Social Media

Miley Cyrus closed her account and quit Twitter with an apparent DIY Youtube rap video called "Goodbye Twitter," wherein she oh-so-eloquently extolls the value of quality in-person time over endlessly updating a stream of personal trivia as the reason for leaving the service. Does Miley's move foreshadow the complete abandonment of social media for tweens and teens?

Last year I wrote about how an organization could aggregate shared bookmarks from multiple people and present them on their website.  In the recent redeisgn of CivicActions.com we implemented this functionality.  You can see the shared bookmarks feed in the center column at the bottom of the home page, or you can look at a more complete list.

I've previously written about how organizations can start Tweeting, and last week found a great primer on using Twitter for Activism. The DigiActive Guide to Twitter for Activism is a concise and informative guide that any organization looking to evaluate or deploy a Twitter strategy should read. While it is geared towards activism I think that most non profits would find it helpful.

Last week Mashable ran a blog post about the increasing budgets for social media marketing at big businesses. It was based on a report by the Aberdeen Groups covered in more detail on EMarketer.com. The report had two important findings:

1. 63% of best in class businesses surveyed said they would be increasing their social media marketing budgets, 21% said by 25% or more.

SO excited to see Amnesty International get onto Twitter today. GO FOLLOW THEM NOW!!!. Go ahead, do it now and come back. I'll wait... If ever there was a case study for mobilizing the masses using social media, I believe Amnesty could be it.

I have a question for you - do you use a micro-blogging platform like Twitter? Why or why not? What are you noticing about your online life, productivity, sense of connection, etc. Give us an idea of who you are, too - work at a non-profit? Are you a consultant? Leave a message in the comments. I'm interested to hear your thoughts, insights and concerns. You can also follow us on twitter and send us as @reply there.

Twice in the last 24 hours I've explained Twitter to friends and family who aren't exactly "early adopters" of webstuff, but who aren't slouches when it comes to staying in touch via facebook, email, etc.. I think these are the third and mainstream wave of adopters and they're starting to hear about Twitter. Arguably, that's because they're in my network and they see my posts on Facebook, which I've configured to update my status with my Twitter feed. "via Twitter" and my occasional tweets about Twitter have 'em wondering. Whether they adopt or not remains to be seen.

In this fifth and final article in our series on creating an SEO strategy we will tackle the topic of community. Websites are not like the "field of dreams" -- if you build it, they won't necessarily come. Certainly if you do everything right up to this point: write good content, use appropriate markup and install the right Drupal modules, the search engines will index your site. However, when you start receiving quality inbound links is when your organic search results will increase exponentially.

It goes without saying that we at CivicActions have been watching the presidential race with a passion that borders on addiction. We have also been excited by recent developments and new uses of technology in the service of civic engagement (which was, in part, what our company was founded on 4 years ago).

Amy Sample Ward at NetSquared posted the following question for the Net2ThinkTank:

What are the key questions nonprofit orgs should ask to help them determine how to prioritize social media training and experimentation as they do their technology and organization-strengthening planning?

I provide Social Media Training and Coaching to our clients.  While there are many good reasons to make social media a part of an organization's overall internet strategy, there are plenty of wrong reasons too.