Streams and feeds are a great way to increase the reach of your online content. Some excellent tools to stream your content:

• Facebook.  A syndicated stream is the default view in Facebook.
• Twitter. Content is presented in a stream to your followers.
• Superfeedr. A service powering millions of real-time feeds.
• Tweetdeck and Seesmic. These stream readers read and write to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and other social network streams. 

I recently participated in the NTEN webinar: Become a Facebook Rockstar: Taking Your Show Worldwide!  The webinar offered nonprofits information about how they can use Facebook to gain awareness, build relationships with members and build donations. It was a good overview of best practices for how organizations should use Facebook.

Thanks to Forum One Communications presenters Andrew Cohen and Michaela Hackner for these insights:

• Talk about your Facebook activities in other online locations and offline communications
• Use Facebook Insights to track usage of your fan page
• Post photos and videos whenever possible – these are more engaging than text
• Use applications to enhance your presence

Are you on Facebook? What is working best for you?

There are so many web services out there that many modern websites represent the integration of the products of several vendors. You can easily have different vendors for development, your association management system, your advocacy tools, your shopping cart, and more.

I am interested in learning about how you get multiple vendors to work together to create a cohesive and streamlined web presence. I welcome your anecdotes – positive and negative – and lessons learned along the way. Please share as a comment to this post or send to me directly at jakprpro@yahoo.com.

Thanks in advance.

I have noticed an interesting trend in online communication. It is all becoming micro-messaging. Facebook wall posts are short, emails are short, discussion forum posts are short. It is as if we all feel constrained to 140 characters or less in all of our online writing. And, I am not sure that is a bad thing.

I rarely receive long  emails anymore. (E-mails that are original compositions of the author, that is, those dang chain emails are still as long as ever.) Most are short and to the point. In the past I have had debates with colleagues about the single topic versus the all-encompassing email. Single topic has definitely won that debate based on the content of my inbox.

The email newsletter, which I have seen as a staple of online, targeted communication, are now looking like dinosaurs to me. I open these full screen, multiple article messages and feel overwhelmed. I find I am reading fewer and fewer of these. However, I scan every shorter message.

Any writer will tell you that writing short is a much greater challenge than writing long. Finding the fewest words to make the greatest impact is a skill that great writers possess.

Kimberly-Clark Corp. has created an online campaign for Kleenex – Pick Your Own Mom. The campaign is clearly aimed at going viral by intriguing users to share the site with friends and family.

GetMommed.com allows visitors can choose from among eight moms either directly or via Facebook-style quizzes. Television commercials also encourage viewers to visit the site.

In my own unofficial survey the idea seems to work. I mentioned something out loud about this at work – didn’t even share the link – and within five minutes three separate co-workers were online choosing their own moms.

Take a look – just to see what mom appeals to you – or to see a great concept in leveraging online tools to create buzz for a product.

The campaign has already resulted in more than 20,000 registrations for the brand’s relationship program.

Last week I participated in the NTEN webinar, Twitter for Nonprofits, and had a few takeaways I wanted to share:

• I have always called Twitter a “micro-blog” but a better name may be “micro-messaging”  – and the input is similar to Facebook and LinkedIn postings as well as sending a text message
• Twitter does not archive tweets for very long. They have changed the retention periods and probably will again, but it is never very long.
• Retweet is no longer a command you need to type – it is a formal action available beneath each post in your stream. Just click the racing arrows symbol. Neat.
• Several non-profit role models to look at: Red Cross, ACLU, American Cancer Society, Greenpeace (I have added these to my list of organizations to follow in Twitter at @jakprpro/organizations)

PRSA is offering a teleseminar especially for associations and non-profits: “How Associations and Nonprofits can Achieve an Effective Social Media Strategy on a Shoestring Budget.”

Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009
2–3 p.m. EST

This presentation will provide a foundation for understanding how to put your association or nonprofit organization at the forefront of the latest social media offerings.

You will learn:

• What drives the philosophy of social media in membership and nonprofit organizations.
• What association and nonprofit public relations professionals are doing well and not so well in the social media space.
• What association and nonprofit public relations professionals must do to equip themselves for social media success.
• What technologies and shifts are next for online communications, particularly with a minimal budget.

According to BIGresearch’s Simultaneous Media Usage Survey of over 22,000 consumers, the audience for mobile marketing is growing but that the audience is still relatively small. Demographically, consumers who like mobile marketing tend to be young men.

More data on mobile marketing users:

• They are more likely than non-users to regularly give advice to others about products or services they have purchased
• They are more likely to regularly seek advice than non-users
• Their top triggers for online searches are magazines, coupons and cable TV
• After conducting online search, they are most likely to communicate about it with others via face-to-face, email and cell phone
• Both mobile marketing users and non-users go to iTunes.com, YouTube.com and LimeWire.com – in that order- most often to access or download video/music content
• They are more likely to visit Facebook, Myspace and Twitter “regularly,” vs. non-users.

Additionally, the percentage of people who don’t like mobile marketing has increased across the board since June 2008.

• 66.8% of overall respondents don’t like text ads (vs. 63.5% in 2008)
• 60.2% don’t like voicemail ads (vs. 56.8% in 2008)
• 59.6% don’t like video ads (vs. 56.1% in 2008)
• 58% of people think marketers need permission prior to sending an ad (vs. 55.6% in 2008)
• 52.1% think mobile ads are an invasion of privacy (vs. 49.5% in 2008).

Mass media was the holy grail when I was working on my public relations degree. The ultimate goal was to get your message placed in the mass media.

Perhaps that’s why I find Jakob Nielsen’s comparision of communicating via TV versus the web so insightful and intriguing: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/media-velocity.html

The web makes television look like a slow media. And, is is even less of a medium of words. Yet, online communication provides a true opportunity to engage. The new holy grail for communicators is to leverage this opportunity.

Some great examples I have seen:

• Guiding Eyes for the Blind, new website integrates information for donors, puppy raisers and others interested in this organization.
• Balance Interactive, new website for my company that highlights what we do and results we have achieved for clients.
• Driveway2Driveway, Balance client that is a car selling service.
• Food Network, tons of recipes and lots of shows, and all easy to access.

Please share your examples of great websites that engage.

NTEN is offering a two-webinar series on how to use Facebook: “Become a Facebook Rockstar.”

Setting up a fan page can be easy, but turning it into a place where your supporters want to engage can take a little more insight. In these webinars, we’ll cover creating a superstar Facebook page, increasing your Facebook popularity, and keeping track of your progress.

Series Sessions include:

• Become a Facebook Rockstar: How to Create a Sellout Show and Find Groupies
• Become a Facebook Rockstar: Taking Your Show Worldwide

When: December 2nd & 9th, 11:00 am PT / 2:00 pm ET

Series Cost: $50 for NTEN Members, $100 for non-members

Individual Webinars: $30 for NTEN Members, $60 for non-members

Presenters: Andrew Cohen and Michaela Hackner, Forum One Communications

I have taken several sessions from NTEN and always find their value exceeds the cost. I highly recommend this session if you want to learn how to use Facebook to communicate on behalf of your organization.