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

photo by wildxplorer

Time once again for a quick roundup of the 10 most popular links I tweeted last month. Twitter continues to be a fixation for many of us, but there also was lots of interest in storytelling, internal communication and social media in general. In order of popularity:

Advice From the Pros: Telling It Like It Is courtesy of Brain Traffic, noted content strategist Kristina Halvorson‘s firm, preaches the gospel of short, sweet and simple (my kind of sermon).

Content Creation Strategy for Nonprofits is a slide deck from Kivi Leroux Miller on how you can effectively manage all the content you create in support of your marketing and communication efforts.

Peter Shankman, the man behind HARO, asks the eternal question, Is Your Social Media Expert Really an Expert?

Time for a Twitter Reality Check, courtesy of yours truly, takes a look at the reality behind the hype that is Twitter (and I’ll be reviewing some of the feedback I received in my next post).

6 Lessons From the Best Marketing Campaign Ever looks at how an unlikely underdog stunned the marketing world at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Wild Apricot did us all a real service in compiling Social Media for Nonprofits: 26 Presentations. Now there’s no excuse for not being ready to explain this stuff to your organization.

Kevin Spacey Explains Twitter to Letterman pretty much sums it up. Watch it. It’s funny stuff.

Use of Social Networking Tools Growing in Nursing, Medical Schools looks at a new study that finds growing popularity of Web 2.0 tools in health curricula.

How to Tell Your Story in 100 Words or Less is my take on the value we all can derive from having an elevator pitch.

Internal Communications and Twitter is me again on how Twitter might be used to support an effective internal communications program.

That’s it for July’s tweets. I’m out there every day in search of useful info on communications, marketing, social media and more, so be sure to follow me on Twitter so you don’t miss the good stuff.

I don’t know where she finds the time, but here’s another great presentation from Kivi Leroux Miller, this time on how you can effectively manage all the content you create in support of your marketing and communication efforts.

As the introduction of social media creates yet another “mouth” to be fed on an ongoing basis, having a solid plan that guides how you’ll produce, use and reuse content is all the more critical. Miller offers lots of good advice on how to get organized, where to turn for content creation inspiration and how to repurpose content for various channels.

I would suggest, however, that one of the first steps in any content creation strategy is developing a detailed outline of the key messages you want carried in your content. This can help you ensure that your message delivery is balanced across channels and that no messages are getting short shrift as you mix and recut content.

photo by terwilliger911

Last month’s most popular tweets focused on everything from social media for nonprofits to Twitter trends to innovation. Here they are in order of popularity:

Twitter’s 10 Rules for Radical Innovators (Umair Haque on one of the Harvard Business blogs)

Social Media for Nonprofits (Wild Apricot’s great compilation of Slideshare presentations)

Their Right. Its True. Your Stupid. (my subtle reminder that things like spelling and grammar do count, even on the internet)

5 Biggest Things I’ve Learned About Using Social Media (public info officer Kelly Huston’s thoughtful advice from what he’s learned on the job)

Only 22% of 18-24-Year-Olds Use Twitter (kinda shocking, given that 99% of them use social media)

LinkedIn Drives More Direct Blog Traffic Thank Facebook, Google or Twitter (interesting info for business pros wondering where to invest their social media time)

Content Marketing Cheat Sheet (another great resource, this time from Ambal Balakrishnan)

New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets (a real conversation starter from the Harvard Business blog)

Tweeting the Bookstore (thoughts on how one retailer might use Twitter)

Great Communicators Are Great Explainers (great advice from leadership consultant John Baldoni)

If you missed any of these the first time I posted them on Twitter, check them out now. There’s a lot of valuable advice and information contained in these 10 links.

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 brad & sabrina

Michelle Tripp had a great post recently about how truly outstanding advertising turns a product or service into an “emotional experience.” She used a clip from AMC’s Mad Men to perfectly illustrate the point. After watching it, I wanted to run out and buy a Kodak projector and dig out my family’s old slides from the garage. (The embed’s been disabled so I can’t link to it, but go to YouTube and search “Mad Men: The Carousel.”)

As Michelle put it:

“As advertisers we add a magical ingredient that no tangible product could ever have on its own. We tell a story that makes a connection. We help the consumer see value beyond the price tag. It’s no longer something they can own, it’s something they can live. We take a product that exists in the outer world and make it a part of their inner world. As humans we’re driven to define ourselves through association, and we begin to LOVE the products we choose, because they fulfill our need for identity.”

For some that sense of fulfillment comes with a TV show or an ad campaign. For me it’s usually a song. Like this one. (Ignore the video. It just distracts from the song.)

Go ahead and listen. I’ll wait ’til you get back.

That’s Bob Schneider’s “Changing Your Mind.” Man I love that song. I’m wearing it out on my iPod and it still moves me. Sorry, but I’m a sucker for a great song about the death of love and how the awful moment can catch us in the headlights.

If only how we communicated on behalf of our organizations had that kind of impact. Can you truly say that you move your stakeholders to tears? That your message dwells in their hearts and weighs on their thoughts?

Telling stories isn’t enough. Your stories have to make an emotional connection that pledges people to the cause. I’m not talking about the easy tears jerked out of soft souls by using cute kids or American flags waving in the summer breeze or nostalgia about the way life used to be. I mean crafting a narrative that convinces people of the absolute worthiness of your effort and creates a yearning to be a part of your righteous crusade.

Does your communication do that? Really? I doubt it. If it did, you’d have people lined up around the block and more funding than you knew how to spend.