Category: Net Tuesday

Net Tuesday April 5: Tips in Social Media Outreach in Culturally Diverse Communities

Social media has opened up an entirely new way for various ethno-cultural communities to connect and share their experiences that affect them. Through a panel discussion, we’ll hear relevant success stories from social media experts and also explore the commonalities and differences among the various communities using social media. We’ll also look at the way diverse communities consume social media (online vs mobile, for example) and what that means for the future. Come learn and share your experiences with us in this very unique session.

Tentative Schedule
630-7pm – people start coming to event
705-715pm – introductions
715-815pm – panel discussion
8-845pm – open dialogue (unconference format)
845-9pm – networking

Vancouver Public Library
Image via Wikipedia

Date: Tuesday, April 5
Location: Vancouver Public Library downtown branch

RSVP:

Background via @KetyE / Huffington Post

Special thanks to Ajay Puri and the Vancouver Public Library for producing this event with Net Tuesday.

Net Tuesday December 2010 slides: Measuring Success with Google Analytics – which traffic sources are more likely to convert?

Thanks to everyone who came out to our December Net Tuesday meetup. December is a busy month!

Here’s my slides from the “Measuring Success with Google Analytics – which traffic sources are more likely to convert?” presentation.

[slideshare id=6085968&doc=nettuesdaydecember2010-101208213952-phpapp01]

Net Tuesday December – Group buying and conversion-tracking in Google Analytics

Hey Net Tuesday-ers,

I’m thrilled to announce that the December Net Tuesday will feature a panel on group buying sites (like Groupon) and a case study demonstrating the use of conversion tracking in Google Analytics. It’s gonna be awesome, so please RSVP.

Date: Tuesday, December 7
Doors: 5:30pm
Duration: 6:00 – 7:30pm
Venue:  W2 Storyeum, 151 W Cordova

RSVP on Facebook or Meetup

Group buying and deals panel

You’ve probably heard about Groupon, the daily deal site that offers discounts if a minimum number of purchase commitments are made. They’ve already got 18 million subscribers and are continuing to grow rapidly. But did you know that Groupon evolved out of  the social-change focused online community The Point?

  • How can nonprofits and social entrepreneurs make use of Groupon and Groupon-like sites?
  • What’s the best way to structure the deal?
  • Is it right for you and your organization?

Join panelists Annalea Krebs of ethicalDeal and Chris Mathieson of the Vancouver Police Museum as they share their experiences from both the business and client sides of the relationship.

Case study: Conversion tracking with Google Analytics goals

Eli van der Giessen rips apart the David Suzuki Foundation’s recent action alert and uses it as a case study to demonstrate how to use Google Analytics goal-tracking and link tagging to measure which traffic sources are most useful. Which group is more likely to complete an action? Email subscribers or Facebook Like-ers?

Our Sponsor:

A special thanks to our venue sponsor W2 Community Media Arts Society.

Our panelists:

Chris Mathieson is the Executive Director of the Vancouver Police Museum, a self-funded charity that has seen incredible growth (from 3000 to 25,000 visitors a year) over the last five years, partly by being unafraid to take small risks in social media and other emerging technologies.

A few additional notes from Chris:

“- We’ve offered two Groupons since they launched in the Vancouver, one for museum admission and one for our “Sins of the City” walking tour. Both offers were very carefully crafted to benefit us while minimizing our risks, something some companies don’t seem to be doing. Both were significant successes for us, but only because we were thoughtful about what we were doing. (We hope…)”

Annalea Krebs is a passionate social entrepreneur whose vision and energy to build a brighter, more sustainable future inspires those around her. She believes that business can be a powerful force for change, and loves companies that are built to make the world better. For Annalea, ethicalDeal is an opportunity to introduce more people to sustainable businesses, products & services.

Prior to founding ethicalDeal, Annalea managed the sales, marketing and community relations for various social enterprises and green businesses including: TheChange.com, Values-Based Business Network, Organic Islands Festival & Sustainability Expo, ICE Promotions and the Canadian Social Entrepreneurship Foundation. Annalea holds a degree in Commerce from Royal Roads University, a Diploma of Technology from BCIT and is a graduate of Leadership Vancouver.

Net Tuesday November notes – online video for nonprofits

W2 Community Media ArtsThanks to everyone for coming out and making the panel work (all those hard questions!) A special shout-out goes to W2 Community Media Arts Society, who provided the venue.

Special thanks to panelists:

There’s been an interesting discussion on Pull Focus’ Meatless Mondays video on the Meetup.com page. And you can watch the original “Meathead” video on Youtube.

Resources and presentation slides:

Subtitling:

Videos examples from event:

Free audio resources:

Other cool resources:

Links via Miraj Khaled

Other than youtube grants, projects with feature length video ideas may benefit from the examples &
grant/awards at the Skoll foundation & Participant Media

A youtube success story: one-man’s video journey to change the world

New ways to learn & collaborate:

The Slides:
[slideshare id=5734168&doc=nettuesdaynovember2010-video-101110233237-phpapp01]

Net Tuesday November 2 – Online video for nonprofits

My grandpappy always used to tell me to “go where the audience is.” (Well, not really, but he should have! Because it’s great advice.) That’s why most nonprofits joined Myspace, and then abandoned Myspace for Facebook when their supporters made the same move.

TV gets smashed by the internet

So, we use paper mailings, email, webpages, social media, public events…. we go where the people are. And increasingly nonprofits’ current and potential supporters are watching video online. So let’s go there too, because the latest research suggests that 50% of internet users are watching online video at least once a week and 32% of all internet traffic is already video (with that figure expected to double by 2013.)

Net Tuesday November 2010: online video for non-profits

Date: Tuesday, November 2
Time: doors at 5:30pm, Starts at 6:00pm, and finishes at 7:30pm
Location: W2 Storyeum, 151 west Cordova
Special features: amplified audio and adequate seating for all!

RSVP on Facebook or Meetup

Featuring:

  1. A 30-minute overview of the Youtube grants for nonprofits program, plus a demonstration of some fun features like captioning and translation, annotations and call-to-action overlays.
  2. A 1-hour panel with seasoned experts working in the field who will address the hows and whys of video for nonprofit. How can video help advance your mission? Is it worth your time? Where can you find help in creating a video? How do you promote your video? What makes a “viral video”?

Panelists include:

RSVP on Facebook or Meetup

More stuff you should know:

  • The David Suzuki Foundation is hiring a Senior Marketing Coordinator to lead our direct mail and online fundraising. If you or someone you know would be a good fit please apply ASAP.
  • Jason Mogus and Lauren Bacon are presenting “Are you web ready?” for nonprofit leaders on November 9. It promises to be fabulous. I’ll be there, and you should too. RSVP now.
  • FreshMedia is hosting Remixology 3 on November 6. The Topic is “The future of media”
  • Communicopia is looking for a new office-mate. Looking for a new office? Check it out.

 

A/B testing email campaigns – an example

September’s Net Tuesday brought up a lot of questions about best practices for email campaigning.

Long or short subject lines? One ask or newsletter style? Weekly or monthly? Text or HTML layouts?

Now I may not be a grizzled old veteran yet, but I’ve already seen that “best practices” for one organization may not necessarily be the optimal strategy for everyone else. So, you have two choices when developing your email campaigns:

  1. you can guess
  2. you can test

I suggest test! It’s fast and easy with most email service providers.

Example using Mailchimp (but almost any major service will do)

NOTE: this was not a statistically valid experiment because of the small size of the test group. I did this as a test of Mailchimp’s functionality and to show how easy it is to setup an A/B test.

I setup an A/B test on the from field of a recent invitation to the Vancouver Net Tuesday group (instructions). The test sent the two variants of the email to a random 30% of the total list, and then after 24 hours automatically sent the winning variant of the email (based on open and clickthru rates) to the rest of the mailing list.

  • Group A: NetSquared Camp
  • Group B: Eli from Net Tuesday

And here’s the stats on the test:

As the French say, “et voilà”.

Net Tuesday September notes

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Net Tuesday September event focusing on email marketing and fundraising. Your insightful questions were what made it all possible. Well, the awesome audience AND the panelists (Duncan Owen, Shannon Daud, and Ben Johnson.) Thanks all for making me look good!

There won’t be a Net Tuesday in October, but we’ll be back in November. In the meantime, you can relive the summer’s NetSquared Camp unconference with Russell Bennett’s great video.

What I learned this month:

  • Panels are a great format for Net Tuesday events. They have lots of energy and help bring the audience into the discussion because they support Q&As really well.
  • I need to bring in a mic and speakers for all future events. Struggling to hear the presenters sucks.
  • Name tags aren’t solving the “no mingling” problem. I need to bring in food AND assign people to start up discussions before the events.

Email campaigning service providers:

The panel didn’t have time to go deeply into their favorite tools for setting up and distributing email campaigns, but here’s the URLs for the tools mentioned.

For more see Seattle nonprofit consultants Groundwire’s great overview of email service providers with a focus on integration with Salesforce.com.

September’s Net Tuesday Vancouver has panelists

September’s Net Tuesday is next week, and I finally have all the panelists confirmed. Better late than never, I say. 🙂

TOPIC: Email communications – still alive and kicking

It’s easy to get distracted by that new-fangled social media stuff (so shiny!), but the folks on the ground in non-profits know that the real action’s in email. That’s where you raise the funds to advance your mission. That’s how you get people to show up to events. That’s how you get petitions signed.

There’s plenty of life left in email communications, and learning how to test, optimize, and integrate email campaigns is (I reckon) the best investment you can make in the online space.

Join a panel of  experts from Vancouver’s nonprofit community as they discuss the value of email to their organizations, how they manage and grow their lists, and how they test and measure their campaigns so that they’re constantly improving.

DATE: Tuesday, September 14
TIME: 5:30 (doors) 6:00pm (event starts)
LOCATION: W2 Storyeum, 151 W Cordova, Vancouver, BC

RSVP:

Meet your panelists:

BEN JOHNSON, Union Gospel Mission

Ben is an online marketing and research specialist. He’s raised over $1MM in donations online, currently works in the development department at Union Gospel Mission, and thinks email is the next big fundraising tool.

blog: http://979s.com.
email: mrbenjohnson@gmail.com
linkedin: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/mrbenjohnson/

SHANNON DAUD, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Shannon Daub is the CCPA-BC’s communications director and co-lead for the organization’s national online communications team.
email: shannon@policyalternatives.ca

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is a research institute focused on social, economic and environmental justice. The CCPA works closely with social movement groups to support education and mobilization efforts by bringing providing information, analysis and solutions in areas like climate justice, economic policy, health care, education, human rights and more. www.policyalternatives.ca •  www.policynote.ca

DUNCAN OWEN, David Suzuki Foundation
Duncan has been with the David Suzuki Foundation for 1 ½ years focusing on fundraising campaigns (direct mail, telemarketing, email), supervising day to day operations of the donor relations team and looking to find innovation and efficiencies.

He’s got book learning too, including a Bachelor of Multimedia (Business Marketing) and a Graduate certificate of digital and direct marketing.
Born and raised in Melbourne, Duncan has been in Vancouver for 3 years.

Net Tuesday September 2010 – email communication isn’t dead yet

TOPIC: Email communications – not dead yet!

Join a panel of  experts from Vancouver’s nonprofit community as they discuss the value of email to their organizations, how they manage and grow their lists, and how they test and measure their campaigns so that they’re constantly improving.

DATE: Tuesday, September 14
TIME: 5:30 – 8:00pm
LOCATION: W2 Storyeum, 151 W Cordova, Vancouver, BC

RSVP for the next Vancouver event: