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My Favorite Advice & Data Viz of the Month

My Favorite Advice

How to track your SEO work with Google Analytics.

Yoast is a fantastic resource for tips on improving your site’s SEO. This article is especially juicy because it explains, in detail, how to find the data that will help you track whether your efforts to optimize your site are actually working. And you can use your free Google Analytics account to do this — no need to pay for a fancy SEO service. I like this article because it starts with the easy (looking at total search traffic to your site and whether it’s increasing) and progresses to the more complex (analyzing whether your mobile experience impacts your search engine ranking). It explains this all through detailed, accessible videos that play without sound so you can watch at your desk.

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Google’s Advice for Ads, Drowning in Donor Data & Political Ads Online

My favorite part of December isn’t the decadent food, cheesy Netflix movies or the endless holiday parties (though, I do love all those things). It’s the year-end “best of” lists. This month, however, is not only the end of 2019… it’s the end of an entire decade. That means an abundance of 2010s nostalgia lists.

Everyone from Buzzfeed to The New York Times is pondering how this decade will be remembered (What will we wear to the 2010s theme parties of the future???). Journalists can argue about whether this decade’s key historical contributions were meme culture, smartphones, YouTube or #MeToo. But I feel like a decade’s culture doesn’t quite solidify until well into the next one.

What seems so clearly defined in retrospect is fuzzy and haphazard when you are living through it. But in reading through these lists, one thing *is* clear to me. The digital world is ever-changing. Staying up-to-date with the trends and skills ⁠— from targeted ads to better UX to online privacy ⁠— is both more important and more difficult than ever. For me, writing this newsletter has been an excellent way to keep up, and I hope you all feel the same.

So raise your glass to the end of 2019 and the start of the 2020s! 🥂

From Fake News to Full Transparency

The 2010s can be described as the decade “fake news” became prominent as a buzzword online. Yes, it’s been around for longer than that, but digital media secured its prominence. People are very skeptical these days with so much fake information out there, so it’s important we keep that in mind as we create new digital content and products. Designing for transparency should be our goal in 2020 (and beyond).

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My Favorite Advice & Data Viz of the Month

My Favorite Advice

Getting Ready For Giving Tuesday.

With year-end giving season upon us, I thought this was a very relevant article on how to test fundraising copy. Nonpartisan fact-checking website PolitiFact helps the public know when they can trust a politician. This summer, they decided to incorporate that same message of trust and transparency into their fundraising language. They found that when language about their brand’s values, goals, and processes were added, it encouraged more, higher dollar amount donations.

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Boost Donations for the Holidays, Google’s New Privacy Tools & 1-Click Donation Forms

This newsletter has been following political advertising on FACEBOOK since the Cambridge Analytica story broke. And the controversy hasn’t stopped since. With Twitter’s announcement that it’s banning political advertising, the focus is now on FACEBOOK.

My feelings about this are too mixed to fit into one bite-sized intro. But banning political advertising outright isn’t a real solution. This hurts new, upstart candidates who need a way to get their message out. The real issue, in my opinion, is exactly what makes FACEBOOK advertising so attractive in the first place: the ability to hone in on a very specific audience. (It’s especially appealing to budget-strapped nonprofits trying to reach a certain demographic or potential donors).

Unfortunately, it’s also what makes political advertising so problematic. It’s hard to debate what politicians are promoting there if you can’t actually see the other side’s ads. I doubt the answer is as easy as “more visibility,” but it’s a start.

‘Tis the Season For Giving

You are probably sick of hearing aquaintances floundering for small talk remark on how the holiday season starts earlier each year, so I’m going to cut to the point. Thanksgiving is coming, and you really need to figure out your year-end digital fundraising. While this article is directed toward boosting holiday sales, it also applies to boosting holiday donations! I absolutely love the advice to use Google Search Ads to build an audience and use Facebook to close them.

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My Favorite Advice & Data Viz’s of the Month

Wait… There’s a New Definition of Spam?

Turns out, yes! The new definition of spam is, “Is this email likely to be engaged with?” rather than simply, “Is this email unrequested?” As we’ve covered here and here, engagement is the name of the game in 2019, which means deliverability is more important now than ever. Amy Chin-Lai goes in-depth in this Medium article about email deliverability, what it means and how to improve your organizations’. It’s a good one.

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