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NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.
Social Media for Food Bank outreach
Feeding America is a network of over 200 food banks across the country. These food banks are there own 501(c)3 organizations and have their own boards. To coordinate efforts both nationally and locally, we have to use online tools and social media to coordinate our efforts.
We have a team in our communication department devoted to internal communications. The primary web portal is our extranet for our members, HungerNet. This password protected site contains valuable resources for our network.
For our recent Network Summit in April, we utilized a variety of tools for users to contribute content.
- There was a photo upload on our extranet.
- There was a blog on HungerNet with many guest bloggers talking about the Summit.
- We created the Twitter account @FANetworkSummit for attendees to follow.
- Encourged using the hastag #FASummit to track posting during sessions.
Our foof banks found these tools to be effective and helpful during the Summit. This will only lay the groundwork for future events.
- dpmichel's blog
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Here's the round-up!
Hey Dan- Thanks again for your submission. Here's the Net2ThinkTank round-up post: http://www.netsquared.org/blog/claire-sale/net2-think-tank-round-using-online-tools-internal-comms
Mixing public and private
Thanks so much for your submission to this month's Net2 Think Tank on internal comms!
it's really good to see how Feeding America is communicating with it's distributed network. I particularly like how you've mixed the private website with the public twitter participation of your network.
I wonder about how wired your Food Banks are? Are they embracing the blog and twitter and photo uploads to your extranet? And, what, if anything, is Feeding America doing to help your audience learn how to succeed using these tools?
Network Connectivity
Thanks Claire!
Just like the public - our food bank network has a wide range of experience and connectivity with online tools. Some are very advanced and some have not explored it as much. These tools internally are still in the early stages and while there are some who are participating greatly, there are many more "lurkers" out there.
We have provided social media training via webinars in the past and have internal conferences where social/digital marketing are sessions (and usually very well attended). This year our closing keynote speaker will be on social tools.
Internal Education
Sounds like you guys are doing a great job of using the tools without leaving later adopters behind. Glad to hear you're helping internal folks make the transition. I also really think "lurking" is the best way to learn how a tool and the community already using the tool operate, so it's a good sign that you can identify that low active participation doesn't necessarily mean that nobody is listening!