If you're not planning your organization's end-of-year giving campaign now, you're already behind.
Year-end giving is traditionally associated with the annual holiday season, and many nonprofit foundations and charitable organizations typically wait until November or December to put together a communications and marketing plan only to rush it out the door to get tax deductible contributions before December 31st. This is a very common mistake. Fundraising is brutally ineffective when executed casually, however, and so as an organization's members and prospective donors confront ever-increasing demands on their time and attention, a growing distrust of inbound messaging, and fatigue from holiday spending, reaching out to them without a clear plan at the end of the year is simply going to fail. Instead, prospective donors and action-takers respond with organizations that engage them intimately over email, with timely and relevant messaging. So, how do you start to catch up and cultivate these donors for a successful fundraising cycle this year?
We partner with our clients on all phases of the end-of-year fundraising cycle, from setting non-profit digital priorities in the new year to evaluating the wish list of initiatives and capabilities, and the most successful year-end campaigns start their planning now. Here are five major advantages to starting on time rather than waiting until the last minute for your campaign:
You will understand your audience better.
Building a culture of user experience begins with looking at the data and building consensus between the communications and development teams at nonprofit organizations about ways to measure success and the path of engagement for audiences. By performing a review of analytics and prior campaign performance, we establish a baseline to engage in field research, stakeholder interviewing, and audience sampling to determine what users want and how they will respond to your appeal for funds.
You will know what to say and how to say it.
Content Strategy in the digital space is still widely disjointed and haphazard and your users simply will not respond. In order to prevent your content from stalling your efforts, it's critical to consider the how cross-channel content synergizes, from tweets that promote a timely and relevant blog post referencing developments in the week's news cycle to a paid media campaign that increases the sense of urgency for users to visit your site and entrust you with their email address. The Echo Way is grounded in content planning, establishing a multi-pathway calendar that becomes the framework through which our team collaborates with a nonprofit organization's marketing and communications effort, making sure that users are being told a compelling and engaging story that grounds them as the heroes of your work.
You will have a customized funnel for the season.
Simply recycling last year's funnel, or worse yet, borrowing a best practice is a counterfeit exercise that fails. Donors want to know why you matter and how they can make a difference online. Treat them as individuals rather than as a vast group: establish an inbound marketing goal and map your donor's journey through the messages you send them, segmenting them based upon their stage in that journey, from their discovery of your organization's great work this year, through the exploration of how you and your team are having an impact. We help you craft a unique funnel that is tailored to your content and capabilities, honed to the expectations and desires of prospective donors, and executed with targeted precision to ensure all calls to action are appropriate for the user receiving them.
You will leverage the most effective technology.
Digital experiences are evolving trends with each year introducing new standards, compelling innovations, and exciting tools. Users now demand to be able to interact with an organization's data, repurposing it in ways that make visual sense to them and their circumstances. We help our clients by building customized views of the content that they produce provoking a sense of wonder that entices donors to become charmed by the unique intangibles that make mission-driven institutions so irresistible. You will know what tools you should use now, and which systems should wait for later.
You will operate more strategically.
When you don't have a plan you can't plan with purpose and instead an organization comes across as reactive, even desperate. The art of persuasion requires the structure and confidence to know that less is more, and spending the time to outline the steps will provide a greater return on your investment by ensuring your campaign is successful. At Echo, we ground all of our work in deep digital strategy, connecting the causes that our clients advocate with the consequences that communities expect.
With many organizations moving aggressively to engage in targeted outreach, we would love to partner with you to make this year's season exceptional for your nonprofit organization. However, the clock is ticking and in this age of digital saturation other organizations are competitors already moving their pieces into play.
Sensible Strategy and the Calibration of Consequence
Recently, we explored how even good ideas can meet a disastrous fate when not approached strategically. In our final installment of "Sensible Strategy," we take a look at how brilliant ideas that are superbly executed can be undermined by failing to take into account consequences of their success. I have discovered three simple tests that can help stop bad ideas or broken processes dead in their tracks. This is the third of them.
Test 3 - Calibrate the Consequences
After an idea takes root, a tapestry of causality begins to descend relatively quickly over the handiwork of a project. There is a very brief window of time in which some revisions, a few final changes or corrections, can be made to alter the destiny of an enterprise. It is better to acknowledge problems and confront them head-on, setting and adjusting expectations accordingly, than it is to simply pretend that nothing is going wrong; even a success can seem like a failure if it ends on a bad note.
Case Study: iPhone 4
Everyone has been captivated by the Apple iPhone 4. As an avid Apple fan, I couldn't wait to get my hands on one and evidently, neither could the entire world: pre-ordering the phone was a disaster that crashed servers and left countless fans frustrated bordering on desperation. But the real problem was not that the iPhone 4 has become a victim of its own success; instead, Apple faced the reality that it shipped a product with a serious antenna design flaw. Despite early warnings from an inside engineer, the iPhone 4 was shipped with a defective antenna that dropped calls and when confirmed Consumer Reports could not recommend the device. Apple initially claimed this was a software glitch, but as mounting criticism exploded, public relations experts predicted that a recall was inevitable. As a Microsoft exec gleefully suggested that the iPhone 4 would be Apple's Vista, Apple refused to issue a recall and later held a press conference to blame the problem on something from which all smartphones inherently suffer (something that both RIM and Nokia said was basically propaganda to deflect from Apple's design flaws). Consumer Reports stood by its decision to not recommend the iPhone 4, and the public watched the failure of leadership side-by-side with soaring sales figures. Customers were offered a free case to cover up the flaw.
Nothing is more disappointing than seeing projects and teams try to escape responsibility by pointing fingers and playing a blame game. Organizations rely upon leadership to set accountability and standards for how ideas are born and tasks are carried out and without it, companies can seem like they are floundering when the going gets tough. Responding proactively to changing circumstances with a willingness to correct mistakes and make things right can transform a deteriorating situation into an exemplary success story. In Apple's case, refusing to acknowledge problems, blaming the entire industry, and offering a simple a case to users is more than an abdication of social responsibility; it's a cheap cop-out unworthy of a successful brand.
It's easy for anyone to be a Monday morning quarterback, especially after a disaster has taken place and hindsight provides delicious fodder with which to second-guess decisions. The examples we've discussed in "Sensible Strategy" showcase how avoiding tactical missteps by placing ideas and tasks into a strategic framework could have transformed bad ideas and flawed products into real successes. And yet, as failure is never the end of the story but the beginning of the next chapter for how working groups and organizations mobilize to confront new problems, the three case studies will continue to fascinate me as they evolve.
Last week, we talked about thinking creatively to preempt failure. In this installment of "Sensible Strategy", we examine how failure can be snatched from the jaws of success by being too focused on the ends and not being mindful of the means. I have discovered three simple tests that can help stop bad ideas or broken processes dead in their tracks. This is the second of them.
Test 2 - Synthesize the Approach
Once a decision to take action has been made, place it within a rollout framework, a "getting it done" work plan. Careful thought and attention to how the task is carried out and how this track of work relates to other activities in the broader project can make the difference between victory or defeat, success or failure. Even good ideas can fall apart here if they are not placed within a strategic context and carried out to complement the work that the rest of the organization is doing.
Case Study: Google Buzz
One of the most spectacular cases of recent epic failure is the much-maligned launch of Google Buzz. Back in February, Google acknowledged the magnitude of its catastrophe, but despite the fact that it was a late arrival to the social networking scene, the idea of Buzz (even though many couldn't quite figure it out) was actually a good one. Like the search innovator's other tech creation, Google Wave, Buzz featured some interesting twists on a familiar formula. But because Google had not considered how the rollout of Buzz might impact how people use its Gmail and Google Talk services, a significant communication (and later, technical) disconnect emerged. And so, no one used Buzz: pretty much everyone turned it off because they considered it noise and opted out because there wasn't anything revolutionary or game-changing about it. It's become little more than a tinkering toy these days, and like Wave - which only ever just showed promise, never caught on, and became failed and cancelled - Buzz has become sort of an expendable working laboratory for social networking features that might be used in a future Google Social Network.
Failure is nothing new for cutting-edge companies like Google and Apple, and what keeps them successful is their willingness to learn from mistakes and continue innovating. A misunderstanding of Google's own demographic derailed the launch of Buzz and even the government of Canada weighed in with opinions about the subsequent privacy issues. By rolling out a good idea that was not yet ready to see the light of day because it needed more time to cook, Google's shortcomings with Buzz were glaringly apparent when compared side-by-side with its own successful Gmail and Talk. By comparison, both Gmail and Talk were launched incrementally to staged audiences with cautious perspective on how these tools would mesh with the rest of the Google platform. Careful consideration of how Buzz might fit in with the suite of products and services Google offered would have revealed early on in development that the tool needed much more thought into how it could integrate and perform.
Failure is a pretty scary proposition, especially in the context of project management. And yet, it doesn't have to be this all-consuming nightmare; it is a challenge that should be confronted head-on. According to famed political economist Douglass C. North, institutions lose their ability to lead strategically because they stop thinking creatively and instead become tied down to process, often because they are paralyzed by the fear of failure. North also observes that the most successful organizations look at challenges as opportunities to thrive. Over the past few weeks, I've come across a number of examples of projects failing needlessly that I think are helpful to consider in the context of a strategic "gut-check", a series of three simple tests that can help stop bad ideas dead in their tracks.
"Sensible Strategy" is a blog series that explores these three simple tests and showcases real world, high profile case studies of spectacular yet entirely avoidable failure.
Test 1 - Evaluate the Purpose, Objectives, and Goals.
Every project needs to start out with a clear vision of its intended end-state and then all actions, including policies and processes that exist in the project, should be put to a basic standard: does it fit? It's more than simple compatibility; it's the "Why am I doing this?" of any project, from building a website or sitting down to write a cookbook. If the task at hand isn't directly involved in the furtherance of an objective or goal, then, it's probably out of scope and irrelevant or worse, detrimental.
Case Study: Real ID Forum Fiasco
The universes of computer gaming and project management unexpectedly collided earlier last month when the world's most popular online game, World of Warcraft, enacted (and revoked three days later) a policy of requiring that customers' real names be publicly displayed when they post to their community forums. This policy was promulgated under the auspices of Real ID, a program intended to link in-game accounts with out-of-game social tools, like Facebook and Twitter. Don't see the connection? You're not alone: users didn't see the connection either and they posted over 50,000 replies to a forum thread protesting the change, citing it as arbitrary censorship at best and an invasion of privacy at worst. It quickly got the attention of the international news media: it was a featured leader on MSNBC.com's Tech category, was being reported by the BBC News Service, and was even being discussed on the morning news. After days of silence and inaction, Blizzard's CEO Mike Morhaime had to deliver a humiliating public reversal which cost the company precious prestige.
The Real ID Forum Fiasco is an example of a bad idea that tried to solve one problem (moderating forums by mass-removing disruptive users) by linking it with another challenge (adding value to users by allowing them to link their game accounts with trusted social networks). Often times, there are synergies between different programs and using policies to cross-pollenate the administration of two or more projects can be effective. This was definitely not the case because there were no shared goals or objectives between these two, and instead, by trying to advance one set of objectives by leveraging tools and resources designed for a completely different set, Blizzard ended up undermining both efforts and caused tremendous waste, needless drama, and a costly loss of confidence.
Balancing Community Building with Audience Engagement
Two weeks ago, the gaming firm ArenaNet launched one of the most highly-anticipated video game titles in years, Guild Wars 2. In what has now become an increasingly unsurprising trend in online games, player response was quite overwhelming and so many people bought the game that the company actually had to stop selling the game online in order to cope with the demand. Yet, the surprising reality wasn't that that Guild Wars 2 over 400,000 concurrent pre-order players before the game was publicly launched, but that ArenaNet closed its official forums and instead directed users to its Guild Wars 2 subreddit to engage community members. In short, ArenaNet felt it could better engage users by disabling its online community gathering space (its forums) in favor of a third-party social media platform.
The decision was startling and, in the gaming industry, without broad precedent: most online gaming firms tend to approach the question of community building and audience engagement through a shared lens. But the two goals, while deeply intertwined, are in fact two separate branches of the same overarching strategy.
Building Online Communities
In the earliest days of the web, the phrase "Content is King" was used to promote a general maxim that the quality of the works that were being published generally determined the popularity of a website. This was true, with one notable caveat: popularity did not always surface the highest quality content, and so firms like The Mining Co. (later About.com) made a living out of trying to qualify search results, before search engines like Google had more sophisticated algorithms that could return more relevant results from gigantic indices.
Clay Shirky rightly points out in his book, Cognitive Surplus, that the past decade has witnessed a transformation of the broad online demographic of typical website users - from one that is primarily consumptive of content to one that instead is energized by interacting and contributing to content. This has had startling implications for what it means to build an online community - previously, a small number of users would create content and generate a large following. This model drove many of the online communities that emerged in the wake of the first social networks: popular blogs and thriving online forums were generally dependent upon charismatic personalities that contributed higher quality content. But in the aftermath of the social web - where people are motivated less by following a popular content publisher and instead excited more about sharing and repurposing content for their friends and contacts to see - online communities are built around lots of users creating content in a system that allows for well-organized browsing, sharing, and distribution. In these communities, niche topics thrive and people self-qualify content by the manner in which they tag and re-purpose the content. From YouTube channels to Amazon reviews and wishlists, users flock to communities where they can experience the content on their own terms, self-organize into groups of interested participants, and contribute to the emerging dialogue in a very well-defined, meaningful way.
The Basics of Engagement
But not everyone could - or should - be singularly focused on just building their online community. Communities, by and large, are easily misunderstood, and over time, needlessly feared. The term "Community" can be a frightening one for two reasons: firstly, communities exist beyond the sphere of publishers' ability to strictly define them; and, secondly, the very existence of communities rightly implies a degree of responsibility and accountability to a constituency. Audiences have specific needs and wants of an organization when they visit their website, and how you interact with that audience determines by and large what that audience is likely to do with the content that you provide them. Succeed in providing what your community needs and wants and they will reward you with traffic, meaningful contributions, and an environment where you can project your message across the collective digital footprint of a network of people that far exceeds the aggregate sum of its parts. Fail to meet their requirements and expectations, and your users will stop caring about your site, consigning it to the oblivion of irrelevance as your traffic withers and dies.
Behind the high risks and proportionate rewards inherent in the interaction with a community is a model of Engagement. If a Community is the engine of the vehicle that is your website, consider Engagement the steering wheel: by providing users clear pathways to satisfy their needs and wants, challenge and reward themselves on your website, and contribute content and actions to your website's mission and goals, content producers and web teams can organize the efforts of their community members while simultaneously ordering website participants, even if they cannot dictate the exact composition of that community. This provides publishers with a crucial scalpel that can shape the outlines of interaction with a community, and an Engagement Model is a strategic framework through which one can conceive of how a community is organized by the different levels of commitment that users have to the organization and its work.
Collision
You're probably remembering how I mentioned that both Community-Building and Engagement are intertwined; building a community without also deploying an approach (the engagement model) and resources (people and ideas) to nurture and foster the community is a recipe for disaster. I've previously written about the problems with commenting, and any feature of the website that is interactive in nature has to have a clearly defined purpose. Communities function best when they are served with high performing functions that speak to their needs, and just asking users to "share some thoughts" is an invitation for unpredictable consequences. Further, when one conflates the idea of organizing a community and managing communication, you risk losing out on an essential strategic advantage by treating the two behaviors quite separately.
The Gaming Industry has a well-storied past of appointing Community Managers who try to do all things at once, often times with conflicting or conflated ends. It's tempting to just shut down either community or engagement in favor of the other, but the risks of damaging the organization's brand are quite high. When online gaming was still in its relative infancy, Sony Online Entertainment ("SOE") was overwhelmed with posts and threads from Internet users on the official forums for its massively multiplayer online game, EverQuest, and so it elected one day to simply shut down its forums and put up a read-only blog to have unidirectional communication. The move, over a decade ago, sparked a visceral backlash of disapproval from users, and though SOE later back-tracked, it never regained the confidence of its playerbase to be trusted with the role of being the convening space of its online community. A seemingly simple action was proven myopic and incisive in its revealing of the lack of strategic planning by SOE's community management team.
By contrast, ArenaNet took great care in deliberately re-routing traffic from its forums to Reddit, offering its community members a clear pathway for bi-directional communication while the company could leverage multiple channels to get its message out - including social media and the game itself. Its decision was admittedly calculated: ArenaNet's Community Team lead, Regina Buenaobra, remarked that they didn't have the resources to moderate official forums, but wanted to engage with the community on specific channels for very intentional purposes: Reddit for soliciting feedback and user input, Twitter for broadcasting announcements, and the game client for escalations to end-users. The end result was a sneak-peak, for at least a week, into a well thought-out multi-channel communication effort that had engagement at its core while preserving the integrity of the community and its ability to interact with the organization. It was also a courageous admission that few organizations want to make: they couldn't properly offer users what they would expect of a typical official online forum experience, and so, they created tools that they knew they could service and support.
That's quite a refreshing departure from the industry's typical (and failing) proposition of Field of Dreams' approach "if you build it, they will come." By avoiding the temptation of creating features and functionality for a need that may not be properly serviced, ArenaNet could focus on carefully planning and releasing tools that it knew it could support. Swarmed with hundreds of thousands of anxious players days before launch, Guild Wars 2 was then able to sustain the millions of customers that needed to have clear channels and pathways for communication while also enjoying the game. Balancing one's community-building efforts with the need to engage audiences online requires a careful strategy and cautious consideration of the people involved. Understanding needs, and classifying those needs into a model that the organization can service proves an indispensable method in guiding and shaping how people interact. And while unprecedented and unusual, ArenaNet's efforts to close its official forums (which it later-reopened just last week) and routing its users to a third-party service to better structure communication and interaction revealed some no-nonsense, purpose-driven planning on the part of the firm.
Last April, we launched a mobile application for the Center for Science in the Public Interest called Chemical Cuisine (iOS | Android). Since then, awareness and enthusiasm for how putting quality content and powerful functionality at the finger-tips of users has been spreading, most recently with Forbes' coverage of Chemical Cuisine and a review on The Mind Body Shift. It's worthwhile taking a step back from the success of this great application and instead examining shifting trends across the Internet that predict a bold future where mobile user experiences are the norm.
As we were deploying this application last year, Microsoft Tag published an info graphic that confirms market projections: by the Year 2014, mobile Internet usage will overtake desktop Internet usage across the world. And just as the English language has been in decline online, with just around 43% of all Internet communication being conducted in English and the future growth centers largely restricted to non-English speaking peoples, the way in which the future users of the Internet experience content will largely be mobile-centric.
One might expect that in such a Mobile Future, mobile applications are front and center to the experience. However, rather than cede its Kindle commercial interests to Apple, Amazon took the plunge with HTML5 and its Cloud Reader. This is part of a broader trend: recent web design fashions, like responsive web design, underscore the evolving nature of how people experience the web - from desktop, to laptop, to tablet, and mobile device, and we are so very privileged to be presiding over a radical reconfiguration of our entire industry. Users will want to experience content on their own terms, across devices, and so as we look at the future of mobile experiences, there is a shift away from an app-centric universe and instead a preference for a web application approach to displaying and repurposing content for different devices. In fact, last summer we began to witness a number of HTML5 applications pushing the limits of web app technology, revealing two persistent phenomena: first, that there are limits and trade-offs whenever you choose between competing standards; and, second, that our industry is one that is in exceptional flux.
With the rapidly evolving landscape that promises to put content in the hands of users and empower them with robust functionality, one should peer knowingly into the Mobile Multiverse that is our future. It has broad implications for the type of content that users will want to consume and the trade-offs that they are willing to make:
1. Focus on a well-defined audience.
Speaking to the largest possible audience these days is a daunting exercise that requires multi-purposed content that is also multilingual, especially given the future growth of the online demographic across the world. Alternatively, consider having a very well-defined, hyper-localized audience that can leverage your content in very specific, geographically relevant ways. This will increase their adoption of your message, their alignment with your values, and extend your brand in what they are doing.
2. Issue a very specific ask.
Building an online community in the Mobile Age can be an exercise in chaos theory, an effort that is waiting to unravel in a single, harshly unforgiving misstep. For many years now, we've been seeing a move away from free-form discourse and an open exchange across diverse audiences to instead a carefully-crafted, moderated, and guided conversation. Consider asking users to perform a single, very discrete act with a low barrier to entry - such as rate a product, scan a barcode, or sign a petition. If you're asking for feedback, don't pull a McDonalds and just "ask for thoughts." Instead, ask a very specific question with a finite set of possible responses that reinforce your brand's identity.
3. Anticipate and embrace change.
Web users are very vocally resistant to change, but mobile users have come to expect it because this is the nature of their experience. Like any good futurist, trying to foreshadow upcoming challenges and prospective opportunities is often a subtle art. Focus on a solid strategy: what is the purpose-driven outcome you are trying to achieve, and how does your message and respective digital footprint help you achieve this mission? Without a strong strategic underpinning, your entire message is likely to be victim to the torrents of change, swept away in the winds of an ever-expanding universe. Avoid being forgettable by remaining relevant: stay on message and stay away from adopting obsessive new social networks or superfluous web tools, and ask your users what sort of tools they are using. Expand your base by embracing the things that they do and being informed and in touch.
The Mobile Multiverse promises to reshape the way we relate with content and how we use content to interact with the real world, whether it's through something as subtle as the new iPad or something as pervasive as augmented reality. Staying in control is all about focusing on the fundamentals: good content, great functionality, and a solid strategy.
Recently, I had to re-create my Twitter account and decided to let all of my Facebook friends know about it. So, I went ahead and posted a status update to Facebook hoping that most of my friends and connections would hear the news to re-follow me. I quickly discovered that my status posting was reaching only a tiny fraction of my friends and virtually none of my second-degree (i.e., friends-of-friends who liked my posting) connections. It was then that I quickly remembered that over the past few months, the free ride upon which so many individuals and organizations have relied -- Facebook -- had come to an end.
Even when it was free, though, it was far from a sure thing that your postings would be seen by your friends and fans. Facebook, like Google, routinely recalculates its algorithm to determine who sees what posting. So, for example, when you post a status update, only certain friends will ever actually see that status posting on their Facebook News Feed at a given time, and only for so long before it is consigned to the dustbin of Facebook oblivion. This algorithm, called EdgeRank, determines your post's maximum Facebook "Reach" potential - or the likelihood that your post will ever be seen by anyone. Back at Facebook's founding, all of your friends would see all of your posts; but today, there are four factors that are used by the EdgeRank algorithm to determine whether or not a user will ever see your status update or page post:
1. Interaction Has your target ever interacted with your posts before? If a friend or fan "likes" every one of your postings, the chances are higher that your next posting will appear on their News Feed.
2. Blackballing If the Facebook public doesn't like your postings (e.g., they never interact with your posts, they ignore them, or worse, report them, complain about them, or block you), your posts are less likely to appear for other users.
3. Similar Interests Users who like photos more than they like videos are more likely to see photo status updates and posts than they are to see non-photo status updates and posts. The same is true for users who like lengthier status updates over shorter ones, and status updates that are posted during certain times of the day. The EdgeRank algorithm captures nuances including size, timing, media type (including links), and even frequencies in order to try and feed users more of what they already like and less of what they don't.
4. Complaints If users complain about your postings, they can effectively "bury" it so that it never, or rarely, ever sees the light of day for typical users, fans, and friends.
Given these factors, it's little wonder that any organization attempting to engage users over social media can find success. At EchoDitto, our messaging approach to online engagement over services like Facebook and Twitter centers around high quality content that promotes sharing and contributes to potential virality. But this is an uphill battle, especially as of September of 2012, when Facebook changed its EdgeRank algorithm to essentially punish the "free riders" -- essentially, every organization using Facebook Pages to build and communicate with fans -- by ensuring that only publishers who paid for "promoted" status messages would get their content seen by a larger swath of their fans and friends.
For brands, companies, and organizations that have made the strategic blunder of using Facebook as the only real channel for engaging with customers and constituents, Facebook's commitment to its shareholders to maximize profit by forcing free users to start paying to get their statuses seen is nothing short of catastrophic, especially since Facebook (like Google) keeps the EdgeRank algorithm secret and ever-changing. This leaves so-called "optimizers" peddling about tips and tricks that might only ever work for a few weeks before the algorithm changes, rather than tried-and-true best practices of creating compelling content.
But for organizations and individuals alike, the time has come to realize that on Facebook, if you have a message that you want as many of your friends and fans to see, the path of least resistance is to simply buckle down and purchase a promoted ad for your status. This can very quickly become an expensive proposition (and Facebook certainly wants promoted statuses to be a lucrative revenue stream, as does Twitter for its promoted tweets). Worse, social media is rarely about taking action (such as buying products or signing petitions) and is principally about projecting a message, so the return on investment for purchasing these promoted tweets or sponsored status messages may be invisible. Most engagement plays on Facebook and Twitter have to rely upon the organic acceptance of audiences (and their willingness to share alike with their connections, co-opting their digital footprints on your behalf), and this begins with focused, timely, consistent, coherent messaging.
The consequences of Facebook's relentless weakening of organic reach in favor of paid reach and advertising are predictable: organizations that have invested months and years into building online followings on their Facebook fan pages are suddenly witnessing dramatic declines in the numbers of users who read and interact with their postings. Rather than start second-guessing a sound messaging strategy (such as publishing content that is highly relevant, timely, and rich in media), organizations should dive deeper into the analytics and consider whether EdgeRank has reduced their effectiveness. And this is where EchoDitto can help.
Meaningful and sustainable online engagement begins with an examination of audiences, grounded in stakeholder analysis and validated by interviews and market research. If you know your audience, you can lay the foundation for compelling conversations that can lead to an enduring online community - on your website. Social Media, like Facebook and Twitter, offer channels to broadcast your content and should never entirely replace your primary publishing presence. For organizations, companies, government agencies, and even individuals who have neglected their websites and eschewed them in favor of a well-crafted Facebook page, these changes to EdgeRank should represent a wake-up call to a simple message that reinforces why you should never outsource your primary messaging channel to a third-party: the free ride is over.
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