Is There a “Right” Number of Social Media Sites for an Organization?

I just answered a question on LinkedIn that would be good for the blog as well. Should an organization be on 5 social media sites or 35?

I would prioritize. Choose 3-5 to really focus on and create a following on those sites. Then take time once a week to look at other sites you’ve placed your organization and see if you can make quick updates or find one new site a week to join. Be sure to keep a running tally of where your organization is listed. Put one hour a week toward the non-high priority social media sites and move on. But you want to be out there, because you never know which site is the next Facebook or LinkedIn. At Water For People, we focus most of our energy on blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. But, as a non-profit which is always seeking supporters, we definitely want to be listed wherever we can. One fun thing that you can do is create a page on your own web site that compiles multiple social media site contributions into one, such as this page – it’s half-Twitter and half-blog: http://www.waterforpeople.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Follow_to_Uganda . It’s amazing what you can do by leveraging various social media site’s existing technology.

Thoughts on this topic from others in the social media expertise?

Social Networking for Non Profits

I’ve been trying to make the experience for Water For People constituents more interactive utilizing social media, to which I am fairly new. But today I had a breakthrough (not without a little help from Jon Gosier). Using Twitter, Yahoo Pipes and Feed Burner, a non-profit can have someone out in the world making notes of their experiences on Twitter, then Yahoo Pipes will separate the Tweets into separate RSS feeds, then FeedBurner will give you code so that you can post the constantly updating feed onto a web page specific to the keyword that you filtered against if you want this on your web site as content. I can think of so many possiblities here – the local humane society could set up “easy” breed-specific adoption feeds for potential new pet owners to know the instant a dog/cat/ferret of their choice comes up for adoption. The local political committee can parse out feeds depending on their constituents interests. The homeless shelter could send out up-to-the-minute requests for what they need that day (food, blankets, volunteers, money, etc.) and specifically reach the people that can offer those resources. It’s really quite amazing. Of course you don’t have to use Twitter, but why not put the information out on an application that is growing widely in popularity and gain followers for your organization that way as well as have people subscribe to your RSS feed? If this is all old news to some folks, then I completely understand. And it’s quite possible there’s an easier way to do things than the way I mentioned (please comment if there is!) – but my point is more that social networking is going to do a world of good for non-profits in order to get out our message in a free, and in many ways “cutting-edge” method. I thank Jon (mentioned above) for opening my eyes!