Yesterday I taught a webinar called “Content Creation Strategies for Nonprofits: Making the Most of Your Writing, Photos, and More.&#  More than 650 people registered from 46 U.S. states and 22 other countries. Pass this on to your nonprofit friends in Alaska, Delaware, Mississippi and South Dakota - we missed them!) Make-ahead meal planning.

If you’ve already started incorporating social media into your communications strategy and have done any research on it at all, you’ve come across the advice to LISTEN FIRST. Here are 17 concrete actions you can take using what you learn from listening. Better understand the people who matter most. Correct misconceptions. Be relevant.

If you moan to 10 of your nonprofit colleagues about how you don’t have time to get your nonprofit on Facebook and other social media sites, I’d guess seven of them will tell you to get an intern to do it for you. The other three? Two will just nod sympathetically and the other one will have no idea what you are talking about.).

As you may know, I am in the middle of writing the full-length, printed book version of Nonprofit Marketing Guide, to be published in Spring 2010 by Jossey-Bass. So I decided to make the first chapter of the book a summary of these assumptions. Here is the my list of 10 marketing realities for nonprofits, with abridged commentary. Tell good stories.

Yesterday I attended a workshop organized by one of my favorite bloggers (and NTC roomie) Nancy Schwartz on how you deal with branding issues for your organization within social media. The panel featured Danielle Brigida, National Wildlife Federation; Felicia Carr, National Parks Conservation Association; and Wendy Harman, American Red Cross.

How many of you have taken Andy Goodman’s storytelling seminar ? Pretty mind-blowing, huh?  Andy unlocks the secrets of good story-telling, decoding a formula for narrative going at least back to Aristotle’s Poetics. There are easily thousands of non-profit communicators who have passed through Andy’s program.  Not for lack of trying.  They are.

I am completely biased in this post because of my own studies in journalism. That said: Newspapers are downsizing. Jobs are being cut. The journalism field is in the midst of a re-invention. Despite the landscape and view people may hold when they think of today’s journalism, enrollment in journalism school has INCREASED ! Get ready. Cliche?

By my most recent count, there are 106 fundraising blogs out there. My definition of "fundraising blogs" is deliberately broad -- these are blogs that are touch on fundraising in some way, at some time. That's a lot of talk about fundraising. More than a normal person can (or probably should) read. But I do. The Agitator. Endless Plain. forimpact.

I can guarantee you this: A lot more people hate the US Air Force than hate your nonprofit organization. For that matter, a lot more people love the Air Force. And that means people say all kinds of things about the Air Force in blogs and other social media places. And the Air Force is doing something about it. And here's the cool part.

Let's face it: People have short attention spans. Especially when it comes to the Internet. We're all clicking around furiously trying to nab the quickest, most-reliable answers to our questions. And, often, we're just browsing for things to entertain our instant-gratification-seeking minds.) Effectively. And, oh yes, quickly. Funny-we did, too.