Social Media: Making It Up As We Go Along

While the winds howled last week with the snow of the century, the power managed to stay on long enough so that I could participate in a webinar about building buzz through social media.   Hosted by The Communications Network and  by the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), session leaders Holly Ross, Executive Director of NTEN, and Nancy Schwartz, NTEN board member and blogger, the session presented three case studies about nonprofits and foundations that had successfully used social media.  The case studies were interesting but what was more interesting was the live tweeting and the conversations that went on during the session.

Social Media Take-Aways

It was interesting to see what points were resonating with the participants. That is the beauty of Twitter–it is instant, short and sweet and it helped to identify key issues.  And I met some new people as a result.

The other take-away from the session is that we’re all making up our use of social media as we go along.   A little advice  to organizations and companies seeking to use social media:

1. Get in there and participate.  This is an active media and to understand it, you have to use it.  Not sure how to use it for your company or organization? Set up a personal account, start following people to listen and learn.

2.  Research.  There are hundreds of blogs and other resources about social media and its use.  I like the Social Media Today Group on Linked In.  Brian Solis blog PR 2.0 and Beth Kanter’s blog also are good resources.

3. Align social media to overall communications strategy.  Think carefully about how social media can help you achieve larger communications goals.  Don’t just establish a Facebook Page or Twitter account to say you have one.

4. Don’t assign social media to the lowest person on the totem  poll.  Whoever is overseeing and managing your social media efforts is a spokesperson for your organization.  Make sure you have the right person out there communicating your messages.

5. Don’t be afraid.

As the webinar last week taught me, even the “experts” admit that a lot of this is trial and error.