Idealware has just taken it a step further by launching a Social Media Resource Library!

As they explain:

As a first step in our year-long social media research initiative, Idealware has compiled a library of nearly 200 – and growing – resources on social media. And, we’ve incorporated an easy-to-use tagging scheme so that you can find the resources most helpful to you.

The Social Media Resource Library , compiled in Delicious, will help your nonprofit gain valuable insights into how to best use social media for your organization. There are a lot of experts out there (while a majority of the resources tagged are from Beth Kanter and Mashable, there are tagged items from over 50 sources), and we are making it easier for you to find what you are looking for.

You can start searching the Library or learn how to add more resources by visiting the Idealware site here.

Go dive in! And be sure to share your ideas about the Library so the Idealware team and the rest of us working to provide resources can be sure there’s everything you need to meet your needs.

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NESTA commissioned the work and the Social by Social team was comprised of Andy Gibson, Nigel Courtney, David Wilcox and Professor Clive Holtham and myself.

Why Social by Social?

There have been so many developments in communication technologies over the past few years, affecting so many aspects of our lives and working patterns, that giving shape and meaning to the chaos has become nearly impossible.

‘Social by Social’ is a term we’ve invented to make sense of what we’re talking about.

The word ‘social’ is often used to imply all the various work that goes on in the public and third sector, and by individuals, to improve the world around us, care for each other, create value for communities and tackle the problems and inequalities of the world.

(Social enterprise. Social conscience. Social problems.)

And ‘social’ is also used by technologists and the media to refer to the new two-way communications technologies available via the internet and digital technologies. Communications that create society, strengthen relationships, support social interactions.

(Social media. Social networks. Social infrastructure.)

This book is a map of where these two words meet. It is not limited to the fashionable trends in social media and ‘web 2.0’; nor is it specifically aimed at people in the social sector. It is about how these new tools for social interaction are changing our society, and how those of us with a social conscience can use them to do more good.

‘Social by social’ change is about using new technologies to bring people together to make their world better. This handbook is a starting point for working out how to do it.

New technologies are changing the way we engage communities, run companies, deliver public services, participate in government and campaign for change. These new technologies are available to all of us. And they offer us an amazing opportunity to change our world.

You can read the handbook online for free or order your hard copy today!  The online version is completely commentable and we are eager to continue the conversation with you!  To dive in, visit:

http://SocialBySocial.com

The post Social by Social: Handbook launched! appeared first on Socialbrite.

Guest post by Dennis Yu
CEO, BlitzLocal

Most experts will tell you not to play this risky game — your long-term strategy is to write lots of good content. If it’s good for humans, it’s good for robots. And much of what SEOs charge for is good old-fashioned webmastering.

So ask yourself these questions:

1Is your code clean? Run it through validator.w3.org and see. Search engines are finicky and fragile. Cut and paste whole content blocks and paste them into the search box to see if they’re being indexed.

2Does your site load fast? Check average load times with free external monitoring services, like host-tracker.com and spyfu.com. Could your images be reduced in size? Optimize your code to run faster and cache where possible. You want pages to load in under one second for an average connection.

3Are you using dynamic pages? Do your urls have question marks or equal signs in them ( www.mysite.org/?sessionid=123&contentid=3456 , etc…)? You can typically have one or two variables in the url, but it’s best to have static pages where you can. Descriptive urls are better for the user and can result in portions of your url being bolded (a good thing) when they match terms in the user’s search. CRM (Constituent Relationship Management) and CMS (Content Management System) vendors such as GetActive/Convio and Joomla have issues with dynamic urls but are working to make their packages SEO-friendly.

4Do you have a Flash landing page? Or perhaps Flash navigation? Search engines cannot see beyond flash, as they look only at text. Do it in CSS. Use the Lynx browser or do a “view source” to get an idea of what search engines see. Don’t put up brick walls to search engines.

5Do you have multiple versions of your homepage? For example, http://www.mysite.org and http://mysite.org), which is also known as the “canonical” issue. To prevent diluting your rank, choose one version and permanently redirect all others to that one. See Matt Cutts’ advice.

6Do you have lots of great content? One of our clients, a nonprofit with a $200 million annual operating budget, wanted to rank highly on a particular term, which was nowhere to be found on their site or sitemap. Our advice: create a page a day of unique content on that topic and over time you’ll be there in the rankings. Simple, but rarely followed. Don’t copy content from elsewhere in any significant way, as that can result in a dupe penalty or even get you banned.

7Do your page titles and tags match your content? For all the talk about how managing meta tags can magically boost rankings, the reality is that if it’s something search engines can see, but humans can’t, it will receive less weighting. It can be gamed. Yet there is still value in having page titles and meta descriptions that reflect terms that are important to you. Just don’t stuff the title with every possible keyword you can imagine. Write your meta descriptions just as you would pay-per-click ad copy — be specific and use verbs, as that is what will show under natural search results. Links between pages should also have your key search phrases — don’t use “click here” in your anchor text.

8Are you doing web analytics? Google Analytics is free and so is awstats. These programs can tell you where users are coming from, what they’re doing on the site, what keywords they came in through, and what’s driving an email signup or donation. Vendors like Lyris’s ClickTracks.com sell a more advanced product that will monitor your SEO rankings, perform A/B split tests, or even manage search campaigns, among other things. Google has other free tools like Website Optimizer, which help you perform landing page testing with ease. Many of these tools are free and easy to use, so there’s no excuse for even a small nonprofit to not be analyzing their online traffic.

9Are you taking advantage of free PPC (Pay Per Click traffic? Google offers Google Grants, which provides free ad budgets to qualified nonprofits. Yahoo has rolled out a similar program, but with limited availability. If you are a nonprofit and are not a religious or political institution, there is no reason not to apply.

We hope these 9 tips will help you drive more search engine traffic to your site. As with the 80/20 rule, you often only need implement a few changes to see significant results. Should you have further questions, feel free to contact us. BlitzLocal, based in Westminster, Colo., specializes in search engine marketing.

Disclosure: BlitzLocal hosts the servers for Socialbrite.org.

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So, my response is simple: I want to share my RSS reader with you. What’s in my brain can be in yours!

Amy Sample Ward’s Version of RSS

Why?

This is just a starting place. There are other places you can go to find more blogs and resources as well, like Alltop and even WeAreMedia. So, why did I do this? I want to help support those just starting to investigate the options of social technologies for social change work, as well as give something back to those already invested and contributing to the community. Opening up my RSS reader (well, except for my mom’s blog and that kind of thing!) is something I have wanted to do for a while because it

1. provides an opportunity for me to offer a bit of value back to the larger tech+change community that is so valuable to me
2. is aligned with my core values of collaboration and sharing
3. creates a chance to improve this collection of feeds by and with my community

What?

My public RSS reader is built on Netvibes, which is a free, web-based RSS reader. This is a place to find blogs or RSS feeds from research or organizational websites – all focused on the large intersection of social technologies and social benefit work. This is free to use and publicly accessible. As you’ll see, it has many different tabs to try to help with the information overload of juggling so many great content sources.  Check it out!

Join me!

I would love for you to visit the public RSS reader, but even more so, I would love for you to suggest feeds that should be part of it! You can either comment on the News & Resources page, or email me with your suggestions.

The post A public RSS reader for you! appeared first on Socialbrite.

And for good reason:

Facebook is one of the largest social media sites on the web:

• More than 200 million active users
• More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is 35 and older

And their users are very active:

• Average user has 120 friends on the site
• More than 4 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day
• More than 30 million users update their statuses daily
• More than 6 million users become fans of Pages each day

Hubspot, an Internet marketing company in Cambridge, Mass., recently published a free book for businesses looking to use Facebook.

I was curious how useful How to Use Facebook for Business would be for my typical nonprofit client, so I downloaded it (no email required!) and read through the 22-page guide.

The ebook includes the following topics – all very useful for any nonprofit:

• Why you should be on Facebook – business value overview (also applies to nonprofits!)
• Facebook’s ad builder can be used to research potential supporters by filtering on age, location and interests.
• How to create an engaging Facebook Page to encourage wall comments – seen by all of commenter’s friends.
• How to use the FBML application to add HTML content to your page (also see this video tutorial).
• How to get search engine credit from Facebook with the HTML application.
• Using Facebook’s analytics to measure traffic on your Facebook Page.
• A Facebook reference guide and glossary.

I found these two pages particularly useful:

And a one-pager on the difference between Facebook Groups and Pages (also see this post).

Download the ebook here: How to Use Facebook for Business

The post Free ebook: How to use Facebook for business (and nonprofits) appeared first on Socialbrite.

RSS lets publishers stream content instantly to users who have subscribed to their feeds, and it lets users follow the latest entries on lots of sites without having to check them one at a time. When new material is posted on a site, subscribers are notified and sent either full versions or summaries.

Users can subscribe to updated text and rich media either by using an RSS reader (also called an aggregator), through some email programs like Yahoo! mail, through a Web browser (both Firefox and Apple’s Safari have built-in feed readers), or by using a service, such as MyYahoo or NetVibes, that lets you collect feeds of your choice on a personalized Web page you create.

Just subscribe to a handful of feeds by clicking on the XML or RSS button on web pages, and you’ll see content appear in your reader of choice only minutes after it appears online. If the term RSS is too techie for you, that’s fine. Yahoo! almost never uses the term; instead, they talk about subscribing to content.

News readers

RSS news reader programs, or feed aggregators, include:

• Miro (subscribe to rich media, PC/Mac)
• Bloglines (Web-based reader, PC/Mac)
• Google Reader (Web-based reader, PC/Mac)
• NewzCrawler (PC)
• SharpReader (PC)
• AmphetaDesk (PC, Mac, Linux)
• NetNewsWire (Mac OS X)
• NetNewsWire for the iPhone
• FeedDemon (PC)
• FeedReader (PC)
• Aggie News (PC)
• Wikipedia has a list of Web-based and desktop news readers
• Other news readers

For more background

• A rich directory of RSS Resources can be found on the Social Media Co-Lab Wiki
• News that comes to you — RSS feeds offer info-junkies a way to take the pulse of hundreds of sites and blogs.
• Tools for the info-warrior — RSS readers ride to the rescue of heavy news grazers.

Please comment on, correct or expand upon this article.

The post What is RSS? appeared first on Socialbrite.

Mobile giving via SMS in the United States and many other parts of the world, has been out of reach because of high carrier charges — up to 50% of a donation would go to the telcom — unacceptable to most charities.

But this has changed in the last two years. Mobile donation campaigns in the United States that go through the Mobile Giving Foundation are not subject to the high carrier fees. The Mobile Giving Foundation charges a smaller percentage fee — currently 10%. As a result, in 2008 the field of mobile giving in the U.S. attracted the attention by organizations large and small, including by such brands as UNICEF, the Salvation Army, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

in England, there is also talk about establishing an entity similar to the Mobile Giving Foundation that would negotiate a no-fee arrangement with the operators and vet charities for SMS giving campaigns.

How does mobile giving work?

The most-often talked about method of mobile fundraising and the one deployed by most mobile fundraising campaigns today are premium SMS campaigns (SMS refers to text messaging). Premium SMS fundraising campaigns were initially deployed to much publicity for disaster relief such as for Katrina victims and those of the California Wildfires. Customers of participating mobile carriers could send a text message to the short code “2HELP” (24357), activated during times of disasters, to make a tax-deductible donation of $5 to the American Red Cross’ relief efforts. 100% of thew donation benefiited the Red Cross as carriers wauved their fees. Now mobile fundraising shortcodes are available to all nonprofits, not just during the disasters.

Short codes are often referred to as the “mobile URL” — short, five digit codes or even vanity codes that customers can text to receive information or participate in a campaign. These donations via premium SMS then appear on customers’ monthly bills or are debited from prepaid cell phone account balances.

The Mobile Giving Foundation in the U.S. currently operates ten donation shortcodes and has enrolled over 65 nonprofits in its program. Each nonprofit has to go through an application process to qualify and then works with one of the mobile vendors that the Mobile Giving Foundation has approved, following strict guidelines.

Approval and then receiving the actual donations is not a quick process. Currently, there is a wait time of at least a month to get approved by the Foundation and the carriers. Donations solicited via mobile minus fees are collected and forwarded to the nonprofit within 90 days.

The size of mobile giving in the United States

Mobile giving via premium SMS is still small despite some valiant efforts. In 2008, the first full year of mobile fundraising in the United States, mobile giving crossed only half a million dollars. Not much, given the ubiquity of mobile phones in the US. But, as James Eberhard of Mobile Accord, a mobile vendor, points out, donations exceeded those raised on the Internet for the first year in 1997, when proceeds were a reported $300,000.

Eberhard cautions that “most nonprofit mobile campaigns are brand awareness campaigns right now rather than a direct response mechanism for an organization.” He points out that the current limit of $5 per SMS is too low an amount to yield much revenue. Nonprofits may furthermore fear that they cannibalize donors with a low mobile contribution when that same person could be giving more online.

But there is a growing number of campaigns — and lots of experimentation. For example, some of the more interesting campaigns used mobiles to draw attention to their brand, or used mobiles as part of a one-time holiday campaign. The Salvation Army in several cities, solicited mobile donations in its kettle ringing campaigns during the holidays. UNICEF deployed a similar strategy, soliciting donations via SMS during its Trick-or-treat for UNICEF campaign during Halloween. Both campaigns sought to capitalize on the just-in-time giving mobiles enable, though arguably it’s still much easier for donors to throw a few dollars into the kettle.

And then there are celebrity campaigns — Alicia Keys, most notably, who aggressively deployed and marketed mobile giving for her charity Keep a Child Alive. Keys included specific appeal for mobile donations during a concert tour last year and prominently displays a mobile giving short code for a $5 donation on the charity’s web site. According to Mobile Accord, the vendor for the campaign, 8,000 donors gave $5 via SMS during the concert tour, for a total of $40,000 for the charity.

These are still tiny numbers in comparison to the $10 billion in online donations purported to have been given online in 2007, and even smaller in comparison to the $300 billion in charitable giving overall.

But when taking into consideration the growth trends in mobile use and texting not just in the younger demographic but in the over-35 group, mobile giving via SMS is a channel nonprofits ought to at least consider. Mobile subscribers in the U.S. between 35 and 54, according to Nielsen, a rating firm, see especially explosive growth in SMS use: in 2007, just 37 percent of them regularly sent text-messages, while in 2008 that number grew to 59 percent. There are currently 270 million mobile subscribers in the US, according to industry group CTIA, all of which have the ability to send and receive text messages.

What works in mobile giving?

As the much-lauded Obama mobile campaign showed, mobile marketing is effective when deployed in a way that reinforces marketing messages through other channels and takes into consideration what is uniquely valuable about messaging via mobile phones. As good communication staff and fundraisers know, reinforcing messages that build a relationship with a donor, that are timely and urgent, and that have specific goals tend to be effective. Mobile messaging can play a role in well-thought-out campaigns and provides another, potentially very effective channel for reaching a target audience.

Share Our Strength, the national organization focused on child hunger, recently launched a text donation challenge — an effective way to reach new donors. Says Chuck Scofield, Share Our Strength’s VP for Development, “AT&T came to us as part of President Obama’s call to service.” Share our Strength and AT&T then partnered on a text-to-donate challenge: Donors who text in “SHARE” to 20222 on their mobile device for a $5 donation will be matched by AT&T for a total contribution up to $100,000. At the same time, as Scofield points out, Share our Strength also leads, together with AT&Ts employees a nationwide food drive to benefit community food banks in 32 cities. The food drive has so far generated 20,000 pounds of food alone, the mobile texting challenge is ongoing until March 1.

Share Our Strength did extensive outreach on blogger networks, and through Twitter. Says Suzy Twohig, Director of Donor Relations: “This is an opportunity for us to reach out to a new constituency. Our donors are giving more this year in response to the challenging times and for us, mobile giving is complementary to our other forms of giving.”

According to industry insiders, there may also be an inccrease in the premium SMS limit from $5 to $10 as well as SMS monthly recurring donations. At that $120-year price point, even if each SMS donation would have to be approved by the donor every month with a reply confirmation, mobile giving via SMS is beginning to look more lucrative for organizations than just a one-time $5 donation.

The hope is, according to Eberhard, that “if you can get a donor committed, even with a relatively small amount, it shows their involvement and can be tapped in the future.”

As usual in this field, there is little public data available, and most nonprofit campaigns have not been very strategic in converting their mobile donors or even activists into longer-term supporters, as we have often pointed out.

Eberhard also points out that most people do not know they can give via a text message, requiring still a large amount of donor education. He cautions that mobile revenue is not going to happen overnight for nonprofits but rightly notes that the trends are pointing in the right direction.

A new blog, Mobile Giving Insider, run by mobile vendor Mobile Commons, is keeping track of developments in this space, though it is currently only focused on premium SMS as a fundraising mechanism.

Going beyond SMS

But SMS is not the only way on which people can give. Mobile Commons, for example, has an application — mConnect — that is deployed by advocacy campaigns for legislative call-in campaigns. Planned Parenthood recently used the tool for a thank-you call to President Obama.

Here is how is works: An organization sends a text message including a phone number to its mobile list. The receiver replies CALL via text or simply dials the indicated number and is connected to a customized voice recording. This could be talking points or an overview of the situation — or a pitch to give. The caller is then forwarded on to a destination number, such as a legislative switchboard, or a phone bank.

Mobile Commons powered such a call-to-give for then-presidential candidate John Edwards who used his list of cellphone numbers to direct constituents via voicemail and text message to a live phone bank. Donors in this scenario then make a donation on the phone with a credit card rather than via a $5 text message.

Another tool, Twitter, has also been much in the news lately as a way for mobile peer-to-peer and micro-fundraising. Twitter, a microblogging service accessible via mobile phone or on the web, allows users to post 140-character messages to a list of followers. Nonprofits have been quick to take up Twitter as a way to get their messages out and converse with constituents. During a recent ‘tweetsgiving,’ an enterprising nonprofit raised $11K in just a few days through its network of supporters and peers to build a classroom in a Tanzanian school.

Twestival, an impromptu, all-volunteer-led series of events on the same day in the United States and the UK organized via Twitter raised a reported $250,000 for Charity: Water.

Share our Strength, through its outreach on Twitter for the mobile donation campaign, was mentioned on a prominent blog which resulted in a $1,000 matching grant from yet another reader, creating a ripple effect of attention and money. Says Scofield: “Our mobile campaign and outreach was opening the door for further engagement.

Though not strictly mobile giving, Twitter and other social networks such as Facebook are yet another channel for nonprofits to build networks reachable via mobile to turn people into supporters and donors of an organization.

There is still much to be explored in this multi-channel universe and the organizations that are thinking creatively and innovatively about mobile giving but it is clear that this channel is going to take off as people get used to the idea and nonprofits become more clever in integrating mobiles into their strategies.

A few more examples

A nice example of mobile-inspired giving recently is the campaign by Stand Up for Kids, a nonprofit working to alleviate kid and teen homelessness. The organization teamed up with Virgin Mobile’s Generation RE campaign and American Eagle Outfitters. A user texts in “karma” to shortcode 68450 and a piece of clothing is donated to a homeless kid on the texter’s behalf by American Eagle. The donor can also text in his or her name to appear on the Stand Up for Kids website. The campaign did a number of things right: It was a great use of texting to team up with a company to make a donation on the donor’s behalf AND build a mobile list in the process. The medium is right for the group that is appealing to a younger audience that feels empathetic to teen homelessness. Even though the organization’s website clearly cries “poor nonprofit,” the Karma page is cool enough. Streaming the donor names makes people feel engaged and recognized.

Virgin has a text2donate program, too — you can give $5 to the nonprofit itself by texting “DONATE” to 7845, but it seems Stand Up for Kids is too humble to mention that anywhere on their site. So, if you read this, have a heart. Donate $5 by texting DONATE to 7845 to alleviate child and teen homelessness, and then give a kid some clothes from American Eagle by texting in “karma” to 68450 – which will cost you nothing but the cost of the SMS.

One of my perennial favorites, even though it is by now a few years old, is a campaign by Meir Panim, a network of soup kitchens in Israel. It ran an “SMS for Lunch” campaign, a promotional interactive campaign: On their website a boy was seen, facing an empty plate. The site invited you to donate through SMS. The moment the system received the SMS, the banner changed: the plate filled and the boy smiled. The amount of the donation — each SMS — covers the cost of one meal for a child.

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s charity raised $85,000 with the cooperation of Zain, a South African mobile operator. Using Mandela’s 90th birthday last July as the ‘call to give’, well-wishers from around the world could text in a birthday wish and make a donation at the same time. Shared and dedicated premium SMS codes were set up in over 20 countries around the world including the U.S., U.K., South Africa, Australia, Spain and Germany as well as many African nations,making this one of the biggest premium SMS fundraising initiatives launched.

Photo courtesy Nelson Mandela Foundation

This entry originally appeared at MobileActive.org.

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