Some basic tips for using your Community 2.0 Network

Many of our Community 2.0 users have asked for some basic instructions for getting going with their sites. As follows is a real simple overview for using your "Community 2.0 Network" to grow and help manage your growth. I’m going to focus on just the most pressing needs that I think we’re ready for (more detailed training will be coming online each month). 1) Invite (or even require in cases of employees) everyone you meet, train, collaborate with and know to join your Community! At the very minimum, people and organizations can begin to connect and start mingling. Use the Invite feature or just use your regular Constant Contact or other communications. The address to give out is www.(your website domain)/community (make sure your programmers create the proper link to your Community 2.0 site). 2) Create groups for each program you run and have participants become “Friends” of each group. To create “sub-groups”, just go to New Account and create an organization. Then become “Friends” of your main organization to establish a link. We will have more streamlined sub-group capabilities later in the month, but this will work fine for now. Also, start becoming Friends with all of your participants through “Send Friend Request” on each profile. 3) Assign official employees and other participants as “Members” and casual acquaintances, affiliated organizations or prospective members as “Friends”. This will allow you to mark entries as visible to Members Only, Members & Friends Only and Visible to Entire Network. 4) Post all of your trainings, workshops, mixers, volunteer events, etc. using Events. To save time, you can use “Duplicate Event” to rapidly copy, modify and create entries (just be on the Event profile you want to copy). 5) Have all participants RSVP for each Event. This is on each Event profile and is just one click. 6) Post what’s happening and your press releases using News. 7) Post links to other programs and websites using Resources. 8) Get the conversations going between classes using Blogs and Discussions. Put your “deep” questions up on the site and invite people to comment and share their thoughts. You can control what entries are for friends and members only. Remember that you can use this to get people from outside your organization engaged through the Peoplemovers Network as each person makes a post that is marked “Visible to Entire Network”. 9) Give Kudos to each other in a public way. Go to the profile of the person you want to thank and Add a Kudo. 10) Definitely, give your volunteers, donors, students and others Awards! For instance, create an “Award” for your programs and “Share” it with them so they can “Apply for Award”. The Award icon will then appear on their profiles. We’re going to be making this even easier to give over the next week or two. The idea here is to get people connected to each other and to you in order to create stronger relationships. Relationships (in addition to their formal training) are what will give your students the inside track on opportunities throughout life. Relationships will also make being involved with your organization FUN as people start to engage more outside of your organized events. That will take the “buzz” about your organization and community to a whole other level! More features are on the way but this will at least give you a dynamic tool to start connecting everyone together while you get the rest of your operation up to speed. Of course, please give us feedback so we can make improvements. We're working with our programmers everyday so things can happen quickly if you really need it. If you need more help or have suggestions, post a Comment below!