Social Media

July 13, 2009, Hartford Business Journal — At the NBA draft in Madison Square Garden on June 25, Mike Soltys grasped his Blackberry and typed in live updates to his Twitter account, espnmikes.

Washington, July 6, 2009, The Christian Science Monitor — The video gave substance to what seemed so far away. We saw the look in her eyes as they went lifeless. We heard the sounds of her friends and family as they begged her to hold on. And she became the personification of the struggle for democracy in a country where voices for freedom are quelled.

Palo Alto, California, June 29, 2009 —   The nation’s largest nonprofit organizations have outpaced corporations and academic institutions in their adoption of social media, for the second year in a row, according to a new research study, “Still Setting the Pace in Social Media: The First Longitudinal Study of Usage by the Largest US Charities.” The study was conducted by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Senior Fellow and Research Chair of the Society for New Communications Research and Chancellor Professor of Marketing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Eric Mattson, CEO of Financial Insite Inc., a Seattle-based research firm.

Orlando, FL, July 6, 2009 — More than 1,500 charities are vying for a chance to win CommuniCause, a nationwide online contest that awards one winner a social media makeover.  Launched earlier this year by Orlando-based interactive agency Mindcomet, the CommuniCause campaign gives Americans the opportunity to vote online and rally support for their favorite 501c3 non-profit organizations.  The winning organization receives $25,000 in consulting services from MindComet to help improve its social media presence and fundraising outreach efforts.  The campaign concludes on July 31st.

July 5, 2009, The Washington Post — Twitter has been hailed as an incredibly useful marketing tool for businesses and brands, both big and small, to disseminate information and engage with consumers on a massive scale. But what about non-profits? The ability to use social media to fundraise for charitable purposes has been questionable. A few months ago, the Washington Post reported that Causes, one of Facebook's popular applications used by non-profits to raise money, was not netting much money for charities, despite its large amount of users (according to the application's page, it has 26 million monthly users).

June 16, 2009, HarvardBusiness.org — Online community and social media are hot areas for business these days, as companies recognize the Internet's potential to deepen customer relationships, share knowledge and strengthen teams. In the nonprofit sector, relationships have always been the key currency: the relationships with the members, donors and supporters that NGOs depend on for volunteer labor, financial support and advocacy muscle.

The fundraising landscape is always changing and forcing nonprofits to work even harder to keep up with what’s hot in the market. Keeping track of new trends can be a full-time job in its own right, and knowing how to change development plans can be a daunting task. Achieving success in this ever-changing landscape can seem impossible, but it’s not.

Profiles, tweets, widgets, avatars, oh my! Social networking has created a wild new world. Given that newness, it’s easy for organizations to get caught up in the notion that they need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to engaging with constituents.

Margelina, my long-lost Second Life avatar, has a friend! Her name is TinaLouise Serendipity. I created her because I couldn’t remember Margelina’s password. So they’re more like stepsisters and, actually, they have yet to meet.

There’s a lot of debate in the blogosphere and elsewhere these days regarding the efficacy of different fundraising and marketing channels. It goes something like this: “Is direct mail dying?” “Will social media kill e-mail?” “Will mobile rule the marketing roost?” “Should I tweet … or blog?”