Entries in Social Networking (89)

Sunday
18Oct2009

The 2009 America's Giving Challenge

DateSunday, October 18, 2009 at 08:20PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

In 2007-2008 America’s Giving Challenge encouraged 70,000 individuals to help raise more than $1.8 million for nonprofit organizations. With the explosion of social media, America’s Giving Challenge hopes to get even more people involved this year and raise a lot more money for nonprofits. The 2009 America’s Giving Challenge is a month long, national online competition that encourages people to leverage their online and offline personal networks to build communities via Facebook Causes, raise money and recruit supporters for a nonprofit. The heated competition will run through November 6th. Just as in 2007-2008, the causes will compete to win cash awards totaling $170,000.  Nonprofits can compete for daily awards of $500 and overall awards of up to $50,000 for receiving the most amounts of donations to their cause on Facebook. Want to start or help a cause? Here’s the scoop:

  • Champion a cause – Individuals can become “cause champions,” for a specific cause and will compete to obtain the most donations for their cause through the Causes application on Facebook.

  • Promote, donate or join a cause – Join, promote and donate to the cause you care about. Facebook membership is not required to donate to a Giving Challenge cause.

America’s Giving Challenge is going to be quite competitive this year so take some pointers from Jared Schwartz who did a case study about a how a small nonprofit used social media and crowd sourcing to win a different challenge – The Global Giving Challenge.

Do you have tips on how to win online challenges like the America’s Giving Challenge? Share them with us below!

 

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Monday
12Oct2009

Measuring Social Media ROI: What Does it Really Mean?

DateMonday, October 12, 2009 at 10:25PM | by AuthorKelly O'Neal

Everyone has an opinion about social media and the value it adds to nonprofits. Your Executive Director wants you to have it, and how can you tell a funder you don’t have a social media presence. The Communication Director sees it as another medium to “reach the public." The energy and enthusiasm of cutting edge staff is infectious as they tell you about their tweets, Facebook posts, blog posts and goofy, cool videos they watch. No one is arguing the coolness of social media nor its ability to collect “friends," “followers," and “views," but how do you measure what this means in terms of meeting your organization’s mission?

Are you wondering if your organization is blinded by the glamour (aka shiny object syndrome)? Scarred if your not doing “it” you’ll miss an opportunity? But, does social media have the same value for all organizations? It's not just are you using social media but how? Are you using it to brand your organization or focus on campaigns? Do you have a strategic communications plan for your social media tactics? How are you dedicating staff and financial resources?

Return on investment (ROI) of social media is a hot topic for both the nonprofit and for profit world. An article in MarketingSherpa, “How Accurately Can You Gauge the ROI of Social Media Tactics? “ notes the “inability to measure ROI” was named by marketers as one of the most significant barriers to the adoption of social media tactics by their organization.” ClickZ.com has a great checklist to review as you make decisions to invest time and money such as:

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Wednesday
07Oct2009

Twitter Adds Nonprofits to Suggested Users List

DateWednesday, October 7, 2009 at 05:20AM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

The New York Times says that a spot on Twitter’s “suggested users” list guarantees 500,000 additional followers. CNET calls this the “New Socialism: a redistribution of attention, not of material wealth.” Up until a few days ago there were less then a handful of nonprofits on Twitter’s “suggested users” list. But things changed for the nonprofit world on Friday. Twitter added several organizations to the list and these nonprofits are instantly growing their base of followers by the thousands. Check out some of the nonprofits that are currently on Twitter’s "suggested users" list:

@Kiva
@CharityWater
@SkollFoundation
@Refugees - UN Refugee Agency
@Ashoka
@Water - Water.org
@GatesFoundation
@AcumenFund
@DoSomething
@PeaceCorps
@OneCampaign
@Care - CareUSA

What inspired the Twitter love? Claire Williams, a 2009 Skoll Scholar now working on Social Innovation for Twitter, helped put the list together. Coincidentally, Frogloop and other bloggers discussed this topic a couple of weeks ago in response to Seth Godin’s post on “The Problem with Non” and asked how can nonprofits compete with celebrities and major brands on Twitter many of whom are promoted on Twitter’s “suggested users” list?

While it’s refreshing to see Twitter diversifying their “suggested user” list with nonprofits, foundations, and social change makers, these types of lists don’t have the space to highlight all of the great groups and folks who offer value to the Twitter community. To exapand upon Twitter's list, I have started a list of suggested #nonprofits and social justice change makers to follow.

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Wednesday
30Sep2009

The Art of Getting ReTweeted

DateWednesday, September 30, 2009 at 11:48AM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Is there an art to getting ReTweeted on Twitter? Dan Zarrella says yes and has been studying the "Science of ReTweeting" for the past nine months. Zarrella analyzed five million tweets and 40 million retweets and compared the two, noting the time of day they were tweeted and ReTweeted, which words and url shorteners were used most often, and more. Check out the results of Zarrella's study below.

Twitter’s most Suggested Users (Comprised of Famous People and News Networks) are Less ReTweetable.
Why? Their tweets are not truly engaging their community and use one way communication. BTW, Zarrella is not a fan of the idea "engage in conversations."  He says it's not "actionable advice" and that tweets should be "contagious." Personally, I think the word "contagious" is a big buzz word that is thrown around by marketing people. The point is if you don't engage your audiences, you won't get ReTweeted because your tweets are boring and not providing value to followers.

Tweets that Contain a URL are 3x more ReTweeted
Url shortners bit.ly, Owl.ly and is.gd are more ReTweetable then using longer urls or tinyurl.

Calls to Action Work

  • “Please ReTweet this” are very ReTweetable. Be strategic though. Don’t always tweet something and tag on please ReTweet. It should be timely, special, etc.
  • “New Blog Post” followed by what post is about is ReTweetable.

Short Tweets Are Best
Since you only have 140 characters to tweet – short words perform better than longer words in generating RT’s.

Use Proper Nouns
Many ReTweets use nouns, proper nouns and 3rd-person verbs. This suggests that headline based Tweets such as "Frogloop Launches Social Networking Calculator"--are more likely to go viral.

ReTweeting Occurs more Frequently Between 3PM and 12AM.
Monday’s and Fridays’ are the most ReTweetable days.

You should follow Frogloop on Twitter here

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Monday
28Sep2009

Integrating Social Into the Larger Mix

DateMonday, September 28, 2009 at 10:26AM | by AuthorGeoff Livingston

As we move towards the critical donation season during the holidays in a recession, now more than ever it’s necessary to integrate social media into the larger communications mix.  How do you turn an organic conversation into something more, perhaps a donation or an action?

Many organizations experiment with social media now, and that’s great. Causes have something real to talk about, meaningful missions that impact people’s lives. But keeping the experiment in a box or a silo is a mistake.

Yes, you should treat conversational media differently. It’s not a place to hard sell.  But, you can intelligently use advertising principles with calls to action and pull people through to make a donation, purchase cause-related goods online, opt-in to an email list, attend an event, or tell their friends about an effort (more email addresses for your database).

Let’s take a look at a classic example, calls-to-action on a  blog.  In this example, the Livestrong Blog, you’ll see four different calls-to-action on the right side.

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Tuesday
22Sep2009

Does Millions of Followers Mean You’re Changing the World?

DateTuesday, September 22, 2009 at 08:33AM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Marketing guru Seth Godin is a very smart guy – obviously. But one of his recent posts about nonprofits (“The Problem with Non”) is pretty far off base and might lead nonprofits into some wrongheaded actions.

Godin’s post starts out on solid ground when he notes that most nonprofits are averse to change. That’s undeniable, though certainly not a problem that’s limited to nonprofits. Senior Management typically fears unknown territory, particularly when it comes to communications and fundraising via technology. Whether managing a fundraising department for a nonprofit or an online marketing campaign for a Fortune 500 company, Senior Management tends to be comfortable with routines, formulas, metrics and what they know works.

But then Godin goes a step further and says that fear of taking risks is holding nonprofits back from growing their base and achieving their mission. I was actually still with him at this point, and I eagerly forged ahead into his piece.  But then Godin started slamming nonprofits for their lack of success at using social media. That’s when it hit me, that Godin is wrong about how he defines success. Here’s why.

Godin asks, why aren’t nonprofits listed in the top 100 most followed on Twitter, especially since social networks don’t cost a dime? Is Godin really suggesting that nonprofits should try to compete against major celebrities on Twitter like Oprah who reaches millions of viewers every day with her talk show, magazine and website? Or compete against Ashton Kutcher, who graces the covers of major magazines and had his own TV show on MTV? Let’s not even discuss Ashton’s adoring fans all over the world.

In addition to competing against A-list celebrities and brands like CNN or Time Magazine that make up the top 100 people/brands on Twitter, is Twitter (or Facebook for that matter) even the right social network for every nonprofit? It’s shocking to hear, I know. But Geoff Livingston, who heads up Social Media at CRT/tanaka, agrees. In his “Gear up for Giving” series, Livingston said that nonprofits should not always take a traditional social media approach and jump on the Facebook and Twitter bandwagon -- or what he calls the “McDonalds” of social media -- but rather they should be more strategic, given their resources. 

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Monday
14Sep2009

The Social Networking Debate: Use Existing Social Networks or Build Your Own?

DateMonday, September 14, 2009 at 11:13PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Is your non-profit debating between building a custom social network VS using popular existing social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or a niche social network like Eons, a social network for baby boomers? If you custom-build it, will they come and join you, take action on your issues and donate money? Does your nonprofit have the staff resources to truly manage the community? Or should your organization strategically focus on social networks that already have millions of people and a potential built-in audience? Lets examine the basic pros and cons.


Why Using Existing Social Networks?

Cost Benefits
Free social networks already exist. Building custom social networks from scratch takes significant time and money.

Built In Audience
Go where your target audiences are -  Are your members, donors, and potential recruits using popular online social networks like Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter? These social networks account for the top 10 most trafficked sites in the United States.

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