One of the best ways to encourage acceptance of a social networking initiative from your Board and executive management is to set appropriate expectations. Perhaps your Board members and executive management equate “social networking” with the Facebooking and Twittering they see their kids doing, i.e., fun but not purposeful. If that’s the case, they’re probably not going to be supportive of your efforts to incorporate social networking into your fundraising strategy.
You can address this by resetting their expectations regarding social networking. Here’s a few facts to get you started.
- Social networking is not just for kids. 35% of all adults with online access have a profile on a social media network.
- Social networking site growth is beyond exponential. 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008, and 5-10 thousand accounts are established daily.
- Social networks have achieved astounding critical mass. In December 2008, 76 million people visited MySpace.
Make it clear to your Board and management that if you ignore social networks you’ll deprive your organization of access to potentially hundreds of thousands of potential supporters.
But don’t just throw big numbers at your Board. Spend some time listening to your online audience before engaging. Share with the Board what you’re seeing and hearing on bboards, in chat rooms, on blogs, and on social networking sites, and be prepared to discuss how you plan to address public perceptions and build relationships, and what you think you can accomplish in the short term.
Keep your plan reasonable. Once you make a decision to engage via a social networking site, you need to stay committed, so start small by selecting a few targets and measure your results. And keep your Board in the loop by reporting on results.
This measured approach will make it much easier to change perceptions of social networking from time-waster to community-maker.