Linkedin is previewing some new features in certain discussion groups. These ideas include "liking" comments and discussions, highlighting frequent group contributors as "influencers," featuring "manager's choice" discussions, and following individuals from within group discussions. What do you think of these changes?

In this post, I talk about 10 social media trends that I'm seeing, and examples of those trends including fear of failure, mounting case studies, acceptance of ROI, employee use of social media, and more.

With the Like button, Facebook has enabled your organization to become a network weaver. This blog post explains how the Like button weaves your fans together, and offers ideas about how to use the power of the Like button on your organization's behalf.

The National Wildlife Federation uses free online listening tools to compile a powerful listening dashboard and stay on top of trends, mentions, and fan activity. This blog post summarizes the key points from their presentation at the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference session.

The Listening workshop at the Nonprofit Technology Conference covered more than the tools: it was a point of view about why listening is critical to any organization. Wendy Harman discussed how the American Red Cross thinks about listening: it is critical to the relevancy of the organization, internal development, professional development, and reputation management.

Two data sets, two different user groups, same results: Small businesses and nonprofit find social media effective for reaching new customers and strengthening existing relationships. Irrefutable evidence of the power of engagement.

There are plenty of other business functions besides sales and marketing that benefit from social media integration: human resources, internal communication, product development, training, customer service. I recently gave a presentation that talks about the ROI of integrating social media with these business functions. The slide show is embedded. Looking forward to your thoughts and contributions.

Social media is a public platform, where we utilize the "power of weak ties" to move people to action. How does a weak tie become stronger, more fully engaged? It's when conversations move them from the public conversation places to private conversations. These private conversations are social media's "back yard." That is where the relationships are strengthened and built.

An interesting survey by Harris Poll shows that Engaged Americans (those who have volunteered, donated or advocated in the past year) want to be more involved in their nonprofit causes through social media. The survey also shows that they are already taking action as a result of social media engagement. How can nonprofits take advantage of this information?

Nonprofit organizations constantly need to raise funds, and many are turning to social media to raise funds online. Organizations ask, "when does social media lead to more money?" The real question to think about is, "when does engagement lead to more money." Using social media to engage, listen and learn from stakeholders is the first requirement for a successful online fundraising strategy.