Tag Archive for 'webinar'

Great reads from around the web on December 8th

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 8th). 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).

  • 2009 Year-End Fundraising Guide – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – “Is your nonprofit sending out 8-10 online fundraising appeals this holiday season? According to Mark Rovner and Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies who led the recent webinar Procrastinator’s Guide to Year-End Fundraising with Kathryn Powers of Conservation International and moderated by Eric Rardin of Care2 and Rebecca Higman of Network of Good, this tactic has been helping organizations raise a lot of money. Nonprofits can expect 60% of their donations to come in between Christmas and New Year’s.”
  • Public ‘want to know how money is spent’ – Third Sector – “More than half of the general public would donate more money to charity if they knew exactly how it was spent, a new survey of 2,000 people indicates. The research was carried out for donation website See the Difference, which will be launched next year. The data shows that 51 per cent of people would give more if they knew how their money was spent and 40 per cent would do so if they could actually see the difference their money was making.”
  • Facebook Will Be Google-able (If Your Profile is Set to Public) – “At Google’s event today announcing a number of fantastic new features, including real-time search, a new partnership was announced: real-time search of public Facebook status updates. A Google/Twitter partnership was announced months ago but we assumed that Facebook wouldn’t be allowing Google to index many details of its site because the two are fast becoming big rivals. Thus today’s announcement is a very big surprise.”
  • Does Directgov Deliver? – “Directgov (www.direct.gov.uk) is the Government’s official website for the general public. This discussion paper analyses how well Directgov delivers on its promise to consumers to ‘provide information and online services for the public all in one place’. The analysis is approached from a user’s perspective, and highlights the types of problems consumers frequently encounter with the service. It is intended to promote a debate, and at the end of each chapter, suggestions are made for rethinking key areas so that they can deliver more effective online public services. We want to hear your thoughts and ideas on this discussion paper so please add your comments in the ‘Your feedback’ section that appears on each page. The paper will be open to comment til the end of January 2010.”
  • 20 Questions To Start a Social Media Discussion | Brand Elevation Through Social Media and Social Business | Altitude Branding – “Let’s make something clear: you can be the person that starts asking the questions and initiating the conversations that move social media forward. You. Sitting right there. Yes, you. I don’t care if you’re the marketing assistant, the PR coordinator, the customer service manager, the HR director, or the mailroom clerk. What it takes is the intent to be part of the progress, the bravery to start an open conversation, the maturity and patience to not make it personal, and the investment in the outcomes to take it a step further.”

We Are Media: Webinar Series from NTEN

We Are Media is a terrific resource for anyone looking for tips, examples, case studies and information on using social media in a nonprofit organization.  Now, the content from We Are media is available to you in a brand new “Choose Your Own Expert” format. The best part: any path you choose will be a good one. NTEN’s gathered some of the top nonprofit social media experts to help your organization devise a solid strategy as well as learn the secrets of using a variety of social media tools.

I’m bummed that I cannot participate this time around (will be traveling with my family, enjoying some offline adventures) but am already looking forward to the next opportunity!

REGISTER HERE!

The Format

This immersive, interactive webinar experience(tm) will begin with a plenary session providing an overview of social media strategy, organizational adoption issues, capacity, metrics, and strategy execution. Because we know you’d be disappointed in us if we didn’t include them, we’ll have a live question and answer and a back channel discussion.

After a ten minute break, participants will have the option of joining one of four break out sessions: Listening/Engaging; Storytelling; Generating Buzz; Online Networking. Each of the 60 minute sessions will include a drill down in the topic area, presented by an expert in field (see below). The back channel will be moderated by even more experts, who will add additional insights and answer participants questions.

After a ten-minute break, participants will reconvene as a group to grill the presenters in each of the areas.

The Flow

Opening Plenary: 45 minutes
Q&A & Backchannel: 15 minutes
Break: 10 minutes
Breakout Sessions (choose one): 60 minute
Break: 10 minutes
Final Q&A: 40 minutes

The Learning Objectives

  • Identify objectives, audience, and strategy execution to effectively integrate social media into your organization’s overall web communications plan so it supports your organization’s mission
  • Explore the organizational change management issues that social media raises and how to talk about them
  • Experience a variety of social web tools that are essential in listening/engaging, storytelling, generating buzz, and online networking
  • Have access to experts and peers to answer your specific questions via live question and answer and backchannel chat

REGISTER HERE!

More about We Are Media:
The We Are Media Project is a community of people from nonprofits who are interested in learning and teaching about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world.

Curated by NTEN, the community will work in a networked way to help identify the best existing resources, people, and case studies that will give nonprofit organizations the knowledge and resources they need to be the media. The community will help identify and point to the best how-to guides and useful resources that cover all aspects of creating, aggregating, and distributing social media. The resulting curriculum which will live on this wiki and will also cover important organizational adoption issues, strategy, ROI analysis, as well as the tools.

Free TechSoup Webinar: Basics for Beginners

This Wednesday, April 15th, you can participate in a free online event and webinar from TechSoup, Basics for Beginners: Getting Started with Social Media Tools.

So you’ve heard about Facebook, Twitter, and other online social networking sites. You know your organization should use social media, but you’re not sure where to start. If this sounds familiar, you won’t want to miss TechSoup’s free online event and webinar: Basics for Beginners: Getting Started with Social Media Tools.

Join hosts, John Haydon, social media coach for nonprofits, and blogger and internet marketing consultant, Chris Garrett, as they demonstrate how to get started with social media and the value this can bring your organization. They’ll explain the best first steps for getting started and help beginners understand how these emerging technologies can help libraries and nonprofits conduct outreach, raise funds, create community, and share ideas.

Register now for the live webinar, Wednesday, April 15th, 9 AM Pacific Standard Time.

Following the webinar, TechSoup will host a free, day-long online event, where you can post additional questions to the expert event hosts in the TechSoup Community forums:  http://www.techsoup.org/go/web2_basics. The forums event is asynchronous (not live) and no registration is required, just show up and post!

Dive into the discussion in the TechSoup online forums where we’ll discuss such topics as:

  • How can you make the most of social media with very little resources (time, money, staff)?
  • Smart ways to use social media to engage new and existing supporters
  • How much time should you devote to social media each day?
  • What is the best way to fundraise with social media?

This free event is ideal for beginners who are looking for simple steps they can take to effectively use social media to enhance their missions. Whether you’re brand new to Web 2.0 tools or looking to share your social media successes and lessons learned, please stop by and add your voice to the conversation: http://www.techsoup.org/go/web2_basic

Have any questions? Please email: community@techsoup.org.

About TechSoup.org
TechSoup.org is a trusted technology resource that offers a variety of information and services for the nonprofit sector. In addition to accessing articles and worksheets, social benefit organizations can connect with a lively online community of peers for hands-on help, or receive product donations from major vendors through its product philanthropy service. This popular program has enabled organizations to save over $1.2 billion in IT expenses as of September 2008.

Email Still Rules: A Webinar Series from NTEN to Step Up Your Email Marketing

Join NTEN for this 4-part webinar series hosted by Triplex Interactive, a division of InfoGROUP to learn how to become a more effective email marketer, communicator and fundraiser.

This is a series that is recommended for folks who can answer yes to the following questions:

  • Do you use an email tool or CRM to manage your email?
  • Do you set up campaigns?
  • Do you have a person or persons in your organization who are dedicated to online marketing?

After this series you will know how to:

  • Create an online donor profile
  • Identify and acquire new stakeholders
  • Engage in conversations (vs. blasting) via email
  • Analyze your results

Session Series includes:

> Register Now for the Series!

Presenters: Jocelyn Harmon, Director of Business Development for Triplex Interactive, a division of InfoGROUP, Alia McKee, Principal, Sea Change Strategies and Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner, Blue State Digital (BSD).

Building Blocks of Social Media – Webinar slides and notes

Today was the first webinar in the Storytelling & Social Media series from NTEN and TechSoup Global.  I’m happy to say that I had the great honor of serving as the speaker for the webinar and had a ton of fun.  It’s always a little weird to talk over the phone and not be able to hear or see those you are presenting to, but everyone was really great with comments and questions and responding online so I knew I wasn’t talking to myself!

If you want to check out the recording of the session or register for webinars that are still to come, check out the full line up.

Today’s webinar focused on the building blocks of social meda; things like tagging, RSS and how to get started finding the conversations taking place online.  Here’s my slide deck:

The questions folks asked at the end were terrific!  Some of them, along with my answers, include:

  • How much time a day do you spend reading (RSS feeds)? I used to be quite worried about reading everything that came into my reader.  Until I finally “got it.”  Even if you don’t read the post that comes in your RSS Reader, that content isn’t lost and the knowledge is still at your footsteps.  You can search within your reader and find content that came through that you might be looking for, even if you didn’t read it the first time.
  • How do you separate personal and professional contacts or content online? I share a lot of information online, but if it is something I really want to be personal, I take advantage of the settings in different applications and mark things as private or hidden.  Most all of the tools you’ll use online allow for you to show or hide different content for different users or groups.
  • What’s the difference between Netvibes and Google Reader? Netvibes is a lot like an iGoogle home page and is designed to have many different widgets or boxes that are customizable.  You may have a weather widget next to an RSS feed of your organization’s blog, a calendar widget and a feed of Google Alerts, and so on.  Google Reader is designed to organize your feeds and let you share them with your contacts/the world – without having boxes and widgets.  I like to use Google Reader most of the time, but keep my Netvibes up-to-date for times when I want to narrow in on certain topics because of the way you can view the feeds.  You can see screen shots of both of these in the slide show above.
  • How do you create a tag? If you are using Delicious, for example, you don’t need to create a list of tags or a taxonomy you have to stick to before you actually start saving bookmarks.  You can create a new tag every time you save something if you want to.  When you save the bookmark, you add the tags you want associated with it, and those can be new or ones you’ve used before.  That’s it; once you hit save that tag is created.

There were other questions and some good conversations.  If you were on the call and had a question that didn’t get answered feel free to ask it here in the comments or you can check out the Emerging Technologies forum in TechSoup to join the conversation.

Upcoming events in the series include podcasting, video creation, creating social buzz, and social media ROI.  Check them out and register here!

Download the recording of today’s webinar on Social Media Building Blocks.

Thanks to all those on the webinar today! It was a lot of fun talking with you and I’m happy to keep answering questions and discuss how we can all use social media better to more effectively and efficiently change the world for the better!

NTEN Webinar: Social Media Building Blocks

NTEN & TechSoup have teamed up to deliver a series of webinars on storytelling and social mediaand I’m the presenter for the first one!

First, what’s a web-inar?

Wikipedia says:

A webinar is a neologism to describe a specific type of web conference. It is typically one-way,[1] from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction, such as in a webcast. A webinar can be collaborative[1] and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, pointing out information being presented on screen and the audience can respond over their own telephones…

Social Media Building Blocks

Is sharing really caring?  Well, it can at least boost your internal staff knowledge and your positioning as a resource in the community!

In this webinar we’ll discuss the fundamentals of sharing information with social media tools.  You don’t have to know how to do this already to take part—this is for those just starting out!  We’ll cover social bookmarking, tagging, RSS and more, plus the tools you can start using for free to do it all.

More Information and Register Now!

How you can join

I will be posting my slides on SlideShare and this blog after the event to continue the conversation started during the webinar.  I’m really looking forward to it and have already started putting together some slides and ideas.

If you have questions you want answered, ideas you want to discuss, or tools you want included, just let me know!

Click here for more information about the webinar and to register!