Archive for the 'Social media' Category

Camera+ App for iPhone

Published on May 13, 2011 in communications, iPhone, photojournalism, Reviews, Social media, Tools and Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Camera+ logo

Camera+ is my new favorite App for the iPhone. ($1.99)

I’ve been using the standard camera option on my iPhone 3GS. It was handy but nothing fancy and with pretty much no options or editing capabilities. Camera+ has so many options, filters and editing tools built right in that it turns your iPhone camera into a photo machine that gives you customized images that look awesome!

Summary

Fresh bean dip

Easy to use and great additional features for your iPhone camera including zoom, filters, self-timer, and more! Many options are available without paying more than the basic 99 cents. (There are additional features available for additional costs but they’re just more filters.)

Things I love about it:

  • Quick button response — The Camera+ App provides quick response times. When you push the shutter button…the photo is taken. What a concept!
  • Timer — Want a photo of yourself? Camera+ includes a self timer with audible warning. There are 5 second, 15 second and 30 second timers available.
  • Cropping — Get just the good stuff when you crop down the image as you desire. Options allow you to keep a variety of ratios or crop freestyle.
  • Borders/Frames — This option really makes your presentation look good before you post your images out to your friends. Includes a variety of options to choose from
  • Filters — One of my favorite things… I really like the options that are provided. From antique looks to HDR and limited depth of field , cross processing and more, this App provides a wide selection of filter effects that can be expanded (paid service).
  • Sharing –  With Camera+ it’s easy to share your favorite images via Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, or by emailing the image size of your choice to your friends. Continue reading ‘Camera+ App for iPhone’

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Online donation options for non-profits

Published on March 29, 2011 in business, communications, marketing, missions, Reviews, Saving money and Social media. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Several online payment services offer many useful tools for businesses and for non-profit organizations too!

As e-commerce becomes more and more common and is embraced by many as the norm. It is not time to sit back and wait for people to send checks to your organization. When it comes to fundraising, it is time to take that same ease of payments that for-profit organizations use and bring it into the non-profit world. Put online giving within easy reach of donors. Here’s a breakdown on three options for online donations.

Thanks to PayPal,  Amazon.com, and other sources like Facebook’s FundRazr App non-profits have the ability to collect individual donations or even schedule ongoing gifts with tools that e-consumers are already familiar with.

PAYPAL

PayPal Donate Button

PayPal Donate Button

PayPal offers several options that give non-profit organizations the ability to accept donations in a simple way that consumers are already use to using PayPal accounts or credit cards. See a guide on how to setup online donations on PayPal.

FEATURES:

PayPal features include:

  • Configure buttons and copy HTML code for use on your website or HTML websites
  • Enable one-time donations at donor-determined amounts,
  • Schedule regular online giving at pre-determined amounts and cycles
  • Management of funds
  • Auto receipt
  • Optional info collection for followup

DONATION ACCEPTED:

PayPal accepts donations from people with or without PayPal accounts through:

  • PayPal Account transfers
  • Credit Card Processing

COST?

With PayPal’s fee structure  you receive a discount if you verify your 501(c) 3 status. The regular rate is 2.9% + $0.30 but while the non-profit rate is just a wee bit less:

YOUR MONTHLY
DONATIONS		 YOUR FEE PER
TRANSACTION		 EXAMPLES
$0 to $100,000 2.2% + $0.30 $2.50 fee on a $100 donation
$100,000+ 1.9% + $0.30 $2.20 fee on a $100 donation

AMAZON.COM

Amazon Payments Logo

Amazon.com offers a similar non-profit donation plan. Amazon’s no start-up cost option  includes the ability to configure your own donation buttons (to be posted on your site or in your html e-mails).  Amazon also provides flexibility to set fixed, minimum, or donor-determined donation amounts along with scheduling ongoing gifts.

Donors will have to either open an Amazon Payments account or have one already to use this service.

Amazon supports giving through:

  • Credit Cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, and JCB).
  • Bank Account debits (only supported by Amazon FPS)
  • Amazon Payments balance (only supported by Amazon Simple Pay and Amazon FPS)

Cost?

Amazon charges no start-up fees, but neither do the other options listed here so that’s no big deal. The key is to compare per-payment charges. At Amazon they’re pretty similar to PayPal:

  • For credit card transactions >= $10: 2.9% + $0.30 for credit card
  • For transactions < $10: 5.0% + $0.05 for credit card

I couldn’t find good info on their charges for non-credit card transactions, but they provide a pretty good FAQ page.

FundRazr

FundRazr provides a unique option of embedding your giving links into Facebook and providing goal-oriented giving with on the fly followup charts so donors can see how the donation project is progressing.

I like this idea, but have found it to take some work to setup (though recent reviews say it’s easy now!). Still with the popularity of Facebook this could reach a lot of people on the social network.

Payment sources?

  • Credit Card
  • Debit Card
  • Paypal Account

Cost?

Recipients pay a fee of 4.9% + $0.30 on every payment. The fee includes all PayPal transaction fees. This is higher than either Amazon Payments or PayPal’s regular service, but the ability to integrate with Facebook is really attractive even at nearly 5% in fees per payment.

Conclusion

I like PayPal but it doesn’t hurt to have several options as long as they’re displayed in a user-friendly way.  In unofficial numbers PayPal had more than 153 million accounts worldwide in 2008.  Amazon has about 615 million and Facebook has over 500 million users. That puts Amazon in the lead with users by evaluating your audience may be a good idea if you just want to use one service instead of all three.

Keep in mind the fees involved. You’ll need to account for these as you keep up on your records since this will be a reduction in the total donation you receive when transferring the donations to your organization.

Do you have a different source that you use for online donations? What’s working well for you?

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Great Website enhancing tool: Wibiya

Published on September 14, 2010 in communications, marketing, Reviews, Social media and Tools. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Wibiya’s handy toolbar (see a sample at the bottom of page here). This tool helps increase interactivity and keep people on your site longer. Plus there are revenue generating options integrated if you want to use them!

Wibiya provides a web toolbar that enables blogs and websites to integrate the most exciting services and web applications into their blog or website.

via About Wibiya.

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Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better?

Published on September 8, 2010 in business, communications, marketing, Social media and Tech. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

When it comes to Facebook its hard to know whether it’s best to make a fan page or to use a group page. I came a cross a great description on Search Engine Journal.

Here’s a quick summary of Ann Smarty’s review of the two features. I didn’t include it but her article includes a great table that compares the feature of pages and groups.

  • Pages are generally better for a long-term relationships with your fans, readers or customers;
  • Groups are generally better for hosting a quick active discussion and attracting quick attention.

via Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better? | Search Engine Journal.

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Snapped4U — A tool for photographers to sell photos

Published on July 22, 2010 in business, marketing, photojournalism, Social media, Tech and Tools. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I remember seeing photographers doing this on campus when I was in college but it was before every soccer mom had a super camera. Now you can have a basic camera and a few business cards and “work the crowd” to make money doing what self timers and tripods once did.  I’m curious how well this actually works and if people will pay $4 for a jpg of themselves.  Will people they actually go and check the pictures out.

Here’s how it works:

  • You go out and shoot photos of people at some event where there are lots of people.
  • Send them to Snapped4U’s web site
  • They search for their images and hopefully buy lots of them.
  • You get paid (via PayPal) $3.50 per image they buy.
  • They get a jpg of the image e-mailed to them.

I like the idea behind this, but wish they had a print option as well. For four bucks it seems like they should get a print, but that would involve printing and shipping…unless they teamed up with Wal-Mart or Walgreens to provide digital delivery to a location near you!

Maybe the future of vacation photos will be something like this…your family is out in front of the St. Louis Arch having a picnic and some guy comes buy takes some pictures and gives you a card to Snapped4U. You get back to the hotel, check it out and buy a few copies, post them to Facebook and click on a button to have them both e-mailed to you and prints delivered to your neighborhood Walgreens Photo Center. When you get home, you drop by Walgreens and pick up your pictures to show the neighbors.

Here’s what Snapped4U says about themselves:

Snapped4U is about getting pictures of people, particularly the group shots they can’t get themselves. Watch for events like concerts, fairs, festivals, markets, and sporting events. Think of places such as parks, beaches, monuments, and scenic overlooks. Choose a venue, then go when it’s busy and work the crowd.

via Snapped4U – The Place for Photographers to Post and Sell Their Photographs.

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How to increase your Facebook Fan numbers quickly

Published on June 24, 2010 in business, communications, marketing and Social media. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Building a fan base on Facebook can be something that you gradually grow or something that catches on like wild fire. Here’s how Weekly World News multiplied their fan base in a matter of four days.

When we took over the Facebook Fan page for Weekly World News , they had 3,244 fans. 4 days later, we had 40,310 fans– 10 times larger.

Read the process they used here at

How We Got To 40,310 Facebook Fans In 4 Days.

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Church Bulletins: Transitioning from print to digital

Published on April 20, 2010 in marketing and Social media. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Remember 1992 when Superman died in DC Comic’s #175 then re-appeared in various forms? Well, that’s kinda what we did with our church bulletin…

Old bulletin cover 8.5"x5.5" size

Old bulletin cover 8.5"x5.5" size

First off, we didn’t kill our bulletin. Some people thought we did, but that really wasn’t the case. We just changed the way we do church bulletins. In fact, the change seems to be doing a lot of good so far!

Here’s what we did.

We stopped one thing and developed three outlets that accomplish the same goal with greater efficiency, track-ability, and with huge savings in time and money.

  • NO — Big multi-page booklet bulletin handed out each week
  • YES! — Small “bullet” card with brief event info handed out weekly
  • YES! — eBulletin emailed out midweek with links to event signup and more info
  • YES! — A few copies of weekly “Info Sheets” available at Guest Services for those who don’t email.

eBulletin

We stopped making the 8.5″x5.5″ multi-page booklets that we were spending more than a dime apiece on each week. We reduced the size of the bulletin to what we call a “Bullet” (8.5″x3.66″). These Bullets are black/white (except for special occasions like Easter and probably Christmas) on heavy stock and cost us about a penny apiece.  The Bullet only has limited info on them and are blank on the back for notes if someone needs paper. For those die-hard fans of printed paper, we have a hard copy with an extended list of events, family info (deaths, births, & weddings) available at our Guest Services Desk…though these are getting fewer and fewer requests for theses just a month into the new system.  We also started a digital or “eBulletin” which is e-mailed out midweek each week and links people directly to more information about featured events or opportunities. See the archives here.

Continue reading ‘Church Bulletins: Transitioning from print to digital’

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Twitter becomes a corporate tool for handling PR problems

Published on February 15, 2010 in marketing, Social media and Tech. 0 Comments

Here’s an example of how corporations are using Twitter to handle PR problems effectively!

Southwest, apparently schooled in its social networking knowhow, responded quickly and efficiently to the impending PR disaster, contacting Smith directly through its own Twitter account with tweets such as “Hey folks – trust me, I saw the tweets from @ThatKevinSmith I’ll get all the details and handle accordingly!

Read the whole story at Death + Taxes Magazine.

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The Washington Post Scrubs a Post about the Post : CJR

Published on February 1, 2010 in Social media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Here’s an interesting article about the editing of opinion articles–which is what I consider a blog even from a news writer — in the Washington Post.

On Wednesday, Bill Turque, the Washington Post’s education beat reporter, posted an excellent blog item showing his readers a little bit of the inside game at his paper. It was titled “One Newspaper, Two Stories”—a title that, by the end of the day, would become more apt than Turque ever could have expected.

That’s because editors pulled the post off the site Wednesday night, replacing it hours later with a new, dialed-back version.

via The Washington Post Scrubs a Post about the Post : CJR.

So how much free speech is free when your own editors re-write and don’t indicate that they changed your work? Sure some editing is part of an editor’s job but an opinion article that no longer expresses the writer’s opinion seems to be off track.

What do you think?

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Circle(s) of friends

Published on November 10, 2009 in Social media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Meaningful relationships are highly sought after treasures, but friendship is taking on a different meaning in a social media world where it has become a race to have the most friends who can be dropped like a bag of soggy chips.

Earlier this year Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw reached the limit of Facebook’s friend list after using his account “for the soul purpose of accumulating ‘friends’.” Then he promplty shut down his account (or at least tried). I don’t really care whether Mankiw wants to be on Facebook, but I think it’s an interesting example of how friendships have become a bulk commodity. Has social media turned friendship into more of a numbers game and less about real relationships?

Personally, Facebook is a tool for staying in touch with friends old and new, kind of how Christmas cards or family newsletters use to be. I use Facebook more as a means to stay in touch and share ideas now and again, but call me old fashioned…I’d rather you send an e-mail than post a message on my wall or send it through Facebook.  I am exploring ways to use Facebook for it’s great group and event capabilities which.

So, does Facebook enhance or water down the relationships in your life?  For me, Facebook makes me feel closer to people I haven’t seen in years, and it gives me conversation starters and tidbits of information (photos, videos, comments) about my nearby friends that comes in as good conversation starters when we hang out. So, despite the expanding connectinos to friends old and new, I think Facebook can do a lot for connecting friends. For actually building relationships, there’s still nothing like a good face to face conversation.

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