Yep, social media (or Web 2.0) is everywhere these days, but it is not easy to get your arms around. For those of us not born to the Internet, here are some resources that help explain social media and suggest ways nonprofits can use it.
Beth Kanter is a consultant who works with nonprofits to help them understand and use social media. Her blog tracks many of her own experiments using social media to raise awareness and money for causes she champions.
NTEN is the Nonprofit Technology Network. It is stuffed with great info specifically for the nonprofit world. It does cost to belong but it is well worth it. NTEN has many conferences and online seminars with the best social media minds in the business.
For the intellectuals out there who want to understand the philosophical as well as technical underpinnings of social media, there is Jim McGee's "A dozen papers you should read in the world of Enterprise 2.0." Among my favorites are "The Cluetrain Manifesto" and "The Long Tail." Plan a weekend for browsing this challenging material.
This is a study from the U of Mass at Dartmouth about how nonprofits are working with social media. Some exciting stats from the study include that seventy-five percent of the nonprofits studied are using some form of social media including blogs, podcasts, message boards, social networking, video blogging and wikis. More than a third of the organizations are blogging and forty-six percent report social media are very important to their fundraising strategy.
Godin produced this
"cheat" sheet about six things a nonprofit can do today to take full advantage of social media.
In 2006, the Pew Internet Project produced a report,
"Riding the Waves of Web 2.0." The report is a good overview of social media and its history. It also cuts through the hype surrounding social media and shows how Web 2.0 is not a brand new creature but is built on ground we already know well.
This is a free ebook by John Haydon that is specifically for nonprofits. It's a great place to start if you're ready to jump into Twitter. Twitter can be confusing to the novice so reading the basics first will really help.
