Using social media to get the word out and connect with your peeps.

Facilitated by Tim Bishop, random Social Media user

Should I use Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Blogging, or Facebook to connect with my peeps? But I could spend all day doing nothing but that. How many resources should I devote to this? What's the ROI? What are the downfalls? Do you know the answers to all these questions? I don't. If you know the answers or have data pointing to answers on any of these, let's get together and discuss data, evolving best places, and do and don't.

Session Notes

-scared of price tags on social media, looking for best practices; unrealistic expectations about what it means to use social media and lack of justification for what want -how to use social media more effectively -offer range of social media applications but hefty price tag; clients don't get what were expecting and don't realize the costs – what's working and what's not -what can we develop and donate; build something custom that can be used by lots of non-profits... -use cases, both a channel and a philosophy / process of engagement – what does an org have to have in place to adopt social media -how does who you are help social media work for you -social media can build a conversation but requires some cultural adjustments -how to engage odd demographics -how to oversome organizational barriers to using social media -coordinating volunteer social media efforts with larger web strategy? --all client interactions think that they can solve fundraising problems in a week -generally skeptical about social media but got last job through linkedin -when move how to raise money into social media w/o modifying it -teaches you to not be a jerk, which is why you can use it successfully early on -social media is a way to esablish new relationships and then what do with that relationship is up to you... -i'd pick projects to support because I can receive updates on the platforms that I am on... let me know what's going on with your project -people give because they feel connected -made first facebook app for a client, and people are interested but when see sticker price they draw back... folks don't have good metrics for what they want -project that works with people trying to get into college, created a facebook app for them, when get into college can announce to their friends that they got into college; at the time wondered who was going to want it; tested it facebook and announced that got into berkeley and suddenly people started acting on it -not a big fan of social media but use flickr, went to zoo and did some illustrations, the zoo re-tweeted it and totally engaged with the zoo and felt great about it -can pitch journalists through twitter -through social media you can become a real person and connect to people on a real level -authenticity, genuineness, reputation, relationships -how do we have a professional relationship online – what happens when drunk pics from the office party go online -massive social revolution of social media – blurring lines between what is professional and what is personal -networks asks us to make hard distinctions but our real lives don't have those same hard distinctions -started using social media because talk to lots of non-profits, now have lots of presence and good number of followers; in social media choosing people who give you information; because have a degree of personal identity they are more trusted -use twitter and facebook to push information out and build relationships but ROI is hard to measure – great to expose selves to a new group of people -have a matrix of communications that follow (if content type X how do we share it) -how much overlap of different channels – information overload: need to know your audience and need to know what the various channels are good at -there's a reason people choose to follow various services, feed each channel with what is attractive to it -demographics of social media sites and what that means for getting out your message -don't put it in a different box than larger communications strategy -don't have a twitter account but people at event were tweeting and had a huge spike on the website -ROI conversations are hard.... do you measure the value of your telephone? Do you measure the value of who you work with? Your receptionist? -can google “social media listening post” to build a system to hear what people are saying about you -been hard to resource 'listening' in the past, and now it is super different to engage with a community and get feedback / listen -don't be a jerk – some of us remember forums, discussion lists, flame wars, and chaos that were (are) unmoderated discussion lists -social skills to function in these spaces has increased -lots of lessons out of the message board era... have a back channel