Social Media Reading - 081409

Tips and Tricks

• 5 Fun and Fabulous Twitter Tools for Nonprofit Organizations and Activists - Highlights 5 Twitter tools nonprofits can use to gain more visibility for their organization and incorporate other functions - like video - into their twitter stream

What Else I'm Reading

• The Facebook Road Trip
• Whites Only Non-Profit Leadership - Criticism of a Non-Profit Times report that listed the top 50 non-profit leaders. 8 on the list were "non-white". 
• Help Us Pick the HuffPost Game Changers: 100 People Who Are Using New Media to Change the World

Social Media Reading - 081109

Tips and Tricks

• How Non-profits can use the improved Facebook search
• Twuner: Listen to Tweets on your iPhone

Webinars and Conferences

• $10 Philanthropy - Change for Change - Commonwealth Club SF Club Office - 08/12/09 - $10

What Else I'm Reading

• Google Shifts Ads (To the Left) - Ads have been moved over to the left and are not just running along the right hand border 
• Why a Social Media Career Might Not be As Great As You Think
• Facebook: No Sponsored Status Updates

Social Media Reading - 070809

• Nonprofit Blogging: Goals, Strategy and Tactics to Crush It - Really great ideas from Frank Barry on non-profit blogging. Comments are a must read. Too many NPs and businesses jump into the strategy and the tactics without doing the goals and planning before starting a blog. 
• Great post by Kivi from back in October, 2008: What Type of Blog Should Your Non-Profit Write?
• Should Kiva have expanded loan coverage to US entrepreneurs? 
• KivaFriends discussion
• Chronicle of Philanthropy: Adding U.S. Entrepreneurs Proves Controversial
• Microfinance in the U.S.: Kiva Enters the Market at its Own Risk
• How I Raised $30K in 30 Days - Great ideas for a successful online fundraiser. 

Webinars and Conferences

• Introduction to Social Media & Fundraising - 7/9/09 10 am PST - Free - Webinar
• What's Fascinating About Market Researchers - 7/21/09 10 am PST - Free - Webinar
• July / August Ruby Workshop - 7/31-8/1 - San Francisco 
• Ruby Jumpstart (women only) - 8/1-8/2 - Washington, DC

Twestival Planning: 

• Seattle - Tweetup - 7/13/09 

Social Media Reading - 070209

• 1 image, the new resume - A very cool graphical representation of a resume
• 5 Tools NonProfits Can use Today to Enhance Their Online Presence and Efficiency - David Neff (he works for the American Cancer Society) talks about his 5 top online tools for non-profits
• Got a Minute? Set Some Government Data Free With Transparency Corps
• National Conference on Volunteering and Service: Report and Videos!
• Facebook's Complete Privacy Presentation - Rolled out to initial 40k users, than 80k, then rollout to rest of the Facebook userbase
  
• Twitter Following Interface Changes - I love the ability to see the last tweet from the user. It's a great way to see if they are a spammer. Would like even more features.
  

Conferences and Webinars

• Content Creation Strategies: Making the Most of Your Writing, Photos and More - 7/23/09 - Free - Webinar
  

What Else I'm Reading

• Twitter Promotion Done Right: #moonfruit
• Facebook's Twitter-Like Transition Begins With New Privacy Options
• The Joost Story: Sometimes, Good Projects Also Fail - Mashable talks about what caused online video sharing site Joost to fail
  

Obama announces $50 million fund to help non-profits

President Obama gave a press conference on 6/30/09 to announce a $50 million fund to help non-profits expand social projects.

• C-Span Video of Press Conference
• Transcript of Press Conference
  
• Chronicle of Philanthropy: President Obama Seeks the 'Most-Promising Non-Profits in America'
• Chronicle of Philanthropy: White House to Spotlight Innovative Non-Profit Groups
• Huffington Post: The White House Office on Social Innovation: A New Paradigm for Solving Social Problems
• Politics Magazine: Moving America Forward - The combination of politics, policy and press
• Skoll Foundation: Sally Osberg Writes on the White House Social Innovation Event
• Tactical Philanthropy: The Innovation Fund & The Serve America Act
  
• Chronicle of Philanthropy: House Panel Proposes Cutting President's Budget for National Service and Social Innovation
• Chronicle of Philanthropy: White House Gives Some Details on Social Innovation Fund

Social Media Reading - 062809 Part Two

• Ruminations on the Future of Newspapers - The newspaper model (as we know it) is dead. But, that does not mean that journalism is dead.
  
• How Broadway Talks to its Audiences Using Social Media - Both with use of established social networks (Twitter, etc.) and home-grown social networks (based on the Ning platform), Broadway is using social media to evangelize the show and also keep the product fresh.
• Businesses use Twitter to communicate with customers - Article mentons how several name brands are using Twitter to make sales and improve customer service. Includes mentions of Jet Blue (@jetblue), Dell Outlet (@delloutlet), Comcast (@comcastcares) and Starbucks.
  

People to Follow

• @kanter - She's using guest bloggers right now as she moves cross country, but if you're looking for someone to follow that knows about social media for non-profits, Beth is it.
  
• The Top 100 Tweeps to Follow

Tips and Tricks

• Introducting act.ly - Petitions Designed for Twitter - A Twitter application that makes it easy for you to sign petitions and share those petitions with the people that follow you on Twitter. The only question I have about it is how are those petition shared with the people that matter? Is it up to the person that created the petition?
  

Webinars and Conferences

• MarketingProfs - Digital Marketing Mixer 2009 - October 21-22
  

What Else I'm Reading

• Almost Half Of Britons Have Lied About Giving
• 4 Tips to Keep Your Recurring Gifts Recurring - If you already have a well-established recurring fit program but are having problems with dropped gifts, this is a great read to help out on those gifts.
  

Cone Nonprofit Power Brand 100

Cone and Intangible Business released The Cone Nonprofit Power Brand 100 ranking the top 100 nonprofit brands. The base of the ranking was done by a telephone survey of 1,000 people. Along with the survey, the other things that determined the ranking were budgets, potential for future growth, number of volunteers, amount of news media they receive.

The Top 5:

1. YMCA of the USA
2. The Salvation Army
   
3. United Way of America
   
4. American Red Cross
   
5. Goodwill Industries International
   

When it came down to Brand Image, the top 5 were:

1. American Cancer Society
   
2. The Salvation Army
   
3. United Way of america
4. Habitat for Humanity International
   
5. American Red Cross
   

Press:

• Cone Blog: Cone Releases the Nonprofit Power Brand 100
  
• Press Release from John Haydon's blog: New Report Values America's 100 Leading Nonprofit Brands
• Chronicle of Philanthropy: YMCA Leads List of 100 Charities with Strongest Brands
• Marketing Daily: YMCA, Salvation Army Dominate Nonprofit Brands
  
• NY Times: An Analysis Ranks Brands of Non-Profits
• PR Week: YMCA tops Cone nonprofit brands
• TriplePundit discusses the report
  

Social Media Reading - 061409 - Part Two

• Maintaining Online Volunteers
  - Lindsey sums it up with "Keep them updated, Share their successes, and Say thank you!"
• Finding and Engaging Volunteers Through Social Media
  - Back this spring, when we were recruiting volunteers for our big event, I did almost entirely online: Facebook, Craigslist and VolunteerMatch. Craigslist brought us in some really key adult volunteers and VolunteerMatch is being used a lot by high school kids trying to fill their service hours
• Facebook traffic nears Google, Yahoo
  - Joe Trippi analyzes the numbers that shows that Facebook traffic is nearing Google and Yahoo. In May 2009, Facebook had 113 million views. Google and Yahoo have about 140 million views per month.
• 5 Email Sins to Avoid
  - This is a *fantastic* primer for anyone starting an email blast / email newsletter program or looking to figure out what might be going right or wrong with their program.
• 2008 IT Staffing & Spending Report from NTEN
  

Tips and Tricks:

• Managing Multiple Twitter Accounts for Your Non-Profit
  - Most of us that twitter and work in non-profit usually have a personal twitter account and then one or more twitter accounts for our non-profits that we also manage. Most of the tools don't allow you to manage more than one twitter account. Also, finding a web-based twitter tool can be difficult. Beth Kanter analyzes two tools - HootSuite and CoTweet. I personally use HootSuite at work.
• 27 Things to Do Before a Conference
  - I like his ideas about researching the conference, other attendees, speakers, etc. If you have a plan of action before even reaching the event, you can get a lot more accomplished.
• The ROI of Social Media
  - If you have a meeting trying to explain the ROI of social media, this Care2 FrogLoop entry is a must read.
  

Interesting Links:

• Suitcases for Kids
  - A project to get 14,000 suitcases donated by 2010 in order to give every child in foster care in Massachusetts a suitcase so that they don't have to use a plastic garbage bag to move their stuff
• BooneOakley Web Site
  - This is an advertising agency that created an entire web site out of YouTube videos. It's awesome. Very irreverant, but great.