Moving a Web 1.0 Nonprofit to 2.0
General, online communications, social networks, Conferences, 07NTC April 11th, 2007I received this response to my NTC review the other day and I thought I’d write a whole post about it.
tim,
I attended some of the same sessions you did - heard you on 2 panels. If you were to give advice to a web 1.0 np about advancing into the 2.0 world, what would you pick as the starting point? blogs, videos, rss, tags … Or should they just start on their e-Newsletters and use social networking to “create their community.” Am excited about the tools but don’t know where to start.
I actually don’t think there is a right answer to this question. However, if it were my decision I would start a MySpace page first. This is probably the one that takes the least amount of time to set up and maintain. To have a successful page, make sure you have strong action alerts. MySpace users seem more compelled to action than anything else, and this is a great way to get people to forward your alerts (in the form of a MySpace bulletin), and get them to join your friends list. Your MySpace page can also serve as the main part of your social networking strategy as it can host your blog, pictures, videos and action alerts in one place. Some groups have found MySpace users will join your email list, and some will even donate.
This is a simple first step to test the waters and see how things work. You’ll find you become more brave with Web 2.0 after trying one or two things.
Of course the other thing you could do is hire me:)
April 13th, 2007 at 8:08 am
tim,
That’s interesting, I probably wouldn’t have put MySpace out there as a first step. I have a piece that I remixed from Marnie Webb called “Ten Steps Towards Web2.0 for Nonprofits”
You can find here:
http://ncna.wikispaces.com/ - it is filled with links and pointers for an organization asking that question to become more educated about the choices.
April 13th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Hey Beth,
Always a voice of reason. I picked MySpace because it’s relatively easy for a nonprofit to get up and running. Many other options (blogs, videos, podcasts) are very hard to get going and MySpace is potentially the easiest. Plus, it allows you to enter the web 2.0 world with relative ease and then you can branch out to other sites from there.
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:12 pm
It’s relatively easy if you don’t care what it looks like - needs some HTML perhaps if you’re concerned with the look. I wonder how much care and feeding it takes to get an ROI? What has been your experience? Do you think the choice of myspace might also be directed by the audience segment you want to reach? Just musing out outloud … admittedly I haven’t yet dived deep into myspace - only just doing a five minutes a day dairy …