Every company has its own time and budget windows to complete its projects. And developing the social-media ‘face’ of an organization requires both time and a budget. The good folks at EngageYourCause.com, who we featured yesterday, encourage the establishment of a ‘listening post’ first-and-foremost. The listening post creates an online window to pursue research on various topics and to hear what others are saying about topics of interest. The creation of content can be that much more demanding, in that one must distill the research and then work out what parts of it seem especially important for the organization and its blog readers. Beth Kanter, whose blog we have drawn from in the past, has recently posted some issues to consider when mapping the resources an organization has for its social-media presence.
Her posting comes from dealing with a series of questions that arise with almost any workshop or seminar she has participated in. She states them as:
How much time does it take to do social media effectively?
Who in our organization is going to do the work?
How are we ever going to find the time to do social media?
Her general response (visible in the graphic to the left) is to find a combination of the three that works best for your organization. She acknowledges the fact that “Using Your Own Staff” could be trickiest, in so far as many not-for-profit and mission-based organizations can not afford to have a dedicated social-media-producing staff. And people hired for other duties might have full dockets anyway, without the extra burden of creating a social-media presence.
She offers an example of the work done with Danielle Siembieda of Zer01 and the 01SJ Biennial. The success of the effort came from incorporating interns for the workshop to work, each of whom used a different social medium – under the guidelines established by Ms. Siembieda – to keep an optimal flow of information both among participants and to those who wanted to follow the proceedings from a distance. A unity of messaging ‘tone’ (my word) was retained with the oversight, but the distribution of duties allows everyone to stay fresh and focused.
One of the benefits beyond the great experience they gain is that each intern had an online space to create a profile of her/his curriculum vitae, to use for future job searches. At the conference/workshop, their accounts pertain to specific topics and they feed their information via Twitter and Foursquare.
An efficient use of resources and time is essential for any organization, and getting your organization’s social-media content up to speed will require both. Beth Kantor’s suggestion is a great place to start the delegation of opportunity!