With our client’s permission, we’ve reproduced the list here.

Experience

• For the key people working on your web project, how much experience do they have?
• Confirm which staff will actually be working on the project.

Subject matter expertise

• Have they developed other sites for non-profit organizations?
• Have they developed other sites related to your particular cause?
• What is their background or experience in search engine optimization?

Aesthetics

• Do all of the web projects they’ve recently worked on have a similar aesthetic? That’s okay, as long as you like that look and feel.
• In your initial conversations about the aesthetic you’re after, does the agency staff communicate in language that you can understand? Are they able to articulate back to you what you’re after?

Technology

• What technologies (platforms like WordPress or Drupal and development environments like Ruby or PHP) do they have experience with?
• Do they have expertise in a particular technology? If so, ask them when it’s not appropriate to use that technology? You want to avoid an agency where every problem looks like the perfect nail for their hammer.
• What changes will you be able to make to the site without their aid, or that of another designer? Ask for a demonstration on another site they’ve worked on of how to make those changes.
• What CRM systems (such as Convio, Democracy in Action and so forth) do their technologies integrate with?
• What CRM systems have they completed recent integration projects with?
• What are the staff training implications of the technology choices the agency makes?
• Can you to talk to a customer for whom they completed an integration project?
• Have they talked to you about the mobile audience, and how their design will accommodate users on smaller screens?
• Do they talk about where and how to host your web project? Do they have a relationship with hosting companies?
• What considerations does the agency give to web accessibility?

Support and Maintenance

• Do they offer ongoing support?
• How much does ongoing support cost?
• What response time do they offer with their support package?
• Can you talk to one of their customers who have been a longtime user of their support services? You want to talk to somebody for whom the honeymoon period is over.

Budgeting

• How will billing work?
• What systems and practices do they have in place to ensure that they don’t exceed the agreed-upon budget?
• What happens if they find they need to exceed the budget?
• In their proposal, have they accounted for additional costs unrelated to staffing, such as stock photography or software subscriptions?

Process

• What are the milestones associated with their development process?
• What are the deliverables associated with each of these milestones?
• Are they comfortable with hitting the deadline you’ve identified?
• Who will be the project manager on the project. Ask if you can have a quick call with this person, to gauge their likability and communication style.
• How many design revisions are included in the process? That is, how many steps are there between the first draft and the final one.
• If you need to register a new domain, who will do this?
• Will the agency have a role in developing the website content? If so, what?
• Do you have multi-language needs? If so, has the agency worked on other multi-language sites?

Other

• Do you actually like the people at the agency? You’re going to be working with them for months.
• Who will own the source files (Photoshop files and such) associated with the project after their work is complete?
• Who will own the copyrights associated with their work on your web project?
• Have they genuinely attempted to understand your organization’s goals for the web project?
• Do they speak in web marketing lingo, using terms like ‘conversions’ and ‘calls to action’? While it’s not hard to fake this, a few probing questions about previous projects should separate the fakers from the experts.
• Where is the agency located? A few in-person meetings can go a long way.
• Do they outsource their work? If so, what parts and to whom?
• Has the agency asked about the demographics of your audience? If many of them are elderly, for example, or in the developing world, then they’ll want to factor these issues into their designs.
• What is their reputation? Ask your colleagues if they’ve heard of the agency, and what they think of them.

It reminds me that an online community manager is a bit of a digital cowboy. When you’re responsible for “rounding” up daily, quality content for all your social media channels, practice your “yeehaw”, put on your cowboy hat and direct your digital lasso to help you organize online content quickly and with a purpose. Here’s how:

Step 1: Organize It
Consider using a social media dashboard like HootSuite. With a dashboard, you can set up and monitor search streams to help you keep an eye on the online conversations and content that matters to your audience.

Step 2: Share It If You Like It
Visit your favourite blogs, news sites, and online magazines. If it’s not something you would read or watch yourself, than you’re going to have a tough time convincing others to spare their attention. Always post quality over quantity.

Step 3: Schedule It
Bookmark or schedule the content for posting or tweeting throughout the day or week. Remember, scheduling good social media content does not replace day-to-day social media monitoring. It’s important to take the time to read and respond to fans and followers who reach out to you. Monitoring should always take precedent over scheduling content.

Step 4: Build It
We recently came across a study that shows tweets that contain a link with content on either side of it perform better than tweets with a URL at the beginning or end. It’s a small change but worth consideration. Prompt the tweet; add your shortened URL, and follow-up with your own thought or reaction to the post.

Step 5: Repeat It
Be consistent. Seeking out relevant content can take longer than you think. Set up a block of time each week and, if you need to convince management that it’s time well spent, explain how it’s a form of media monitoring and research. After one month of “rounding” you’ll notice how much more you know about the current conservations and online attitude toward relevant topics.

Step 6: Have Fun With It
Not every piece of content you share has to be a New York Times opinion editorial. Maybe you work with a conservation organization and you’ve just come across a beautiful example of time-lapse photography that features wild landscapes from around the world. No doubt members of your audience who support your conservation efforts would love to see examples of wild spaces that matter so much to them.

Step 7: Reward It
If an organization or company similar to yours is making headway in their field and you like what you see, share it. It never hurts to send a little link love toward efforts that further innovation, even if you find yourself competing for the same audience.

Giddy up.

Image courtesy Jose Manuel Mazintosh, flickr.

Since I signed up, Google+ has apparently gained some serious momentum. Earlier this year Google’s CEO reported that Google+ had 90 million users worldwide. That’s a very fast rate of growth–much faster than the equivalent periods of growth for Facebook or Twitter. Anecdotally, I’ve got nearly 6000 followers (roughly the same number of Twitter followers I’ve collected in five years of Tweeting) through no actual effort on my part.

And yet we’ve already read the usual “new social media channel is dead” stories from the likes of Forbes and Slate. I don’t put much stock in those, though I’ve recently seen other Google+ news that’s not encouraging. Among my Google+ circles, I only see about 10% of users actively on the site.

What’s the future of Google+? I gave up making predictions about technology back when I wrote about “not getting Flickr” in 2004. Until recently, I’d been advising our non-technology clients not to worry about Google+. It’s early days, I told them. Let the geeks kick the tires on Google+ and we’ll see if it crosses the chasm. I reminded them of other Google efforts–Knol, Wave and Friend Connect.

My advice changed, though, once I watched this video from SEO guru Rand Fishkin. Take 12 minutes and watch it.

As you can see, he makes a very strong case for the search engine optimization benefits of being active on Google+. SEO tends to be a relatively small part of our non-profit clients online marketing efforts, but if you sell stuff online, then Google+ matters.

That said, if you sell stuff online, then you’re probably better off spending time on Pinterest than Google+. But that’s a whole other post.

Photo courtesy Yodel Anecdotal, flickr.

Drawn to the Wild aims to raise awareness around threatened Canadian landscapes. It invites Canadians to contribute to a new version of a Sarah Harmer video and support the protection of part of the Niagara Escarpment at the same time. In the video, Sarah is singing “I’m a Mountain” as footage from her  documentary and concert film, “Escarpment Blues”, features Sarah and her band touring across southern Ontario.

When you first visit http://DrawnToTheWild.org, you’re presented with a randomly selected frame from a short segment of the documentary video. After choosing a frame, you use a drawing tool to illustrate it — tracing it, adding to it or radically re-envisioning it. The site aggregates the resulting frames into a new version of the video. Each time someone draws a frame, The Big Wild donates 25 cents to Sarah’s Protecting Escarpment Rural Land (PERL), an organization she cofounded. When enough frames have been submitted, The Big Wild will release a new remixed version of the video. We eagerly await the finished product and we’ll be sure to share it on our website when it’s done.

In the meantime, Darren has put together a screencast, below, to help you better understand how the project works and what to do if you’re interested in submitting a frame, yourself. Have fun, drawing!

TEDx Vancouver hosted 16 speakers and an audience of 1000 at the University of British Columbia’s Chan Centre on November 12th, 2011. Here’s a round-up of four speakers that left an impression on me: data-related or otherwise.

Gamers, It Turns Out, Make Excellent Biochemists

Seth Cooper knows a thing or two about computer science and engineering. He is the creative director of the Center for Game Science at the University of Washington where he focuses on using video games to solve difficult scientific problems. He is also the co-partner of a new project called Foldit. It’s a scientific discovery game that has allowed gamers to advance the field of biochemistry through puzzles. In fact, you may have read about it in the news. In just three weeks, Foldit gamers were able to predict the structure of the HIV Enzyme, a protein that has stumped biochemists for a very long time. News of this discovery and how the gamers did it made international headlines.

We Share Content In Waves Called Cascades

Jer Thorp is currently the Data Artist in Residence at the New York Times. Together with the research and developement department at the NYTimes, he’s been working on a new data visualization project called Cascades which was featured in Mashable earlier this year.

Cascades visually represents what happens when readers tweet about New York Times articles. You can click here to watch a short clip that demonstrates what a cascade looks like and how it’s formed. One of Jer’s favourite cascades was one he named the “Rabbi Cascade.” It’s a small cascade that a group of rabbis on Twitter started when they shared an article from the New York Times. You can measure exactly when conversations like this start on Twitter and when they end when people share New York Times content.

The Ocean is Connected to the Internet (For Real)

Dr. Kate Moran heads up the Neptune Project at the University of Victoria, which connects the ocean floor off the West Coast of Canada to the internet through underwater cables. At the end of each cable rests a device that measures seafloor stability, tectonics and paleo-climates. All of this data travels through Neptune’s underwater internet cables into your desktop computer or personal device where you can volunteer to help interpret it. Dr. Moran is, effectively, crowd-sourcing the content of the ocean and turning us into scientific researchers, working from the comfort of our own homes.

Carl Sagan had a Radio Voice

Reid Gower is the architect behind “The Sagan Series” which borrows excerpts from Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” on audio tape and adds a musical score and film footage to create digital montages. The first part of this series titled “The Frontier is Everywhere” has been viewed more than 1,450,000 times on Youtube. This video opened up TEDx Vancouver and introduced the event theme: Frontiers.

In the past, we’ve seen several well-done infographics that feature international social networks. The first infographic that comes to mind is about a year old now. It’s a colour wheel of networks from Facebook to Flickr to China’s popular Kaixin001.

More recently, Mashable produced an infographic that features “How the World Uses Social Networks.” The infographic breaks down data provided by Nielson from their “Social Media Report” and visualizes social networking across ten different countries.

Here at Capulet, based on the needs of our client, we focused on five countries: Mexico, Thailand, Koren, Japan, and Brazil. We also looked at the European Union as a whole.

Almost every social network we looked at presented advertising opportunities, albeit, in a multitude of languages. If we decided to go ahead and advertise on one of these social networks, we’d have to bring in a professional translator (think simplified Chinese versus traditional Chinese) to help us navigate the bidding process.

A few of the social networks in particular stood out, not only because of their popularity, but because of the specific niche they’re designed to attract. Below is a quick look at some of the more popular social networks we discovered across several different continents.

Sonico is a free-access social networking website focused on the Latin American audience. You can create a profile, add friends, upload photos and videos, and organize events. The site is popular in Latin America and other Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking regions.

Hi5 shares similarities with many social networking sites, and claims around 60 million members from more than 200 countries other than the US.

Cyworld is a Korean social network that gives users access to a profile page, photos, drawings and images uploading, an avatar, neighbourhoods, and clubs. Many renowned Korean socialites and celebrities have accounts. Cyworld has networks in South Korea, China, and Vietnam and is gaining popularity across Asia and the Pacific Island.

Kaixin001 is a popular professional networking tool in China targeting white-collar middle class users who come from a first tier city. This site in China is extremely popular among people who work for multinational companies, ad agencies and other white collar companies. Kaixin001 has gained much more popularity since 2009 because social networking sites, such as Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube were blocked in China.

PerfSpot is a web portal for people of any age, gender, or background who want to share their interests and favourite things on the web. PerfSpot currently publishes its site in 37 different languages, with a moderator team based in the U.S. and the Philippines that screens through up to a million pictures on a daily basis.

We tip our hat to Heather and offer up these additions to what’s looking like an excellent collection of online resources for your non-profit toolbox.

Hootsuite: Your One-Stop Social Media Dashboard

Maybe it’s too obvious or doesn’t quite fit into the genre of “cheap and cheerful” tools for non-profits, but we still think Hootsuite is one of the best tools out there for organizations. For next to nothing, you can decentralize, organize and schedule tweets, Facebook posts, LinkedIn updates and your WordPress blog from one dashboard. Hootsuite even offers tutorials in the form of “Hootsuite University” if you’re overwhelmed with the idea of adding a new social media dashboard to the mix.

Screencast: Capture and Create Online Videos

Screencast is a screen capture tool that captures, among other things, online video and safely stores it online. It won’t compress the video file, which means you keep what you capture. If you’re looking for ways to tell a story using online videos and images, we highly recommend this gem of a tool.

Storify: Connecting the Soc Med Dots

We know that Storify is pretty new on the scene because we signed up as beta users and had some fun with it. Storify allows you to collect content from your different online channels, group it in one place and share the end result with your online communities. It’s a great idea for organizations looking for better ways to collect online community content from multiple channels and present it as one, cohesive story. We look forward to seeing how this tool develops as more users climb on board.

Ushahidi: Online Crisis Mapping

Earlier this year, we attended Mobile for Social Change, a two-day training session that’s part of the Toronto-based conference, My Charity Connects. You can read more about that experience, here. We learned about the latest crisis mapping tools organizations are using to mobile disaster volunteers around the world and Ushahidi was number one on the presenter’s radar. Ushahidi means “testimony” in Swahili and is an open-source mapping tool (which means it’s free) that allows users to contribute reports and content via the web and mobile phones. It launched in 2008 and was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout. Its roots are in Africa and it’s a beautiful example of citizens mobilizing information and news to inform how government’s make nation-wide decisions. You can host the Ushahidi Platform yourself or have Ushahidi host it for you using its new Crowd Map tool.

Wordle: An Oldie But a Goodie

Wordle is still our go-to tool when it comes to producing a fun graphic or word cloud for our social media channels. It helps you narrow in on themes if you’re following an online discussion or reading an article. All you need to do is copy and paste the content and Wordle generates a simple and creative word cloud. If you visit or blog homepage, you’ll see the Wordle we created using the content from this blog post.

Worldometers: Nothing But Numbers

This is one resource we’ve borrowed from Heather’s post. It was just too interesting not to repeat. Using a few specific sources, Worldometers generates numbers that inform, among other things, the rate at which humans are consuming resources and energy, making babies, and dying. Worldometers provides a “quick facts” drop down menu and lists its sources. Averages are adjusted based on the data source. The site, for the most part, is automated and several of the meters reset every 24 hours. For example, there’s a running meter that tracks how much governments around the world are spending on public healthcare on a daily basis. One look at global energy stats or population growth is enough to throw you into a cold sweat. Despite the anxiety this website may bring on, it’s an excellent source if you’re looking to compare numbers, output and global statistics for a specific research project, article or campaign.

In his post, Godin talks about his love for science fiction. He tells of the hours he spent in his high school library reading the sci-fi collection (a telling detail into his awkward teenage years!) and how that reading would impact his future work:

“What I discovered … was that domain knowledge, edge to edge knowledge of a field, was incredibly valuable. It helped me understand where the edges were, and it gave me the confidence to be selective, to develop a taxonomy, to see what was going on.”

The post was shared on our listserv and a reading list sprung forth that we’re pretty sure even Godin would approve of. This reading list is a mix of recommendations that cover everything from organizing to digital advocacy, traditional marketing and inspiration.

We consider it our back-to-school reading as we prepare for September and the Web of Change conference.

Reading List

Beyond the Echo Chamber: How a Networked Progressive Media Can Reshape American Politics
By Jessica Clark & Tracy Van Slyke

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
By Paul Hawken

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose
By Tony Hsieh

Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web
By Brian Solis

Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook
By Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo (yeah, we snuck our book in)

Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed
By Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Patton

Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems
By Van Jones

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
By Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing with Organizations
By Clay Shirky

Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
By Margaret J Wheatley

Momentum: Igniting Social Change in a Connected Age
By Allison Fine

Rework
By Jason Fried and David Heinenmeier Hansson

Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes
By Katya Andreson

Rules for Radicals
By Saul Alinsky

Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web
By David Weinberger

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
By Chip and Dan Heath

The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change
By Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith

The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change
By Allison Fine, Beth Kanter and Randi Zuckerberg

The Purpose Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message and Mission
By Rick Warren

The She Spot: Why Women are the Market for Changing the World and How to Reach Them
By Lisa Witter and Lisa Chen

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
By Ori Brafman

The Tao of Leadership
By John Heider

Trust-based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships
By Charles Green

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
By Don Tapscott

You are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
By Jaron Lanier

According to a recent report published by Efficient Frontier (EF), a digital marketing firm that monitors growth in search engine advertising, the total amount marketers were likely to spend on cost-per-click (CPC) advertising on Facebook rose 22% in the last quarter. If you’ve ever advertised on Facebook, you know that Facebook suggests a CPC rate based on your budget and the audience you want to reach. Ad rates seem to be determined on a case-by-case basis. The bottom line? Online advertisers are spending more to reach their audience, whether they know it or not.

Already Advertising Online?

The data suggests that you can expect to pay more for your CPC campaigns throughout the rest of 2011. Brands already advertising on Facebook have the advantage of connecting with consumers and winning their loyalty early on, even as competition grows. “The longer brands wait to engage with consumers on Facebook, the more expensive it will become to acquire fans.”

Still Thinking of Advertising Online?

The report predicts that “advertising dollars will shift from offline to search, Facebook and display” channels. We tend to agree. If this is true, then brands still considering online advertising budgets would be wise to test the waters of online advertising now. The longer they wait, the longer they risk competing with brands already established in these channels who, as early-adopters of CPC ads, have had a head start converting users into customers.

CPC and the Future

Efficient Frontier recognizes that Facebook advertising is sill a “young channel” and the data it’s pulling from is “highly volatile.” Still, the report wraps up by stating the cost of CPCs will continue to rise. “Even if CPCs increase at 20% per quarter for the remainder of the year, this will still result in an 80% growth in a year.”

Despite the rate increases, Facebook CPC ads continue to be some of the most effective ad dollars we spend for client projects. That’s because conversion rates tend to be high and the cost is still so much lower than traditional web and offline advertising.

To read the complete report by Efficient Frontier, click here.