NetSquared’s February series exploring “Online Community Organizing” includes three different interviews; I’m really excited to participate! As many of you know, before joining NTEN as the Membership Director last year,
Great reads from around the web on April 21st
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 April 21st). 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).
- Social Media’s Changing Landscape to Make A Profit – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – I'm really looking forward to this conversation – what do you think? "Admit it – you don’t like when things that you are quite comfortable with suddenly change. As social networks try and become profitable they are experimenting with new ad models and trying to drive more traffic to increase ad revenue. Twitter’s beta advertising model via "Promoted Tweets" and Facebook’s new Fan Page “Like” button (which is replacing the “Become a Fan” button) is buzzing with critics’ opinions. Are these changes good for nonprofits bottom line too? The jury is out."
- From Social Entrepreneurship to Social Interpreneurship — Social Edge – There's a great post and conversation starter from Peter Deitz up on the Social Edge blog talking from social interpreneurship. "What is social interpreneurship you ask? I’m not entirely sure, in light of its classified nature, but I would hazard a guess that it’s two parts Internet, five parts Interaction, and ten parts Interdependence. Flipping through the Skoll World Forum program and rerunning the highlights in my head, I see evidence of social interpreneurship at every turn." Join the converstaion!
- Chris Brogan Talks Nonprofits and Trust Agents – netwitsthinktank.com – One of the basic best practices I am always talking about with organizations starting out with social media is to be a real person – not an "organization" online. Have real pictures and have real conversations. Here's a great video with Chris Brogan and next steps for being "real" online.
- Advice & Resources for Your Online Organizing Career – Check out this great round up from the presenters at the "Online Organizing – Career Night event that includes lessons, insights, and even job opportunities!
- Grizzard Communications Group – Free social media tools & the ‘experts’ who can’t answer “How?” – Eric has a great list of free social media tools to help you find content, monitor trends and much more! "In the last week, I attended both the NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference and the AFP 2010 Conference. One problem that I saw in many social media sessions at both – and a problem that I see far too often at social media conferences, seminars, and How To sessions – is that speakers and panelists rarely provide tangible How To advice to people struggling to get started. They tell you you should do something, “Start up a Facebook Fan Page and start posting content interesting to your fans,” but regardless of how hard they are pushed, they rarely can say how to go about figuring out what content your fans find interesting or maybe even how to gain new fans."
- 10 Take-Aways from SXSW for Nonprofits — Nonprofit Geekery – Happy that I came across Matt Koltermann's wrap up from SXSW. It was a few weeks late but better than never! My favorite take away from this list: 4. Make sure your website behaves like an approachable and likable person. "The annual SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX—which brings together tech geeks, social media peeps, and other online folk—wrapped-up yesterday after five intense and inspirational days. I attended a bunch of sessions focused on how nonprofits, in particular, can take advantage of technology to meet their mission—here’s a short-list of ten things that really stuck."
Great reads from around the web on February 3rd
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 February 3rd). 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).
- Net2 Think Tank: Online Fundraising Lessons Learned | NetSquared – "The Facebook application Causes recently announced it hit the $20 Million mark in donations. The America's Giving Challenge from Case Foundation spurred $2.1 Million in donations for charities this past winter. But, despite these numbers, for most organizations and causes raising money via social media is still a hard thing to do. There are different rules and new opportunities with online fundraising and every platform or application comes with a different community and varying functionality. So, what have you learned from trying your hand at online fundraising? This month's Net2 Think Tank asks you to share a lesson learned from online fundraising."
- Social Enterprise | GreenXchange: Crowdsourcing Social Innovation – Marcia Stepanek discusses the newly launched collaborative effort amongst diverse companies to create an open area for innovators and innovation. "Launched last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, GreenXchange (GX) is a new Web-based knowledge exchange that is being spearheaded by 10 companies and social enterprises, including Nike, Best Buy, and Creative Commons, the San Francisco nonprofit that works to expand the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. Its seven other backers include Yahoo!, IDEO, Mountain Equipment Co-op, salesforce.com, 2degrees, the Outdoor Industry Association, and nGenera, a corporate strategy think tank."
- 10 must-read Facebook resources for non-profits – Ross McCulloch – Ross has a great collection of resources about using Facebook, including Pages vs Groups, adding paypal, examples and case studies. Whether you are already using Facebook for your organization or not, this is a good place to go to learn more about how to use the social networking platform to it's fullest.
- Seth's Blog: Random rules for ideas worth spreading – Seth Godin shares a list of rules for those times you develop an idea worth spreading. My favorite rule: "Seek out apostles, not partners. People who benefit from spreading your idea, not people who need to own it." Have you found any of these to be true in your own idea sharing and development? Which are best/worst?
- 350.org: giving new meaning to “new organizing” | Working Wikily – This is a great case study about community organizing from the 350.org campaign. "A lightbulb went on in my head while I was listening to the PdF webinar last week that laid bare the machinery that made it possible for 350.org to achieve the most widespread day of political action in history back on October 24th. We’re still in the midst of examining the various threats that traditional “membership organizations” are facing and the story of 350’s success is one of the best illustrations I’ve seen yet of the new model. In the words of 350 organizer Phil Aroneanu, “It’s about concerned citizens who are looking for a meaningful way to engage. It doesn’t make sense to ask them to click once and that’s it. That’s not a believable theory of change. Building those [local] leaders is the secret to the way that we organize.”"