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.)

2 comments:

  1. Hi Ken, I think you're on the verge of a new poem, something like this from back in the early '90's:

    If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort, And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

    If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, And the double clicking icon puts your window in the trash, And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash, Then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash.

    If the label on the cable on the table at your house, Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol, That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,

    And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse, Then you may as well reboot it, and let it go out with a bang, 'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang.

    When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk, And the micro-code instructions cause unnecessary risk, Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to ram your ROM, So quickly turn off your computer and go and tell your mum!

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  2. Hi Ken,

    This is Jessica Mallard and I work for a marketing firm in Utah. One of our clients, Operation Kids, recently established a blog. We have been brainstorming ways to increase visibility, and I liked your "blidget" idea. They already have a widget, so this would not be foreign to them. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I find your blog informative and practical. Thanks!

    http://operationkids.wordpress.com/

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