In this series, we're interviewing several people who do social media on behalf of their associations (including two who work for association management companies). In this interview, Lindsay Reene of the Alzheimer's Association (Georgia Chapter) gives us the scoop on how they manage their social media efforts. Check out this awesomesauce!
1) First things first: Tell us a bit about where your social media management role "lives" within your association. How is it integrated within the structure of the organization? Is it a full time position, or part of another role? What department are you in, if any? How large is your organization?
The Alzheimer's Association, Georgia Chapter's social media is integrated as a part of the role of the E-Philanthropy Coordinator. The E-Philanthropy Coordinator position is made up of five main components: online giving, e-marketing, database management, website management, and social media. This position falls within the Development department, who are primarily responsible for raising awareness about our organization's operations in order to raise funds.
We are the Georgia Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association and are a subset of the national organization. Each chapter is responsible for establishing their own social media structure; however, the national office provides guidelines and support to assist chapters in both creating their social media plan as well as maintaining quality once it is up and running. Our chapter has 35 employees, including staff running our 7 regional offices throughout Georgia as well as our regional and state staff in Atlanta.
2) The work of social media often cuts across lots of different traditional silos. Describe the process of how you communicate and work with other departments. How supportive is the association as a whole about your social media role?
The organization is very supportive of the social media role. We work closely with the Programs department to feature education seminars, public policy successes, advocacy updates and research breakthroughs on our website, Facebook fan page, e-mails and Twitter feed in order to provide real-time updates of the chapter's operations.
Also, the National office is very supportive of our social media outreach. We schedule periodic meetings to discuss social media strategy within our chapter and they apply our ideas, successes and failures to their national roll-out of recommendations provided to all chapters.
3) Everyone is dying to know how you manage the listening and monitoring process. Do you use a dashboard? Do you use any paid services? Any tips to share?
Great question. We believe that listening to the community you want to reach is an integral component of the foundation of a good social media platform. We have multiple tricks and tools that we use to listen to our community. Specifically, we rely on our daily Google Alerts, RSS feeds compiled within one iGoogle homepage platform, and Twitter lists. Our best ways to learn are by subscribing to leading nonprofit industry leaders and to apply their best practices in a trial-and-error format. Even though many things we try don't always work, we usually end up learning something in the process.
We have used these three articles as research to enhance our listening and monitoring process: How To: Create a Listening Dashboard for your Organization (from Amy Sample Ward, NTEN), Doing Social Media for your organization? (yours!), and How to set up a social media listening station (John Haydon) [video]
4) Let's talk about the "big three" - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Of course, it largely depends on where your members are - but have any of these proved especially useful for achieving particular goals?
Twitter and Facebook have proved phenomenally useful to our organization. First, online outreach allows for us to make contact with caregivers of those with Alzheimer's disease. In the case that they are often short of time and resources, it is convenient for them to interact online from home.
It is important to note that our use of Twitter and Facebook work collaboratively together. However, the goals and outreach strategies we facilitate through them are significantly different.
We were elated to see the way we could delve deep into the niche arena of elderly healthcare and Alzheimer's care on Twitter, connecting us all across the country with people within our area of interest. Twitter is also our key outreach platform for learning from nonprofit tech industry leaders. We organize these niche areas of interest into Twitter lists (AlzheimersCare, NPTechRoleModels) and utilize their resources actively and often.
On the other hand, Facebook has served us greatly in reaching out to our Memory Walk participants and those in our community interested in supporting the cause to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. We have been more successful in reaching an older constituency in this network. Also, we post less often to our Facebook fan page (usually only about 5 times per week). We will be focusing our recruitment efforts on growing our Facebook fan page more so than our Twitter followers in the next few months.
Finally, we invite Memory Walk participants to share their personal Memory Walk headquarters homepage with others over Facebook and Twitter. During the height of Memory Walk season, we check our status feeds often to highlight our friends and fans who have featured their Memory Walk headquarters on their Facebook page. They enjoy engaging with their community as well as furthering donations and awareness of Alzheimer's disease in the process.
We are not actively utilizing LinkedIn as an outreach medium but will continue learning to allow the possibility in the future.
5) How do you measure the success of any particular projects? I don't mean specific numbers, but do you have a "system" for how to decide what to keep track of, and how to report progress?
We can quantify our success based on a compilation of measurements that analyze community engagement and interest using click-through web URL shorteners (e.g. bit.ly), conversational responses on Facebook and RT's and @ mentions on Twitter, e-blast click-through's via our database management system (Blackbaud) reports, and CMS reports of website traffic. I keep a running list of our facebook fans, twitter followers and click-through's to our shortened URL leading to our donation page that I update periodically and track by date. To see the growth is very fulfilling. We have grown to 800+ Twitter followers (@AlzGA) and 800+ Facebook fans in just 3 months!
6) How do you bring stakeholders up to speed on what social media activities are going on (whether it's members, other staff, the board...) - is it part of your role to teach people about social media? What kinds of things do you do (if anything) to help bridge the digital divide?
We find that the best way to demonstrate the power and functionality of social media to members of the organization is to highlight a specific feature that appeals to their niche arena of interest (i.e. education programs or caregiving support) and to show stats and conversation we are creating around that topic that is a result of the online capabilities. For example, we featured a local newspaper write-up submitted by our Director of Programs on our Facebook fan page and "tagged" her in the feature thanking her for the submission. She was then individually thanked by members of our community for her contribution in the comments. I have found that examples of success such as these can counter the misconception that social media is simply a communication tool with the same reach as e-mail (i.e. convenient but not very personal).
We have also asked all Development team members to share our Facebook fan page with their friends. When a friend that they shared it with joins, they get a notification. The immediate feedback was very rewarding, and it made the process an enjoyable one!
7) Finally, tell us about a specific social media project you are particularly excited about, whether it's in the planning stages or something you've had success with.
The social media outreach we are most excited about are individual profiles of caregivers across the state compiled in a blog-type RSS format online. Specifically, over the course of 2010 we are raising awareness to the issue of "wandering," which is when someone with Alzheimer's disease leaves their home or residence in a state of disorientation. We have had 8 instances of wandering in Georgia alone this year, and the majority of these wanderers have either been found dead or are still missing. It is TRAGIC epidemic that is highly preventable with the correct awareness and prevention measures. We are launching a blog with video interviews by year end and would love to send an update when it's complete!
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