How to set up on Facebook
Wild Apricot Blog not only has an excellent beginner’s guide to Facebook for non-profits:
This powerful networking service is not just for individuals like me to keep in touch with friends. It’s a very effective networking tool for nonprofits to create awareness and connect with their community. In this post, I’ll take you through a beginner’s guide to get your non-profit on Facebook and ways to effectively use this tool. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of features, but it may help get you started.
but also useful information on How to Set Up a Non-Profit Facebook Page:
How do you tell Facebook that you want to make a Page for a nonprofit organization, not for a commercial business?
If you’re even thinking about Facebook — and you should be at least thinking about it — visit for clear, helpful instructions.
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June 21, 2008 No Comments
Social networks beat email
According to Hitwise New Zealand users prefer social networks as a channel for communication:
Bebo continues to be the market leader in the Social Networking & Forums online industry with 16.87% share of visits for the week ending 5 January 2008. Facebook followed closely at second position with 14.2% share of visits.
Brand recognition of Bebo is extremely strong amongst New Zealand Internet users; ‘bebo’ was the top term out of 9,343,431 unique searches measured for the 24 weeks ending 5 January 2008, ahead of ‘trademe’ and ‘youtube’. ‘Bebo’ was the leading search term for most of 2007.
…Social Networking & Forums significantly outranked web-based Email services with 4.98% share, suggesting that users prefer social networks as a channel for communication.
[Source : Hitwise NZ Social Networking Update - Bebo leading social network and brand online.]
[Thanks to The Evolving Newsroom: Bebo still rules the roost in NZ for the link and lead.]
Which suggests that community organisations should consider adding one or more social networks — probably Bebo and Facebook — to their communication strategies. Email may not be enough any longer.
March 1, 2008 No Comments
Non-profits and social networking
Priscilla Brice-Weller asks:
I can’t quite believe I have to ask the question, but there it is: “Should non-profits get involved in social networking?”
… Having used MySpace as an advocacy tool for a year for ANTaR, I’ve decided to stick with it for now. The relationships we’re building are worth the time I spend on MySpace. As for Facebook, we’ve been on there for about six months and I’m a bit disappointed with the results, but we’ll continue with our investment because I feel that it is too soon to tell whether it’s going to be worthwhile in the long term.
[Via Solidariti: Should non-profits get involved in social networking?.]
January 12, 2008 No Comments
Social networks are about people, not ideas
Katya Andresen reminds us in Four fundamental laws of social networking that social networks aren’t about causes, ideas, or some vague notion of bringing people together. Instead they are about allowing and helping people to find others with whom they share something:
Don’t build to a concept, build to people. People don’t look for a social network to join – they look for people like them. Networking technology is about NETWORKING – being amidst people like us – more than it’s about the tools or technology. So don’t build a network because you think you have a great concept – build a network because you have a real group of people that wants to spend time together, connecting.
…I’ll leave Ben with the last word, and it’s a good one: “Donors want a better giving experience, and social networking technology, properly used, can significantly improve this experience by making it more personal, by giving people a sense that they are a member of a community and not just a cash machine, and by enabling people to dramatically magnify their impact. …”
[Via Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog: Four fundamental laws of social networking.]
December 20, 2007 2 Comments
Niche Social Networks
Many community groups already know they need to set up places where their ‘clients’ can share experiences with others who really understand. But sometimes they don’t so much need to set up venues as to locate existing possibilities and establish a presence or provide the links.
ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick has an article about niche social networks, triggered by the appearance of SoberCircle. He begins his article, The Nearly Never Ending Market for Niche Social Networks, with a nice, clear explanation:
What is a social network? Typically, it’s just a website that offers users a profile page, the ability to publish to the web, to add other users as friends and to send user-to-user messages, or sitemail. That’s simple but powerful stuff;
Then he goes on to make several points, including this fundamental observation:
People will share information with groups of people they know they can relate to that they never would share in a general public forum. We all seek empathy and many of us have life experiences that cannot be meaningfully discussed outside of a context of shared understanding and a base of common experience. People in recovery from substance abuse is one such huge market, people with communicable diseases another, the insanely wealthy yet another - and the list goes on.
November 20, 2007 No Comments
