8 Social Media Tools, Overheard at Social Media for Nonprofits

In law, sometimes you find the most important reasoning in the footnotes. And at conferences, sometimes you find the best advice in the asides.For example at the popular event, Social Media for Nonprofits SF in the course of explaining their key takeaways on social media, many of the speakers, panelists, and attendees also mentioned social tools they use regularly.This was a great complement to high-level thinking on goals and strategies for social media to promote social cause, because it provided practical “how-to” or “how do I do that” tips to enact the big picture.

8 Social Media Tools, Overheard at Social Media for Nonprofits

1. Polleverywhere.com lets you poll an audience instantly through mobile phone voting (i.e. text and twitter). It’s like American Idol polling capability for social innovators. It is free for small audiences and has pricing plans for larger groups as well as plans for K-12 and higher education. Other interesting features include a downloadable slide with results that updates as people vote.

 

2. Topsy.com is a search engine for tweets and Google+. It lets you track influence and influencers according to Twitter and Google+ usage. At Social Media for Nonprofits, Topsy was mentioned as an effective way to find influencers in your field or related to your cause. Connect with influencers, and your message, mission, and social innovation may find a broader reach.

 

 

3. Slideshare.net is a way to share presentations online. The site is the largest community for sharing presentations and is used by the White House, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Social Media for Nonprofits. Users can upload and download presentations, share on social networks, embed video and links, and can sign up for a free account or can opt for pro.

 

 

4. Tweetchat.com is a simple way to listen in to tweets about a particular topic. Just enter the desired hashtag and you will see live twitter chatter about that topic. At Social Media for Nonprofits large screens were set up on either side of the podium featuring live tweets containing the #sm4np hashtag, powered by Tweetchat.

 

 

5. Tweet-in is not a website but an innovative concept employed by Darian Heyman (@dheyman), Social Media for Nonprofits conference convener, emcee, and author. He essentially posed questions related to social media challenges and goals to the room of participants and called on everyone to respond with the #sm4np hashtag. The result? everyone in the room could view the large screens and virtually network with everyone else. It was a unique way to simultaneously connect with potential partners, resources, and mentees. Creative!

6. Twazzup.com is a tool that lets you mine tweets for trending topics, news, and influencers. It gives provides an interesting statistic called “TPH” (tweets per hour) for a particular topic. For example, I searched #socinn and came up with real-time results including highlights (left column), news (no news stories came up) and live twitter feed (right column). The TPH rate for #socinn was 3.

 

7. Twiangulate.com is a tool that helps you pinpoint the lesser-known influencers on twitter. It lets you do some interesting searches, such as searching 3 twitter handles and finding out common friends and mutual influencers. You can make maps and tables that tell you how various tweeters and tweeps are connected. TMI? Maybe you meant TMZ, because TMI doesn’t seem to apply to web 2.0 :)

8. Storify.com is a fascinating tool to enable social media storytelling. You can search social media outlets such at twitter, facebook, rss feed, flickr, and google for content based on search terms. Then comes the fun part, you can actually assemble a storyboard with the social media finds you want to be included. The result is a more-cohesive presentation of social media. Considering the importance placed on storytelling in social innovation, it could be extremely useful.