Tag Archive for 'challenges'

Starting your social media over?

Published
by
amysampleward
on January 2, 2008
in community and socialmedia
. 1 Comment

As we enter a new year, many people and organizations are thinking about how the last year went and where the new year can go. Making resolutions, setting goals, and even drawing boundaries. Beth Kanter recently posed a great question:

What if I could start all my social media and nonprofits work over from scratch? What would I do differently? What lessons have I learned that will stick with me for 2008?

It has garnered some equally great responses. What would I say? Well…

1. Community is key - Talking to and talking with your community are two very different things. Asking questions, responding to answers, and seeking out connections really do make a difference.

2. Blogs are conversations and more - On a blog, you can deliver news and information, start and carry out conversations, and even provide “static” content. What does this really mean? Just as Britta Bravo explained, a blog can be your entire web site!

3. Social media tools assigned last - Forrester’s POST method is one of the best, and simplest, assets for nonprofits designing a social media strategy. I covered the POST method when it was first released and hope I can continue to use it to help make strategy design a less painful experience.

4. Stay optimistic - There is truly such a thing as information (or social media) overload. It is easy to get overwhelmed and walk, or rather run, away. Do not fear! If you stay optimistic and approach your social media strategy and usage calmly (and use the POST method!), you can have the patience to filter out the noise and hear the important conversations.

What lessons have you learned and what lessons do you hope to play by in 2008?

To network, or not to network, is NOT the question!

Published
by
amysampleward
on November 21, 2007
in networking
. 2 Comments

As Elizabeth Dunn and others are discussing lately, the question to answer is not whether you and your organization should use new media networking tools or not, but which ones and for which purposes.

One major factor in deciding between the growing list of social networking sites, is the age group of your donors, supporters, or service members. Facebook and Myspace are the ones you probably hear the most about but many feel that these sites are only used by college-age and twenty-somethings. Actually, Facebook has seen a 98% increase in the last year of users 35 and older (click here for more metrics).

Elizabeth does an excellent job at facing this dilemma using the metaphor of learning a new language:

Of course most of your current donors aren’t on Facebook and MySpace - it’s still a pretty new thing for most of the population. However, most internet usage has historically been led by the young and the early adopters, followed - in time - by the rest of the general population.

When your constituency finally makes it to Facebook, MySpace, or whatever global site we are using in 5 to 8 years, don’t you want to be there when they go looking for you?

And don’t you want to be already quite good at it?

Of course you do! Getting started with networking and fundraising tools now will help you gain supporters, volunteers, fundraisers, and even partners both in the short term and the long term.

Has your organization made the dive into social networking yet? What was the most surprising part of the new tools?

More on ethics - Thanks, Amy Gahran!

Published
by
amysampleward
on November 13, 2007
in issues
. 1 Comment

A great comment from Amy Gahran at www.contentious.com to my post on ethical standards last week brings up great issues. The best questions really bring up more questions and not specific answers. The only way to truly answer the questions Amy poses is to sit down with your organization and discuss as a group where the comfort level is with the tools, the community, and service area you provide.

1. What ethical standards should nonprofits have when using new media tools, like blogs?

Amy also says that, “many nonprofits have the self-identified standard of working for the good and not for the man,” which can be applied to focus on the answer. As a nonprofit, working for the good, what elements of new media tools stand taller than the rest for ethical standards? How about: Raising community awareness and involvement. To do so would mean that your nonprofit’s website, blog, even videos are shared in a way that is available to the public and include features for commenting and connecting with you and others interested in your organization. Providing a safe environment for people seeking out information and services from your organization. This would require that your organization decides what kind of language and content is allowed in comments and other user generated content areas of your website, blog, etc. If you are an organization that deals with children, your guidelines for appropriate content could much more strict than an organization dealing with single adults. The limits are fine, wherever they fall, so long as they meet the goal of creating a quality environment for community.

2. Is the community you’re serving proud of the way it is represented online?

Terrific question! How best do you identify if you are serving your community well or not: Ask them, of course! There is a plethora of free surveying tools online that your organization could use to build a survey to send to your volunteers, clients, funders, etc. You can ask questions to identify if people know about your website, blog, forums, videos, online fundraising, or any other new media tool currently at use; ask about the current state of those tools and the frequency that the users reads or participates; most importantly, ask what can be done to improve services and community online both by improving the tools already in use and implementing new needed tools. Investigate what other organizations in your field are doing online. There are many organization working toward the same end; find an organization in another part of the state, the country, or even the world and talk about how it is using new media tools to connect and represent the service community online. You should also talk to organizations in your local physical community about how to better represent and serve the groups online, maybe even by connecting the organizations’ tools online. If an organization is having trouble successfully representing its service community online, getting the support of other area organizations can help bring its standards and tools up to a more appropriate level to garner more support and quality for its users.

These were two great questions, but I’m sure there are many more. What do you think?

Who’s standards are yours?

Published
by
amysampleward
on November 8, 2007
in Uncategorized and issues
. 0 Comments

I’m here at the blogworld & new media expo and just participated in the breakout session on blogging ethics. There was some lively conversation between panel members and audience members about experiences and thoughts on the ethics field for bloggers, mostly asking questions and not answering them.

Should bloggers align with journalists and the standards they (are supposed to) adhere to in order to gain the reputation that journalists have in the media and news realm? I think it can be a slippery slope in trying to answer questions like this one definitely for bloggers because the sphere covers such dynamic areas and niches that can’t be grouped together.

One of the greatest features of blogs is the ability for citizens to be journalists, organizations to have a voice, and people interested in similar things to connect. Blogging has opened up the communications avenues for nonprofits, especially small grassroots organizations, to garner supporters that are outside of the physical service area or who can help the organization grow and succeed who may have never found the group.

All right, so let’s really get to the nonprofit issue here: what standards should nonprofits have when using new media tools, like blogs?

Many nonprofits have the self-identified standard of working for the good and not for the man. The answer to the standards/ethics questions is pretty much summed up in that. Nonprofits, in blog posts, videos, and social networking profiles should always keep the community they are serving in mind. Is that community proud to be served by your organization by the way it is represented online? Are the issues you raise in posts, news you write about, and stories you relate to the world at large representative of the mission of the community and the community served (and often featured in that material)?

When creating your new media plan for your nonprofit organization, answers to those questions are important to consider. AND, if you are ever scrounging for material for a blog entry or video story for compelling new funders and supporters, staying true to your mission is an easy and ethical source for material!

Nonprofits on the honor roll or dropping out?

Published
by
amysampleward
on November 2, 2007
in issues
. 0 Comments

I remember when I was in school, if students complained about being bored in class the teacher would respond that a class can only move as quickly as its slowest student.  (I’m ignoring the fact that I went to school in the boonies of Oregon with very limited resources and staff, at least for sake of argument here.)

Is this the same concept at work in the nonprofit sector with new media?  Yes, there are terrific examples out there of nonprofits making videos to tell their stories for them, enabling their websites to become go-to news and information portals, producing messages/causes that get picked up by individuals all around the world to fundraise for them.  BUT, many of the nonprofits that I work with are still struggling with the idea that a website is not a parking lot of information that only needs updating maybe once a year.

Is the struggle facing the nonprofit tech community the one of getting everyone up to a certain competency, or to move as fast as the most gifted and see where we can go?

Maybe it’s the day job calling, but I feel a lot of responsibility to get down to basics with those that will more rapidly be left behind, than push the limits with the few straight A kids in the class.

What do you think?