through nonprofit eyes: Through Non-Profit Eyes: Mashable's weekly social-media tools

Every week Mashable.com summarizes their stories and blogs of the week on social-media tools. As a resource for the non-profit world, I take it each week and share some of the applicable tools through a pair of non-profit spectacles.

1) If you dig through one of their postings, you will find the following tool at the bottom of a list. Twibbon allows followers and fans to add a logo of support to their profile pictures. Great tool for building fan bases and getting your followers to spread the love.

2) Maximize the reach of your content via social-media. Mashable gives you some great info, all of which is directly applicable to non-profits. Click here.

3) Boosting your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) via a YouTube channel. The basic steps suggested by author Mitchell Harper are:

a) Choose your topics - For non-profits this decision can vary. If you are a service organization you can highlight the service you provide and education can highlight various topics - right? Maybe. The key here is to use topics that will generate traffic and make the case for support. If there are current topics or viral videos that you can respond to and stay on topic, do it. Run the topics by your donors and potential donors to see what impact they would have on support.

b) Record the videos - A decent flip, high-definition camcorder is not that expensive any longer. You can then edit your videos and load them to YouTube. If you need guidance on video-editing software, PC Magazine has a nice page with reviews and pricing.

c) Optimize for VSEO - Not unlike tagging blog postings and photos, YouTube videos can be tagged. The title, description and tags are where you generate search engine results. If you can repeat key terms multiple times in the title, it will help your search scores. Harper uses the following example:

Let’s say your company sells shoes and you just recorded and uploaded a video about “casual sneakers.” You want to use the phrase in the title twice to maximize SEO impact –- once at the front and once at the end, like this: “Casual Sneakers — How to Choose Casual Sneakers 101.”

In the description, you should always include a link at the beginning back to your website. It should be followed by a short description of the video and the benefits of watching it. Be sure to use words that will be commonly searched for by your audience. In the example above that may be run, jog and shoes.

As for tags, Harper hits the nail on the head:

Finally, for tags, repeat your key phrase and common variants. Similar to website SEO, stick to 10-15 phrases. For phrases with more than one word, make sure you enclose them in double quotes, like this: “casual sneakers,” sneakers, shoes, “jogging shoes,” “walking shoes,” “men’s shoes,” casual-sneakers.

d) Build a Base of Viewers - Obviously, post to Facebook & Twitter and link to the video whenever and wherever appropriate. Tag prominent users, donors, and fans that will be able to share/retweet to large audiences. If you have any celebrity followers get them involved (if appropriate)... and by celebrity, I don't mean Paris Hilton has to be a fan of the local SPCA... Consider "proportional celebrities." If you're a community foundation in a college town, can you get the mayor and college president to post/tweet about it?

You can also use your video as a reply to other popular videos. As Harper notes:

...search YouTube for the exact phrase you want to rank for (in this example, “casual sneakers”). Click on each video that comes up and post your new video as a “video reply” to those.

4) Profile Picture tips - Let's take a look at these profile pictures first, as examples. You may want to click on the image so you can get a better look. Note - these are all university or college profile pictures for the respective institution's official Facebook page.

Unless your brand is represented by a random squirrel or guy catching a frisbee, I can't imagine the pictures on the right serving well as profile pictures. That being said, the images on the left are outstanding - they are crisp, appear to be consistent with institutional branding and have an "official feel" about them.

Other tips for the profile picture:
a) Use a high quality image.
b) Be consistent across all social-media (Visit Malaria No More and their social-media pages for a great example of consistency).
c) Know the dimensions. Each channel has different restrictions - use those dimensions to your advantage. For example, the tall and skinny picture for Facebook works well for exposure (see Baylor profile pic above) , where as the short and wide version will suffer (see the top right profile pic above).

Facebook: Use a .JPG and make your picture exactly 200 pixels wide so Facebook does not manipulate the image. The thumbnail will be a 110X200 zoom on your profile picture - keep this in mind when selecting/designing your profile picture.
Twitter: Use a square .PNG image. It will be shrunk to a 73X73 image, but you'll want to make sure it is at least 250X250 in case users/followers click on the image to check it out in detail.
YouTube: Use a square .JPG image. It must look good at 88X88 and 60X60 - make sure it looks good at both and then load the 88X88 version. (if you do not use .JPG, it will be converted and may not look as nice)
Flickr: Use a 48x48 .JPG.
Google Buzz: Use a high-quality, square .JPG. that looks good when scaled to 45X45.
LinkedIn: Use a .JPG - one that is 80X80 for the profile picture and 100X35 for a company/org page (...which I think are odd dimensions, LinkedIn brass... but that's a rant for another day).