exploring cutting edge social mediapage 3 exploring cutting edge social media • may 2013...

May 2013

Exploring Cutting EdgE SoCial MEdia

Exploring Cutting Edge Social Media • May 2013

Introduction................................................................................................................................................................ 3

Should.You.Consider.Cutting.Edge.Social.Media?.............................................................................................4

Defining.Your.Goals.and.Target.Audience........................................................................................................... 6

How.Should.You.Choose.Tools?.............................................................................................................................8

How.Do.You.Determine.a.Site’s.Longevity?........................................................................................................ 9

Exploring.Specific.Tools........................................................................................................................................... 11

Social.Media.to.Engage.Youth.......................................................................................................................... 11

Geolocation.and.Mobile.Applications............................................................................................................14

Improving.Traffic.and.Content.for.Online.Communications.....................................................................16

Connecting.Locally.............................................................................................................................................18

Connecting.Internationally...............................................................................................................................19

Nonprofit.Specific.Social.Media.....................................................................................................................20

Sharing.Multimedia............................................................................................................................................21

Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................................24

About.Idealware.......................................................................................................................................................25

About.the.Authors...................................................................................................................................................25

tablE of ContEntS


introduCtion

New social media startups are appearing all the time, and the lines that distinguish existing tools blur more each day. Facebook is still the dominant channel, but even there, usage is on the decline. Is your organization’s social media presence still cutting it?

Even if the increasing diversification of the social media landscape has piqued your interest in some of the more cutting edge tools on the market, why would you consider investing time and effort establishing an organizational presence on a newer product? A hidden strength of these newer tools is their specificity and their collectively smaller user bases. Many believe that a larger user base nets stronger results for your organization’s efforts, but the opposite can also be true.

Your constituents receive constant updates via Facebook and Twitter, where they’re mixed in with countless other updates from the rest of your users’ networks, and even your most loyal fans can miss an important post from your organization. With smaller social networks, such important messages as calls to action or requests for volunteers are likely to stand out.

Additionally, many of these tools allow users to customize more specific content feeds and are tailored to particular demographics or areas of interest. For example, Sulia lets users follow the online conversa-tion about topics of particular interest to them, like fundraising, green energy, or nonprofit organizations. Similarly, hashtags—a means of tagging content into a searchable group popularized on Twitter—can be used

with a number of lesser-known social media tools, such as Instagram, Tumblr, and Google+, to reach users who are already searching for related topics.

Tools like these can help you reach a smaller-but-more-engaged user base. Traditional outreach methods like a strong website and email marketing approach remain critical to nonprofits’ communication strategies, but integrating cutting edge social media platforms into your communications mix might allow your organiza-tion to keep a presence on tools that are still widely used while offering select constituents a more intimate, engaged experience.

With smaller social networks, such important messages as calls to action or request for volunteers are likely to stand out.


The big name tools in social media try to cater to everyone and everything, but many social networks are populated by more specialized demographics, or offer features that make them compelling to certain organiza-tions. Interested in going beyond Facebook and Twitter? There are a number of great tools you can consider, but before diving in, your organization should first set specific goals for this new communications strategy, identify the factors that make you want to look at these tools, and assess whether your organization has the time and resources to devote to the enterprise.

Social media isn’t a task to relegate to a volunteer or intern—it’s a critical part of an organization’s commu-nications mix, so allocating a substantial amount of staff time to it is recommended if your organization seeks to implement cutting edge tools in a strategic way. That’s beyond the reach of most nonprofits, so start small. Fully investing in one to three social media tools will foster a better relationship with your virtual support-ers than if your organization spreads its efforts across multiple channels that are infrequently updated.

If your organization doesn’t have the resources to fully invest in a new social media venture, the consequences can be negative. Say a Pinterest-loving potential donor checks her mobile app to see if you have a presence—if she finds your page but finds it infrequently updated and lacking in unique content, it might paint a more negative picture of your organization than if you had no presence at all. And if users try to communicate with you using a channel you’ve abandoned and get no response for their efforts, it can leave a bad impression.

Cutting edge social media is suited for reaching smaller market segments and for specific uses, like sharing different kinds of multimedia or finding relevant new content for your website and other social media efforts. While your constituents probably expect you to have a Facebook page, and may even seek it out to find basic information, they may not be surprised to learn you’re not on Blasterous, for example.

If your organization can afford the staff time to check and update these resources regularly, it might be worth-while to explore more specific kinds of social media platforms. There are a number of reasons your organiza-tion might consider this, including the following:

• To Reach a Narrow Sector. If you are trying to reach a very specific audience, social networks can help. Facebook started as an extremely narrow social network—just Harvard students—but has grown to such a wide user base that it can be difficult to nar-row down. If you are looking for more engagement from a very specific community, such as users in your geographic area, looking at smaller, more focused social networks can be a great method.

• To Share Specific Content. The content you’re sharing will help determine the tools you consider. If your organization shares a great deal of photos and videos, a social media service specializing in those formats may be more appealing than tools that favor articles, links, and infographics.

Should You ConSidEr Cutting EdgE SoCial MEdia?

Cutting edge social media is suited for reaching smaller market segments and for specific uses, like sharing different kinds of multimedia.


of your strategic plan to remain innovative and up-to-date on the latest in technology, cutting edge social media might add value to your communications mix. If this doesn’t sound like your organization, these tools may not be an appropriate allocation of resources—at least, not for now.

Your social media team should be genuinely excited about trying these new tools. If the staffer handling your social media rolls her eyes at every new social media tool that starts gaining traction, it might cause a cultural divide between your organization and the early adopters of that service. Social media is supposed to be fun—you don’t want to risk putting boring or inappropriate content into the world just for the sake of having a presence on a new tool.

• Because it’s Mission Related. If your organization has a physical location that encourages visitors, or has lots of events, you may also consider location-based and mobile-heavy social media outlets for users on the go. If you work with many constituents in other countries, it may be worthwhile to look at social media outlets that are popular there. For example, Facebook is currently banned in China, but there are several social network sites with millions of users in China and very few outside of the country. In another example, Orkut is wildly popular in Brazil and India, but is little known elsewhere.

Since cutting edge social media is inherently experimen-tal, whether or not you decide to adopt it will depend at least partially on your organization’s culture. If it’s part


Once you decide that experimenting with cutting edge social media is right for you, it’s time to set some goals. Try to devote a single goal to each new tool—you’ll find more success that way than if you try to shoehorn a number of unrelated goals into one presence. (We’ll get to which goals might work for which tools a bit later.)

How do you set reasonable goals? Start with the SMART acronym: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based. Let’s look at these one at a time:

SpecificMerely having a presence in cutting edge social media is not a strong end goal. Your organization will get more focused and demonstrable results if you first define exactly what you’re hoping to accomplish. Say you’re setting goals for your organization’s Pinterest ac-count—strong goals might include getting more views on specific campaign-focused photos, getting more links back to your website, and connecting with more female volunteers in urban areas. Whatever goals you set, be specific—doing so will also help you make them more measurable.

MeasurableTracking results in real time can help your staff manage a diversified social media presence. Reporting on your successes with social media can also be a great way to sell board members on the value of social media, espe-cially when it helps you to better meet your mission. Measurement will also help you decide if it is worth continuing to pursue these new cutting-edge tools.

A variety of third party services can provide statistics about your organization’s Facebook, blog, and Twitter presence, but cutting edge social media tools often aren’t as helpful with providing measurement data. As some of these tools become more popular, especially in the corporate world, new tools for measurement are emerg-

ing. Pinterest is a relatively new tool, but it’s been useful in ways businesses find very appealing, such as driving more traffic to websites and selling products—tools like Reachli and PinReach have been developed in response to Pinterest’s enormous success as a marketing tool, and Pinterest recently developed its own built-in analytics tool akin to Facebook Insights.

Whatever measurements you choose, make sure they match your goals. For more information on how to track your social media efforts, refer to the Idealware articles “Measuring Your Social Media Success” (http://www.idealware.org/articles/measuring-your-social-media-success) and “A Few Good Tools for Measuring and Monitoring Social Media” (http://www.idealware.org/articles/few-good-tools-measuring-and-monitoring-social-media).

Make sure you’re clear on what “success” means. Simply saying “we want this post to get more people to attend our events” is too general. Is one extra person at your annual gala a success? If your goal is to get 20 more attendees at your winter fundraiser this year than at the previous year’s, you can track exactly how successful you are.

AchievableIf you set your goals too high, you can become disap-pointed with the return on investment and stop main-

dEfining Your goalS and targEt audiEnCE

Whatever measure-ments you choose, make sure they match your goals.


Once you have outlined your goals, consider whether you can meet them through your current presence on social media. For example, if you are looking for a way to increase donations through social media, you may not need to start a Kickstarter project or sign up for a Care2 account. Although these can be excellent ways to get more constituents involved in particular projects, adding a “click to donate” box on your Facebook timeline using the “Causes” application is another approach that won’t tack on additional social media resources your staff may not have time to fully curate. While this won’t replace your other fundraising efforts, they can complement them.

With all tools, there are certain best practices to keep in mind. Most of these tools are based around following or subscribing to different users’ content. On Twitter, for example, it’s good etiquette to follow the users that follow you, but depending on the size of your organization, you might limit this list to only the users that provide compelling content. Additionally, as many social media sites gain precedence on the web, make certain that your tags and descriptions are search engine friendly. This could mean tagging posts with appropriate hashtags, like #nonprofit, or including language about your cause whenever possible.

Once your organization has set social media goals, continue to evaluate your presence and allow it to evolve. You may discover new features that could help you in your mission. The website itself may change, and your organization must continue to grow with it—for example, the Facebook timeline feature completely changed the look and feel of pages. By planning for such changes before they take effect, you can make the most out of new features and stay up to date.

You might discover that your strategies with social media may need to evolve. If you find you are unable to meet your goals, you might try experimenting with other kinds of content or uses for the site. Don’t forget to continue to remind your current supporters of your new social media experiments and to encourage them to follow you.

taining your presence when it fails to meet your lofty expectations. Say you hope to get 100 new volunteers in two weeks through newer social media channels and you currently only have five; it can be easy to blame the tool for being unable to achieve a nearly impossible goal.

Targeting a specific demographic can be helpful when trying to choose achievable goals. For example, “increas-ing awareness of our cause” is not only difficult to measure, but also lacks time limits for benchmarks. Will you go on increasing awareness forever, or is there an amount of “awareness” you will need to achieve? If your organization instead set its goal to “getting more young men from Greater Boston to attend our meetings this coming year,” it is more likely that you’ll actually see successful results.

RelevantNow ask yourself whether this goal will help your mission and resonate with your target audience. Maybe you have a budding photographer on staff and want to share more photos online. If your supporters aren’t checking out and sharing the photos you post now, it’s unlikely your photos will engage the community on a more-cutting edge social media tool, either. If you can’t connect your goal to the actual strategy you put into place, it will be more of a challenge to be successful. In this way, doing substantial planning and research about your goals and the tools and strategies that will fit will make it easier to feel successful.

Time-BasedDesign a timeline of smaller more-attainable goals, and stick to them. By reaching certain benchmarks of success, you will be more encouraged to move forward. Exploring a new tool, creating an organizational pres-ence there, uploading certain content, and getting a certain number of followers are good small goals you could likely achieve before you see any results in your mission-based goal. Setting this timeline for success will also be helpful in determining when your presence is not helping or isn’t worth the amount of staff time put into it. A good following takes time to build, but if you aren’t seeing any results after six months of good content, interesting discussion, and frequent updates, the tool may not be suited for your mission.


The organizations that have demonstrated success with cutting edge social media are often the ones using it for deep engagement and program delivery. In this context, program delivery refers to a tool that allows you to tie in your social media presence to your mission. A good example is the Exceptional Children’s Assistance Center of North Carolina’s (ECAC) Pinterest. The ECAC is using Pinterest as a directory of resources, which have been sorted into pinboards based on interest area. With this free resource, the organization can direct parents who want more information on their mission and practices to their Pinterest page. ECAC’s ever growing page is made up of both their own content, as well as relevant content created by others.

Nonprofit staffers are notoriously overburdened, but it’s worth setting aside experimentation time for the team at the organization that handles social media. (Don’t have a designated social media team? Not to worry, this can be anyone at your organization who uses or is in charge of social media or interested in the process.) They’re probably itching to check out new tools they’ve heard about from their networks. It might be worthwhile for these staff members to sign up for an account and get a feel for the tool in order to determine whether or not establishing a presence can help your organizational mission and social media goals.

This research and planning work can be of real value. Although most social media tools are free, the staff time involved in properly setting up and maintaining any social media presence can be substantial. Present-ing research on a particular tool’s demographics and features, your specific goals, and a plan and timeline for completing those goals to your board might also be worthwhile—at least for those new tools of particular interest.

We also recommend surveying your current constitu-ents as to what tools they use most. A formal survey in a broadcast email or on your website will work, but a more informal approach can be effective. Across all

social media, people love talking about their interests, so don’t be afraid to get personal. Remember that many of these tools are used in conjunction with bigger social media brands like Facebook and Twitter, and that they are often not mutually exclusive.

Consider asking peer organizations what tools they are using and how effective it has been for them. You might get a better picture of tools to consider—and ones to avoid. Other organizations can help you determine the feasibility of your goals, the time and effort to invest in each tool, and practical tactics for approaching social media. You could also use ideas for interesting program delivery from any organization; imitation is the highest form of flattery, after all.

Asking your own staffers what tools they use personally can be a great way to learn about where users with common interests congregate, but be sure to vet new tools to make sure they’re a good fit for your organiza-tion and audience before investing in it. In general, we recommend choosing to integrate a tool into your communications mix based on its net effectiveness for your organization, not just because it’s the most popular tool of the moment. Just because a number of your staffers enjoy making videos with the Cinemagram mobile photography application doesn’t mean that it is necessarily a good option to explore for your organiza-tion.

But champions of your new social media venture can help you gain followers—if you know staff members, familiar organizations, and current followers have Tumblr accounts, for example, ask them to follow and share your organization’s new page, and to get their friends to do the same.

how Should You ChooSE toolS?


An important element in exploring tools is estimating how successful a tool will be in the future. Cutting edge tools can come and go, but if you invest substantially in a single tool, it can be frustrating to see the user base shrink as time goes on. “There are no guarantees that [a tool] will be a hit or not,” notes consultant Heather Mansfield. Experimenting with new tools should be an exciting venture, but even if a tool starts off strong, there is no clear cut way of determining exactly how relevant the tool will be in two, five, or even ten years down the road.

More important than membership numbers is whether the tool is beloved by its user base and whether they interact with others on the platform. If users are only updating their own profile and not interacting with the profiles of others, the tool might not be as successful for nonprofits on the whole. The membership numbers, usefulness of the site, and the engagement of users should increase the longer the site has been online, although all of these can, and likely will, rise and fall.

Try to explore how engaged users are with the tool in depth. Are they posting every day? Do you see lots profiles of people that signed up and never actually used it? Are they posting real information about their daily lives, or are they simply using the tool just to try it out? Chances are, if people are organically engaged by it, it could be worth investing in. If you begin to see unique uses of the tool emerging, that can speak to its versatil-ity, which will help in keeping it current and exciting in the long run.

Be wary of a small social media startup being bought by a large company. All too often, thriving social media sites are bought out only to alienate their user bases by focusing on making more money and integrating with the larger company’s existing tools. For a real world example of independent success, tools like Twitter and

Facebook have never been bought, despite numerous offers for both when they were starting to gain traction. StumbleUpon became a more interesting service by adding new features and a complete redesign only when the original founders bought the company back from eBay.

The Lifecycle of a Social Media ToolThe “hype cycle” of technology, developed by technol-ogy research and advisory firm Gartner, expresses the evolution of new technology as follows (and as shown in the chart on the following page).

When new tools are first released to the public the press and hype surrounding it can be substantial. A large number of people will run to the tool. If the tool is unique, well received, and seems like it would be useful for your mission and program delivery, this initial period of excitement can be a good time to jump on. Following the initial popularity of a tool, while indi-viduals and organizations are clamoring to it, there will be both successes and failures for the new users.

Unfortunately, since many technology tools start off so strong, there is an inevitable slump in both membership and engagement after the initial hype has died down. Often, as people start to see the practical applications of a particular tool, its popularity will grow again, although not as substantially as during the initial hype. The organizations and users who found the true usefulness of a tool in the previous periods will continue to hold precedence and become high level users.

Finally, the tool’s engagement will level out. While the tool may continue to change and grow, it is generally unlikely that any substantial increases or decreases in popularity will be made once the benefits of a tool have become widely demonstrated. There will be fewer

how do You dEtErMinE a SitE’S longEvitY?


big name, the initial hype was enormous, and new users clamored to it and assumed it would make all other social networks obsolete. Unfortunately, it simply could not—or did not—live up to those lofty expectations. A year later, a comScore report showed that during a representative two-month period in late 2012, users spent a second on Google+ for every hour on Facebook. Additionally, several technical frustrations with the service eventually led to a decline in users, and caused many journalists to call it a failed experiment.

However, people began returning to the site in 2013, according to market research firm Trendstream, making it one of the most popular social networks in the world. Google continues to incorporate interesting features—such as being able to determine who sees what content, adding an animated profile picture, and integrating with existing Google apps—to make it more appealing to users. However, the place for Google+ in the social media landscape isn’t yet clear.

tweaks made on the part of the company in charge of the tool, and more users will have a better understand-ing of what the tool does and how they should approach it.

Platforms like Flickr and Foursquare are starting to reach the practical application phase. They have been servicing users for a number of years, slowed down, experienced changes, and come out successful—both in user base and in usefulness. Meanwhile, tools like Snapchat and Blasterous are brand new and getting a great deal of press. These are two of the best periods of time for nonprofits to consider exploring these tools. If you miss the phase of early adoption, it’s a good idea to wait until the tool has gained some practical applica-tions beyond the hype and excitement surrounding it when it is new.

What does this lifecycle look like in the real world? Consider Google+. After a highly successful invite-only beta period, Google released the social media service to the public in September, 2011. Since Google is such a

Gartner’s.“hype.cycle”.of.technology.expresses.the.evolution.of.new.technology.


With new players in the social media realm popping up almost daily, it’s nearly impossible to provide a comprehensive overview of the sector—obsolescence is both the downfall of technology and part of what makes it exciting and diverse. These recommendations are a starting point. We encourage organizations to do their own research before integrating any tools into their communications mix.

Since these tools can come and go quickly, it can be discouraging to invest in one only to find it losing population. If you have been using it for program delivery or engaging with it in a way beyond just “reaching out,” chances are it could serve your mission. If your presence can stand alone to deliver information about your organization and further your mission, it won’t make as much of a difference if the number of users starts to fluctuate.

Social Media to Engage YouthEngaging teens can be an especially tricky goal, but is one where cutting edge social media might be especially useful. Younger social media diehards are interested in creating a picture of themselves in an online format. Unlike users on LinkedIn or Facebook who pick and choose the content that describes them with an audi-ence in mind, teens tend to be interested in sharing and engaging with the things that define who they are on a daily basis. For this reason, transient applications like Snapchat, constant streams of content like Instagram, and private messaging services like Path are especially appealing.

Another reason social media appeals to younger audi-ences is the chance to gain large numbers of followers. Rather than connecting with intimate groups of family and friends, some sites—Instagram for example—lend themselves to collecting followers, likes, and shares in large numbers. Giving back to your youthful commu-nity can be a great way to tap into this element of social

media. If you interact with the relevant content your younger constituents post, it can increase their engage-ment with your own content.

Currently, mobile-based applications are most popular with young people. Three-in-four teens currently access the internet on cell phones, tablets, or other mobile devices, according to the Pew Research Center. With this in mind, mobile websites, text messaging campaigns, and mobile-heavy social media tools are especially good choices when specifically trying to reach a teenage demographic.

Generation Y is moving away from Facebook now more than ever. The Pew Research Center reports that “42 percent of Facebook users ages 18-29 say that the time they spend on Facebook on a typical day has decreased over the last year.” With parents and even grandparents now joining Facebook in droves, the site is losing its edge as an exciting tool for self-expression and socializa-tion for teens. While many teens are still on Facebook, they primarily use it more for regular communication, and are less concerned with checking for new pictures, videos, and stories.

Let’s look at a few specific tools of interest to younger audiences.

PhEEd

Want a tool similar to Facebook, but with a more youthful edge? Pheed (pronounced “feed”) is a brand new tool quickly gaining in popularity with a young audience. Pheed’s iPhone app was one of the top selling of early 2013, and an Android app is in the company’s future. With 81 percent of the application’s user base between the ages of 14 and 25, it could help foster connecting with youth.

Pheed is a versatile tool, allowing users to share text, video, audio, and photos with the same priorities. Like many social media sites geared toward a younger crowd,

Exploring SpECifiC toolS


Though usually described as a photo sharing applica-tion, a Nielsen study showed more than one million teens visited Instagram during a one month period to stay in touch and form a deeper relationship with the things they were passionate about. Instagram is a great example of how social media tools can be used in unexpected ways by select groups of users. People on Instagram can search for photos and users simultane-ously using hashtags, so it can be a great way to connect with people who have shown previous interest in your cause.

Facebook acquired Instagram in April of 2012, partly as a way to reach defecting younger users. While Facebook has yet to integrate or alter the application in a signifi-cant way, it can be a great way for organizations with a strong foothold in Facebook to share photos across multiple platforms and increase engagement with a younger crowd.

SnAPChAT

Snapchat is unusual in the social media realm in that it isn’t based around profiles and sharing but on brief messages and chats. Users can send photos, videos, and messages to others who have the smartphone applica-tion, but there’s a catch: anything shared on Snapchat is deleted within 10 seconds after being viewed. While this makes it problematic for marketers, the tool is growing

its smartphone app is full-featured. You can take photos and videos right from your smartphone or upload more professional videos from a computer. Pheed also offers an interesting feature that allows users to follow you on a paid subscription, or to pay for specific content.

Pages on Pheeds are called “channels.” Users can sub-scribe to channels, and “love” and give “pheedback” on content. When content is reposted, it’s called a “remix.” You can also publish what you post and remix on Pheed to Facebook and Twitter. Pheed also makes it easy to add copyright information to content, a feature lacking in many smaller social media tools.

InSTAGRAM

Users share pictures taken with the smartphone-centric Instagram application, and that photo-sharing is at the heart of the social tool—an Instagram page without a steady stream of photos simply isn’t an Instagram page. While beautiful, unique photos are great to look at, nonprofits don’t need to share works of high art to make use of this tool. The artistic filters and square frames Instagram is famous for make even mundane photos look interesting. A few photos of your office, events, and volunteers working hard, or even full-blown visual campaigns based around Instagram, can be great to share.

Pheed.is.quickly.gaining.in.popularity.with.a.young.audience.


an organization could send out reminders about events, volunteer opportunities, and fundraising without being overbearing to their youth audience.

Currently, the vast majority of Snapchat users are in their teens. The numbers could change as the applica-tion grows in popularity, and as more parents join the service to stay in touch with their kids. Facebook has recently released its Poke app, which shares many features with Snapchat but lacks the dedicated user base. An organization with a strong Facebook presence considering branching out with Snapchat might find it valuable to test the waters first with Poke.

in popularity with younger audiences. This app in particular has been making headlines for the potential it provides for users—especially teens—to send inappro-priate messages to each other, taking advantage of the short lifespan of the messages. There’s been less coverage about the possibilities it provides nonprofits or other users, but it can be worth looking into as a way to tap into youth communication.

An organization could, for example, use Snapchat as a way to communicate with younger volunteers in the field, or to quickly answer questions about the organiza-tion. Snapchat users can also send “Snaps” to groups, so

Tumblr.is.an.image-centric.blogging.site.that.lets.users.link.to.and.follow.each.other’s.posts.


CaSE StudY

Do.Something’s.mission.is.to.encourage.teens.to.connect.with.a.variety.of.causes..When.exploring.cutting.edge.social.media.tools,.it.set.out.to.be.“everywhere.[teens].are,.literally,”.according.to.Calvin.Stowell,.director.of.content.and.digital.strategy..In.particular,.the.organiza-tion’s.Tumblr.presence.attracts.teens.by.creat-ing.and.sharing.content.they.connect.with..To.further.the.goal.of.being.“not.your.mom’s.nonprofit,”.Do.Something.hosts.a.variety.of.GIFs,.or.animated.looping.images—often.with.a.funny.description.relevant.to.teens’.daily.lives..Occasionally,.it.will.issue.a.call.to.volunteer,.but.for.the.most.part,.Do.Something.uses.humor.to.connect.with.teens.on.Tumblr,.meeting.its.audience.on.its.own.ground.

Do.Something.also.tailors.specific.campaigns.for.the.tools,.Calvin.said..“We.try.each.kind.of.platform.and.wonder.what.works.best,”.he.said..“The.content.on.Tumblr,.you.can’t.see.anywhere.else.”.

If.Do.Something.can.nurture.a.regular.social.connection,.when.it.does.have.a.call.to.ac-tion,.it.is.more.effective..“When.surveyed,.98.percent.of.kids.want.to.volunteer,”.Calvin.said..“They.just.don’t.know.how.”.In.order.to.get.its.message.to.its.audience,.the.organization.made.the.decision.to.“be.their.friend.first.and.a.brand.second,”.he.said..“If.they.have.no.emotional.connection,.why.would.they.do.it?”

Your organization can simply offer digital incentives that tap into the competitive element of Foursquare by awarding visitors badges for each visit, or a certain num-ber of visits. Red Cross of America, for example, used a custom Foursquare badge as a way of saying thank you to supporters who donated blood, and as a reminder to donate again in the future. Remember, though, that you must create your own custom badges and have them approved by Foursquare. Typically, unique badges that will be unlocked frequently and offer real life incentives are the most likely to be approved.

TuMBLR

Tumblr is a microblogging platform with a majority of users under the age of 25. While it looks like a traditional blog, it works in a more social way. Users can share their own content as well as follow, like, and re-post the content of others. Short content seems to work best—brief bits of text along with photos and videos are the most popular types of posts to share. Tumblr pages can also be customized to an extent, and offer a variety of features to help tie in your organization’s branding. There’s also a popular mobile application that allows users to post and read the blogs they follow on the go.

Geolocation and Mobile ApplicationsGeolocation applications are changing the way we live our daily lives, and they’re connecting people to causes in ways they’ve never connected before. Social mobile applications like Locavore are helping to make people more aware of how they are eating by showing locations of nearby farmer’s markets and sources of locally grown food. Other applications are striving to do good for the world, like pinpointing oil spills on the gulf coast, discovering new green businesses, and finding the nearest polling place on election day.

Nonprofits can capitalize on these growing trends. These geolocation and mobile-based social networks can be a great way to engage with local supporters, and many do not require the substantial maintenance, responding, and updating of other tools. More people are getting on smartphones now than ever, so experimenting can be a great way to get additional exposure to mobile crazy supporters.

FouRSquARE

Foursquare has been around for a number of years, beat-ing out tools like Whrrl and Gowalla in the geolocation market. With Foursquare, users “check in” at a particu-lar location, and are sometimes awarded with incentives for doing so. Users can earn virtual “badges” for visiting a location or performing a particular action.

Users can also unlock badges for performing a sequence of events, such as checking into four different museums in New York City. The user who checks in at a particular location the most times is called the “mayor” of that location, which unlocks an additional badge, and is posted for everyone to see in the Foursquare application.


CaSE StudY

Beyond.the.traditional.methods.of.engage-ment.with.Foursquare,.some.have.used.the.application.for.program.delivery.in.other.ways..The.University.of.Pennsylvania.relied.on.Four-square.users.for.its.MyHeartMap.Challenge.campaign..The.idea.was.sparked.by.the.goal.to.create.an.easily.accessible.map.of.automated.external.defibrillators.across.the.city..While.the.organization.did.not.have.the.time.and.resources.to.send.out.people.to.verify.each.AED’s.location,.they.knew.they.could.rely.on.crowdsourcing.through.social.media.to.meet.the.goal.

Thousands.of.AED.locations.were.submitted,.and.the.two.users.who.spotted.the.most.were.awarded.$9,000.each..Not.only.was.the.uni-versity.able.to.create.a.nearly.comprehensive.map.of.AED’s.in.Philadelphia,.it.was.successful.in.increasing.awareness.about.AED’s,.and.engage.with.supporters.locally..It.plans.on.repeating.the.campaign.in.other.cities.across.the.country.

You may also wish to thank your current mayor using such other tools as your Facebook page or broadcast email. This can increase competitiveness among your supporters and help you get more repeat visitors. You might consider offering real life incentives on Four-square, such as giving whoever is mayor free admission to all of your events. The Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati is using offers several Foursquare incentives, for example: for every five check ins, users can earn a free dessert, a guidebook on the museum, or even a free membership to the museum.

While encouraging users to check in at your events may not directly increase attendance at events, it can still be a great way to market events and your organization in general. Check-ins on Foursquare are shared across other social networks, so the potential for reaching a wide number of supporters with a single tool is high.

Foursquare.lets.users.“check.in”.to.a.physical.location.


Movable Feast is another application using mobile engagement in a creative way. The application allows users to tie multimedia to points on a map, creating a tour as engaging remotely as it is in person. It works through Google Maps, where a tour taker can look at photos, videos, audio, or text added to a particular loca-tion to learn more about it. The experience is certainly a more-engaging experience than simply “checking in.” Moveable Feast is a cutting edge startup, and the tool is not suited for all nonprofits, but could be suited for cultural heritage organizations, museums, and historical societies.

Other organizations might want to consider adding information to Google’s Field Trip. Smartphone users can log into the application and be notified when they are near something of interest. The notification will take them to photos of the location and provide information about it. If a mobile user has Bluetooth enabled, the app will read the description aloud. Google Field Trip is less intimate and personalized than Movable Feast, since you can’t tailor a user’s experience or share audio and video, but people using Field Trip are more likely to stumble across your content since Movable Feast requires users seek out tours and download them.

Improving Traffic and Content for online CommunicationsIf you simply don’t have the staff time to create your own resources to share daily across your social media presences, curating and reposting relevant content from outside sources might be a useful strategy. Even if you have unlimited resources to come up with new photos, articles, and discussion topics every day, your social media efforts can seem more universal if you are sharing relevant content from other sources. Many cutting-edge social media tools are based around constant streams of content and can help your organization stay on top of the latest thinking on relevant areas of interest. You can also use these tools to share your own content, and get added traffic to your website and more followers on social media.

REddIT

Reddit is a message board for the entire web. While certain sections of the “front page of the internet,” as it is known, tailor to specific types of content or interests, in general there’s something for everybody. This is one

CaSE StudY

Big.Love.Little.Hearts.initially.used.Foursquare.as.a.way.to.grow.awareness.about.children.with.heart.defects,.but.it.became.a.highly.successful.fundraising.platform..To.recognize.the.fact.that.one.in.100.children.is.born.with.a.heart.defect,.Big.Love.Little.Hearts.founder.Estrella.Rosenberg.started.her.campaign.on.April.9,.the.100th.day.of.the.year..She.had.her.supporters.add.the.following.“tip”.to.popular.check.in.locations:.“1in100.children.are.born.w/.a.heart.defect..Pulse-Ox.screening.saves.lives.–.you.can.too!.Check.in.with.the.hashtag.#100X100.”

The.campaign.was.so.successful.that.an.adult.who.was.born.with.a.heart.defect.decided.to.support.it.financially..She.committed.to.donate.$1.for.every.time.someone.used.the.#100x100.hashtag..Big.Love.Little.Hearts.raised.$25,000.in.just.one.day.thanks.to.her.generosity.and.the.popularity.of.the.campaign.

oThER LoCATIon-BASEd SERvICES

Even if you don’t have a physical location that encour-ages visits from your supporters, more traditional tools for businesses can help you gain perspective on your community’s thoughts on your organization. Having a presence on location-based review sites like Yelp, Around Me, and Google Places can help supporters find your phone number, website, and office hours quickly from anywhere.

Encourage your volunteers and supporters to write re-views of your organization on these sites. Eventually you might receive feedback from the outside world, which could be positive or negative but will offer additional perspective on the public’s view of your organization, and another opportunity to respond to criticism in an effort to change their minds.

You can also advertise offers and deals with many of these networks. You may already offer free membership for volunteers, or services for major donors, but adver-tising these incentives in an interesting way will make them more likely to stand out to more supporters.


platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. If you know that the originator of such content is on Facebook or Twitter, give them a call-out and get them involved in the discussion. In this way, tools like Reddit can be not only very powerful ways of promoting your own mate-rial, but also ways to encourage the work of peers and create a more engaging experience for your social media followers.

PInTEREST

Pinterest is based on a similar constant stream of content to Reddit, but has a completely different look and feel. To the uninitiated, Pinterest, like Instagram, seems to be a way to share photos, but is much more than that—it’s a way for people to put their passions on display and to be inspired by the content of others. In this way, it can be very advantageous to nonprofits.

Pinterest streams links in a visual way. Pictures and images get shared and adopted by other users who pin them into their pinboards, which are collections of inspiring or interesting content organized by category. You can also choose to “like” a pin, which can be a good choice for miscellaneous content that doesn’t fit in with any of your pinboards. You may also opt to have an open pinboard which any of your supporters can pin to, like a board for event photos.

reason why it’s become extremely popular in its short time online. Redditors submit links of the most interest-ing content on the web, almost like a collaborative RSS feed. Users can then choose to “upvote” or “downvote” the content to determine how much priority the link is given.

Like with any social network, there’s no guarantee that your content will be “upvoted.” It’s difficult to predict what content will go viral and what won’t, but the idea is that the funniest, most thought-provoking or most exciting content will be seen by the most people.

In addition to deciding the placement of your content on Reddit, users have the opportunity to discuss, praise, and even criticize your content in whatever way they see fit. Redditors do not need to be your “friend” to com-ment on your content. It’s hard to control exactly what is being said about you on Reddit, but many different types of people will get a chance to have their opinions heard. Comments themselves are also upvoted and downvoted, so in theory, the most relevant questions or talking points make their way to the top of the list.

Once you sign up for an account, you can subscribe to particular subreddits, like “Idealist News,” for example, and use Reddit as a way to find great new relevant images, videos, and articles. You can share especially interesting content across other, more familiar

Pinterest.gives.users.a.“pinboard”.for.their.collections.


program designed to help nonprofits gain more traction with the tool. Each month, the program highlights three nonprofit presences as a way to drive viewers to the content of extraordinary nonprofit users.

CaSE StudY

Stumbling.for.Good.was.partially.inspired.by.the.work.of.the.World.Food.Programme,.which.created.an.awareness.quiz.that.com-municated.important.information.about.its.mission.in.a.fun.and.engaging.way..For.each.quiz.taken,.a.donation.of.a.single.meal.was.made.anonymously,.or.the.Stumbler.could.opt.to.donate.themselves..StumbleUpon.donated.free.paid.discovery.promotion.to.them,.and.the.campaign.helped.feed.over.5,000.people.in.East.Africa.

Connecting LocallyPeople care about what’s going on in their own neigh-borhoods. Your Facebook friends in other parts of the country may not be as concerned with the issues in your community, and there are other applications designed to help you connect with those who share your concerns about your local community or the community where you conduct a great deal of business. Exploring these tools can be a good choice if you are looking to gain new volunteers and connect with local community, especially those organizations with a true sense of place in the target location.

dEhood

DeHood is designed as a social network for neighbor-hoods. Users can choose to see local news, deals or check ins, and other updates about their community. It also offers features to let you connect with people locally, and promote events. DeHood could be particu-larly useful if you’re located in a major city, and want to reach a particular neighborhood. It can either be the neighborhood your organization’s headquarters are in, a neighborhood where you do a lot of work, or a neighborhood you have a lot of connections in.

It’s a good idea to have your own content link back to your own website, and to use hashtags and descriptions that people might search for. Users can follow your en-tire organization, or just one pinboard in particular, to get updated whenever you post new content. However, you are also expected to share other people’s pins, which is what keeps the Pinterest community going. When you repin something, you should follow the user that created it. This can be a good way to not only get new, relevant content, but maybe new followers in return.

STuMBLEuPon

StumbleUpon began as a way for users to find new websites that might interest them, and offers a tailored experience for finding great new content. While Stum-bleUpon still does this well, it has added a lot of features that can help in driving users to your web presence, and in 2011 it was responsible for half of all referral traffic from social media.

Currently, users can install a stumble button into their web browsers to take them to a random link the StumbleUpon algorithm determines that particular user would find valuable. Users can then tailor their experience by voting to see more- or less-similar con-tent. Users can also elect to see content in very specific categories ranging from activism to Africa to alternative energy.

You can also use StumbleUpon as a traditional social network by following nonprofit peers to see what kind of content they are discovering, but there are not yet enough in-depth features to make this truly compelling. Similar to Pinterest, you can also add content you find on the web for other Stumblers to see—your followers will also be able to see the content to which you give positive feedback.

StumbleUpon is a great way to share multimedia or specific articles or campaigns as opposed to entire websites. Anything that is immediately eye catching and engaging will work best, as it is designed to allow users to move through different websites quickly until they land on something interesting. Time-sensitive content does not work as well, since it may not get uncovered by everyone right away.

StumbleUpon also offers a paid discovery option in which you choose to promote your content for a small fee. It also recently released Stumbling for Good, a


Connecting InternationallyMany of these tools allow you to connect with neighborhoods internationally, but some bigger name social media tools are popular in other countries but not in the United States. Even if you aren’t interested in creating and maintaining a dedicated presence on these websites, they can be interesting places to consider advertisements and campaigns to reach audiences in other countries. Many are more focused on blogging than on sharing images and video, although some focus on sharing audio and music.

qzonE

Qzone is the largest social network in China, and is one of the most active social media sites in the world with over 150 million frequent users and some 700 million users overall. China’s closest analog to Facebook, Qzone is free to try, but some of the fancier, profile customiza-tion features are only available to paid users. Tencent runs Qzone, which also offers the extremely popular instant messaging app QQ as well as the Twitter clone Weibo.

Profiles are linked using geolocation to the users’ current location. Using the smartphone application allows the news and updates to change depending on your loca-tion, but DeHood also offers a way to explore news and discussions from nearby neighborhoods, or all around the world. In this way, it can be highly useful as a way of connecting both locally, but with other communities as well.

BLASTERouS

Blasterous is a similar app that lets users send “blasts” to others in their area. Blasts can be local updates, event notifications, or just locally pertinent discussion topics up to 240 characters in length, with up to five images, and can include links. Users can comment on blasts, creating an interesting dialogue within a community.

Users can also perform similar functions to DeHood¬, in that they can use the application to check in, find new local businesses and events, and share their content with Facebook. Blasterous may appeal to some users because it claims to deliver messages only to the targeted audience, and no one else. As a marketing tool, this can make it a challenge since a great deal of communication takes place in these specialized circles.

DeHood.is.a.social.network.for.neighborhoods.


which means it’s easy to integrate with existing Google communications. While the service began at Google’s offices in California, its headquarters moved to Brazil after the user base there began to grow dramatically.

Originally, an appeal of Orkut was that any user could view any other user’s profile and content regardless of whether or not they were a “fan” of the person. How-ever, privacy features have recently been introduced due to several concerns. Content on Orkut is called Scraps. Users can post scraps to other users’ scrapbooks much like a Facebook wall. Orkut also offers an interesting community polling feature which could be useful for organizations.

nonprofit Specific Social MediaCan social networks be used for good? Certainly they benefit from population, but if you put over a billion internet users on the same website, can they drive social change? A number of tools are aimed specifically at the nonprofit sector with these goals in mind.

LinkedIn offers service in China, making it a good method of outreach without using a dedicated service. However, the professional aspects of LinkedIn mean it might not be ideal for the purposes outlined here. Despite Facebook’s worldwide dominance, it is unlikely to ever become popular in China due to strict rules related to advertising. Qzone has been increasingly implementing English-enabled features, but with any of these tools, approaching them comprehensively will be a challenge without fluency in Chinese.

nETLoG

Netlog is a community for young people in Europe, and currently boasts more than 98 million members. Previously called Facebox and Bingbox, it’s open to anyone—even outside Europe—and the site’s relative simplicity makes it a good choice for people looking to reach its targeted demographic.

oRkuT

Orkut is one of the most popular websites in both India and Brazil, and conveniently is fully available in the United States. Orkut is owned and operated by Google,

Causes.connects.nonprofit.organizations.with.donors.


raised if you fail to meet your goal—while IndieGoGo lets you keep what you managed to raise. Nonprofits may also look into sites like Crowdrise, which allow your supporters to create friend to friend fundraising campaigns for your organization.

The power of the crowd doesn’t have to be limited to fundraising, however. Crowdsourcing can be used to collect data relevant to your mission from a wide geographical area. For example, supporters can collect water samples from streams near their homes or create electronic versions of historical records and other physi-cal data sources or any information important to your cause. NGO Post, an organization based both in the US and India, for example, provides an online forum for individuals to share and discuss social welfare efforts and report on issues like arts and culture, education, or human rights.

Sharing MultimediaMultimedia-sharing tools help share a message with to your supporters more quickly than a lengthy appeal or annual report. Furthermore, a picture is still worth a thousand words, and a Tweet is only 140 characters. While more prominent social media tools are now support more visual content, dedicated tools for sharing multimedia can be beneficial in making your content look more professional. You also might reach a wider audience, and find your media easier to manage.

Videos and photos on Facebook generally are more popular than text- only updates or link shares. Third party social media tools allow you to easily share content on Facebook to further engage your Facebook following.

vIdEo

YouTube and Vimeo have both been around for some time, and each offers users slightly different features. With YouTube, you have the opportunity to get a lot more viewers, but your organization is also compet-ing with lots of other content. Vimeo is designed for artistic content rather than home movies or humorous content. There’s a smaller—but more engaged—user base compared to YouTube. If you need a simple means of embedding videos on your website and through other social media channels, Vimeo might be a compelling option as it offers a clean, modern interface.

PETITIonS

Get enough concerned citizens to sign in support of your issue, and you have a chance to make a difference. Years ago petitions made the jump to the internet, and now entire communities of like-minded people gather to create, sign, and promote them. Websites like Care2 and Change.org exist to facilitate new petitions, collect signatures, and achieve social, political, or environmen-tal change, among other goals. Even the White House now offers We the People, a site on which any American citizen can browse and support petitions, or create their own, on far-ranging topics like gun control, internet privacy, and immigration, to more-wishful ideas like funding the construction of a Death Star and requiring congressmen and senators to wear their financial back-ers’ logos on their clothing. Petitions are by no means a guarantor of policy change, but can generate wider public interest in your cause.

GIvInG PoRTALS

In recent years, a variety of “social middleware” sites have arisen—portals to connect potential donors with nonprofits. One of the most recent was the now-defunct Jumo, which has since merged with the GOOD community. More stable communities have persisted, including Causes.com, GlobalGiving, and Fundly. On these sites, nonprofits create public profiles users can search or browse based on interest, mission, or geographic region. The site itself takes online donations, but many require a monthly fee, and a small percentage of each donation.

CRoWdFundInG

Crowdfunding is another fundraising tactic that can be of use to nonprofits trying to implement a specific project. Sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo let users create projects with a fundraising goal, and provide deadlines to meet them. Supporters donate in incre-ments, typically from small amounts like $1, $5, $10, and so on, up to donation levels in the hundreds. It’s common practice to include some type of reward for each donation level as an added incentive to give—for example, everyone who pledges $5 or more will get a thank you card, $10 or more gets a sticker, and more.

With Kickstarter, if you don’t meet your goal by the deadline, you don’t get the money. It operates on an all-or-nothing model—you receive none of the money


again login to the service with Google and Facebook accounts as well as with Yahoo!.

Photos on Flickr are well categorized, so it’s an appeal-ing option for nonprofits who are hoping more people will find their photos by chance. Photos can also be organized into albums, which make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for. You may also have boards which other users can add to, which can be a great way to collect resources, such as photos from your events, or even just pictures of your staff and volunteers.

Nonprofits can apply for the Flickr for Good program though TechSoup, which donates Flickr Pro member-ships to worthy organizations. The pro membership, which normally costs $24.95 per year, allows users to upload unlimited photos and gives you more informa-tion about your accounts statistics, as well as the ability to share 90 second clips of high definition video.

Photobucket is similar to Flickr in terms of features, but offers a stronger mobile application. It’s a compelling option if you plan on uploading many photos onto the web from mobile devices. However, it does not offer Flickr’s in-depth searching and categorization options. Photobucket also runs the free TinyPic service, which can be used without an account to quickly make images from your desktop properly formatted for the web.

Mobile centric services like Instagram are fun, and can certainly be useful as social media platforms, but Insta-gram photos usually have a particular look due to the

Videos shared on either service can help you raise funds. Vimeo has a built in donations function in its “Tip Jar,” which allows users who want to support your cause to donate right below the video. Vimeo also has pay to watch features, where viewers can pay a select amount to see your content, however this feature requires that you have a Vimeo Pro account, which costs $199 per year.

YouTube offers a number of monetization options by adding advertisements before your video, but YouTube also offers a program specifically for nonprofits. Users must apply for the YouTube Nonprofit Program, but being accepted will give you access to a number of well implemented features, like a donate button, and a call to action overlay. Invisible People, an organization which creates video campaigns to help the homeless in America, has had great success in gaining the funds needed to help housing and food programs, both in the way that the videos can be shared across social media, and in gaining donations directly from the videos.

PhoToGRAPhS

While Flickr has had a troubled past, it continues to reign supreme for users seeking quality free photo host-ing. Flickr began as one of the earliest successful social networks, but when it was bought by Yahoo! in 2006, a number of changes were rolled out which alienated Flickr’s existing user base. Most of these changes have been rolled back. For instance, Flickr users can once

Video.sharing.sites.like.YouTube.and.Vimeo.let.users.upload.and.share.videos.with.wide.audiences..


vIRAL MuLTIMEdIA

Easily sharable content is increasingly popular across all social media channels. The popularity of memes, images and videos referencing pop culture—often in humorous ways—has spread from the internet’s underground to the mainstream. Memes are generally variations on known content, like adding a funny caption to an image, posting a .GIF in reaction to something, or just presenting a sharable, striking image that immediately makes its point are all common examples of viral multimedia.

GIFs, or small, looping video clips, are probably the most difficult meme to create yourself. They require some knowledge of Photoshop, or its open source counterpart GIMP. While mobile applications like Vine, Cinemagram, and GifBoom are making short, looping clips more accessible, they only apply to videos you take yourself, usually on a smartphone.

Image macros are easy to create. You can take any image and superimpose text over it in Photoshop, or even Microsoft Paint. The most instantly recognizable meme font is Impact. If even that is too complex, you can use sites like Meme Generator, which will allow you to simply type in text to make a perfectly formatted variation on a popular image macro.

There have even been certain campaigns based solely around shared images via social media. For example, the American Cancer Society’s Tag2Nag campaign was based around images that Facebook users could tag their friends in to remind them to get screened for colon cancer. The images were often humorous, but didn’t stray from the necessary call to action, and reminder of the American Cancer Society. This was effective in that it was a lighthearted way of getting social media users talking about a challenging subject.

These types of multimedia are popular across the inter-net. All social media outlets are moving towards greater facilitation of images and videos especially. If you are looking for an outlet to share them specifically, the most popular are social blogging sites like Tumblr, internet forums like Reddit, and even just constant streams of viral images like Imgur.

platform’s trademark filters which may not be appropri-ate for all campaigns. Additionally, dedicated photo sites like Photobucket allow you to easily embed your photos on your website, in emails, and on other web forums.

AudIo

Storytelling with digital audio is a less-explored but intriguing option for nonprofits, especially if your organization records interviews, talks, or trainings. The following tools are also their own social networks, with their ways to follow and interact with other users.

SoundCloud is the most popular audio sharing service, and reports 180 million monthly users. The service allows users to collect their audio under a specific URL, which can be helpful in directing your fans to your page easily. SoundCloud also has a useful timed commenting feature, where followers can leave a comment on a particular moment in an audio file.

SoundCloud offers limited features to help you measure engagement, but provides more information for pro users. There’s also a smartphone app that allows users to upload audio directly from their iPhone. You can also upload associated photographs with each sound file.

Another tool, Audioboo, lets you record from a desktop or laptop using a microphone without an additional Digital Audio Workstation, and publish it immediately on the site and across other social media platforms. You may also do the same with the mobile application. Audioboo can allow you to subscribe to a podcast through iTunes or an RSS feed. However, audio files are limited to three minutes in length for free users, which makes it questionable for more in depth material.

Chirbit is a similar service, but offers a few extra features to free users which make it worth mentioning. For example, you can create a unique QR code to lead back to you audio file directly from within the site. This can be an interesting way to bring in online audio content into physical mailings and other campaigns. You may also choose to geotag your audiofile, add a picture to it, and embed it anywhere online with their HTML 5 media player.


In general, it is important to remember that people are using all kinds of social media for fun. They want to connect with their friends and family, to share news, videos, and photos, and to keep up with things going on around them. As an organization, finding your place in social media can be challenging. While you wouldn’t want to burden your supporters with constant advertise-ments, campaigns, and requests for donations, you want to make certain that your social media presence is helping your mission.

A good approach is to use social media to grow relationships, rather than thinking of it as strictly a fundraising tool, or strictly a video sharing tool, for example. Having an organizational personality, rather than an unapproachable “brand” can be helpful in this. Additionally, sharing good, original content will be more appreciated than reused or bland content, driving more people to your online presence. Along with that,

each tool should offer a unique method of helping you to achieve your organizational goals; not just getting the word out, but actually helping you achieve your mission whenever possible.

While many of these tools offer integration with Facebook and Twitter, it is frequently recommended to cross-post infrequently. Developing campaigns and overall strategies for each individual social media outlet will likely mean more work, but it will also mean a more engaged audience, and reason for people to follow you more than once. If you cannot take the time to define a strategy, and set up a reasonable, unique edito-rial schedule for each of your social media presences, perhaps you should not dive in immediately to more cutting edge social media tools. However, with the right goals, outlook, and resources at your disposal, any organization can find success, no matter how rapidly the landscape of social media grows.

ConCluSion


AndREA BERRY, dIRECToR oF PARTnER-ShIPS And LEARnInG

Andrea oversees Idealware’s fundraising and training activities including the Field Guide to Nonprofit Software, sponsorship, corporate and individual giv-ing, grants management and online seminars. Prior to joining Idealware, Andrea held fundraising positions in education, health research and museums and has taught math, performing arts and history in traditional and non-traditional educational settings. She has worked as a consultant with nonprofits to help identify appropriate donor management software. Additionally, as a former teacher, Andrea brings front-line tested expertise in curriculum development and training.

IdealwareIdealware, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, provides thoroughly researched, impartial and accessible resources about software to help nonprofits make smart software decisions.

Nonprofits maintain a complicated relationship with technology. Most know that software can streamline their processes and help fulfill their missions more efficiently and effectively, yet lean staffing and tight budgets mean they’re unable to devote the time neces-sary keep up with new technologies and find the right tools. From the most basic questions (like how to use software to help manage emailing hundreds of people at once), to the more complex (like understanding the role

TYLER CuMMInS, TRAInInG ASSoCIATE

As Idealware’s Training Associate, Tyler lends a creative eye to a variety of training materials, crafting new slides and polishing the tried and true wisdom of his colleagues. He began as a research intern, writing and editing articles and blog posts—as well as this report—and contributing to the 2013 Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits. A graduate of Alfred University, he brings to his role at Idealware his experience as a writer and a lifelong love of technology.

ChRIS BERnARd, EdIToRIAL And CoMMunI-CATIonS dIRECToR

Chris is a longtime freelance writer who has worked in journalism, advertising, and corporate marketing and communications, and as a technical writer for several high-tech startups. He brings 19 years of experience telling stories and crafting messages to his work with nonprofits.

about idEalwarE

about thE authorS

of social networking and mobile phone text-messaging in fundraising strategy), organizations need a trusted source for answers.

Idealware provides an authoritative online guide to the software that allows U.S. nonprofits—especially small ones—to be more effective. By synthesizing vast amounts of original research into credible and approachable information, Idealware helps nonprofits make the most of their time and financial resources. And our reach is expanding. Our reports have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

exploring cutting edge social mediapage 3 exploring cutting edge social media • may 2013...

Documents