Nonprofits and Social Media: It’s All About Community
Jan 23rd, 2009 by Amy Southerland
In a recent SPURspectives post, Dave Svet compares social media to a virtual front porch – as a meeting place where people are finding and creating the community they crave.
In a similar vein, social media expert Chris Brogan describes how social media supports café-shaped conversations. He looks at the challenges this creates for businesses, especially large corporations that may not understand or value café-shaped conversations. To make social media work for them, businesses have to find effective ways to engage people at the intersection of commerce and community.
Social media is a powerful marketing tool for businesses that use it well, but it often requires a learning curve for executives and marketers. The businesses that are using social media well have embraced the virtual front porch as their destination.
Meanwhile, nonprofits have always been on that metaphorical front porch, interacting with neighbors and making new connections. Nonprofits already look at everything they do through the lens of community.
Effective nonprofit leaders are already sitting around the café table in the real world (and the kitchen table and the board room table), listening to the people they serve and the people who support their work. They are having conversations with policymakers and community leaders, searching for solutions and new ways to make a difference.
If you lead a nonprofit, you have a head start on your for-profit counterparts when it comes to tapping into the potential of social media. You understand the dynamics of community. You know the value of café-shaped conversations because you’ve been convening them in the real world – and now you can use that experience to create virtual conversations which will extend your reach and impact.
Don’t be daunted by social media. Don’t get hung up on the technology. Don’t dismiss social media as a fad or something that you can’t afford right now. Instead, look at social media as a new way to forge and strengthen community bonds. See social media as a cutting-edge set of community-building tools – tools that your organization can learn to use quickly and effectively.
Social media rewards those who understand and cultivate community. This makes social media a natural fit for nonprofits, and is one more reason that every nonprofit should have a social media strategy.
- Amy Southerland
Great post, Amy! Very well put. You’ve captured the essence of what drove us to create 1stfans here at the Brooklyn Museum.
Enjoy your weekend,
Will
Excellent point! Nonprofits DO have an edge over for profit enterprises because of their understanding of community. But in reaching out, many have fallen into the same pitfalls as traditional PR - talking AT their community instead of with them by sending out newsletters and news releases and plea letters without giving their community a chance to more closely interact with them - and with each other. Any social media strategy has to take into account the need to nurture interaction in order to succeed.