Doing Social Media for your organization?

by Maddie Grant on November 17, 2009

We’ve had some great discussions, feedback and interest around my recent interview of 3 new community managers and this post about hiring for social media roles, so I would like to do a series of interviews of people currently in social media roles for their organizationsPLEASE SPREAD THE WORD, thanks!

I really want to get a sense of what’s really going on out there.  Surveys to me are pretty pointless (I know that’s just me).  I feel like there’s been a bit of spreading of doom and gloom lately, about whether social media roles are really being taken seriously.  I know some of you are actually doing great stuff (and yes, expect an email from me – hehe).  I’d like to hear from other social media managers / community managers directly, find out how you are doing, see what we can learn from those of you doing this stuff every day out there in the real world.  Is this you?  Email me at maddie [at] socialfish.org.

We’ve been talking a lot about how to do the actual work of social media here on SocialFishing; here’s a little reminder of some recent posts on the topic.

Defining the Community Manager role
Phases of Online Community Building
Spectrum of online relationships diagram
3 Gems on Building Community from Six Pixels of Separation
Drafting Social Media Guidelines
The 5 C’s of Engagement
Ten steps for building an internal social media team
5 Ways Clarity can Replace Control
Clarity and your social media team
Guiding principles for online community management
Exploring the social web as a research tool
What Social Media Means for the Way We Work
Getting Started With Clarity: A Homework Assignment

I’d also like to hear from anyone who has specific things they would like me to ask social media managers about.  Are you thinking about hiring but not sure where the role fits, for example?  Are you curious about how social media managers handle being the intermediary between a bunch of different departments?  Are you wondering what kind of listening dashboard they use or how they report back what they hear on the social web?  Let me know in the comments or by email – I want to make this interview series really helpful for everyone.

Thanks!

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19 responses to "Doing Social Media for your organization?"

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maddiegrant November 17, 2009 at 1:11 pm

Doing Social Media for your organization? http://ff.im/-bAEeN

SocialMediaUMMS November 17, 2009 at 1:16 pm

RT @maddiegrant: Doing Social Media for your organization? http://ff.im/-bAEeN

PRSA_MD November 17, 2009 at 1:27 pm

RT @maddiegrant: Doing Social Media for your organization? http://ff.im/-bAEeN

brianjohnriggs November 17, 2009 at 3:16 pm

RT @maddiegrant: Doing Social Media for your organization? http://ff.im/-bAEeN – every story is unique -

SocialFishFood November 17, 2009 at 1:27 pm

Doing Social Media for your organization? http://bit.ly/21QEOF
#socialfish

ElizabethB November 17, 2009 at 1:52 pm

Doing Social Media for your organization? http://bit.ly/21QEOF #socialfish (via @SocialFishFood)

social_medio November 17, 2009 at 2:39 pm

Doing Social Media for your organization? http://bit.ly/27EELx

Maggie McGary November 17, 2009 at 2:37 pm

Great idea! A few things I’d be interested in hearing people’s thoughts on:

1) I saw your tweet about the American Cancer Society social media person leaving to go work for a PR firm, and obviously I and several others also recently defected. Are PR firms and/or other businesses actively courting social media “rockstars”? Is this a trend organizations should be aware of? With so much of social media being about self-promotion, it’s hard to deny that people who are able to show track records of actual successes will be highly desirable and plum candidates for companies looking to staff social media efforts for the first time. Forum One Network’s recent community manager salary survey showed that nonprofits pay considerably less than for-profits, and I’d be willing to bet that the gap continues to widen–is this something nonprofits should be aware of and/or addressing?

2) I’d be interested to hear what kinds of dashboards people are using for their listening. Are they primarily using RSS feeds in Outlook or actual dashboards that others in the organization can also have access to?

3) Do most community managers also have a role in internal communications within their organization? E.g. are they either in charge of or in some way involved with an intranet? Is internal social collaboration seen as on par with using social tools in a public-facing way? Or is internal collaboration seen as an HR thing and external collaboration seen as the social media/community manager’s thing?

4) I’m particularly fixated on the salary thing–it just seems like such a pot-shot! I’m working with Ben Martin on his social media salary survey (http://www.socialmediasalarysurvey.com/) to try to gather as much data as possible about social media salaries to hopefully try to make some sense of the whole thing. I’d be interested to hear what other people’s take on the salary thing is; e.g. titles and salaries all over the place, lack of benchmarks especially in the association world, etc.

Ok, I’ll stop now ;)

joltsocialmedia November 17, 2009 at 7:47 pm

Doing Social Media for your organization? http://bit.ly/21QEOF
#socialmedia

Lauren November 17, 2009 at 4:20 pm

I second Maggie’s suggestion regarding dashboards. As someone whose organization doesn’t have a strong social media presence (though I’m trying to make a case for our members’ needs in this area), listening is one thing that we CAN do (though we’re not doing nearly as much as we can in this area). It would be wonderful to get into some specifics here:

1. How did they decide what was important to them?
2. How did they go about finding the “signals” in all of the “noise”?
3. What tool(s) are they using to listen (and why do they work well for them)?
4. Who’s responsible for the listening and how do you communicate your findings internally? And how can you make it a more collaborative effort?
5. Are the dashboards easy to understand?
6. How much time is spent maintaining them on a daily basis?
7. Too many questions, I know! :) Sample dashboards would be a great addition to ASAE’s “toolkit” web pages, or perhaps posted to the Association Social Media Wiki.

It would also be really interesting to hear how these individuals came to their community management positions….what type of backgrounds do they have, what skills do they find essential to develop/maintain, etc.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes next!

ShySocialButterfly November 18, 2009 at 8:13 am

Can’t wait to see more on this Maddie! Here’s what I’d like to know:

1. Are the people doing social media in associations considered experts in the association’s field? For example, if ANA is doing social media, are nurses doing the work?

2. How are social media folks bringing members, staff, and the board up to speed on social media basics? Are they doing education series, articles in association publications? What else has been helpful?

_lr November 24, 2009 at 6:41 pm

YAY! To be part of Socialfish feature w/ @maddiegrant on behalf of social media outreach promoting "wandering" @AlzGA. http://bit.ly/5TpIK8

timscullin November 25, 2009 at 12:30 pm

Doing Social Media for your organization? — SocialFish http://bit.ly/7QVqJa Good resource

Network4Good November 26, 2009 at 11:53 pm

Doing #SocialMedia for your organization? — SocialFish http://ow.ly/G0f6 #npo #nonprofit

FSSimon November 26, 2009 at 11:53 pm

Doing #SocialMedia for your organization? — SocialFish http://ow.ly/G0ey #npo #nonprofit

taragotwalt November 27, 2009 at 12:48 am

RT @FSSimon: Doing #SocialMedia for your organization? — SocialFish http://ow.ly/G0ey #npo #nonprofit

FSSimon November 30, 2009 at 1:58 am

Doing #SocialMedia for your organization? — SocialFish http://ow.ly/G0f6 #npo #nonprofit

peggyhoffman February 11, 2010 at 8:58 pm

@BobFarrace check out socialfish series http://ow.ly/16tj6 #untech10

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