Britt Bravo of Have Fun * Do Good has an excellent post about using the social web for social change. In the nonprofit sector, online activism has become much more than sending an email to Congress or making a donation. Organizations today are engaging their constituents to upload pictures, text and videos and share their story with the whole world. Britt feels that a lot of activists know that there are many kinds of social web tools available to them, but they aren't sure how to find them, or use them, and are intimidated by the technology.
Britt shares four steps that will help ease them into using the social web for social change (read the post for more details):
1. CONSUME: Writers read, artists go to galleries, reporters watch the news. You need to start by checking out the content that is already being created by citizen journalists and activists about the issues you care about on blogs, podcasts and online video/vlogs. Even if you never go beyond this step, at least you'll have a list of new media to send event announcements to.
2. JOIN: Join a social network, or two, or three! Facebook isn't just for college students anymore. You might be surprised how many nonprofits and individuals are using Facebook groups to organize.
3. PARTICIPATE: "Web 2.0" is also called the "social web" because, well, it's social! It's all about connecting and participating.
4. CREATE Now that you've consumed, joined and participated, you're ready to create your own citizen media (like you consumed in Step 1) and/or your own campaign.
Britt closes her post with some good tips:
1. Don't be afraid of the tech.
2. Don't feel like you have to use these tools, email is still very powerful!
3. Ask for help.
4. Have fun!
This sounds like a pretty easy way to use the social web for your cause. I did a quick search through for more resources available for nonprofits about how to use Web2.0 tools and here's what I found:
Blogs
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Flickr
Mashups
Podcasting
Video Casts
RSS Feeds
Screencasting
Wikis
Productivity Tools
Do you have any other tips for using Web 2.0 and the social web? I'd love to hear about your experiences and what worked and didn't work for you. Please share them below via comments..