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Blog - The first two scary months

July 3, 2009

I know I tend to blather on about the value of social media for nonprofits. Everyone I talk to seems to be scared to death of it. Truth is, I’m scared to death too. I know I don’t sound scared, but I am.

We have this shiny new website. We don’t even have any parking lot dings yet! We’re on Facebook and Twitter. Yet some of these things seem to defy conventional marketing theories. A website has a certain image and voice. It needs to be professional and it, in and of itself, can set a certain reputation. Does it have the right voice? Does that photo say anything? Does the wording in that menu make sense? Does this feel intuitive to you? There’s a lot of time and effort that goes into answering these questions.

Facebook is a bit of a different beast. All the navigation and most of the wording is done for you. You just have to spiff it up with a few fun things and add your sparkle of personality with status updates. In some ways, it can be a website in a can. It makes things a bit easier but you still need to add your voice to it. Because of that, you can be far more expressive than on a conventional website.

Twitter is different yet again because it’s a dialogue. With actual people and organizations. Back and forth. To and fro. Sharing and connecting. Immediate feedback on what’s going on. Pretty darned gratifying.

What scares me is this nagging question: “What if I don’t have anything important to say?” Nobody in cyberspace cares that my shoelaces are frayed or that Volunteer Nick is painting the door right now. (Thanks Volunteer Nick!) So what else goes up there? Well… take a look. It’s surprisingly easy. And getting easier. When I first started, I was tweeting every 2 to 3 days. Now it’s usually every day. (June 30th got four tweets!) And our Facebook page sat mostly empty for months. Now we seem to update our status every few days. We’ve even grown to a second Facebook page promoting our Festival of Trees fundraiser (November 13–15 at the Sherwood Park Mall… shameless plug).

Here’s what else scares me. How long before Twitter and Facebook are obsolete? What’s next? Am I in front of the wave? Am I floundering in a cacophony of cybernoise and geekdom? Is anyone even listening? Are we important and relevant? I guess that’s a bigger question answered by strategic plans and other organizational assessment tools. And of course all of these social media things have to fit into your strategic plan. It has to be relevant. To your members, your funders, your clients, your stakeholders, and anyone else that helps you meet your objectives as an organization.

Google and Facebook have become so engrained in the English language (and probably others) that they have become verbs. (Ever Googled anything? It’s made it into Webster’s. Has anyone ever Facebooked you?) Twitter has created a whole new language and list of acronyms. Guess what? It’s here to stay. It’s not going away. Not soon. Maybe not ever.

So don’t do all of these things. Pick one. Twitter is pretty darned easy. So is Facebook. Don’t revamp and retool your website for thousands of dollars. Take one of these (free) mediums and jump in. And don’t give me any of this “It only meets a small youth demographic” crap. The 35–55 age demographic on Facebook is doubling every two months. That’s right. Doubling.

So I choose to embrace it. Call me crazy. (You wouldn’t be the first.) But I choose to remove my head out of my proverbial backside and take a look around. Because if I don’t, someone else will… and THAT’s what scares me most of all.

Thanks for reading and feel free to share your thoughts!

Posted by: Scott | In: IVC

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