Category: Shift Happens

Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations – SM Fundraising Prezi

Slide 1:

I am truly honored to be here today. I grew up in Ft. Wayne and I have vivid memories of watching Monty Python on PBS Sunday evenings. I’m glad I can share my experience with Public Broadcasting Stations from the Banks of Ohio to the Shores of Lake Michigan. Because of time limitations, I will move quickly through my presentation so we will have plenty of time for questions afterward. This prezi contains live links and can be accessed freely at Stark Reality Check Dot com.

I was invited to speak today because If you google Amy Stark, …..

Slide 2

….. I’m number two. The first Amy Stark listed Actually owns the domain name. She is an artist who has traveled the world. Soon after google added tweets to their search algorithm I moved into the number 2 spot, unseating …

Slide 3

…. a psychiatrist from California named Amy Stark … who uses her beloved standard poodles during therapy sessions.

Slide 4

I encourage you to connect with me on twitter @AmyStark . I have close to ten thousand followers and my tweets have been valued at 26.10 per entry. My mom is VERY proud.

Slide 5

Vicky and I know each other only through social media interactions. This is our first time to meet face to face, and already I feel like we’re friends. She wanted me to talk about:

Cohesive messaging across Traditional and Social Media .. Plus she wanted me to share successful Fundraising campaigns, some best practices, and how to measure Social Media. If these are not the topics you had hoped I would cover, You’ll have to talk to Vicky about it… =)

Slide 6:

Let’s jump right into Vicky’s first question about cohesion. The content from your traditional marketing efforts: like your web-sites, email campaigns, brochures– can be easily used to feed a Social Media System.

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FIRST AND FORMOST you all must engage in social media RIGHT NOW… not later.. to protect your brand. In the 1940’s Churchill said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Today a lie can spread to every corner of the glove at the speed of light. You MUST LISTEN to what’s going on out there in the Interwebz … because if someone’s talking about your station, it’s better that you know Sooner rather than later.

Once you have mastered the reputation management part of Social Media you can focus on raising awareness for your mission, your brand and ….

Slide 8

…. your station. You need an engaging home page on your site. It’s a bad idea to drive traffic to a lousy site. I was glad when I scoped out Vicky’s Lakeshore Public Broadcasting website, because it’s groovy, and it matched my color scheme so well.

Slide 9:

the real power of social media comes from being able to move folks from awareness to alignment and advocacy, but I’ll talk more about that toward the end.

Slide 10:

Vicky asked for examples of a successful campaign and my favorite Case Story is how Beth Kanter raised $215 Thousand dollars over the course of 3 contests.

If you visit Stark reAlity Dot Ning Dot Com you will find a live RSS of her Blog. Three best practices emerged as I reviewed Beth’s campaign strategies…

Number 1) Competition is GOOD and luckily this is an ideal motivator for most #Indiana folk. Number 2) Beth was able to tap into her influential Social Media friends like Chris Brogan. She’s well respected among the peeps I hang with and her reputation as someone who is willing to share information freely… has ensured her a spot in the Social Media Fundraising Campaign Hall of Fame. Which leads me to best practice Number 3 … Longevity… Beth has been blogging for ten years and started these campaigns with an already SOLID social media following.

I confirmed the total amount Beth raised by sending her a couple of @mentions in the twitter public timeline yesterday….

Slide 11:

She tweeted back an exact figure to me quickly… She also sent a link to her wiki listed here which is chock-full of best practices…….. WHILE I”M NAME DROPPING, let me share another Best Practice from a social media friend @PaulPoteet He participated in The Throwmato Indy event last weekend. A $10 donation to the Pat Tillman foundation was the cost to participate. A local restaurant sponsored the event in exchange for the Social Media spot light. Paul sent me a picture of the event along with the following tweet, “Here is a pic of me seconds after getting hit in the tomatoes at Throwmato.” I highly recommend connecting with these two Influencers… you’ll be glad you did..

Slide 12:

There are thousands of social media peeps eager to share their best practices… but be careful. Some aren’t even better practices, let alone best ones. I have SEVEN best practices that I would like to share:

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The first best practice I stole from Shakespeare, “To thine own self be true” – Be your mission in all SM exchanges.

The second Stark reAlity Check Best Practice is ALL Interactions should abide by the THARG principles. Transparency Honesty Accountability Reciprocity and Gratuity. By Transparency I mean… HIDDEN agendas are sniffed out quickly and they won’t work in the long run. The H in THARG stands for Honesty-after all it is the Best policy, Accountability – Keep your social media promises because– To quote Bobby Vee.. “the night has a thousand eyes”… By Reciprocity – I mean follow peeps back who follow you unless there is something that offends you about their social media presence. AND WHEN someone starts bugging you, then simply ignore and unfollow . Finally the G in THARG stands for Gratuity which is Gratitude PLUS a payment of time talent or treasure.

The third best practice is share stories. If you only broadcast pledge requests you will be ignored quickly.

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Number 4 is Be a lightning rod, not a spigot. State who you are .. what you’re about and let interested folk find you. This is the purest form of permission based marketing. It’s a longer donor cycle… but you end up with A MORE loyal follower base and influential friends:

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Stark reAlity Check Best Practice number 5 ??? Quality over Quantity every day of the week. I will promise you that 5 INFLUENTIAL Social Media advocates are equal to THOUSANDS of “filler followers” or peeps who may be aware of you, but they never truly align with your mission, and definitely will not BE an advocate for your station.

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Number 6> The Art of Conversation is alive and well and living on social media platforms. Tools and applications come and go, but the value of being able to communicate works digitally AND face-to-face.

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The last best practice is offer IS freemium.. Some people may not be able to afford to donate treasure, but they may be able to share time and talent. A freemium is a great way to thank them for paying you some attention, plus ….. they are more likely to share your freemium with others.

When you combine the Seven Stark Reality Check Social Media best practices with the research I performed specifically for this group, I came up with what I think is a brilliant idea for All #Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations

Slide 18:

Get the LOL Cats to answer the phone banks during a telethon – then post it on YouTube. It would go viral. I’m not even kidding.

Slide 19:

The fourth and final topic Vicky wanted me to cover is , “How To measure Social Media ?” This was the toughest question of all — because there are scores of tools and applications that can be used to effectively measure your efforts– ranging in price from free to tens of thousands of dollars. Whenever I am faced with a challenging Social Media Media question like this, I usually fall back on my knowledge of the Ancient Greeks… and use a wise quote so that I can sound impressive. The Philosopher Heraclitus said, “The only constant in the universe is change.” … Social media ,,, and the ways to measure it … have tools and applications that are in a continual state of flux. New and improved tracking methods are being introduced, adopted .. and then dumped …on a daily basis. My best advice regarding Social Media measurement? Check out Doug Karr at the marketingtech blog .. he’s an #Indiana Social Media Geek who stays on top of the latest measuring trends.

I also encourage you to measure the efficacy of social media against my Awareness Continuum …

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Awareness is a NECESSARY first step in all fundraising activity… No one will pay you a pledge before they pay you attention. Once you have a following who are aware of your station, look for those in the group who align with your goals – They are the people who visit your website frequently, grab your RSS feeds and don’t mark your emails as spam. From this group of ALIGNERS- look deeper for the social media influencers – and ask ’em to help. This is where you can Turn your donors into fundraisers.

Slide 21:

Remember at the beginning of this presentation I mentioned the REAL Power of Social Media?

Imagine if you have 3 Influential followers acting as advocates, and they all have three people who Align with your goals… who ALL have three people who become aware of your mission … simply because they overheard a digital discussion between an Advocate and an Aligner … I call this “viral awareness raising.” And if you want an example, check out the YouTube Old Spice Campaign … It’s hilarious by the way. When you’re well connected – you have the ability to tap into the collective genius pool of your network, AND the genius pool of your Advocate’s … THAT”S When the real social media fun begins.

Slide 22:

I hope I covered your topics thoroughly, Vicky. Raising social media awareness has been a passion of mine for several years, so thanks again for inviting me to share my ideas with The Public Broadcasting Stations of #Indiana.

Now I’m excited to take questions. Please don’t hold back, ask me really hard ones – I love to be challenged.