stark REALITY check

Tag: “Social Media”

  • mini Social Media campaign

    Safe Sitter® is a 501(c)3 headquartered in Indianapolis that “prepares young adolescents for the profound responsibilities of nurturing and protecting children” They have “almost 900 teaching sites from coast to coast and in England. Each year almost 35,000 young adolescents take the course.” This worthy organization is in the process of hiring a development person. In its 30 year history Safe Sitter has not used traditional fundraising techniques for their operating budget, they have relied on sales from the training courses and grants.

    I was recommended for this position by Marilyn Burger, a well-respected fundraising professional in central Indiana who is friends with the Executive Director, Sally Herrholz. After meeting with Sally I learned this is a new position that has yet to be fully defined and that I was among the five possible candidates. I asked her, “Compared to the other four, what is my greatest weakness?” She said, “You have no traditional fundraising in your background.”

    What I DO have is 20 years in Marketing/PR/Sales in the for-profit world and a Masters in Philanthropic Studies, but no fundraising experience. She then said my greatest strength (comparatively) is my social media experience. This gave me an idea: what if I ran a mini-social media campaign using twitter and asked some of my highly influential social media friends to send a tweet recommendation?

    The Safe Sitter website is great and they are already using several social media techniques but they aren’t using the tools available, so I set up a @SafeSitter Twitter account for them as a donation. Soon after I was tweeting with Diane Brooks – @TalkToDiane – and I asked her opinion about this twitter campaign. She suggested I first get a buy in from Safe Sitter before tweeting anything.

    I met with Sally a couple of days later and gave her this proposal:

    ___________

    Mini-social media campaign:

    I will tweet the following message a few times throughout the day:

    @NancyMyrland [for example] I’m among the final 5 people being considered for a position at @SafeSitter Would U please send them a “Hire @AmyStark” tweet?

    This AWARENESS-RAISING campaign will:

    • Introduce the @SafeSitter brand to my 9,300 + followers (repeatedly as I will be sending out 5-9 individualized tweets per day for the next 3-5 days).
    • Introduce the @SafeSitter brand directly to the influential people who will receive the personalized tweet.
    • Introduce the @SafeSitter brand to all their followers if the recipient sends a tweet as requested.
    • Introduce the @SafeSitter brand repeatedly in the public timeline.
    • Build a small following of well-respected tweeters throughout central Indiana.
    • Introduce the @SafeSitter brand to influential tweeters in major metropolitan areas throughout the U.S. and the world.
    • Give you an idea of my capabilities at building a community online and leveraging the power of just one social media tool.

    Cost to Safe Sitter ………………. $ 0.00
    Return on Investment ………… off the chart
    __________________

    Sally agreed saying, “I see no downside to this, however I cannot promise anything. The Board is in charge of winnowing down the five candidates to two possibilities based on the resumes of the I forwarded to them.” My heart sank a bit. If the board is traditional they may not consider my social media skills and connections as valuable.

    Somewhat disheartened , I moved forward with the campaign beginning Tuesday, July 13th. If I’m hired this will become a tremendous case study on how to leverage social media connections to gain support during a hiring process. If I am not selected, I will be publicly humiliated and use the case study to demonstrate how NOT to use social media in the hiring process. = ) I hope it is the former and not the latter because I believe in their mission. I sent my daughter through the training three years ago and she gained valuable information that will help her not only when she babysits, but also when she becomes a mom.

    So what do you think? Would Safe Sitter benefit more from hiring a traditional fundraiser, or a well-connected social media strategist?

  • The democratization of information

    I’ve been following the election debacle in Iran closely via twitter. During this six minute video chronicling the protests I discovered on the SOCIAL MEDIA platform called YouTube, I noticed a recurring image => cell phones. Out of the dozen or so cell phone images in the video only 1 person was using it as a telephone, all others were using it as a video-camera or a text messaging device. Like it or not, twitter and all other social media platforms that provide Internet access to a mobile device is an EVOLUTIONARY game changer. Repressive regimes will no longer find it easy to manipulate and control information dissemination. To allay any arguments that may arise from social media naysayers, please take a look at the news articles below.
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    ‘Twitter war’ proves kilobyte is stronger than the megaton
    “Twitter is most suited to a psychological information war, and right now in Iran there is a war over information,” …“This is the first Twitter war.”

    “On the one hand, you’ve got Ahmadinejad’s regime striving to manipulate and hide information, and to create an information monopoly. But unfortunately for them, this can no longer be done because of the democracy of the new media,”
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    Social Networks Spread Defiance Online
    “Many Twitter users have been sharing ways to evade government snooping, such as programming their Web browsers to contact a proxy — or an Internet server that relays their connection through another country. “
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    Iranian media crackdown prompts Tweets and blogs
    “ Tiananmen + Twitter = Tehran, highlighting both the similarity between events twenty years ago in China’s Tiananmen Square and in Tehran today and the difference that the Internet has made in how the Tehran events have unfolded. “
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    Follow Iran protests … on Twitter     | CharlotteObserver.com
    “The Iranian government reportedly has blocked opponents of President Ahmadinejad from sending emails, but they are being outwitted by another form of technology — Twitter. ”
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    There are reports that the Iranian government chided the U.S. Government for meddling, however I’ve seen little to no action from our president. The meddling is coming from the global twitter community. Repressive regimes be warned. Tweeters are watching and chronicling.

    Wasn’t it Thomas Paine who said something like, “A mind expanded by a new idea can never go back to its original size.” I contend that a world connected by social media will never be the same.