What bits of Web 2.0 are essential for a local campaigning group?

One of the jobs I’ve taken on for 2009 is getting an online presence set up for the Oxford City Fairtrade Coalition. The coalition’s last static HTML website disappeared when the committee member who had set it up moved out of the area a few years ago, and the group is currently without a proper existence online.

With the rise of the social web over the last few years, it’s obvious that I can’t just set up a new static website. I need to make use of Web 2.0 tools to really give Oxford City Fairtrade Coalition a proper presence in the online space. But what should I use?

Should I leap in with Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and more? Or is this just going to leave a trail of un-maintained web-debris? What sort of strategy should a small, volunteer run, campaigning group use to be seen on the web?

As I get started setting up a web presence for the group, I’ll aim to document the process, and to produce some practical Getting Started guides for each of the tools I do use (in the style of the one page guides) in the hope that these can be useful to other campaign groups, and possible to the emerging digital mentors programmes. However, before I start on that, I’d really value your ideas on the tools and approaches you would recommend…