How can Twitter work for you? Do you need more volunteers? Jersey Cares recruited over 1,000 new volunteers using Twitter in just one month. Last year, Jersey Cares doubled our volunteer participation in MLK Day of Service with the extraordinary work of a few AmeriCorps members. When MLK Day of Service finally arrived, Jersey Cares had a record turnout of over 2,000 volunteers – over 1,000 of which were new volunteers to the organization! In this guest post. Jersey Cares staff Sherry Lynn Fazio and Siobhan Tiernan offer a step-by-step blueprint of how they moved their twitter following from 800 to 1,600 and brough 1,000 new volunteers to their MLK Day of Service 2011.

Google+ rolled out its Ripples feature on October 27, with just a hint of data potential within Google+ for marketing and engagement. Google+ Ripples is really the first set of metrics we've seen from Google around Google+. Ripples gives Google+ users relevant information about the use of circles, G+ influence, and how data is spread. Google+ Ripples has a lot of potential, including knowing your influencers, finding new influencers, knowing what others want to share, and of course implications for the future of online search and Google SEO. Why is Ripples really relevant for nonprofits? It can help nonprofits understand how to move connections on G+ (and elsewhere) to action. Read the full post for more.

presented at this year's Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthropy's annual conference November 13-14 in Springfield, MA, and walked away impressed with some of interesting things that camps are doing with technology. Kevin Martone, the Institute's Technology Program Manger, wrote this guest post highlighting how three camps used technology creatively to meet their goals: online/offline relationship building through blogging and Facebook, engaging current families with an unique iPad/iPhone app, and social fundraising through livestreaming a phone-a-thon. As Kevin writes, "These camps evoke incredibly strong emotions in their alumni, campers, and parents. They need to use the tools available to harness these emotions and connect them to the real world.

Every November leading up to World Diabetes Day on Nov. 14, the Diabetes Hands Foundation, (DHF) runs an online campaign, called the Big Blue Test. Diabetes Hands Foundation is one of the nimblest online organizations around. They are not afraid to experiment with social media, as I've written about previously. The success of Big Blue Test speaks to their belief in the potential of social media as much more than tools for socializing. They have time and time again leveraged Facebook, Twitter, Ning and YouTube to help people with diabetes connect with others like themselves, raise diabetes awareness and lately...help others in the process. All of this is possible when you align goals with participation paths, and you are not afraid to try new things. I spoke with Manny Hernandez, President of DHF, to understand how he leveraged the DHF community and social media in this online campaign, and why the Big Blue Test 2012 was the most successful yet.

I cannot think of another organization that better exemplifies the concept of "followership" than Epic Change. They listen, include, incorporate, and respect followers. This year's Epic Thanks is a result of good followership. This Thanksgiving season, as in years past, Epic Change is raising money to support the Shepherds School in Arusha, Tanzania.

Google+ launched Pages this week, a move many of us have been looking forward to since the launch of Google+ itself. Within days, stories of unintentional G+ personal posting, problems sharing admin oversight, and issues with merged profiles were shared on the web. However, during that same time frame, hundreds of nonprofit organizations worldwide created and launched Google+ brand pages. Two nonprofit motivations are apparent. A primary motivation seems to be related to search engine optimization: Google is the largest search engine by far, and Google Pages will certainly benefit from Google's search algorithm (see why here). I wrote that Google's+1 button will change search, and so will Google+ Pages. The second unstated story is that everyone knows about the potential value in a Facebook Page, and everyone wants to get in on Google+ Pages early enough to start figuring out the medium. And maybe get a head start. I think two critical elements may be missing from nonprofit Google+ Pages: strategy and people.

What is your organization's primary topic of conversation online? If you don't know the answer to that, you may find that is the crux of the issue with your online strategy. Without knowing and owning the online conversation topic, your organization is doomed to wander aimlessly about in the online desert. To get at this, I often ask this simple question: "What about your industry or issue is so interesting that you want to have a conversation about it?" Taking this simple question a step further, I'll often ask: what topic of conversation is interesting to potential fans, can define your organization, but isn't about the organization itself? Knowing your conversation, then owning it, offers a map through the online desert to real engagement, trust-building, and advocacy. This post includes three examples of nonprofits who really know what their conversations are about, and execute them superbly.

I had the pleasure of presenting a workshop entitled "Data Driven Leadership" at the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network/AGM annual conference last week, along with colleagues Marc Baizman and Steve Backman. The question we addressed in the workshop was: what online data does a leader want in order to make informed decisions around programming, advocacy, fundraising, and advocacy? Marc, Steve, and I have expertise in analyzing Google Analytics, understanding customer segmentation and databases, and identifying social media metrics, respectively. Each of us thought about how the data from our respective area of expertise could address this question, and demonstrated how to find those answers during the session. We also created a DIY worksheet for the session entitled, "Make Your Data Work for You: A DIY Worksheet." It offers sample questions to get you started thinking in the areas of marketing, programs and services, development, and volunteers and advocacy.

Facebook's newly-revised Insights is such a significant change that it is a game-changer in the social media space. With the new Insights metrics, Facebook is boldly telling the Facebook community and its competitors that the most important social network metric is real online engagement. Everything about the new Facebook Insights is focused on helping page administrators understand how well their page's content is being received, shared, and talked about within Facebook. Facebook believes that you should know and need to know how engaging your content really is. And they want you to do something about that. In this post, I analyze why it is such a bold move, why engagement matters, and what a game-changer the new metrics has become. This is the future of measurement.

This week I'm launching a regular blog feature called "New and Improved on the Social Web." In this regular roundup, I'll be highlighting some of the latest changes and iterations to social media platforms, apps and tools, and commenting on their implications. This roundup includes an overview of delicious' new Stacks feature for creating shareable curated bookmarks around a topic, and two important changes to Facebook's pages, open commenting feature and new Facebook Insights.