Here's your weekly dose of TA. Enjoy.
Tools and Resources
- How Nonprofits Can Tweet Effectively During the #SOTU has some terrific advice. Think preparation: Write a minimum of 10 factual tweets with sources in advance, Also write a minimum of five call-to-action tweets in advance, and Create social media graphics for your #SOTU tweets.
- Instagram just announced some fun and useful changes: GIF stickers and soon the ability to upload photos and of any size. "GIF stickers are available today as part of Instagram version 29 on iOS and Android."
- Content Marketing in 5 Easy Steps by LightBox Collaborative makes understanding content management easy. The post walks readers through the steps in an easy-to-understand way and offers some links to tools and ideas to help out.
- Need a typeface that looks like handwriting? Something different than what came with your computer? Check out FontSpace's Free handwriting Fonts. Some are for personal use only while others allow for commercial use.
- Social Media Image & Video Sizes 2018 "explains to you what the best image sizes are for each social network and the image types to use. Every major social media platform is listed on here so you’re up-to-date with social media platform optimization." Bookmark.
- Engage Your Clients With Text Messaging is a must-read. Adding texting to your portfolio of communications tools (for general comms and more importantly connecting with clients) has been demonstrated time and again as a good way to connect with otherwise hard-to-reach clients. Consider whether this is right for your clients and organization.
At work
- Why You Should Actually Stay Home When You're Sick — No, Really. Read, share, do.
- What Happened When I Replied "Call Me" To Every Email I Got For A Week is a good read.
- 4 Reasons To Invite HR To Your Strategic Planning Meetings makes a number of good arguments. Of course, it presupposes that your HR team is top-notch.
- There's 1 Key Thing Millennials Want at Work is short but packed with good links.
Learn something
- How to Get Media Attention for Your Community Project, Thursday, February 8:
From major news sources to local papers, radio, and TV stations across the country and beyond, the sharing economy and community-driven civic engagement (such as Transition Initiatives) is big news. By following these 10 steps, you can join the buzz and capture media attention for your community project or event.
- Plan Ahead 2018, Part 1: Creating a Voter Engagement Plan and Timeline for Your Nonprofit, Thursday, February 8, 2:00 pm: Learn all you need to know about creating a voter engagement plan for your nonprofit. Attendees will receive a 2018 timeline handout and a planning worksheet. (Tactics will be discussed in Part 2.)
- Slides & Recording Links for January 24, 2018 Technology Trends Round Table: As usual, chock full of interesting tech stuff.
- Here's the Wild Apricot list of free webinars for February. Faves in the first half of the month: Introduction to Project Budgets (February 7); Online Tools that Help Nonprofits Learn, Listen & Engage (February 7); and Managing an Aging Volunteer Corps (February 15).
Good reads
- Interview with Ursula Le Guin is a transcript-style interview. It starts with a synopsis of Le Guin's accomplishments:
Ursula K. Le Guin’s first novels—set on alien planets and published as trashy head-to-toe double paperbacks by Ace Books—were first unleashed almost half a century ago, in 1966. She was 36. Two years later she published A Wizard of Earthsea, the defining and enduring classic of the genre of wizards going to wizard school. The Left Hand of Darkness, the book that forced writers everywhere to examine how they wrote gender, was first published the very next year and became one of the most acclaimed books of the last century.
She published a dozen books in that first decade, a pile of words built up largely during her thirties that, once released, changed the American conversation about fiction. She is the reigning queen of writing about "the nature of human nature," as Margaret Atwood once described it, in regards to Le Guin's "Ekumen" series. Le Guin is one of the rare authors to have twice taken the Hugo and the Nebula awards in the same year. She published three stories in the New Yorker in 1982 alone. - ICYMI, Ursula Le Guin died last week. Two good reads about her: The Category-Defying Genius of Ursula K. Le Guin and Ursula K. Le Guin, Acclaimed for Her Fantasy Fiction, Is Dead at 88 (NYT paywall, limited number of free reads)
- The Power of Small, Strategic Cash Infusions: A Big Idea for 2018 by Rachel Schneider describes Schneider's plans for 2018 including looking for partners.