Social networks - where do we stand, what do we do?
- Wed, March 21 2007
- Filed under: Social networking and web 2.0
NTEN’s Katrin Verclas has a very thoughtful piece on social networking and why it matters here. I like it because she shows that while the social networks are over-hyped at times, there is some real value for nonprofits if we use it as a tool to find supporters efficiently. My thoughts exactly. She also includes some eloquent thoughts from the Agitator, a blog well worth your time.
Read Katrin’s whole post but here are some highlights, in her words:
Simply put, social networks are where there are a lot of people in one place. So, good place to go recruiting.
Nonprofits also need to communicate and engage with greater authenticity in order to survive and thrive in this age of ‘sousveillance’, increased transparency, and accountability. This is much needed now when professionalized advocacy has worn thin and email advocacy is becoming increasingly less effective. Dialogue – and not monologue – is the name of the game.
Positioning and spin, particularly in fundraising and marketing, is trickier than it used to be. For example, one man’s blog post criticizing Heifer’s fundraising methods resulted in a widely-watched YouTube video and a conversation with the organization about the best ways to support people locally.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that smart social networking results in increased supporters, but the return on investment is still unclear. MySpace does not yield fast list growth for the average organization, but some nonprofit’s activities have resulted in increased “community brand” support and growing contributions, sign-ups, and participation - albeit usually only when part of a comprehensive engagement strategy.
Here’s what the Agitator said, as quoted by Katrin:
We believe marketers must study their current and potential audiences, understand the communications habits and preferences of those targeted, and then experiment to test explicit marketing hypotheses relating to reaching and moving more effectively those targeted. For most nonprofits, I’ll wager that less than half your current supporters have visited your website, that less than 10% of your current donors have contributed online, that less than 5% of prospects visiting to your website are “captured” by any means of registration or conversion. And a miniscule number have posted MySpace or Wikipedia entries or YouTube videos. This is not to be critical. Rather, it’s to underscore the strategic and tactical challenges presented by the online medium. Nonprofits are just starting to get good at the basics of marketing in this medium.
Yes, I agree completely.
Comments
Hi Katya,
At the non-profit AIDG, we use ALOT of the social networking tools. Here is what they have done for us.
Blog: establishes us as a expert in our field, great for networking/recruiting volunteers and supporters, great for research. Blogging has helped bring us media coverage. While blogging/reading other people’s blogs, we made relationships with writers/journalists interested in our type of work. It can really help you keep up to date with what is happening in your area of expertise. Blogging has also really upped our google rankings, so people interested in appropriate technology can find us far more easily. I think this has been the single most useful web2.0 thing that we have done.
Flickr: same as the above. Flickr also makes it easier for other bloggers/writers/supporters/donors to check our what we do visually. Flickr groups are also great for networking with other organizations/enthusiasts if you have the time to devote to it. Saves us bandwidth /server space on our site. Saves us from having to create our gallery.
Facebook: A GREAT way to keep in touch with previous interns and volunteers, as well as find new ones. Useful for rallying people for easy action alerts.
Delicious: useful for keeping all the resources we think are useful in one place. Also allows us to share them with other people so that they can benefit. Further establishes us as an expert in the field. It also makes it easier for people to find us once they have id’ed us as a group of interest. It also gives us an idea of our appeal to people by the number of bookmarks we have.
Youtube: we haven’t posted much on there yet, however there have been a lot of appropriate technology/environment specific videos posted by other people that we share with our readers/supporters/friends.
Myspace: I’m not so sure how useful it is. Good for google rankings I reckon. We haven’t spent as much time on it after we set up our account as the ROI wasn’t obvious enough.
Squidoo: Haven’t had enough time to been the site current, but rather useful.
Twitter: Just signed up. Not sure how it will pan out. Might be good for live blogging events.
Mybloglog: great for seeing what people read on your blog in realtime. Also good for making contacts with other bloggers whose work you are interested in.
Overall, the social networking tools are exceptionally good for grassroots community building. Also good for pull rather than push marketing. We’re creating value not only for the communities that we serve but also for our donors/supporters/people just interested in learning more.
It is true that we’re only getting at a subset of the population, but the content that we generate is used for our offline activities as well.
Cat Laine
Communications Director
AIDG
http://www.aidg.org
All networking tools which I download does not work. It is needed to hope only on the knowledges. am I right?
Thanks for that great comment Cat - very useful for nonprofit readers!
Thanks, Katya. Oh and another non-profit that uses web 2.0 tools REALLY well is Kiva ( http://www.kiva.org/ ). We’ve looked to them for a lot of inspiration. They’re team is good.
I could not agree more about Kiva, and have often highlighted them on this blog. They are not only good with web 2.0, they have a terrific grounding in gold-standard marketing principles.
Katya, thanks for the nice post. Appreciate the plug and also the great comment by Cat. This is undoubtedly going to be an ongoing conversation and lots of experimentation. We live in interesting times! Looking forward to seeing you in DC, Katya!
Katrin, NTEN
This is a great resource, but I notticed that you didn’t mention digg.com.
If you have an interesting story or angle its going to be a great way to get 20,000 visitors in a day!
I’m actually starting a promotion campaign based on social networking sites with a focus on digg.
Digg’s a hard system. In a way you can think of it as a newspaper whose readership are largely interested in tech, really cool photography/crazy pictures, humorous stories, and sometimes politics.
I follow the top diggs with google reader looking for interesting environmental stories for our blog. They do have a few non-profit/social justice stories that hit the front page every week. WWF did around World Water Day with the title “1 billion people in the world live without water”. Another title compared how many children you could feed for the cost of a single day in the war on Iraq. The non tech stories tend to have bold titles that catch your attention. They seem to have to do compete.
Post or articles that are lists work really well. Ex: Top 50 Things To Do To Stop Global Warming. How-tos are also really popular. Again a grabbing headline is key. There are times where users will digg stories based on the headline and the summary alone without heading to the original post.
This is a great resource, but I notticed that you didn’t mention digg.com.
If you have an interesting story or angle its going to be a great way to get 20,000 visitors in a day!