Tag Archive for 'adoption'

Great reads from around the web on December 10th

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of December 10th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

  • URGENT: Facebook Pages are changing | facebook | social-advice- Advice for charities – More information about changes coming to Facebook – this time it's more changes in the way Fan Pages function. A great read if you have a fan page for your organization as these changes are said to go into effect in early 2010.
  • Debating the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference – "Over 1,000 young people from 100 different countries will gather online to debate climate change. This is the largest single ongoing panel of discussions outside of the conference itself and the range of young people involved gives it an unmatched reach. This unique project will allow young people from vastly different countries to get involved in probably the single greatest challenge the world faces. Israelis will get together with Iranians, Americans with Afghanis, Sudanese with Singaporeans and they'll discuss what to do about climate change."
  • Click For a Cause | Conduit – Conduit's Gives 2010 project offers $3.6 Million for 100 Nonprofit Organizations! "Since 2005, hundreds of thousands of web publishers have used the free Conduit Platform to increase engagement, grow web traffic, and drive revenue. We are now putting that experience to work with Click for a Cause to help struggling non-profits to engage and energize their communities in order to increase participation and ignite fundraising efforts during this difficult economic time."
  • Social Media Today | If the Army Can Put Its Doctrine Up On a Wiki, You've Got No Excuse – "A few weeks ago I had the privilege of watching an astounding event – a room full of Soldiers typing Army doctrine onto a wiki so that Soldiers in the field could make changes as they were discovering new and better tactics in the midst of fighting a war." This is a great case study for anyone looking for support in those hard buy-in conversations…
  • George Weiner: Will You Marry Me? What Not-For-Profits get Wrong on the Web – "The "Will you marry me?" (WYMM) syndrome turns every online messaging opportunity into a nail begging to be hit with the donation hammer. I can point to dozens of orgs that create sites that are essentially fundraising brochures with donation buttons and paragraphs about the history of the organization. There are also not-for-profits that take the WYMM mistake beyond web sites and into their social media strategies, advertising opportunities, newsletters and partnerships."
  • Women, Social Media and Influence (cont’d) « A. Fine Blog – If you haven't seen the two recent posts from Allison Fine about women and social media, you should join in the conversation! She's posed some very interesting questions and shared some of her ideas – but most importantly there are lots of comments that are just as critical, thought-provoking and interesting! Do join in!

Comeback Lines to Social Media Objectors

Debra Askanase has turned a recent experience dealing with many social media obvjections into a list to help you nail your comeback lines for any objectors in your organization or office.  She even crowdsourced some of the responses via Twitter – a fun way to get a bit more brain power out of the process of blogging!  She deals with these five questions:

  1. It’s not safe! What about the BU Craigslist killer?
  2. What if our biggest rival pretends to be us online?
  3. Social media means a lot of work and we don’t have the staff time to do that.
  4. There is no place in our organization for social media.
  5. People will attack us online with negative critique.

Read the answers to those questions and more of the story on Debra’s blog here.

And remember… the best comeback line is the truth, and the truth is that if you aren’t online, joining the conversation with your community members, supporters, and doubters, and engaging with the larger sector, then it doesn’t matter how great you think your branding is or how much you know your audience, because there is a quickly moving and building conversation about your work and your sector happening without you.  The only form of control you have over your message and your organization is to join the conversation that’s already happening.  Really.