Gen Y Blogger Profile: Qui Diaz - Evangelist for Social Change

Qui Diaz

Last month I attended the "Twenty-Something Meet Up" at the BlogHer Conference, facilitated by the fabulous Zandria. The question  ... "Where are the twenty something/millennial bloggers writing about social change, activism, and nonprofits?" was raised.  I left room inspired to compile a living list.  The next logical step, of course, is to start to get to know some of these bloggers by doing interviews.

Meet Qui Diaz.  Her personal blog, EvangeList, focuses on social media, social change, and nonprofits.  By day, she's the director of strategy at Livingston Communications.

1.  Tell me about you

The first thing people ask me is the story behind my name. It's short for Quitrina (pronounced kee-tree-nuh & roll the 'r'). My parents (one Spanish/Cuban)  made it up, tapping  the spelling for Quixote. One day I'd like to say that was a providential move -  "quixotic" describes someone who "takes on an idealistic quest against great odds." I want  to take more risks in life.

In the safety of my day-to-day in DC, there is a lot of laughter, love and champagne.  Things aren't so bad when  you take time to celebrate the small blessings in life! Still, I feel strongly that we are here on this earth to see each other through. There's a quote that I very much identify with, by E.B. White: "I arise each morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor it. That makes it hard to plan the day." So, paralysis is my Achilles heel.

2.  Tell me about your blog

Evange.List kicked off as a personal 'social media experiment' to see if anyone gave a flip about my voice. A few people did! So after 50 days of writing about 50 things I love, it was time to "Madonna" the blog and keep it going. For about a year now it's been dedicated to 'social media for social causes,' and I usually write about nonprofits and people I adore. I also get a lot of pleasure from incorporating religious lingo, too. Evangelism is a critical aspect of word of mouth and cause-related marketing, I am personally an evangelist for many causes, and we are all in the Church of the Internet.

I also blog on The Buzz Bin, the company blog, which is well known in the marketing, PR and social media space. My 'beat' is social good.

3. I understand you work with nonprofits and social media strategy -- Can share a story about one of your clients and how you worked with them to incorporate a social media strategy?

My agency, Livingston Communications, is currently helping Network Solutions with reputation management across blogs, Twitter, and forums to significantly decrease the  company's 58 percent negative commentary ratio (as of June 30) by more than 20 points. It's  not a nonprofit example, but it serves as an interesting case study for nonprofits.

Any organization is susceptible to critique, and overtime that can be detrimental to end goals. What nonprofit wasn't impacted by post 9/11 scrutiny? Plus, let's face it, the more controversial or provocative the issue, the more potential there is for outlash. Listening and responding are vital, but so is resolution. And those efforts have to be sustained over time. What we're seeing with Network Solutions is that, even if we can't always provide the desired answer, engaging in the right way at the right time is having an immediate impact.

4. What is your advice to nonprofits about integrating social media? What should they do first to ensure success?

After (and only after) defining a clear objective, honing in on a specific targeted
audience (i.e., not "the general public" or "women"), and setting measurable goals for meeting your objective - do your homework. Don't rush your research either - give yourself a few weeks to initiate what is basically a SWOT analysis of social media related to your mission. Find out what is (or isn't) already being said, by who, and where. Get a handle of the space, then develop your strategy. More than likely, you'll need to engage your audience in said strategy, and social media will play a role in that. All engagements should be meaningful and contribute to the measurable outcomes you set upfront.  Otherwise, as is often said on Twitter, "fail."

5.  What do you think is the biggest challenge to nonprofits in embracing social media?   Are there certain types of nonprofits or situations where you'd advise a nonprofit to use social media?

Challenges: Justifying the means through ROI. Integration with other name lists. Also a general lack of comfort with navigating the rapidly-evolving digital ecosystem. (Weren't we all just breaking through into email marketing 4 years ago?)  Nobody is doing any of this perfectly though, no one is an expert. There is a lot of commiseration. I really like the foundational and exploratory spirit of WeAreMedia, too.

Certain causes warrant full-on exploitation of social media if resources allow. For me, the deal breaker is death. Genocide, poverty, slavery, clean water, AIDS. I just saw the screening of Call+Response, which is the newest in a series of initiatives to end today's rampant slave trades, from child soldiering to sex trafficking. It's been set up as an "open source activism" movement - anything goes.

6.  As a Gen Y, who uses social media and social networks, what advice would you give to nonprofits about interacting successfully with people of your generation on socnets?

Don't expect much for another couple years. We're Gen Y, remember? Joking aside, our generation at large (in the U.S.) was not groomed with an empowered activist mindset the way kids today are. However, the youth-driven, social media-supported campaigns we see right now are paving the way for more action in coming years. By setting up camp in social media and testing word of mouth campaigns, your organization can prepare for the fight for mind-share in our increasingly fragmented media culture. Keep an open mind, love your evangelists, and expect great things.

Comments

[Qui Diaz]

Thanks for passing the mic, Beth! I look forward to getting better acquainted with other 20-something change bloggers through your interview series. It really is an honor to be included among the likes of folks whom I admire so greatly. Thanks for spurring all of us on.

Qui

[Lynn from Organicmania.com]

Very nice interview with the beautiful (inside and out) Qui. It's great to see people coming together to harness the power of social media for the greater good.

I'm glad Qui gave a commercial example to show what non-profits can do.

I've been struck by how long it takes some non-profits to adopt the latest commercial marketing approaches. I noticed a bit of this at the Bridge Conference and again here, where Qui says, "Weren't we all just breaking through into email marketing 4 years ago?" I don't know, but I was doing email marketing in the tech sector way back in '97. (Just blew my cover- I'm definitely not Gen Y!)

Non profits need to look at what's working in Corporate America and adopt best practices. Marketing is marketing - whether it's for Internet routers or social change. We can't afford not to have our leading non-profits use the best tools available to them - there's too much at stake in the world.

Keep up the good fight!

[Kyle Lacy]

Hey Beth.
Great post.
One quick thing though: Qui link did not work for her blog. Evange.List.

[Barbara Kelly]

Beth: Thank you for this profile of Qui, who I first met at a ForumOne Communications seminar "Social Sites for Social Good" earlier this year. Of the two blogs I read religiously, Beth's Blog and Evange.LIST are tops in the social media/nonprofits/technology mix. Btw, I hope you won't mind if I circle back on a comment I made on your August 4 posting, NPTech Roundup. That is, to request a quick update to change "ammando" spelling to "ammado" (www.ammado.com). Very very much appreciated since EVERYONE pays attention to what you post. Thanks!

[Qui Diaz]

Kyle - that was my fault for not double checking the link! http://evangelisting.blogspot.com.

Thanks Lynn & Barbara for your kind words!

[Beth Kanter]

Ah, Barbara - fixed it. Somehow the name is easy to mess up for dyslexics like me! Stuff that spell check doesn't catch ... but thankfully I have readers who good copy editors.

[Jake Brewer]

And also... Qui is awesome. Just in case people weren't completely clear, it needed to be put out there.