PR Blogger Stephen Davies thinks we’ll start to see a fragmentation of social networks. As people begin to tire with the vast, general nature of MySpace et al , they may migrate to niche social networks that are more relevant to them, their passions and their lives. Niche social networks can be tapped into for more relevancy in online engagement. He asks: So what does it mean for brands?

Many people view online social networking tools, such as Facebook , LinkedIn , and Myspace as time-draining distractions. Facebook also has the benefit of having your installed audience, your network of friends at your fingertips, so you can easily announce new activities, campaigns, and events to your self-selected constituency of like-minded individuals and groups, without having to email a large group of people and risking the effects of a spam filter's black hole. If you haven't heard of Facebook, I'm sorry to break it to you, but you are living under a rock.

Nonprofits looking to start using social media as a marketing tool with find a wealth of sound advice online, but putting the pieces together into a solid strategy? In fact, trying to give step-by-step "one size fits all" directions for using social media is a lot like trying to teach a shy first-time party guest how to mingle with strangers.) That's the real challenge. No one simple strategy will work for every nonprofit group. (In

Social media! But how should nonprofits track their social media? Each objective requires different tools to track your nonprofits social media progress and return on investment. Lets dig in to my top eight social media tracking tools. Social Social Networking Trends I seriously think it’s "the" buzz word of 2009.

According to a survey conducted in March 2009 by NTEN, Common Knowledge , and ThePort , social networking has become an integral part of nonprofits’ online strategy. have one or more social networking communities on their own web site. gt; Download the Social Network Survey Report And You may have already suspected that, but now you can get some hard numbers to justify that Facebook page you've been keeping so tidy and au currant. Then you can go all Matt Damon on your ED: “You

using social media and social networking in their organizations. many organizations are initially focusing on using social media as a communication and awareness tool. recently had a chance to discuss social media strategies with members of our Target Analytics Customer Advisory Board. For a while now I've been talking with a lot of nonprofits about using I thought

Guess what one of the biggest challenges nonprofits face today when adding a blog to their website or diving into social media? These are all valid questions and concerns and point to why it’s important that nonprofits develop and implement guidelines for blogging and managing social media. Social Networking Web 2. Giving up control. Does this sound familiar?

Social Networking Web 2. Grassroots Enterprise recently launched “Actions” on Facebook that allows nonprofit organizations' supporters to take action and send a letter to their members of Congress without ever leaving Facebook —and without installing an app. The Actions tab will not only match supporters to federal and state legislative officials based on their addresses but will also capture names and emails in a database.

After you've gone through the strategic planning, and made sure that, indeed, building your own social network is exactly what you want to do (instead of building on networks already there, which, I think is what should be done 80% of the time), how do you go about doing it? The community and data is not your own, and there is some evidence that they might be using that data in social networks on their platform in ways that they shouldn't be . Elgg . I've heard it a number of times: "Our organization wants our own Facebook." I've been working on this for

As part of a workshop on social media that I gave with Susan Mernit at the 2009 Women, Action & the Media conference, I pointed out Wellstone Action as an example of an organization that's doing great work on Twitter. DZ: Was there any organizational resistance to Twitter (or other social media)? In my role as Communications Director, it is After the workshop, I wondered how @wellstoneaction planned their Twitter usage-- were they really some sort of non-profit advocacy Twitter mastermind, as I'd suspected? Elana Wolowitz, the Communications Director and voice behind