Putting Effective (Online) Social Networking Into Practice

Over the past month, I've been doing a little action research for an article on ways to be effective using online social networking sites.   To do the research, I've been asking my "friends" in different  online social networks, "What is your best practice or tip for using online social networking sites for your organization."    I didn't just ask people from nonprofits as I wanted to get a multi-disciplinary view.

So, I started with reading and reflecting on some recent blog posts by two gurus on the topic: Chris Brogan and Connie Bensen.   In response to a query, Connie provided a brilliant synthesis of the key networking principles which were my starting point for putting some ideas into practice.

Today, in a quick interview conducted via a socnet messaging system, Micah Sifry mentioned something that crystalized Connie's point #1, "Meet people as people first."

I have only one best practice to share, based on my watching how various sites have succeeded in becoming hubs for community activism, and that is to devote real resources and authority to whomever is going to tend and grow that community. The DailyKos started as one person's blog, and that person, Markos Moulitsas, spent untold hours building his community. He once told me that in the early days, when he had maybe several hundred regular readers, he knew the names of every single one and would notice when someone hadn't been on the site for a while, and when they returned, he'd greet them personally. It takes that level of leadership engagement to build a successful socnet around activism. I have yet to encounter a site, no matter how well designed, where random people organize themselves around a cause. So when I see all kinds of NGOs setting up their mini-socnets, I wonder if they are also assigning staff to spend real time cultivating those sites and giving them real authority to speak on behalf of the organization.

So, looking at the "Meet People As People First,"  the "maintenance" work of approving people as friends isn't a matter of clicking on "approve" and adding them to your list of friends.  Take a minute or two to learn something about them.  (I am assuming here that if you are doing this on behalf an organization that you will soon surpass the "Dunbar Number" the magic number of friends a human can handle.)

I often get friend requests from people I have never met face-to-face or names I do not recognize.  Rather a knee jerk approval or rejection of friendship, I always message first with "How do we know each other?  How are we connected?"  I take a peek at their profiles and their friends list and try to figure out the connection and reference it.  I also ask if they read my blog.

I have many people who leave comments, but I also suspect that I have lurkers too.  What Facebook has been able to do is help know my readers a little better.   What constantly amazes me is that I am able to connect with people who I may not have met otherwise, but we're interested in a lot of the same topics.  Here's a few folks I've met through this experiment.

Karyn Romeis

Kerri Morgret

 

Kate Germain Kromann

 

Mike Metz

 

Shashi Bellamkonda

Chip Winston

If you are working for nonprofit organization and have established a profile on a social networking site, what is the benefit or value of getting to know your "friends."   This assumes you've stepped back before you jumped into a social networking site and have concrete metrics and goals - and that your taking a step back as your use these networks.

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Comments

[Ian Kennedy]

Hi Beth,

Love the quote on this post about personally getting to know your readers. I found your blog while doing some research for an interview with the folks from NetSquared who were interested in finding out how non-profits are using MyBlogLog. A simple search on "nonprofit" in the MyBlogLog search box turned up your site.

Cheers,

Ian
Product Manager, MyBlogLog

[Karyn Romeis]

I'm doing a dissertation for my MA on how the use of social media has transformed my professional practice.

I will confess, though, that I don't have any fixed goals regarding my use of the various spaces. I'd rather just see where that rabbit hole goes and, particularly in respect of Facebook, I am making a concerted effort not to influence the outcome too much. I don't feel I have a strong enough handle on where it's going to be able to predetermine what I want to get out of it.

If I receive a friend request from someone with whom I'm connected in some other virtual or physical space, I tend to accept it. However, I do push back on strangers who send friendship requests: why are they looking to link with me? Unless I get a satisfactory answer, I opt to reject those requests - much to the horror of my teenage sons who are concerned for the hurt feelings of the rejected requester. I was interested to note the extent to which they were aware of the human being on the other end of these requests and how anxious they are not to cause hurt/offence. This is an issue I need to address with them, in the interests of their own online safety.

[Beth Kanter]

Hi Karyn:

I tend to jump in without a goal at first to learn and then surface back to set them. That may be feel like a waste of time to others, but it is part of my process. Many nonprofits don't have the resources to be learning organizations and can't often dedicate the time to action learning experiments even on a small scale. Even the approach described above will probably look like too much - and my sense is like, Micah's -- if they can't dedicate the time resources to the exploration and person-to-person networking.

When I get a request from a stranger, I do screen. If it is someone I don't know at all and I don't have any friends in common and I don't see a connection and their response isn't adequate - I might just give them access to my limited profile - which has less information on it.

[Beth Kanter]

Ian,

Thanks for stopping by. I haven't heard a lot about mybloglog since its launch and subsequent acquisition by Yahoo. I did wrote something about in the early stages and Eric was really helpful.
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2006/11/creepy_cool_or_.html

[Ian Kennedy]

Thanks for the pointer to the earlier post. As Scott mentions in the comments, we have added that ability for both users and site owners to selectively block their userpic or visitor userpics from appearing on a site. While it's a manual process that adds another step, hopefully it strikes the right balance of providing maximum benefit with a tool to prevent occasional unpleasantness.

As you point out, this is new territory. We're alwasys open to new approaches. There have been other tools that I've seen that operated as browser plugins with an on/off button but I would always forget to turn them back on and they eventually they were forgotten. L

Surfing with a MyBlogLog cookie is like publishing a blog, at first it makes you feel exposed but eventually you learn to appreciate the benefits which ultimately outweigh the annoyances.

[Roger Carr]

Hi Beth,

I have also developed some great friendships online through social networking. Just as in person, the friendships have developed over time.

I tend to accept most people requesting to be "friends." However, I read their profile page before accepting and reject most who have not written a profile or who appear to have ethics that are 180 degrees from mine.