Creating Great Content

When it comes to creating great content, there are four important elements, especially with social media, as you can see in the image at the top of this post. You’ll notice that the goal is in the middle of all three because it is always the core of your success and the first step in any decision. The people you want to talk to are closely connected to the goal and if one changes, the other may react. Your tools are defined both by the goal of what you want to do, but also by the people – are they tools that that audience uses and likes? And the content – is that a platform or application that supports that kind of content? Similarly, the content is defined by the goal, but also by the tools at your disposal and the people who will consume it

So, what is the content you want to share? Do you want to be sharing what you know and learn with other volunteers? Inspiring and recruiting your friends to volunteer with you? Or are you trying to promote the organization? Maybe even using these tools to document and share back with the organization all that you’re doing. What you want to be doing with your voice and story via social media will shape the tools and content. Anyone in here want to share what you are now or want to start doing? Start with the goal, and then complete the circle identifying the people, the tools, and the content.

Creating Buzz

On Twitter, look up hashtags that your community uses and follow them to track conversations. Be sure to use relevant (but not spammy!) hashtags in your posts to connect them into related topics. Consider participating or even starting a Twitter chat – the Association Chat is a great example of a weekly chat with an online archive. Be sure to use @ replies to bring people into your conversation directly or thank them for engaging with you. Here are some Twitter-specific tools:

What do you think?

I’d love to hear how you’re using social tools to support an organization you volunteer for, or how you share your knowledge and experience as a volunteer with others!

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).

• Reflecting on “Make It Your Own” « A. Fine Blog – “The Case Foundation has just released an evaluation of their innovative “Make It Your Own” program. The assessment was conducted by Peter Levine, Peter Deitz and Cynthia Gibson. One would be hardpressed to find more knowledgeable, thoughtful folks on civic engagement and social media. The Make It Your Own program was a grant program in 2007 created by the Case Foundation to promote “citizen centered” approaches to local community building. With nearly 5,000 applicants and more than 15,000 voters. It was one of the first efforts, perhaps even the first, to use online voting as a way to crowdsource grantmaking.”
• NYC Startup CatchAFire.org Launches Site To Match Skilled Volunteers And Charities – “Catchafire.org, a service to find and match volunteers with professional skills and charitable organizations in need of their help, will open its website to the public today after about a year in private beta testing.”
• Broadband for everyone » ext337 – “The Broadband Commission for Digital Development is, as ArsTechnica puts it, the world’s broadband plan… I’ve been thinking for a while that nonprofits, ngos and community-based organizations should be online hubs for their communities. If we are looking for pictures of our communities — the digital education needed and accessed, the policies that need to be addressed, the services being offered — then we need to include the views of all members of our communities.”
• Net2 Think Tank Round-Up: Finding Volunteers Online | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – Looking for ways to recruit volunteers online? Check out the Net2 Think Tank for ideas! “For this month’s Net2 Think Tank, we asked you to share your tools, tactics, and best practices for promoting your volunteer opportunities online. There are many tools and resources available – so finding the ones that work best for your audience, and finding the ways that you can use them effectively can be a task. Below is a list of networks, tools, and best practices that will help steer you in the right direction.”
• Citizen-Centered Solutions: Lessons in Leveraging Public Participation from the Make It Your Own Awards | Case Foundation – As Case’s director of communications, Allyson Burns, explains, the report “takes a look at public participation / grantmaking programs and in particular the lessons learned from our Make it Your Own Awards. When we launched MIYO, our aim was to introduce the concept of citizen-centered philanthropy. The program challenged people from all walks of life to discuss what matters most, decide what kind of community they want, and take action together, all while being completely immersed in the grantmaking process.”

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 Versus Entrepreneur – “Grammatically, the word social modifies entrepreneur, indicating a social entrepreneur is one whose entrepreneurial activity is social in nature. I think about the word social as referring to social welfare, be it poverty alleviation, environmental protection, or any type of intervention that benefits humanity in what has traditionally been thought of as a charitable way. With so many new ventures founded every day, it is becoming increasingly more difficult for me to decipher what the social purposes of some initiatives are. This is a significant problem for the social enterprise movement.”
• Submit your Case Study to the Global Digital Activism Data Set! – “The goal of the Global Digital Activism Data Set (GDADS) project is to turn qualitative case studies of digital activism around the world into a non-proprietary quantitative machine-readable data set in spreadsheet form that will facilitate the work of scholars in this new field.” Learn more and submit your case study today!
• http://manage-volunteers.org/ – “As far as we know, it is the first such comprehensive listing of options for causes, nonprofits, and NGOs who need tools to manage volunteers. Organizations that rely on volunteering can compare and contrast the wide variety of volunteer management software available, and more quickly identify the software that is right for them. Software developers may also gain better recognition and hopefully more customers by having their software listed on the database. Our goal with this site is to help nonprofits and other volunteer organizations grow and thrive by giving them easy access to the resources they need to better manage their time and volunteers.  Our goal with this site is to help nonprofits and other volunteer organizations grow and thrive by giving them easy access to the resources they need to better manage their time and volunteers.” Check it out and provide your feedback!
• The 2010 Social Networking Map / Flowtown (@flowtown) – I love maps and I work in social media; so I always love the maps of social media! Here is an updated version of XKCD’s Map of Online Communities; with updated numbers and networks.
• Four social media lessons from the New York Times | Creativity_Unbound – “If you look at the Times from another perspective – that of partnerships, social media behavior, and content – the company’s actually a shining example of how to hold onto core values and evolve at the same time. Here are four things it’s done that serve as examples for any traditional company, including advertising agencies.”

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).

• TakingITGlobal and Nabuur Launch New Action Guide on Online Volunteering | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – "TakingITGlobal (TIG), an organization that operates the world’s most popular online community for young leaders, and Nabuur, an online volunteering platform that links Neighbours (online volunteers) with Villages (local communities) in Africa, Asia and Latin America, announced today the release of a new Action Guide on Online Volunteering available for download on the TIG website." Check it out!
• Chase Community Giving Contest Ends With Yet More Controversy – Beth's Blog: How Nonprofit Organizations Can Use Social Media to Power Social Networks for Change – Beth Kanter has an excellent post chronicling and compiling many posts and resources, as well as commentary and criticism surrounding the Chase Community Giving contest that just finished. "This contest was the culmination of a two-part "vote for me" cause marketing strategy that started in November and has been rife with controversy. In some ways, it comes as no surprise that the race to the finish line ended with more allegations of dubious behavior by contest participants and those watching them compete. It's left some nonprofit professionals wondering whether these types of contests are a good idea." I strongly agree with Hildy Gottleib's comment at the end of the post and urge you to read both the post and the discussion in the comments.
• Online Fundraiser's Checklist – "FREE DOWNLOAD: The Online Fundraiser's Checklist. How Do You Ensure Fundraising Success This Year? Take advantage of Network for Good's handy new eGuide, The Online Fundraiser's Checklist, to ensure you don't miss a thing."
• 3 Powerful Social Good Trends in 2010 – Ben Rattray, the founder and CEO of Change.org, has a great piece on Mashable showcasing the three trends he sees coming in 2010 for the social change sector. "2009 saw a proliferation of online charity events, competitions, and “friendraisers” that spilled across Twitter (Twitter) and Facebook (Facebook) and filled email inboxes everywhere with more requests for money than any Nigerian prince could ever hope to make. And while it’s hard to argue that this is a bad thing — anytime someone gives money to feed the hungry instead of buying another digital potato seed in Farmville, global karma rises, if even just by a little — this focus on using the web as an ever-more elaborate means of getting people to fork over cash misses the much bigger opportunities just over the horizon."
• Try These Dynamic Digital Storytelling Platforms | Community Organizer 2.0 – "Nonprofit organizations can tell the best stories. Stories about the impact that a nonprofit has on people’s lives can engage, recruit and solidify donors and members. As ImpactMax writes so beautifully, tying individual stories to overall contextual problems and societal issues can really change policies. Anecdotely, I see a lot of blogs and Flickr photo streams, some YouTube and Vimeo use. Why limit yourself? There are so many other tools and platforms that are exciting, innovative, incredibly engaging, and beautiful. Here are my top digital storytelling platforms and tools for your nonprofit to try out in 2010."

Social media and new technology are changing the way we recruit and manage volunteers.  They’re also changing how we define the concept of volunteering.  New forms of participation such as micro-volunteering, and web-generated events such as Twestival, are changing the way people are coming together to raise funds, donate their time and make a difference in their local and global community.

Our next #4change chat, on Thursday 12 November, will look at how the volunteering landscape is changing.  Join us for a global conversation, sharing ideas, best practice, links and resources.

How to join the chat

1. If you want to contribute to the conversation, you’ll need to have a Twitter account (it’s free).
2. To follow the conversation (whether you are planning to contribute or not), use  http://search.twitter.com/ or another application to search on Twitter for “#4Change”
3. Jump in to the conversation by adding “#4Change” (without the “”) to your Twitter message
4. Feeling brave? Check out TweetChat – it’s a great application that integrates with your Twitter account and makes chats more fun! You can turn it off after the chat.

Rules for #4Change chat

1. #4Change will be structured around a series of questions which all participants can respond to. Send your questions to @tashjudd or post them below to have them considered.
2. Introduce yourself in 1 tweet at the start or when you join.
3. Stay on topic!
4. Be cool.

A few links

How social media’s changing volunteering
Blog: Brave New World for Volunteering
Blog: Sacrifice, optional and about other people (defining volunteering)
Blog: The Extraordinaries: Will micro-volunteering work?
Article: NetSquared and the new wave of online volunteering

Recruiting volunteers online
Volunteer Match
Do-it
All for Good

A few interesting volunteering and participation initiatives
The Extraordinaries
Virtual volunteering
Junction49
Urbantastic
Twestival

Please visit the #4Change blog to contribute other interesting links, case studies and questions you’d like to see raised during the chat.  Looking forward to seeing you all online on the 12th.