A sample of some of my Social Media workshop material, taken from a course delivered at Birmingham VSC.

1. Social Media Workshop – BVSC,
9th
November 2010
Rob Weaver, Development Director,

2. Agenda
 What is Social Media?
 Best Known Social Media
 Benefits of Social Media
 Will Social Media be useful for
your organisation?
 Aligning your use of social media
with the objectives of your organisation
 Next Steps & Getting Started

3. What is Social Media?

6. Social Media is...
• An email with a cc to the world
• Your radio phone-in programme
• Your chance to be an author, film maker, interviewer
and archivist.
• Brilliant if done well.
• Marketing done badly.
• The 21st
Century equivalent of the gold rush
• Accessible
• A range of conversations
• No replacement for ‘offline contact’ but it does extend
your reach.

7. Best Known Social Media

8. Best Practice: RSS
• Make it easy for people to subscribe to your
new content. Set up an RSS feed!
• What is RSS? http://www.whatisrss.com/
• Feedburner: http://www.feedburner.com/
Need an RSS feed?
Quick and Easy How-to: Set
up a blog, which will enable
your audience to follow
updates and info from your
organisation
Need an RSS feed?
Quick and Easy How-to: Set
up a blog, which will enable
your audience to follow
updates and info from your
organisation

9. Best Practice: Blogging
• Set up a blog at Wordpress.com
http://wordpress.com/ or Blogger.com
https://www.blogger.com/start
• Share the link to your blog on your website as
well as affiliated websites
• Wordpress and Blogger will give you an RSS
feed that can be used by your readers
• Keep stories short – and current

10. Best Practice: Sharing
• Set up a social sharing service for your social
network site (i.e., your website, blog,
Facebook, YouTube and more . . . )
• Provides a way for your audience to share
your content with their own communities
• Social sharing services include:
– Share This: http://sharethis.com/
– AddThis: http://www.addthis.com/
– FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/

12. Best Practice: Twitter
5 Easy Things To Do Daily:
• Check most recent @replies
• Review latest conversation thread
• Join the conversation, for example:
– Share a link
– Post an event
– Respond to a comment
• Search for keyword-based conversations
• Chat with (not at) people

13. Twitter Tips for Following:
It’s easy to want to follow everyone and build up a large
community, but quantity does not necessarily mean
quality. Before you follow, review the user’s:
• Bio section. Is it complete?
• Website link. Does their website/blog look reputable?
• Following to follower ratio. Do they have roughly the same
number (or more) of followers in comparison to the
number of people they follow? Or are they a celebrity?
• Tweets. Are they offer valuable information or dialogue?
Would you want to be a part of their community or would
you want them to be a part of yours?
• Red Flag: Users who follow a high number of people (in
comparison to followers) are usually spammers

14. Tips for Creating Content
• Promote and talk about the issue, and
– Listen to community concerns
– Share and comment on their stories
• Share expertise and information
• Establish reputation and expertise
• Focus on a call to action, including:
– Announce events
– Prose questions to the community
– Options for volunteer involvement
• 70-20-10 Engagement Model:
– 70% sharing other voices, opinions and tools
– 20% responding, connecting, collaboration and co-creation
– 10% promoting and/or chit-chatting
[70-20-10 Engagement Model courtesy of David Dombrosky’s
presentation Social Media And Social Networks From Experiment To
Strategy http://tinyurl.com/yzz6xre]

15. Tips for Having a Conversation
• @ Reply: a comment or reply to a specific user. To do:
start with @username - and insert comment specific to
that user
• Re-tweet (RT): a comment tweeted by another user,
but you would like to share. To do: start with or
include RT @username - and then the users comment
that you'd like to share
• Direct Message (DM): a private message between two
users, but you must be following one another for the
functionality to be enabled
• @ Reply v. Direct Message: to many (public), to one
(private)

16. Tip: Download TweetDeck
• Download TweetDeck
http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
• It's easy to use
• Helps you make Twitter more time efficient and
manageable
• Customised columns make it easier to follow the
conversation and keep track of conversations
• Saved searches helps you remain aware of
conversations that contain keywords specific to you
• PC and Mac compatible, also iPhone/Blackberry
versions available for quick mobile use

17. TweetDeck:

19. Best Practice: LinkedIn
• Join/start groups
– Strengthens expert status
– Post relevant news, topics, articles and events
– Ask (and answer!) questions
– Start Conversations
• Create your own group
– Your staff, clients, funders as a group?
– Professional expertise areas
– Allow you to state group profile and appoint owner/manager as
well as track ‘members’ of the group
– There is a distinction between ‘connections’ and ‘followers’
– You can control who joins and how requests to join are
responded to

21. Best Practice: Facebook
• Set-up a Facebook Page:
– Provides analytics
– Enables Fans to share your content with their
Facebook friends
• Allow fans/supporters to create Groups
• Use Events to generate visibility
• Use Causes for donations or visibility
• Additional Tips:
– Profiles are for People
– Use Groups for Controlled Membership
– Use Events to Generate Attendance

23. Best Practice: YouTube
• Set-up a non-profit channel
http://www.youtube.com/nonprofits
• Buy a Flip Mino video camera
• Produce member video spotlights
• Upload to YouTube and share on your website
or social network (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Make time to respond to comments
• Tag your videos with keywords

25. Best Practice: Flickr
• Start your own group and actively try and promote it. Search flickr
and see if there are users that might want to join your group.
• Build up you flickr contacts, invite your clients to join you on
flickr.
Make sure your portfolio page is filled in and provides links to
your websites.
• Make sure your account photos are organized into sets.
• Make sure your photos are optimized with correct title’, tags and
a descriptions
• Do not try and sell a product or service using flickr otherwise your
account will be deleted.
• When you find a flickr user that has great photos, go to their
profile page and write them a testimonial.
• Your business name can be the username for the account

26. The Benefits of Social Media

27. Tailored for the Voluntary Sector
(1)
• Spreading the word. Getting your organisation or campaign
better known. It helps to build your ‘brand’, who you are,
what you do and why.
• Create a following. It gives people the opportunity to identify
with a cause and to feel involved.
• Developing a central networking place which in turn allows
you to be more efficient and effective in your communication.
• Providing a personal face to your organisation. That personal
connection gives a much better feel for your organisation
than what can be a rather faceless brand.

28. Tailored for the Voluntary Sector
(2)
• Gathering information. It isn’t just about you getting your
message out there. Social networks are social. They are as
much about listening as talking, receiving as giving.
• Building communities. Far from the internet breaking down
community life, the effects (particularly of social networking)
are the opposite with people coming together more both on
and offline.
• Updated Information. Social networking is all about what is
happening now. It helps you to keep up to date and to keep
others up to date

29. Basic Metrics

30. Will Social Media be useful for
your organisation?

31. Identify your Success Criteria
• Sales
• Visits to Website
• Awareness
• Engagement
• Profile

32. A Reality Check

33. A Reality Check

34. Part I: Create a Social Media
Strategy
• Determine who will manage your online identity & accounts:
– Executive staff
– Marketing department
– Younger staff members
• Determine time & resources available to spend on social
media activities
• Establish internal policies and procedures around social
media use that are agreed upon by the organization
• Develop user guidelines that state your expectations when
others comment and what you as an organization
deem appropriate as well as inappropriate

35. Part II: Measure Success
• Set up analytics for your website as well as
other types of analytics for your blog and
other social media to measure traffic to your
content
• Examples:
– http://bit.ly/ that tracks link analytics
– http://www.google.com/analytics/
– http://www.socialmention.com

36. Time Management:
• Already swamped? Not sure how to fit social
media into your already hectic day?
Here are three time-based options:
• 15 – 30 min/day: respond and publish
• 30 min – 1 hr/day: monitor, respond, and publish
• 1 hr or more a day: lurk, monitor, respond, and
publish

37. Option 1: 15 – 30 mins per day
Respond and publish:
• Respond to Facebook, Twitter and other social
media messages received and find ways to
engage with your constituents
• Publish new content:
– Post a link from your website to Facebook
– Cross‐post on Twitter
• Share community links from members or
organisational partners

38. Option 2: 30 min – 1 hr
Monitor, respond, and publish:
• See Option #1 and the following:
• Set up and monitor Google Alerts:
http://www.google.com/alerts
• Set up RSS feeds in Google Reader:
http://www.google.com/reader
• Google yourself and your organisation!

39. Option 3: 1 hr or more
Lurk, monitor, respond and publish:
• See Option 1 & 2 and the following:
• Check your Twitter feed throughout the day:
– Twitter tools: TweetDeck
– More Twitter tools on Mashable.com
• Spend time online where conversations are
happening
• Spend time with content produced by your
members and future constituents and respond to
them

40. Aligning your use of social
media with the objectives of
your organisation

41. Before you Start
• Listen to your audience and learn how they communicate
before you engage with them
• Know which kind of tools your clients, and desired audience,
are using
• Understand that not all clients maybe using the same kind of
tools
• Identify the communication preferences and expectations of
your audience (i.e., do they prefer weekly email updates or
do they want to know that there will be something new on
your blog each day).
• Don’t use tools they’re not using!

42. Before you Start (2)
It’s tempting to jump right into social media
and set up a myriad of accounts, but before
you begin be sure to:
• Determine your organisation’s goals
• Develop a communications plan
• Know how to reach your audience

43. Sample Social Media Workflow:
• Step 1: Publish an editorial, personal story or research
piece to website or blog
• Step 2: Shorten the link to the published piece using Bit.ly
http://bit.ly/
• Step 3: Share the shorten link on Twitter
• Step 4: Share the link on Facebook
• Step 5: Measure success using Bit.ly, Google Analytics or
www.socialmention.com
• Step 6: Note any lessons learned (i.e., was it viewed more
on Twitter or on Facebook? Was the topic interesting to
your online community? Was it re-tweeted or shared by
others on Facebook or blogged about)

44. Next Steps & Getting Started

45. Next Steps
Options:
• Create a Social Media Strategy
• Learn How to Measure Success
• Develop Policy and Procedures
• Play! Setup a Personal Account
• Connect to Friends, Family & Colleagues
• Take Time to Become Familiar with Tools

46. What Are Your Next Steps?
• Please take 5-10 minutes to think about 1-3
solid next steps that you will take.
• Share your next steps with someone sitting
close by and be prepared to share them with
the group.

47. Conclusion
Remember that blogs, social networks and other
social media platforms are just tools – and tools
are only as good as their users:
– Take your time learning how to use the tools
effectively
– Identify which tools work for you and the needs of
your organization
– Respect your capacity and the resource/time capacity
of your organisation
– Be flexible and adapt to the tools that are the most
valuable to your community members and intended
audience(s)

48. Resources (U.S. but good)
• [Twitter] Step-by-Step: How to Set Up A Nonprofit Listening
Post -
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/12/stepbystep-
how-to-set-up-a-nonprofit-listening-post-twitter-part-1-.html
• [ROI] Is It Worth It? An ROI Calculator for Social Network
Campaigns - http://www.frogloop.com/social-network-
calculator
• [ROI] The ROI of Social Media -
http://nten.org/blog/2008/01/11/the-roi-of-social-media
• [Facebook] Using Facebook for Your Nonprofit -
http://www.techsoup.org/community/facebook/
• www.mashable.com
• www.socialmediaexaminer.com

49. More of this?
• We work with key decision makers on FIVE questions
in order that a social media strategy can be
formulated:
– What are you business trying to achieve?
– What specific goals can social media help you with?
– How do your clients use social media?
– How do you make the time to manage your social media presence?
– What infrastructure do you need to have in place?
• If your organisation has 5-249 employees you may be
eligible for a DDP discretionary grant of up to £1,000
towards the cost of our services.

50. Rob Weaver
Development Director
C3 Connected Consulting
www.c3consulting.org.uk
rob.weaver@c3consulting.org.uk
0121 422 5300/07792 244614
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/robweaver70
http://twitter.com/robweaverregen
http://robweaverregen.wordpress.com