Chatterbox : blogs

The Nonprofit Technology Community

Lindsey Robbins — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:12:00 GMT

Wow, for a geek, I'm sitting here even more geeked up (especially for a Monday). I recently found out this blog is included on the Nonprofit Technology website as a blog source.

Nonprofittech.com is a website that was started by Beth Kanter as a way to bring together bloggers and others to create a content community. This community makes it easier to find and organize good content around use of technology by nonprofits. Tony Karrer, CEO of Techempower coordinates new content and works with Beth to moderate the site.

So yeah, I'm feeling pretty great that not only do I have a forum through Blackbaud to help out nonprofits with technology *stuff* but now a wider audience can read my blogs. No pressure eh? I'm more into the idea that we can lean on each other as we learn, explore, and hopefully master how to use social media and technology to our advantage. After all, when you want to help people like those in the nonprofit community do, you can use all the help you can with or without hard economic times.

Thanks to Beth and Tony for creating such a great resource. I know I'm going to look forward to all the learning opportunities.

Social Media Magic

Lindsey Robbins — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:29:00 GMT

Participating in social media can perform magic. How? It can magically take all your time and make it disappear! You started working on a short blog post. It’s only a couple paragraphs long. You write and re-write. Read it aloud to yourself. Change some words. Research some information on Google. Add a link for more information. You even insert an image to make the post more attractive to potential readers.

You’re feeling pretty good about your blog post. Well, until you look at the time. What?! Wait a minute, what happened? How is it hours later? Did Michael J. Fox take you back to the future? No, you just learned a valuable lesson in social media. Often the simplest of actions takes the most time.

Why? When you have a limited amount of time and space to capture your audience and bring them into your organization’s efforts every piece of social media communication becomes valuable and worthy of your time. Even for me, writing a blog takes up more time than I’d like and I’m supposed to be a professional writer. Words are not just words.

When you participate in social media, your every move needs time and thought. The details really do matter because there aren’t as many to observe. Most social media efforts take place in tiny bite sized information dispersed in several forms meant to drive your audience to your website, to your events, and ultimately to the bank to support your mission.

So how do you balance the demands on your time? If you’re like me you go through valleys and mountains of social media activity. You also are more patient with yourself and don’t expect to master all social media mediums instantaneously. Add efforts on a site-by-site basis. For a month or two, start your blog. Tweak how it looks until it presents the image of your organization you’re hoping for. Play with the links and the type of information you are providing. And, start writing posts. Think realistically about how often you can and should write. Minimum of one post a week is good. I’ve fallen victim to this one. If you don’t post often enough you lose readers, too often and people will skim over your information too much. When you’re blogging on a regular basis and feel comfortable with the demands then start expanding. Promote your blog on other sites. And maybe consider what other efforts you want to explore. Perhaps it’s time to promote the blog and your organization’s website on Facebook. Perhaps you want to twitter your posts and timely information. Either way, don’t take leaps, take small measured hops. I’ll take quality over quantity any day.

Best Social Reads of the Week 8/18 - 8/25

Lindsey Robbins — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:27:00 GMT

I thought I’d start a new weekly (I’ll attempt weekly) post covering my favorite blog/article reads of the week on social media. After all, I’m still learning just like you and if I read something particularly good, I should share it with y’all.

Flickr Blog - Our new slideshow: pass the popcorn!
Flickr is one of my favorite tools and they just made it better. Check out the post to read and see more about their new slideshow tool. If I had more time, I'd be on here making more use out of this amazing site. I don't do nearly enough with my pictures especially since pictures can be a powerful medium to share with others.

Will Kelly's I am not your Mother's Technical Writer! - Google Docs adds eForms
Will wrote a post discussing Google Docs new eForms feature. Sounds like google is starting out small and simple with web based forms but knowing Google, this could end up being very helpful and yet still easy to use.

The Content Wrangler - Twing.com: Searching Online Forums and Communities Just Got Easier
Hadn't heard of Twing before and Scott gives a good intro on how to use this site for searching.

Chris Brogan - He had four great articles this week. All worth checking out.

I'd Rather Be Writing - Too Connected – Utopias and Dystopias of Communication
In theme with my thoughts on how to keep personal separate from business on social networks, Tom discusses his thoughts on whether you can be too connected.

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media - Open Thread: How does my nonprofit organization get started with social media? What should we do first? What's your advice?
Beth writes a good post and then there is some good discussion in the comments. If you're just starting out with social media, you might want to read this article.

Work / Life Balance in Social Networking

Lindsey Robbins — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:30:00 GMT

How do you decide which social media to use for personal use and which to use for business use?

All the fun ways to connect with people means it can often make it difficult to separate our business lives from our personal lives. For example, I have several different blogs I write and even one personal one. However, I don’t like to mingle them. I rarely if ever talk about work in my personal blog because my family (who I write it for) would be bored to tears. They don’t quite get why I love technology and geeky stuff so much.

Then, I have the three corporate blogs I contribute to:

Chatterbox (this one) – my personal work blog
From the Doc Side – Documentation Team blog
The Book Bag – Education Edge blog.

Aside from blogs, I use Twitter for professional things and mostly because I don’t think people would ever care about the mundane things of my every day life. Once and a while I slip but I earnestly try to use it for professional networking, learning, and sharing what my team is doing.

Social networks. I am on a lot of them. I usually sign up and then see if I want to use it. I do have the obligatory Facebook and MySpace accounts but I don’t use them for professional reasons. I just like to stay connected with people.

However, if I was running an organization I would consider using Facebook to connect with my target market. Whether you’re selling a product people love (like Apple’s iPhone, Starbucks Coffee, Zoot Sports triathlon gear) or you’re promoting your school, cause, or political candidate, Facebook is an excellent opportunity to bring people in and keep them up to date. In this sense, I do become the follower in this social network and not a leader like the blog forces me to be. I’ll try to do a follow-up post soon on some ways I recommend people to use facebook since the ways to connect are becoming more creative every day.

Other social networks I use regularly (more professionally) are Plaxo and LinkedIn. Okay, so I don’t update my profile as often as I should and I’m not sure what benefits there are…yet. It is something I’m on and trying to learn more about. Sometimes social networks take time to figure out the real benefit. Don’t dismiss a way to connect too quickly; you never know how it might benefit you in the long run.

Now here is where it gets tricky when it comes to social mediums, how do you decide which medium you get more benefit out of personally or professionally -

Delicious
Digg
Google Docs and Spreadsheets
Jumpcut, YouTube, Viddler, etc.
Slideshare
Aggregators like FriendFeed and Google Reader
Wikis
and the gazillion new sites that appear every minute of every day...

I guess the other option is to create two separate accounts to keep your work work and personal interests private. If you can do that, please let me know how because I wonder where you’d find the time and the ability to keep all your social media straight.

The more I’m thinking about it the more I think I might need a neatly organized chart to keep track of everything. Otherwise, I think the time suck of web 2.0 is going to grab a hold of me and never let go. There goes work productivity and possibly my job if I don’t watch out! Lol

How do you manage the balance between work and personal on the ever intertwining social media?