Links for May

Here are some interesting websites and blog entries that I wanted to with my readers-

• 9 Reasons Social Media and the Web Can Save Wildlife from National Wildlife Foundation's Blog
• Five Things To Do With Your Nonprofit Blog from Notes for Non-Profits
• Non Profit Website Design: Examples and Best Practices from Smashing Magazine
• Web Design Industry Jargon: Glossary and Resources from Smashing Magazine
• U.S. Government Channel on YouTube
  

Government Resources About Earth Day and the Environment

Here are some resources from the U.S. Government about Earth Day and the environment:

Earth Day - US Government Portal

Earth Day from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) - Earth Day 2009

Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: Earth Day (U.S. Department of Energy)

Remarks at the State Department's "Greening Diplomacy" Earth Day Event

The White House - Press Office - Presidential Proclamation - Earth Day

Earth Day Resources from Library of Congress

Use of Social Media and the Internet on Inauguration Day

Here are some interesting facts on how people used social media and the internet to follow the Inauguration-

• The Presidential Inaugural Committee setup an inauguration channel on YouTube, a twitter account, and a flickr account
• People posted and followed updates on twitter using #inaug09
• A graph on the twitter blog shows the number of twitter updates
• Photos were shared on Flickr using the inauguration tag
• According to the Google Blog, the top keywords used during the day on Google were live inauguration coverage, inauguration day 2009 streaming, listen to inauguration live
• A graph on Google shows that the number of searches dropped from when the presidential oath began and when the Inaugural speech ended

Links for more information-

Inauguration Day: Social Media Goes to Washington

Interactive Inauguration of Obama Is Just the Beginning

Obama's Is First Web 2.0 Inauguration

Live-Blogging the Social Media Inauguration

Official Google Blog: Search findings from the U.S. presidential inauguration

Crime Reports and Social Media

The company I work at, CQ Press which is a division of Sage Publications, recently released the annual crime report publication. How does your city rank? Check out the rankings at
City Crime Rankings 2008.


After looking at the rankings, I started wondering if social media could be used to report crimes. In my opinion, the social media tools that would be most effective would be blogs, rss feeds, maps, and Twitter.

Here are some examples and articles about the use of maps and Twitter to report crime:

Oakland Crimespotting

Los Angeles Police Department Crime Maps

Police a-Twitter over news alerts

Mountain View Police Join Twitter

Things Nonprofits Should Think About When Using Social Media

Before nonprofits begin using social media, they need to ask the following questions:

• What are your goals for using social media?
  (Example: Is your goal to fundraise, spread the word the organization, or provide information about a campaign?)
• Who are you trying to reach and what social media tools do they use?
• What social media tools do your current subscribers, donors, and volunteers use?
• What are other organizations doing with social media?
• What tools will the organization be using to spread news about the organization? Each time you begin a new campaign or bring awareness about an issue, you need to figure out what tools you will be using.
  

Questions to Ask When Putting Social Media To Action

• Who will be responsible for social media tasks?
  
• Do you have what is needed to complete a task?
  
• What is involved in each form of social media?


• Did you put information in your e-newsletter or website about where the organization can be found on social media sites?
  

Digital Video and YouTube - Do you have the equipment needed to create a video? Who will be making the video? Who will be posting it on YouTube or the organization's website? Will the video be posted on the organization's blog or social networking sites?

Blogging - Will one person or more staff be updating the blog? How often will it be updated? What content will you include?

Social Networking Sites and Groups - Who will be responsible for creating and monitoring the organization's page? How will you decide who to approve as a friend? How often will you post information to the group? How often will you read comments and respond to them?

Blog Outreach - Who will be looking for blogs to see what people are writing about the organization and related issues? Will you connect to these bloggers by writing comments on blog entries? Are you going to keep track of how many blogs mention the organization or write about a campaign?

Social Bookmarking - How many people bookmarked a certain item? What tags were used? Who will be monitoring social bookmarking sites?

Evaluation Questions

• What tools worked and what did not work?
  
• What would you do differently?
  
• Did you raise money and how much did you raise?


• Did you gain new supporters?
  
• Are people viewing videos?
  
• Are people subscribing to the blog's feed or writing comments?
  
• What are people saying about the organization or mission?
  
• What topics are people interested in?