social media

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Recently released… Social Media and Your NonProfit.

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The trends tell us that the Internet is the place to be, especially if we want to engage younger people in our work. But it is also true that more and more older folks – the boomers – are becoming more active online and using a lot of the same social media tools their children (who are now young adults) do.

People not only read the news online (which is why so many newspapers are in trouble), but they have so many more choices about where to get their news, not to mention be entertained, engage in learning, and most important it seems get and stay connected with friends – even those old friends from years ago.

The number of non profits using social media applications is on the rise, but the extent to which social media is being used to help meet organizational goals is difficult to discern.  It’s so easy to set up a Facebook account or sign up for Twitter that just about anybody can do it, and it appears many non profits have done just that, but again with what success?

I am a proponent of deploying social media and you will see quite a few postings on my blog about it, but my enthusiasm for it is tempered by this: social media must add value to organizational strategy and to use it well you have to understand what it can and cannot do for you. So my approach to social media as a tool is more as a strategist than a social media consultant.

This means that the questions an organization must address are bigger and broader than the answers social media on its own can provide.  Certainly it can be a major player in the implementation of strategy, but unless it is connected to strategy and a part of a matrix of actions, chances are your deployment of social media will end up being little more than a cool thing to do.

I can teach your organization how to create and maintain a blog, associate it with a Twitter account, develop a collaborative site (a “wiki”), create a Facebook presence or launch your own standalone social network. I can teach you how to use Flickr, create widgets, use online e-news tools, create your own news and information online magazine, and the list goes on. All that is well and good but in the end, it’s all a big so what if you are not using this tools to deliver on strategy and in the process produce the results these tools are good at producing.

Social media, when combined with an overarching web strategy which itself is based on organizational strategy can do a lot: it can inform your clients, donors, and other stakeholders about your work, your events, and your cause. Social media can be used to engage people in dialog and also to introduce your constituents to another (vis a vis a social nework). It can help you locate people who, for example, are also memebers of Facebook.  Twitter for example can serve as a great Q&A site for your donors or serve as a quick hub of information.  Photo sites like Flickr or video sites like YouTube  provide easy to use platforms to house, organize and distribute your photos and videos to the world.

Google has a host of products that can enable collaboration among colleagues that are not able to meet face to face as frequently as they might like.  Ning and its competitors allow you to build your own social network – in fact you can build as many as you like for whatever purpose you want: intranets, collaboration, volunteerism, donor groups, research networks and on and on.

All of these tools are free to use and some offer versions of their online tools for very little money. The affordability of using the Internet and its myriad tools has never been so good. But again, so what? Free or low cost tools that don’t accomplish your goals are ultimately a waste of time.

Now after all of that, I must tell you I am convinced that nonprofits must embrace the Internet like never before. But you have to do it right and you have to stage your adoption of web strategies and social media in a reasonable fashion at a reasonable pace.  And that’s the service I offer: helping you develop organizational strategies, identify which of those can be aided by the Internet, and then work with your staff to make it all happen.

If you want to know more or have a chat, call me: 780 244 8686 or email me at mark@markholmgren.com

Here are some postings on my blog that might help.
Gen-Y and Social Media Resources
The So-What about Social Networking
Ten Ideas to Strengthen the NonProfit Sector
Social Networking: Creating Transformational Change
Wiki wiki what?
10 reasons to get web savy