Building an online community of supporters

Priscilla Brice-WellerConnecting Up, May 2007

http://www.antar.org.auhttp://seaofhands.antar.org.au

3 goals• Become a trustworthy

voice on Australian Indigenous issues

• Extend the reach of our electronic communications

• Inspire people to take action

Who are we engaging online?

sympathisers activists

Simple actions:Web 2.0

Professional activists

Activemembers: attending meetings, becoming passionate

Sympathisers will start using Web 2.0 tools to engage with yourcause early on, and continue using them through to the activist stage.

Easy actions:writing blogposts about issues, emailing a politician

Advocates: engaging other people

Specific, tangible actions: donating,volunteering, downloading and using online materials offline

each online tool requires significant resources

not-for-profit orgs need:• to be strategic about which tools they use• a range of tools that, collectively, helps them reach

the target audience• to question for each tool “does effort = effect?”

myspace.com/nonprofitorganizations:The first 5,000 friends took 5 months and 25 days to achieve. The second 5,000 friends only took 2 months and 5 days.

myspace.com/ant4r:After about three months, we had just over 200 friends.

MySpace friends

MySpace age demographic

Total audience, August 2006

Age % of audience

12-17 11.9%

18-24 18.1%

25-34 16.7%

35-54 40.6%

55 + 11.0%

Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1019

“Corporate” website: antar.org.au

challenges

opportunities

Email newsletter

CampaignMonitor.com

• Easy to use

• Affordable

Subscribe to other organisations’ newsletters to see the good and the bad

blogsWhat I wish I could tell you:“We’ve been running guest blogs on our site for

a month. The bloggers are finding the system really easy to use. Our visitors are loving it too, as we’re getting a few comments every day.”

However, technology has held us back.

Bespoke: Sea of Handshttp://seaofhands.antar.org.au

• Personalised

• Community

• Take action

• Funding + expertise

The White Box• del.icio.us• Flickr• maybe an online calendar at some point

The future?

Those URLs again:

• ANTaR - http://www.antar.org.au• Sea of Hands - http://seaofhands.antar.org.au• MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/ant4r

My blog - http://www.solidariti.com