Book Review: Web 2.0 For Nonprofits

The Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide, written by and published by Idealware. Published 2010. Copyright 2010. Available on their website. 

Idealware is a great resource for anyone involved with a nonprofit who also uses software. Providing “thoroughly researched, impartial and accessible resources about software to help nonprofits make smart software decisions”, it’s a great place to go for everything for online donation tools to the pros and cons of the various e-mail blast systems out there.

Back in July, they released their Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide, available for free with registration, and it’s a great resource if you or our organization is trying to decide how to enter the social media landscape.

From explaining the various popular methods out there (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and more) to providing a workbook so that your organization can decide what methods would be best for them, the guide is a simple and productive way to think about social media marketing. It even defines what they consider social media to be, and explains the differences between each one.

And it has one of the best lines that I have now added to my arsenal when anyone wonders why to use social media: “These channels are tools, not a finished product. A Facebook page shouldn’t be the end goal of a social media strategy any more than a telephone should be the end goal of a communications plan.”

Social networking and Web 2.0 is about conversations, not lectures — and Idealware’s guide understands that. Even if you’ve ventured into one (or more) of the social networks out there, this guide is still worth a read — to see if what you’ve decided to do works for your organization’s goals.