Brian Beehler – Social Media Talk

When a NGO acknowledges the importance of social media as a key enabler of their digital vision, it must not ignore the factors associated with the application of social media tools and technologies that could result in long-term or permanent damage to their reputation. As such, a number of critical imperatives must be considered as the NGO sets out its strategy. I’ll be breaking down the critical success factors over several post as I would like to provide details for each.

• Governance: The NGO must ensure that it has set out the appropriate control mechanisms – policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes – to protect the organization from potential reputation threats or even liability. Effective governance enforces best practices, anticipates the digital needs and goals for the NGO, and provides guidelines that makes the deployment of the digital strategy manageable and also an effective business tool.
• Alignment with the Strategic Objectives: alignment provides the ‘directional beacon’ that sets out which digital strategies to explore and which to avoid. Close alignment of any digital campaign to the strategic vision and direction of the NGO is critical in order to focus resources, and maximize the impact and return of any activity undertaken.
• Consistent standards of execution and measurement: As with traditional and online marketing & communications activities, NGOs will require consistent standards to be enforced in order to safeguard the reputation of the organization. At the same time, the very nature of what makes social media successful will require the NGO to consider creating standards – tactical and ethical – that not only reflects traditional visual guidelines, but which also reflects social media’s less structured, more individual, more transparent, and more interactive qualities. A clear, highly flexible, measurement structure should also be considered in this light, so as to allow the organization to benchmark activity over time, focus on those activities that are working, and shut down others that show no signs of real traction.
• Sustainability: Unlike traditional PR or marketing activities, social media often does not have a finite start or end period. Although many digital campaigns have been created with a sun-setting date in mind, many others – blogs, social networking tools, online communities, and crowd-sourcing tools – are all created, in many instances, to live on for an indefinite period. As such, the issue of sustainability and resourcing to support an ongoing initiative – whether through additional headcount or additional time given must be an important part of the digital strategy.
• Ongoing awareness & education: When the NGO engages in various digital activities, the value of social media will be viewed differently by different employees. Likewise, many who use social media personally may not be fully aware of the risks that inappropriate social media behavior can have on their individual reputations and that of the organization. Ongoing awareness and education of social media – tools, and policies – will be critical to safeguarding the reputation while encouraging organic growth and adoption throughout.

In my next post, which I’m hoping will be within the next week or so will touch upon Crisis Management, Technology, People, and Speed & Flexibility. This will be several posts but will set the stage for a successful implementation of your digital strategy.

Filed under: NGO, social cause, Social Media Tagged: | social cause