Social media: the less successful stories

Yesterday I facilited a session for the context masterclass on draagvlakversterking (draagvlakversterking is hard to translate but is something like 'strengthening your supporters base') on the topic of social media. It was fun. After a presentation we did a card game in small groups talking about dilemmas. Then we talked about tips and tricks and we ended with three participants showing some of their work with social media and sharing the intricacies. Here's the presentation if you're interested and here's the link to the wiki.

Nieuwe media voor draagvlakversterking

View more presentations from Joitske Hulsebosch.

A big lesson is that the social media people (including me) tend to focus on the success stories, which makes it look like an easy thing. See how people collaborate on Twitter to raise 119.000 euros for Haiti. Look what Lego is doing to get customers to participate in the design. Often the same stories circulate. But when you look at actual practice it is hard to replicate because the circumstances in these examples were right, people were interested in the cause. One video going viral (we watched where the hell is Matt) doesn't mean your video will go viral too.... Fortunately we had enough space to swap the hard stories. Next time I'll try to include some less successful stories.... A few of the stories I've heard (I am making sure that the organization is not recognisable; I believe it is good to share these stories but understand why these stories don't get shared easily):

• One organisation got excited to start an online community when they heard about all the advantages from an external bureau. The site was built but then nobody had the time to engage with it. The site is (almost) empty.
• After an exciting event a facebook group was created for the participants of the event. However, the purpose of the online group was not discussed and nobody felt responsible. Nothing happened.
  
• An organisation wanted to collect people's signatures for a petition. Hoping it would go viral. It never did, few signatures were collected and the petition never materialized.
• One organisation built a site where people can make profiles and exchange on a forum. People do make a profile but are not exchanging on the forum.
  

It is very attractive to set up something like an online network, online community or group on a social network like facebook. But it is another thing to think through what is needed in terms of facilitation and support and what you really want to achieve with it. It seem a pitfall we are all falling into.

I noticed from participants' reactions that information overload is a big issue for non-profit staff. Not everyone is happy to get an online community to facilitate or to twitter for the organisation because they are already overloaded with information. This reduces the enthusiasm and makes that working with social media is perceived as a burden and time consuming. I don't know what the solution is. On the one hand I think people do need to develop the skills of working with huge amounts of information, on the other hand it might be best to work with the people who are capable (and even excited) to do this. Apparently it is not for everyone.

Lastly it is powerful to be able to do something for the second or third time. We used the evaluation and the interaction with participants from last year's session. I prepared this session together with the facilitators of the course and we were able to keep the elements that were highly appreciated and added some wishes like the need to have more hands-on tips en tricks. Often we move on and new people take over. Having the chance to keep a team pays off (hope participants will notice that too..).

Everyone is a non-profit?

This month's question of Netsquared is: What do you think the role of nonprofit organizations is in the changing world of social media? They start off with this video of Clay Shirky answering the question. Well, if Clay Shirky has answered it, what can I add?? He is basically saying that the lateral connections that are possible as a result of social media are far more radical than the changing relation between non-profits and their members. So the question for non-profits is: What do you do about those lateral connections? Which are beneficial to us or to our cause? Suggest to them that you, 15 people, could get together and work together. You can watch Clay Shirky explain it in the video below.

So what do I think? I can answer this for development organisations, as that's the sector where I have experiences. In a way social media make it easier for each individual to become a non-profit. We can all start a fundraising session on our blogs, we can organise a twestival for a charitable cause. Is this an important change that development organisations should watch out for?

To answer this question it may be good to look at the private initiatives by individuals and the professional development organisations. Initially development organisations ignored the private initiatives, but they have slowly realized that it has its powers and needs to be cultivated because it is so important for creating a broader commitment for development cooperation. So in the Netherlands, joint initiatives like Linkis and Impulsis were started by development organisations to support the private initiatives. Lau Schulpen of CIDIN did a study into private initiatives in Ghana and Malawi. Some of his findings:

• The private initiatives work in splendid isolation
• There is lack of sustainability of the intiatives
• There is little accountability over results. Learning levels are low.

This is ofcourse a different situation than Clay Shirky talks about. These private initiatives are not using social media. Are not connected and are not sustainable. So what could be the role of the professional non-profit development organisations? Now some thinking outloud; there could be two ways if professional organisations see a role for themselves to create synergy:

1. They could leverage social media (like helpalot, a social network for charities or Nabuur trying to get people north and south to help) to facilitate connections around themes and geographical areas. This is probably in line with what Clay Shirky says, but the difference is that a lot of people are NOT yet participating through social media. In this case the non-profits need to think strategically what to look for, how to create communities around certain causes- align energy- link private initiatives and (paid) professionals, with the professionals as experts. Get private initiatives online and share, but this needs to start face-to-face and it is a cultural change from the current isolated initiatives. What can we gain from this? A wider understanding of development work, more private funding better aligned to certain causes probably.
2. You could also see the private initiatives as charities, working on welfare, and the professional organisations as working on development issues. In this case, it is better to create separate lateral connections. Maybe help private initiatives to use social media to communicate with their charities in the south. Stimulating learning between professionals is also happening by organisations like Agri-ProFocus and PSO.
3. Taking Shirky's view that fast lateral connections ARE happening online through social media, non-profits could also start with listening online to what's happening. Did you know about twestivals? Do you know global voices? Beth Kanter has a good blogpost about listening. Organisations and individuals north and south are sharing more online, but are we listening or are we only sharing? How much time do we want to invest in this? How to avoid becoming overwhelmed? After listening ideas for facilitation may come up, with their mission in mind. But keep in mind that this is a minority group.

I'm not sure this makes sense to the original question or is too specific to the development sector. I guess in our case we cannot assume that we are all a non-profit. But we can also not ignore the fact that we might all become a non-profit in the future, working voluntary towards causes we have some emotional ties with.