24,000 ‘friends’ in 18 months, that’s what Oxfam America gained when they participated in MySpace, the social networking site. And each of those ‘friends’ is an ally, a potential volunteer, someone who will help promote the work of the orgnaisation.

Over on Wild Apricot Blog is an extremely interesting interview with Tim Fullerton of Oxfam America about How to use MySpace to drive new activists and donors. You really should read the whole thing (it’s only about 1500 words), but here are a few items that caught my eye (I had a hard time not just quoting the entire article):

• MySpace has been a low-cost and effective way to bring our message to a broader audience.
• We decided we needed to reach out to people where they were, rather than waiting for people to come to us. MySpace was the first social networking site we used, as it was the biggest and most talked about.
• We’ve recruited over 1600 activists from MySpace alone.
• We’ve found people love to show their support for Oxfam by hosting our banners, reposting our bulletins and adding us as a top friend. This has been a great way to get our name out there.
• The biggest part of maintaining a MySpace page is to update it. If people feel they will find something new on the page, they will keep coming back, read your blogs and read your bulletins. This is critical if you want your friends forwarding your messages onto their friends. It is also important to promote your site to your constituents.
• Our MySpace page has been very effective generating new activists and introducing the organization to a whole new group of people.
• Any time you have engaging content, it’s important to make it as visible as possible. Social networking sites make that easier.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Share this post

Hide Sites