Charity: Water is strongly leading the charge in how non-profits utilize social media. Are you familiar with their work? They bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

In just five years, Charity: Water has developed a powerhouse of an online presence, fully utilizing every possible medium and outlet to raise awareness and funds for their work.

With 1.3 million Twitter followers and 210,000 Facebook likes, they are clearly doing something right!

Charity: Water leverages their blog, Facebook, and Twitter feeds to share compelling stories of the communities and individuals their donors help to support. And they do so with one of the highest standards of quality and excellence out there today, in any industry.

Their use of beautiful imagery and stunning video plays an enormous role in their success.

A quick glance at their website shows you their unbelievably high standard of excellence and the extreme lengths they go to represent well both their work and those they serve around the world.

Charity: Water makes their pictures, videos, and other materials easily accessible for people to grab and share through their own personal social media outlets. They have everything from blog banners to Twitter backgrounds — making it as easy as possible for others to help spread the word about the cause they believe in.

Non-profits and businesses can learn a lot from Charity: Water’s approach.

Make your partners or clients want to engage and spread the word by providing them with beautiful and excellent material, and by making it as easily accessible as possible. Offer something people feel proud to talk about, share with others, and represent.

Tell your story well — with passion and excellence. It draws people around you who want to use their own voice and influence to continue telling the story.

What would you like to see non-profits do or change
in their social media strategy?

[HT: MajorMultimedia.com]

We are always looking for ways to stay organized in this fast-paced world of ours. Evernote has quickly become one of my favorite tools. It’s now an indispensable part of my life and work.

What is Evernote?

Evernote is an amazing tool that synchronizes in real-time across all your digital devices. Add a note on your iPhone and it’s automatically synced with your desktop computer, online website, and iPad. Amazing! Your information is available anytime, anywhere.

You can use Evernote to save your ideas, take notes, keep track of projects, generate shopping lists, store recipes, or brainstorm with a colleague.

Notebook System

Create notebooks in any system that makes sense to you. I name mine by clients or projects, but you could go a completely different route. Maybe you like action words. Your notebooks could be:

• Listen (music you want to explore)
• Read (books, quotes, authors)
• See (films and photography)
• Taste (recipes and restaurants)
• Create (projects)
• Go (future travel)

It’s entirely up to you. Simply name your notebooks in the way that makes the most sense for you and how you want to utilize Evernote. Your notebooks can be shared with those you invite, or kept completely private (only accessible by you).

Create Notes

Start creating notes within your notebooks. For each note you can:

• Include a URL of the website you got the idea or information from
• Record a GPS location (to search by location or remember where you wrote it)
• Enter tags to maximize searchability
• Format as much or as little as you want

How important is your profile picture? Very.

If a picture really is worth a thousand words, than our profile pictures speak volumes. They serve as visual representations of ourselves and our companies/brands in the online world. You want to make sure you are representing yourself well.

Regardless of what people say, we all judge books by their covers. In social media, your avatar is your book cover. It can make the difference between someone reading what you have to say or scrolling right past it.

Some tips for having great avatars and profile pictures…

Consider the medium.

Your avatar on Twitter should be different than your profile picture on LinkedIn, and rightly so. They are social media outlets that serve very different functions. It isn’t crucial that your photo be the same across all your online outlets, but that your photo matches the platform it’s on. Twitter and Facebook are considered more conversational and personal. They lend themselves to profile pics that are fun and casual expressions of yourself. LinkedIn is professional and corporate. Your profile picture for those types of networking sites, or any platform where you specifically represent a company or brand, should be engaging but professional.

Size matters.

There is nothing more frustrating then clicking on someone’s avatar to get a closer look, only to discover the owner uploaded a tiny image. Use large pictures to avoid small, blurry, pixelated images.

Don’t change your photo too often.

On Twitter and Facebook where we quickly scan through the timeline to read only the bits we’re interested in, profile picture recognition is key. When you change your avatar often, it makes it more difficult for people to readily identify you and follow along with your conversations online. That doesn’t mean you should never change it — just avoid changing it every other week!

What would you add?
What tips do you have for profile pics?