Social Media

From The Open Forum Foundation Community

Let's use this as the center point for our collaboration. Here is a page to track our progress. This should also be supporting our fundraising efforts.

Keywords

Contents 1 Overview 2 Needs 2.1 A Community 3 Haves 3.1 Main public-facing website 3.2 This publicly available community site 3.3 Facebook Page 3.4 Email lists 3.5 Wayne's personal Twitter account 4 Other options 4.1 Twitter account for Open Forum Foundation 4.2 LinkedIn Group 4.3 GovLoop Group 4.4 MySpace Group

Overview

It is my contention (open for discussion) that the point of our social media strategy is to reach people where they are, and provide them with the latest information about what we're doing and why it's important, all in a format that is convenient and interesting for them.

I think that we should not so much be pushing people to sign up for an email list or to create a profile on this wiki, but moreso simply to connect with them wherever we find them.

We can use the activities on one location for material to begin discussions or pass along to other locations, but each one requires a slightly different perspective or voice or handling in order to be attractive within its own context.

We also need to be careful to not over-commit ourselves. I believe it is better to not engage than to engage poorly.

Needs

A Community

The goal of our social media strategy is to develop a community of individuals that see the benefits of what we're doing and want to support development of the platform. This support may come in many ways:

1. Spreading the word - telling friends online and in real life
2. Donating
3. Advising on technical aspects
4. Actively participating in the development
   1. Review of the proposed feature set
   2. Review of the architecture of the platform
   3. Assistance with design or development (this will not be our main source for these activities)
   4. Usability testing
   5. Beta testing

If we are as responsive to these users as we should be, they will become the initial users of the platform, as well as its greatest proponents.

Haves

Main public-facing website

http://openforumfoundation.org/

This publicly available community site

Facebook Page

At this big, long, ugly URl - 114 fans

Email lists

Technically 3 currently:

1. Blog Posts - 22 subscribers
2. Weekly Update - 23 subscribers
3. Monthly Newsletter - 30 subscribers

Wayne's personal Twitter account

http://twitter.com/wmburke - currently 165 followers or so and growing.

Other options

Twitter account for Open Forum Foundation

1. OpenFF?, OpenForum? What should it be?
2. How should we use it? What will we tweet about? How often?

LinkedIn Group

GovLoop Group

MySpace Group