SOCIAL MEDIA FOR NONPROFITS
Let’s start off on the subject of empowering organisations in New Zealand with an eye towards lever-aging the social media sphere.
The current environment leads us all to believe that we’re deep into a long and difficult recession. One question now lingering in minds of executives is: How does our organisation survive this and how can we effectively build a capability to preserve our gains and access to our supporters?
Only a handful of clever organisations have managed to find the answer to these two questions — invest in social media. The rest continue to remain clueless.
The key to survival in these times of stress and pain is really just having enough nous to embrace a new approach. One that widens the support base and one which effectively makes use of technology — technology that helps build capabilities to influence and attract valuable support in ways that may not have been imagined. And it’s sustainable.
Constituency-building and brand management are together, inextricably linked and dependent on communications. The art of attracting would-be supporters is tied to the level of trust and satisfaction others have with an organisation’s public profile and brand identity.
I’ve observed that most organisations in New Zealand stop short at defining their constituencies more clearly. These are the target audiences for which appeals, programmes and services are designed to reach.
When organisations begin appreciating that connections between their needs first need to be established in order to reach those who can act on to supply those needs, then it becomes possible for them to define, prioritise, focus and act on it.
Organisations that test the acceptance of their programmes or services through the sounding boards of their constituencies often derive a second benefit from that test – an assessment of their public image with a wide variety of target audiences. An attempt to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation in the minds of its constituents may also uncover a false impression, or an unmet need.
If negative feedback does crop up, many organisations would be grateful to learn of such problems before they reach the media or before beginning a programme, service, campaign or an event that might otherwise fail.
I’m confident that many organisations would really want to make use of existing or even emerging web technologies and strategies just so they could get their brand identities and messages across. However, opting to do Do-It-Yourself brochure-type websites usually equates to low-quality, amateurish and static websites. Those things don’t get too far off on the road.
There’s a great opportunity for organisations of all stripes and types to generate public interest and awareness about themselves in ways that could rival the web presence and support that much larger and more established businesses and organisations enjoy. So I’ve put up a communications consulting company, Karl Quirino & Associates, as a vehicle to help address the skills gap perceived by some organnisations as hamper-ing their own progress towards moving forward.
It is a promising development in New Zealand because now it opens up many opportunities for such organisations to engage the Social Web as a way of leveling off the playing field; one that gets their brand persona known better at an accelerated pace, and another that opens them up to promotion on the Web thus contributing to their own long-term sustainability.
The Web restores the banter of the bazaar. We all need to appreciate that it tears down power structures and senseless bureaucracies. It puts everyone in touch with everyone. To speak with a human voice, organisations could start learning to discover the concerns of their follow-ers, supporters, clients, customers, constituencies and communities. This works best when people inside have the fullest contact possible with people on the outside.
Learn more about the author and Karl Quirino & Associates.
