Building an online community of supporters

Building an online community of supporters Priscilla Brice-Weller Connecting Up, May 2007

http://www.antar.org.au http://seaofhands.antar.org.au

3 goals

Become a trustworthy voice on Australian Indigenous issues

Extend the reach of our electronic communications

Inspire people to take action

Who are we engaging online? sympathisers activists Simple actions: Web 2.0 Professional activists Active members: attending meetings, becoming passionate Sympathisers will start using Web 2.0 tools to engage with your cause early on, and continue using them through to the activist stage. Easy actions: writing blog posts about issues, emailing a politician Advocates: engaging other people Specific, tangible actions: donating, volunteering, downloading and using online materials offline

each online tool requires significant resources

not-for-profit orgs need:

to be strategic about which tools they use

a range of tools that, collectively, helps them reach the target audience

to question for each tool “does effort = effect?”

myspace.com/nonprofitorganizations: The first 5,000 friends took 5 months and 25 days to achieve. The second 5,000 friends only took 2 months and 5 days. myspace.com/ant4r: After about three months, we had just over 200 friends. MySpace friends

MySpace age demographic Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1019 Total audience, August 2006 Age % of audience 12-17 11.9% 18-24 18.1% 25-34 16.7% 35-54 40.6% 55 + 11.0%

“ Corporate” website: antar.org.au challenges opportunities

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blogs

What I wish I could tell you:

“ We’ve been running guest blogs on our site for a month. The bloggers are finding the system really easy to use. Our visitors are loving it too, as we’re getting a few comments every day.”