Will Marlow

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nonprofits

 
February 9, 2010
 

Opportunities in Social Media (or the Bright Side of a Blizzard)

Downed_tree

Where I live in DC, we just got the largest snowfall in 90 years, and now we're preparing for another blizzard that could drop an additional ten inches.  Most news coverage talks about all the negative impacts of the blizzard, but flip that coin over and you can use it to engage your audience.  If you work for a school or nonprofit and you have valuable equipment stored outside, take photographs or videos and share them online via your Facebook or Flickr profile.  If you work for a nonprofit that helps low-income people or the homeless, send an emergency announcement to your supporters letting them know that the weather has increased the need of the people you serve.  If the blizzard damaged the grounds of your school's campus, use Facebook to ask your students and alums to submit their own photographs of the damage by uploading them online.

If you run a consumer business, evaluate how much productivity you would have saved if your staff had been better prepared to work from home.  (Maybe you can use this as an opportunity to jump-start a year-long telework program that may make your workforce happier and more productive.)

Opportunities are everywhere.  If you're a photographer or videographer, go out and take pictures and gather footage.  This snowfall is the largest accumulation in 90 years, and the photos you take today could be stock photography for the next 90 years.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge.  Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Filed under  //   Blizzard   Facebook   Flickr   Social Media   higher education   nonprofits  

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January 2, 2010
 

Usability Testing on a Shoestring

A lot of times we get really fancy when we need to do things like "usability testing."

Someone I trust recently described a great way to do usability testing for your website for just $30.00.  

1.  Pick three of your friends who you don't work with.  
2.  Give each of them $10.  
3.  Sit down with each of them in turn, and ask them to make a donation on your website, but don't give them any instructions. 
4.  Watch what they do, and take notes.

How long does the process take them from start to finish? 
Do they find you by searching in Google? 
Do any of them fail to make a donation?
Do they get sidetracked by anything? 
Do they look frustrated? 
Does any part of the process confuses them? 
Where do their eyes go when they reach your website?

You can learn more by spending $30 in this way than you can by spending weeks or months thinking about the way that you think your website should work.  And even if your web site doesn't have anything to do with donations, you can still learn a lot from an informal focus group like this.

Because when it comes to the user-experience of your web site, what you think is just a guess until you ask.

Will Marlow is the co-creator of AlumniFidelity, which helps schools and nonprofits improve their online fundraising results with peer-to-peer, social-based fundraising.  Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.  

Filed under  //   "Usability Testing"   Online Fundraising   Software   Software development   donations   higher education   modular   modules   nonprofits   schools  

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