Posts tagged as:

socialmedia

Betting the Farm

April 16, 2010

Countless nonprofits flocked to Ning to create social networks. Since I’m not a social media guru, I’ve generally kept my opinions about this to myself. But now that Ning isn’t free anymore, I’m going to carp some.

I think over the course of lo this last few years, I have blogged or tweeted about this very phenomenon what feels like countless times. Nonprofits find services for free. They start depending on them. The free services disappear, for business reasons. The nonprofit community gets up in arms. Lather, rinse, repeat.

There is nothing wrong with software or services that don’t cost anything. Nothing at all. But if you are going to bet the farm, make sure you know what the risks are. Using free services is fine, but know why they are free. Are they free because the company behind them is an ad revenue machine and uber profitable (Google)? Is it free because it’s open source (Drupal, Elgg, Word Press)?  Is it free because it is a profitable company that has a clear and well defined donation program (Salesforce.com)? Or is it free because it is a start up in search for a business model (Ning)?

There is an effort afloat (and a petition) to get Ning to make nonprofit and educational accounts free. I’m not holding my breath. They eliminated 40% of their staff. They are feeling pinched, and need to stop their burn rate. I don’t know how charitable this will make them feel. And even if they do, there is no guarantee that Ning will even survive.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a great social network management system that won’t get pulled out from under you, try Elgg. It’s open source, and out of the box, it does just about everything Ning does, without the need for the deep setup required to set up Drupal like Ning. It has an active developer community, and is growing.

Or, if you look for another free service, make sure you understand the risks, and be prepared for possible disaster if it’s a startup in search of a business model.

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Social CRM, part 1

April 11, 2010

This blog series is all Beth Kanter’s fault. We (the two partners of OpenIssue) shared a cab from the Atlanta airport to the hotel when we arrived for the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference. We were chatting with her about what kind of work we do, and she asked “do you do social CRM?” She might not have seen the blank stares on our faces since we were in a dark cab, but I’m sure she heard the pregnant, confused silence.

As you know, I don’t blog much about social media. I use it all the time, but there are much better sources of good information on that – I’ve been sticking to writing what I know best. But I have to admit, this idea of social CRM piqued my interest. More than that. The truth is, if @kanter asks me about something that is related to social media, it must be important, so I’d better figure it out. And, of course, I’m at least a year behind the curve on this – there has been a lot going on in this space, although, frankly, in my research so far, I haven’t found a lot in the technology sphere that would immediately be helpful to nonprofits (especially small to medium-sized ones.) There’s some, and I’ll talk about that in the next posts in this series.

Beth pointed us in the direction of Jeremiah Owyang, who I’d been reading a little for a while, but had lost track of, since I don’t follow the social media space carefully. He has a great post on the use cases for Social CRM. It’s a really solid post, with an information-packed report attached, as well as some resources. This is a bit high level for me – my job in life is generally to make use cases real using technology. I’m hoping that someone (hint, hint) will write the blog post or report taking off on this work, and articulate the major nonprofit use cases for Social CRM. The report does include some technologies to look at, and I’ll be delving into those in future posts.

I’m going to take a little chunk off of this, though, and ask some leading questions. And then, I’ll do my best over the course of the next few weeks to answer how these would get accomplished via the technological tools that most nonprofits use  or can get access to.

  1. How do you know which of your Facebook fans/Causes members are also a donors (separate from donations through Causes)?
  2. How do you know how many of your twitter followers are also donors?
  3. How do you know what percentage of your donors or constituents are on social media at all (twitter, facebook, myspace, linkedin?)
  4. Can you follow the trail from tweet (or facebook status) to a donation? A tweet to a specific action (like a petition?)

If you’ve got more questions you’d like to see me address, or you’ve got some examples of how your nonprofit has answered these questions, please feel free to comment on this post.

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