“Social media, now what should I tell my staff when they ask me if it’s OK to use Facebook to communicate about work  with their colleagues? A few of them are even asking if it’s OK to connect with their clients on Facebook or Twitter. Shish, I don’t even have an account, these social media tools are making me nervous.”

These are timely and tough questions that deserve the attention of Executive Directors or anyone interested in social media for their organization.

I created what I’m calling a Social Media Landscape Map. The top half of the map identifies some of the higher level work related to understanding and implementing social media in your organization. The lower half unpacks what social media can do for your organization and your staff. Click the map to see a larger view.

Social Media Landscape Map

You may know of non profit organizations that have taken time to plan a social tech strategy or have integrated a social tech strategy into their current business plan. It’s fair to assume, their strategic approach has led to stronger and deeper relationships with their employees, supporters, partners, donors and service users.

Clearly, social media continues to impact all sectors of society and is not going away. In the non profit sector, social media is transforming how we support community development, how staff learn, connect and collaborate. You know that the people your organization serves are using social media tools in their everyday lives but you are not connecting with them online.

You also recognize that your staff and other service providers are expert’s users of social media and mobile tools but are using these tools without an organizational social tech strategy or policy.

To help clients and any interested social media enthusiast understand the “landscape” for implementing social tech in organizations, I’ve created a Social Media Landscape Map. Also included is a brief overview of my approach for working with organizations. You can download the PDF document here.

I’ve included a “Social Media Landscape Map” for those of you who are interested in learning more about social media in the workplace.

I use my map as a discovery and discussion tool when I’m speaking with Executive Directors, community leaders or at workshops with organizations from the non profit, public and educational sectors.

With the map you will see a brief overview of my own journey into social media consulting world. Also, my landscape map has both a general view and a detailed view. My goal was to illustrate how social media tools combined with a well thought out social tech strategy can bring increased capacity and effectiveness to the non profit organization.

If you have questions or would like to discuss my consulting services, I’d be pleased to meet with you for a low pressure chat.

I love this book “The Groundswell” , winning in a world transformed by social technologies written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.  Here is how they introduce their approach to writing the book. We have taken “a broader view of this phenomenon(social networks, media, tools, web 2.0 etc), one that encompasses not just today’s technologies but the fundamental change in behaviour now happening online. The groundswell is: A social trend in which people use technologies to get things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. (non profits corporations as well).

This book has rounded out my thinking and made clear why it’s so important for non profit organizations and businesses to learn how to survive and thrive in the groundswell.  The next excerpt from the Groundswell book is a bit long, but for me it so accurately captures the the depth, breadth and permanence of the seachange in how we relate and do business with each other in our neighbourhoods, countries and world.

The groundswell is broad, ever shifting, and ever growing. It encompasses blogs and wikis; podcasts and YouTube; and consumers who rate products, buy and sell from each other, write their own news, and find their own deals. It’s global. It’s unstoppable. It af­fects every industry—those that sell to consumers and those that sell to businesses—in media, retail, financial services, technology, and health care. And it’s utterly foreign to the powerful companies and institu­tions—and their leaderships—that run things now. Simply put, the groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other instead of from companies. If you’re in a company, this is a challenge.

The groundswell phenomenon is not a flash in the pan. The tech­nologies that make it work are evolving at an ever-increasing pace, but the phenomenon itself is based on people acting on their eternal desire to connect. It has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works. This book exists to help companies deal with the trend, regardless of how the individual technology pieces change. We call this ground-swell thinking.

Having worked in the non profit sector for many years, I know well the challenges of surviving as an organization, let alone having and maintaining a web presence that represents the Mission, staff and operations of the organization. The groundswell for non profits and businesses simply means that they need to learn how to connect more effectively with the ever growing numbers of individuals (73% in the USA) who are active online users.

In the non profit sector, street youth, newcomers, to Canada, the unemployed, seniors wanting to reach out to distant relatives or people struggling with health issues are using online tools to connect with others and access resources. Ignoring the way these people are communicating and using online tools is not an option when your in the capacity building, social change and community betterment business. For social change agents and community organizations, it’s time to listen and learn how to participate within the groundswell.

Non profit organizations like any other business, are now faced with delivering services to a consumers who have access on the social web to knowledge, options and tools that aids them in their everyday living needs. They expect service organizations and staff at the minimum, to be knowledgeable of navigating the web and capable of connecting them with the right information and resources. They no longer wish or expect to passively wait for service. These non profit organizations, by their charter and by their funding requirements strive to adhere to standards of transparency, inclusiveness, equity. Giving people pithy statements about what wonderful services and worthy purposes that your organization promises to deliver isn’t good enough in todays networked world.

So where does creating an online strategy fit in to this picture? Well, the good news is that with good old fashioned planning and a sincere desire to understand what your audience is doing and talking about, you can initiate an organizational change that brings you into dialogue with your constituents, within the groundswell. My next post will focus on the framework for creating your online strategy.