social networks

posted by Colleen Dunbar, Project Specialist, Marketing/Communications ASU Lodestar Center

Should you change your nonprofit’s Facebook profile image to show support of a hot political issue? What do you do if someone comments with a racial slur on a photo of your volunteer? How do you react if you find your page to be the victim of the ever-dreaded troll?

As they say, “With any social media profile, comes great responsibility.” (Just kidding, no one really says that. But they should!)

If you have ever found yourself in one of these situations, then you know that making a wrong or inconsistent decision can have disastrous results. And those disastrous results are very, very public. Having a social media policy in place will help you answer these questions, and inform you or your social media manager on what to do in similar situations. And it’s extremely easy to create.

What’s in a social media policy?

Every nonprofit’s policy is going to be different, because every nonprofit has different needs, different audiences, different missions, and different campaign goals. But to give you an example of what a social media policy consists of, here’s a sample of the ASU Lodestar Center’s:

posted by Annalise Parady, Director of Development  for Vive Peru

Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing series, we invite a nonprofit scholar, student, or professional to highlight current research reports or studies and discuss how they can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice.

These days,"social network" is a term that often refers to a social media community, such as Facebook, and thus is not a term that many managers would take seriously unless they were discussing a social media campaign. In fact, we all live in social networks, every day, and the implications are important for organizations, professional networking and leadership development. The ways in which social networks are designed for interaction among the members of an organization can create a network of support to improve teamwork, as well as create the highest level of information flow to stimulate ideas.