Social Media Overview and Strategy For NGOs

Editor's Notes

1. Social networks are where people go to connect with other people. Social media is often the product of those connections: the shared comments, photos, videos that those people create. Social media can exist outside of a “social networking” site like Facebook. Blogs and comments constitute social media, for example, though they do not necessarily exist inside a social network.
2. Social networks are the connections between people. Websites that let people connect with each other. facebook has over 200 million users. It would be the 4 th largest country. 35% of online adults have a social networking profile, and many have more than one (on different networks)‏
3. The “networks” are not always “social networking sites”, though they may exhibit some characteristics of social networking.
4. In may about 70 million people visit facebook each month, same for myspace. 17 million visited twitter in may people trust recommendations from friends more than advertising. top search hits for many consumer products are user generated content, not manufacturer marketing materials. people can post content from anywhere via mobile devises, and reach hundreds, if not thousands of people instantly.
5. without the “connections” social media is really just media. But beyond that there is a shift in tone that opens space up for conversation. I press release probably doesn't generate much “conversation” online, while a blog post, or a short video might garner a multitude of comments. A tweet may be replied to, or forwarded. The barrier to such action is VERY low. The social media sphere is really a no spin zone. Authenticity rules the day. It is important that you are seen as adding value to the network though sharing information. You will be rewarded for it by getting more attention.
6. AS we've seen from the numbers I've already shared, 10s of millions of people use these social sites monthly. Certainly some more than others, but the trend line is going up. Populations of users on facebook are increasing in all agegroups. Twitter has experience astronomical growth. Chances are you have nascent networks in all of these places that are just waiting to be activated. People are blogging, commenting, tweeting, posting comments on facebook, posting videos, and they may already be talking about you, or the issues that are important to your organization. You need to be a part of that conversation. sites like Facebook, and Twitter, are trying to become the go to “social search”. I'd much rather know what my friends say about the news, a product, or an organization than what some cable news talking head, or far off reporter says. So i will search my network, or query my network first.
7. Now we will talk about some different types, or modes of “social media” in more dept
8. people, especially the mainstream media, seem to be all atwitter about twitter these days. You can't turn on CNN without seeing an anchor referring to or reading “tweets”. What exactly is it: short dispatches, limited to 140 characters. Ranging from the mundane, like what a person ate for lunch, to the profound: breaking news about the iranian election, and everything in between. It is a way to quickly and easily share thoughts, information, links to news or videos. Recommendations, questions, and conversation. You really have to get into twitter to fully understand it. Facebook also offers status updates which are very similar, not as constrained and live on your profile on facebook and are shared with all your facebook friends.
9. On Twitter, you can choose you want to follow, it is a one way relationship: you subscribe to them, there is not reciprocity by default, which is different from facebook. People can then choose to follow you back. On both platforms, the conversations that ensue are by default public, on facebook they are threaded, whereas on twitter they are not.
10. I'm sure that many of you often email links to websites to friends and colleagues. Email, is still for many, the killer app, and it works very well for sharing a link with a few friends. Social bookmarking basically shares your “links” or bookmarks with everyone, and in doing so a network effect emerges as sites get bookmarked by many people, tagged and categorized, the resulting database can then be searched, and the results are imbued with more human intelligence. I personally favor delicious, and use it every day for tagging bookmarks. Stumbled upon has a dedicated following as well. Google has a bookmarks tool, and there is also google notes which works with google reader and allows you to share items you find on the web via your google reader shared feed which we will talk about a little more later.
11. This is a list of my bookmarks in delicious tagged with “environment” At that red arrow you can see that 201 people have also tagged mongabay.com
12. Many sites offer a “share this” set of tools, as you can see here, there are links to share the page via a variety of websites and services.