And there’s a great post on Search Engine Land about how to make it happen with your Flash files.

From a Business Week report:

Democrats have been focused on recruiting supporters online while McCain has been spending campaign donors on TV. The difference is striking:

Obama now boasts 1.5 million friends on Facebook and MySpace, and 43,026 Twitter followers, not to mention 850,000 fans on MyBarackObama.com, his personal social network. In contrast, McCain has 203,343 supporters across MySpace and Facebook.

To compensate for missed connections, McCain’s campaign launched McCainSpace in February, a social network where users can create McCain-centric personal profiles. Commentator Michael Goldfarb was also hired to blog for McCain’s website.

This month the Republicans also launched MeetBarackObama.com, a social media site that highlights Barack’s weaknesses.

I’m not sure if McCain will be able to catch up, and I still don’t think he’s using social networks in an authentic way that will seem “real” online.

I’ve been busy building an online services team here at OMP, but wanted to share a presentation that I gave along with one of my colleagues here at OMP focused on how to use online marketing to build a donor list, how to eliminate issues with list acquisition on your website, and how to create a cultivation and fundraising email campaign. We gave the presentation at the Democracy in Action conference, and you can view the our online marketing and email cultivation  presentation on Slideshare.

This is a brilliant piece of viral marketing an link bait from Emerald Nuts that I find brilliant (and look I’m now spreading it’s reach by sharing it with you!)

Of course it would have been even more succesful if I could grab the video embed code from their site, but you’ll just have to head over there to check it out:

http://angryleprechaun.com/

Enjoy!

I am a huge supporter of natural search placement for nonprofits because it’s the placement that is free to obtain and therefore within the realm of possiblity for most non-profits. But did you know that it’s also a more effective way of obtaining new activisist/supporters than placing paid ads?

I found hard numbers from Google about the effectiveness of natural/free vs. ppc/paid on a Feb 1. blog interview with Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Analytics Evangelist and author of “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day”

The interview highlights two items that I found interesting:

1. The average Google query now consists of 4 words and not 3! That’s up for the first time ever as of Q4 2007, from the long-time 3 word per query Google user average.

and

2. 14% of Google clicks come from paid search and 86% of clicks are organic.

Let’s summarize that. Eighty-six percent of clicks happen on organic/natural/free search results so a strategy that involves buying paid ads without thinking about natural placement is not 100% effective, now is it?

The good news is that non-profits can gain high natural placement though good SEO practices, building links from .gov and .edu partners that they already have relationships with, and not use financial resources to get there.

I discovered an analogy about social media networks that I had to share, because I see quite a few non-profits join a social network like Facebook or MySpace and then basically abandon their account/profile - only rarely posting updates.

It’s important to think about social networks like it’s a party. If you join but then don’t do anything, you’ll become known as the guy/gal who came to the party but stood in the corder and that has consequences about how your brand is percieved.

Its rather easy to keep your profiles updated because the posts should be natural sounding and short. Here are some ideas;

• So when something happens in the news related to your issue, post a comment and a link to the news article.
• When you have an event coming up, post the event in Facebook and Eventful
• When you come up with a new video, post that everywhere as well. (YouTube, MySpace and Facebook at a bare minimum)
• When you are working on a new advocacy campaign, post a blurb to the full information on your accounts..
• When someone else comments on your content, take a moment to comment back.

Don’t be so shy to participate that you don’t at all. Unlike high school parties, social media sites are a bit more forgiving about awkward first advances. Besides, you’ll never get that “date” with a new donor or supporter if you don’t walk away from the corner long enough to at least say “hi”.

Maybe you’re convinced that the risk for someone speaking ill about your organization is relatively low. But what if a site creates a parody using your name? That’s what happened when the Onion created a parody about a boy asking for too many wishes from Make a Wish and bankrupted the organization. Totally fictional, but it took the top ranking spot on the search engines. You can read more about the story on Serengeti Communication’s blog.

All the more reason to invest in PPC ads, and keep an eye on how your name is being represented on the search engines. Who knows how many potential donors Make a Wish has lost who thought the organization was going belly up?

A .pdf from Facebook about how to use their tools to promote yourself virally.

I had to highlight an online flash game I found that was developed for Conserve our Oceans, called the Ocean Survivor Game.

It’s a great way of creating activist and adding their emails to Conserve our Ocean’s email file, but unfortunately, you’re not going to find the game though search, only through the organization’s website (I tried to find it).

A search for “blue fin tuna” displays the Environmental Defense Fund’s activism page, and the World Wildlife Fund’s activism page - because it’s filled with the word “blue fin tuna” (in the title and page text, though it could use a description tag).

How could Conserve our Ocean get more traffic? First, they should add keywords to the text of their page and in their meta tags. Second they should try to get prominent bloggers to mention their game (like Treehugger.com who has 510,336 visitors per month vs. Conserve Our Ocean’s site with 4,123 - based on compete.com data).

Third, they should partner with places like the Monterey Bay Aquarium and see if they would post a link to the game. Put it on their facebook page, or even better, turn it into a Facebook Application. I would play it if a friend sent me along or if I could compete with my friends for higher scores. They could even buy a Facebook ad related to the game and have it display on profiles that use keywords related to the ocean or fishing.

They should also get NOAA’s educational page to link to the game. Not only does the NOAA site get over 4 million visitors a month, but it also would be a quality inbound link coming from a .gov site.

It’s a great tool, and a fun game. I hope that Conserve our Ocean gets a chance to promote it more broadly.

I like to spread the news of innovative online strategies to engage activists, and Amnesty International has one that I’d like to share called tearitdown.org.

Visitors get to sign their online petition and get to “own” a pixel of a picture of prisoners at Guantanam. It’s taking action to “tear down” the prison.

The site is very well done and worth interacting with.