Wednesday, January 21st, 2009...11:59 pm
What good are social networks?
It seems that there’s a bit of a thread out there on a few blogs, something in the air, a terrible question that’s being asked: are social networks actually a useful fundraising strategy?
The Pew Research Center published a report this week on the changing demographic profile of social networks. I would, ahem, modestly point out that Social Ch@nge was one day ahead of the curve on this one.
Among the responses of the blogosphere, the Agitator has run two interesting posts on the theme. The first talks about the recent Pew study, and points out that your donor base might not fit the demographics of Facebook. Fair enough.
The second post looks at the buying habits of users of social networks. The key point being: people don’t like being sold stuff through the medium of a social network.
This isn’t earth-shattering, nor rocket science – and fundamentally it’s a good point. You shouldn’t have to worry about product placement during a dinner party for your friends. Neither should banner ads intrude on your little Facebook flock.
But I think that this aspect is, in fact, what makes social networks such an interesting and powerful fundraising tool for non-profits in particular. A social network, by its very nature, commands a certain level of trust. You can screw up a good relationship with your donors/customers by trying to purchase their trust in this fickle medium. Don’t advertise – keep it honest and earn their trust. Political causes have certainly figured out how to make this work, for the very same reasons. It’s not mass media, it’s personal media – keep it personal. A smart non-profit will take this and run with it.
ps. Put the Agitator on your RSS feed – always great food for thought.
4 Comments
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:15 am
That last sentence is exactly what I say when anyone – journalist, fellow non-profit marketer, friend – asks me about how to ’sell’ on a social network. You don’t – you make a friend, and ask for their loyalty in return for your agreement to keep your demands to a friendly minimum.
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:11 am
Social networking sites are really fantastic for letting people with absolutely no technical skills publish on the web. In Web 1.0, people needed a web designer to publish. With Web 2.0, they don’t.
Social networking sites are great for people like my mum and aunties who don’t even have the confidence for the rest of the Web 2.0 tools. They can’t set up a TypePad blog with photos pulled in from Flickr, videos from Vimeo and bookmarks from Delicious. Facebook is easy.
Of course, that’s *nothing* like the picture marketers/fundraisers paint of social networking sites, which is hyped and distorted to the point where people think Web 2.0 and social networking sites are the same thing. Charities (and marketers) end up with Web 1.0 web sites, Web 1.0 attitudes, and an intern squatting on Facebook for a year to find out whether there really is any point using the internet for fundraising.
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Hey, Brad.
I think I agree with your last point – the intern part made me laugh.
But when you say “Web 1.0 attitudes,” what do you mean?
Sean
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:26 am
Having a Web 1 attitude means treating the internet like a broadcast publishing medium like radio or TV, and less like the telephone.
Web 1: “We talk, you listen.”
Web 2: “You talk, we listen, we talk, we laugh, we cry….”
Where Web 2.0 is read/write, Web 1.0 is read-only.
In Web 1, organizations want 1 tightly controlled voice. In Web 2, organizations have lots of casual voices, and some of them are their customers, donors, and volunteers.
And so on….
Most illustrative Web 1 attitude:
“We can’t afford to hire someone to talk to customers to find out what they think and desire. (We can however, afford to spend more than 1 salary to run focus groups and extrapolate from a small sample of people who aren’t necessarily even our customers – to find out what our customers want.)”
Or
“We can’t afford to hire someone to blog and make our site lively and great, respond to comments, answer email, contribute to relevant communities, and do *real* internet networking/marketing. (We can however, afford to hire an SEO to try to write site content stuffed with top keywords, run PPC campaigns, and attempt to trick Google into thinking we have an amazingly good site.)”
Web 2 says to Web 1, “Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to BE great than to hire people to create the misleading impression that you are great?”
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