Social media is social, so building strong online relationships means there are some basic social norms you need to practice. The most basic of these norms is the Golden Rule: treat others the way you want to be treated. In other words: share content with your followers that you would want to see.

In our part of southwest Michigan, you don’t need to drive very far to see a farm with silos next to the barn. The barns and silos that dot the rural southwest Michigan landscape look like they have been there forever, like the tallest oaks and maple trees.

To build a strong social media presence, you have to take you social media efforts off the backburner and make them a priority – there’s no way around it, and everybody knows it. Here are four essential principles for your to consider during your social media renaissance.

When your donors think of your United Way, what words come to mind? We frequently ask donors this question, and the hundreds of words donors use to describe United Way reaffirm the fact that most donors do not understand what your United Way does.

Recently, I saw an interesting editorial from a United Way CEO about how their United Way is changing the way it addresses social issues in their community. What caught my attention in the editorial was not what the United Way is going to do to address the pressing local needs it has identified but how they are going to measure their success.

Why does your United Way hold workplace campaigns? At first, this will seem like an easy question to answer. But, I would ask you to think about it at a deeper level – beyond raising money or because United Ways have always held workplace campaigns.