Welcome to your Community. Let's talk about your plans for 2015. What's new and different to you? How can the Community help? ... View more

As the Community Manager, my team also does the Social Support for the Company - meaning someone tweets or posts that they need help, my team helps them and puts a smile back on their face (ideally!) So, I'm pretty much a believer in the virtues of social... so when I see an article that says " Social media takes back seat to in-person networking" I read it.  This article is about big business and one of the biggest and oldest, who you know industries around - Oil.     The article says "To confirm how unnecessary social media is for the oil industry, Masters said that because his company has been in business for 54 years, it has ongoing relationships it has maintained with companies over the years."  HOWEVER, they also note that even in the oil business "startup companies in the industry may want to use social media."  I appreciate that long standing relationships matter and deals often are signed with a handshake in many industries, but it's interesting to see that even in an old school business, they are saying that social is creeping in... though the article doesn't try to make this point! I am reading between the lines...    Am I in the minority that I check Facebook when I wake and often determine my meal choices based on specials I get emailed or texted from businesses I like? I'm 40!   How pervasive will social be in the next generation?  Will all the old-school industries be on board one day? How has social impacted your business and how you market?  Interested in how social has crept in to your life in ways you didn't expect. Please share your experiences with the Community by commenting. Read more: Social media takes back seat to in-person networking - MRT.com: Oil http://www.mrt.com/business/oil/article_03594fd6-598e-11e4-bac2-0b9e2f118a89.html#ixzz3GyI1TOIx Under Creative Commons License: Attribution ... View more

Overall: Moderately recommend. Good detail for the beginner. Audience: Non-Profits and Charities Technical Skill level: Low Time commitment: High   In this book, published just this summer, Sherrie A. Madia builds upon her Feb. 2010 edition of The Social Media Survival Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Grow Your Business Exponentially with Social Media by narrowing in on the benefits of social media for non-profits and charitable organizations. While this edition delivers similar findings on the benefits of social media overall, here Madia focuses on how these tools can be used specifically to enhance fundraising and improve the donor lifecycle – without detracting from what’s already working for the group.   In Chapter 2, the risks are outlined… in detail… and the questions a non-profit should consider before engaging in social media are asked: the most important being “are your potential donors using social media tools and if so, which ones?”   If you already know where your prospective donors are, I’d suggest skipping to Chapter 5 and working your way through the Fundraising Toolkit.  Then, jump to the chapter on engagement (Chapter7) which has some great examples of organizations that are using social media well.    Overall, if you are new to social media, this book can give you a good starting point and when I initially started reading it would have probably said it was worth the investment… however, I would now say a better first step is to visit the FREE Social Media Quickstarter site before you pay for anything! Many of the lessons learned in this book are also here.  If you are looking for a few examples from the book these are the ones I found most interesting:   Effective Fundraising with Facebook Causes   Nonprofits discover power of social media fundraising   Nonprofit Social Media Primer   If you like text books, this is a good one to add to your collection.  However, if you are looking to get involved in the online world, most of the lessons found in this book have been blogged about in detail.  If you have time, Google it! ... View more