When it comes to your direct mail campaigns, you’ve probably over-farmed your land.

You’ve been emailing and snail mailing the same donors you have done for a decade. It is time to leave the land fallow and let the lists rest. You have probably responded to lower donations and attention by relinquishing too much power to your direct marketing firm and they have been much more aggressive than you’re comfortable with, sending out many more snail mail and email donation requests than ever before. You used to blame the economy for decreased giving but you’re starting to believe it has more to do with the fertility of the donor list than it does with the economic collapse of 2008–or a lot less than you’ve been led to believe. You realize that the nonprofit space is ever more competitive, but your brand is strong and respected and comes up well in Charity Navigator, so what gives?

Well, in agriculture, it is possible to over-farm your land. Indeed, it is probable, in a couple ways:

Ultimately, you need to do one or more of a couple things: allow the land to rest, either ceasing farming completely or throttling down substantially, though this is impossible if you’re tending only one plot of land; enrich the land you already have with better aeration, nutrition, and pesticides with the expectation that you will be able to increase your yield; rotate your crops within the land you already have with crops that tend to enrich the soil that has been depleted by your main crop, naturally returning your field to a cycle of fertility; or you can expand your fields, distributing your yield over a larger plot of land, reaching into a greater diversity of quality of land, essentially hedging your bets over land of varying quality, durability, fertility, and health, resulting in a more consistent crop that is less dependent on any particular geographic focal point.

What this means to fundraising messaging is that you can no longer beat the same drums and rally the same troops. Not only is the economy in the sort of slump that is putting 100-year-old charities into seizure but there is less barrier to starting a charity or foundation, there is less trust that a charity will deliver the goods to the issues they purport to support, and then there is the Internet, allowing anyone to initiate a financial call-to-action on their own, completely by-passing traditional charities. So, while there used to be a very strong field from which to harvest donations, each crop results in a much lower yield. Deafness to your message because of over-mailing is only one symptom of this “over-farming.” The deafness is caused by direct mail firms stepping up the seven touches to 11, hitting the same lists again and again, going back further historically, and also buying cold lists from other organizations for cold hard cash, all in an attempt to make quarterly forecasts and budgets. This has proven a dangerous game because these are all very short games and the outcome has been devastating: people are deleting your emails and throwing away–hopefully recycling–your physical mailings.

Ceasing farming completely or throttling down substantially: This is almost always impossible unless you’re sitting on a huge pile of foundation or grant cash. We at Abraham Harrison use email lists all the time and we never reach out more than three times to one recipient over the course of one campaign (one harvest) and then retire it until the next harvest. We sometimes go one step further by retiring some recipients if there haven’t been any recent conversions. Sometimes we allow that list to rest completely, not using it in any other campaigns, either, because the list had been completely over-used. This most often happens with tech blogs and parenting blogs (mommy bloggers, daddy bloggers, etc). Letting lists rest is not optional, it is essential. The only question is to whether you have more than one field in play or can increase the health and yield of your plot through some methods I will discuss below.

Enrich the land you already have with better aeration, nutrition, and pesticides: As an aside, I am trying to get back into shape. This doesn’t only require exercising and diet, it also requires cross-training. Your muscles quickly become accustomed to the same workout routine, the theory being that you need to constantly “surprise” your muscle groups with different challenges–to mix it up. It’s the same thing with messaging as well as farming. How has the state of the art progressed? Are there new pesticides or pest-resistant strains of crops you can use? Or fertilizers? Or farming methods?

Have you been feeding the earth as well as the crops? Well, at Abraham Harrison, we’re working towards the best relationship advice ever: give the gift your recipient wants rather than giving the gift you want to give. It can be tricky. What do the members want that you have not given them? It is a challenge to praise your donors for their generosity, their support, and their sacrifice–effusively–when you feel like they’re being selfish cheap bastards. Is that true? Are you offering tote bags when nobody wants totes anymore? Could you reward your donors in a more public way?

The Internet allows much smaller donors to be actively appreciated for their micro-donations. My favorite podcast, No Agenda, while not a charity, spends well over half-an-hour of its 150-minutes lavishing praise on the people who donate cash-money to support their Thursday and Sunday live show. If you donate more than $33, have a birthday, or do something that Adam Curry and John C Dvorak consider to be PR, you get a shout-out.

If you pay in a few hundred dollars on a single show, you become an official producer, and if you accrue $1,000 in donations over-time, you receive an 0n-air “Knighting.” And their zealous listeners, myself included, eat it up. While this isn’t possible for many charities (why not?), I experience push-back again and again from my past charity clients who are uncomfortable with thanking bloggers who have promoted their cause or furthered their message because “we don’t do these sorts of endorsements.”

The biggest enemy of hallowed and honored charities and foundations is their resistance to innovation and reinvention and their addiction to tradition. Why can’t you shake up your routine? Why can’t you do things a different way? Why can’t you lavish praise on the smallest of donors?

The Internet allows all of these things to be easily and readily tested. Go ahead and play? Go ahead and borrow, copy, and steal things that have worked for other organizations, and don’t be afraid to invest more in your lists than you expect to extract, allowing some good will and equity to be left over after harvest for the next.

Rotate your crops within the land you already have with crops that tend to enrich the soil: I touched on this above a little bit: give more than you get and switch it up. That said, there is more. It is important to not harp on the same thing in your messaging all the time. How hard are you plucking people’s heart strings, and are you plucking the same string over and over? Fear, guilt, and shame are very powerful motivators but they’re also such strong elixirs that they can kill their emotional receptors, pitching the recipient into hopelessness and retreat, “why do I even write these checks anymore? There’s no hope anyway and I am throwing good money after bad, what’s the use?” That is surely two steps too far, to the point where the earth seems salted, a wasteland! That’s a bad place to be and generally unrecoverable, as far as that donor goes.

We have been helping the Fresh Air Fund for years and we were under retainer to amplify their yearly requirements and goals. What we did for them, with regards to crop-rotation, was to break the year into seasonal requests: Winter donations request, Spring search for host families and camp counselors, Summer camp stories and experience-sharing, and Fall thank you campaigns. While only one of those seasons focused primarily on donations, since the Winter Holidays are traditionally the biggest gift-giving season, the other three were hybrid messages. The three other seasons lead with stories of urban children getting into the fresh air, into renewing and enriching Summer camp and host family experiences outside the city, lead with needs of hosts and counselors, and generous thank-yous to everyone involved. These lead messages are also followed closely with opportunity to give, to follow, to Like, and to connect.

While we did also have extensive field-expansion strategies going concurrently, as I will discuss below, the crop rotation messaging strategy allowed the Fresh Air Fund to convey much more than just a glimmer of hope, they were able to show, in black and white, the copious success of the program, the long-term relationships that were formed, the real-time joy and happiness that was the direct result of donations of time and talent. They supported the seasonal messaging with direct mail outreaches as well as daily updates shared via Social Media to their followers and friends on Facebook and Twitter.

So, in this case, crop-rotation includes rotating the message, rotating the recipient pool, as well as rotating the medium, from blogger outreach to direct email to direct snail mail, to Facebook and Twitter. In our case, we garnered over 1,800 earned-media-mentioned annually in support of their other efforts.

Expand your fields, distributing your yield over a larger plot of land: My uncle Jack used to own Oscar fish. These fish are omnivorous and are often fed small mice. They are also known to grow as large as their tank allows, though they will not outgrow their tank. That reminds me of many fundraising campaigns and the mindset of many charities and foundations. While they continue to do their best farming the lists and relationships they have, they’re often limited by what their lists are capable of producing in any particular economy or any particular news cycle, oftentimes ceding donations to the issue of the week.

In the case of the Fresh Air Fund, they were limited by a perceived relevance only to the Tri-State Area of the New York metropolitan area, the historical and logical region around Manhattan that traditionally supported the Fresh Air Fund with funds, families, camp counselors, and children. They also relied exclusively on the New York Times as a platform for development, a platform that is becoming less and less viable in the information age.

We decided that the mission, message and ministry of the Fresh Air Fund transcends New York and is compelling to not just the region but also the Nation and the world, and we were right. We started prospecting bloggers globally who were in the same vertical that the Fresh Air Fund historically had success with locally and that wrote in English. Compassion for children surely transcends the Hudson River, right? Why yes! We were able to drive conversation on behalf of the Fund internationally, rewarded again and again when bloggers would amplify their noble message, a message that has been a continued resource for inner-city youth since 1877.

Talk about expanding your field! If you can sing Olly Olly Oxen Free loudly enough to light up bloggers and blogs globally while also lighting up their associated Facebook and Twitter streams and reaching not only their readership, their followers, their friends, and their friends’ friends, you’re definitely taking a very bold and effective first step at bringing the powerful mission of your nonprofit, your foundation, you NGO, or your charity into entirely new and fresh land, raw and uncultivated but also not tough and over-farmed, either. You might have to start at zero with your seven+ touches toward giving, but you’re also not having to deal with insensitivity and deafness to message, either.

And that is to say nothing about the powerful effect that all that global conversation will do for your ranking on Google, Bing, and Yahoo! search, as well as search.twitter.com and on Facebook as well, where 800 million global denizens spend their working hours. The search benefits–the organic SEO–is beyond comprehension when it comes to the sort of due diligence that modern contributors go through before writing those checks any more. Oh, come on, you know it’s true–and why Charity Navigator scares you as much as Yelp! scares stores and restaurants to death.

None of this was even remotely possible before the efficiencies of the Internet. When dealing with Internet communications, you need to understand that this is a revolution and not an evolution. That it is now possible to easily, cheaply, and efficiently access a global market or a hyper-targeted market, reaching them right where they live and not in the hopes that they’ll open the Times on a particular date.

There are hundreds of millions of potential donors who have both never heard of you before or been emotionally abused by your incessant requests for money before. This is fresh meat!

And, while you’re cultivating these new recruits, you’ll be able to lean heavily on your oldest and main lists, allowing them some time to miss you, to rest, and to heal. To paraphrase Dan Hicks, how can they miss you when you don’t go away?

Via Biznology and Socialmedia.biz via Marketing Conversation

Related articles

• You’ve probably over-farmed your donors (biznology.com)
• How to Double Global Food Production by 2050 and Reduce Environmental Damage (obxcommonground.org)
• Integrated Aquaculture (timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com)
• 400,000 Farmers in Southern Africa Using ‘Fertilizer Trees’ to Dramatically Improve Food Security (scienceblog.com)
• Fertiliser tree systems can double agriculture yield in two thirds of cases in East Africa (nextbigfuture.com)
• Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) (pensci.wordpress.com)
• Trees ‘boost African crop yields’ (bbc.co.uk)

Look what just popped up on my Twitter profile when I visited via the Web today — you can now share a photo directly through Twitter by uploading your photos to Twitter.com instead of through TwitPic, yfrog, Twitgoo or img.ly.

I wonder how this will affect the third-party providers. The image hosting back end is provided by Photobucket, one of the largest photo hosting sites, which is an interesting partnership.

Here’s the scoop straight from the source:

About Image Uploading on Twitter
Uploading and sharing images on Twitter.com is easy! Below you’ll find a brief how-to and some answers to common questions about uploading images on Twitter – right from your Tweet box!

Where do I upload my image?

• When you click inside the Tweet box on your homepage or on the New Tweet button, you will see two small icons in the lower left hand corner, one for adding your location (a compass), and one for uploading an image (a camera).

How large can my image be?

• You’re welcome to upload any image that is 3MB or smaller.
• We’ll scale the image for you to fit into the display pane on the right side of your Twitter.com timeline.

What do I do after I hit the “Upload image” camera icon?

1. Clicking on the camera icon to upload an image will prompt you to locate the image you want to upload on your computer.
2. After you attach the image to your Tweet, your Tweet box should look like the one pictured below, with the thumbnail in the lower left hand corner, and the camera icon highlighted in blue. (Image 1, below)
3. Once you’ve added your image you’ll see the character count to the left of the Tweet button update. (A link to the image takes up some characters)
4. If you selected the wrong image or no longer wish to share that image, just click the “x” control in the thumbnail or next to the filename to delete the current image.
5. Then, simply enter any text you’d like and hit the Tweet button.
6. Once you’ve successfully tweeted, click on the Tweet to view the image in the display pane. (Image 3, below)

Image 1 – Camera icon is highlighted in blue after a photo is successfully added to a Tweet:

Image 2 – Please note: In some browsers, you may see the name of the file instead of the thumbnail:

Image 3 – Clicking on the Tweet will show the image in the details pane.

What does “powered by Photobucket” mean?

Twitter is launching a native image experience that allows users to upload images directly to Twitter.com from a computer. The images themselves are hosted by Photobucket.

Why can’t I upload images yet?
We’re rolling out this feature on Twitter.com over the course of a few weeks. If you don’t see the camera icon under your Tweet box, bear with us! You’ll get access to image uploads very soon.

Will Twitter continue to support Flickr, Twitpic, yFrog etc?
Yes. You’ll be able to view images hosted on most 3rd party images providers indefinitely.

What’s the deal with protected accounts?
Protected accounts will work the same way with images as they do with text Tweets: you won’t be able to see images from protected accounts unless you’re following the account.

What happens to the Exif data? I heard there are privacy concerns there.
We remove the Exif data on upload. It is not available to any consumers of your image.

Can you comment on an image?
Yes, you can do this by replying to the Tweet containing this image.

How do I delete an image?
You can delete an image by deleting the Tweet containing this image. Once a Tweet is deleted, the image will be be made unavailable. It may still be cached in some browsers and servers, but the image will no longer be available from Twitter.

Are you going to have galleries of my images?
Not at first. But in the coming weeks, we’ll add user media galleries, which will let you see the images a user has shared on Twitter.

When you do have galleries, will they only include images uploaded to Twitter or will other services be included? If so, which ones?
User galleries will include images a user has shared on Twitter, including those uploaded via other services, such as Twitpic, yfrog, and Instagram.

Will all images appear in search?
Unless you have a protected account, there is always a chance that your image will appear in search results.

If I have a protected account, will my images show up in search?
If you have a protected account, your images should never show up in search results.

If I delete a Tweet containing an image, will that image still show up in search?
No, deleted images will not show up in search results.

If I change my account to “protected,” what happens to my images?

• Images previously shared by you when your account was public will be replaced by an error page.
• Your images will still be viewable by your followers.
• If you don’t want anyone to see your images on Twitter, you should delete the Tweets containing these images.

Is there an image upload API? If yes, can I use it?

• There is an image upload API but it is not available to third-party developers yet.
• Third-party developers will be able to access the image API shortly after we’ve rolled out the feature to all users.

Via Marketing Conversation viaSocialMedia.biz

Simply put, Bag Closure Power Strip Organization Hack passes the simple and elegant test, via MAKE:

Make intern, Tyler Moskowite, sent over this clever bread bag closure power strip organization hack he found on the Interwebs. I have yet to find the original source for this hack, but hopefully someone will leave their name in the comments and we can all congratulate them for a job well done. This hack reminds me of the Binder Clips As Cable Organizers hack from a while back, but is obviously equally as cool and unique. [Thanks, Tyler!]

This is a very interesting screen I almost never check out that Facebook is willing to show you — I have invited 181 people to explore Facebook for the first time.

I find it enlessly amusing that I am number two under my high school friend Emy Louie, who has me beat — she is, indeed, a superior networker than I.

This is pretty interesting and I cannot tell you how interesting a page like this is.

Be sure to check out your “Impact” by clicking over to www.facebook.com/#!/impact and tell me what you discover — how many people have you introduced to Facebook? What was your impact on that?

I was vanity surfing Twitter mentions of “Chris Abraham” and came upon an article over on the What About Paris? blog by blogger cum lawyer cum traveler cum intellectual cum academic cum Renaissance man, Dan Hull, Esq, entitled Chris Abraham: Seer, Force, Renaissance Man, Your Future:

He’s a Force of Nature and there’s nothing anyone can do about it so just follow his career and eventually join him. Berlin and DC-based, on fire, a Renaissance Man and a mainstay Hull McGuire mentor and friend, he’s the human reason–together with Washington, D.C.‘s Mark Del Bianco and Chicago’s Patrick Lamb–What About Clients/Paris? even exists. So we are in his debt.

He moves (i.e., vibrates), he talks, he laughs, he persuades–and he brims with ideas and joy. And, like the undersigned, he is infuriatingly right about too many things. Chris Abraham over at The Marketing Conversation is someone you should get to know. Chris is probably going to find you anyway. I see him in D.C., California, Charleston and–well, I could not avoid him anywhere I go.

Chris found me seven years ago–and explained what a “blog” is. He was just warming up. Since then, he and Abraham Harrison probably have been doing more to change the way people think, live, gesture, market, connect and otherwise collaborate together globally–and, yes, the ways we view ourselves, view each other and talk to one another in the Cosmos–than Buckminster Fuller, Edwards Deming and Marshall McLuhan combined.

You might as well give in to the guy. We did.

Like I said in the comments:

You are entirely too generous my friend. You are an F-22 Raptor and I am merely a Cessna 162 Skycatcher. Thank you!

More about What about Paris?

24/7 News and Ideas for Doing Business Globally aka What About Clients? Business. Law. Politics. Foreign Affairs. Verve.

Here’s a little proof that Twitter is now not simply location aware, in terms of latitude and longitude or address, but is now place-aware.  I checked in to both of these places on FourSquare and Twitter recognized these places by name:

Then, I decided to click on the Trader Joe’s, Falls Church link beside the little map marker, and lo! there was the following pop-up window, which is very much aware of not simply location anymore but they’re following the trend of Facebook Places and the other location-aware social networks by starting to connect to businesses:

Via Marketing Conversation

There really are social media gurus and social media experts and my Chief Programmer Phillip Rhoades wrote up the best of their genius on his article The Best Of The 60 Ways to Increase Your Influence Online — it is both an interesting article for who and what Phillip includes in the list as well as who and what he doesn’t include.  You can read the original article and full list here via Sam Rosen at Copyblogger.

The Best Of The 60 Ways to Increase Your Influence Online

Sam Rosen and Copyblogger recently hosted a very short conference and had several thought leaders come up with 60 Ways to Increase Your Influence Online. Quite a few of the methods are sort of stock, cardboard, filler, but there are some gems. Here are a few that I really liked:

#3. Mike Volpe. “We share lots of things that most companies would keep internal. By sharing both the good and the bad, you build digital influence.” -@mvolpe

#11. Hugh MacLeod. “We use other people’s stuff or other people’s content to socialize. And your stuff’s either a social object or it’s not.” -@gapingvoid

#22. Shama Kabani. “Create [video] content around your area of expertise and then distribute, distribute with gusto!” -@shama

#24. Johnny B. Truant. “Defy convention where it’s appropriate. Only a few people dare to step outside. And people take notice of that.” -@johnnybtruant

#46. Brian Clark. “Learn to be a storyteller. Narrative — it’s what makes us human. Big media does it great. You have to as well.” -@copyblogger

#51. Shashi Bellamkonda. “Find out from your customers which social networks they are using, and be there for them at the moment they need you.” -@shashib

#52. Gretchen Rubin. “Self-expression is the new entertainment. Get people talking. I had success just asking, ‘What’s your comfort food?’” -@gretchenrubin

#59. Julien Smith. “Get someone else to take a look at what you have that you maybe take for granted and gives you an advantage over other people.” -@julien

Any that you particularly like? Any that you think they completely missed?

Summer intern, Leslie Quiros, must be a pretty popular young woman — she is appalled by the huge volume of birthday wishes she gets every day-of-her-birth.

OK, I joke, I get quite a few as well, but I roll around in them. However, I am shamelessly hungry for love and approval and the endless birthday wishes makes me titter like a pothead on nitrous!

Anyway, please go take a look at her awesome article:  Alleluya!… Facebook fixes another problem

Alleluya!… Facebook fixes another problem

If you are like me and get annoyed by news feeds from people congratulating a friend who is celebrating his or her big day, you might find this post interesting.

If you are the type of person that checks Facebook every 30 minutes or so—like me— you might have noticed a few changes taking place. As the Facebook creators try to improve the social networking experience, they are now testing a new design that “organizes birthday-related messages in a much cleaner, simpler way that’s consistent with other recent user-interface changes (CNN.com).”

According to this article, you will no longer have to worry about opening your home page and seeing post after post of “happy birthday____, hope you have a good one!” from 50 different people. Instead, Facebook will summarize all birthday-related posts into a single news feed on your home page. As a result, your wall won’t be spammed with these posts and you won’t miss more important events going on in Facebook.

As Mashable points out, hopefully with this new design Facebook will find a way to also summarize all Birthday-related posts on the person’s wall so that more important messages don’t get lost or to avoid having 4 wall pages of “Happy Birthday.” I don’t mean to sound like the Brithday Grinch, but when you have more “friends” than you can count, it can get a tad irritating.

So readers who are like me… don’t be scared to jump up and down screaming Alleluya- for I already did!

I just noticed tonight, when I logged into Twitter‘s web interface, that there’s a new list of two suggest Tweeters featured on my home screen that Twitter suggests I follow.

Also, how long has this been live?  When did it launch? Days? Weeks? Months?

As you can see to the right, it also offers me a “view all” which leads to the “Suggestions for you” AKA twitter_suggests tab.

My question is: are @websuccessdiva and @chrisharrington really people I should follow based on some sort of sophisticated algorithm or is this a hustle?

Could these these recommendation be another form of advertising?  Paying to make yourself a priority recommendation, sort of like Jason Calacanis tried to do with his offer of $120k, $250k, or $500k for being a top recommended Tweeter on Twitter. (Did they ever take him up on it?)

Could it be a double secret marketing and advertising profit-making campaign in cahoots with Featured Users? Various versions of Featured Users are all over the internet, making quite a pretty penny in the competitive world of follower-wooing.

Well, I went over to check out the list of top-tweeters, at both Twitaholic and WeFollow Top and then followed Ashton Kutcher @aplusk and this is what I saw:

If you’ll notice, there’s the list below that states “Since you just followed ashton kutcher, you might also want to follow:” and they recommend @delta_goodrem, @AdhitHeaven, and @OfficialVernonK — are these recommendations based on a sophisticated match-making logic or some dynamic AI that looks at my choices and recommends these people to me based on my history, my tendency, their interaction with @aplusk, or their relationshop with him?  The number of followers?  The types of tweets?

Or, have they in some way bought their way into this “featured user” and “recommended user” rarefied air?

Do you have any more questions?  Do you have any answers?  Do you have any rumors? Conjectures? Conspiracies?  Via Marketing Conversation.

Dear Internet users: saying “backslash” in a URL is actually wrong and refers to one of these: \ and not this / which is what you mean.

Internet address URLs only use forward slashes or just “slash.”

“Backslash” generally refers only to the MS-DOS file structures that use the \ to define directory boundaries and pathways.

So, while I even hear Ashton Kutcher dictating domains with “backslash” this and “backslash” that, he’s wrong no matter how many Twitter followers he has.

Just say “www dot twitter dot com slash a plus k” and you’re good.

No real need to say forward slash any more. Post 1999, the forward slash has been universally replaced with just the simpler slash as a representation of the / character.

I just thought I would share it here since it isn’t simply just a quirk, it is literally an untruth which, taken literally, breaks things.

By assuming that “backslash” means / and not \ demands that everyone who listens to you corrects your mistake for you because you don’t know any better.

Worse, you’re confusing people and, moreover, spreading a mutant meme.

Thanks very much for your attention.

Responded to a call of too few volunteers on the Monday-after-July-four — as did many people — and helped out on a morning shift at Miriam’s Kitchen. Such a different experience.

While I am not a morning person, getting up at 5AM to make it to Miriam’s by 5:45 is really no hardship. Lots of sous-chefs and lots of hands-on-deck and tons of cool people. That said, I am all about my afternoons at Miriam’s Kitchen serving dinner and doing the morning prep and clean-up.

I do my next service at Miriam’s on Wednesday. If you want to give it a go or volunteer, please let me know. You can also check out Miriam’s at @miriamskitchen on Twitter and facebook.com/miriamskitchen.

Pop them a “follow” or a “like” when you have a chance!

In the last week, I have volunteered at Miriam’s Kitchen three times, Memorial Day, Wednesday, and yesterday, Friday. And I could not be happier.

I fell in love with Miriam’s Kitchen last year after re-connecting with the service organization after over 20 years when I first heard about them while an undergrad at GW. It was at Twestival and not only was Miriam’s Kitchen the recipient of the money raised but they also manned and catered the event, which was first-rate.

After that, Jennifer Roccanti, their social media maven, and I started grabbing lunch and talking.

Not just wiling to talk social media, I signed up to give volunteering a go. Before my first time, Ashley Lawson showed all the new volunteers around and told us a little more about Miriam’s Kitchen.

Even so, when I arrived the first time, I didn’t know my way around. That didn’t matter for long, however, even though I was initially self-conscious. My first time, I prepped in the kitchen, the second time, I worked in the dining room. I find both details equally appealing.

Then I went away for ten weeks to Berlin.

When I returned, I let the gang at Miriam’s know I was back and asked them to please load me up. I asked if I could become a sous-chef to their excellent professional chef, John Murphy, and waited for the next opportunity.

Not only did an opportunity arise almost immediately, but before I knew it I was being trained to be Floor Captain, which is the job of setting up and maintaining, and breaking down the dining room for the guests. Then, I received an email from chef John inviting me to be a sous-check, requiring scheduled service twice a month versus once-a-month.

In the last week I have had the opportunity to serve the guests of Miriam’s Kitchen on Memorial Day — which was awesome as quite a few of the guests are vets, on Wednesday, and last night, on Friday.

I mostly serve the evening shift, from 3:45pm until a little after 6pm.

I have been asked what job I like most at Miriam’s and I have yet to decide. I love cooking, that’s for sure, but I am also happy doing prep, setting up and breaking down the dining room as volunteer or Floor Captain — as you get to spend time becoming familiar with Miriam’s Kitchen’s guests, which is the whole point of being there and doing the work. On Memorial Day we were short our dishwasher, Mariposa, and I really didn’t mind washing dishes and putting them away.

I am lucky to own my business, having the sort of flexibility and support I need to be able to take so many afternoons off to serve, but I believe quite a few employers would be so proud and happy to avail their staff to helping out in the community.

One of the reasons why I have been so busy helping out recently is because Washington is actually part of Europe — Washingtonians seriously love their vacations and all of the holiday-taking has resulted in an under-staffed volunteer team.

So, if you have some time, please consider throwing your hat in this Summer to help out as a volunteer at Miriam’s Kitchen. And let me know if you want to check it out as I am sure I can find a way to be scheduled to be volunteering on your first day.

I also found out that it only costs a dollar to feed one guest at Miriam’s Kitchen. So, it generally costs $125 to feed all the guests on any one evening. So, if you like, please consider donating to Miriam’s.

Also, Miriam’s Kitchen needs more than money. They also have a call out for those mini shampoos and conditioners as well as the mini soaps you get from hotels. They’re also looking out for clothing and bags and backpacks and flip-flops and anything else one might need when living outside in the rough.

Finally, because if the hard work of Jennifer Roccanti, Miriam’s Kitchen has amazing Twitter and Facebook profiles at http://Twitter.com/miriamskitchen and http://Facebook.com/miriamskitchen — please follow and like, respectively.

Here’s yet another example of why one needs to pay attention to social media as well as be on social media — from the boss’ point of view for sure — and why your character is the sum of what you do and say every day.

Yes, even when you’ve just arrived home from the job you hate, get into your bunny slippers, make a cup of tea, and decide to open your heart and your venom onto Facebook.

Stupid is as stupid does and this woman was not long for that job anyway and the Universe was being merciful and helping her along towards her next opportunity, though I wouldn’t hire her!  Social Media and Facebook just allowed her to be easily stupid and simply careless.

Via Caveman Circus via Marketing Conversation

I learned about Miriam’s Kitchen back when I was in College at GW but it wasn’t until I was wowed by Miriam’s Kitchen’s participation in the Washington Twestival in 2009 as the fund-raising beneficiary recipient that I got pulled back in.

Jenn Roccanti reached out to me to talk about social media and we started lunching.

I was really drawn to serving the guests of Miriam’s Kitchen so Jenn connected me to Ashley Lawson and now I am a volunteer at Miriam’s Kitchen as often as I can fit it into my schedule — three times so far.

I love it, no matter what the job I have, be it working the dining room or doing prep work in the kitchen.

Great news, chef John has asked me if I would like to work as sous chef and I am quite looking forward to spending more time in a working kitchen.

I have always loved to cook and believe I am pretty good at it.

If you’re in the DC metropolitan area and would like to pitch in and help out by becoming a volunteer at Miriam’s Kitchen, you should check out their web site and also find them on Twitter,  and on Facebook.

Phillip Rhoades wrote up a post about truth in publicity, advertising, and marketing, Drop Kick The BS And Earn Trust:

A lot of corporations have been sending a great deal of BS out to the consumers for a very long time, but companies are starting to see that the consumers are too savvy for tall tales. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media tools allow consumers to talk to each other about products, services, and companies at an amazing pace. The BS that used to protect a company, now only serves as fodder against it.

My suggestion? Drop kick the BS and move straight to the truth. Today’s consumer appreciates it when a company is willing to quickly and honestly own up to mistakes. They don’t expect a corporation to be perfect (after all these people have gone through the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s), but what they do demand is honesty and ownership of faults.

Don’t be afraid to say sorry. Don’t be afraid to admit a mistake. In the long run it’ll make your brand stronger, because the consumers will feel that you have earned rather than abused their trust.

I just set up my second Chumby — the brand new Chumby One. So happy to have these little devices around the apartment. They’re fun and they allow me to share what I am doing with people who don’t live in my world.

I have a Chumby Classic in the bathroom which is cool — it acts as a very smart Internet device as well as a news update and a clock and a weather station and a whole lot of different stuff — you can see that it even shows me my logged-in Facebook profile.

Love it — it is smaller than my Chumby Classic but it does all the same thing and uses the same program that the Classic uses — and it is much smaller and lighter and will work with a battery — also, which is cool, is that it comes with an wide assortment of plug adapters for worldwide use.

Lots of my friends and family ask me what I do and when I tell them they often look at me glassily.  I try to communicate but I don’t even think my mom knows what I do for 12-18 hours/day, seven days-a-week.

That said, I have been trying to brainstorm some of our lesser-know services.  Abraham Harrison is globally known for being able to engage thousands of bloggers in 5 Continents, 12 Countries and 11 Languages.

That said, we also offer Social Network management services and social media solutions and all of that — here’s a list of some of them along with my interpretation of what each of them offers.  Please let me know if I have done a clear job with the copy — I think it still may be too dense.

Online Business Intelligence
Tracking and monitoring the online reputation of your brand, company, product, and services on your behalf, as a way of keeping track of conversation real-time.  Unless reporting is explicitly agreed to, this “open source intelligence” will be monitored for content, friendliness, and threat. Any and all threats are triaged and reported to the appropriate client point of contact.

Online Media and Social Media Metrics
Abraham Harrison maintains a suite of tools, algorithms, and strategies that allow us to provide you and your client with bona fide measurements, including reach, tone, and sentiment.  This suite of tools allow us to create illustrative proof, over time, of the efficacy of the campaign from the launch and over time.

Campaign Metrics and ROI Reporting
Intelligence plus metric plus time equals reports. Client and campaign reporting is something that needs to be defined and agreed to in advance of the campaign because reports are not built into the campaign but are a la carte and you get to define the specificity and granularity of the reporting.  Generally, reports are done bi-weekly or monthly, usually interspersed with weekly updates and “as needed” alerts.

Twitter Community-Building Services
Twitter is not a broadcast medium, it is a community-prospecting platform.  In order for the entire community to take shape and take bloom, one needs to not simply register an account, one needs to design, populate, and then prospect followers before there can be any real growth.  This community-building leverages both our collected contacts and current community relationships as well as several tools that we use to help promote and grow online reputation and growth of your Twitter online reputation.  In other words, like everything online, if you build it they won’t come.  Building it is a start, if course, but unless you’re Oprah or Ashton Kutcher, there is a lot of work and a lot of building, promotion, and prospecting required, and that is what Abraham Harrison LLC can do for you.

Twitter Posts and Posting Services
Twitter has become an essential part of online branding. Companies, celebrities, brands, and even fictional entities have been leveraging the ease-of-use and the simplicity of Twitter to both communication with current and potential customers as well as being able to engage and respond to user question, user requests, and user responses.  However, it isn’t as simple as posting status updates to Twitter regularly.  In our process, we work with the client to come up with 25-100 pre-approved “tweets” that the client can approve, veto, or edit.  Over time, AHLLC is able to message on behalf of you, the client, with messages that are consistent with client vision. After that, the messages are delivered to the Twitter stream with an approved frequency, from once-per-day to a couple posts to multiple-posts-per-day, with the frequency according to the scope of the contract.  During this process, it is also important — essential — to trust the Twitter team to be able to triage all replies and direct messages on behalf of the client — or, there needs to be a rapid process to triage replies and direct messages through the client.  As the campaign moves forward, the evolution of the campaign can change to offer more and more independence to the Twitterer.

Twitter Retweets and Retweeting Services
The secret sauce of Twitter is retweeting (retweet (RT)): a) to copy a tweet and then send it again on Twitter. b) passing along of messages in Twitter) Retweeting is the epitome of what makes Twitter such a powerful tool.

Retweeting allows Twitterers to repeat content from one Twitter stream they’re following onto all of their own followers.  Writing compelling tweets is what organically can result in retweets down the Twitter stream; however, it is also important to use Retweets as a form of reciprocal currency. Retweeting someone else’s tweet can engender attention or connection and build social equity within the “Twitterverse.”

In addition to intentionally retweeting on a client’s behalf, one of the benefits of running your Twitter campaign through Abraham Harrison LLC is that you are able to instantaneously have all of your client tweets retweeted through not only our staff’s Twitter accounts but through all the status-update social network sites our staff is a member of.

This allows our clients to automatically enter the conversation well in advance of their earned reputation online.

Twitter Message Modeling and Copywriting Services
In our process, we work with the client to come up with 25-100 pre-approved “tweets” that the client can approve, veto, or edit.  Over time, AHLLC is able to message on behalf of you, the client, with messages that are consistent with client vision. After that, the messages are delivered to the Twitter stream with an approved-to frequency, from once-per-day to a couple posts to multiple-posts-per-day, with the frequency according to the scope of the contract.

Active and Reactive Tweeting, Real-Time Twitter Customer Serives Services
Twitter is more than messaging and updating the Twitter status, Twitter offers the opportunity to use the real-time web to discover conversation around your products, services, and brands and either collect the intelligence for reporting or action or to engage the conversation, be it through use of @replies, Direct Messages (DMs), Retweets, or even the addition of hash tags.  The Twittersphere is considered real-time so it is essential to keep up-to-the second with a constant flow of twitter mentions.  The best thing about Twitter is that one may also easily engage real people who are mentioning your brand or the brand of your competitor.  You can also mention these people, retweet them, or help them with any sort of problem they may well be having with you, your produces, your services, or your general customer support.

YouTube development
While it is simple to join YouTube, there are quite a few important steps one must take before launching. First of all, there is a lot of customization that one can do to make sure a client’s YouTube channel blends well with the client brand identity, mirroring the parent brand.  In addition, structuring the channel, making sure the channel name is appropriate, and also make sure that if there needs to be content that plays for more than the standard 5-minute limit the ways to extend that (even to hours) are implemented. There are ways to make revenue as well, through Google AdSense.

Since Abraham Harrison LLC staff has been using YouTube since it was launched in 2005, we understand it well – most of all that, unlike television channels, YouTube is not simply a broadcast medium but rather primarily a community platform.  Like Twitter and other online communities like MySpace and Facebook, YouTube allows, and is most powerful with, a very deep level of participation.  Many companies, looking for the next viral hit or just a YouTube land-grab tend to forget this.

It is important to not simply create the YouTube channel and make it pretty, it is important to also upload all of the videos required as well, knowing what the most appropriate file type, file size, and file quality it appropriate for each particular application or requirement.  It is also important to customize the set-up based on how the client wants to share the content and with whom.

Online Video Distribution Services
Sometimes the community maintenance required for YouTube channel creation is too much for a particular client requirement or campaign and what is needed, instead, is a complete and comprehensive video upload to all of the current video sharing sites.

This video distribution service offers a quick and comprehensive upload to over 30 video upload and social network sites, including the usual suspects but also including many other less-popular and less well-known social networks; however, in order to best cover all possible opportunities for brand video sharing, it is always a good idea to make sure the client brand experience and client video assets always exist exactly where and when people are looking for them.

In addition, one of the largest ways people choose their video content in today’s market is through word-of-mouth and sharing, which we can help you ignite; however, a more predictable and common way of discovering content online – and the only way of discovering the content if the word of mouth does not include sharing links – is search. Doing a comprehensive video upload and distribution is a way of stacking the deck towards the discovery of the content organically by flooding the search engine indices with client content — which can result in the ownership of the content.  Video distribution is an important strategy towards controlling and promoting brand perception online – the secret sauce of the social web.

Facebook Page Creation
In the past, there were many methods for promoting on Facebook; however, Facebook is clamping down on Terms of Service (TOS) violations.  As a result of – and in response to – people creating profiles that do not reflect authentic people but brands, products, services, or fictional entities, Facebook has replaced business profiles and business groups with Facebook Pages.  Pages are entities not unlike profiles, and are becoming more and more like profiles. Like profiles, Pages have walls, updates, videos, events, and all the rest. Additionally, they interact with peoples’ statuses in much the same way that Facebook Profiles do.

When creating a Facebook Page or Group or Cause, it is important to remember that these Facebook Apps are community-oriented and need to be fed and watered.  The tools support community, conversation, and collaboration and many people develop these Facebook Pages as if they were a published brochure instead of a dynamic, developing, conversational community.  These communities are needy, more like a blog or like Twitter than anything like a page. A MySpace profile can be developed more like a proper web page, but Pages offer the opportunity to share Events, Conversation, Links, Discussion, Photos, Videos, etc. While they don’t have to be completely open and interactive, they do need to be responsive and there needs to be a certain level of maintenance and content creation committed to the Facebook Page.

There is a lot to know about the Pages, however, and there are many 3rd party tools and services that can be used to expand brand, including doing Facebook Ads and the like, to help promote the brand.

In order to best promote “fan” membership of a Facebook Page, one needs to be creative as to the reason why being a fan is worthwhile.  Some easy “gifts” can include exclusive content, Facebook-only offers, “live” interviews, access to celebrities or notables, etc.  When an online brand reputation

One of the things that makes Facebook Pages better than either Facebook Profiles or Facebook Groups is that the content is not hidden behind the Facebook Authentication Membership Wall.  More like MySpace profiles and groups, which are completely visible and partially accessible when not yet a registered member of the site, Facebook Pages are one of the few “rooms” in the mostly “gated community” of Facebook proper.  Facebook Pages can be indexed by search engines like a normal web page and found using simple keywords through Google, Live.com, Ask.com, and Yahoo!

One of the beautiful things about Facebook Pages is that Google loves Facebook more than just about any other web site (Google loves Twitter more) so brands that have a Facebook Page are often surprised by how quickly the Page turns up on the first page of search.

There are other ways of promoting brand on Facebook, which can include cross promotions with other Social Networks (have all of the networks aimed at the Page), organic SEO strategies, Facebook Ads, as well as incorporating a strong blogger outreach campaign aimed at brand promotion.

However, that said, it is hard to start a Facebook Page and we generally recommend starting with a Facebook Group.  It is much easier to prospect new memberships, invite new members, and get everything started from zero, so we often start with a Group, build that up to over 1,000 members, and then have the Group converted into becoming a Facebook Page, which is what we have the connections to do.  We call it the one-two sling-shot punch!

The advantage of a Facebook Page is that you can use it as a proxy web page for marketing and a proxy online community in support of your brand instead of developing or hosting your own; however, aside from being a “fan” of your company, brand, product, or service, there is little incentive, or “gift,” associated with ever returning to your Facebook Page unless you spend some time and resources developing unique content for the Page — Facebook Pages support photos, events, videos, message boards, a wall, etc –  as well as for responding to questions, queries, comments, and the like.

One of the strong advantages of smartly-but-aggressively developing messages, updates, photos, videos, and exclusive content is that the New Facebook Pages have evolved into me a lot more like the Original Facebook Profile, which includes status updates that scroll down each fan’s status update stream in exactly the same way their friends and family’s statuses update.

This is a very powerful method for brand messaging and distribution.  One of the past lacks of Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages is that it was too easy to join and forget, becoming a Group member or a Page fan and then never seeing hide nor hair of it until there was an explicit admin message to all members — a member update.

Even so, with Facebook Groups in the past, one was penalized by success because when a Facebook Group grow above 1,000-1,200 members, the ability to send a message to all members was revoked.

With the new Facebook Pages, it is easy to keep “fans” engaged and updates, through the regular status update stream that all users; unfortunately, as I mentioned above in the section about Facebook Groups, it is easier to prospect and collect new members on a Facebook Group and a Facebook Cause because it is very possible to easily invite personal Facebook “friends” to Groups and Causes.  When creating a brand profile on Facebook, it behooves one to develop all three: Facebook Page, Facebook Group, and Facebook Cause.

Q: What do these community groups gain from maintaining a blog? What are some of the drawbacks and difficulties?

My A: One of the most valuable thing that non profits and community groups offer through engaging in blogging and other online ventures is economy of scale.  One of the reasons why Big Donors feel such love is because big donors are allocated the time, resources, and energy commensurate with their donation — and there’s a certain level of accountability and daily/weekly/monthly touches associated with “this is what we’re doing with all that money.”  Before the Internet, especially before social networks and blogging, small donors were treated like third-class citizens.

However, while $50,000 might be simply “done for tax reasons” by a corporate donor as a right off, for mom and dad, their parents and kids, yearly donations of $25-$100 is an important decision during gift-giving season.

They competitive advantage in leveraging custom email and newsletter systems, of process and case study blogging, of listening and attentively responding to queries and questions, and the ability to “check in” on what’s going on with the “money that I have donated” to see good happening — and not just at the end of the year.

Since each person who has donated money has almost explicitly committed to the organization they have donated to, it is much easier to “ping” these donors.  Having spoken/voted with their money, they’re almost always keen on being kept tighter in the loop and are generally very excited to receive updates — even very specific and very detailed process and “daily bread” experiences, challenges, frustrations, and — of course — wins.

The most obvious drawbacks include greater transparency, which is always a double-edged-sword.  When you open your daily goings ons to the masses you might very well realize that these small and medium-sized donors might feel like they have better ways of doing things or might take it upon themselves to give their two cents… which is also a blessing and a curse because this sort of empowerment to the community — and a community would be thus created were you to get such attention — is often very rare and should be cherished, respected, encouraged, appreciated, and nurtured.

So, instead of going silent, or getting defensive, it is really all about listening, considering, and engaging.  However, this comes to the even great drawbacks and difficulties: the more successful and online campaign becomes — be it blogging, a Facebook Page, a Twitter account, or a message board — the more financial and human resources it will take.

First to create content, second to moderate responses (not all responses are appropriate and really awful responses on FB Pages and in blogs need to be removed immediately), and third to respond, reply, engage, encourage, and learn.

What I see every day is that organizations have enough energy and enough steam for about three or four months and then peter out out of exhaustion or because they Intern they gave the work to has left and there is no HR position to make sure this sort of staffing and budgeting is mandatory and built into the main funding and not through some tenuous and easily-cut special projects budget.

I see so many “social media ghost towns” and while 50 million blogs may well be created every three seconds, I daresay that 99% of them are shuttered well before they make any purchase into the conversation space.

And while blogging is a perfect way to fortify your village with the platform to address and the platform to have your fans and supporters defend you out and about, it also raises your profile online and also reveals some or most of your flaws (especially if you do it right and allow your more human, personal, and “sometimes flawed” side intentionally and with pride, shamelessly.

Well, while you’re doing that, you may very well attract the trolls and the haters and those who are just looking for someone to beat on for some reason or another, be it how you spend your money, how you choose to use the money you spend, and so forth.

It is all in the balance.  It is all in the listening and it is all in the trust and in the willingness to make this a long game decision versus something that’s simply short-term and a fashionable bit of social media bling.

(Awesome questions from Madelaine Paterson — more to follow) Via Marketing Conversation

Here’s the full text of An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg that all members of Facebook just received tonight.  Very interesting.  The cessation of “regional networks” is going to suck but this has been a long time coming.  We’ll see how it works.  I hope we can keep our Abraham Harrison Facebook network because we at AHLLC love it:

An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg

It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.

To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we’ve built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.

Mark Zuckerberg

Well, I don’t know. I think it is always BAD to take what you give. I heard someone mention how she’s allowed to ADD to her Thanksgiving dinner by her family but she’s not allowed to remove any.

I think that Facebook should be willing to add to the tools offered but I daresay that there are a lot of people who don’t have college and don’t have clubs and don’t have things they’re connected to (anymore) and their region/city (hey, Brooklyn) is all they care about.

Other than that, I have not cared about regions in forever.

Dan Krueger, Director of Client Services at Abraham Harrison, and I met up in New York City today to live tweet and enjoy the the Fresh Air Fun fall benefit at Pier 60 at Chelsea Pier. We had an amazing time and we go to spend some time with some of the cool kids from our friends at THD that neither Dan nor I had met before. We had a great time! Thanks so much to Jenny and Kate for making sure we were included. We had a smashing time and we were happy to contribute to the live stream over at the Fresh Air Fund Facebook Page and the Fresh Air Fund Twitter profile.