Blog Archives
Thinktank Thursday – Help Team Up For Nonprofits
When I recently moved back to Seattle in April, I immediately started poking around at various local nonprofits where I could lend a helping hand.
Sidenote, Seattle’s nonprofit community is beyond impressive. Kudos to this city. I need to add two extra days to the weekend and just float around helping out a new nonprofit each week. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
Back to the point…
Team Up For Nonprofits
During my hunt, I came across a great organization called Team Up For Nonprofits. Like any good nonprofit, Team Up’s mission is simple. Team Up combines two of Seattle’s greatest cultural strengths, music and philanthropy, by hosting music events that raise funds for local nonprofits. The organization’s founder, Ryan Hodgson is a tenacious leader but he also realizes that he needs help and input if he wants to become the Networked Nonprofit (book review coming soon, killer work @kanter) he envisions.
So, this is why I’m turning to you my fellow social braniacs. In the spirit of giving back to the community, I ask that we put our brains together. I’ve labeled this post “Thintank Thursday” in hopes that this can be an ongoing series to help shed ideas for various nonprofits that could benefit from some crowdsourced social insight.
I want this to be an open brainstorm (literally…no idea is a bad idea, it’s free game so let loose on the creativity!) to help provide Ryan with some feedback. Long-term strategy ideas or tips, short-term tactics, nuggets or examples to spur ideas – doesn’t matter, let’s throw ‘em all in the comments below and give Ryan and his board some juice to work with.
Challenge
Team Up’s second event ever will be on Thursday, August 19th at Seattle’s Hard Rock Cafe. Ticket price is $20,$15 of which goes straight to the nonprofit, which will be Seattle Works for this show.
Idea Starters
- What more can Team Up be doing to engage and grow their 3k+ Facebook fan base?
- What blog strategy or content tips would you suggest for the Team?
- How about Twitter engagement or YouTube content? What can be done to ramp up these channels?
- How can the Team make use of their sponsor base or partner nonprofits doing similar work?
- What top social metrics would you suggest the Team be measuring right now as a benchmark that can be used to sell in to larger sponsors and assess progress down the line?
- Where should Ryan and his team devote time for reaching influencers?
- What can the team do to maximize online outreach through sponsors to increase pre-show sales?
If you’re feeling extra motivated, feel free to tweet about the upcoming show and be sure to use the #Gigs4Good hashtag.
Thanks Everyone and please feel free to suggest a nonprofit that you know about that may benefit from a post in this series.
What’s Your Slideshare Strategy?
Slideshare continues to evolve as one of my favorite social sharing and networking sites around.
With more than 25 million visitors each month, it should come as no surprise that Slideshare can be utilized in a variety of ways for general professional networking, to showcase ideas, gain competitor insight, talent recruitment, advocacy, develop new business leads, create shareable training, drive personal branding and support other outreach.
The site also continues to evolve and adapt to the needs of businesses and organizations alike with announcements this year around branded channels, video sharing capabilities and business products such as AdShare and LeadShare. Here’s some additional breakdown:
Interestingly enough, 80% of Slideshare’s members are qualified as decision makers – people you should be connecting with on a regular basis. For good reason, the site integrates with other professional networking sites such as LinkedIn and makes it easy as pie to share and embed content across the Web.
If you or your business are not currently utilizing Slideshare in one way or another, you’re missing out on a big opportunity. Take time to think about your company’s communications channels. How can Slideshare be utilized to help amplify your mission or news, improve networking or general efficiency around your training processes?
For those on the nonprofit front, Beth Kanter posted this excellent presentation around 9 Ways Networked Nonprofits Use Slideshare.
Feel free to share your own tips or insight on how to make the most of Slideshare below.
