Posted by Bryan on March 9, 2010
I see quite a few online videos summarising the latest ’state of the internet’. But this one from creative agency Jess3 (which I spotted in Fast Company) is particularly well done – and includes some fascinating data that you don’t normally see. Including a great history of key social media site launch dates (and closures) from 1995 onwards and some scarily big numbers relating to spam and virus activity.
Posted in Social networking | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Bryan on March 1, 2010
Each time we see a significant evolution in the way consumers communicate there is always a temptation to jump to the conclusion that the latest method will surely kill-off the previous methods. Presumably such predictions were bandied about after Alexander Graham Bell made his first telephone call back in 1876 – yet the mail service didn’t die-out as a result of the adoption of telephones. Rather more recently, there have been suggestions that email will kill-off traditional mail ever since I got my first email address back in the early ’90s (remember Compuserve?) – but it hasn’t happened yet (although that debate does continue).
As such, following the incredibly rapid adoption of Social Media over the last few years it’s not surprising that people are having the same discussions again – ’surely if everyone is tweeting or facebooking then they’ll no longer be using email?’. Indeed, this was the very idea being put forward in a WSJ Tech Article I spotted towards the end of last year entitled: “Why Email no longer rules”.
However, it turns-out based on a growing body of research evidence that the rumours of Email’s imminent demise at the hands of Social Networkers are incorrect. Here are just a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean:
Firstly research from Nielsen back at the start of last year. This is particularly interesting because Nielsen analysts had previously gone on record stating that Social Media was more popular than email, based on a global analysis of internet usage. However, when they went on to do more detailed research examining just how Social Media use decreases Email use they actually ended-up disproving their original hypothesis and instead proved that social media use actually leads to increased Email use – as illustrated in the chart below. You can read more about their research here.
More recently, this same finding has been confirmed by US Relationship Marketing Agency Merkle in its ‘View from the Social Inbox’ report released just last month. Based on research conducted in late 2009, they too found that active social network users are more likely to be avid email users. With 42% of social networkers checking their email 4+ times per day compared to just 27% of non-social networkers (as shown below). You can download the full Merkle report here.
So, now that we have a growing body of evidence that Email is continuing to be a key online communication channel – despite the overwhelming popularity of various forms of social media – here comes the important question… Given Email’s continued, if not growing, importance – just how happy are you with the way you’re using it to engage with your supporters?
This question has been particularly front of mind for me recently as I’ve been working with two large UK charities to help develop their online fundraising strategies and in both cases opportunities to improve email use have offered some of the greatest income growth wins.
If you’re in the same boat, then don’t feel too downhearted – because you’re certainly not alone. According to the 2009 Adestra/Econsultancy Email Marketing Census, 72% of email marketers (from both commercial and non-profit organisations) admitted that they are not using email as effectively as they could – despite acknowledging that it offers the best ROI of any online activity other than natural search. Interestingly, as shown below, the top two reasons given for not using email effectively were ‘Quality of email database’ and ‘Lack of strategy’, with ‘Poor technology’ 7th in the list – reflecting the fact that many organisations now have access to the technology required to undertake pretty sophisticated email programmes, but their strategic planning has yet to catch-up:
With most of the online fundraising buzz these days tending to be focused on some form of social media activity, it’s good to be reassured that dear old email is here to stay – and, in the light of this, to be prompted to make time to consider whether you’re online income is suffering because you’re not using it as well as you could be.
Posted in Email, Facebook, Online fundraising, Social networking, Twitter | Tagged: Bryan Miller, Email, Facebook, nptech, Online fundraising, Social networking, Twitter | 1 Comment »
Posted by Bryan on November 16, 2009
I’ve had a manic few weeks since mid October, mostly related to my starting-up my own Marketing and Fundraising Consultancy (called Strategy Refresh – do take a look when you have a spare moment) with a bit of house moving thrown-in for good measure. All of which means that things have been very quiet on the Giving in a Digital World Front – so apologies for that. Normal service is close to being resumed as I’m starting to get into the swing of working as an independent consultant.
One think I’ve been meaning to post about but have only now had the opportunity to get to was the great response to the presentation Jonathan Waddingham from JustGiving and I gave at the International Fundraising Congress over in Holland last month. It was all about ‘The new breed of digital donor‘ and sparked all sorts of post presentation discussions – both online and offline – which was great. You can see the full presentation in the Slideshare embed below.
One part of the presentation that got a lot of folks interested was the story of the 93 Dollar Club – so I thought it worth repeating that here for anyone who hasn’t come across it before (you can see more about it in the presentation).
The 93 Dollar Club all began back in August this year through a chance meeting and act of personal kindness in a Trader Joes grocery store. Jenni Ware was shopping there when she realised that she had forgotten her purse. Fortunately, next in the line was Carolee Hazard who, on seeing Jenni’s situation, kindly offered to cover her $207 bill. Jenni gratefully accepted and as the two left the store she reassured Carolee that she would mail her a cheque later that day. However, as Carolee drove away she couldn’t help wondering if she would ever actually see her $207 again. Being an active Facebook user, on arriving home she shared the story with her online network of Friends and they started to add to it, reassuring her that she had done a good thing and that it was sure to be repaid.
And so it was – with a check arriving not just for $207 but for $300, including a $93 ‘thank you’ gift. Carolee was surprised by this and at first intended to return the $93. However her Facebook Friends, who were by now an active part of this story, proposed she donate it to a non-profit instead. They even suggested which – the local Second Harvest Food Bank. Carolee liked this idea so much that she decided to match the $93 windfall donation with $93 of her own. Then, as is the way with social networks, her Facebook Friends agreed to follow-suite and by the next morning they had together collected over $1,000.
Encouraged by this, Carolee set-up a Facebook Page – entitled the 93 Dollar Club – and so the story continued, not just on Facebook but being picked-up and given massively greater reach by traditional news media too. Indeed, so much did the story grow that if you take a look at Carolee’s 93 Dollar Club page today you’ll see that the total raised has now gone from $93 to over $23,000 – and they’ve now set themselves a target of $93,000!
Do take a moment to visit the 93 Dollar Club Facebook page. On it you’ll see contributions from an incredibly vibrant community of donors, sharing ideas for fundraising and plans to expand the whole 93 Dollar Club concept to help achieve their great $93,000 target. A true community, focused on fundraising yet entirely inspired and organised by the donors themselves – a fantastic example of just what the new breed of digital donors can achieve when they get to grips with doing it for themselves.
Posted in Facebook, Online fundraising, Social networking | Tagged: 93 Dollar Club, Bryan Miller, Community Fundraising 2.0, Facebook, IFC, Online community fundraising | 1 Comment »
Posted by Bryan on September 22, 2009
The incredibly fast adoption of Social Media over the last couple of years has left many, if not most, organisations in something of a spin – as, in very short order, something that was at first dismissed as the preserve of the young and the geeks has become an unavoidable key component of mainstream communications.
With this recognition has come the need to better understand and manage the use of social media by organisations – including charities and other non-profits – leading to the desire to develop social media guidelines to help ensure that everyone across an organisation works together to get the most from this new technology. However, this is not as easy a task as it might sound. Where do you start when trying to write guidelines for something that is, at its heart, often about engagement through spontaneous, unstructured conversations?
Well, one very handy place to start is Chris Boudreaux’s Social Media Governance website, where he has very helpfully collated links to social media guidelines from over 70 different organisations – including the American Red Cross and Easter Seals, as well as a diverse range of other corporate and public sector organisations.
While the very organisation-specific nature of Social Media usage means that it’s unlikely you’ll find an exact fit for your own guidelines – reading how others have approached the same challenge should certainly help you set off in the right direction.
Posted in Blogging, Online Campaigning, Online advocacy, Online fundraising, Social networking | Tagged: Bryan Miller, charity, Online fundraising, Social Media Guidelines, Social networking | 2 Comments »
Posted by Bryan on September 11, 2009
Some pretty shocking data for UK fans of the social networking site MySpace was highlighted last week, with the news that traffic to the site has now dropped behind that of microblogging site Twitter.
On one side, this is just more evidence of the amazing rise of Twitter in the UK (leading to London being described as the “capital of Twitter” by its CEO, Ev Williams) – and these site traffic stats actually only tell part of that story, due to the number of people using third-party applications to manage their Twitter accounts.
However what is more significant is such clear evidence for the apparent collapse of MySpace over here.
With the pace of change in the Web 2.0 world over the last few years, it’s easy to forget just how dominant MySpace looked in the UK market back in the early days of the online social networking goldrush. As a reminder, I dug-out a blog post I wrote ‘way back’ in early June 2007 – when it was Facebook that was the freshfaced newcomer showing what would now be described as ‘Twitterish’ growth…
Amazing to think that back then MySpace was sitting pretty on over 100m users worldwide, compared to Facebook’s mere 25m. The story since then has of course been dominated by Facebook – with it’s active user numbers reaching 250m by July this year, while MySpace growth has stalled such that even its dominance in the US social media market seems doomed.
All in all, a useful reminder never to take the social networking world for granted. It is still a far from mature marketplace and there is pretty well constant change going on out there, whether related to new functionality, shifting user demographics, or the simple departure of users altogether. All of which makes it essential for any marketers or fundraisers responsible for social media activity to keep an eye out for data that helps them understand just what’s happening, so as to help guide where to invest time and budgets when looking to engage with supporters online.
Posted in Facebook, MySpace, Social networking, Twitter | Tagged: Bryan Miller, Facebook, Hitwise, MySpace, Online fundraising, Social networking, Twitter | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Bryan on July 28, 2009
There’s an interesting article by Jon Duschinsky in the latest edition of the Resource Alliance eNewsletter, where he introduces the concept of ‘quantum fundraising’ as a way of explaining how people increasingly want to come-together online to make something happen – but then to disband and move-on to do something different elsewhere. Jon says…
People are increasingly self-organising and using the tools of the flat world platform – the web, networks (physical and virtual), tribes, omniscient communication – to effect change in different ways. Linear society is fading from our present. We have entered the age of quantum society, where people come together under a shared vision to effect change before disbanding and going off to do other things.
He goes-on to examine what can be learned from Obama’s grassroots fundraising activity as a guide to how to make quantum fundraising happen as well as to highlight what he believes to be one of the Obama team’s few errors – going against the quantum fundraising idea by trying to maintain the community that formed to get him elected when the mass of those involved have moved-on to other things.
It’s well worth a read as a fresh take on the challenges fundraisers will face in the future as they seek to engage with supporters in our networked society.
….
Other related Giving in a Digital World posts:
What is the future for membership organisations within our networked society?
Posted in Online Campaigning, Online advocacy, Online fundraising, Social networking | Tagged: Bryan Miller, Community Fundraising 2.0, Jon Duschinsky, networked society, Obama fundraising, Online fundraising, Quantum Fundraising, Social networking | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Bryan on July 22, 2009
Online research and measurement company comScore just released the findings of a study into UK social networking site usage which provides a good picture of just how mainstream social networking has now become – with an incredible 80% of the total UK online population (aged 15+) apparently having visited at least one social networking site in May 2009.
As you might expect, the most active users are still in the 15-24 age group, with 86% of them visiting social networking sites and spending an average of 4.6 hours on them over the month. However, as the table below shows, 67% of the 55+ segment are also shown as using these sites, for an average of 3.7 hours over the month – confirming the fact that social networking is ‘maturing’ as an online activity (which, as I’ve said many times before, is good for online fundraising).
The report also provides a popularity ranking of social network sites for the UK, as shown below, with Facebook now by far the dominant site in this category – with pretty well the same unique visitor numbers as the next four sites put together.
Also interesting to see figures for the growth of Twitter – up a phenomenal 3,226% year on year. That’ll be an interesting growth rate to review in 12 months time…
Posted in Facebook, MySpace, Online fundraising, Social networking, Twitter | Tagged: Bryan Miller, Facebook, Fundraising, MySpace, Social networking, Twitter | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Bryan on July 12, 2009
Great news from the folks behind ‘Causes’ last week, with the announcement that they just passed the $10m point in donations since launch back in May 2007.
Causes was without doubt a trend-setter from the outset, being one of the very first apps to be launched after the Facebook Platform toolkit was made available – enabling the development of 3rd party Applications (Apps) that integrate directly with Facebook user data. (Remember those far gone halcyon days of summer 2007 when you first had a whole range of apps to add to your profile – and ended-up playing with Zombies and Foodfight?).
However, I must admit that when I blogged about Causes on its first anniversary I wasn’t all that impressed with its fundraising success. Despite being one of the most popular Apps on Facebook, boasting some 12m registered users, over its first 12 months it had raised just $2.5m – equating to just $126 for each organisation being fundraised for.
Fortunately, things have clearly improved since then to take them through the $10m mark just 14 months later, and what is especially interesting is the fact that $5m of this has apparently been raised in just the six months since the start of 2009.
This set me to thinking what might have changed since the first 12 months to have generated such a boost in donations and what others might be able to learn from this success. It seems to me that there are three key contributing factors to take note of:
1. Provision of quality support and fundraising ideas for Causes users
As Causes has developed, more and more support has been provided to its users – with a key step being the creation of Causes Exchange, where users could read and share ideas about how best to use the app. A great example of providing new ideas for fundraising approaches came with the launch of the ‘Birthday Wish’, where users were encouraged to ask their friends to support a specific Cause rather then get them a birthday present. This seems such a simple and obvious idea, yet ‘Birthday Wishes’ alone have apparently generated over $1m since this was first added to the Causes app just three months ago.
Over time, advice provided by the Causes team has been supplemented by advice shared by others – which in many cases has been spotted and also passed-on through the Causes Exchange blog.
2. Generation of awareness and engagement through a challenge/matching grant initiative
Key to the success of fundraising through social networks like Facebook and Myspace is clearly the peer-to-peer advocacy effect, as individuals share their enthusiasm for a particular cause with others in their network and encourage them to add their support too. However, you can give this type of peer-to-peer fundraising significant extra momentum if you support it through a high profile initiative which raises awareness and gets more people talking about the fundraising activity.
Causes did just this with their ‘Causes Giving Challenge’ held for 50 days to the end of January 2008. With matching grants offered by The Case Foundation for those causes raising the most over this time, the Causes Giving Challenge on Facebook led to over $500,000 being raised by over 25,000 donors for nearly 4,000 different causes. While this was great performance in itself, the challenge also generated a significant amount of online and offline coverage and thereby introduced thousands more Facebook users to the Causes app. You can read a full report of the challenge here.
3. The changing profile of the Facebook audience
The third factor is nothing directly to do with Causes, but I have no doubt it will have contributed to their accelerated fundraising success – this is the changing profile of the Facebook audience.
Clearly, the growth in Facebook user numbers has been incredible since Causes launched back in May 2007. However, what is perhaps more important from the fundraising point of view is how the profile of Facebook users has changed over this time – shifting from the young early adopters to their parents. I’ve mentioned this shift before, when posting updates on demographic profiling tools that can be used to assess which donor groups are using Facebook. However, the latest data on the maturing of the Facebook user base comes from the iStrategyLabs 2009 Facebook Demographics report, and reveals over 500% growth in US Facebook users aged 55+. This is good news for online community fundraisers, as it introduces an older generation of online charity supporter likely to have greater disposable income and a greater inclination towards supporting nonprofits financially.
Posted in Facebook, MySpace, Online fundraising, Social networking, crowdfunding | Tagged: causes, Community Fundraising 2.0, Facebook, Online fundraising, user profile | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Bryan on June 8, 2009
One of the regular topics that comes-up when I’m discussing the potential of online social networks with fundraisers from outside the UK is just which social networks are dominant in their particular country. Because, contrary to how it might feel from the UK or US perspective, when you go further afield the Social Network world doesn’t start and end with Facebook.
So, I’m always on the look-out for data which helps shed some light on the relative strengths of different sites across different countries – and two such sources cropped-up over the last couple of days that I thought you might find useful, wherever you happen to be based.
The first is from TechCrunch.com, who have just updated their global valuation of social networks. While this is certainly interesting from the overall valuation standpoint, it’s also great that they have provided a link to all of the Comscore base data underpinning their model – which gives a handy snapshot of unique visitor numbers for 26 social networking sites across 17 countries.
The second is a little less robust, but still provides some useful insight into the different sites prevalent in different countries. This comes from Vincenzo Cosenza’s blog, where he has used Alexa and Google Trends for Websites data to develop his own visual mapping of the Social Networking world.
While I’m pointing-out free research relating to Social Networks, you might also want to take a look at the Nonprofit Social Network Survey Report released a little earlier this year. This is US-based, but provides some interesting insights into where and how US nonprofits are active on Social Network sites, which should also be of interest to anyone interested in this area of nonprofit communications and fundraising.
Posted in Facebook, MySpace, Online fundraising, Social networking | Tagged: Bryan Miller, Facebook, MySpace, Online fundraising, Social networking | 1 Comment »
