For growing associations and nonprofit organizations, online content sharing is critically important in the success of a socially-enabled web destination. Document sharing among Groups, Chapters, Committees, and Special Events participants promotes community engagement and interaction before and after offline meetings.

In a custom-tailored social community, members will have multiple options for creating and posting text, visual and audio content. The content can be linked to specific groups, selected individuals or made accessible to the community as a whole. In addition, the documents can be shared with anyone or made private to be viewed only by designated constituents. The privacy option especially facilitates sharing among association chapters and committees. Pre-event planning and post-event follow-up can proceed at a brisk pace—a pace unachievable  outside a socially-enabled, Internet-based community.

A Few Ways Organizations Are Using Document Sharing

-Simple, fast dissemination of minutes and summaries from meetings

-Effective sharing of conference presentations to registered attendees

-Collaboration on plans and proposals using shared commenting and version control

-Rating and Tagging shared documents to help develop a consensus among chapter members

ThePort Network has carefully crafted a social media platform that fully supports document- sharing file types. A sampling of exchangeable files includes:

Microsoft Word                          Apple iWork

Adobe PDF                               Images (.jpg, .png, .gif)

Video (.avi, .wmv)                       Music (.mp3, .wma)

Zip files

ThePort Content-Sharing Practices for Associations:

-Share Documents with Individual Friends and Groups

            Collaborate on tasks by sharing documents with members, chapters and committees. Select with whom you would like to share. Use the privacy option if desired. Seamlessly create documents online.

-Security and Privacy Checks Included

            Perhaps you don’t care to share a sensitive document with the entire community. Or, your communication is only appropriate for reading by fellow committee members. In   either case, you also want to be sure your document is secure and virus-free. That is why we recommend you seek a community provider who offers built-in security and permission checks.

-Add Comments, Ratings and Tagging to Your Documents

            In order to reinforce active document sharing, have your organization’s online community enabled with Commenting, Rating and Tagging. When published content can be         commented upon, rated and tagged, it helps members collaborate on changes and identify better content that deserves your attention.

-Request the Capability of Version Control

            Especially when several individuals are collaborating on a series of documents, the exchange of content can become confusing. As members revise and publish over previous forms of a document, unwanted changes may occur. With ThePort’s Version Control technology, your members can instantly replace documents with prior versions.

Above all, make content sharing in your branded, integrated  community a social networking priority. For associations and nonprofit organizations of every size, robust document exchange equals happier, more productive members at every level...local chapter to corporate executive committee.

If you have ideas, questions or comments about how document sharing can be a focal point of a social networking community, please share them here.