HOW TO: Mobilize Viral Swarms via Network Mapping

Relationships are the heart of many successful social media outreach efforts. They help fuel viral success (second only to exceptional content) and serve as a catalyst for self-organizing online swarms. You need to be able to visualize connections and influence, however, before you can strategically leverage relationships to reach and inspire target audiences. That's where network mapping comes in. Depending on your objectives, you can map social media … [Read more...]

Web 2.0 Suicide, Not Armageddon, Komen’s Problem

Breast cancer is personal for me. My own grandmother survived breast cancer. Three of my coworkers had breast cancer and one died, leaving two young children. Another friend of mine also survived breast cancer. For that reason, when I received a direct message from Beth Kanter on Twitter asking me to post tweets with #takebackthepink and #supercure during the SuperBowl I did. I supported Beth's efforts to make women's health care accessible to everyone. Every … [Read more...]

Top 12 Blogs to Help You Change the World

If you want to use social media and mobile applications to make the world a better place, a number of blogs can help you chart your way, even as technologies change. Among the many strong ones out there, here are my favorite 12: Beth's Blog—one of the most popular and useful blogs for nonprofits (and anybody else interested in making a difference)—provides the latest insights into social media, online networking, and transparent organizational management. Its … [Read more...]

Video Clip of the Month: Treesaver & Accessibility

My April 2011 video clip of the month features a pre-release demonstration of the free open source dynamic publishing platform Treesaver. Online publications created with Treesaver automatically adjust to the size of any screen (you've got to see it in action). Treesaver is a lot like the Flipboard iPad app except it's built with web standards—HTML, CSS, and Javascript. That means you can just design a publication once and the same code will work on any device … [Read more...]

Don’t Merge Your Facebook Page & Places Page

"Don't Merge Your Nonprofit Facebook Page with Places Page," warns the heading of an interesting Dec. 17 guest post on Beth's Blog. The post, by Ivan Boothe, explains if your organization accepts Facebook's invitation to claim your Facebook Places geolocation page, you'll lose your ability to specify a default landing tab on your regular Facebook page. That means all the time and money you put into creating a beautiful custom landing tab will go to waste. Since … [Read more...]

Social Media: Democracy’s Ruin or a Better Planet?

With summer over and more time to read in the rainy fall days ahead, I decided to finally buy The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change, a book by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine that I've been meaning to read since it came out in June. So I drove to the nearest Borders, but it didn’t have the book. Then I drove to Barnes & Nobles. It wasn’t there either. Then I remembered the words of Jacques Ellul in Propaganda: The Formation of … [Read more...]

‘Special Sauce’ for Online Contest Success

The special recipe networked nonprofits use to win online contests was revealed in a video the Case Foundation posted on its website last week. The video features Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, authors of The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Changet, with research on the successful social media strategies of contest winners. It also features Scott Beale from the Atlas Service Corps, a nonprofit which has won five online competitions and … [Read more...]

Video Clip of the Month: Social Media for Good Causes

My April 2010 video clip of the month features Beth Kanter giving a 40-minute presentation on how non-profits can use social media to promote their causes and raise funds. Kanter is the author of Beth’s Blog, one of the longest running and most popular blogs for non-profits. Here's the YouTube video: … [Read more...]