Thanks for the great advice on how to handle this. The information you presented definietly helped me conjur up some great ideas to present to a large membership driven NGO (especially when most correspondance is via the Internet)

once again, thanks a ton!
@callumpinkney

Here is a post that is a pretty good example (it’s mine so I’m biased) of a show and tell experiment. http://budurl.com/TomMartin6

Hope this helps.
@TomMartin

I tell folks that we all have to beware of the extremes of social media: That is is the savior of your business, org, NGO or that it’s just a fad.

It’s a mode of communication so it’s important to ask:

1. who are you?
2. what’s your message?
3. who’s your audience?
4. so what?

another three principles that guide me in nearly everything:
- everyone wants to be loved
- everyone wants to be heard
- everyone wants to be part of something Bigger

great post.

It’s really difficult to translate relationships as being hard results. Look at you and I, for example. We met via Twitter, and have since been able to develop a friendship through other social media tools, and meeting in person. That is a relationship of worth, as far as I see it. At times, you’ve become a brand ambassador for me, and I’ve become one for you. And a true ‘brand ambassador’ is priceless. But to quantify that is a very difficult thing. What are you going to tell your boss? “I made a new friend?” That doesn’t really work.

However, building case studies around these occurances can. I’m actually thinking about your Amnesty Write-A-Thon right now, and the potential in that. We take the numbers, which we need, and then give them additonal worth by describing the processes involved in attaining those values. It’s not an either/or scenario. We need both. The crux of any type of qualitative versus quantitative argument, is that historically quantitative wins. How very ‘scientific method’ of us. But we can all admit that people don’t stop at numeric value.

Maybe what’s needed is a shift in the way we value marketing/sales online?

Here’s a quick example that I’ve asked to share. It’s very small, but it has value, so here goes:

We have a great client, Connie Yrjola, who is a jewellery maker. The other day we blogged about a product shoot we did at her store (with her permission). By posting pictures here and on our Facebook Fan Page, Connie increased her audience by probably 300 unique viewers. That means something, and it turned into results. From those 300 views, she generated 30 fans for her Facebook Page, had at least one local jewellery store ask about collaboration, and had about 10 inquiries (that I know of) on pieces that we featured. That’s results. From one blog post.

Now what we do is take those numbers, follow up, and create cases in a research-based, scholarly way. People want to know how this stuff works. I have a great case that I’ll post on our Facebook Fan Page for you where Nicholas Kristoff talks about SM and non-profits. You’ll love it.

Hope some of that helps.

Especially in an organization that is just identifying how to properly use social networks like Facebook properly, it’s an ever gruelling task to have them learn about Twitter, LinkedIn, Wave, and others that are tech knowledge dense.

Without the use of these social networks, many of our engagement strategies would go to the dogs, especially in our Youth Development department. A perfect example of this on my side, and not to shamelessly self-promote (had to see that coming), is our Write for Rights event tomorrow. This is held at multiple locations across Canada on Dec 10th, on Human Rights Day.

This year, and just as of this morning we have over 19,500 registered writers for tomorrow all across Canada. Last year’s numbers didn’t even come close to touching this. We can firmly stand behind the belief that social networking through Twitter, Deqq (see Writeathon page), Facebook, Flickr, Youtube and anything we could get our hands on greatly improved our audience range, and the reception it received. Our personalization on over 50% of our tweets/updates vastly improved the audience engagement and their willingness to participate in something they felt they would promote a change for.

The problem is taking this information back to a generation who isn’t keen on this type of work, is that the only statistical results we can present is the number of writers, and the number of click-through’s on links we have tweeted and posted. This doesn’t exactly represent the number of hard-worked man and woman hours that were put into achieving this. The usual view is: “So you put something on the internet and people clicked on it… great do that next year too.”. Not exactly how it worked, but more or less what happened. The ever growing task is making sure your pleasing your client (my bosses), and showing hard evidence is always a requirement of any organization or business who is spending either monetary assets, or man-power assets on something they passively are knowledge of.

I think you posed a really good question about how we encourage an older generation in some of these businesses/non-profits to support online engagement efforts to build awareness, educate, and sell. It can be difficult to break down mindsets of what typically/historically works in terms of marketing.

I think we who work in this arena on a daily basis, forget that there are many, many people who don’t. It’s difficult to convince them that without immediate hard results, their time/money is being well-spent through SM engagement. I think the more we can come together and discuss cases of where it’s done right, the more we build our own argument to take before naysayers in our businesses/organizations to show them that SM does in fact work, and is becoming de rigeur in terms of marketing and PR.

A personal example of who is doing social media right is not an organization, but a personal couple from the states who are posting a video every day for 365 days. They have caught on fire all around the world, and it’s down to their engagement with their fans. In every video log, they are mentioning fans, asking for advice, telling them how to interact, and rewarding them. Not only in their video logs, but their tweets, and facebook updates. Their ultimate goal? To be a spin-off couple king and queen of the vlogging world (I have assumed). It’s their engagement everyone comes back for, regardless of how hilarious they are.

You can catch these dynamic pair at @CharlesTrippy, and follow their links to their YouTube channel.

Happy Festivus
Cal!