When Warren Buffet donated the bulk of his vast fortune to the Gates Foundation, did the Gates Foundation’s donations dry up because people felt the foundation had enough money, and their money would be needed more elsewhere? Nope. The Gates Foundation donor base got bigger. Why? Because people want to be around winners. A wider and deeper donor base is built on the understanding and belief that your organization is a winning brand. Learn how to develop and communicate your 5 Top Winning Attributes and how to use this message framework to engage your audience and grow over time.

On December 3rd, Chris Klaehn, Partner & Director of Brand Strategy, gave a talk entitled “Everybody Loves a Winner” at the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Conference on Philanthropy.

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Our clients often ask us why they should conduct usability testing with their website, mobile site or application. They say, “We’ve talked about the site endlessly and now it looks great! Why do we need to take the time to get more feedback before we launch?” Task-based usability testing is one of the best ways we have to understand how users will succeed and fail with an online experience. While we have a number of qualitative and quantitative tools that help us understand the mindset and behavior of site users, we can never be sure that the site will work for them until we recruit real users and sit them down in front of our work.

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A key question when developing social media strategy or a website is “Who do we target?”. “Who will be the most effective individuals to reach with our message?” Often these target audiences break down into two groups. Advocates for your organization, people who are invested in you and your offering, and the public, customers or end users – the ultimate recipients of your offering. A typical website design or social media strategy will try to reach these two groups in varying proportions.

But there is a third group, a group as important as either and one that can have a disproportionate effect on reaching end users. We call this group “Messengers.” Unlike your advocates, messengers are an audience that you don’t have direct contact with on a regular basis. They don’t follow your every word but they do share an affinity for your ideas, your topics and your issues. They might already be talking about your issues without mentioning your organization. Sometimes messengers talk about your topic on a regular basis, sometimes more sporadically as events or seasonality dictates.

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Internal applications – intranets, knowledge management sites, workflow management systems, etc. – drive an organization by keeping employees informed, creating quality and consistency across an organization, and positively influencing the bottom line. In this post, I review 4 ways to make these internal workhorses really shine.

Social Tools

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Andrea Naddaff, VP of Business Development and Partner, was interviewed by Dave Fish, CEO of IMakeNews about naming. Naming can be a fun process, as well as an arduous one. Listen in for tips on how to name products, brands, services and more. Naddaff also provides some insight into the trickiness of naming online entities.

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