Putting it in Contxt: March 11, 2011

You work hard trying to bring results and supporters to your cause. As much as you wish, you just don’t have the time to analyze what’s trending on Twitter or notice the new tools that are out. Let us keep the pulse on social media developments for nonprofits and organizations with a mission so you can avoid information burn out. Every week Social Contxt will wrap up the key social media news stories you might have missed, separate the important stuff from the fluff, and make it super easy for you to keep up to date and look like a social media rockstar.

Key Developments in Social Media:

Sequoia, Google Ventures, and Salesforce.com invest $32 million in HubSpot -- All-in-one marketing firm HubSpot announced Tuesday a Series D round of funding from top seed funding giants. HubSpot is a major force behind the idea of inbound marketing, a strategy that focuses on getting found by customers rather than spending tons of money on advertising. Inbound marketing tactics focus on providing high quality content through blogging, hosting webinars, email drip campaigns, as well as fine-tuned SEO and strong social media campaigns. This latest round of funding shows that these methods are proving valuable, and increasingly important to generating leads and customers.

Analytics revamped -- Two major companies revamped their analytics measurements this week, both Facebook and the social media manager dashboard HootSuite. (New to Hootsuite? Check out our recent tutorial.) Facebook now provides real-time “Insights" analytics on your content’s performance and you’ll also be able to view key stats like most popular story and total impressions and feedback on a per-content basis. The biggest improvement is “like" button analytics to track how effective social plugins are on their website. As for HootSuite, the social media dashboard client announced a fully redesigned their analytics package, though it’s still in beta and requires a Tweet or FB post to activate. You now can track a total of 30 metrics and download illustrative reports suing either easy-access templates or design custom reports.

Launch your own version of FourSquare using Ushahidi -- Ushahidi, popularly known in the field of real-time crisis reporting, has ventured into the field of location-based products. Launching a new check-in platform for their own Crowdmap service, they platform is open source, meaning anyone can use, manipulate, and create their own platform based off of their code. What’s best? You own and control your own data. So, should you bother to build your own FourSquare? You may face trouble getting a broad audience to use your platform, but if you’re designing it for a specific, niche community you may in fact find great success.

Craigslist's new nonprofit arm -- Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, wants to make the world a better place. Newmark officially launched craigconnects this past Wednesday, dedicating 20 years to nonprofits and public services organizations. His first “areas of support" include community building, journalism integrity, the Middle East, open and accountable government, service and volunteering, technology for social good, and veterans issues. So far he’s chose some key nonprofits for each area and will focus his efforts around building support for these organizations. How to get your organization on the list? As his website instructs, “Connect with Craig."

Favorite Mashable Article of the Week:

Which Social Sites Are Best for Which Marketing Outcomes? [Infographic] -- If you ever wondered which social media sites excelled at user-interactivity or boosted your SEO ratings the most, Mashable has provided a handy chart with just that information. Turns out, Facebook and Twitter aren’t the leading networks for getting high page views -- but StumbleUpon and Digg take the cake in this field. Use this chart as a handy reference, but don’t forget to target your campaigns for your audience, not the platform. Play up the strengths of each network, but don’t neglect networks your audience may be on simply because it might not be the biggest SEO booster.

Say What! Most Outrageous Development of the Week:

Cameroon bans Twitter -- With rumors of protest high on the social network last month, but Cameroon’s President Paul Biya has preemptively shut down Twitter throughout the country. President Biya believes one way to prevent revolt like the kind in Egypt and Tunisia is to shut down what has so far seemed to be the citizen’s primary means of organizing. It’s curious to see if protests and revolt do emerge without Twitter, as so far none have. It begs the question; could these previous revolutions happen without today’s leading social networks? While of course it’s true that Twitter is not magic, as the New York Times via ReadWriteWeb has joking claimed, and Twitter or any other singular tool will never bring down a government on its own, it has still proven to be an easy and effective means for organizing that previously hadn’t existed in these areas. One wants to think protests and change can happen without these tools, but there is really no accurate way of knowing for sure as the true effects of Twitter and other social media networks remain so difficult to measure. My guess, though, as we’ve seen time and again during this tumultuous time, is that it will take a lot more than banning one social network to prevent digital social networking.