Social media has become a powerful tool for nonprofits to engage and interact with their supporters. Organizations are reaching out through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to build community, mobilize supporters, and increase their visibility and impact.

In our webinar "The Social Website: Integrating Social Media into Website Design and Function", Debra Askanase explained that social media is the democratization of information. It transforms online readers into publishers by empowering them to post their own information online.

Nonprofits can harness the power of social media to engage supporters on their organizational websites, as well as in the social spaces of the internet.  "The Social Website: Integrating Social Media into Website Design and Function", explored the whys, whats, and hows of integrating social media into nonprofit websites. Presenters Debra Askanase and Seth Giammanco outlined five techniques for doing so:

For organizations looking to replace or overhaul their website, the project ahead may seem enormous, unwieldy, daunting. The path from initial planning to the successful launch of a well designed, functional website is long and full of twists. Trying to accommodate your leaders' feedback, while creating a website that has a unified voice and purpose, can seem nearly impossible.

Fortunately for us, Ryan Ozimek and Tim Forbes have broken down the website development project into 8 clear phases, covered in our recent webinar "What to Expect When You're Expecting: A Website Development Project". Those phases are: