Future:Media:Change

With new social networks popping up faster than you can tweet  them, the technological landscape can become intimating for any nonprofit with limited resources or time to invest.  To help us map out what nonprofits can do to understand and benefit from social networking, Future:Media:Change spoke with Heather Holdridge, Vice President of Digital, Washington DC with Fenton Communications.

Amil Husain: Could you tell us a little about Fenton Communications and what you do with nonprofits?

Heather Holdridge: Fenton has been around for almost 30 years as a communications company with the vast majority of our clients being nonprofits and foundations.  In the last couple of years Fenton has sought to evolve our practices to serve the nonprofit community with an integrated view towards communications, which includes the traditional PR and outreach but also involves the Internet and the social media landscape.

Amil Husain: We wrote about the Social Media Grant on FMC before, and the deadline is coming up on December 18th, what kind of things are you looking for in a nonprofit that applies?

Heather Holdridge: I think there are a couple criteria.  First we’re going to be looking for a situation where we can concretely help a nonprofit use social media.  For example they might have just launched a campaign but might not know strategically how to use social media to help their cause.  Second, is the type of work and issues that they are doing.  If it was an organization where we have a specific expertise that would certainly be a factor.  And the third criteria that is really important is the nonprofit’s internal capacity enough to sustain the social media process after we award the grant.  We want to know if there is an organizational capacity towards the work so things don’t drop off after our engagement is over.

Amil Husain: Many organizations have separate online and communications divisions.  Would you suggest making sure the overall communications has a clear message before branching into social media?

Heather Holdridge: That’s an interesting question. My view is that sure you can bifurcate communications into online/offline but social media at the end of the day is still a tactic, just like traditional PR and communications work.  Your audience might be different and there are more options on the web because it’s interactive, but you want the entire organization to understand what the potential value of social media, at least at a basic level.  Nonprofits should understand that social media can’t be a one-off project, and it really needs to be viewed as another equal tool in your toolbox to reach your audience.

Amil Husain: Is there a reason beyond just money why nonprofits are behind the curve when it comes to social media?

Heather Holdridge: I think it’s a few things; fear of change, not wanting to stray from what “works”, and feeling like what you’re doing is enough. But I think all of this is changing.  Even the most traditional organization now knows the Internet isn’t a fad. It really is just a fear of change and a fear about being able to adjust and adapt to a new landscape.

Amil Husain: Are there ways that you have been able to help online communications units convince their superiors that social media is a viable platform?

Heather Holdridge: I think that communications directors want to understand how social media strategies factor into the larger goals of the organization not only because the tools are popular.  Who are your target audiences? How do you reach them? How do you motivate them? What do you want them to do once you find them? It’s important to see how all of these online tools plug into the overall strategy instead of just trying experiments for a few weeks or months because those projects are destined to fail. And the truth is that the “old school” communications and program folks can learn some neat things from the social media staff,

Amil Husain: Are there any best practices in social media that you can point to?

Heather Holdridge: There are a lot of smart uses of integrating email with multimedia campaigns.  For example, MomsRising.  They came out of nowhere in 2005 and they’re huge now.  One thing they’ve done which was really smart was 1) They established a really authentic and genuine voice. I really like the informality of the emails they send.  2) Once they had built their email list they had a  Onesies campaign that asked mothers to upload a picture of their child wearing a decorated Onesies to their website.  It was a great way to allow people to show a little of themselves but in a way that totally fit the audience and was fun.

Another example is the Courage Campaign in California who were working on Gay marriage rights.  If you’ve seen the FidelityHigh Fidelity reviews video, it’s essentially a video produced during the Proposition 8 fight (that repealed same-sex marriage rights in California), showing gay and lesbian married couples and their families, some of whom held up signs that said “Don’t Divorce Us”. Those images weren’t used during the Proposition 8 fight as part of the major messaging, and it was a totally authentic and low cost way of energizing their community, that wanted to see themselves represented in the campaign, but weren’t.  And of course, it made the issue personal, which is what the anti-gay folks didn’t want. So you could see the aggregation effect happen when you ask your supports to take part and channel their energy into something small but that everybody could do. Sometimes the simplest concepts, executed in a timely way, are the most effective.

Amil Husain: Anything else?

Heather Holdridge: At the end of the day, I think it’s an exciting time to be working on “the Internet.” We’re living through a wholesale revolution in how people communicate and connect with each other. When I graduated college, I didn’t even have an email address (I’m a Gen-Xer). And now we’re several steps beyond that with cell phones, AIM handles, TwitterTwitter FacebookFacebook pages, etc. I’m not sure that anybody can truly be an expert in this space, because the medium, given the nature of its interactivity, is changing daily.

I’m looking forward to reading what the Social Media Grant applicants are looking for and continuing my work to push the envelope with non-profits.

————————————————————————————————-