Do something about gun violence and #WearOrange

So, here we are. Again. Reeling from more school shootings, questioning our priorities as a nation.

So, here we are. Again. Reeling from more school shootings, questioning our priorities as a nation. In our home state, we watch for real action against gun violence as Texas Governor Abbott apparently has a plan.

Condensed

WTF is a GDPR?

You’ve probably received enough privacy notice emails that a flag has gone up, and you’ve started to do a bit of research. 

Why it's worth listening to people you disagree with | Zachary R. Wood

Understanding the “other side” through uncomfortable learning

Our country is torn.
Two sides, a great divide – with no solution in sight.
But what if the solution was easy?
What if we just talked to each other?

How I Survived 30 Days of Biking in Houston

There are bike-friendly cities and then there’s… Houston.  When I tell people that I participated in #30DaysofBiking, I’m met with blank stares and more than a few questions.

A note from a Zennial: Breaking generation stereotypes with activism

You know the phrase ‘being stuck between a rock and a hard place’? As a so-called “Zennial,” that’s where my generation lives.

You know the phrase ‘being stuck between a rock and a hard place’? As a so-called “Zennial,” that’s where my generation lives. It’s uncomfortable, it’s awkward – but here we are. Ready to change the world.

A Digital Podcast for a Better Human Experience

As Black Sheep’s Digital Strategist, I am constantly immersed in the digital landscape.

As Black Sheep’s Digital Strategist, I am constantly immersed in the digital landscape. While I don’t want to throw my phone across the room as soon as I get home, I do appreciate some perspective.

fallen in love

Keep the blue side up: A moment of glider plane Zen

What have you rocked out in life that started with the thought: if they can do it, why not me?

Voguing with Kia LaBeija | Iris

A True Movement: Kia LaBeija and Human Storytelling

In our office, we often talk about how to represent our clients through more than just their work.

In our office, we often talk about how to represent our clients through more than just their work. We do that by telling a human story. I think that human story comes from knowing the humans within their work and organization, which is a large part of our discovery process.

Creative Musings from a Confused Left-Brainer

My mom likes to tell this story about a pivotal moment in my life that occurred in a guidance counselor’s office.

My mom likes to tell this story about a pivotal moment in my life that occurred in a guidance counselor’s office. It was my junior year of high school and the counselor called me in to fix what she assumed was a mistake on my schedule for the upcoming semester. The egregious error?  5th period life drawing class.

As a kid growing up in rural Northern California, our house was a bit of an animal farm.

Fostering Impulse

As a kid growing up in rural Northern California, our house was a bit of an animal farm. We had sixteen acres of land and our pets included a cat, a dog, a rabbit, a snake, a hamster, guinea pig, pond of goldfish, a turtle and a rat named Clicker Starman. I grew up loving animals and they were the means to my allowance.

Guillermo del Toro Presents: The Shape of Dissonance

I love Guillermo del Toro. His Oscar acceptance speech only made me love him that much more.

“Because I think that the greatest thing our art does and our industry does is to erase the lines in the sand. We should continue doing that when the world tells us to make them deeper.”

Escape from 2017: Thoughts on Optimism and Despair

From what I can tell, the theme for the start of 2018 is “thankfully we made it through 2017.”

In the last several decades, Boys and Girls Harbor has done amazing work.

Popping the Cork on a New Brand

In the last several decades, Boys and Girls Harbor has done amazing work. For 70 years they have been steadfast in caring for our region’s abused and neglected children.

Baby, You’re a Firework: A Personalized Story About Austim

I remember being embarrassed asking my friends to watch this Katy Perry performance at Night of Too Many Stars, because typically celebrity-heavy primetime charity concerts are chock full of Grade-A cheese.

I remember being embarrassed asking my friends to watch this Katy Perry performance atNight of Too Many Stars, because typically celebrity-heavy primetime charity concerts are chock full of Grade-A cheese.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs : Anxiety

Tiffany Pratt: Designer + Stylist

CreativeMornings x WordPress.com

Beatriz Craven: Compassion

We’re not morning people, but we’re Creative Mornings people.

Our Favorite Mornings Are Creative

We’re not morning people, but we’re Creative Mornings people.(See what we did there? *Swish*) Since the inspirational creative coffee klatch launched in 2014—with our fearless leader speaking about Kid Cudi, the pursuit of happiness and having the courage to say“No”—we’ve been hooked on the community connecting, brain-rebooting whiz-bang that this event brings(not to mention the plentiful Greenway Coffee). 

The Art of Overcoming Fear, With Artist Katy Holton

Have you ever been frozen with fear? Felt like the stakes were too high?

Have you ever been frozen with fear? Felt like the stakes were too high? That there were too many obstacles in your path? Too many dragons to slay? That you’re stuck on the wrong side of a ravine, yet everything you’ve ever wanted was just on the other side? So has Katy Holton, a Houston-based artist from Austin’s design studio DesignGood. Katy took on our Blank Slate chalk wall this week to encourage the Flock to overcome fear through a dazzlingly bright explosion of colors. 

The happy secret to better work | Shawn Achor

Attitude of Gratitude: A Blueprint for Success + Happiness

I had a lot to be grateful for in 2017: Health, relationships, a beautiful baby boy, a comfortable home and a thriving business.

“The absence of disease is not health. Here’s how we get to health: We need to reverse the formula for happiness and success.”—Shawn Achor, TEDxBloomington

Kendrick Lamar, U2, Dave Chappelle - Performance (LIVE From The 60th GRAMMYs ®)

I’m not 100% sure who the intended audiences for award shows are, but I’m almost certain they aren’t males between 35 and 45.

DAMN Right.

Figuring your life out is difficult in your 20s.

Life advice? Yes, Please.

Figuring your life out is difficult in your 20s. Especially if the whole world is telling you that everything has to be decided and you need to be successful by the time you turn 30. It’s a lot of stress for one person to handle and that fear can keep you from making any decisions at all out of fear of getting it wrong. At this time in life, you don’t need judgment, you need advice.

The best damn reading list you’re going to find if you’re looking for something to fill your soul in 2018.

2018: Booked Solid

For years, the advice to every nonprofit was some version of "be more like a brand." Post more. Sound more polished. Chase the same tricks beverage and mattress companies use to win attention. But that advice is going out of date fast. 

Here's the good news buried in the shift: being human, being rooted in a real community, telling the truth about the work you do - these used to just be things nonprofits talked about. Now they're becoming part of how the algorithm decides who gets seen.

Let’s be real, the social media feed you're posting into isn't the feed you learned on. There are three changes to pay attention to here:

You are no longer broadcasting to your followers. You're being matched to people by interest, whether they follow you or not. According to Meta, only 17% of time on Facebook and 7% on Instagram goes to content from friends and family. The rest is strangers' content, served by an algorithm reading for interest, not relationship. This means that follower count matters less than it used to; what your organization is actually about matters way more.

For a decade, the game was capturing eyeballs at any cost, but that game is almost out of runway. This new reality rewards the meaning people seek out, instead of the noise people scroll past. A nonprofit was never going to out-shout a beverage brand for attention, and it doesn't have to start now.

Bots now account for more than half of all web traffic, the first time automated activity has outpaced human activity online. Add the flood of low-effort AI content built to trigger a reaction, and feeds get louder, faker, and angrier by the month. Outrage travels, so platforms keep rewarding it, regardless of whether it's true.

Platforms are starting to notice the same AI slop we are, and they're building against it. As feeds fill with machine-made content, audiences and the platforms chasing those audiences are turning toward visible effort, texture and even imperfection. 

Authenticity is starting to get measured less as a brand value and more as "proof of process": can people actually see the work behind the thing? Instagram has begun actively suppressing reposted and aggregated content for exactly this reason. Original, human, made-for-the-platform work is now structurally advantaged, not just ethically preferable.

The appetite for this is showing up in surprising places too. Myspace's owners are reportedly plotting a relaunch, betting that algorithm fatigue is real enough that people will pay attention to a platform explicitly selling itself as an escape from optimized feeds.

Brands without a real story are feeling the squeeze from the other direction. Even insurance companies and mattress brands, categories built on being interchangeable, are now scrambling to act like media companies just to stay visible, hiring writers and building personalities where there used to be none. But your nonprofit isn't scrambling for any of that. The real stories, real people and real process you already have aren't a compliance requirement anymore. They're the raw material every faceless brand is spending real money trying to fake.

You're the expert. Make sure AI knows it.

The same shift is happening in search. More than half of Google queries now return an AI-generated answer before a person ever clicks a website. Being the credible, well-documented source those answers get built from is starting to matter as much as being the thing someone finds by scrolling. Same principle, different doorway: substance and legitimacy are becoming the input, not just the output.

No one knows your mission, your people, and your work better than you do. When someone asks an AI assistant how to get involved in your cause, that answer should be built from what you've actually published, not a stranger's guess or a five-year-old blog post. Making sure your own documentation is the source AI pulls from isn't just a search tactic. It's how you keep your story accurate and keep your work moving forward, instead of watching it get flattened into someone else's summary.

What this actually means for your nonprofit online

Here's the part that should feel like relief: none of this asks you to get louder, weirder or more "on brand." It asks you to do less pretending and more proving. Show the work. Show the people. Let the algorithm find you doing the thing you're actually good at, instead of trying to out-shout accounts that were never your competition to begin with or hoping to be stumbled upon via hashtag soup.

The real question is whether what you post could hold up to a stranger asking, "how do I know this is real?" That's a content question, a design question and a strategy question all at once, and it's the kind of work that's easy to know you need and hard to carve out time for.

That's the work we do at Black Sheep Agency. We help mission-driven organizations turn what's already true about them- the real stories, the real people, the real process- into content and strategy built for a moment when that's exactly what gets rewarded.

Why Nonprofits Might Finally Win the Algorithm

The algorithm now rewards real stories and community over polish and AI content. See why nonprofits are positioned to win the shift and what to do next.

The algorithm stopped rewarding polish and started rewarding (human) proof

The algorithm now rewards real stories and community over polish and AI content. See why nonprofits are positioned to win the shift, and what to do next.

The Black Sheep blog is turning up the volume on community engagement, social media strategy, Houston happenings and what it means to lead a purpose-driven life.

The Black Sheep Agency | Social impact and nonprofit blog

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