Social media is a free-flowing, wide-open phenomenon that needs to be handled and handled well. The clearer you are, the more likely it is that your org will make an impact with these tools  -- whether you're just monitoring conversation about your org via Google Alerts, have a two-pronged approach with Facebook fan and cause pages or are experimenting on several fronts. Who responds to conversation about your organization and how? So frame its use for your staff, volunteers and base. Core issues to cover include:

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dave Evans, author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, for a social media intensive I taught recently at the Academy for Nonprofit Excellence. a social media maven and well-practiced at breaking down what often seems our ideal guide to social media. Click here to listen now or download for later listening (Right click on a PC or cntrl click on a Mac, and "save file as" to your Desktop) : Dave is

This is also archived on the We ARE Media . What are Social Media? Social media comprise the vast array of communications vehicles including blogs, wikis, e-mail, and social networking sites that are powered by the Internet. Social media can be best understand by what they are NOT. Social media are NOT mass media, defined by Wikipedia, as "traditional means of communication" like television or newspaper or radio that were "envisioned and designed to reach a VERY LARGE AUDIENCE such as the population of a nation state.

I had the fantastic opportunity of facilitating a conversation ( slides here ) on this vital topic at the Communications Network conference recently. The daily volume of content and conversations created in social media channels – blogs, Facebook, Twitter and more – is huge, and growing exponentially. These conversations were always happening but you couldn't hear them. Here's the problem we were helping participants to solve: Now you can.

Once, when I was representing social media on an arts marketing panel, a fellow panelist said to me, one-on-one, something along the lines of “ okay, but how does this sell tickets ?” The longer answer is about social media metrics and the complexity of conversation, and it’s not really an answer. There is a lot of great writing and research out there, by people like I guess I didn’t get that point across! I gave him the short answer .

And that means people say all kinds of things about the Air Force in blogs and other social media places. They could teach the rest of us a little about how to equip your people to engage with social media in constructive ways. Read about it at the Web Ink Now blog: The US Air Force: Armed with social media . I can guarantee you this: A lot more people hate the US Air Force than hate your nonprofit organization. For that matter, a lot more people love the Air Force.

The more I read about social media campaigns without conversations ..  The more I watch companies expand marketing departments to include social media positions that put a premium on tech skills versus marketing experience .. The more I see social media consultants focus on old/traditional messaging wrapped in new/social media Web 2.0 .. The more I wonder .. I

Had a great time yesterday teaching a social media immersion class to staff members of 25 nonprofit orgs in the Norfolk, VA region. Yet the group came together as an incredibly productive learning community around social media. During my intensive prep for the class, I had to do a lot of sifting -- through tons of resources, tools and, the greatest challenge, my own perspective and experience with nonprofit use of social The organizations these folks represented are varied in size, experience, issue focus and more. This palette of tools is way too new, and changing

If you moan to 10 of your nonprofit colleagues about how you don’t have time to get your nonprofit on Facebook and other social media sites, I’d guess seven of them will tell you to get an intern to do it for you. (The If you are thinking about giving a social media project to an intern or a new employee who is a recent college grad, keep these four tips in mind. The other three? Two will just nod sympathetically and the other one will have no idea what you are talking about.)

Subtitle : Motrin's We Feel Your Pain Ad Campaign Targeted To Moms: Proof of the Influence of Social Media In social media style it was uploaded it to YouTube. if McNeil Consumer Healthcare were a social media marketing client how would I advise them? Background Today sipping my morning coffee I clicked into Twitter and was intrigued by a tweet from @chrisbrogan.