NTEN's NTC - #10ntc Session Summaries & Responses

"Multichannel is the word du jour during the NTC conference in Atlanta @10NTC, but what considerations should nonprofits make before launching the next big campaign? Megan Hawkes @CCCINews, Executive Director, Constituent Engagement at Campus Crusade for Christ, International and Dave Raley @daveraley, Director of New Media at Masterworks presented the session Case Studies in Integrated Multichannel Fundraising and did a great job of answering that question in a series of 7 lessons."

Read the rest here >>

"If you currently work in a nonprofit organization, or the corporate world for that matter, you've no doubt had a conversation in the past year about 'generational differences' today. Researchers, executives and pundits of all industries are realizing and analyzing the shift in the current work and media landscape after the advent of the Internet and great fragmentation of media outlets.

How do you reach Generation Y with the many different outlets they use? What motivates them in the workplace? How likely is someone in Generation X going to donate to my organization? And how do you run programs to reach Baby Boomers and Matures while still reaching the up-and-coming 20 & 30 somethings?"

Read the rest here >>

Special thanks to Jordan from Convio!

Image courtesy of TechSoup

A couple summaries of the #npstory session have been posted in various places. Here are a couple links:

SlideShare preso >>

Google Doc >>

TechSoup >>

Presenters are uploading to the NTC's SlideShare Event.

Get them here >>

Check out T.J. Cook's post on the 25 Ways to increase your nonprofit's reach online #10ntc.25w session:

"This session started by reviewing some foundational aspects to
consider when approaching a social media strategy, things like knowing
your audience, crafting your 'elevator pitch', and creating personas
to identify your story and message.

I took notes throughout the presentation and found it to be a great
succinct list of ideas and tools that someone new to the scene could
internalize to begin thinking about his or her organization's social
media strategy."

First off, I love Jordan Dossett (the presenter). She's clearly experienced and had a great attitude that helped cut through the post-lunch subdued blues. So, quick plug for her company, Antharia. Check it.

Onto the session...

I've always been fairly intimidated by analytics and email delivery reports. There's so much data to glean, that usually I wind up with a conclusion or two and then get distracted by more actionable/urgent/immediate tasks in my queue.

But, I realize metrics are one of the most powerful tools for understanding your online audience. It should be a priority. So, I went into Jordan's session hoping to take away 3-5 actionable items that would allow me to take back to the office. And that's what I got.

Get clustering.
Most communications professionals are familiar with demographic and psychographic analysis of audiences. But not all of us are great about analyzing and grouping these larger audiences into clusters. Web analytics services (Google Analytics, Yahoo! Analytics, etc.) and ESPs--Email Service Providers--can be powerful tools to group clusters within larger pools of stakeholders.

Talk to your clusters.
Conditionalizing content according to your clusters/sub-audiences is a great way to engage individuals in ways that are particularly meaningful for them.

Ideas I'll take back to the office...

• Using data validation on the front-end (i.e., email sign-up forms, donation forms) to keep your list clean. Constituents often mistype their email addresses--"homail" and "eartlink" are a couple examples--and not all services provide instant validation. However, it's always possible with some easy code.
• Checking out the behavior (using web analytics) of a few individual visitors can reveal some useful information. Finding patterns between data such as time on site, entry and exit pages and action items can be revealing.
  
• This may sound simple, but when considering the time of day for your email send, you should bear in mind the cluster/group/list you're targeting, as well as the actions you want them to take. If you send an appeal (donation ask) on a weekday between 8:00 and 5:00 to a list mostly comprised of professionals, they may open your email at the office and forget to donate when they get home at night.

- Lindsi Gish

@lindsi on Twitter

Overall, this was a great session. The panelists and moderator were very experienced and well-prepared. I'll edit this post to include their presentation once it's posted to SlideShare.

I'll share my key takeaways below. Full disclosure: I'm an SEO newbie, so this may be common knowledge for some!

The are three "must haves" when it comes to SEO at your organization.

1. You must identify your SEO goals.
2. You must understand how a search engine "thinks." (And it's different for each engine.)
3. You must research your audience. Understand how they think and behave.

SEO isn't just about keywords or the content on your site. There are several off-page factors as well.
Authority, Page Rank, Links and Trust are key factors to consider. Trustworthy inbound links are key. Google considers things like page load time to be a crucial piece of their ranking algorithm.

Optimizing your site isn't a one-time project. It's crucial to care for and feed your site.

• Find simple things for your team to do. Like using special keywords and tags in press releases and blog posts, or wherever your regularly updated content resides.
• Focus on key terms. Start small. Optimize the obvious terms, and continue to do so as new projects/programs/publications arise.
• Focus on headlines, not just for SEO, but for relevant, targeted content.
• Focus on links.

It's important to establish a measurement strategy.
Checking Google Analytics an hour after you issue an optimized press release isn't going to tell you anything. The panelist suggests monthly or quarterly analysis of your data, to ensure the content has been indexed and the data has been populating long enough to trust/analyze. "Think about timing. Think big. Think strategically."

Think like a marketer.
Learn about your audience and how they're behaving. Learn about your competitors and what they're doing well that you can mimic. Optimize your site according to both.

Thanks to moderator Dottie Hodges from Northridge Interactive, and panelists: Liz Murphy from RedEngine Digital; Kira Marchenese from Environmental Defense Fund; Eric Werner from Northridge Interactive; and JoMarie Hoholik from Balance Interactive.

- Lindsi Gish

@lindsi on Twitter

#10ntc attendees: we all wish we could be in 5 places at once. There are hundreds of useful conversations happening in various rooms throughout the Omni right now. So, let's share what we can about the sessions. Ideally, it'd be great to have a volunteer for each session happening throughout today and tomorrow--but I realize that's optimistic!

If you're willing to write up a quick summary and your key takeaways from the sessions you attend throughout the day, just email your post to post@10ntc.posterous.com. Anyone can post--and I'll moderate throughout the next couple days.

Feel free to post any questions as a comment here!

- Lindsi

P.S. - If you've never used Posterous before, take a quick peek at the FAQ. It's super-simple to post anything, including videos and photos.