Tuesday, June 30, 2009

OrangeGerera Presents on Social Media and Non-Profits

Last Friday I was asked to give a 15-minute primer on Social Media and non-profits to Seattle-based OneAmerica. My initial reaction was "Sure! Piece of cake." After all, I've been working with some form of social media professionally for over nine years. I could do it in my sleep. Boy was I wrong.


After about five attempts at an outline, it occurred to me that what I was trying to do is similar to describing what it's like to drive a car to someone who has never seen one before. I realized that I've been taking the subject for granted for all of these years and in order to legitimately consider myself qualified to speak on it, I should be able to easily describe social media to laypeople.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to prepare, so I did the best I could with the time I had and have vowed to continue to refine the presentation over time. In the end, I'm told that the presentation was well received, informative and made an intimidating subject more approachable for the group. Whew! Goal accomplished.


After the usual introductory stuff about who I am and who in the room had heard of or used social media, the presentation went something like this:

1. Social media represents the democratization of control over the flow of information. For centuries this control has rested with those in power—religion, government, and big businesses. There were some key advances along the way, but not until the Internet became mainstream did this really start to change.


2. Even in the 1990's, however, with the exception of the few who had HTML skills and the necessary hardware, or the money to source them; the masses were still largely unable to publish freely and help to control the flow of information on large scale.

3. Then along came Web 2.0 and the desire to build websites that focused on the user and their ability to interact with, share, and contribute to the dialog. I compared the difference between the one-to-many orator model and the many-to-many social model by using the analogy of a party where people identify with one another by the labels they project. There are social media and networks where individuals can discover others with similar interests, and others where simply joining a specific group indicates your shared interests with others in the group.

The remainder of the day's agenda was devoted to an in-depth introduction of specific social tools, so I avoided highlighting any specific tools, except to list a few by name and general category.

4. I then turned the focus to how social media has the potential to impact non-profits. This is where my personal experience was lacking. Sure, I'm aware of many of the ways non-profits are using social media and networks to drive donations and awareness, but I hadn't conducted any of these campaigns myself, and hadn't yet experienced the other options.

Fortunately I found an excellent summary article by Beth Kanter of Beth's Blog titled 4 Ways Social Media is Changing the Non-Profit World, which lists:

1. Deepening relationships and engagement
2. Individuals and small groups are self-organizing around non-profit causes
3. Facilitating collaboration and crowdsourcing
4. Social change behind the firewall

I walked the group through examples of each of Beth's items which got people's attention. Thanks to this article, I was able to make social media relevant to a group who had largely considered it the domain of teenagers.

The questions I received were mainly regarding specific terms or concepts that I hadn't clearly communicated in the presentation, or hadn't gotten to yet. In addition to adding an ounce of visual appeal to the slide deck, I've made a note to do a better job of defining key terms and avoiding those that aren't relevant.

I'm already receiving requests to possibly give the presentation again, so I should set aside some time soon to make improvements. Once I have, I'll be sure to post an update here.

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