Month: December 2009

Great reads from around the web on December 8th

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources across the web ever 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."

Continue readingGreat reads from around the web on December 8th

Great reads from around the web on December 2nd

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources across the web ever day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of December 2nd). 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).

  • ReputationOnline » Blog Archive » Jonathan Waddingham on ‘Can you turn fans into consumers?’ – Jonathan Waddingham from JustGiving has a great post up today: "The advent of Facebook fan pages has been great news for brands wanting to create communities without having to build their own social network. In many cases, it’s largely pointless trying to create your own community when the people you want to attract are already part of another one… But what do you do with your fans once you’ve got them?"
  • How Facebook turns active users into community managers – without paying a dime (video) | Powered by John Haydon – John Haydon has a great post and video discussing facebook's strategic design that empowers users to be community managers. "You want to develop a stronger, more passionate community. You want your members to invite like-minded folks to join your community and you want the cultists to encourage others to be more active. You them to do both of these things regularly. And you want this all to happen naturally – because it won’t happen if you push."
  • Social Media Analytics: Twitter: Quantitative & Qualitative Metrics | Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik – "Twitter is amongst new media channels that are challenging how we communicate, with whom we communicate and perhaps most fundamentally how we (Marketers) influence people. … So in this post my hope is to share with you what is unique about measuring one such channel, Twitter. The blog post is also sprinkled with my own words of folksy wisdom as to how you should use the channel for maximum impact."
  • Is Your Organization Human Enough for Social Media? — SocialFish – "Social media can be overwhelming. There are so many tools, none of which you’ve used before, so you don’t have an intuitive sense of how they work, let alone if they are really helping you get the work of your organization done. And if you’ve gotten into these tools at all, you’ve probably noticed that they are not implemented in the same way as many other initiatives within your organization. You’re not sure who’s supposed to tweet or blog, and suddenly there are people outside of your staff who are saying things your staff used to say."
  • Three Ways You Can Help Build The Future of NABUUR | NABUUR Blog – "NABUUR exists so people like you can make a real difference for communities worldwide. With your contributions, you have improved the lives of countless others. You have proven it works. Now, your talents and time are needed to take the next step: make NABUUR itself self-supporting and driven by a global community of volunteers. In the last year alone, the numbers of volunteers and villages have doubled. Together, we learned how to connect, share and work together via the internet, without bureaucratic controlling bodies. NABUUR is following this path itself: already, many of you have taken over work that previously required office staff. And a bold next step is ahead! From January on, NABUUR will be volunteer-run: no more office staff. The NABUUR platform will remain online, and limited central support will still be available, but how it will develop will be up to the community to decide."

Continue readingGreat reads from around the web on December 2nd