Four things for 4th of July

Since it’s the 4th of July tomorrow, here are four things that are trending in social media right now.

1) Instagram video. Earlier this summer Instagram released it’s video component to compete with Twitter’s Vine. Some say it hit Vine hard. Others say, not so fast. In my opinion I like the filters you can use on Instragram but the 15 seconds seems too long compared to Vine’s 6 seconds. Chalk it up to another Facebook imitating what is popular elsewhere instead of creating their own new innovation. can you say #hashtags?

2) Countries again want to block social media because of the political unrest they cause. Countries like Turkey have tightened their control and want offices for the social media giants to be located in their own country so staff may be summoned to government offices when needed. When you have countries insisting on offices and blocking posts you have a very powerful tool at your hands. Use it wisely.

3) You must use Social Media to replace the RRS Feeds that Google and others have dropped. RSS Feeds were a great tool to aggregate news from many sites into one place and you could make it your own. Now you have to use a Web 3.0 social version of it. If someone likes a link and shares it all you have to do is refresh your social media feed. Since Google and others have decided that RSS feeds are no longer necessary, boo hiss, you can use social media in its stead.

4) Here are some APPs picked for you for the 4th of July. From Grilling guides, to beaches and fireworks. Ejnoy!

The 140 Best Twitter Feeds

Time.com just came out with their “Best 140 twitter Feeds for 2013.” However, none are disability-related. Since they won’t do it, I think I will come up with a list of the “Best 140 Twitter Disability-Related Feeds for 2013” but I first want your input.

If you have a favorite Twitter disability-related feed and think others should be following it, too, please share it in the comments section. Please do so by the end of the day 4/15/13. I will compile and categorize the nominations and will share the list in a future NCE Social Media blog post.

Please note, that I reserve the right to exclude some or all of the Twitter feeds nominated due to appropriateness or space limitations.

5 Things for Wednesday

1) Twitter has started to email account users when someone retweets your tweets. Assuming you check your email often or get prompted when you get a new email, it makes it a little easier to know when someone has retweeted your work.

2) Twitter is buying Tweetdeck. If you use Tweetdeck already, you shouldn’t notice much change.

3) Who has rights to photos you post on social media? A woman posted a photo of the latest shuttle launch on a social media site. News agencies picked it up and used it but few asked permission. This has opened up the debate of who owns the photos, videos, and anything else you post to social media. You should read the privacy and permissions policies for each social media tool/platform/product you use to know.

4) Hashtags continue to be important in social media. I’ve discussed them in the past. Here’s a list of 30 hashtags you may want to follow that are specific to nonprofits.

5) People often ask me what is the future of social media? Is it a semantic web? Is it mashing up current tools? Is it a new and easy way to measure social media? Yes, Yes and Yes. What are your thoughts on the future of social media in the near and distant future?

Why We Need Social Advocates

Ryan Kuder wrote a post on ZDNet explaining why small businesses need social advocates. You know what, nonprofits need them too. In fact, we need as many as we can get!

If a tree falls in the woods but no one is around to hear it does it make a sound? Well that’s the same with social media. If you post something on social media but no one hears or shares it is your message being heard? Without advocates our messages would not be viral. Think about it.

How are your advocates talking about you and sharing your information socially?

Greatnonprofits.org

Have you visited Greatnonprofits yet? It is a web site that allows visitors to rate your agency and post reviews and comments about it. It also allows you to use a pre-formatted box to link to their site so people can review your agency.

Greatnonprofits has partnered with Guidestar to post the reviews from your Greatnonprofits listing to your organization’s Guidestar listing. Here’s a link explaining it in greater detail.

If you haven’t already addressed the need to address what people say about your agency online, this news release might be a little scary.

What things do you need to do to get ahead of the curve on this trend, ie people leaving reviews and comments on public sites that can. Do you need to contact your donors or people you serve? What about others who might not have nice things to say?

Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Change.org’s premium service is now free for all nonprofits!

This is an email I got today that I wanted to share with our readers. Please visit the Change.org link listed below for more information. If you already use this service, please let us know.

Hello Nonprofit Admins,

Good news! The $20 monthly fee for our premium service is no more. Now all nonprofits on Change.org have the premium service toolset added to their Admin Dashboards. In addition to all the tools that came with the basic service, all nonprofits can now:

1) Create Actions, including email petitions that can empower and expand your base of supporters

2) Message all your supporters

3) Send supporter requests to recruit new members

4) Link to your profiles on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

That’s just a small sampling of what your organization can now do on Change.org with the premium toolset. For a complete list and background on the enhancements, please see:

http://is.gd/vqbS

We also have a new feature for nonprofits on Change.org that is synched with Twitter and allows admins to ask the rapidly growing Change.org community for help with a specific need in 140 characters or less. These “Asks” can range from requests for volunteers to calls for immediate online action and will soon show up in numerous feeds throughout Change.org.

To view a feed of most recent “Asks” from all nonprofits on Change.org, go to: http://www.change.org/nonprofits. To post your own asks, simply go to your nonprofit homepage and make sure you’re logged in.

As a reminder, I give free Webinars every Wednesday that explain in detail the new toolset and how to fully maximize your organization’s presence on Change.org. If you know how to use the site and the tools correctly, your organization could have hundreds if not thousands of new supporters in just a few months – something we regularly see with organizations that engage the Change.org community. The Webinar schedule is listed on the right here: http://nonprofits.change.org

Finally, you may have noticed that a number of organizations such as Amnesty International http://www.change.org/amnestyusa have branded headers for their profiles. If you want to have your branding appear on your nonprofit’s header, just email us the design you’d like to use and we’ll upload it. The dimensions must be 939 pixels in width and no more that 150 pixels in height.

As always, I am here to help and hope to hear from you or see you on the site soon!

THANKS so much,

Heather

—
Heather Mansfield
Nonprofit Community Manager, Change.org
http://nonprofits.change.org

Facebook Follies

Yesterday I stumbled across a group page on Facebook for my agency’s camping and recreation program. Our agency didn’t set up this group and we don’t administer it. A former camp counselor set it up as a way to reconnect with other former and current camp counselors from our camping program. They have our current camping program schedule posted to the site.

I want to reach out to the person who set up this group. I don’t want to take over the reins of this group but I want to make sure they continue to stay connected to our agency. By creating a group on a social media platform like Facebook, they have demonstrated that they have a strong link to our agency that continues even after they are no longer a summer counselor. This is someone who can be a donor, a volunteer. Whether or not they know it, they are acting as an evangelist for our programs.

Allowing someone else to write about you is something we will have to face now thanks to social media. This is a difficult situation for most, ie realizing that we can’t control what is written about us. And…we don’t have much of a choice in it. Unless they are violating a law or terms of their current/former contract this isn’t much we can do.

What are your agencies’ experiences with allowing others on social media platforms to create pages, blog posts, etc. that describe relate to your work?

Why Social Media Fails and 5 Steps to Avoid Failure

Search Engine Watch has a post on their website today explaining why many companies fail at their on line efforts to reach out to their customers. We can easily adapt the message to nonprofits who rely on the internet as an inexpensive form of engagement and advertising.

Here are the 5 main reasons why social media efforts often fail as identified by Liana Evans, and my comments for nonprofits on the five categories she identified.

1. Identify Your Audience – many nonprofit agencies forget to think about their target audience. This is a basic marketing concept that often gets left behind after the launch.

2. Define Your Success Measurements – just like any funder wants now, you need to know how will you measure your outcomes. Is it the number of people who visit your site, the number who buy your product online, or anything else?

3. Plan a Strategy that Includes All Stakeholders – Be the nonprofit with the plan. Is social media built into your strategic plan yet? Without a plan you are just shooting from the hip and are destined to fail.

4. Be Transparent – Let people know who you are and what you are about. Tell them about your board, staff, history, programs, successes, etc.

5. Recognize that It’s Not About You – Social media is more than just a place to post your shingle on the world wide web. It’s a place to give people a voice in the work that you do. You may not like what they have to say about you, but then again, you can see what needs to be fixed, updated or attended to with a greater priority than you might have previously thought.

What are some of the failures you might have had with social media? Did you start using it and stop suddenly? Did you get negative feedback? How have you embraced any failures? Please share in the comments section.

Arc Hamilton Blog

The Arc – Hamilton County (Cincinnati) has a new blog using Typepad.

Please visit it as they embark on their social media endeavor.

The Benefits of the Cloud

Holly Ross, Executive Director of NTEN, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting technology use by nonprofit organizations recently made a presentation at an event hosted by Google, Facebook, and the Salesforce.com Foundation. The presentation focused on using the cloud for nonprofit technology needs. While the cloud poses interesting prospects for us, it is the near future of computing as computer memory continues to get cheaper and more memory can be stored in smaller spaces.

This leads me to ask are you currently using the cloud, and if so how?

Please view the presentation here:

The Benefits of the Cloud for Nonprofits

View more presentations from nten_hross.