We too at the groupery are seeing great passion amongst volunteer leaders and non profits who today are primarily in synchronous client relationships hungry to take the social interactions into an asynchronous relationship. They are interested in leveraging, reaching and extending their reach with social media. They want to embrace these open technologies and often aren't sure where to start, who to have involved or scared that the task will require too much time and money. It's unclear to many leaders what will really 'come off' the plate?
Questions that arise are: Is it really secure? How much time does it take to learn how to use it? How will we ever be able to keep up with all the comments and feedback, etc.
We are talking with groups and leaders about shifting the conversation. Spend time as teams to think through how to take an existing task off someone's plate to making space for social media. Why not? Consider making it as easy as this five step process:
Step One: Talk in with volunteer teams about your where your customers live today in social media?
Step Two: Discuss areas that are time intensive and involve communication, public relations, marketing and business development.
Step Three: Converse around possible areas you would like to save time or resources from existing tasks or programs?
Step Four: Consider taking small steps as group to practice internally "walk the talk" in a safe environment that builds everyone's confidence and experience.
Step Five: Launch one small social media program that allows you to be responsive to your customers, invite them into conversations and see the benefits of how adapting into this new environment can be fun, social and rewarding.
Hopefully in taking on these five easy steps, groups can see that social media does have its advantages and you can find the resources and time to commit. We're particularly interested in the answers that NPO's and volunteer leaders arrive at for step one. Do you believe you can reach and continue to engage your customers via Twitter and Facebook? Or do your customers really live in eNewsletter land? Do you have to pull them into conversations from their Inbox? What's working for you?
Beth's Blog is another great resource for organizations at all stages of adopting social media.
