Social Media for NGOs
The African Commons Project
and
Sangonet

Basic Course Overview
• Introduction to Blogging: Daniela and Matt
• TEA
• Introduction to Microblogging: Kerryn
• LUNCH
• Introduction to Social Networking Sites: Kerryn
• Introduction to Wikis: Daniela
• TEA
• Introduction to Multimedia Sites: Daniela and Kerryn
• Social Media Discussion and Summary

Blogging
Outcomes
At the end of this section you will:
1. Know what a blog is
2. Understood the value of a blog for your organisation
3. Understood how to use a blog as part of your organisation’s
communication strategy
4. Have tips on how to go about getting buy-in from within your organisation
and how to attract a community of readers to your blog.
5. Know how to write a blog entry and have some ideas on what to write
about.

Blogging
Blogging in Plain English
Lee LeFever, Commoncraft.com

So what’s the big deal?
Read / Write
Read / Write
• Sir Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1990.
• The proposal was based on how to transfer information over the internet,
using a point-and-click system.

Tim Berners Lee’s Web

READ ONLY

READ-WRITE
http://www.africancommons.org/wp-admin

READ-WRITE

Blog versus ‘Website’
How to integrate for non-profits?

Blog versus ‘Website’
A site WITH A BLOG

Blog versus ‘Website’
A site WITH A BLOG

Blog versus ‘Website’
Blog AS A WEBSITE

Why Blog?
Blogging facilitates conversations and creates relationships:
• Gives a personal, ‘insiders’
view to the happenings within
the organisation
• Allows you to garner support
and recruit volunteers.
• Information exchange
between constituents, other
non-profits, information
specialists etc.
• Helps with accountability to
donors

Best Practices for NGOs
• Read blogs!
• “Before your organisation starts to blog, set up a newsreader”
• Have someone who likes blogging do the blogging
• Sustainability
• Quality above quantity
• Respond to comments
• Don’t just tell – show
• RSS feeds
• Promote your blog

Blogging Platforms
• Wordpress.com
• Yola.com
• Blogger.com
• Live Journal
• Type pad
• Serendipity
• Movable Type
• See the wiki for URLs!

Some blogging STYLE notes
• Informal and personal tone
• Focus on unique content: Add a new
voice to the internet
• Length: 250-300 words or maybe…
not???
• Link, link, link: This provides
supporting information to your post
• Appealing headlines (titles): Grab
your reader
• Spelling and grammar check!
• Visuals: A picture (or video) tells a
thousand words

Friday Fact Box

Blogging Exercise
30 minutes
Log on to the NGO Pulse website
Write 2 paragraphs on one of the following topics:
• About your organisation: vision, mission and projects;
OR
• A recent event/project that your organisation has
hosted/launched.
Remember to include links!

Microblogging
Outcomes
At the end of this section you will:
1. Have background context to microblogging and Twitter
2. The different uses of microblogs, and the different ways of using
microblogs
3. Know how to navigate your *homepage*
4. Understand how Twitter can be used in organisational strategy and
campaigns or programmes
5. Have set up a Twitter account either personal or organisational.
6. Know how to search for *followers* on Twitter.

Microblogging
What is micro blogging?
Twitter in Plain English by Lee lefever

The birth of microblogging
• Microblogging is a hybrid, or mix, of two technologies:
– mobile phone short message service (sms), and
– IRC (internet relay chat protocol); which was the very first instant
messaging system sent via a phone line before the world wide web
was developed.
• Microblogging developed from a creative sub culture that grew in IRC
chat where people could give a short status next to their name when
‘logged in’
• Microblogging is based on this principle of providing an immediate
status update: what am I doing now?
• Twitter is the name of the microblogging platform. There are similar
platforms, but Twitter is the most popular.

Example of IRC chat room - geeky, no aesthetic
… became instant chat eg ICQ,
with updates: what am I doing?

… became a platform that
looked like this …

The Twitter tale
• Original name was Twttr, inspired by the name Flickr
and also based on the 5-digit sms code
• Rebranded to Twitter & launched publicly in 2007
• One of the most powerful tools in the SNS (social media
sites) arsenal
• “The new scaffolding that gave power to new
short messages.”
• Twitter is now the third largest social media platform with
4.5 million users at November 2008
Why 140 characters?
• Started limitless but 160-character per tweet
• Due to system overload this was reduced to 140, leaving
space for user name and colon
“One could change the world with one hundred
and forty characters”
Twitter Tree by Pandemia, Source: Flickr, cc-BY

The main uses
The main uses are:
1. Daily chatter:
– Sharing my daily routine, what am I doing … a stream of consciousness
2. Conversations:
– Commenting on or replying publicly to other people’s posts, using the @ sign
– private direct messaging to followers (called dm)
3. Sharing information/URLs:
– 13% of all posts contain urls. Using a url shortening service like Tinyurl or
bit.ly
– Retweeting someone else’s tweet (NB for organisational/ brand building)
4. Reporting news:
– latest news or comment about current events

3 types of users
Information source
Is a hub that has large number of followers.
Might post regularly or infrequently, but due to the
value, followers remain large
Friends
Most relationships fall into this broad category
Posting regularly
* Friends are not necessary ‘friends’ like facebook
Information seeker
This person might post rarely but follows other users
regularly
Twitter Tree by Pandemia, Source: Flickr, cc-BY

So, what do you do with Twitter?
follow & be followed … and search
Following:
– Updates in your personal timeline of those you’re following will be
visible on your homepage.
Search:
– for people, profiles, topics of interest and follow
Followers:
– receive your updates
– When you post an update to your Twitter account, your followers will get it
on their home page
– Mutual followers can send each other private messages - DM -
– Can get notified by email when someone new follows you or sends
you a private message
Extend your network:
– Extend your network by following those who you’re following or are
following your followers

User name
following/ follow stats & status updates
direct messages and directed responses
people following updates on homepage
most recent update
search (find people) and advanced search
(8)

The lingo of twitter
retweets, ats & bit.lys …

Hashtags in Twitter
Well, firstly what are TAGS in general?
• a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information - an
internet bookmark, digital image, computer file
• this kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by
browsing or searching.
• are chosen informally/ personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on
the system
Tagging helps organise and share our info online. By attaching one or more
keywords to an object, like a Flickr photo, we group it together with others that
have the same tags. Hashtags on Twitter serve a similar purpose
Objectives
• to bring order to Twitter users’ updates (tweets)
• To make it easier to follow a topic of interest
How to
• Create a hashtag by adding the hash symbol # to the front of an appropriate
keyword as you write your tweet
• There are pre-existing hashtags that others have set up which can be followed
• A well-known example is #nptech for tweets about the non-profit environment
• Hashtag tweets are also available as individual RSS feeds

Search (find people)

advanced search - http://www.search.twitter.com

Other handy hints
1. Apps for desktop
• “Twitter clients” - bring Twitter to your desktop: Tweetdeck, Twhirl
• Can post to multiple platforms at same time
• Can provide immediate shortened url app
2. Pics on Twitpic - http://www.twitpic.com
• Upload pics to a Twitter photo-sharing platform
• Upload via twitter client
• Upload via cellphone with unique email address
3. Track retweets
• Search for retweets using advanced twitter search or new tools such as
Retweetist or dailyRT
4. Find hashtags
• Twitter advanced search using “this exact phrase”
• Hashtags at www.hashtags.org

The rise of Twitter as a business app
Meaningful business tool for building a community of constituents, clients
or supporters, through
1. ability to talk directly to a group of people (no intermediary)
3. send people to a specific location (url) (call to action)
5. provide info to people (info source)
7. gain insight into what constituents are thinking and talking
about (user intelligence)
9. gain insight into what other orgs are doing, discussing (market
intelligence)

How non-profits can use Twitter: case study
• Reason for using Twitter: National Wildlife
– listening post and place for conversation Federation,
United States
• Strategy:
– employees tweet & develop like-minded followers. (see NWF Twitter
homepage)
– Different campaigns on different channels
– Twitter not in isolation: Put articles on other SNSs and point to them
through Twitter;
– push people to their media hub page
• Benefits:
– Can join in conversation with constituents (direct communication)
– Can gain insight into how constituents feel toward the org (user intellig.)
– Can even mend relationships and have made new contacts (r’ship mngmt)
– Helped spread important messages (info source)
– Increased their online activism

20 mins practical
• Create your profile on twitter at twitter.com
– Basic: You will need to access an email address for profile confirmation
– Advanced: Customise your homepage background
• Search
– Basic search: Find 3 people that you either know or would like to follow, and
follow them
– Advanced search: Find organisations that are active in the non-profit, ICT
environment and follow them
– Advanced search: Find the hashtag bb4za and find out who posted and what
this event was about
• Post:
– Basic post: Post your first tweet to your profile
– Advanced post: Send a direct message to kerrynmckay or someone you are
following
– Advanced post: Post about this workshop using #smngo and then search for
this hashtag to see who has contributed
– Or retweet something interesting

Social Networking sites
Outcomes
At the end of this section you will:
1. Have an understanding of how Facebook can be used as a tool for building
or supporting constituencies
2. Understand how campaigns can be implemented on Facebook
3. Know the difference between Groups and Pages and how these could
complement your organisational strategy/ objectives
4. Have some knowledge of additional apps and tools that can be used in
Facebook for business purposes
5. Be aware of how to manage your organisation and staff on Facebook
6. Have an awareness of legal issues around Facebook content

Social networking sites
Towards a definition:
“ Social networking sites allow users to articulate and make visible their
social networks … (they are about) … communicating with people
already part of your social network
”
- danah m. boyd, Social Networks Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship

Facebook in context
Timeline of development
2004
Harvard-only
To find friends, hook ups on campus
Need harvard email address to access
2005
Other universities and some corporate networks
Need varsity or corporate email to access
2006
Everyone
Any email address to access

Why does Facebook work? …
175 million users can’t be wrong!
• Barriers to entry are low
– It’s free
– Easy to do
– It’s a relatively safe space based on friendship and referral
• Based on community
– Built around groups
– Made up of networks
– Successfully mirrors fabric and structure of real-life
communities
• Immediate gratification
– Updates are real time
– Connect in real time with chat application
• Customisable
– Add different applications to their profile
– Customise your homepage

Non profits and Facebook
• Enables non profits to easily access (potentially) huge numbers of
constituents and potential constituents at very little or no cost.
• Platform for amplifying and broadcasting your message via
personal relationships to a massive audience.
• Is an ‘opt in’ scenario!
• Your facebook strategy
– should not be so much about the organisation as about the cause.
– Develop and discuss a deliberate strategy
– Remember: strategy requires maintenance!
Eg: Facebook allows your org to be hub of info; or clearing house for
important/ relevant info; time sensitive info distrib.

Keys to success
• Create personal relationships with other
facebook members interested in similar causes or
issues.
• Encourage constituents to post comments,
submit photos and videos
• Participate Participate Participate!
– Frequent updates
– Encourage your org’s employees to have online
conversations around your org’s work
• Monitor and keep in touch
Remember: Relationship first - organisation promotion second!

Tools for your org - groups and pages
About groups
Groups are best for special interests, causes, a place to build up a
tribe of people interested in your subject
Groups can be set up by anyone, about anything - not necessarily formal
representation
Example: there are 133 Save Zimbabwe groups
People who join your group are called members
Groups can
• show news & info,
• create & invite people to events,
• set up discussion threads and
• add multimedia
Members can
• contribute to the wall with comments, multimedia (photos/ video)
• add, & contribute to discussion threads
• RSVP to events via their inbox

Group example
• build database of constituents; email max 5,000 bulk mail
• Create events; send invitations to members through event system;
RSVP functionality
• Members can add a comment to the wall, can add photos and
video
• Members can contribute or initiate discussion & debate
Contact members directly;
message appears
in their facebook inbox

Group pros and cons
The pros The cons
• Facebook users are familiar with • are only visible to Facebook
groups members
• you can send messages to group • no extra applications added to
members them
• are marginally easier to set up and • You generally have to visit a group
manage than pages regularly and use the messaging
feature to keep discussions flowing.

About pages
Pages are best when you want to specifically represent your business ;
pages get indexed by Google to allow global access in search.
Pages cannot be created to represent a real public figure, artist, band or
org, and may only be created by an official representative of that
entity.
Pages have more functionality than Groups and can add media-rich
content; focus on the stream of content posted by page administrators
You can promote your pages with your own Facebook ads
Pages have
• customisable tabs: enhanced wall for updates/ photos/ video/
events/ reviews/ discussions
• measuring engagement and interaction tools
Fans can
• interact on wall, in discussion groups
• dependent on customisation they can write reviews, upload photos
and video

Page example

Pages pros and cons
The cons
The pros • ‘Updates’ sent to those who decide to
•visible on the wider internet to non-
be a ‘fan’ of your page are lower key
Facebook members (although only
than messages to group ‘members’ -
Facebook members can interact with
appear on side of homepage when log
them)
in; not inbox
• can add applications from a wide
• Facebook users are less familiar
range of off-the-shelf apps
with pages than they are with groups
• provides visitor statistics to let
• Visitors still need to be a member
you know how many visitors you pages
of Facebook if they want to join in
are getting
discussions on your page message
• user RSVPs added to their
board.
calendar & friends will see event in • More difficult to set up than groups;
newsfeed
might need tech assistance to add
other apps

Privacy & IP issues on Facebook
• On Facebook you can adjust your privacy settings; ensure these
meet your level of comfort
• If encouraging your org’s employees to post, remember that their
updates are visible by everyone in the network. Request discretion.
• Be aware of the Facebook terms of use & privacy policy and
understand what impact this could have for your organisation
• The controversy - Facebook terms of use clause change … and change
back again!:
– Stated that the perpetual licence that they had granted themselves
to the content of users’ profiles would no longer expire when those
users shut down their accounts.
– Translation: We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content.
Forever

Wikis
Outcomes
At the end of this section you will:
1. Have found out what a wiki is and how it can be used
2. Understand what the key features of a wiki are
3.Understood the value of a wiki for your organisation
4. Understood the types of information that can be shared on a wiki
5. Have tips on how to get buy-in from within your organisation and how to
encourage positive participation in the organisation’s wiki.
6. Have practiced adding information to a wiki, including how to add new
pages, linking and formatting.

Wikis
Wikis in Plain English
Lee LeFever, Commoncraft.com

History function

Discussion feature

Wikis gather communities

Practical implementations for non-profits
1. Collaborative Documents

2. Conference programmes, documentation
and planning

3. Project Management
TACP uses Socialtext to
coordinate the organisations’
work – meeting notes, to do
lists, shared information.
(Private wiki)

Where to find a wiki
• Free and EASY, but with advertising
• Wikispaces
• PB Wiki
• Free but you’ll need a developer
• MediaWiki: database-driven, for large wikis
• EASY but not FREE
• Wikispaces (no advertising and customisable)
• PB Wiki
• Socialtext

Wiki Best Practises
• Think about it first: Launch a wiki
with a clear purpose
• Adoption strategy: Set up a staff
meeting and demonstrate how the wiki
will be used and how easy it is to
contribute.
• Pre-populate: At least on the front
page. This encourages others to
participate.
• Appoint a wiki gardener and/or a
wiki champion
• Make the wiki a part of daily work
habits

Wiki Best Practises
• Wikipatterns.com: A great wiki resource!
• People patters/anti-patterns
• Adoption patterns/anti-patterns

Wiki Exercise
40 minutes
Using your cheat sheet…
Log on to the Social Media for NGOs Wiki
(http://socialmedia.ngopulse.org/)
Find your name in the participants list.
Create a new page for your name
Add (copy and paste) the blog entry that you wrote on
NGO Pulse to your page.
Insert the following somewhere in your text: Bold, italic,
bullets, heading, an external link.
Save the page.
Once you are done, add a link on your page to the page
of the person sitting to your right.

Multimedia sites
Outcomes
At the end of this section you will:
1. Understand the benefit of using photo and video-sharing sites for
your organisation
2. Understand tagging and how it can be used to gather media from your
constituents
3. Be able to find and share photos and video.
4. Be aware of free or open-licences such as Creative Commons, which
allow you to legally share and use multimedia from *external* sources
5. Know how to add multimedia to your blog, including resizing and

Multimedia sites
Photo sharing sites in Plain English
By Lee LeFever, Commoncraft.com

Flickr
• Essentially an SNS - one of the world’s best online photo management
and sharing apps
1. Help people make their content available to people who matter to them
- this includes alternative licensing options
2. Enable new ways of organising video and photo
• Free account to upload photographs and use the site to store, share
and explore photos (up to 100 MB per month)
• Members can
1. Upload and download photos
2. join and create groups
3. participate in discussions
4. connect to people and can help widen your org’s online connections
through photo-sharing

Tagging and Search on Flickr
Tags
• An online non hierarchical ‘filing’ system to categorise
photos and video, ie: a keyword or category label.
• Tags help you find photos and videos which have something in
common.
• On Flickr - up to 75 tags to each photo or video
• Geo-tagging and search using the map on Flickr
• Creative Commons search on Flickr

Promote your tag to your community

Geo-tagging search

Flickr and your Org
1. TALK. Tell your story through Flickr
• “A picture is worth a thousand words”
• post pictures about your cause and spread your story
• connect with your supporters and start a Flickr group.
– Groups can be private or public
– organized around an event, subject, theme
• Encourage everyone to comment and give their feedback on the
photos.
• Don't worry if you are a small nonprofit and don't have a lot of pictures
to post. Even a few will help demonstrate to supporters your work
towards your mission.

Flickr and non profits
2. PROMOTE. Share your event
• Upload event photos
• Encourage your attendees to do the same.
• Exposes to a wider audience than if you just posted them on your
web site.
3. LAUNCH. A campaign; a fundraiser
A great example of a fundraising campaign on Flickr is The Children at
Risk Foundation (Carf)
Asking supporters to donate $10 per person to support their street kids
programs and to contribute their own photos to their Flickr group.
Photos & conversations they generate show how a small amount of money
$10 can make a huge difference.
There are many advantages to launching campaigns on Flickr .
• They can be easily done on a low budget; increase your visibility,
provide an interactive community for supporters and engage new
audiences.
4. ENGAGE. Be known to your volunteers
• Encouraging volunteers to share photos, ideas and stories allows your org
to take advantage of the creativity of as many people as possible

http://www.flickr.com/photos/camera_rwanda/sets/

Video to support your cause
Education
• A great way to find resources on issues related to your
work.
• Example: Common Craft videos shown here today – all
sourced from Youtube.
• Videos are a great way to effectively explain complex
issues in a succinct and entertaining way. You can share
explanations about your cause and why it is important.
• Which is also linked to…

Video to support your cause
Marketing and Fundraising
• Video memes
What is a meme?
Any idea or scrap of content that spreads voluntarily
from person to person across the Web.
• Example: The Girl Effect
• Documentation of your work and events
• Resource
• Donors and stakeholders accountability
• Archival purposes
• Example: The iCommons Summit in Sapporo ‘08

Video site showcase
Where do I share?
• Youtube channels
Huge international audiences, limit of 20 minute
uploads, 10 million uploads a day.
• Zoopy
Local option, local audiences, local speeds (faster).
Audio, video and photos. Mobile site.
• Dotsub
Plugging in to a community of translators

Creative Commons in the digital economy
• Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between
full copyright and the public domain.
All rights reserved No rights reserved
Some rights reserved
• The licences help you keep your copyright while allowing certain
uses of your work — a “some rights reserved” copyright.
• Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright.
• They work alongside copyright, so you can modify your copyright
terms to best suit your needs.

You can choose!
• The types of uses you want people to automatically have with
your work without having to gain permission from you as
creator
• No contract signed. Creative Commons licences are designed
to be applied to your work and to be binding upon people
who use your work based on their notice of the Creative
Commons “Some Rights Reserved”
• The licences have been ‘ported’ into South African law so that
they are compatible with and upholdable within SA Law courts
• Licences available in human-readable, lawyer-readable
and computer-readable code (The metadata describes the
key licence elements that apply to a piece of content to enable
discovery through CC-enabled search engines)

Video and photo
Upload/download, resize and embed
DEMO ON WORDPRESS SITE
2.SEARCH
3.PUBLISH
a) EMBED (video)
Copy the embed code
Choose HTML view
Paste the embed code
Resize
b) DOWNLOAD/UPLOAD (photo)
Click download and save to desktop.
Go to story and click on upload photo
Follow instructions
4.SAVE

Multimedia Practical
15 minutes
1. Search
Use one of the featured video sites or flickr.com to
find either a video or picture to compliment or add
to the story you wrote at the beginning of the day.
2. Add this media to your story on the NGOpulse site.
3. Publish your final story.

Final Social Media Practical
45 mins
30 mins – Analytical exercise
– Using the social media tools that you have been introduced to, write
a 5 step social media implementation plan for your organization.
– You may use one, some or all of the tools.
– Log back into the social wiki and record your five-step
implementation plan, using the cheat sheet to familiarize yourself
with the formatting.
– http://socialmedia.ngopulse.org/index.php/Main_Page
15 mins - Report back
– Report back the ideas used in your implementation plan to the
group.