open2media

Part of this blog is a follow on of conversations which took place on my blog when I recently asked the question “Social Media for Non-profits - what do you recommend?” in preparation to help David, Nick and myself to be able to collaborate and create a workshop for the UK Circuit Riders conference. In true collaborative social networking style, I asked the question, not only on my blog, but used other networks including Twitter, Facebook and Seesmic too (plus the old fashioned ‘web 0.0′ face to face with small organisations to see what their needs were!).

Using my blog and various networks was a really useful way to reach out to others and I received lots of comments and suggestions back from many people, some who I knew, and others who I had never connected with prior to this which was really exciting, getting an active global conversation taking place using a variety of media.

One example of creating conversation was the reply on Seesmic I received from Brian Rendel, based in Michigan who offered some of his ideas of what we should share in our session to help ICT development workers/circuit riders with helping them understand and join in with social media. Follow this link to see his reply …

Do feel free to comment and participate in this new blog, if you wish to write articles / posts that are relevant or submit information or links that we might have missed, do contact us!

For me this year’s Circuit Rider conference will be a great opportunity to take forward some of the discussions we had at last year’s event - and again get the benefit of working with a front-line expert.

Last year I had the chance to run a workshop with the amazing US-based blogger Beth Kanter, which included her knock-out presentation on social media, and the first run of the social media game. Reports are available on the social media wiki, together some other guidance we’ll be updating there and on this blog.

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More later on how we are planning the game - meanwhile here’s Beth’s slides from last year. I hope Beth may be able to join us virtually. I already know it is going to be a lot of fun developing this year’s workshop with Laura Whitehead. However good the Net, there’s something about being in the same country, sharing the same issues …. and running to catch up with yet another highly productive collaborator! Beth, Laura - how do you manage to do so much good stuff?

How can we support circuit riders to help organisations with developing and integrating social media tools within their organisation? I’ve discovered in my work with organisations, that the newest smallest fledgling groups who were the most receptive to this new way of working and connecting with members and potential stakeholders were eager to learn anything that could help them reach out to new audiences. For the larger well established organisations it would mean a huge shift in behaviour and approach to communications but willing to allocate capacity to develop their own approach if they could encourage wider involvement and acceptance across the organisation. The small to medium sized organisations running and growing steadily for a couple of years were the ones, that most probably have always had issues with their ICT controlling them, rather than them being in control. It is often that category of organisation that found modern fangled media too much to take on board instantly, although were happy to consider it and seek to implement those forms that could be relevant and purposeful practices with it in future strategies.

What tips do you have at increasing sign up within an organisation that you would like to share?