Ken Goldstein, MPPA

Ken Goldstein has been working in nonprofits and local government agencies from Santa Cruz, to Sacramento, and back to Silicon Valley, since 1989. He's been staff, volunteer, board member, executive director, and, since 2003, a consultant to local nonprofit organizations. For more on Ken's background, click here. If you are interested in retaining Ken's services, you may contact him at ken at goldstein.net.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Is your nonprofit blidgetized yet?

What's a "blidget"? It's a widget to syndicate a blog. Huh?

Basically, if you've got a blog, and you'd like to allow other web sites, blogs, profiles (MySpace, FaceBook, etc.) to embed your blog, a blog widget is an easy way to do it. What's in it for a nonprofit organization? Viral marketing made easy, that's what. Imagine each of your supporters embedding your headlines on their blogs, on their MySpace profiles and on their Facebook pages. It's a great way to get your message out there for a total investment of about ten minutes of your time.

Using the tools found at widgetbox.com, creating the initial widget was very quick and easy. Creating a Facebook application out of the initial widget was a little more complex and time consuming, but the instructions offered by widgetbox got me through that as well.

Here's what my two main blogs look like when widgetized:

(Note: If you'd like to use either of these blog widgets on your page, just click the "Get Widget" button at the bottom of each one.)