Linkedin Web Design

Collected from the LinkedIn:

"Martin has provided -- and continues to provide excellent service and consultation as a Web site developer. For my site on New York-based architecture and history, Mindfulwalker.com, I asked for some complex developments of and changes to a WordPress theme and the site installation. I received the service that I needed and more, and I'm very happy with the site today. Martin brings a variety of assets to his role: He is extremely knowledgeable and capable in programming and Web tools. He's also a good communicator, is very value-conscious about the service he delivers for the cost, and is understanding of client needs. Beyond this, Martin helped with some excellent tutorials as I took over the site. I plan to hire Martin again as I look forward to enhancements and additional developments for my site and business. Martin is excellent at what he does!" May 10, 2009

Susan DeMark, Journalist.
Hired Martin as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2007
Top qualities: Great Results, Good Value, High Integrity

"Martin provided great value in designing a website for my law practice. He was accessible and facilitated the process, despite our geographical distance, through email and telephone consultations. He was flexible in working with me to achieve what I was looking for within my budget." May 1, 2009

John Kindley, Lawyer.
Hired Martin as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2008
Top qualities: Personable, Good Value, High Integrity

"Martin is not only highly competent as a Web site developer, he's also one of the most honest and trustworthy people I've ever hired. I highly recommend Martin." April 30, 2009

James Maguire, Author.
Hired Martin as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2006, and hired Martin more than once.
Top qualities: Great Results, Personable, Expert

"Martin has worked for our school to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into our communication materials. Martin is highly-personable and his is an expert in current technological approaches. This is a hard match to find in consultants." April 30, 2009

Michael Moulton, Technology Director, William Penn Charter School.
Hired Martin as a IT Consultant in 2007, and hired Martin more than once.
Top qualities: Personable, Expert, High Integrity.

"Martin has an outstanding grasp of everything there is to know about the internet. He is our "go-to" guy whenever we encounter something new and different, especially involving Web 2.0 and Search Engine optimization. He is also an experienced and skilled designer and has excellent PHP/CSS/HTML programming knowledge. Martin is a pleasure to work with in every respect!" May 1, 2009

    Barbara Raphael, Founder/Owner/Designer/Developer, Raphael Webscapes, LLC.
    Worked directly with Martin at Raphael Webscapes.

I'd like to talk today about social media and nonprofits. I've had a couple of interesting projects lately helping nonprofits put together Facebook Pages, LinkedIn Groups and Twitter sites. I think this is an exciting way to reach out to audience members.

Today: Email Lists

Over the last few years we've focused on email lists. We all have big email lists--tens of thousands of users, segmented all sorts of different ways. We send out dozens of emails a week and they end up seeming not spam.

Facebook Pages

A new era is coming with social media. A big change is Facebook Pages. These are geared toward advertisers although you don't need to have a Facebook advertising campaign to use them. In March 2009, Facebook redesigned Pages to act much more like typical user profiles: there's a wall, there's an activity stream, and you can associate different applications with them.

Two things about Pages are exciting. One is the activity stream. People who sign up as "fans" of your Page see what you're putting out in their individual stream. They'll log into Facebook and see that messages like "Jen just got engaged!" or "Joe is having a bad hair day" and that your organization is having some great event coming up this weekend. You're seen in the association of happy news from their friends. It's different from a spammish email because it's coming in with the context of their friends, which is very powerful for publicity.

The other nice thing about Facebook Pages is that they're public. A lot of portions of Facebook aren't but making Pages public means you can point to them from your website or other social media campaigns.

I think Facebook fan groups are going to be the new email list. They are the way we'll be able to reach out to people. I'm very excited about this because there's all sorts of easy multimedia possibilities. You can integrate with Youtube, with Twitter, with podcasts, etc., embedded for fans of your Facebook page to see as it's happening. This is much more exciting than some of the emails that we send out. They are also more interactive because fans can post things on your fan walls so you can have conversations on your sites.

Intimate, immediate, engaging

What the smart nonprofits are going to be doing is a lot of posting in a style that's authentic and intimate and less worried about being slick than we've typically been.

What I would love to see nonprofits doing is to get serious about video. I'm not talking about fancy video, hauling in videographers for six months shooting a three minute slick commercial. Get an inexpensitve video recorder and start doing five minute interviews with the people your organization serves. This will differ depending on your organization's focus. One advantage to simple videos is that you can convince even the busiest of your interviewees to take out a few minutes. You make these videos and post them to Youtube, Vimeo or directly to Facebook video. It doesn't matter where they hosted but you'll have to make sure they're embedded on your Facebook fan page.

Building our Facebook Fan Page

How to direct? You can direct in the emails you're sending out or through other sources. Twitter is a great way of directing people to what's happening: you send out a 140-character "tweet" with an interesting tease about the video you've produced and a link to the Facebook fan page.

The whole goal is to get Facebook fans. Once you're in as a fan, you show up in their activity streams. All the fans get to see the events you're organizing, the videos. If you have extra tickets to an upcoming event, post about it because people will see it immediately. It's a wonderful way to reach people quickly in a way that's not as intrusive as email (I suspect a lot of younger users are actually checking their Facebook homepage more often than their emails!).

The New Nonprofit Outreach

I'd love to see a lot more of these intimate, almost home-made videos going up on Facebook fan pages and using fan pages as a way of connecting with people. We can think of these as the new email list.

I would strongly encourage nonprofits to use all of these these media to reinforce their message and to find new ways to reach their audiences in a much more engaging, intimate way.

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Martin Kelley is a web developer and social media consultant specializing in nonprofits. This post is a loose transcription of his video, Nonprofits and Social Media. This essay is also available on the MartinKelley.com Facebook fan page.

Web Designer, Content Editor, SEO Specialist

See also: Print Resume, LinkedIn profile.

SKILLS

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Consulting: Fifteen years of experience in nonprofit world. Much of this work consists of educating staff and leadership on effective use of online communication technologies. Current focus is on analytics, integrating social media, and helping nonprofits adopt content management systems.

Web Development: Proficiency in HTML, XHTML, PHP, CSS, PERL (CGI), MYSQL, Adobe Dreamweaver, Six Apart's Movable Type, Drupal, WordPress, t and related content management systems, along with Search Engine Optimization techniques and analytic tracking methods. Experience with various shopping cart backends for E-Commerce applications. Comfortable with Quark Xpress, Adobe Pagemaker, Adobe Photoshop, Joomla, and Javascript. Close follower of Web 2.0 developments.

Editing: Experience as Acquiring Editor for nonprofit publishing house; proficient at negotiations, copy editing, marketing.

Martin Kelley is a web designer in the Philadelphia area. Here's the story of his evolution from activist book editor to social media web guru!