Archive for the 'Big Features' Category

Learn how to organize your school online with BigTent

Published August 26, 2010 Big Features 2 Comments

We are once again honored to have PTA volunteer, community coach and expert, Monica Baucke, host a free upcoming webinar for school leaders. If you can, please sign up and join us.

How to Organize Your School Online

Thursday, September 9th @ 9 am Pacific/noon Eastern

Register for free at http://bigtent.webex.com

Monica will share several tips for managing your group online, including:

  • How to get buy-in from other school leaders
  • How to set up and organize your group and subgroups
  • How to create a BigTent buzz

The session is designed to be interactive, and no question is too big or small. Take this opportunity to learn from Monica! Monica is entering her third year using BigTent to manage communications for not one, but two schools: Croce Elementary and Christensen Middle School.

Hope to meet with you soon. Let us know if you have any questions or feedback.

Best,

The BigTent team

Help Save Marine Life Threatened by the Oil Spill!

Published July 21, 2010 Big Features 2 Comments

BigTent is very excited to announce our new partnership with Cloud B. We are partnering with Cloud B and the Audubon Nature Institute to help saves animals stranded and injured by the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico.

There are three easy ways to help through our website:

1. Donate $1 with the click of a button

2. Donate $5 with your Cloud B purchase

3. Share this opportunity to support the Gulf Coast through Facebook and Twitter

By taking one of the actions above, Cloud B will make a donation on your behalf to the Louisiana Marina Mammal and Sea Turtle Rescue Program.

To learn more about this new campaign, please visit http://www.bigtent.com/promo/cloudbaudubon

Thanks everyone!

The BigTent Team

About Cloud B

Cloud B is an innovative designer of award-winning sleep products for children of all ages. Cloud B’s Twilight Sea Turtle, Gentle Giraffe, Sleep Sheep, and other high-quality products are helping children sleep peacefully and healthfully the world over.

About Audubon Nature Institute

Audubon Nature Institute is a family of nine museums and parks dedicated to nature. The Institute serves as an educational resource, an environmental guardian, a leader in economic development, and a venue for family entertainment.

BigTent helps spruce up your group for Fall

Published July 20, 2010 Big Features 2 Comments
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In the spirit of back to school, BigTent is bringing back its Transition Tool promotion to help your group get organized. What does this mean? For a limited time, we will migrate full member data for groups, which can include anything such as names, addresses, and kids’ information.

What you need to participate:

-Group with 50+ members

-List of member data (can contain names, email addresses, kids’ info, etc.)

As an added bonus, groups that migrate their data by the end of August will get a special, BigTent-hosted Q&A forum in their groups. The Q&A forum provides a month’s worth of tips to get your members comfortable with using BigTent, and features timely responses from BigTent experts.

To participate, send an email to support@bigtent.com with “Data migration” as the subject line. You can also attach a copy of your member list, if you have it ready.

We look forward to seeing your group on BigTent soon!

Best,

Diane & the BigTent team

Let us know what you think of our Customer Support!

Published July 6, 2010 Big Features 9 Comments

Hi BigTent Members -

It’s that time of the year again for you to weigh in on how we can improve our Customer Support, help resources, and our communications to you. We strive to provide the best Customer Support out there for trusted community groups so please let us know how we can make our service even better for you.

We’ve created a quick survey that will only take a few minutes to complete. As a thank you for providing your feedback, you can enter to win one of two $25 Amazon.com at the end of the survey. Take the survey here:

http://bigtent.com/l/feedback

Thank you! Please let us know if you have any questions by leaving us a comment.

Cheers!

The BigTent Team

Learn Social Media for Your Twins Club

Published May 26, 2010 Big Features Leave a Comment
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Is your twins club looking for ways to increase engagement, connect with new local parents and supporters, and raise awareness of all the great things you do in the community? Join me and BigTent for a fun, free, and informative social media webinar designed just for you.

Social Media for Twins Clubs

Wednesday, June 9 @ 9 am Pacific/noon Eastern

Register for FREE at http://bigtent.com/l/smtc

I’ll cover 10 tips for getting started with social media, drawing on my experiences as Director of Manhattan Twins Club and Founder of Twiniversity. With Twiniversity, I’ve gained over 2000 Facebook fans, 500 BigTent friends, and 300 Twitter followers in just a few months. These products have played a substantial role in helping me build an international support network for parents of twins and higher order multiples.

But enough about me. This session is all about you, and we’ll keep it open-ended to discuss any of your questions or suggestions. No topic is too big or too small!

All parents groups leaders and folks interested in learning about social media are welcome to attend, though my approach will be tied to the unique experience of parenting twins.

Hope to see you at the webinar!

-Natalie, founder of Twiniversity.com & expert BigTent leader

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Twiniversity

Follow BigTent on Twitter: http://twitter.com/BigTentGroups

New BigTent Help area arrives!

Published April 28, 2010 Big Features 3 Comments
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Our new Help home is here! Check it out by clicking here or sign in to BigTent, click “help” and then click on “Search our Help area.”

Here are a few changes from our last Help center:

- Cases are called “Requests.”
- FAQs are categorized by feature.
- The Help area & support emails have an updated look.

Here is what is staying the same:
- You can still submit requests through the web or via email.
- We’ll still respond to you within 3 business days or less (or 1 business day for new users and Premium Support members).
- You can view your previously submitted cases in your “existing request” queue. If you notice missing information from your old cases, it will be updated in the next few days.

We hope you’ll find the new Help area intuitive and easy to use. If you have any questions or feedback about the new Help area, please leave us a comment or submit a request in our Help area.

All the best,
The BigTent Team

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/bigtentgroups

BigTent Group of the Week: Pre-Vet Club of Pierce College

Published April 22, 2010 Big Features 2 Comments
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This week’s BigTent Group of the Week is a super active student group at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, CA. With over 150 current members, the Pre-Vet Club of Pierce College is committed to helping members develop professionally and give back to their surrounding community.

Kris Galang, Public Relations Chair for the club, took some time to share more of his experiences with us:

Q. What kinds of community events does the Pre-Vet Club participate in?

A. Our members assist with the care and husbandry of the animals on our 200-acre farm laboratory including bottle-feeding orphaned lambs, beef cattle vaccinations, and egg-laying hen physical exams. We also work with horses and cats at local animal rescues, volunteer with a local women’s shelter, and provide backpacks filled with clothes and school supplies for children on Native American reservations through a program known as Walking Shield.

Q. How did you get involved with the organization?

A. I am constantly inspired by my fellow students — whether it be the amount of knowledge shared in a classroom setting or seeing us in action on our farm. It is because of this that I believe it’s important to not only connect with the greater campus and community, but to connect with each other! I am enjoying my role as Public Relations Chair, as it is my responsibility to raise awareness for our club.

I am currently in my second semester at the pre-vet program. After spending almost 8 years in sales and business management (with an educational background in journalism), I decided to refocus my life towards a path that has always been closet to my heart — animals! Inspired by very own French bulldog and the many other animals in my life, I decided to return to school and fulfill a childhood now adulthood dream of becoming a veterinarian.

Q. Why did your group choose BigTent?

A.  BigTent is easy to use and has a ton of fun, amazing features. BigTent has allowed our group to remain connected (member gifts, photos, etc.), engaged (forum topics, current events), and excited (weekly calendars, subgroup news). BigTent is the most powerful, free service of its kind

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/bigtentgroups

How to Organize Your School Online: Webinar recap

Published April 22, 2010 Big Features Leave a Comment
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School leaders from across the US signed up to hear words of wisdom from Croce PTA leader, Monica Baucke, in our BigTent webinar, How to Organize Your School Online.

As promised, we have posted Monica’s 10 tips for improving your communications and increasing parent involvement, as well as a recorded version of the webinar.

If you have any questions or ideas, you may wish to join Monica’s online discussion group, PTA/PTSA/PTO Parent Groups.

Please feel free to share these resources with your leadership teams. We welcome any questions or feedback you may have.

Best,

The BigTent Team

Follow Monica on Twitter: http://twitter.com/myptofview

Follow BigTent on Twitter: http://twitter.com/bigtentgroups

Social Media 101: Webinar slides and recording available

Published April 21, 2010 Big Features Leave a Comment
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Our free webinar, Social Media 101, was a huge hit! We had nearly 150 people sign up to learn how to get started with services such as Twitter and Facebook pages.

Based on this turnout, we plan on hosting the webinar again in the near future. In the meantime, we have uploaded materials from the webinar for those who missed this week’s session:

Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback. We look forward to seeing you on a future webinar!

Best,

Mia & the BigTent team

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/bigtentgroups

Looking for Ning alternatives? Learn about BigTent in an upcoming webinar

Published April 16, 2010 Big Features 7 Comments
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With the news that Ning is phasing out its free service, many leaders of Ning networks have begun the search for a free alternative. We’re aware of all the effort involved in a researching and adopting a group technology solution, and we’d like to make the process easier for you.

To learn more about BigTent, join us for a webinar on Wednesday, April 21 @ 9 am Pacific/noon Eastern. We’ll give you an in-depth tour of our product, plus explain the process for moving over to BigTent. You’ll be pleased to know that we offer free hands-on training for group leaders getting started with BigTent.

BigTent has many of the same features as Ning and more: discussion forums, announcements, subgroups, event and membership management. Plus, you can collect dues payments and donations.

If this sounds good to you, sign up to learn more at our webinar! Hope you can make it.

Best,

Mia & the BigTent team

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/bigtentgroups

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