Beth Tinsman shares her expertise on Social Networking
May 12, 2010
Beth Tinsman of Twin State Technical Services and Tom Terronez of Terrostar share their expertise on “Social Networking” at the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ May 2010 meeting.
Beth’s notes from the panel discussion on Social Networking:
Great group of individuals to work with, and very engaged on how to interact with their populations. Our discussion centered around how to use media mechanisms like Facebook, Twitter, Website, and other technologies to provide targeted and desired information to their friends, donors, and potential donor constituencies.
Social networks are groups of like-minded individuals who come together in a community to communicate electronically with one another. Networks are across the board in range: educational, hobbies, geographic or community, medical – but individuals share common interests.
A few conclusions we left with the group:
1. You are providing a service, not selling a product – know what service you are providing.
2. Keep it local – people want the local message and the local information in order to feel connected to their community.
3. Flip around the perceptions of your reality: late twenties and beyond ages perceive email to be safe, and social networks to be unsafe. Remember that those users grew up with email before spam, before email addresses were ubiquitous, when email was personal. Today’s generation sees social networks as safe: a place where there friends are, a protected environment to be with people who share their interests. Email is perceived as unsafe, a place where they receive messages from those they don’t know with information they don’t want.
4. Explore on your own interest groups and fan organizations of things you are interested in yourself – and capture what you think could pertain to your own organization as you learn and explore this medium. Examples: Twittering key signup information (Y soccer signup, Camp Abe Lincoln summer schedule) to interested users who sign up via the Twitter information on your fan page or website), using discussion boards to generate feedback on your organization or project.
5. Connecting your organization with a business that shares a common interest (Hill & Valley (manufacture sugar-free desserts) with American Diabetes Association) to gain traction, identification, and momentum – as well as giving people a purpose on what they can do to help (walk for Diabetes, signup information on sugar-free products at the grocery store.
Several social networking websites are available as resources to help the public work for the social good such as idealist.org, Taking It Global (tigweb.org), and networkforgood.org.
Other good sources of information: www.emarketer.com, www.briansolis.com, http://www.slideshare.net/guest0df0481/social-networking-for-fundraisers, http://www.donorperfect.com/donorpagesblog/
