Becoming A Social Media Savvy Nonprofit, Nurturing A Social Culture Through Personal Use

 
Photo by Dietrich

I love the Red Cross's approach to scaling its engagement strategy by involving the whole organization - it is spelled out in their strategy handbook and policy guidelines.  The first steps are simple once you have policy/philosophy in place and the right mix of bottom up/top down adoption or acceptance of social media.

Here's how the Red Cross handbook states it:

Step 1: Get Social Media Savvy

• Initiate personal social media use:
• Explore the tools you’d like to adopt by using them in your personal life first. It’s easier to understand the culture behind tools like Facebook and Twitter when you spend some time posting your own pictures and experiences.
• Follow the personal online communications guidelines

Using social media as part of getting your job done is easier to imagine and put into practice if you're in the communications, marketing, outreach, or fundraising departments.   The listening as a first step is familiar - it's free market research, it's brand monitoring, it's an analysis of press mentions. 

Using social media listening is somewhat more difficult to imagine, perhaps, if you're managing programs or at the policy/funding level.

One of the approaches I've been thinking about lately is how professional learning through social media channels can be put into practice by using listening (and engaging techniques) for program development.  Before this can happen, there are a couple of culture shifts:

• Professional learning is and should be a part of your job and honored by the culture. That you feel it is okay to spend some of your work day investing in your knowledge and you gather wisdom from your professional networks, including via social media channels.
• The importance of carving out time for this type of learning.  It is difficult because you have shift gears from your Outlook calendar, answering emails, getting tasks done mind shift.  It's a shift from a getting things done sort of productivity to social productivity.  Or rather it is finding your social productivity sweet spot.
• Using social media is an enhancement to your offline professional networking and relationship building.  That you may use it to extend relationships with people you've met at conferences.  The shift is the comfort level in using these tools to develop or initiate new connections.  For me, personally, I've found that social media has connected me with people who are thinking deeply about a lot of the same topics and that by connecting via social media it has enriched my learning.  I think there are some generational differences as well as industry differences in comfort level of using social media tools to leverage your personal networks.
• The concern about information overload and too much unstructured information.  Attending to your professional learning using social media and networks requires making sense out of the leaves rather than being presented a knowledge tree.  The initial dip into the leaves can be overwhelming and unpleasant at first.

Beth's Monitor

Paying Yourself First

Jeremiah Owyang wrote a great post two years ago called "Pay Yourself First."   In a nutshell:

Every morning, for about 2 hours, I pay myself first by researching, reading, and writing blog posts...before I dive into email hell]

In the comment thread, there was a suggestion about putting a sticky note on your monitor.  I needed to do that for myself!

Getting Started: You Don't Have To Be Joey Chestnut

The photo above is Joey Chestnut who won the Nathan's hot dog eating contest in 2008.   His total for the day was 64 hot dogs.    In 2009, he won again, beating his own record by consuming 68 hot dogs. The thought of consuming 68 hot dogs makes me feel a little uncomfortable. No downright sick in the stomach. It's the same sort of discomfort that some people feel about approaching the task of listening for learning using the social web.

Doesn't listening require plowing through mountains and mountains of unstructured information?   Won't it make you dizzy and uncomfortable?  Don't you have to be Joey Chestnut to be successful?  NO!

To get started, think about just eating one small pig in a blanket!

Ask yourself how time you can allocate to listening for professional learning.  Is it a half-hour a day, an hour a day, or is an hour or two a week?   The point is to get started, block out that time, and start paying yourself.

Here are some steps to get started with listening for professional learning via social media.  The bigger questions is - are you ready make the shift?

How do you carve out time for professional learning via social media?  Has it been valuable?  If you're a leader in your organization, how to encourage professional learning?

Comments

[Jamie Favreau]

I think people need to listen and know where the conversation is. With out listening you are just sending out a message into the oblivion.

I haven't taken this PR test for a PR firm to weed out its candidates. But in it, I feel it has missed the point. They talk about ghost writing for a CEO when everyone can write for the organization. Why ghost write for a CEO? Does not make any sense to me.

Plus, they have comments on how you would react on Twitter, Facebook or Linked IN. But they miss the point... because they aren't asking the person who would be monitoring the content if they know how to listen to whatever is being said.

I think you have to know how to listen, find out where your target audience is active, and then comment. Sure you are going to change status messages accordingly but if no one is listening...Will you get your message out?

[Cat Lazaroff]

Listening as a first step certainly is key - that's why Beth is pointing out that people who communicate for a living may have an easier time using social media successfully. We're supposed to know how to listen already!
But as a communicator, I'm finding that many of my colleagues have spent so many years communicating outwards only (sending press releases, buying paid media, etc) that we've let our listening and relationship skills atrophy.
I view this changed media/social media environment as an opportunity to remember why we became communicators in the first place - to help start, and participate in, important conversations. Social media simply helps us locate the people and communities who are having conversations that are meaningful to us, and then sharing information and ideas that will be meaningful to them.
It's exciting to spend more time talking directly to people, and less time talking to newspapers and TV/radio stations!

[Margaret]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Margaret

http://grantfoundation.net