New on SSIR: Give Permission to Peer Influence

09 March 2010

My latest post is up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog. You can read the post and join the conversation on the SSIR blog here, or read the copied post below. —– A new report from the team at Forrester came out last week: Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid. It comes at the same [...]

What to Watch For at SXSW 2010 - The Nonprofit Edition

09 March 2010

Depending on who you ask, it may or may not be a surprise that SXSW 2010 has become a destination for nonprofit staffers. With fifteen percent-ish attendees working with nonprofits, SXSW can be inspirational. It's the perfect place to meet change agents like Beth Kanter, David Neff, and Amy Sample Ward, as well as network and learn from your peers at other nonprofits. But the attendees are just the beginning...

Reputation Management and Branding: SphinnCon Israel

07 March 2010

Live blogging a moderated session about online reputation management at SphinnCon Israel. Great ideas for rep managment and recognition using a Q & A answers strategy.

SEO Fundamentals: Moderated Session at SphinnCon

07 March 2010

Understand the basics of Search Engine Optimization, a moderated session at SphinnCon Israel.

Social media IS effective for nonprofits and small businesses

03 March 2010

Two data sets, two different user groups, same results: Small businesses and nonprofit find social media effective for reaching new customers and strengthening existing relationships. Irrefutable evidence of the power of engagement.

Building a Facebook Fanpage – Part 1 – The Background Info

03 March 2010

This is Part I of my guide to creating a Facebook fanpage for nonprofits. We’re going to use a fan page that I recently set up as an example of how to set up a page. So stage one – Register and make it clear what you are about...

Blackbaud Announces March Web Seminars for Nonprofits

01 March 2010

Blackbaud is offering a free web seminar series to help nonprofits build strategies for mobilizing, soliciting, and stewarding supporters during and after times of disaster. Blackbaud experts and partners developed the seminars based off of their work with nonprofit customers who responded to the Haiti earthquake. The series, entitled “Lessons Learned from Haiti,” includes five seminars that will take place March through May.

Unpacking the world of digital in government

27 February 2010

Recently, I was in a meeting of government communicators at the leading edge. The discussion was informed, and mature; the examples innovative and and impactful. Though the group had diverse backgrounds in Press Offices and Strategic Marketing, they were all in agreement that digital, and social media in particular, was the way of the future. This [...] Related posts:

1. London Summit: digital engagement done right
2. Defining the roles within digital engagement
3. The pieces of the digital engagement puzzle

Guest Post: Staying In Control of Social Media

26 February 2010

Social media takes so much time! Why does it always seem to take us away from work tasks, or so hard to manage effectively. Hannah Katzman offers her thoughts on how to stay in control, and why it's so difficult to manage social media in this guest post.

Learning is Everything!

26 February 2010

In my conversations with nonprofits over the past ten years, the single most important need isn’t simply more money or more staff (although those are always helpful)…it’s continued learning. Education is absolutely essential to the millions of nonprofit organizations doing good work in the United States and abroad.

The rules of Intranet Club

26 February 2010

Yesterday at work, we hosted the first meeting of intranet club, bringing together intranet managers from 12 central government departments for a show and tell about design decisions, technologies, user involvement and project management. It was a fascinating couple of hours, with a group of people who rarely get together in that way, aside from [...] Related posts:

1. How much is too much?

Building a Facebook Fanpage – Part 0 – The prelude

25 February 2010

I went to visit a local (to me) historic site recently, Cumbernauld House.  This house has been sitting since 1731 and is on the site of a castle which goes back centuries before that.  When I went along I realised the house had fallen on hard times.  A builders firm had purchased it a few years ago from the local council and had then gone into liquidation and the house had lain empty.

Tips for Developing Social Media Presentations

24 February 2010

How do you explain social media to the public, no matter what their level of understanding? This was the issue we faced crafting an "overview" of social media. From this experience, I offer five basic ideas that you have to utilize in order to convey the concept of social media effectively.

Great reads from around the web on February 23rd

23 February 2010

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I've found recently (as of February 23rd). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Social Media Today | ROI: How to Measure Return on Investment in Social Media - A great post from Brian Solis on Social Media Today discussing the ROI of social media. This is a really great post to read for anyone thinking about how to measure, evaluate, and even consider the impact of social media use (and that should be everyone). "Over the years, Social Media experts attempted to redefine ROI for a new era of influence. While some introduced alternative philosophies for measuring the nuances tied to social media, others wondered aloud whether ROI simply wasn’t necessary as the tools and methodologies for analyzing yields didn’t yet exist. And furthermore, by focusing on justification and metrics, we were distracted from the primary objective of building relationships and cultivating dialogue. ... But that was then and this is now. In 2010, we enter in to a new era of social media marketing, one based on information, rationalization, and resolve."
• Cause Fatigue #4Change Recap « 4change - Did you miss the recent #4change twitter chat? The February chat focused on cause fatigue, but if you missed it, Zero Strategist has done a great recap of the conversation and highlights. Check it out!
• The Collaboration Prize - Search Database - Wow! Check out this great resource - a database of collaborations! "The first phase of this database of nonprofit collaboration models (currently consisting of the 176 nominations deemed eligible for The Collaboration Prize in 2008) contains the information submitted by each nominator in response to specific questions about the nominated collaboration. Additional models of collaboration from The Collaboration Prize will be added soon. While the contents of the first phase are limited to data contained in the nominations submitted in 2008, the next phase of the database, to be launched in the next few months, will have an interactive component, whereby the existing data can be updated and the database can be expanded by adding new collaboration models that were not part of The Collaboration Prize project."
• Welcome to Kopernik - "Kopernik -- www.thekopernik.org -- a new non-profit venture that provides life-changing technology to the poor, launches today. Kopernik makes technology designed for the developing world accessible through the Internet and by harnessing the power of individual donations. Kopernik’s aim is to bring this technology to the poor in developing countries via the site, and link them to individuals willing to make a donation towards the purchase of the products. It is the brain-child of Ewa Wojkowska and Toshi Nakamura who have extensive experience in international development as UN staff members." Check it out!
• New Ideas for Promoting Physical Activity in London - "The Go London social innovation competition is a call for ideas on how to make London more active, the first of its kind to be energised by the groundswell of optimism surrounding London hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. It is a shared movement to create a city where physical activity is a normal part of Londoners lives and contributes to making London a more livable, sustainable and healthy city. The project aims to help improve activity levels of everyone by finding out what's already out there as well as asking people for their ideas on how they think London could become more active. In the same way that stories can come from anywhere to inspire others, and we'll hope to capture as many of these as possible, simple, life changing ideas can spring up too. Through the creative use of social media Go London hopes to capture as many of these ideas as possible."
• Facebook Causes: Not just for Individuals: ICT Hub Knowledgebase - The Knowledgebase from LASA is a great place to find articles on all kinds of topics related to technology for organizations. I wrote an article for them on how organizations are using Causes and it's now up. Visit the knowledgebase if you want to learn more about Causes but also head there to find some valuable resources on hardware, software, social media and more.

Live Blog: Is Technology Really Good for Human Rights

22 February 2010

Tonight, I attended a live panel discussion on the question of whether Technology is Really Good for Human Rights, or not. Below are live notes – apologies for spelling and grammar – that follow the main points and audience q/a. Enjoy! Context for the event from Rory Cellan-Jones: Prevailing ethos of the web has been libertarian, [...]

Vote for your favorite examples of Social Media for Social Good

19 February 2010

The Social Media for Social Good collection from NTEN and NetSquared calls for your case studies in leveraging social media tools in your program work. Social Media for Social Good Everywhere you turn, you’re hearing about social media. Especially when it comes to fundraising. But at NTEN and NetSquared, we know that social media is good for [...]

A Totally Baldacious Campaign

19 February 2010

Don’t worry, I’m not trying to start an adjective revolution! Totally Baldacious is the latest campaign from The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and it’s turning heads! Well, it’s turning them bald… “The Totally Baldacious campaign is a great way to show your love and solidarity with cancer patients while you help raise awareness and funds [...]

Top 5 from Stanford Social Innovation Review

19 February 2010

I’m so thrilled to share the news with you all that my blog post, Online Community Building: Gardening vs Landscaping, was the most popular blog post on the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s opinion blog in 2009. It is such an honor to me to contribute to the valuable collection of knowledge and insight at SSIR [...]

NTC 2010 and a plea for help

19 February 2010

***UPDATE*** Unfortunately, a personal issue has arisen that has upset my plans to attend 10NTC. The wonderful people who were so generous in helping me have received full refunds, an explanatory email and my eternal gratitude! Today, thanks to the generosity of the NTEN community, 57 lucky people (including me – woohoo!) have been granted scholarships [...]

The Social Media Response to the Disaster in Haiti

18 February 2010

I have a guest post up on the NTEN blog discussing some of the ways social media was put into action as soon as the earthquakes struck in Haiti: When disaster strikes, we want information as soon as possible and we want to help just as quickly. How can we do that? Whether we look at [...]