In case you missed any of them, here are my 20 most popular links (in order of popularity) tweeted during the previous month. I think I post somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 or more links via Twitter each month, and these garnered the greatest response. They serve as my monthly reminder that there is some truly superior content out there to assist you in your own communication efforts; you have only to surf (or follow me).

Letting Nonprofits Act Like Businesses: One Foundation’s Brave Act of Leadership

Social, Global, Ubiquitous, and Cheap

50 Content Ideas That Create Buzz

Katya Andresen on the Six Most Miserable Mistakes of Social Marketing

Are We Breeding Social Media Ne’er-do-wells?

Social Media and the Paradox of Choice

Are You Antisocial in Your Social Media Efforts?

In Advertising, Stupidity Can Win You Awards

Communicate as You Wish Others Would Communicate With You

Five Steps to Building a Successful Social Media Strategy for Your Nonprofit

Your Story Doesn’t Move Me

The Basics of Social Media for Nonprofits

Sometimes It’s Best to Kill the Ones They Love

70 Percent of Journalists Use Social Networks to Assist in Reporting

Social Media Listening for Nonprofits

Shredding Some Misconceptions About Social Media (Part I)

Your Communications Plan: What It’s For

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Writers

Why Seth Godin Is Wrong

Tips, Tricks & Tools From 140 | The Twitter Conference

It figures. The day after I write about how so many nonprofits fail to make a real emotional connection through their storytelling, Katya Andresen posts this piece on Mark Horvath and his efforts to make the homeless visible.

I met Mark earlier this month at an L.A. nonprofits tweetup. I didn’t have much of an opportunity to chat with him, and now I wish I had. The work he’s doing at invisiblepeople.tv is truly heroic. Check it out.

photo by neogabox

Tip of the hat to Katya Andresen for the lead on this great communications evaluation guide from the folks at The Communications Network.

Evaluating the effectiveness of your communications program is one of the toughest jobs there is, so many organizations just don’t do it except anecdotally.

This is a well-considered step-by-step guide with lots of great advice on how nonprofits can set objectives, identify audiences, identify the right questions to ask and choose the best techniques to use.

photo by jurvetsen

Katya Andresen had a great short post on the importance of transparency a few weeks ago. While she’s speaking primarily to nonprofit marketing folk, the lesson is equally applicable to all organizations. Without transparency it’s difficult to build trust, especially in today’s environment.

But if transparency is the new black, I’d argue that clarity is the new grey. Even those who think they’re being transparent frequently fog things up with jargon, unnecessarily convoluted language and dazzling displays of numbers that only serve to confuse.

People are hungry for clarity. A recent Siegel + Gale survey found that 84 percent of Americans say they’re more likely to trust companies that use jargon-free, plain English in communications. Three-quarters believe that complexity and lack of understanding played a huge role in our current financial situation. And 79 percent think it’s an important enough issue that President Obama should “mandate that clarity, transparency and plain English to be a requirement of every new law, regulation and policy.”

Your organization probably doesn’t have a global director of simplification like Siegel + Gale does, so it may be that the job falls on your shoulders.

I’m a big fan of transparency. I think it’s essential to developing solid, trustworthy relationships with your stakeholders (customers, clients, employees, donors). But I’m an even bigger fan of clarity. You really can’t have one without the other.