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