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 October 14th). 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).
- Marketing to Media-Savvy Gen Y: Transparency, Authenticity – Advertising Age – News – "They entered the consumer market during the stormiest economic climate since the Great Depression. And like the generation that was forever altered by the harsh sacrifices of World War II, millennials are likely to be permanently affected by the Great Recession and its long-term ripples. But these characteristics won't change about the demographic: They are vocal, demanding and discerning."
- Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "Can I be honest? I’m worried about the lack of nonprofit leadership creating a culture of innovation. While multi-channel outreach such as action alerts, microsites, social media, fundraising appeals, direct mail and telemarketing are good strategies to have in your toolbox to fundraise and market your organization; it’s simply not enough anymore. To truly raise your nonprofit’s profile (aka increase brand awareness), grow your constituency, and raise even more money in 2011 and beyond, organizations need to also focus on innovating."
- Facebook And Skype Officially Announce New Integration – "Today Facebook and Skype officially announced a new partnership which includes the complete integration of the Facebook newsfeed into Skype as well as the phonebook which lists all of a Skype user’s Facebook friends. This is another major partnership for Facebook who has announced numerous partnerships in recent weeks, including yesterday’s announcement with Bing."
- National Theatre’s Twitter Screw-up – What We Can Learn From Other People’s Mistakes | The Nest – "Over the last month, The Nest has been conducting social media training in nine regional theatre venues across five states. Commissioned by national touring agency, Performing Lines, the training assisted venues in marketing the forthcoming tour of Red Stitch’s acclaimed production of ‘Red Sky Morning‘. We helped marketing and management staff get to grips with, and genuinely leverage, social media to help sell the show."
- URL Shorteners: Blind(ly) Heading Towards Disaster? – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "Social networking has forced nonprofits to be comfortable with two-way communications, transparency, and adapting to short social conversations using limited character counts. As part of this communications evolution, nonprofits have grown accustomed to relying on url shorteners such as bit.ly and ow.ly to quickly share links to blog posts, advocacy and fundraising campaign on social networks. Plus some of the tracking stats (number of clicks, referrer, locations) have been useful to nonprofits in helping to determine which links resonated with their constituents. However, just today a .ly shortener called vb.ly has been seized by the Libyan government for failure to comply with Islamic law. And now this has all .ly url shorteners on high alert. You may be wondering how this is possible and what kind of impact will this have on nonprofits?"