Unleashing Your Staff On Social Media
All of our postings to date regarding nonprofits’ use of social media have dealt with the possibilities of these platforms for empowering, engaging and "unleashing" your donors, members and activists.
But there’s another side to this.
What guidance should you give your staff for their use of social media — the ultimate individualistic, decentralized, "let a thousand flowers bloom" media — in the course of promoting your organization’s mission and brand?
Here’s a source devoted specifically to that subject, which you might find helpful.
Chris Boudreaux has a book in progress called Social Media Governance. You can get an advance peek here.
Chris has compiled (and provided links to) nearly a hundred documents detailing the social media groundrules of a broad range of organizations, from leading charities like the Red Cross and Easter Seals, organizations like the Smithsonian and the Mayo Clinic, corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft, media outfits like the BBC abd ESPN, and others.
Plenty of resource material here if your nonprofit is considering promulgating some institutional groundrules. But please, try a light touch.
Tom
P.S. Thanks to Giving in a Digital World for this tip.
2 responses to “Unleashing Your Staff On Social Media”
Behavioral Science Q & A
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Tom, this is an absolutely vital aspect of any org’s social media presence, but one far too often ignored.
Let me suggest that this need — for policy/guidance and training — extends beyond staff to the broader base, including volunteers and donors. Helping supporters put social media to work most effectively for your org will increase that impact. More here:
http://www.gettingattention.org/my_weblog/2008/12/volunteers-as-social-media-organizers.html
Great work! Looking forward to diving into Chris’ groundrules
I am not surprised that I have the first comment on today’s blog entry and it is 2:00pm EDT. Maybe the social networking blog entries are not only getting so commonplace as to be boring OR maybe nonprofits need to spend time in media that raises money.