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On June 13, I had the privilege of serving as a panelist on Social Media Strategy: Plugging Into A New World for MPI’s Chapter Leadership Conference 2009. Panelists included Sterling Raphael, Founder and CEO of NFiStudios, Alan Baptista, MPI’s Director of Community Development and Randy Crabtree, MPI’s Manager of Global Marketing. The workshop, offered twice, was organic and audience-driven in structure as we addressed attendees’ questions regarding social media for associations and meeting professionals.
Here is a summary of recommendations I had for nonprofit chapters on how to use social media and a list of resources that Sterling and I shared with the audience.
Social Media Considerations For Nonprofit Chapters
- Social media is about communicating and connecting with people, building and maintaining relationships, and creating a community for your members.
- When using social media, the focus should be on people, not technology or tools.
- Social media is just an extension of what you’re already doing in your chapter and a way to incorporate Web 2.0 into your current chapter strategies.
- Social media augments and enriches the face to face experience. It does not replace meetings or events.
- Start by creating a strategy on how to implement social media. That strategy can be a simple as creating a Facebook Fan page to creating a Twitter Account or as detailed as you want.
- Find champions for the social media tools you decide to use.
- Social media does not rest within one silo or department. It crosses all departments from marketing to education to communications to membership etc. Don’t try to force social media into one category.
- Consider creating a social media task force to see what some of your members are already doing and how you can tap their talents and experience.
- Don’t be afraid of Social Media. It social space is very forgiving of newbies and often people are willing to help. Try it.
How Your Chapter Can Use Social Media
- Extend your event experience for your attendees before, during and after the event. Integrate blogs, internet radio shows, twitter and Facebook Fan page.
- When contracting speakers for an event, ask and include in the contract the following items
a. Two blog posts on their topic- one before and one after the event.
b. A newsletter article (different from blog posts)
c. A Webinar before the event
d. A live radio interview (consider blogtalkradio.com) that is recorded and creates a podcast and MP3 for downloading to a MP3 player
e. The face to face presentation(s)
f. Short video interview onsite after the presentation.
Then share this content on your Website, your Facebook Fan Page, you’re LinkedIn Group, through your Twitter account, etc. The more speakers you have, the more fresh, new content you’ll have to drive traffic to your various Web properties - Create a Facebook Fan Page for your chapter and invite your chapter members to join and post their own content.
- Make your chapter newsletter article easy to share via social media. (If the newsletter or magazine articles are all in one PDF or an electronic book, people will have challenges sharing specific articles they enjoyed. When creating the monthly newletter or magazine, also post them individually on your website. Include the “Share This” button at the bottom of each article which will allow readers to share with others.
- Use social media tools to listen to your members, potential members and industry trends.
- Engage virtual attendees with your events
- Consider setting up a Twitter chat with your members and guests. Set a time, date and topics to discuss. Pick a moderator to lead the discussion. Use Tweetchat.com, Tweetgrid.com, wtHashtag or Monitter to monitor the chat and filter the Twitter noise.
- Set up a blog for your chapter and populate with member created content, newsletter content, speaker articles, etc. Blog posts do not have to be long and even a provocative paragraph works.
- Market and promote your events through Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin.
- Consider using Twitter during your events and project Twitter stream on screen. 5 Ways To Visualize Twitter At Your Events (Actually 6, read comments to see one more.)
SOCIAL MEDIA RESOURCES DISCUSSED
Social Media Books
Creating A World Wide Rave by David Meerman Scott
Groundswell by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li
Twitter for Dummies by Laura Fitton, Michael Gruen, Leslie Poston
Facebook for Dummies by Carolyn Abram, Leah Pearlman
Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time by Joel Comm
The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein
Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online by Warren Whitlock and Deborah Micek
Free Online eBooks
7 Tips to Write a Great Corporate Blog by Debbie Weil
Beginner’s Guide to Business Blogging by Debbie Weil
The Big Juicy Twitter Guide by Caroline Middlebrook
Getting A Foothold In Social Media by Amber Naslund
How To Use Facebook For Business And Nonprofits by Hubspot commentary by John Haydon
The Social Media Starter Kit: The Tools by Amber Naslund
Twitter For Beginners by Charlene Kingston
Twitter School by Charlene Kingston [Great resource for beginners, novices and experts]
Facebook Info
Facebook Fan Pages
Facebook Groups and Pages – Features, Benefits And Killer Tips by John Haydon
Mari Smith – Social media queen of all things related to Facebook and Twitter
Twitter Tools & Tips
Desktop Tools
Tweetdeck.com for PC
Seesmic.com for PC
Tweetie.com for Mac
iPhone Apps
Tweetie
Twitterific
Tweetdeck (new)
Blackberry Apps
Ubertwitter.com
To Follow Twitter Chats
Tweetchat.com
Tweetgrid.com
Monittor.com
wtHashtag
Search.Twitter.com
Eventprofs Twitter Chats information. Tuesdays, 9 pm ET, Thursdays, 12 pm ET
List of other Twitter Chats -
Meryl.Net List
wtHashtag List
Robert Swanwick’s @speakerinteractive Editable Twitter Chat Schedule
Free Video Production for Creating A Short 30-second or 1-minute marketing video
If you’re like many associations and association chapters, you are not convinced social media is for your organization. Your volunteer and chapter activities already take a lot of time and you have no idea how to get started with social media, or even if you want to add one more thing to your daily to do list outside of your normal job. Nourishing and growing your member relationships while prospecting and developing new ones takes time. Your business and volunteer efforts require a lot of your energy, passion and mind-share and you are already overwhelmed with your daily tasks.
Instead of thinking of social media as something new, one more “to-do” item on your list, think of it as an enhanced way of doing the business you’re already doing.
Social media is a tool that can help your association and chapter:
- Listen to your current and potential members, and listen to conversations of others about your industry, association and chapter.
- Engage in dialogue with others about your chapter, industry, your projects, your mission.
- Build new relationships and strengthen existing ones.
- Showcase that your chapter is a conduit, connector and community enabler for your industry.
- Network with other professionals in your industry, chapter and association.
- Market upcoming events, projects, fundraisers.
- Source new ideas, projects, products, speakers, etc.
- Communicate with your members and maybe even recruit new volunteers, especially in today’s Web 2.0 world.
- Extend the attendee experience before, during and after an event.
- Engage virtual attendees to your meeting or event.
This is just a short list to get you started thinking. Add your reasons to the list.
Q1: Are associations struggling with the way different generations want to interact? If yes, what are you doing about it?
- Very different assumptions about what networking “should” look like.
- Teaching members about differences can be challenging
- Showing members the use of new mediums get results: Facebook, blogging, twittering, Virtual world of Second Life. Teaching them what/how
- Education is the key in getting association members engage with Web 2.0 features. Lead them to it and teach them how. Helps both association and the members’ professionally.
- Realize that old-style lecture sessions won’t cut it anymore. Young members want to connect, both online &in person.
- Everyone will start using the tools. Different generations may use the same tool differently though.
- Members will value Web 2.0 tools differently. One size does not fit all.
- Some associations positioning themselves for when members start using social media. Have built their social platforms and ready to go.
- Build a social media strategy including utilizing outposts.
- Lead members to it, train volunteer leaders how to use it, engage them and they help other members learn it. Engagement early is key.
- Don’t wait for younger members or early adopters to join organization before start using social media tools. Star now and it will attract different audience than you currently have.
- Look for champions on outposts (FB, SL, Twitter, etc.), participate in outpost conversations, add extra value on your own site.
- Second Life being used for some networking and training by some associations.
- Active presence in social media will not destroy association but potentially breathe new life into it.
- Important that people can get back to your association website but your association should not be a silo
- Association should have presence in several social media outposts.
- often there is tension between doing what members want and making board members comfortable with change
Q2: Thoughts about using social media around events and meetings.
- Multi-purposing content and using content not only to passively inform but to engage
- Integrating Twitter and Facebook for association meetings and events.
- Extending meeting and event with attendees both before and after event through social media.
- Encouraging blogging and Twitter use at conference through Bloggers Hub like at World Innovation Forum 2009
- Encouraging use of backchannel to talk to attendees at conference and virtual attendees.
- Work with speakers so they understand and can engage people using Twitter during meetings or events.
- Create tools (videos, web pages) explaining how to use social media tools at event.
Q3: Thoughts about keeping local association chapters alive.
- Social media alone will not breathe new life into chapters.
- Is not cure-all but will bring some new folks, blood, life into chapters if done correctly.
- Chapters die because of people in them or lack of people. Not because of tools used.
- Teaching members how to use social media tools so they are not rude or inappropriate to new members key.
- Ultimately, chapters and associations should be about relationships.
- Burned out volunteers cause death to chapters.
- Leaders need to learn to be more inclusive, share the workload and celebrate different POVs. Social media tools can support that.
- Lack of vision, lack of leadership, resistance to change will cause death to chapters.
- Chapters and associations need leaders not managers.
- Chapters and associations tend to promote workhorses and not leaders. Then not training new leaders on how to run organizations. Both of these factors lead to decaying organizations.
- Our organizations are often not attractive to various generations. May be able to sell why join but keeping them is different.
- Same project run by different leaders can be different experience based on “how not what.”
- Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technology. It happens when people adopt new behaviors as Shirky says.
- Social technology accelerating the process of mindshift.
The next Association Chat (#assnchat) will be Tuesday, May 26 at 2 pm Eastern (11 am Pacific). You can follow by going to Tweetchat or Tweetgrid and following #assnchat, or in Tweetdeck you can create a search column for #assnchat.
Participants:
AlanJBaptista, ArashRobinson, CharmsS, Christytj, CynthiaDAmour, DanScheeler, ImageSpecialist, jmancini77, JamieNotter, JeffHurt, kikilitalien, ltwhite, MPIRandy, MsStallings, paulaberger, pinnovation, reedstockman, rjohnston, robinhickey, unklbuck
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