Relfections

I wanted to display my learning about managing relationships using a blog.  Blogs are something I use a lot in my personal life so I am familiar with how they work.  I also chose a blog because many of the other social media I considered using have word count restrictions such as Twitter and Facebook.  I’ve done a lot of reflection over the last two units and I didn’t think I could do those reflections justice with 140 characters.  Here I will reflect on the main points of learning that have spoken to me throughout the last two units of class: the relationship between nonprofits and identity salience and the importance of social media for nonprofits and the use of personal stories.  

Videos

I'm a big time visual learner so videos really work for me.  I wanted to include a couple of videos that talk about the relationship between nonprofits and social media.  It’s a topic that’s very important to the longevity and sustainability for nonprofits. 

This is a really great video I found that speaks about the organization Live Strong.  This is Lance Armstrong’s cancer organization that had a summit in August 2009.  The interview is with the organization’s social media employee.  She speaks about the use of social media to advertise the summit as well as track conversations and trending topics on Twitter as the summit is happening.  People with questions were able to connect with Sanja Gupta, a board member of Live Strong, through a webcast.  

Because I am such a visual person, I began searching how social media video can help nonprofits.  I found this:

It details the different video approaches nonprofits can take to convey their organization through the medium of video.  It talks about how to videos, a day in the life videos and documentaries.  I think we live in a very visually driven world and it's important to embrace video and learn how to do it effectively.  

Identity Salience and nonprofits

I think it’s important we understand how people form relationships and connections with nonprofit organizations.  Prior to reading the Michalski and Helmig article I had never thought about how people become attached to one organization over another.  I had also never thought about the varying degrees to which people associated their personal identity to membership or donations to a nonprofit.  But it makes sense we should know how these attachments happen.  I think it can also provide reflections on the organization itself. 

By this I mean if organizations can learn what it is about their mandate, values, services, etc that people connect with the most it gives them a clearer picture of what their work means to the community at large and not just their client base.  It might also help to give nonprofits insight into what their community likes most about their organization and also address any gaps that might appear.  In other words, if a nonprofit focuses the most on their services and finds out people in the community are actually connecting most with a particular service, it might help the nonprofit refocus on what the community needs at that point in time.  The set of questions used in the article could be retooled to provide a scope of a nonprofit’s programs and given to members of the community.  Perhaps patterns would emerge around popular programs.  For example, a social service nonprofit could create sets of questions for each of their services using the five-point scale.  Maybe a set of questions for employment services, counseling and computer literacy just as examples.  People from the community could answer and if there were higher instances of identity salience with employment services the nonprofit could react accordingly.  The five-point model used is good but I think it could be expanded on.  

S. Michalski & B. Helmig. (2008). What Do We Know About the Identity Salience Model of Relationship Marketing Success? A Review of the Literature. Journal of Relationship Marketing, 7-1 

Social media and personal stories

Times of crisis generate the most donations in social media.  The Red Cross received 20 million dollars worth of donations using their ‘causes’ page on Facebook and text messaging after the earthquake in Haiti last year.  That figure doesn’t include their own personal website donations.  People respond to a crisis, as we are seeing now in Japan.  But nonprofits can’t fabricate crises or disasters to grab the attention of people.  This video discusses nonprofits detailing personal stories through social media to attract people in the community, potential donors and as a form of branding themselves. 

Promoting the nonprofit organization’s mandate and value through personal stories about the organization’s programs, projects or even clients is a way of connecting to other people.  People in the community feel engaged when they connect on a personal level to issues they are passionate about.  Or even when they see parts of themselves or their past in the work of a nonprofit organization.  Finding those connections with people is key to nonprofits.

Social media can build relationships and connections like no other medium.  This video also speaks about trust between peers on social media.  Cause recommendations, a type of advertising, are 72% more likely to be trusted when coming from a peer than a TV advertisement or Internet ad.  This means there is huge power and potential when people share causes with their peers using social media.  Because the level of trust is so high between peers, nonprofits need to be telling their stories through social media. 

Finally, this video speaks about the power of many.  This is the one to one interaction that comes with social media.  When one person shares information it travels to all their Twitter followers and Facebook friends.  If even one of their friends or followers passes it on to their friends and followers the message could reach dozens of people in only a few clicks.  The power of many means information from trusted peers can grow and spread at a very fast rate.