I hope you found my previous post on how to harness the power of social media helpful. I'd love to think that you went immediately to Blogger.com, TypePad.com, or Vox.com, and set up your own blog as soon as you could, but I understand that all this Web 2.0 stuff can be extremely overwhelming, so one step at a time.
You may not have posted a lot about your organization on the Web yet, but believe you me, I can almost guarantee, folks are already talking about you. I mentioned Technorati.com in a previous post, but did you know you can use it and similar sites like blogdigger.com (which has a cool list of local bloggers), icerocket.com to see what bloggers are saying about you? Good news travels fast.
Short Case Study: Another cool way to harness the power of bloggers and to engage your supporters, is to do what one nonprofit did. The San Francisco Symphony hosted "Citizen Journalist Night." What in the world is that? Basically, they invited bloggers to hear and enjoy the symphony. Twenty bloggers agreed to come and bring a guest which ended up being 40 people. For many, it was their first time at Symphony Hall and they received all the perks that traditional journalists covering an event get.
So what did the Symphony want in return for the two free tickets they dished out? They wanted each blogger to blog about their experience. Whoa! You might say. What if the bloggers simply hated the performance? Well, therein is the key. If you start developing relationships with the community through social media, you have to be willing to be TRANSPARENT. If not, you'll lose respect in the blogosphere. We don't look kindly on phonies out here.
Be true. Be transparent. Be authentic.
How did this pan out for the San Francisco orchestra? Very well. They were able to broaden their network by reaching people in the bloggers sphere of influence without spending a ton on an advertising campaign that would have been ignored anyway.
Here are a few more ways to make your socially responsible organization everything you dreamt it would be.
You may not have posted a lot about your organization on the Web yet, but believe you me, I can almost guarantee, folks are already talking about you. I mentioned Technorati.com in a previous post, but did you know you can use it and similar sites like blogdigger.com (which has a cool list of local bloggers), icerocket.com to see what bloggers are saying about you? Good news travels fast.
Short Case Study: Another cool way to harness the power of bloggers and to engage your supporters, is to do what one nonprofit did. The San Francisco Symphony hosted "Citizen Journalist Night." What in the world is that? Basically, they invited bloggers to hear and enjoy the symphony. Twenty bloggers agreed to come and bring a guest which ended up being 40 people. For many, it was their first time at Symphony Hall and they received all the perks that traditional journalists covering an event get.
So what did the Symphony want in return for the two free tickets they dished out? They wanted each blogger to blog about their experience. Whoa! You might say. What if the bloggers simply hated the performance? Well, therein is the key. If you start developing relationships with the community through social media, you have to be willing to be TRANSPARENT. If not, you'll lose respect in the blogosphere. We don't look kindly on phonies out here.
Be true. Be transparent. Be authentic.
How did this pan out for the San Francisco orchestra? Very well. They were able to broaden their network by reaching people in the bloggers sphere of influence without spending a ton on an advertising campaign that would have been ignored anyway.
Here are a few more ways to make your socially responsible organization everything you dreamt it would be.
- Engage your supporters and donors on YouTube. If a picture says a thousand words, then getting your message out on YouTube (the largest worldwide video-sharing community and 8th most popular site on the Internet), will say more than a million things about you and what you do.
Hey, it's free and I'm sure you already have video footage of your last fundraising event, speaking engagement, or donor reception. Go ahead, sign up and post away. - Rock the vote. Get more foot traffic to your site with Digg It! On Digg.com, people vote on Web sites and news that they think are popular and worth visiting. Why not add your organizations Web site. It's free. Did I say that it was free?
Let me know what you tried, and what worked for you. I can't wait to hear your success stories.
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