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Bradley Portnoy's picture

Bradley Portnoy

Digital Producer
Bradley may be new to Weber Shandwick, but at least in terms of online strategy, he’s been around the block. A refugee of the Democratic National Committee and the Presidential Transition Team, Bradley has worked on sites as varied as WhiteHouse.gov and BarackObama.com. During the 2008 Presidential Election, he wrote for Obama for America’s national blog and controlled the campaign’s social networking presence for much of the Northeast, while still managing to keep a full schedule as a student at Brown University. Bradley loves to get involved with all aspects of online strategy to create truly integrated campaigns, bringing together social networking, e-mail, and user experience, as well as coordinating with offline efforts, to make sure that clients get the biggest bang possible. An avid photographer, Bradley can be found snapping pictures of the young and outgoing at parties, pools, and picnics around Washington, D.C.

History

Member for
46 weeks 3 days
Jul 27

Getting nonprofits started with Foursquare

Bradley Portnoy

Last week I had the privilege of attending the annual conference for the Military Child Education Coalition (a Weber Shandwick client) and was surprised at the enthusiasm of some attendees over Foursquare, the location-based social networking service.
 
If you don’t know much about Foursquare, here’s a good rundown on the service.
 
While I was talking about Foursquare at the conference, many attendees pulled out their smartphones to download the free mobile app and sign up on the spot.
 
Although not every nonprofit needs to use Foursquare, it could be a useful engagement tool for those that have physical locations for people to visit – such as a museum – or for special events.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

  • The History Channel created a profile that you can follow to receive history-related tips when you check in at various venues. Depending on your nonprofit’s mission, this can be a good method of educating people about your cause when they’re on-site and more likely to form an emotional connection.
  • If you have a public venue, make sure to claim it. You’ll get access to a wealth of data about your visitors.
  • Once you’ve claimed your venue, you can offer a special that rewards freuent visitors. Perhaps a museum could offer a free scoop of ice cream to visitors every fifth check-in, or free entry to special exhibitions for the “mayor,” which is the person who has visited the most times using Foursquare.

As geolocation apps become more widespread, Foursquare seems poised to take advantage of the next big trend in digital living.
 
Particularly if your nonprofit has a physical location open to the public, it makes sense to investigate how Foursquare can take your visitor interaction to the next level.
 

Mar 23

The Most Exciting Things We Saw at SxSW

Bradley Portnoy

You should probably scan this with Stickybits.Our time at South by Southwest may be over, but the Social Impact team is still sorting through all of the incredible innovations that we saw in Austin. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be working to develop some of the ideas we came across into new strategies that can help our clients. Until then, here are some of the more exciting new things that we encountered in Texas:

Stickybits – This iPhone and Android based app lets you scan any barcode and attach photos, video, comments, or hyperlinks.

Barcodes for your favorite products are standard: the code on every box of Wheaties is the same. So if you attach something to one box of Wheaties, you attach it to all of them. And there’s a lot of potential for creative marketing in that technology. PS - scan the barcode in this post.

Venmo – It’s your best friend’s birthday, and you’ve got twelve people who want to split dinner onto twelve credit cards. The waiter gives you the look of death; he’s not going to split the check twelve ways.  This is where Venmo comes in. You put the dinner on your card, and each friend uses Venmo to send you their share via text message. It’s charged to their card, and when you get home, you deposit it into your bank account. I can’t wait till all my friends use this.

Razoo – This has got me really excited for our nonprofit partners. Network for Good is a trusted way to process donations, but they take a small transaction fee – and no matter what online payment system you use, there’s some fee involved. If you give through Razoo, Network for Good still charges their fee. But Razoo issues an equal grant, replacing the transaction fee and allowing the nonprofit to receive the full amount of your gift.

With all the talent and brainpower at SxSW, there are scores of great ideas out there that we haven’t touched on – which were your favorites?

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