WeAreMedia: Social Networks - Build the Nonprofit Social Media Tool Box

Source: Nielsen Online

The We Are Media Festival of Tools is starts the last week of work on the Nonprofit Social Media Toolbox with a focus on social networking tools and widgets and apps.

So for today, our focus is on social networking sites.  According to this recent Nielsen study there has been explosive social networking growth over the past year.  The top social networking sites include some familiar names - Myspace and Facebook.   What is interesting is that nearly half of the biggest social networking sites are also among the fastest growing - and they are all most popular among age groups over 25.

Gartner VP recently published a report from analyst Andrea Di Maio, who says citizen social networks will complement, and may replace, some government functions. "Today, the primary role of social networks for governments is to facilitate the exchange of information and to establish novel collaboration patterns, often across organizational boundaries," Gartner's report says.  It argues that blurring departmental boundaries, increasing horizontal exchange among departments, shrinking budgets, and a growing trend in which control over storing information is relinquished to third parties are all fueling the adoption of social media within government organizations.(And perhaps nonprofits?)

For the social networking section the WeAreMedia tool box, we have included the definitive list of every social network in the world, but what would be really helpful to have the short list of where nonprofits have had some results.   So far that list includes the big ones like Facebook, Myspace, Ning, and LinkedIn.  And, it should include some of the focused social networking sites for nonprofits, like Change.Org, so the quesiton is what others to include on the social networking part of the tool kit?

Office Life:How To Befriend The Boss On Facebook

In addition to links to the various site, we would like you recommend the best of the best how-to posts or videos for the specific social network.   The example of above comes a collection of screencasts about Facebook. (Hat tip to Kari Dunn Saratovsky of the Social Citizen's Blog for find the one above).  We have lots of resources with tips and examples related to strategy in other sections of the WeAreMedia project, what we're looking for here are the pure how-tos related to the specific social networking sites referenced.

So, go over to the wiki and add your best how-to resource and you could win a t-shirt.

Comments

[Ashley Messick]

Thank you so much for sharing that super cute and yet informative video. I find that often times I am asked similar questions concerning privacy as I encourage other employees at Blood Centers of the Pacific to join the social networking scene. It seems as though with people who are less familiar with Facebook this is one of the major concerns of joining. I am glad that now instead of them having to listen exclusively to me I can share this video, which let's face it seems to explain it much better than I ever seem to!