Luckily for us, there is plenty of advice out there on the web for people wanting to develop their own strategy and its attendant plans, programmes and policies. Here are some of the things I’ve found lately:

First, here’s a book. Called ’101 +1 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits’, the clue is in the title – judging by the extract that I downloaded for free (or rather, for the ‘price’ of a tweet and a follow) this is a comprehensive list of tactics your organisation could pursue, plus some real-life examples. Read more in this Frogloop article or jump straight to the book’s own page here.

A related article in Mashable exhorts us to produce a ‘Winning Social Enterprise Strategy’. Social enterprise here is defined as the use of social media to ‘leverage the social grid to share information and ideas’… whatever your views on this definition, the article itself has some useful general points about building in channels of communication, listening, and preparing for mobile traffic. Read it here.

On the subject of making sure your internal communications and processes are helping rather than hindering your organisation, then Kev Baughen has penned an excellent article in UK Fundraising which suggests that many charities are letting themselves and their supporters down by not owning problems and making sure solutions happen and are properly communicated. Here’s his article. You might also be interested in these 10 tips for using social media for customer service from The Wall Blog.

If it’s inspiration you need, then read about the social media campaign cleverly planned and executed by the World Development Movement (WDM) – this included a raft of social media and other methods to get their message about the damage that speculation in food prices was doing. More of a campaign-guide, this, but still useful and you can read about it on UK Fundraising.

How do you plan ahead? Care to share?

Whether or not you’ve already taken the plunge, these resources about G+ may be worth reading to help inform your next moves:

Mashable gives a breakdown of how using the G+ button may impact on your site’s SEO. This isn’t really my area, but if you’re into this type of thing then this article is for you.

If you want to know how G+ is doing compared to Twitter, then read this article by Gordon Macmillan in The Wall Blog. It appears that Google+ may be rapidly becoming the home of branded pages in a way that Twitter struggles to do. What do you think?

For graphics-heads like me, then take a look at some infographics which cover G+ in various guises:

• Social sharing via Mashable
• Mashable has another graphic which looks at the demographics of G+ users (or ‘Plussers’ as they are apparently called)… I’m afraid this won’t load for me as I’m on the move, so apologies if it’s not all that helpful.

Have you taken the plunge and created a G+ page? Do you routinely use G+ in a personal capacity? How do you think it will balance out with the other social networks? Leave us a comment, below…

She gives six headline bits of guidance for avoiding the hot water of data protection and copyright issues in our everyday usage of social media tools.

Well worth a read, here.

Well, what is it? I hear you ask. It calls itself an ‘online pinboard’, and you ‘pin’ images you like or are interested in to the board. I think the site was originally conceived as a sort of fashionista’s mood board, but has now generated a lot of interest from all kinds of different sectors and industries, perhaps because it seems to have more female users than some other social networks.

So if you want the skinny of what Pinterest is, and what it could conceivably do for you, then try out some of these links:

• Read up on Mashable for the 101 on the site.
• Get inspiration for your own Pinterest board from these examples of how other non-profits are using it (thanks to Frogloop).
• Howard Lake from UK Fundraising has also put together a list of six examples of UK-based charities using Pinterest.

Are you using Pinterest? Or are you just not pinterested?

Well, if you are reading this in the wee small hours, draw comfort from this post by Kev Baughen on UK Fundraising. He cites some studies from the US and some examples from the UK which suggest that the most successful use of social media for fundraising comes from seeing these new communication methods as just another way to build relationships, engage with supporters’ concerns and create what Kev calls a ‘value equation’ between you and them.

Anyway, he says it all much better than I am paraphrasing, so read it all here.

Using the hashtag #HiddenCrisis, the conversation is rolling around the world from a starting position in the Far East and passing through countries in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and South America as the time zones permit.

Thanks to AdeJB for flagging this campaign. You can follow the whole chat on twebevent here, or read more commentary on The Next Web.

So if you’re not sure whether to go to all the trouble of using a hashtag or not, then read this excellent article from Mashable which gives nine short and punchy tips for avoiding problems and getting out of trouble… I particularly liked tip number 5 which suggests asking your sarcastic colleagues for their take on your proposed hashtag, as a way to anticipate problems before they arise for real!

Read it all here.

What’s of more importance to thee and me is the breakdown of how the companies respond to comments posted on its Facebook Wall: nearly 66% of companies said that they used the Wall to respond, with just 32% following this public response up with a personal contact.

Read all the stats here, and take a look at All Facebook’s resulting infographic too.

Well, Mashable has put together a collection of five spreadsheets that have already been built with a variety of functions for monitoring your social media work – I haven’t tried these yet but will certainly be doing so! If they are as good as promised, then this will save us all a lot of work!

Read all about them, here.