Liveblogging 08NTC: Building, Growing, and Sustaining a Vibrant Online Community – How to Reach Beyond Traditional Tools into the Web 2.0 Sphere

Beth Kanter

The Cute Dog Theory

• Assess your community's social activities (technographics)
• Discuss and set objectives first (two-way discussion)
• Transparency
• Relationship building
• Rewards (recognition)
• Reciprocity (don't' see results immediately, need 1-2 hours a day investment)
• Define your communities rules or guidelines (open as possible, but plan for the worst)
• Start small, reiterate over and over, learn from your experiments

Tools

• Flickr: techsoup is giving away professional accounts to non-profits.
• Object based sharing community
• Cohesive groups of people sharing photos common to their interests
• Start with an individual profile
• Setup a separate organization profile, then document organization events
• Set org/group guidelines, copyright rules, etc up front

Compelling imagery works as basis for building online communities.

Twitter

• Social presence tool: what are you doing (what has your attention) right now.
• personal networking tool
• news resource
• twitterpack (identify leaders in your sector)
• Fundraising:
• reaching out to networks to mobilize activists
• "twitter rally" -- requires social capital

Keith Morris aka Jade Lilly

Second Life
Basically an MMORPG minus the game and the rules.

• Social Platform: chat, concerts, etc
• Whole world is user generated content
• Currency exchange: Lindens
• Relay for Life (American Cancer Society Signature Fundraising Event) has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars utilizing Second Life to mimic offline fundraising techniques

Abby Sandlin of Charity Dynamics

Social networking allows you to identify activists through actual 2-way communication. Start by documenting your goals and expectations at the outset, then set aside resources to work toward that goal. Later you can then track your ROI.

What to measure for ROI?

• Recency: timing, duration, consistency
  
• Quantity: analytics, UGC points
  
• Quality: tone and type of conversations
  
• Response Rate:
  
• Origination
  

Success metrics are trackable for social networking projects!

Details on tracking devices and notes from questions at:

http://ntc08-communities.wikispaces.com/