We introduced Scoop.it and Pinterest recently because we think these information-sharing sites offer a great platform for nonprofits and charities to share their own news as well as related images or stories in their sectors. As promised we have returned to round out this mini-series with a guide to help you setup a Scoop.it e-magazine site. Unlike Pinterest, you need not wait for an ‘invitation’. In fact, if you have a Twitter or Facebook account, you are already good-to-go. And if you don’t, where have you been these past five or six years?!
Once you are signed in with your account (I used Twitter), you have the opportunity to link other social media to your Scoop.it account. Interestingly, Google+ is not on the list, though you can distinguish between individual Facebook accounts and a Facebook Page for your nonprofit or charity. Your organization can connect itself as much or as little as it wants with other social media accounts.
Once those SM choices are made and linked to Scoop.It, you will want to drag the Scoop.It Bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark bar. This thing does a good bit of magic, and all you need to do is drag-and-drop! Then, as you explore the internet and find something you want to share via your social media and your Scoop.It site, just click the Scoop.It bookmarklet, and the browser offers you a sidebar to prepare your Tweet and/or Facebook post (or whatever other social networks you connected your account to). You can add/tweak your own comments, and the story gets shared to your ‘magazine’ and all those other platforms in one easy ‘click.’ Scoop.It becomes your one-stop/share-all social-media hub!
You will want to encourage people to follow your charity’s Scoop.It magazine, and you will want to present your e-magazine in the similar colors and fonts that adorn your website and printed material. That’s where the different pay rates come in. If you upgrade to ‘Pro’ ($12.99 per month) you can export news stories to different social-media platforms and push your various stories along different social-media networks (handy for larger nonprofits that might have a few Twitter accounts). Go to the ‘Business’ level ($79 a month), and you can brand each magazine, not just your account, with its own colors and fonts, as well as give up to five staff members access to the dashboard for its general upkeep. Of course, you want to bring some visual continuity between your organization’s Scoop.It site(s) and the Twitter/Facebook/Website pages you already have. Note also that Scoop.It offers an ‘Education’ account ($6.99 a month) that offers access to 30 students over 20 topics.
The name of the game is ‘curation.’ Scoop.It certainly offers you opportunity to connect to your own organization’s blog, website, Twitter account, etc. But so too do you want to ‘scoop’ engaging and relevant stories about your field, your efforts, and your constituents. By scooping such content (and remember: you can make more than one e-magazine/collection, even in a free account) you will bring new readers and followers to your educational portal and to your organization’s donation and volunteer pages.
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