My deck from the charities and membership breakfast briefing organised & hosted by #FreshNetworks in London on 18 Feb 2010.

1. Putting your people
at the heart of your
social media strategy
@stevebridger
18/02/2010
#freshnetworks

2. I help charities unlearn stuff
and trust more of their own
people to build relationships
online that support collaboration,
transparency, advocacy &
philanthropy
@stevebridger

3. This is the brief story of a fictional*
not-for-profit in a time of
accelerating turbulence
* any resemblance to your own organisation is purely coincidental
@stevebridger

4. Our story begins as the
boundaries of traditional
charities were under
assault by new patterns
of communication and from the
association... 19th century

5. Until now our charity had control
aged the B
RAN
54.5 D
print
events
closed
website
email
...in the 20th century,
donors remained donors

6. ...and everyone knew their place in the hierarchy

7. But it was becoming more difficult to reach
people with a message that was not carried by
their own networks
your website
plotting
family
me
@stevebridger

8. They had seen the water buffalo movie
and participated in flashmobs. It had registered
that the web did not like ‘middlemen’ that much,
and that they were standing in the middle
beneficiary charity donor
enabled by tech
@stevebridger

9. They decided to reach out to people in
a way that wasn’t just marketing
The web of ‘pages’ and The web of ‘flow’ and
top-down campaigns ‘instant’ campaigns
@stevebridger

10. They began to catch people ‘in motion’ -
when they were ‘goal orientated’
50% more
‘user-generated’
your website events in 2009
compared to 2008
plotting
my cause
family
me
@stevebridger

11. They grew
bigger ears and
listened to what
communities were
saying and doing
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulgi/280789933/

12. Then some people realised that all
the new stuff* was also disruptive
and transformative inside the
organisation
* let’s call it ‘social media’
@stevebridger

13. b ut some key peopl e also resisted...
and even wanted to lock everything
down & incre ase brand control
“It is difficult to get a man to
understand something when
his salary depends on his not
understanding it”
Upton Sinclair
@stevebridger

14. Leaders were persuaded that it was
still all about relationships and
they saw mass participation as an
opportunity to create value, rather
than a threat to their own existence
...and if you ban Twitter or Facebook
you shut off the ability to make new
connections
@stevebridger

15. and that they wanted to
sustain these
conversations
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edublogger/715455592/

16. texture
...by thickening the texture
of these relationships over time
through letting go
@stevebridger

17. They heard about Zappos.com
(among others) distributing trust

18. ...and how even
accountants
can tweet
@stevebridger

19. Still the legal people had mixed feelings
about this...
...so they adopted some
guidelines only
29% o
comp f
anies
social have a
media
policy
@stevebridger
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkonig/385851325/

20. welco me to
the re al time
web
...but by treating social media as just
another channel, they created a
bottleneck as communication
funnelled via a handful of staff
beware unrequited love
@stevebridger

21. They had made
social media
just another silo
@stevebridger

22. ...so they became convinced that...
who wanted to
v
“...eventually every member of staff
[would] need to have some level of responding
power and be empowered to use social media
to communicate and build relationships
with the people around them”
@willmcinnes
trust the NB: Reward
hiring staff for
decision being social
@stevebridger

23. marketers’ roles
changed from
broadcasters to
aggregators
friends
influencers
open
BRAND walls yo
u
can step
over
brand as
facilitator
they recruited or
grew staff into new
roles like community
managers
adapted from a David Armano graphic | darmano.typepad.com

24. nal ly...
They showered praise on their
An d fi
advocates and amplified their voices
“The project is not about creating a charity; it is about
enabling & empowering a community to change a situation”

25. Thank you for listening
@stevebridger
“we build too many walls and not enough bridges”
Isaac Newton