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Your Website Redesign, Online Fundraising & Building a Data Culture

Not Another New Year’s Article

I know it sounds cheesy, but put better data collection at the top of your list of new year’s resolutions. This article is written by Salesforce to promote Salesforce, so take it with a grain of salt, but they have good suggestions about what organizations should be focusing on in 2019. For example, committing to a data collection tool and making sure it is set up correctly ensures your nonprofit can be confident in the data you collect – and the decisions you make from it.

When It’s Time to Redesign

If you want to start fresh in 2019, this handy UX research process explains the steps and timeline for redesigning your website with users at the forefront. One thing that stuck out to me was their emphasis on the importance of combining generative (user interviews) and evaluative research (A/B testing, mouse tracking, remote usability testing). Hot tip: since you want the research to define the direction of your design, “put generative techniques at the beginning.”

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Russia’s Facebook Ads, Data Makeovers & Predicting Donors

What’s New This Week?

Russia Funds Political Facebook Ads
Having covered various Facebook Ad drama, I didn’t think anything on the platform could shock me. But it can! Facebook disclosed on Wednesday (finally!) that a Kremlin-backed company funded $100,000 worth of Facebook Ads. The ads, which ran from June 2015 until this May, focused on divisive social issues, such as gun control.

Finding Donors in the Data
Turn on your speakers and check out this podcast from Blackbaud. The nonprofit tech company explains how nonprofits can use predictive analytics to find their most likely (and capable) donors.

Happy Birthday, Here’s the $$
Facebook rolled out a new feature that allows people to solicit birthday donations for their favorite nonprofit. It works like this: two weeks before your birthday, Facebook will prompt you create a fundraiser for an approved organization (There’s currently 750K). You set a goal and create a message. Then, Facebook notifies your friends on the big day. The catch: a 5% fee.

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Local SEO Tips, More Creepy Ads & Google’s New Analysis Product

What’s New This Week?

Google’s Big Announcement

Google’s launching a new product, but coverage has been a mess of marketing gobbledygook. Here’s my nonprofit-friendly translation. If you track what traffic sources (Facebook ads, Google searches etc.) are leading to donations and other actions on your website, you probably do so with “last click attribution.” That means, you attribute credit for the donation to the most recent way the user entered your site. Google Analytics currently has tools to address this, but they are confusing and not too useful. But more is coming! It’s called Google Attribution. (But for now, it really only works with Google AdWords and DoubleClick campaigns. So get ready to better understand your Google AdWords grant use.)

Creepy Advertising Story of the Week

I’m starting to think that this can be a weekly feature in Bee Update. We’ve covered the perils of overly-personal ads before, but I have to share any piece entitled “Hey Instagram, Don’t Tell Me When to Freeze My Eggs.” Go ahead and bemoan the state of targeted advertising with Wired.

Topping Your Local Search Results

Trying to improve your search ranking in your local area? Here’s a read for you. SEO experts weigh in on what’s most important. The top three factors are quality and quantity of inbound links, on-page content (got your keywords?) and the rate of click-throughs on your search listing. Read some more in Search Engine Land.

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Facebook Forbids Snooping and Crafty (Pun Intended) Advertising

What’s New This Week?

Stop Spying Everyone, Says Facebook
Facebook is explicitly telling groups to stop using their data for surveillance, writes TechCrunch.  You can thank the ACLU for forcing the issue. Back in October, one group was caught compiling protesters’ posts from social sites and selling the data to law enforcement. Twitter also forbids this practice.

“Very, Very Fictitious” Data
Remember that time the Obama administration manipulated jobs data to make the unemployment rate look lower? Yup, it’s another story about “fake” data in the Trump Administration. Thanks FiveThirtyEight for breaking down why this claim is so absurd.

The State of the Social Media Union
I see so many one-off stories about social media trends (Twitter is over! Facebook use is down!), that it’s hard to keep track. I appreciate Forbes’ mile-high overview of what’s up with each main social platform.

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