10 Absolutely Essential Truths about Social Media
- Wed, June 22 2011
- Filed under: Social networking and web 2.0
Today, the Case Foundation is holding a virtual summit on millennial donors, which I’m blogging about today. Julien Smith, who along with Chris Brogan wrote Trust Agents, shared these essential truths about social media.
1. If no one is paying attention to you, it’s your fault. You must have amazing content, over and over. What may look like apathy is filtering out your message because it’s not compelling. Create radically interesting content! That may make you fear reactions, but you want to have that authentic voice that elicits response.
2. To be trusted on the web, be an individual not an organization. Who is your core, central person on social media? (Julien also said this in my interview with him yesterday.) Millennials have great cynicism regarding authority. So you’re better off being a person, not a brand.
3. If you’re talking as a human being (with authenticity, vulnerability, humor), you’re forgiven more easily. Organizations are not.
4. Engaging online is a slow burn and asking for money is a long sale. Build a relationship, steadily, over time.
5. You’re a better fundraiser when you ask as an individual and tell your story as a human being.
6. Show you have a real relationship with people online. Since you don’t have the intimacy of in-person contact, you have to create it in other ways: acknowledge people in a public way.
7. At some point, you have to build an army. You can only sell something yourself so many times—you need your community doing it for you, performing the heavy lifting. So give them ownership.
8. Look for the “small yes”—it will make people feel better about doing big things later.
9. Remember, it’s all about trust. Think about the trust equation from Charles Green, which says trust is the combination of:
1. Credibility: How people perceive our words
2. Reliability: How people perceive our actions
3. Intimacy: The safety or security people feel when entrusting us to do somethingIf you think of trust in terms of a formula, it’s the sum of these three factors divided by what Green calls your degree of “self-orientation.” Self orientation is self interest and refers to how much you are focusing on yourself vs. your donors. The more you seem focused only on your own needs, the bigger the denominator and the lower the level of trust.
10. That means self-interest can’t be your end goal—it’s not about how you matter, it’s how others do, to you.
Comments
Katya, another great post. Thanks so much for passing along these thoughts from Julien.
This is tremendous help. A real eye opener.
Thanks for the post Katya.
Thanks for the post and sharing these points from the session. Great stuff.
I find that your item number 7 above—giving (vs getting!) your tribe (assuming it has been developed) to take ownership of something meaningful is one of the biggest hurdles for organizations. It is hard giving up control and taking on the risk that an org’s vision might be tainted in some way by uncontrolled advocates out there. Even though we are talkng about *advocates*! 
Perhaps our community should spend time sketching out some different scenarios how this might look when done well—both in itty bitty steps and big huge leaps.
Kenny
This list is a great roundup about how to keep up with social media. It’s always important humanize your organization and to stay personable with potential donors, so I’m glad to see that idea transferred to your social media tactics. Thanks, Katya!
Thank you for your articles. I own a remodeling company and am in the process of learning about nonprofit. I want to start one to help men (and woman) learn a construction trade and to help them become better with life skills. Your blogs help me see the bigger picture.
Thanks