Our logo for the Biodiversity Professionals group on Linkedin

Biodiversity has been in the news recently (yay!). And thousands of people are actively engaged in various aspects of biodiversity (also yay!). But there are not a lot of professional networking resources specifically for folks in biodiversity careers (boo!).

A lot of the social networking resources revolve around Facebook and Twitter. These are great, but the conversation tends to be a bit scattered and is often cause-based or promotional.

Biodiversity professionals need a place where they can engage in more focused conversations. The Biodiversity Professionals group on Linkedin provides that platform. It does not have the distractions or spam prevalent on Facebook. Our Linkedin group for professionals engaged or interested in biodiversity-related careers provides features for users to:

• Engage in discussion on biodiversity-related topics
• Connect with similarly-minded group members
• Promote specific issues or causes
• Post or search for biodiversity jobs

Take a minute to visit the Biodiversity Professionals group page and request to join. (Group membership is by invitation or approved request only.) See you there!

Other resources

Biodiversity Media Alliance – Aimed at media professionals with an interest in biodiversity

The Biodiversity Daily makes Twitter so easy...

Unless you live in a cave, you will have heard of Twitter. And many reading this will have tried out the microblog’s service. Trouble is, many who try it give up after a few “tweets.” They just don’t “get” Twitter.

While Twitter has its die-hard fans (I’m one of them) it can be hard to see how Twitter is a valuable use of your time.

It’s true that much of what you see on Twitter is irrelevant “noise.” But there’s lots of help and many tools online to help you get past this (see list below). I recommend giving these a try, because there’s also a lot of tremendously valuable information, mostly in the form of links to useful news, resources and like-minded users. Indeed, Twitter is evolving into a must-have news service. (See article: Like It or Not, Twitter Has Become a News Platform)

To see how and why, take a look at The Pimm Group’s Biodiversity Daily. It’s in an easy-to-read newspaper style format. The page of biodiversity news includes a headline, opening lines and images. The page pools summaries from the most important links to biodiversity articles that have been posted to Twitter in the past 24 hours. So even if I can’t convert you, you can at least stay up to date with the latest biodiversity-related happenings on Twitter!

GUIDE TO TWITTER FOR BEGINNERS
Twitter for Beginners – 5 Things to Do as a New Twitter User
Twitter Beginners Guide
Twitter for Beginners
Twitter for Beginners: 5 Steps for Better Tweeting

The NCF wants a new logo. Rather than roll out a new logo fait accomplis, it posted ideas on its Facebook page and asked “Fans” of the page to comment. Ted Kahn, Executive Director of the NCF and who founded its Facebook Fan page, posted the logo to the page’s photo album and wrote “I created a new logo for NCF. I value your input. Do you like it? Or add a comment, let me know what you think, don’t be shy.”

Indeed the Fans were not shy. Users posted more than 60 comments to various iterations of the NCF’s logo. Even better, once folks had commented, Ted tagged people in the logo so they could get credit for contributing.

Draft NCF logo posted on Facebook for comment by users

Such “crowd-sourcing” via social networks is an effective and inexpensive way for organizations to develop practically anything new, whether products, programs, or marketing materials such as logos or taglines.

From day one you get buy-in and engagement from users who feel their opinion is valued. At the same time you are reducing the costs associated with developing something entirely in-house or contracted out. And when the result is rolled out, a positive response is more likely because you have had input from those who are most likely to have a stake.

Conservation organizations should look to examples like the NCF’s to learn how to better get our message out and connect with non-scientists.