Blogging the AZA Conference, Part II

Continuing on with some more stuff I picked up at the conference, there was a big push on social media and keeping a well-maintained web presence. See below for the highlights and some ideas on how you can improve the web experience for your visitors, members and donors.

The session: Using Web 2.0 for Education, Advocacy, and Outreach

The concept: The social web is here. If you ignore it you are doing your organization and your mission a big disservice. Having a presence on the social web does not mean creating an account on every social networking site, but choosing carefully which ones to participate in, based on where your market is.

The details:

For those who still aren't familiar, the main concept of the term Web 2.0 is that the web is no longer a one-way information portal. It now serves and connects people in new ways every day, with things like blogs, forums, wikis, podcasting, video sharing, social networking and other tools.

You cannot afford to ignore your web presence. If you haven't built your own web presence on at least one of the major social networking sites, someone else has probably already done it for you and may be accidentally (or deliberately) spreading incorrect information. If you haven't created an account on Facebook or MySpace, take a quick look because it's likely that a fan of your organization is running a page under your name. During this session there were real-life examples of where this had happened. Luckily in every case, the person running the page was very happy to give it over to the actual organization. Know where you are and what things say about you.

Your brand does not belong to you anymore. Since the web has become so social, the reputation economy rules. You can live and die by reviews and comments about your organization. That's why it is so important to put out lots of your own content and work with individuals who are your fans. One zoo did a Flickr search for photos taken by visitors and found lots of images, some of them pretty high quality. They then went one better, sponsoring a Flickr photo contest with a prize (with rights to use the images on their site and in publications, of course), and this brought in hundreds of photos from individuals. People on the web are creating an impression of you that is out of your hands. Do what you can to mold that impression, and harness the creativity of the folks online who love what you do.

Be choosy about where you spend your time online. Instead of ignoring web presence, some people create the opposite problem by putting themselves on every social network they can find. Learn which sites your market is using and put a lot of time and effort into developing your presence on those sites. Don't create a presence on 10 different social networks, because chances are that you won't be able to keep up with all of them and those who do find you will only see outdated, half-finished content. My personal opinion is to skip MySpace altogether, it only provides any value as a place for bands to put music and concert schedules. Go with Facebook, and keep your eye on a newer social network called BrightKite, which is a location-based network. I think this one is going to get huge in the next 1-2 years.

Many people prefer self-service when possible. This one is pretty simple and was thrown out as an afterthought, but it shouldn't go unsaid. Your visitors and members want to be able to add and remove themselves from mailing lists, change their address and edit other personal details.

Now get out there, join a social network, improve your website and leave a comment about your experience!