by caker on June 23, 2010
When your company decides its time dip its toes into the social media waters it is important that you’ve assembled the right team. Depending on the size of your company, an entire team may not be necessary, but if it is, here are some people you should consider including.
1. IT Department: There are many reasons to bring the IT department into the fold. For instance, if you want a blog and want it to link to your current site you’ll need the help of you IT Department. If your company doesn’t have an IT Department then you may want to consult with the company that hosts your website. They can probably help you with this.
2. Legal Council: For most businesses this is probably very unnecessary, but better safe than sorry. You may want someone to at least review any policy you are considering enacting regarding social media.
3. Risk Management: Again, for most businesses you won’t need Risk Management on the team and really many, businesses don’t even have such a department. However, if you do have a Risk Management department you may want to loop them in at some point. They’re job after all is to figure out where you may have problems and to help prevent them.
4. Public Affairs: For many companies, marketing and public affairs are the same, but consider including your public affairs team in the process if they do work separately.
You will need to look at your business specifically to see if there are any other key stakeholders that should be included in the initial planning of a social media strategy. Depending on the size of your business you may not need a whole team to get things going, but do consider who might have a vested interest in your company’s social media efforts and go from there.
Above all you want to have people on your team who are excited about communicating through social media.
by caker on June 15, 2010
With so many non-profits, it is tough to stand out and even more difficult to secure the funds, particularly in this economy. There are ways that non-profits can effectively use social media to further their cause. It is fine line though between asking for funds and informing the public about what you do to gain support.
A couple of easy tools that a non-profit can employ to make their use of social media more targeted and effective.
- Determine the types of messages you want to communicate. Which means figure out a few key topics that messages can fall under. Some suggested topics are, success stories, needs, impact of public policy, news and general information. If you find a few key topics that most of your information can fit into then you have a place to start. You don’t want all the information you’re sending out to sound the same or to always be an ask for funds. You want to give people a reason to listen to you.
- Keep an list of messages organized by your predetermined topics. Using a tool such as Google docs will help your team to store communications ideas in one easy to access place. If you keep the document updated then you’ll always have something to say in your various social media forums.
- Encourage a conversation. This means you need to participate in the social media forum you’re posting in. You can’t be all about one-way communication. You must listen and respond. Building these online relationships will strengthen the dedication your followers and friends have towards your non-profit.
There are many things you can do to build your social media presence as a non-profit, but you need to follow just a few steps to get going. By starting small and just doing a few things the staff will become more comfortable about communicating via social media. Making social media a part of your non-profit’s communications plan will be second nature in no time.
