Raising awareness is vital to the survival of most social benefit organizations. Your organization may be doing important and valuable work - but if no one knows you exist, you are missing out on the opportunity to meet, engage, and motivate others to take action on your behalf.

Unfortunately, because nonprofits have limited resources, they can face significant challenges when deciding how to get their message out to large numbers of people. They must continually answer the all-important question, "How can we reach the most number of people in the most cost-effective way?"

Enter MySpace, one of the most popular social networks on the Web today.

Designed to help like-minded individuals and organizations connect and share information, social networks are showing promise as low-cost, high-impact marketing channels because they are both highly visited and highly targeted. In particular, many nonprofits are starting to set up profiles on social-networking sites like MySpace to keep "friends" up to date on the latest activities. These friends then invite more friends to join the group and so on, ultimately allowing the nonprofit to reach people well beyond its original circle.

If you decide to launch a MySpace page for your organization, here are seven things you can do to increase your chances of success:

  • 1. On your MySpace page, ask friends to take specific actions such as "link to our Web site," "subscribe to our e-newsletter," "tell a friend about our current campaign," "contact us to learn about," and so on.
  • 2. Write blog entries and circulate your entries via your "bulletin board." Invite friends to post comments to your blog; visit your friends' pages and leave relevant and valuable comments; host events; and continue to add friends.
  • 3. Add videos to your MySpace pages. Images and videos have a way of motivating people to take action.
  • 4. Update your MySpace page frequently and customize it to resemble your organization's look and feel. Be careful not to make your page appear too stuffy.
  • 5. Don't make the mistake of staying within your own circle of like-minded organizations. When you add friends, consider reaching out to folks outside of your circle. In particular, nonprofits could reach out (via MySpace) to for-profit companies with strong social responsibility programs that can help spread the word about their causes.
  • 6. Add your MySpace URL to your email signature line, business card, and letterhead in order to encourage people to visit your MySpace page.
  • 7. Write articles about how your organization is using MySpace to advance its causes and submit them to both online and print publications. Or publish them on your Web site and ask bloggers to link to them.

Social networking does require a commitment; but when done right, it has the power to get your message to people that traditional marketing efforts miss - and at a very low cost. Given this, many experts see social networking as a defining example of how emerging technologies are leveling the playing field between large corporations and modest-sized nonprofits.

Now get inspired and get your organization's message out there!

Copyright: Cruz Coleman Associates

Source: http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page6016.cfm