Tag Archives: online community

August 7, 2012

How to take engagement to the next level

Begin by questioning assumptions & looking at the data

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, community managers, Facebook administrators.

Debra AskanaseSocial media used to be all about assumptions: Who is online, what they are doing, how much they love you, whether or not your content resonates. When nonprofits and companies began rapidly adopting social media in the late 2000s, activities were based on assumptions and experimental ideas. Fast forward five years, and we now have at our disposal some solid measurement and data collection software systems, research studies, case studies, demographic data and a relatively savvy social media user base. The problem? We’re still working from hunches and assumptions.

If your organization is not getting what it wants from its social media engagement, question your existing assumptions and look deeply at your own data. Here are a few good questions to ask to take your social media to the next engagement level.

6 questions for social media teams to ask

1Are our social media activities tied to SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) goals? Surprisingly enough, I hear “no” when I ask that question nine out of 10 times. The doing of social media is usually what consumes staff and organizations. (“We have to be on Facebook!” “We need a Twitter account, right?”) Why? To what end? When we begin by knowing what goals the organization needs to achieve, the direction of social media implementation becomes clear. Here is a relevant case study on how one organization did just that. Continue reading →

October 17, 2011

501 Mission Place relaunches for nonprofit leaders

501MP-logo

John HaydonBorn as a conversation between close friends almost a year ago, 501 Mission Place is an online community for nonprofit leaders. From its inception, our goal has been to bring together nonprofit leaders from around the world to learn from each other, share ideas, resources, and inspiration. That conversation has continued each week over the past year and has focused on the following questions for our members:

  • What do nonprofit leaders really need to fulfill their missions?
  • How can we (Rob Hatch, March Pitman, and myself) provide an even richer venue for collaboration with other nonprofit leaders?
  • How can we all be happy in the process?

Seeking to answer these questions, we have revamped what 501 Mission Place provides (and added a fresh coat of paint in the process). Check out what’s new at 501 Mission Place.

Bonus Webinar this week!

To celebrate our relaunch, Rob Hatch, John Haydon and Marc Pitman will be offering a FREE webinar to 501 Mission Place members on Wednesday, October 19 at 1PM ET.

In this dynamic and interactive session, discover how to unleash your organization’s existing and latent strengths in order to foster adaptation and innovation. Rob, Marc and John of 501 Mission Place will illuminate the strategic impact your organization’s culture, openness, and “human side” can make on its continued growth and success.

Join today and get access to this helpful, fun webinar!

May 26, 2010

Zanby: Roll your own community

Zanby: Create your community from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

JD LasicaI‘ve been fascinated for some time by Zanby, a plaform for online collaboration for businesses and nonprofits that launched last year. I chatted a few months ago with Leif Utne — technologist, journalist, activist, musician, social entrepreneur and son of the founder of the Utne Reader — about Zanby and its potential as a customized collaboration community for millions of members.

“It’s a pretty exciting way to allow a movement to collaborate across organizations to share users and share content, while being able to maintain their distinct identities,” Leif said.

A few other platforms have stepped up to the plate, but what’s different about Zanby is that it allows organizations to create teams of online collaborators in a richer way than Microsoft’s SharePoint or Google Groups by letting you create “group families” with all the latest photos, videos, discussions and upcoming events shared by all the groups in the family.

Said Leif: “It’s kind of like a private-label version of Meetup.com that lets you customize the look and functionality [of the site and permits you to] own your own data.” Zanby lets you map your teams and members to the real-world structure of an organization, he adds. A number of businesses are already using it as part of their company intranet.

Watch, download or embed the video on Vimeo

Zanby is close to releasing version 4.0 (current version is 3.2). “Our best-looking client site right now is Rework the World, a global summit on green jobs taking place in Sweden next week,” Leif said yesterday. Continue reading →