow their community here in Houston around finding ways to make our city more sustainable and “Green”. Our featured presenters, Rosalind Wyatt and Ahshia Berry, shared best practices and tips to utilizing the online data that nonprofits collect from their websites and social networks to create engaging and useful case studies, reports, and other online content.  Roz and Ahshia also shared the hurdles Sustainable Houston has faced with their web technology needs, including the value of a geo-location app that would allow Houstonians easily find member organizations that were nearby.

The Presentation Deck

Melbourne Netsquared – Social Media and Fundraising FTW

The morning after Houston Netsquared, I hopped on a plane and headed out to Melbourne, Australia where I had the rare honor of being the Melbourne Netsquared guest speaker.  My presentation shared insights into how some nonprofits are successfully increasing their online fundraising through the use of social media networks and how other organizations could translate these success stories into actionable campaigns for their own nonprofit. I’m often asked by both nonprofits and for-profits here in the U.S. how they can generate more revenue and leads from social media marketing.  It turns out that Australian nonprofits struggle with many of the same challenges that U.S. nonprofits have, with a couple of key distinctions:

• Aussie NPO’s have far more social media profiles than most U.S. NPO’s.  In Melbourne, the questions expanded beyond just “how to use Twitter, Facebook, and/or LinkedIn” to include a variety of other networks: Pinterest, Google Plus, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, etc.
• Aussie NPO’s are currently struggling to follow new government regulations on what to do and not to do while engaging on social networks.  These regulations present a management challenge that U.S. NPO’s don’t have.

I found it interesting to hear how Aussie nonprofits had similar questions to what I normally hear from my clients and peers here in the United States about how to use social media including things like: engagement best practices, use cases, and managing all of the real time conversations with a limited staff and budget.  The Melbourne nonprofits also asked how to figure out which of the channels they could “cull” and how to know what channels would be most effective. My best answer to identifying the best social networks to engage with depends on a number of factors that your social media strategy helps you determine, with the big three factors consisting of:

1. Learning where your target audience engages most
2. Finding out who the influencers for your industry are
3. Determining your resources, including staff, for managing social media campaigns

Find out more about creating a social media strategy for your nonprofit in our new Social Media Strategy Resource Guide: http://tendenci.com/social-strategy  and here’s my presentation deck from Melbourne Netsquared.

Melbourne’s Best Kept Secret

I was out in Australia to share the “secrets” of incorporating social media and fundraising programs and came back with one of Melbourne’s secrets.  The Australians pronounce Melbourne like: “Mel-bin“. I want to send a huge Thank You to Leanne O’Donnell and Richenda Vermeulen – the Melbourne Netsquared organizers!  Leanne and Richenda provided me with so much information and support leading up to the presentation and I had a blast switching roles at a Netsquared from organizer to speaker.

Photos and More!

Join us at the Houston Netsquared October 9th event and learn more about making digital videos for your nonprofit: http://meetup.com/NET2Houston and come over to the Houston Netsquared’s Facebook page: http://facebook.com/NET2Houston to share your ideas and ask questions. Here’s the photos to the Houston Netsquared September Meetup: http://tendenci.com/photos/set/41/ Check out photos from Sarah M Worthy’s Melbourne Netsquared Presentation: http://tendenci.com/photos/set/43/ Find more photos from Melbourne Australia: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjC7ZXme Find the latest webinar recording and presentation on Lessons on Website Management online: http://tendenci.com/website-management