Advocacy Avenue

Aside from the sweet smell of Friday and the coming weekend, my office has been taken over by the the sugary scents of cookies, pastries and other things upon which your personal trainer typically frowns.  It’s just one of those many signs that the holidays are just around the corner and slowly creeping like a stealthy ninja.

Before some of you panic at the thought of not having done anything yet for your holiday campaigns ("You mean you can’t start on December 24th?"), let me share some guides that would help you catch up with the rest of the holiday online campaigning peloton:

• The folks at Sea Change Strategies just launched a white paper called The Procrastinator’s Guide to Year-end Fundraising.  A great and insightful read for folks who are just not natural planners.
• Seth Godin recently published a quick cheat sheet on how organizations can promote themselves in a Web 2.0 world.  A note on step three: Check out the marketer’s view and use the goals assessment tool.  It has been an awesome analysis tool for IDI clients’ yearend campaigns.
• A companion to Seth’s cheat sheet would be some quick insights from Beth Kanter.

That should cover this Friday’s edition of Factoids.  Sadly, this is my last post for 2006.  Happily, like  great shows on network TV, I will be back in 2007 with great new things to share with you every Friday.  Until then, have a happy holiday!

Blog logo on a T-shirt.  I’ve seen it.  Blog logo on a dog’s T-shirt.  I’ve seen that.  I’ve even seen bloggers promoting their blogs on thong underwear.  But the tracksuit???  This is outstanding.

It doesn’t hurt either that the blog selling this particular gear is Crooks and Liars.  This Top 20 progressive politics blog, founded and administered by John Amato, covers topics ranging from campaigns to political scandals to terrorism.  Plus, the frequent TV news clips make it one of the more media-rich of the top leftie news blogs.  So you probably don’t need to be in a tracksuit to enjoy this blog, but it would certainly help.

Happy Friday, one and all!  If you were subscribed to IDIdeas, you should have received a copy of our special 20th anniversary edition.  If not, well, you can subscribe today at the IDI Web site.

Anyway, since IDI’s birth 20 years ago, it has worked in consumer advocate issues, promoted public interest and delved into Internet Technology.  That brings me to my tribute to IDI’s 20 years of achievement today by bringing you factoids about being online.

Let’s get started:

• A study in Cambridge, MA has indicated that direct mail donor retention has dropped from 33% in 2004.  The article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy indicates that the drop can be attributed to donor frustration with mail frequency, lack of response to user complaints and the move of donor preference to online giving.
• The 11th Annual Webby Awards are accepting entries.  Their list has now grown to 65 categories, thanks to the Web 2.0 phenomenon.  The categories now include social networking and mobile marketing.
• Social networking is growing.  Mark Rovner at Sea Change Strategies recently posted a summary of engagement principles within this space (ie, MySpace and Facebook), and I’ve made a quick comment arguing the point that social networks can be a great fundraising platform.  Interested parties should also check out the two case studies about non-profit engagement in social networks at the Getting Attention! blog.

And that concludes this week’s edition of Friday Factoids.  A big happy birthday shout-out to Issue Dynamics, Inc., and I’ll talk to you folks next week!

I’ve noticed these hilarious single cell comics scattered around the blogosphere for quite some time now, but only just stumbled upon the original blog that they come from.  Cartoonist, blogger, and marketing consultant Hugh MacLeod hangs his virtual hat at Gaping Void, his blog that features his tech-centric news and cultural thoughts along with, of course, his outstanding comics. 

Now normally my blogger chic series focuses on T-shirts and other forms of blogwear, but MacLeod offers something truly unique and perfectly fitting for promotional gear.  Blogger business cards also known as "Street Cards" that feature his comic on one side and your contact information printed on the other.  With 56 comics to choose from and a ringing endorsement from Jeff Jarvis, what could be more… chic?

Happy Friday, everyone!  Did you miss me?  Of course you did!  If you were curious, yes, I braved Black Friday along with the 34% of the US population and completed 95% of my holiday shopping.  But that’s not the kind of Friday Factoids you were looking for, right? 

Anyway, I know you’re itching for this week’s episode, so let’s get on with the show.  This week’s theme is exploring new kinds of Web 2.0 technology, and I found three rather interesting products that would give you something to talk about:

• Have you checked out Pagebull?  It’s a visual search engine that highlights your word of choice in different screenshots of Web sites containing the text.  I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but I would love to hear your thoughts.
• Recruiting fake friends is not just a thing of the real-life high school drama.  For 99 cents per month, you could have a faux member of the in-crowd comment on your social networking pages to increase your cool factor — Web 2.0 style.
• I heart my DVR.  If I can only convince my housemates to get TiVo, I would be in TV heaven.  Apparently, if I thought I was a little behind in that kind of technology, I was farther behind, because taping it off the Internet is the next big thing.  Nothing gets friends talking more than those crazy episodes of Heroes and Ugly Betty.  Why not bring that conversation to the Web?  Brilliant.

Well, that concludes this week’s Friday Factoids.  In the spirit of engagement — tis the season after all — I would like your thoughts on how the Factoids are going.  What would you like to know?

Where are you from?  If it’s a major city, chances are there is a Gothamist blog to go with that.  Being a DC resident, I rely on DCist for all of my local politics and culture news.  But the Gothamist network of city blogs covers many more cities, including Europe and Asia hotspots like London and Shanghai.  The T-shirt link brings you to a site that allows you to pick your style, color, text color, and local logo.  I’ve decided to spread the word about my favorite local blog in hot pink with black writing.

It’s pretty impressive when you can spike traffic on another blog with a simple link.  It’s a whole other thing when this phonemenon has received a name based on your blog because it happens so frequently.  Long time political blogger Glenn Reynolds, known as Instapundit, is known for finding the best of the blogs and offering a link on his widely-read, conservative-leaning site.  The traffic his link generates is known as an "Instalanche". 

Now when a friend first told me about the Instalanche phenomenon, I thought he called it an "Insta-launch," referring to the launch in fame that a spike in readership from Instapundit would lead to.  Hmmmm… that’s pretty catchy too! 

And now for my final addition to Insta-lingo, I offer you Insta-chic…

Happy Friday, everybody!  Like anyone who is in the online advertising and fundraising world, my schedule is somewhat packed these days, but I always think that it’s the best part of the job.  So to honor the very reason behind my endless days and restless nights, I am dedicating this week’s Factoids to the yearend season.  Let’s get the party rolling:

• Have you checked out ChipIn?  Talk about a brilliant idea for personal fundraising and for saving costs on presents for that special someone who owns everything.  It would also be great for small non-profits and their specific needs (hint, hint).
• Nielsen/NetRatings is trumping all assumptions that YouTube is populated by the adolescent and tweener crowd.  Their latest studies indicate that 55% of YouTube’s visitors are between 35 and 64 with another 19% in the 25-to-34 age group.  Coincidentally, those are also the optimal donor age groups!  Think about that for a second..
• A recent poll indicates that only 34% of the US population will be brave enough to venture into the Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving) wild this year.  That means 66% are staying at their home, watching TV, surfing the Web and checking their e-mails.  Fundraising messaging, anyone?

So that’s all I have for you today.  Along with the courageous 34%, I will be out trying to conquer my holiday gift list next Friday, so I won’t be back until the Friday after that.  If you will miss me that much, leave a comment, question or suggestion!

Happy Friday to everyone!  A big shout-out to the 24.3 million retired soldiers whose public service we honor today.  Thank you for your dedication and courage.  Since we’re running low on time, let’s go on with the show:

• Happy birthday, Marine Corps!  That’s 231 years after the Continental Congress raised what was then called the American Marine batallions.  Amazingly, USMC is looking for some online love from the men and women in service to share their "sea stories."  Wouldn’t it be great if they would turn it into a blog?
• Check out this rather sad lesson on Chris Baggott’s blog about what NOT to do in e-mail marketing campaigns.  What’s even sadder is that a lot more firms — and non-profit organizations — are employing this practice.  Oy!
• Forget the 10-10-somethings or 80-20s.  The new combination fad is 90-9-1.  As a frequent lurker among the bulletin boards, I’m glad to know that I am not the only one.  In the same study, did you know that out of 1.1 billion Internet users, only 5% (55 million users) have blogs and only 1.6 million posts each day?  Talk about not having a voice in this big void.

Speaking of blogs, have you registered for the blogger boot camp yet?  It’s on Monday afternoon at the National Press Club.  Debbie Weil, author of "The Corporate Blogging Book", and other speakers will be there, not to mention lovely Blogger Relations celebrities, like Cheryl Contee, Kevin Reid and Shana Glickfield!  So what are you waiting for?  Register now.  Yes, I mean right now..since Friday Factoids is done anyway.  See you next Friday!

Writers, directors, producers, performers, musicians, and other arts and entertainment professionals unite within the organization Center for Creative Voices in Media.  They advocate for a free and open media environment with less media concenration and less media censorship.  One key method of communicating with the tens of thousands of artists that they represent?  Their blog.  And the key message disseminating companion to the blog?  Why a T-shirt, of course.  This one features the slogan "What the FCC happened to free speech?" above their URL.