Most nonprofits I know are terrified of using humor in their communications. We can’t be funny, this is serious stuff we’re trying to accomplish. 

Hogwash.

Executed thoughtfully, humor can be an effective form of communication. In addition to offering lots of benefits for our minds and bodies (like reducing pain and stress, and increasing relaxation), it can really move the needle on nonprofit recruiting, advocacy and awareness initiatives (and in rare cases, fundraising).

Yes, humor can misfire or worse, backfire, but so can other approaches. We test and try then learn from our mistakes. Nowhere is that easier than online communications.

(And remember, to err is human. Mistakes can be openings for deeper engagement. A prompt mea culpa can endear you to supporters.)

So, why does humor work?

1. Powerful Emotional Engagement

Humor hits us somewhere deep in inside. Brain science tells us laughter and humor release endorphins and increase oxygen to the brain, giving us an opening for persuasive messaging. Make someone laugh or smile and you immediately have their attention, which is a pretty hard thing to get these days.

Humane Society of the United States Photo Caption Contest

2. Break Down Walls; Ease Fear and Tension

Ever go toe-to-toe with a stubborn kid and reach that because-I-say-so moment? Make a joke (especially one at your own expense, not theirs) and watch that impasse melt away.

How might this apply to nonprofit communications? It gives people an easy out, or a pleasant path around your mutual obstacle — think taking action, donating, awareness, caring. Make ‘em laugh and they are more likely to get past that hump and meet you half way.

3. Binds People Together

Laugh together and you create a positive shared experience. How many times have you had a conversation that went like this, “Did you see that cartoon about the election?…YES, it was so funny!” BOOM! Bond formed. That bond can be between you and your supporters.

NOTE: Never mock your supporters. Humiliate yourself instead.

Pie in the Face Fundraiser for United Way of Olmsted County

4. Memorable

Funny stands out and sticks with us. Recalling something humorous makes us feel good all over again.

Sierra Club Email: Help Governor Sanford Find the Appalachian Trail

5. Freedom to Say Stuff You Couldn’t With a Straight Face

This approach can be a bit harder to pull off, but it is the bread-and-butter of successful comedians like Stephen Colbert, and of parody Twitter accounts such as @PaulRyanGosling, @DepressedDarth, @FakeAPStylebook or @BronxZoosCobra. In the nonprofit sphere, no one does this better than Left Action, which has built a one-million strong progressive activist empire on edgy, humorous campaigns. Left Action founder John Hlinko says, “This approach is so much more effective it’s CRAZY.”

Left Action Campaign

6. Humor Travels (Dare I say viral?)

Funny gets shared. Those joke emails have been (thankfully) replaced by shares on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest (check out George Takei’s Facebook Page or my For the Love of Star Wars and Political Humor Pinterest boards). We share funny, therefore we are funny. 

Got Photoshop skills? Hop on a meme like Texts from Hillary, Binders Full of Women or McKayla is Not Impressed to ride a wave of publicity.

“Let My People Vote” by Jewish Council for Education and Research (This is Sarah Silverman, so if you offend easily, don’t watch.)

Have you used humor in your nonprofit fundraising or communications? How did it go?

Woman laughing photo credit.

Email subject lines have one main job—to get your email opened. You have two seconds to grab your reader’s attention. That’s a lot of pressure. So avoid these avoidable mistakes.

Writing subject lines is mostly art, but there’s some science to it as well. If you steer clear of these subject line sins, there’s a world of opportunity available to you.

Sin #1: Too Long

At 50 characters, most email programs cut off the subject line preview in the inbox. Subject line real estate is extremely valuable, so go shorter when possible. Your readers will thank you, especially mobile readers.

You are absolved of this sin if…you have a highly targeted audience. MailChimp analyzed millions of headlines and found that these audiences appreciate the extra detail you can put in a longer subject line.

Sin #2: Too Short

One-word subject lines used to be the hot new technique, but the party’s over. A few political campaigns still use them, but most nonprofits can’t pull it off. Too vague and gimmicky. Skip them.

Sin #3: Boring

Nothing makes me reach for the “delete” button faster than subject lines like, “March Newsletter.” I know you’ve got a monthly newsletter; I signed up for it. I also know it’s March.

Give me a reason to read this newsletter. Tell me your best story.

Sin #4: Personalization Abuse

Personalization is great, but you can get too much of a good thing. Use personalization in subject lines wisely and sparingly.

Sin #5: Sticking Your Tongue Out at the Spam Filters

Gone are the days when the word “free” automatically flags your message as spam, but you still have to be careful. Avoid these content spam triggers:

• AVOID ALL CAPS. It’s shouting and tempting fate.
• Holy $%*&^$!!!???? Excessive use of punctuation and symbols will surely get you in trouble.
• If you can, look in your spam folder. Cringe. Be offended. Have a chuckle. Don’t write stuff like that. (Learn more at MailChimp’s How Spam Filters Think.)

Sin #6: Betting the Farm on the Subject Line

High open rates are great, but high conversion rates (getting people to take action) are better. Once you get the reader to open the email, you need to quickly and convincingly deliver on the promise of your subject line. And never trick your supporters into opening an email. No one likes a bait and switch.

Great subject lines don’t always have to be clever or witty to work. Experiment. Accept failure as part of the learning process. And, most importantly, keep trying.

Photo credit: Makelessnoise

Rapportive is like caller ID for your Gmail contacts – on steroids. When you open an email from a contact, Rapportive replaces the Gmail ad in the right column with great info on your contact such as:

1. Contact’s photo and title from LinkedIn
2. Recent Tweets from Twitter
3. Facebook profile and other social networks plus your relationship with that person on those networks (are you connected, friends, following)
4. Notes (which are private)

Here’s what it looks like:

You can send friend requests, retweet, follow and connect right from the Rapportive side bar. It’s great for growing your network and enhancing your relationships with contacts.

Download this free add-on for your Firefox, Safari, Mailplane or Chrome browser, and open up a world of information on the people who email you.

It’s time for Facebook hiding and blocking.

OPTION 1: Hiding

Hover over the top right of any post you’d like to hide until you see a little arrow and a drop-down menu. Then select the type of hide – person or application – and check it. (The screen capture below shows just the option of hiding the app, but on other posts you’ll be able to hide the person, too.) Your hide is not publicized, or communicated to the person if you’ve hidden a person.

Hiding is less harsh than unfriending and a good choice if you want to turn the volume down without tuning someone totally out. If you change your mind and want to unhide the app from your feed, scroll ALL the way down on your newsfeed until you see this:

Then click on “Edit Options” and you’ll see an alphabetized list of all of the apps and people you’ve hidden. I bat those quizzes and game notifications like flies as soon as they come up, before they breed and muck up my feed – 466 applications hidden and counting.

OPTION 2: Blocking

When hiding isn’t enough, there’s blocking. Blocking means that you totally prevent an app or person from interacting with you. For people, it’s beyond unfriending. It’s being unlisted for just that person.

The blocking function is a little harder to find. Start with your “Privacy Settings,” pictured right. Then scroll down to the “Blocked People and Apps” and select “Manage Blocking.”

You can block users, app invites from specific friends (the over-inviters), event invites, and apps. The event invite blocker in particular is a glorious feature.

Hiding and blocking let you have more control over what you see and who you interact with. I’m sure there’s something you’ve been itching to drop from your feed. Go hide!

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

A few weeks ago I was putting together a presentation and found an image on my hard drive that I really loved. Being a firm believer in obeying copy rights, I wanted to give proper credit for using the photo.

Problem was, no matter how I searched on Flickr (that’s where I find most of my photos), I couldn’t find the photo again. Then I remembered TinEye.

TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You give it a photo (via upload or URL), and it seeks out a match. TinEye finds exact and altered copies of the images that you submit, including those that have been cropped, color adjusted, resized, heavily edited or slightly rotated.

Truth is I had bookmarked TinEye a long time ago and never had an opportunity to use it. Just before my presentation I read Who Is This Man, and Why Is He Screaming? about a shy photographer named Noam Galai who discovered that people all over the world were using his scream self-portrait without attribution.

He used TinEye as his image detective to retrace his photo’s journey to advertisements, street protests, t-shirts and more in Spain, Iran, Mexico, England – about 40 countries. See Stolen Scream for his version of the story.

Noam’s story prompted me give TinEye a test run. The tool passed with flying colors, cutting my search from minutes to seconds.

In addition to the web search, TinEye has browser add-ons for Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer. It also lets you sort results and share them on Facebook, Twitter, via email and on other social networks.

WHY USE TINYEYE

I used TinEye to find out where an image came from. Other uses include:

• Research or track the appearance of an image online
• Find higher resolution versions of an image
• Discover modified or edited versions of an image

TinEye is free and fun. Be sure to bookmark it…I bet someday you’ll need it.

CONFESSION: I know enough HTML to get into trouble, deep trouble. And forms totally confound me.

Thankfully, a few years ago I found Wufoo.

Wufoo makes collecting information on the Internet easy. All the little bits that drive you nuts about forms – making it work on all platforms, error correcting, confirmation pages and emails, and so much more – are all handled beautifully. You don’t need to know html or style sheets to make an awesome form that does what you want it to do.

You can build your own form from scratch using the Form Builder, which looks like this…

Or choose a base form from Wufoo’s huge Form Gallery, which includes really solid forms for:

• Contact
• Surveys
• Invitations
• Registrations
• Online orders
• Volunteer registration
• Church visitors
• Complaints

Here’s a quick peek at the Registrations category of the Form Gallery:

I started using Wufoo because I found the contact forms and modules in WordPress, Drupal and Joomla were remarkably rigid. Wufoo let me customize to my heart’s content and embed the form right back into a website.

PRICING

A basic account – 1 user, 3 forms, 10 fields and 100 entries – is free. The next level of account is only $14.95/month, and you can upgrade, downgrade or cancel at any time. Click here for Wufoo pricing.

6 WUFOO BELLS & WHISTLES I LOVE

1. Host your form on Wufoo or embed a snippet of code on your website
2. Integrates with PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize.net for payment processing
3. Reports
4. Notifications
5. Adding social media sharing buttons to a form’s confirmation landing page
6. Integrates with MailChimp, Twitter and other web apps

3 PEARLS OF WISDOM

1. Test Your Form, with friends, more than once…don’t be lazy (conversely, tell someone politely when you see a mistake on their form)
2. Don’t Ask For More Data Than You Will Use, or people get cranky and leave
3. Make it Work, use those confirmation emails and confirmation pages to engage people more deeply (ask them to share, thank them profusely, invite them to learn more on your site)

Now go forth and collect info with ease and confidence – you are form genius!

It’s simple. On Friday, send a Tweet that recommends other people to follow on Twitter. Include the hashtag #followfriday in your tweet, or better yet, #ff, which saves you a few characters. It looks like this:

Follow Friday was created in 2008 (Mashable has the origin story) and has been one of the most consistent traditions (some call it a game) on Twitter ever since. Who you choose, how many people you recommend, and how often you participate are completely up to you.

This is social media karma and curation at its best. Trust me, the beauty and benefits of the game will become clear to as you get a few rounds under your belt.

6 TIPS FOR A BETTER FOLLOW FRIDAY

1. GIVE CONTEXT. Group like accounts. Give a reason why you are recommending these people by adding an additional hashtag or description. In the example above, I added #humor. Try these – #location (#hudsonvalley), occupation, specialty (#politics, #nptech), #donors, #advocates, #customers or #clients, #foodies, #runners, #yankees.

2. HAVE PURPOSE. Be strategic with your groupings. Use them to highlight clients, donors, volunteers, thinkers, influencers, show gratitude, give respect, welcome newbies, wake up a Twitter account you think should be more active.

3. SHOW VARIETY. Recommend big accounts and little accounts. Your recommendation could attract the attention of someone influential or bestow credibility to the small but mighty Tweeter. Also, mix it up. Don’t do the same recommendations every week. It’s OK to repeat, but the same #ff every week is a bit lazy and dull.

Use Follow Friday Helper (pictured below) to get easy recommendations based on who’s mentioned you recently.

4. RECIPROCATE. Minimally, review your Mentions on Twitter to see who recommended you. TopFollowFriday (pictured below) is a tool that will show you #followfriday recommendations, but not those tagged with #ff, so it’s only a partial record. It does go back in time more than other apps, which helps you find and recommend your longtime followers. Definitely thank the people who recommended you, and consider recommending them in return.

5. GIVE PROPS. A slight variation of Tip #4. When you are recommended, check out the other people recommended in the tweet. If you end up following those folks, give thanks for the recommendation! EXAMPLE: @HeyAwesomePerson, I followed @WickedSmartPerson from your #ff list. Thanks!

6. CURATE FROM TWITTER LISTS. This is how I do much of my themed #ff recommendations. I go to my Twitter lists, see who’s tweeted interesting stuff lately, and recommend those people.

For example, during Hurricane Irene, there were a few heroic Tweeters who made it their business to get the word out on road closings, water advisories and rescue and recovery resources. I made a list, checked it twice, and made #ff recommendations.

Have any tips to add, or experiences to share? Share them in the comments section.

1. Go to Wordle
2. Paste in a bunch of text, plug in the URL of a website or blog post, or enter the user name of a Delicious user (Delicious is a social bookmarking service)
3. Make a word cloud
4. Play with fonts, color schemes and layouts
5. Make a screen capture
6. Adjust size as needed in your photo editing program (if you don’t have one, read my blog post about Picnik)
7. Upload to your blog or website

They don’t even have to be your words! Grab the text of a political speech or a news story. Word clouds are very good at instantly finding themes. Here’s the text of the press release for President Obama’s American Jobs Act made into a Wordle:

10 IDEAS FOR WORD SOURCES

1. Print newsletter
2. Appeal
3. Blog post
4. About page
5. Press release
6. News story
7. Speech
8. Staff bios
9. Book excerpt
10. Delicious user (see my Wordle below, based on http://www.delicious.com/karvetski)

Be sure to browse the Wordle gallery for inspiration. Even more fun is this Google Images search for Wordles.

There are great stories in print pieces, keyword-rich content that could help your nonprofit or business get found by search engines, and therefore donors, volunteers and customers. Google juice! But all those beautiful keywords remain trapped in dead wood and dry ink.

Photo credit: Johannes P. Osterhoff

You’ve also spent time and money designing your print pieces. Reconstructing them for web consumption can be costly and time-consuming. In many cases the content is simply too long for viewing online.

Sure you can turn your document into a pdf and post it online. But that puts a small hurdle in front of your visitor. Your visitor must download the document, and some folks will choose not to take the leap.

There’s a better option.

Turn your print pieces into Google juice with Scribd.

Scribd publishes your document online with your formatting intact. Fonts and graphics stay put. The service surrounds your document with features that make it findable (keywords, descriptions, categories), shareable (Facebook, Twitter, email, download), sticky (follow), social (comments), measurable (stats) and portable (embedding).

The American Red Cross posts safety checklists, disaster relief reports and white papers to its Scribd channel. (via Wendy Harman @wharman)

Here’s a sample of a Red Cross document hosted on Scribd and embedded on this blog:

Wildfire Safety

Check out what these nonprofits are doing with Scribd:

• Action Against Hunger uses Scribd to convert lengthy documents into web-friendly content. Check out their Publications section powered by Scribd (via Johanna Bates @hanabel)
• Reconciling Ministries Network posts its newsletters on Scribd and embeds them on its website (via Debra Askanase @askdebra)
• United Nations Environmental Programme shares its reports on Scribd

Scribd accepts a wide array of file formats:

• Adobe PDF (.pdf)
• Adobe PostScript (.ps)
• Microsoft Word (.doc/ .docx)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt/.pps/.pptx)
• Microsoft Excel (.xls/.xlsx)
• OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
• OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
• OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
• All OpenDocument formats
• Plain text (.txt)
• Rich text format (.rtf)

Categories include presentations, books, business/law, creative writing, government docs, puzzles, recipes, speeches and op-ed pieces. Topics include business and marketing; cooking, food and wine; parenting; news, politics and nonprofits; and self help.

I highly recommend starting with Scribd 101, which links to related guides for uploading, sharing and stats, among others.

Give yourself time to learn how Scribd works, and if you want to convert some newsletters or annual reports, start with recent publications and work your way backwards. Your new stuff is probably the most topical.

Think strategically about why you are putting particular documents online. Let your supporters know about your newly available content by mentioning it in your online newsletter, Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Give your print content wings! Good luck.

But it ain’t easy.

Yes, smartphones and Flip video cameras have made it easy to capture video. The gobs of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute attest to that.

But many nonprofits and businesses shy away from video because they know a good video is not just about capturing video. A good video is about telling a story and having a purpose, i.e. capturing leads, raising awareness or soliciting donations. It’s also about knowing the medium and editing your footage to create a coherent and compelling message.

Making a good video entails both storytelling and technical skills. No one wants make a bad video, so a lot of us just don’t try.

Animoto Helps You Make Stunning Videos

If you’ve got photos, you can have a good video. Very few technical skills required. Really.

Animoto is a web-based service that sets your photos to music and turns them into videos. Check it out.

Animoto thinks like a director and an editor, combining your images and music with the same sophisticated post-production skills and techniques used in television and film. The technology takes into account every nuance of a song – the genre, song structure, energy, rhythm, instrumentation and vocals.

Animoto is a tool, not a magic bullet. You still need a compelling story structure, decent photos and solid copy.

Make and share an Animoto video and I guarantee someone will ask you how you did it.

Thirty-second Animoto videos are absolutely free. Pick an animation style, choose your music, add some text, upload your photos and Animoto makes it stunning.

Pull in images from Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket or SmugMug. When you are done, share your video easily via email or on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or Tumblr.

Animoto comes with about a dozen animation styles and music in a variety of genres. Paid accounts give you more options – download videos, produce videos without the Animoto branding baked in and add a link to the end of your video, a feature that’s a must if you are going to use the video to make an ask (sign up, donate, etc.).

Pro accounts with all the bells and whistles are just $249 per year, or $39/month. Click here for Animoto pricing.

Free Animoto Pro Accounts for Nonprofits & Educators

Here’s the best part – nonprofits and educators are eligible for free Animoto Pro accounts!

Here’s a video that volunteers at Amnesty International US put together recently in support of Iranian student leader and prisonor of conscience Majid Tavakoli.

To qualify, nonprofits need to submit a charity registration number and to register with a nonprofit email address, not a personal email address. The Animoto website states that it will take about 14 days to process a nonprofit application. Click here for Animoto for a Cause.

Educators must provide school, grades and subjects taught and class website/blog. Likewise, educators must submit the application using an official school email address. Click here for Animoto for Education.

I highly recommend the Animoto blog for tips and tricks, webinars and tutorials. Definitely read 5 Ways Animoto Can Help Your Cause and Animoto For A Cause 101.

If you end up using Animoto, share your video here and I’ll share it on the Company K Media Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Tool Tuesday blog posts feature products and services I’ve actually used, like and recommend to nonprofits and small businesses.

Related articles

• Animoto & Instagram: Perfect Together? (gigaom.com)
• 5 Facebook Apps for Getting More From Your Photos (mashable.com)
• YouTube Good Work Helps Non-Profits Find The Video Help They Need (googlefornonprofits.blogspot.com)

photo credit: PearlsandaCardi