You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, But Not Like a Record Player
Lately, the top 40 airwaves (which get a lot of play in my car and house because of my daughters) have been chockablock with the Flo Rida remake of the song, “You Spin Me Round.” Flo Rida took out the record player line of the original song, probably because people like my daughters wouldn’t know what the heck a record player was. I explained to my kids that the original was pretty darn good. Then I showed them the video original, by Dead or Alive - who is, by the way, alive and well on YouTube. All I can say is: Oh. My. God. What’s with the hair? The shoulder pads? And the eye patch?!
My daughters laughed hysterically through the entire video. (Another friend’s son had the same reaction.) Then my ten year old IMed her friends with a link to it to show how pathetic her mom’s heyday era was.
All of this, NATURALLY, got me thinking about nonprofit marketing. Because I just had to find a reason to post this video, regardless of how big a stretch this is. So here goes.
Remakes have value. In this era, we have to remake our oldie but goodie offline style for online audiences who might not relate to our originals.
Times have changed. You can’t slap your offline newsletter on your website, install a Donate button and call it a day.
1. We have to get shorty: Long works in direct mail. Short works online. If you put long, text heavy stuff online, you’re going to be ignored - and irrelevant.
2. We have to reflect our audience rather than stick to our own same-old: What are our audiences talking about? What do they care about? How do they relate to others? We need to reflect their interests, use their preferred modes of communication, and engage them in a conversation. Monologue is so old school.
3. Target, don’t blanket: Old-school outreach was “spray and pray.” Online, we can and must to do a far better job segmenting our audiences and speaking to them personally. In fact, we can do that so easily and cost effectively, there’s no excuse not to do this.
And so on.
Lesson - Get with the times. Oh, and don’t parade around with big hair and a eye patch talking about record players.
Syndicate
So this is way funny! Thanks for entertaining while keeping us all on focus and on task to keep up with the changing needs of our constituents. Note that what you’re asking us to do is no easy task - there are hundreds of options for communicating with constituents on the Web and through the Web with all the social networking and interactive opportunities. Add in SMS, mobile giving, small screen opportunities and traditional tactics that appear to work with some audiences and allocating resources, knowing where to start, prioritizing becomes a real challenge for small to mid-sized nonprofits and perhaps even for huge ones. A nonprofit cannot do it all. The biggest job is getting it into a strategic plan and not waste money while trying new things. So any ideas or ways to to test new things without breaking the bank are greatly appreciated. For example, is there any data on response rates for mobile fundraising campaigns when you’re starting without a list? What did you do to promote it? Where did you start? This is the latest fundraising craze in the US.
Chris