If you fail to plan…
Archana Sridhar facilitated the workshop, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” as part of MyCharityConnects this year. Archana is Associate Director of the Hennick Centre for Business and Law at York University and Co-Founder of the South Asian Philanthropy Project.
I immensely liked her presentation. She was well organized with her slides, took her time and steadily built awareness in the group about thinking through using social media in your organization. She used Facebook examples to show how non profits are using this tool. I thought her presentation was useful for the experienced social media practitioner as well as those organizations and practitioners who are beginning to explore the social web.
A few of the themes she covered included:
- The continuous and often times slow process of pervading your audience’s awareness of your organization;
- Becoming aware of a “buzz” happening as you continue your social media work. You may have more media inquiries, your volunteer requests increases; more hits on your web site etc.
- Incorporation of your channels on your front page;
- Showcasing the “we are media” site and many more excellent examples to support her message; i.e. http://www.thephilanthropist.ca
- Clear explanation of the setting of goals for your online communications and how your actions will vary according to your goal(s);
- Closely understanding who your is and gauging the tech saveyness of your audience; Related to this point is the importance of using Google alerts to track your query i.e. organization name; topics your close to etc.
- Don’t fee like you have to do it all; pick and choose; Start small – upward trajectory of growth; use a pilot project to get started.
I especially liked how she discussed the importance of looking at how your social media tools fit in with your current mix of communication tools i.e. print newsletter; website; other media; A question addressed the issue of loss of control for your organization in terms of your message being challenged. She balanced this concern by reminding the audience that loss of control can be a plus because as you open up more to your users, they can tell you more about your organization and more about the different needs they have;
In the area of developing metrics, she talked about how new technologies are hard to measure and will vary according to the different target groups. To help set your metrics, it’s a good tactic to find colleagues in organizations similar to yours so that you can compare your metrics with their approach to measurement. This networking approach can help you develop more specific metrics relevant to your organization.
The question and answer portion of the presentation was very helpful for many in the audience. There was some rich advice about using social media policies to guide your organization’s work. If there was one thing that was missing from her presentation it was on the process of developing your social media policies prior to diving into the tools. She didn’t leave it out, but didn’t get into this area as much as I would have liked. (my bias since this is a lot of what I do).
Archana ended off with giving us some of her key principles; The short version of these are:
Be genuine; be interactive; despite the title of the workshop, don’t be afraid to fail.
What topped her presentation off for me was her referencing Beth Kanter’s theme of recognizing that social media is more about providing conversation starters than any particular answer about your work.
Well done Archana!
