Archive for May, 2007

Here’s something that might answer this question.

[If you have trouble viewing this video, see it here at YouTube.] If that video doesn’t make much sense, here’s another (which actually provoked the making of the first) that cogently explains the genesis of and philosophy behind web 2.0.

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News you can use from the world of funding … Entries are open for the Sponsorship of the Arts Awards 2007. The awards acknowledge partnerships between business and the arts that demonstrate a creativity, commitment and vision, as well as business benefits. Companies who have sponsored an arts event or organisation in the year to June 2007 have until 7 June to enter.

ASB Community Trust, which grants $45m to community groups in Auckland and Northland regions each year, has decided to set annual closing dates for when it will accept grant applications.

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Arts marketer Jerry Yoshitomi has pointed me in the direction of an invaluable resource: TechSoup - the technology place for non-profits. I signed up for their weekly newsletter ‘By the cup’ (see the top left corner of the TechSoup home page to subscribe), and I’ve just received my first edition, which has prompted me to check out their website in more detail.

Turns out TechSoup is an essential service for helping us to get to grips with technologies - new and established - and how they can be applied to our kinds of businesses. Here’s a few things to get you started:

• an article on analysising website statistics - what you should measure and tools to help you do this
• suggestions in the Technology for Fundraising forum on database tools for managing reservations, donors and sales
• a review of seven blogging tools
• useful, relevant posts from community members on which blogging platform is best.

Topics cover emerging techologies, technologies for fundraising, databases, hardware, web building and such - all from the context of what works for non-profits.

Sending your customers an email newsletter is possibly the cheapest and most effective way to market your services and build audiences. If you have a limited marketing budget, an email newsletter should be at the top of your to-do list. It can help you get eyeballs on your brand, send news and information to your customers and drive traffic to your website.

‘The seven deadly sins of email marketing management’ outlines the major pitfalls to avoid if you want to keep your newsletter subscribers happy. Some key things to remember are to keep your design simple and your messages relevant. Link through to your website for more information. Encourage subscribers to forward the newsletter and provide a link so that new people can subscribe.

Using a good email tool can make all the difference. It can help you identify bounces (email addresses that are no longer active), manage your list of contacts and monitor open rates for your newsletter. Data on the links in your newsletter that have been clicked on gives you opportunity to adapt newsletter content to meet your subsribers’ needs and interests.

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I attended a workshop today at the GOVIS conference in Wellington. The workshop was Kathy Sierra’s presentation ‘Creating passionate users’, and it was delivered by her colleague Tara Hunt.

In Kathy’s memorable phrasing, we were challenged to find ways to help our users ‘kick ass’. Our websites should be faithful ’sidekicks’ to our users, helping our users be better at doing their job, at their leisure activities, at paying their taxes - whatever the service is that we’re offering.

Websites - especially those that deliver any kind of service or community feature or that require users to contribute - have a learning curve. It’s important to keep the ’suck threshold’ low (the period when your user is struggling to master your service), and let users advance to the ‘kick ass’ level as soon as possible (the point at which they see the benefits and payback).

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