1. Social Media for Public Engagement Luke Walker TakingITGlobal.org

2. Consider your situation… Purpose: What are you trying to achieve? Audience: Who are you targeting and what are they using? Access: What are the limitations in terms of hardware, software, and bandwidth? Norms & best practices: Who has tried this before and what can you learn? Ownership: How much deeply can you/do you want to rely on external platforms (for audience or functionality) vs. your own (for sustainability)

3. Synchronous Tools IM Text-based (mostly) chat between known contacts, video Skype/telephony Cheap calling, conference calls, video Webconferencing Training, showcasing, presenting

4. Synchronous Tools (links) IM - the big two: Americans use AIM (AOL): http://www.aim.comhttp://www.aim.com The big one elsewhere: MSN/Windows Messenger (Microsoft): http://get.live.com/messenger/overview http://get.live.com/messenger/overview Growing fast - Google Talk: http://www.google.com/talkhttp://www.google.com/talk Skype: http://www.skype.comhttp://www.skype.com Web Conferencing: http://www.elluminate.com http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/ Open source option (?)

5. Tagging Folksonomies: User-defined, social categorization of web content Tags can help organize and agglomerate content about YOU Links: http://del.icio.us Search for nptech (techsoup.org)

6. Blogs Reverse chronological Often informal Online diaries/journals or op-ed columns “Blogosphere”

7. Blog (links) http://www.google.ca/blogsearch http://www.technorati.com/ http://www.blogger.com http://www.livejournal.com http://www.wordpress.com /.org http://www.wordpress.com http://www.moveabletype.com

8. Wikis Internal communications Reporting Knowledge transfer/archive External communications Audience participation Rapid deployment

9. Wikis (links) http://www.wikipedia.org http://www.mediawiki.org http://www.wikispaces.com http://www.socialtext.net

10. Media Sharing Organized by tags Social networking element User rating/favouriting/”interestingness” common Different sites have different acceptable use/IP policies - read them! They affect who controls yours content

11. Media Sharing (links) http://www.flickr.com http://www.youtube.com http://www.teachertube.com

12. Social Networking Focus on creation/maintenance of identity & relationships Most allow for the creation of groups, identification of causes, give special status to NGOs and political orgs

13. Social Networking (links) http://www.facebook.com http://www.myspace.com http://www.orkut.com http://www.meetup.org Event planning http://www.takingitglobal.org Social network for social good http://www.tiged.org - platform for schools http://www.tiged.org

14. Virtual Worlds What: 3D environments May be games (but not necessarily) Users have avatars/in-world identities Examples: Second Life - Non-Profits in Second Life Second Life: http://secondlife.com/http://secondlife.com/ Teen SL: http://teen.secondlife.com/http://teen.secondlife.com/

15. Virtual Worlds (links) Non-Profit Commons: http://www.nonprofitcommons.org http://npsl.wikispaces.com/ Global Kids http://www.holymeatballs.org

16. Issues to consider Platform: You don’t own it Community: You need to know the norms Viral spread: You don’t control it Longevity: You can’t predict fads

17. Platform: Ours, not Yours Commercial sites are commercial Your information IS being used for their purposes (read the terms of service) As featured/functionality are added or changed, functions you depend on may disappear Support may be difficult or impossible, particularly with free/ad-supported services

18. On Online Communities… Understanding how to use a tool isn’t enough; you need to know how other people use it Violating norms, language standards, etc can deligitimize your presence very quickly—experienced users can sniff out “newbies” very quickly

19. Viral Spread: Seed It; Watch It Most social media/Web2.0 sites promote content based on popularity Popular content spreads You can drive up your contents’ popularity using your networks/contacts/friends (get the ball rolling) Controlling your brand/content/image becomes increasingly difficult the further it spreads

20. Longevity: Have a backup plan Online services appear and disappear everyday, because of: Ownership changes Shifts in trends/popularity/user demand Advertising dollars disappearing/$$ losses Facebook/MySpace are not the first socal networks, and won’t be the last Use these tools to support your presence online, not as your sole presence (when possible)