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powering nonprofits for social good

I Admit It, I’m a Newb

Nathan Porter - April 16, 2014

Newb, perfectionist

I haven’t been ready to announce it to the world, but it’s time. I’m a Newb. I’ve been a Newb for a long time actually, maybe all my life. What’s even more alarming is I’m finding myself thinking that I’ll probably always be a Newb. I have a somewhat ADHD personality, I’m always trying new things. Am I a pro at some things? Sure. But I’ll always be trying to learn something else. Therefore I will always be a Newb. Maybe I like to try new things too much. Maybe I should slow down and get really excellent at one thing. On the other hand, I’m a little bit of a perfectionist. I have a hard time turning over a project to someone else because I know they won’t do it as well as I can. So there, now that I’ve shared all of my personality disorders, I feel better. How about you? Are you a Newb? Are you always trying new things, learning new skills, falling down but getting back up and trying again? I hope so. And don’t be afraid to admit it. It’s the only way you learn.

I love this quote by Richard Branson. I think it frames this subject well.

“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!”

If you are that kind of person let me know. I’d love to meet you, maybe even work with you.

Never quit being a Newb.

The Science of Facebook Engagement

Nathan Porter - March 20, 2014

Civicon presentation, Nate Porter

Growing your Facebook likes and driving engagement are two very different things. Which is more important? It is easiest to think about this in relation to real world interactions. If you are in a small group of people you know and you are interacting (engaging) with each person in the group you have a 100% engagement rate, if you are at a national convention of some kind where there are 5,000 people and you had conversations with 50 of them, then you would have engaged with 1% of the audience you were a part of. If you were able to have some kind of interaction with 2500 of that group you would have had an engagement rate of 50%. Understanding these examples helps to identify the importance of engagement. It’s also easy to understand that as your audience increases, sometimes your engagement decreases. This can depend on the type of page you have. If you have a business page about an engineering company people are probably going to be less likely to engage that if your page was about saving dolphins.

So what drives engagement? This might come as a surprise to you but sharing content that others have created and distributed doesn’t drive engagement. In fact a recent study showed that Facebook actually penalizes non-original content. If your audience could find the content on their own from other sources the value of the content is lowered. Just like in the real world, people are attracted to personal interaction, personality, and common interests. This is a key reason why the largest organizations are mostly focused on relationship building rather than a stream of content. Thinking about what you would respond to can help you understand what others would respond to as well.

I’ve been holding off on some bad news. So here it is. Many social media management services are all about creating curated content from around the web and featuring it on your site. Sure they’re inexpensive but is it really worth it? Take a look at your engagement to see if it’s really working. (More on that later). Real engagement takes work, because your company or organization is unique. You have a unique personality, a unique product, a unique way of treating your customers and constituents. Figuring out how to extend that same experience to your online audience takes time, it takes effort, and most of all it takes your personal input and engagement. No shortcuts here.

So how do you measure engagement and where do you start? There are a few ways you can measure engagement of your page as well as others. You’ll notice in the image below that in the circle beside the 2 there are two statistics, the first is the number of likes and the second is the number of people talking about this page. This is usually based on the previous week. If you take the number of people talking about this (74) divided by the number of likes (1072) you can get a rough percentage of engagement (7%). There are much more accurate statistics in the dashboard which can be accessed by clicking on see insights in the circle beside the #1.

Facebook-Dashboard

In the insights dashboard there are a lot of different statistics which are broken down by post, day, week, etc. If you scroll down there is an area where you can add pages of competitors or other pages you want to watch. Here you can see more accurate details of their likes and engagement. Additionally you can see trends and how many posts they have posted. You’ll notice that this list is ranked by total page likes. (I’ve grayed out the page name and favicon) The top page has 5,300 likes but an engagement of only 8. That is a percentage of 0.15%. That is not very good. The second example has 4100 page likes and an engagement of 164. That is a percentage of 4%. As an example, we have around 1,100 likes and an engagement of between 75 – 180 on average. That is an engagement of around 10%. Ideally we want to drive that to closer to 20%. Some causes pages can have an engagement rate of 50-100%, but that is pretty rare. If your page is in the 10-30% range, that’s good. One last word on engagement. If your audience growth is driven solely by ads then you may have a more difficult time engaging. Ad generated likes are ok if targeted properly and when they are mixed with organic growth, but organic growth is always better over the long term as it ensures that your audience is made of people who genuinely care about your subject.

Facebook-Dashboard-Pages

We’ve been working with top social media experts for years and can give you the guidance you need to see your brand engagement grow to the next level. Stop paying for someone to spam your feed with content from around the web and start engaging your audience with your unique message and your unique personality.

CiviCRM Ranks Highly in the Non-Profit Technology Network Report

Nathan Porter - March 14, 2014

civicrm, salesforce, report, nonprofit, crm, teamwork, community, relationships

The recent report, “A Consumers Guide to Donor Management Systems” issued by the independent group the “Non-Profit Technology Network” showed that CiviCRM ranks highly among it’s competitors. In a top ten style comparison of features and costs, CiviCRM stood it’s ground against competitors such as Salesforce NonProfit Starter, eTapestry, The Raisers Edge, Donor Perfect, among others. Some of these systems have an out of the box subscription cost of up to $60,000 per year, not counting any integrations with third party software or setup, training, and support.

What’s amazing is that a community of users and developers has managed to create a full featured software that outshines many for profit competitors and yet is able to offer it with no ongoing software subscriptions or fees. I makes me glad to be a part of this community. CiviCRM is not the only open source donor/constituent relationship management software in the space but it is the only one with this rich a feature set and this advanced of a developer/support system.

Why I’m not an Expert and I Haven’t Written a Book About it

Nathan Porter - January 29, 2014

scientist, funny, humor, expert, stock photo, crm, nonprofit, agency, jobs, bank, employment, expert, learning, growth, experiment, civicrm

There’s something tempting about having your name on a cover and being designated as an “expert” in a field. But there are plenty self-published books out there that nobody reads. I mean, sure, there is the rare instance when I’m walking through the airport, bored, and see a cover that catches my attention, but let’s be serious, that lasts about 10 minutes max. (Am I the only one who reads a chapter and then puts it back on the shelf?) I’m not saying that all books are outdated, I’m just saying people don’t read them like they used to back before all the gizmos and gadgets. I admit it, I’m a child of the digital age, if it’s not in a video, an audiobook, or a 500 word blog post, I’m probably not going to read it unless it has been recommended by someone I know and trust. However, all this is still misleading as to the real core of “Why I’m not an Expert and I Haven’t Written and Book About it”. For that I have to tell you a little story.

I started my adult career as a jack of all trades in an IT/Software Development company. That experience was pretty uneventful in light of this story. The real eye opener for me was when I started working at a local bank as a Customer Service Representative making $13 per hour. That job was the most “professional” looking job I have ever had. It is also the lowest paying job of my adult career. I wore a suit, starched shirt, and tie to work every day. Heck, we spent a whole day of our orientation training talking about appropriate attire and appearance. At least I could pick the color of my tie.

One day as I was holding the door for a middle aged gentleman in a T-Shirt and jeans he looked at my attire and said angrily, “What is wrong with you? Don’t you know this is the 21st century? Who the **** still wears a suit and tie?”

At the moment I felt a little offended, like, how dare he criticize my attire? But then I began to think about it, “Who the **** DOES still wear a suit and tie?” I’m making the least money of my career and I’m wearing the most expensive outfit I’ve ever owned. Why does that make any sense? I get it, there is a psychological aspect of trusting people who look a certain way but let’s be honest, I wasn’t the “seasoned expert” I looked like. I felt pretentious and out of place and since that day I’ve always been a little more suspicious of anyone in a suit and tie.

During and following my career at the bank I began reading a lot of business books about success and even got involved in an MLM or two. I learned a lot from multi-level-marketing and business motivational writers. Primarily I learned that MLM’s weren’t for me and as a budding skeptic I began to realize that neither of these things were all they were hyped to be. I learned that MLM’s overall have a very low recruitment retention rate and are almost always exaggerated or falsely represented by at least some of the representatives. This was a big letdown when I compared that to the story I received from the guy who signed me up. I still like the guy. He’s the most positive guy I know. But recruiting people with the expectation of a high turnover rate wasn’t for me.

I had a mixed experience at the Bank. I moved around to a lot of different branches and had some great experiences and some bad ones. I can say with 100% assurance that appearance doesn’t make everyone a nice person or easy to work with.

After leaving the bank I worked in a few different sales roles. One of those was as an outside sales representative for the Home Depot. One of the prerequisites for that job was a two weeks sales process training in Atlanta Georgia. There I learned all the steps for approaching customers, handling objectives, asking for the sale, etc. A lot of the training was really helpful. When we got back from training though there was a guy on my team who was very persuasive, and boy would he get the sales agreements. However, in the home improvement industry there is a 3-day rescission period which he would use to get people to sign up. “If you decide you want to cancel, you have 3 days to do so.” A lot of his clients cancelled. I on the other hand took my time to explain and treated people the way I would want to be treated. My actual net sales exceeded his dramatically even though his gross sales were almost double mine.

For the past 5 years I’ve been focused exclusively on the web development industry.

There are a ton of companies out there promising to increase traffic to your website, boost your social media presence, and magically increase ROI.

In the beginning I signed up for a few of these courses to “learn”. What I learned is that it can be difficult to get them to stop the monthly subscription withdrawal from your bank account. And the content? I learned more from free YouTube videos and targeted Google searches. 90% of them were a waste of time and money. Why? Because when you get down to it there are no magic beans. When someone forces you to watch a 5-10 minute video presentation, and you can’t fast forward or reverse, when someone’s “squeeze” page looks like a used car salesman talks, with paragraphs and paragraphs of words, testimonials and endorsements, I immediately move on. Why? Because I don’t trust someone who has to work that hard to “sell me”. Another thing I can’t stand is when someone calls themselves a leading expert in their field…. Who are they to designate themselves? What does expert mean?

To me expert should say, I have achieved excellence in this field. I am the ultimate resource on this subject. In a world of technology where trends are constantly changing, how do you know the technique in which they attribute themselves with achieving excellence is still relevant?

Here’s the bottom line. I don’t wear suits anymore. Ever. I’m more of a ‘what you see is what you get’ kind of guy. When it comes to meetings and mixers I sometimes feel a little out of place, but the fact is, my work speaks for itself. I’m constantly learning and I think the most effective way to showcase my talent is by doing good work. Many people have told me they were a web, or social media expert only to show me statistics that were inflated by advertising and didn’t correlate to actual engagement. Or they’ve demonstrated that their design wasn’t intuitive for the end user, or that the important content wasn’t featured. There are a lot of people today who like to wow with big words and who talk a lot about doing things (You should see some of the proposals I’ve seen! They are a full on encyclopedia), but not that many who actually do things well.

Never stop learning, never stop innovating, constantly pursue excellence in your work, and you will never be irrelevant.

Never designate yourself as an expert. It doesn’t look good and it doesn’t really mean anything unless you are one.

 

 

Innovation, Creativity, and Distractions

Nathan Porter - January 1, 2014

busy, people, crossing, street, innovation, change, goals, growth, research, crm, nonprofit, website, agency, technology, ukuupeople

What impact do today’s distractions have on innovation and creativity? Today we live in a fast paced world, we are surrounded by every distraction. TV Shows, Sports, Social Media, Events, and so much more.

Would we have the same innovation and creativity of Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, or Thomas Edison if they had lived with all of these distractions? Would there have been less innovations? Even Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and other modern innovators didn’t have the level of distractions we do today in the prime of their careers.

 

And yet today, we have access to so much more information and research, which surely impacts our ability to achieve things more efficiently and learn things more quickly. So what is the right balance? I’m sure the pursuit of that balance is something one chases for their entire life.

In his book “The Four Hour Work Week” Tim Ferris explores the impact of an undisciplined schedule and how to create a more efficient work process. One of his principles is to take the interruptions and make them behave by scheduling as many as possible. So, for example, if you get a lot of email, set aside 2 times a day to review all your emails, voicemails, etc. and respond to them. And turn off your notifications so that you don’t have the distraction.

I know that organizing my time and life and being more focused on innovating and growing is a big goal of mine this year. Whether that means more brainstorming meetings, code sprints, designer collaborations, strategic planning meetings, personal times of reflection, etc.

Whatever it takes, I’m determined that this will be a wonderful year of great personal growth and corporate innovation.

How about you? What are your tips for avoiding distraction and achieving your goals? What are your biggest goals for this year?

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Lies We Won’t Tell You

Part of our value statement is “we value integrity, honesty, ingenuity, open communication, collaboration, personal excellence, constructive self-criticism, continual self-improvement, respect for each other, and respect for design.” Here are a few lies we won’t tell you.

WE HAVE A SOLUTION FOR EVERY COMPANY
One of the things I (Nate) dealt with in past jobs is creating an illusion for our customers that we offered a wide variety of solutions which we in reality did not offer. It was a smoke screen we put out there as a company to entice customers who were looking at other well known branded solutions to consider our primary solution.

Some people feel that offering a “wide variety” of solutions makes them look like a more experienced solution provider. In reality it means they are minimally experienced in many areas.

We focus on a few well known, and well researched solutions that we feel best meet our clients needs. That doesn’t mean we aren’t intimately familiar with other solutions or that the solutions we have selected will work best for all organizations. If our solution isn’t the right one for you, we are going to tell you and give you a recommendation of where you will find the best solution for your needs.

YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY IS GREAT
I say this sort of tongue in cheek because you might actually have a great brand and marketing plan. I like making people feel good. I would love nothing more than to tell you that your branding strategy and marketing plan is spot on! However, lying to you about the quality of your brand or marketing plan isn’t going to help anyone long term. Don’t feel bad though. I wouldn’t bring a criticism that I didn’t also have a solution to.

Our talent is taking a data driven approach to analyzing your current branding, technology, and marketing plan and maximizing your efforts to reach your audience and grow your organization!

YOU CAN'T DO THAT
This one is a little interesting. There may be many reasons why you shouldn’t do that or what you are asking for may not be something that we are prepared to do with our team, but we won’t tell you that you can’t do something. We’ll always be ready to explore the best option for what you are looking to achieve and at the very least, point you in the right direction.

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