Elaina Buzzell

Tag: nonprofit

March 13, 2012

Free as in Kittens: 5 tips to better use donated technology

Anya the free kittenEight years ago, I was looking into getting a kitten when a friend’s cat had an unplanned pregnancy. A few months later, Anya came to live with me, and I’ve had a good, if rude and rambunctious, friend since.

Anya was a free kitten, but I have made many investments in her since she came into my home. Litter, food, toys, vet visits and vaccinations have all added up over the years, and I have also spent a great amount of my time playing with and caring for her. To put it gently, if I had I insisted on my free kitten remaining free, our relationship would failed at the outset. Read the rest of this entry »

March 9, 2012

Professional Social Media Presence

So, you have your communications strategy set, and your social media accounts are set up. Now, how do you get the results you are looking for? This week in Favorite Finds Friday, I’m highlighting articles that I have found about running a professional social media and/or communications campaigns at nonprofits. These articles have tips for engaging your audience, building your follower base, and how to staff your communications campaigns.
  • How to Build Your Professional Twitter Brand by Heidi Cohen. This article includes some tips for creating the kind of Twitter account that attracts followers and has high engagement. You’ll still want to have that strategy in place to be sure that you’re bringing in followers that will meet your goals, but these tips will help you along the way. Most of these tips apply to communications tools well beyond Twitter.
  • 3 Cool Twitter Tricks That Are Useless Without Strategy by Hector Cuevas: Here, Hector outlines some pretty neat tips, but I also love that he points out that tips and tricks won’t get you far without an underlying strategy to your communications.
  • 7 Reasons Why You Don’t Need an Intern to Run Your Social Media Program by Peggy Dolane. Job listing sites never seem to be short on listings attempting to recruit interns to run the social media or communications programs at nonprofits. In this post, Peggy outlines great reasons to re-consider this practice.

 

Have you used any of these tips? How does your communications strategy utilize Twitter? How is your communications program staffed?

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March 7, 2012

SocialBro and Hootsuite: A match made in limbo?

I wrote a bit ago about the new tool SocialBro, and how it’s a must-have for anyone with a professional Twitter presence. Today they announced a very exciting new feature, the ability to send the results of your “Best Time to Tweet” report to Hootsuite. As a long-time fan of Hootsuite, my immediate reaction was of joy. However, there’s definitely a lot of room to improve, and I can’t wait for the next version. Read the rest of this entry »