The American Legion W.R.I.T.E.S

The American Legion Western Region Information & Technology Exchange Service.

This is a site is devoted to the free and open exchange of ideas and applications of pertinent information and technology to The American Legion.


Saturday, January 16, 2010

Internet Presence Through Social Networks

A Web presence is important means of communication to every Post, Unit or Squadron in The American Legion family. A Web site and e-mail accounts are the traditional means of communication. Social networking sites and messaging are the new media for communications.

Web sites still have their place, but they are not free and require a lot of work to maintain. A Web site with year-old information is worse than no Web site at all. I am proposing that a organization can have a Web presence without a Web site by using the resources provided by social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and many more. Best of all, the only cost is time, and an Internet connection. The only tools you need is a computer with a browser, and an email account. You do not need to pay a hosting fee, or a domain registration fee.

Before proceeding, we need to understand a few terms that are commonly used:
  • Social Network - Wether they are called friends, followers, or a connections, the social network provides immediate communication to your network, and still be viewable from a public view.
  • Blog - What I am writing is a blog. As opposed to the static nature of a Web site, a blog (a conraction of the term "Web Log") is a Web application that allows for easy posting of commentaries, description of events, or graphics. Blogs tend to full articles on some topic.
  • Microblog - (also called status updates) are short messages that may have links to Web sites, blogs, photos, or movies. The size of the message varies from the 140 character tweets allowed by Twitter to 255 character status updates for Facebook.
  • Bookmarking - Sites such as Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon are bookmark sharing sites, with a social networking twist.
Before diving into this world, I suggest that you do the following:
  • You need to create an email account that is for the organization, and not a personal account. This allows you to transfer your work to someone else, as the social network source require an email account. Posts within The American Legion of Montana can get a free email account form the Webmaster. Other alternatives include, Goggle, Yahoo, and Hotmail.
  • URLs (Web addresses) are often long, and can quickly exceed the limited length allowed for a message. There are a number of service that shorten URls, which are then expanded to the correct URL by the service. The most popular service is http://bit.ly/. I would suggest creating a bit.ly account, as a first step. We will use it in later articles.
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