flickr: haglundcA community manager’s job is built on a foundation of distractions. 

Navigating the social web can feel a bit like walking through a water park on a Saturday in July with a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old who somehow keep running into their friends, when you really want to be back home developing a dinner strategy for Sunday. And did you see that ice cream vendor over there? Did his cooler have a QR code on it?

Making sense of the never-ending flow of information, keeping ourselves focused – all while ensuring that no one at the water park of our organization has a sunburn at the end of the day – involves a constant state of learning, adaptability, and growth.

Thanks to Net2 Think Tank, folks all over the web this month are sharing their best practices for effectively monitoring online feedback. Here are a few of the things I’ve learned along the way:

When we announced "The Social Media Decision-Maker's Toolkit" last fall, it sold out in two weeks – so we've partnered with the experts at Idealware to offer it to you again.

But we're down to 10 spots remaining already! If you or somebody on your staff is interested, you should:

> Learn more and register today.

A monthly roundup of our favorite nonprofit tech resources and other goodies. Read more posts on our blog.

1. If you liked our look at the ROI of NTEN's Facebook ads, be sure to check out Groundwire's post on using ads to find likers for your fan page.
2. Why would you want to do that? (Not why would you use "likers" as a noun – why would you want to find more?) Well, we found that when we targeted ads at our fans, they were three times more likely to click than somebody interested in nonprofits in general.
3. Engagement is a positive feedback loop: the more you engage with your supporters, the more engaged they'll be with your cause. Blackbaud even found that using social media can increase your fundraising by 40%.
4. And can we just say how happy we are that the brouhaha over the efficacy of social media in the real world is dying down? We can. And we will. Social media wins.
5. Mobile phones FTW, too.
6. Apropos of nothing, this video of a talking dog has been cracking up the NTEN office for weeks.
7. The 2011 Games for Change Festival sure looks like fun. Just don't go dressed in your Hello Kitty Darth Vader suit. Such a thing could drive one to existentialism (as told through Star Wars, natch).
8. Community – specifically, you. We really need you to give us your opinion on how well we're meeting your needs. Pass judgment on us in the 2011 NTEN Community Survey.
9. After all, where else would you turn to for links to things like van Gogh's "Starry Night" recreated with bacon right next to IBM's report on "The State of Marketing 2011" (pdf)?

By Larry Orman, Executive Director, GreenInfo Network

Data and storytelling are, to quote the great American sage, Forrest Gump, “like peas in a pod”. Data is vital for powerful analysis, but at the end of the day, we're swimming in it. For us to be moved by it, we need to have data turned into narrative sense. An earlier article posted to the NTEN blog did a great job covering data visualization generally, but what about data and places? More specifically, what about mapped data?

Here are four characteristics of successful mapping projects, whether the products are fixed images or interactive applications.

We recently dipped our toes into the world of social media ROI to track how well some of our purchased ads were performing. (Tip: don't use LinkedIn to market free stuff.)

It was actually pretty easy. Much harder: integrating social media into your overall communications strategy in such a way that you can figure out if it's actually working. We've got a great webinar on the topic coming up this week: "It's Not Direct Marketing If You Can’t Track It! Analyzing the Social Web".

> Learn more and register today.

Megaphone: Flickr: floeschieEvery week we pull together interesting tid-bits from across the web where NTEN members are making – or writing – headlines! This week, we're seeing members do both: garnering headlines for awards and news and putting the spotlight on their ideas. Have more news to share? Drop us a line or include your links in the comments!

By Brett Meyer, Communications Director, NTEN

As part of our effort to build the subscriber base for NTEN:Change, our quarterly journal for nonprofit leaders, we purchased advertising space – on Facebook, LinkedIn, and in GrantStation's weekly newsletter. Being new to this, we also had to determine how to measure the return on investment (ROI) of our ad buys, to help guide our efforts in the future.

We found that each new subscriber cost:

• $2.12 from GrantStation
• $2.40 from Facebook
• And a shocking $7.83 from LinkedIn

Here's a step-by-step guide on how we calculated that with the help of Google Analytics.

Don't let the phrase "geographic gap analysis" turn you off: it's just another tool in your search for new donors.

By forming a geographic profile of your current supporters, you can find regions under-represented in your constituency. If you discover that a large number of your current donors are, say, 50-year-old women in the suburbs, you'll be able to find areas with similar demographics you may not have reached yet.

The release of the 2010 census data means the time is ripe for just such an analysis. We'll walk you through the steps at our upcoming webinar, "Geographic Gap Analysis: Leveraging Census, Open, and Proprietary Datasets for Fundraising".

> Learn more and register today.

Flickr: qthomasbowerYou might have noticed all the recent articles on our blog about data. It's this month's topic for us, and you should subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter to receive the compiled "best of" version of these articles later this week.

But I want to offer something to this discussion to drive the point home about how your organization's data is important for your work:

Your data is people. Your data is past, present, and future of your work. It has the potential to change the way people think about your cause.

Thanks to the generous support of Google, we're able to offer the Technology Leadership Academy one more time in 2011 – free for qualifying nonprofits. We hope you'll apply.

Learn more and apply (by May 20)