Social Media 101
From Lakeinnovation.org
In the social media 101 group, we focused on how tools work and what kinds of communities are best reached on different tools. Use the links below for resources.
General Resources over all tools and strategies:
Social by Social - this is a handbook for using social technologies for social impact work and includes an extensive tools overview and resources (visit the Companion section for specifics)
We Are Media - this is a collaborative project pooling tips and resources for using social media in nonprofits
Listening and Sharing Tools
Delicious - just like saving bookmarks on the web to your computer or browser, Delicious allows you to save your bookmarks online, so you can access them from any computer. Tags are used to save content, for example, saving the Lake Innovation blog on delicious may have the following tags: innovation ashoka technology entrepreneurs fellows italy. In this way, you could find the blog by searching in your delicious account for any of these tags. If you choose to have your bookmarks be public, others could find the Lake Innovation blog by searching for content saved to a tag which you used to bookmark the blog.
Google Reader - this is a tool from Google that allows you to subscribe to content of all kinds across the web (youtube videos, blog posts, news sites, etc.) via RSS. Instead of visiting all of your favorite websites to look for new content, you would visit your Google Reader page and see new content for all of the websites you subscribe to.
Google Alerts - you can sign up for Google Alerts to track any key words or phrases, etc. Setting up a Google Alert for "Lake Innovation" would let us, either by RSS or by email, be alerted to any new mention of Lake Innovation on blog posts, news sites, and so on. This lets you find people talking about your organization, campaigns, or projects and connect with them, answer questions, or provide more information for them to help you.
Social Networking Tools
Facebook - a social networking platform that was originally designed for university students in the USA, is now a public/global platform, often associated with a "clean" or "more professional" feel than MySpace
MySpace - a social networking platform that was originally designed for music groups, is now used by individuals, groups and organizations, often used as an example of offline social groups replicating online social lines
Bebo - a social networking platform that is used largely in the UK, Japan, etc. and is most used by young people
Ning - a social networking platform that allows users to create their own social networks, either closed or public, and customizable to meet the needs or the community via various user options (forums, blogs, photos, videos, etc.)
LinkedIn - a social networking platform for professionals and professional groups, lets users list professional experience, education, affiliations and so on
Communication Tools
Wordpress is a free blogging platform that has two options for use: 1. Wordpress hosted with a limited set of options for embedding and adding on to you blog, or 2. a self-hosted open source option that is completely customizable.
Blogger is a free blogging platform hosted by Google
Blogging is driven by conversations; authors post and readers can comment to continue the conversation, ask questions, add ideas, and so on. Organizations use blogs to keep supporters updated on their work, get feedback, call supporters to action, fundraise and more. There are many options, mostly driven by RSS, to push your blog content out around the web including to Twitter, to Facebook, back to your website, and so on.
Twitter is a free communication tool, often called "micro-blogging" because, like blogs, posts are from an author/s and appear in a stream in reverse chronological order, but unlike with blogs, Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters at a time (which drives the use of Twitter on mobiles via sms). Twitter is used for promotion and conversation. Because of the short limit on characters, Twitter posts often include links to where conversations or content of interest are (instead of being embedded in Twitter). Hashtags (like #example) are also a huge conversation tool on Twitter which allow people to link posts to each other by including the same hashtag - so everyone posting message to Twitter about the Lake Innovation event can find each other's posts by including #li09 in the posts.
