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Social Media For Social Good, by Heather Mansfield: a review.

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You work at a nonprofit organization. Perhaps you even lead the organization. Your group has a website, an email list, maybe even a Facebook page (because everybody tells you that you have to have one). In the back of your mind, though, you have the nagging feeling that other groups are doing more, or better, with social media. You wish you had a tech-savvy friend who really gets it about nonprofits who would sit down and explain to you what the heck is going on.

Heather Mansfield is your new best friend. In Social Media for Social Good, she lays out what you’re likely doing now (and how you can do it better), what else you can do now, and what you may want to be doing soon. (Just to show you how friendly she can be, in May 2013 Heather published 33 Must-Read Updates to the book. I wish more how-to authors would do the same!)

What you’re probably doing already is what the author calls Web 1.0. You took written materials and photos you had on the shelf, posted them on the web, and left them there for people to find (the “static web”). Maybe you even got around to updating them on a semi-regular basis and supplemented them with an e-newsletter (the “broadcast web” described in the 33 Updates). Web 1.0 is still crucial. If you do nothing else, follow Heather’s suggestions on how to improve them. (You will find examples and checklists at the end of each chapter to make it easier to put her suggestions into practice.)

We are already well into the age of Web 2.0, the social web. Read the middle section of this book to figure out how to be social online: it is a new skill set for most nonprofits and it can be learned. Read this section also to learn what you could do for your mission with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and photo and video sites like Instagram and Youtube. Are you blogging? Blogs are the quiet powerhouses of social media. I strongly recommend you read that chapter.

Since this book came out in 2011, the world has moved quickly on to Web 3.0, the mobile web. Today, over 40% of the people who view your website or read your email do so on a mobile phone or a tablet like the iPad. You have to make your organization accessible and attractive to them, or else you’re losing a lot of the benefits of being on the web in the first place. Read this section for tips on how to get those people checking their mobile phones on the subway to check in on you.

Your tech-savvy friend might also be so enthusiastic, she tells you more than you want to know. Heather does that sometimes. This book also has some of the “you must” intensity that true enthusiasts bring to their subject. If you’re a cynical reader, you might wonder if, in this book (and even more in the 33 Updates, and in the highly informative webinars that Heather offers), she’s not proselytizing for more jobs for people like her.

I read the book in a different light. Heather Mansfield strongly believes in your organization…AND in the power of social media to help you change the world. It truly pains her that you’re not taking advantage of the tools that are out there. She also points out that early adopters of new media learn how to use them best, and they’re best positioned to learn the next wrinkle when it comes along. That makes sense, but not every organization has the capacity of CARE, or Partners in Health, or NPR. You have to figure out what your organization can do. So, accept her help, and use your own judgment. But stretch yourself a little. If there’s one takeaway message from this book, it’s that social media will create new possibilities faster than we think, and we need to be ready to take advantage of them.

Three Simple Questions to Create a Communications Strategy

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Do you get overwhelmed by the concept of a communications “strategy”? Does it seem so daunting that you keep on doing what you’re doing already?  Or, do you assume your strategy needs to be complete and perfect, so you don’t even start to create one? Relax! It doesn’t have to be so hard. Image

Get the people who have a stake in your communications in the same room and ask them:

1) Who are the audiences we’re trying to reach? (Hint: there is no such thing as “the general public.” You have people inside and outside your organization that you would like to do something for the organization. Who are they, specifically?)

2) Toward what end? (Once we have built up a nice, preferably two-way, relationship with the audience, what will they start to do that they weren’t doing before?)

3) What do we already know about these audiences? What do we need to find out to give them what they’re looking for?

Answer these questions first, and then issues like the content of your messages, the media you should use, what counts as success and how you measure it will be much easier to resolve.

But don’t stop reaching out and interacting with people in the mean time! “Take a sad song and make it better.” —The Beatles

Strategic Communications for Nonprofit Organizations, 2nd Edition: a review

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Are you leading your organization through the process of creating a communications strategy? Good for you! There’s a lot of scatter-shot communications in the nonprofit world, but very few organizations take the time to think about how to bring all their communications–in print, in person, on the web, through social media–together for the greatest impact. Whether you’re a consultant, a staff person in house, or a Board member, this book is meant for you.

If you are a seasoned communications strategist, the book will serve as a refresher and a series of checklists. It also contains two dozen worksheets, all available online, and you can use the ones you find most helpful to structure the discussions you lead.

If you are new to strategic planning, don’t get overwhelmed. Look at the overall flow of the book to get a sense of what steps are involved. You may decide you want to hire a consultant to lead the planning process, and this book will give you the tools you need to interview that person and decide whether he or she will meet your needs.This book offers a lot of good advice. I particularly like some of the lists. For instance, here’s a list that could serve as the itinerary for the whole process:

*What are we trying to achieve?
*Whom are we trying to reach?
*What do we want them to do?
*How will we encourage them to do it?
*How will we know if we have succeeded?

There are also some real drawbacks to the book. It seems to assume that people in the organization will already understand the value of creating a communications strategy and commit themselves to a what could be a very long process (every week for six months).  My experience tells me that you begin instead with a certain amount of information sharing and consensus building.  You might not want to tackle a wholesale audit of the agency’s communications at the outset.  You might want to start with concrete questions like “Whom are we trying to reach?” and “What do we want them to do?”

I think that the process of creating a strategy and the process whereby you get the buy-in of the people who have to carry that strategy out are the same process. I wouldn’t hand this book to people who know a lot about programs but not much about communications. It would alienate them.  Instead, I would take what I could from the book and apply it to my organization in whatever order would get the most participation in and eventual buy-in.  That’s the way to make sure your plan doesn’t sit on a shelf but instead directs the actions of your agency every day.

Note: this post first appeared in April 2013, in my personal blog.

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