I am relatively new to the blogosphere but I am truly addicted and let me tell you why! I used to read the newspaper every morning but then several years ago I gave up the paper because I liked reading the articles published in the newspaper on the Internet the night before it arrived at my door. To me, blogging is the "new Internet" (a.k.a - the "blogosphere") where I read about the really good stuff long before it makes it onto the "old internet".
Not only is the "good stuff" found in the blogosphere but it is also free of distraction, so far! I have yet to start reading a blog post only to be interrupted by an unsolicited pop up of the new Honda Accord racing towards me on course to drive straight through my living if I don't save myself in the the waning moments by locating the "Close X" button obscurely placed in one corner of the screen.
To me, blogging is the "underground" of the Internet. The place where feed readers are encouraged and information can be found free of unwanted advertisements, pop up windows with the sharing of ideas and content not as the exception but the rule!
I am all for free enterprise and entreprenuerial innovation but I do fear the "blogosphere" is in danger! The rapid growth of blogging is too tempting not to find ways to make it profitable, but will it be overrun?
I am truly conflicted on this matter. I am all for blogs raising money for either your own personal piggy bank or for that of your favorite Charity, both can be done well on credible sites like Squidoo. I am also in favor of mashups like AuctionAds which enables you to link an Ebay auction for items related content in your blog. I love blogs and I love Ebay, bring it on!
When I search for information on blogs I don't land on your blog by accident. You have posted something that I was looking for...and while I'm visiting feel free to convince me of your opinion and even suggest that I make a contribution but I will draw a line if the sand if you ask me to pay to read on!
Maybe paid subscriptions will raise the already high bar that blogs have set or maybe not! Is this the wave of the future, you tell me!
Friday, March 9, 2007
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Get Warren Buffet to Read Your Blog
The Slate 60 recently posted a list of the top charitable donors of 2006. In total, these 60 people pledged more than $50 BILLION to charity with Warren Buffet pledging over $40 million to the Gates Foundation alone.
In one of my recent posts about statistics you should ignore I expand on some sound advice from Seth Godin about not chasing pennies from the masses and it all made sense until I read about The Slate 60. At first glance I thought this was just another example of the China Problem as I start calculating in my head what it would be worth if I can get my hands on 1% of this pot and so on!
Yes, Warren Buffet and I will likely never cross paths and it is even less likely he will read my blog but he is not the only big fish in the sea willing to part with big dollars.
My advice is not to forget about the little people -- as the power of a large audience goes well beyond the dollars they can give you -- but if you are the best at addressing a key issue important to someone with deep pockets make them take notice and it could be well worth your time!
In one of my recent posts about statistics you should ignore I expand on some sound advice from Seth Godin about not chasing pennies from the masses and it all made sense until I read about The Slate 60. At first glance I thought this was just another example of the China Problem as I start calculating in my head what it would be worth if I can get my hands on 1% of this pot and so on!
Yes, Warren Buffet and I will likely never cross paths and it is even less likely he will read my blog but he is not the only big fish in the sea willing to part with big dollars.
My advice is not to forget about the little people -- as the power of a large audience goes well beyond the dollars they can give you -- but if you are the best at addressing a key issue important to someone with deep pockets make them take notice and it could be well worth your time!
Monday, March 5, 2007
Blogging Evolution - 5 Key Terms All Beginning Bloggers Should Know
In celebration of my one month anniversary in the blogosphere here is my list of 5 key terms all new bloggers must embrace to make your new world much easier to understand and navigate. They are:
As the saying goes, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink!" Most of these terms I had heard before but found little need for until blogging became a daily "To Do" item.
RSS, Bloglines (a feed reader) and podcasts have become a necessary evil in my blogosphere and probably the first you will conquer with relative ease.
Widgets are next. Like most gadgets I probably don't need to add widgets to my blog but I will makeup a reason to find a place for ones like ChipIn. ChipIn is a simple platform for individuals or organizations to collect money for anything and everything that allows people to track your progress towards your goal and let's organizers use well known online bill pay tools like PayPal.
Last but not least is Mashup. Put simply, a Mashup is the combination of two technologies that when combined can make an even better product, service, etc. like the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup or if you prefer a more recent example the Apple iPhone.
Next month I offer an update list for the intermediate bloggers to continue tracking my blogging evolution! Stay tuned!
2 Staggering Blog Statistics You Should Ignore?
- There are more than 55 million blogs on the Internet.
- More than 100,000 new blogs are created daily.
Staggering statistics wouldn't you say? Just think, if you could just have a penny for every blog in the "blogosphere" you'd be socking away $500K and counting! Now forget you even read this...but keep reading!
Seth Godin refers to this type of thinking as the China Problem. The concept is similar to the example I describe above. Godin makes his point about marketing but the same rules certainly apply in the "blogosphere". I had big dreams when I started my blog...over 50 million blogs, countless more blog readers on top of that and yet you can fit my subscriber "audience" into a jiffy john. The whole "if you build it they will come" business clearly only applies to baseball diamonds in corn fields!
Big numbers seem to mystify us all beyond reason -- and this is not a new phenomenon-- playing the lottery despite the tremendous odds against winning is something we can all relate to.
You can't be all things to all people (or bloggers) but everyone can and should be relevant. Too often it seems like non-profits are trying to be everything to all people. Tell me what problem you are fixing and how my money is going to help you fix it and count me in. Nobody I've seen has ever done it better than Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly's who's back page article on the need for malaria nets raised over $1.2 million the last time I checked.
The organization that is the best at one thing relevant to me is the one that gets my time and/or my money. If they are really good I may even tell my entire subscriber "audience"!!
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
The 2008 Election will be Won on the Internet
As of February 2007 there are now 25 candidates running for President which is all the more reason the Internet will be a major factor in electing the next President in 2008. If you don't believe me watch this video of how Hillary Clinton announced she was running for President. She didn't do this on the nightly news or a Sunday morning talk show she did it on her website! A longer look at her robust website is a clear indication that her people are putting a lot of stock in its importance to her success.
To be clear, I am not starting a Hillary fan club. That said, by all indications she is certainly a major player for the Democratic nomination in 2008. I assume she has a pretty experienced team in her corner who got her husband elected in '92 and '96 so they probably know what works.
As the saying goes, if you want to see the future all you need to do is look to the past. Do you remember Howard Dean going crazy in 2004? Well before that happened, his campaign, "Dean for America" was one of the most successful online political fundraising efforts ever. According to this Convio Case Study Howard Dean raised $3.6 million online in only 90 days and raised more than $7 million dollars in one quarter while growing his email list from 200M to 500M subscribers.
The Dean figures from '04 will likely pale in comparison to what will be raised online for 2008. Every candidate, Republican and Democrat, will have a presence on the net and I welcome the onslaught that is soon to follow. Creativity is often at its best when the stakes are the highest and there isn't much that can compete with the final table at the WSOP...or a presidential election!
To be clear, I am not starting a Hillary fan club. That said, by all indications she is certainly a major player for the Democratic nomination in 2008. I assume she has a pretty experienced team in her corner who got her husband elected in '92 and '96 so they probably know what works.
As the saying goes, if you want to see the future all you need to do is look to the past. Do you remember Howard Dean going crazy in 2004? Well before that happened, his campaign, "Dean for America" was one of the most successful online political fundraising efforts ever. According to this Convio Case Study Howard Dean raised $3.6 million online in only 90 days and raised more than $7 million dollars in one quarter while growing his email list from 200M to 500M subscribers.
The Dean figures from '04 will likely pale in comparison to what will be raised online for 2008. Every candidate, Republican and Democrat, will have a presence on the net and I welcome the onslaught that is soon to follow. Creativity is often at its best when the stakes are the highest and there isn't much that can compete with the final table at the WSOP...or a presidential election!
6 Essential Motivators for Giving
My brother tells me the key to compelling copy for my blog is to offer the next great list of top 5 or top 1o list of what to do...so I went in search of a good list for fundraising and came across this article in the February edition of Fundraising Success magazine.
Tim Burgess, CEO of Merkle-Domain explains how he recently went through all of the mail he had received in the past few weeks, he threw away a bunch that didn't appeal to him and kept the rest and then came up with his list of the six essential motivators.
Some of his points were good but I think he stops short of the real question that needs to be answered. Knowing who is motivated by what, and when is the best time to get their attention, is everything. When we can answer that question Tim won't be throwing out charitable solicitations he gets in the mail and I will be getting a lot less credit card offers don't you think?
Tim Burgess, CEO of Merkle-Domain explains how he recently went through all of the mail he had received in the past few weeks, he threw away a bunch that didn't appeal to him and kept the rest and then came up with his list of the six essential motivators.
Some of his points were good but I think he stops short of the real question that needs to be answered. Knowing who is motivated by what, and when is the best time to get their attention, is everything. When we can answer that question Tim won't be throwing out charitable solicitations he gets in the mail and I will be getting a lot less credit card offers don't you think?
Save the World One Lightbulb at a Time
Did I get your attention?
I recently read an article in Fast Company about the CFL light bulb which states that if all 110 million households in the United States changed one traditional light bulb to the "swirl" light bulb we would save enough electricity to power all of Delaware and Rhode Island or cut the green house gases produced by 1.3 million cars on the roads today.
Let me reiterate the fact that this can all be done if we only change ONE light bulb per household. A quick tally of my house tells me there are approximately 45 light bulbs in my house...changing just one doesn't seem like too much, right!
Enough about "going green", the real point here is about the marketing. Is it just me or should whoever invented this light bulb be screaming the above point from the roof tops? I have seen these light bulbs in stores, they look weird and so I buy the standard light bulb and go on my merry way. If you put a big sign in front of the display that tells me we can save the world and I am walking out with the swirly bulb for sure.
This seems like a huge miss to me but the reality is that this probably gets missed everyday in business, in non-profits, etc. as shown here by Seth Godin's post on vacuums. If every business asked themselves, "what is it that we do better than anyone else or that no one else does" and built their marketing/advertising plan accordingly we may all be rich... okay, and save the world!
I recently read an article in Fast Company about the CFL light bulb which states that if all 110 million households in the United States changed one traditional light bulb to the "swirl" light bulb we would save enough electricity to power all of Delaware and Rhode Island or cut the green house gases produced by 1.3 million cars on the roads today.
Let me reiterate the fact that this can all be done if we only change ONE light bulb per household. A quick tally of my house tells me there are approximately 45 light bulbs in my house...changing just one doesn't seem like too much, right!
Enough about "going green", the real point here is about the marketing. Is it just me or should whoever invented this light bulb be screaming the above point from the roof tops? I have seen these light bulbs in stores, they look weird and so I buy the standard light bulb and go on my merry way. If you put a big sign in front of the display that tells me we can save the world and I am walking out with the swirly bulb for sure.
This seems like a huge miss to me but the reality is that this probably gets missed everyday in business, in non-profits, etc. as shown here by Seth Godin's post on vacuums. If every business asked themselves, "what is it that we do better than anyone else or that no one else does" and built their marketing/advertising plan accordingly we may all be rich... okay, and save the world!
Friday, February 2, 2007
The Future is... Text Messaging
Giving through direct mail will always be prevelant, making charitable donations online will continue to grow exponentially year-to-year like Google profits but I am here to tell you the future of charitable giving could be text messaging!
This is already a common practice in the U.K. yet I hear very little about it in the U.S.A. From what I have heard, the technology and service of wireless providers is much better overseas which explains why they are ahead of the game in this arena but I think the America is ready!
I have attended several conferences on non-profit fundraising in the last few years and never once heard someone talk about text messaging as a viable giving medium in the years ahead. In just the last few years I have seen text messaging go from a novelty dominated by 15 year-olds to the preferred medium of "quick conversation" for thirty-somethings. I don't have any articles to link to that support my theory but take a quick look at Cingular, Verizon, etc. and you can see multiple phone options (not PDA's) which were designed specifically for text messaging.
I am not sure if text messaging to cell phones could be a work around for telemarketing that has been so impacted by the do-not-call laws but, if so, that will be all the more reason text messaging could be the future!
This is already a common practice in the U.K. yet I hear very little about it in the U.S.A. From what I have heard, the technology and service of wireless providers is much better overseas which explains why they are ahead of the game in this arena but I think the America is ready!
I have attended several conferences on non-profit fundraising in the last few years and never once heard someone talk about text messaging as a viable giving medium in the years ahead. In just the last few years I have seen text messaging go from a novelty dominated by 15 year-olds to the preferred medium of "quick conversation" for thirty-somethings. I don't have any articles to link to that support my theory but take a quick look at Cingular, Verizon, etc. and you can see multiple phone options (not PDA's) which were designed specifically for text messaging.
I am not sure if text messaging to cell phones could be a work around for telemarketing that has been so impacted by the do-not-call laws but, if so, that will be all the more reason text messaging could be the future!
Could a Superbowl commercial change the world?
I recently heard a speech from the co-founder of Operation Smile, Dr. William Magee who presented one of the most compelling cases for giving I have seen (if anyone can find a podcast or text please send me the link or add a post here). This speech was given to an audience of about 500 people, got a standing ovation and undoubtedly could have emptied the pockets of many who were in attendance.
After watching the Superbowl over the weekend it got me thinking about what could be accomplished if an organization with a compelling message was given a one minute spot or maybe more to make their case to huge audience. According to Nielsen Media Research more than 93 million people tuned in for the Superbowl and based on all of the buzz I would be willing to be one-third of viewers were more excited for the commercials than the actual game itself, right?
Yes, I know that a one minute spot would cost $5 million dollars but let's do a quick math exercise to measure the potential gain. Of the 93 million total viewers, let's estimate that only 20% of viewers are actually tuned in to see the actual commercial (nearly 19 million). Of those 19 million who were actually tuned in, I will estimate only 2.5% of people who watch actually make the effort to pick up the phone or log on to the Internet to donate (remember, this is only 2.5% of those who watched so it is actually only .005% of the total viewers who are giving to the most compelling offer anyone could find). If these 475,000 people can find it in their hearts to give an average gift of $25 we are talking $12 million in gross revenue!! You could also argue that the 19 million impressions could be worth 10x as much longer term.
This article further confirmed for me how TV and Internet alike are embracing this "Youtube" world where people can get air time for doing anything and everything. Why not offer non-profits this golden ticket once a year? Whoever can make the most compelling case for giving in the shortest period of time wins, and I mean REALLY wins!
After watching the Superbowl over the weekend it got me thinking about what could be accomplished if an organization with a compelling message was given a one minute spot or maybe more to make their case to huge audience. According to Nielsen Media Research more than 93 million people tuned in for the Superbowl and based on all of the buzz I would be willing to be one-third of viewers were more excited for the commercials than the actual game itself, right?
Yes, I know that a one minute spot would cost $5 million dollars but let's do a quick math exercise to measure the potential gain. Of the 93 million total viewers, let's estimate that only 20% of viewers are actually tuned in to see the actual commercial (nearly 19 million). Of those 19 million who were actually tuned in, I will estimate only 2.5% of people who watch actually make the effort to pick up the phone or log on to the Internet to donate (remember, this is only 2.5% of those who watched so it is actually only .005% of the total viewers who are giving to the most compelling offer anyone could find). If these 475,000 people can find it in their hearts to give an average gift of $25 we are talking $12 million in gross revenue!! You could also argue that the 19 million impressions could be worth 10x as much longer term.
This article further confirmed for me how TV and Internet alike are embracing this "Youtube" world where people can get air time for doing anything and everything. Why not offer non-profits this golden ticket once a year? Whoever can make the most compelling case for giving in the shortest period of time wins, and I mean REALLY wins!
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