So I was going to push back on Jamie’s push back of my original push back about whether getting clarity about what your organization is all about is hard work or not.  LOL!  But whether you think it’s hard work (like Jamie) or not (like me), we all agree it’s a place to start.

You can do one of two things here.

1) be clear about your philosophy and core values from the get-go, and write it into your social media guidelines, or live it Zappos- or Netflix-style , or

2) start with your organization’s mission statement, no matter how crappy it might be, and use it as the basis for writing a Statement of Purpose for your social media activity.

Sound complicated? It’s not.  I promise.  What is your organization about?  Look at your mission statement. 

Here’s an example, picked at random:  ISTE.  This is from their website about page, and I don’t know if it’s their actual mission statement, but it works great for my exercise. (Apologies to them for being my guinea pigs here!)

“The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is the trusted source for professional development, knowledge generation, advocacy and leadership for innovation.

ISTE is the premier membership association for educators and education leaders engaged in improving teaching and learning by advancing the effective use of technology in PK–12 and teacher education. ISTE is home to the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS), and ISTE’s annual conference and exposition, (formerly known as NECC). ISTE represents more than 100,000 professionals worldwide.

For more than three decades, ISTE’s annual conference—presented by ISTE and keyed to the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)—has featured hands-on workshops, lecture-format and interactive concurrent sessions, discussions with key industry leaders, and the largest educational technology exhibit in the nation.”

So you have this nice mission statement (you are using yours, of course).  Your homework, just for fun, is to distill it down to one or two sentences that really clearly states what the organization is about, and use that to explain why you are using social media to advance your mission.  Here’s how I would do it:

Step 1. Distill this down to the core value proposition.

To do this, first eliminate the superlative bla bla bla about “being the best at providing value to the industry”. Cut out all the unnecessary words. Try and boil it down to one sentence, or maybe two max.  For my ISTE example, here’s what I came up with: 

“ISTE helps PK-12 educators and education leaders improve the process of teaching and learning by advancing the field through smart and innovative use of technology.” 

I just made this up, of course. I don’t know if this is what ISTE does.  But lets say it is.

Step 2. Write up your Statement of Purpose for your social media efforts. 

Now that you have your core value, add the social media part back to it.  This should be a total of a paragraph, maybe one page at the absolute maximum. What are you trying to do with social media? You’re trying to execute your mission – like Wendy Harman of the Red Cross said at the Social Media Workshop.

Back to my example:

“ISTE uses social media to help PK-12 educators and education leaders improve the process of teaching and learning by advancing the field through smart and innovative use of technology.  ISTE uses social media to give our members a platform to collaborate and share their knowledge and learning with each other and with the organization.  ISTE strives to be a hub for the best information on technology and education in the industry.”

This is just a start (and complete artistic license of course), but I think you get the gist.  Assuming you know what your specific social media strategic objectives are, adding the social purpose “layer” (sentence or two) to the core value of the organization should not be hard, at least not as a group exercise.  Because here’s the other thing.  This exercise is not about getting the wording perfect, for approval by the board.  No one gives a crap about that.  This exercise is about getting your social media team, at least, or everyone in the organization, if you’re lucky enough to be able to do something like this with everyone, to have clarity on why the organization exists and what social media can do to help it do the things it exists to do.  The clarity in this exercise does not come from getting the wording just right; the clarity comes from cutting all the layers of verbiage out, then adding a simple statement of purpose for the social part back on.  So that everyone’s on the same page.  Just as Jamie said, ”you need to be able to articulate a level of clarity that is below the platitudes and above the nitty gritty details.”

Jamie said he thinks “most associations operate with very little strategic/mission clarity”, and those high level mission statements are “not clear enough to guide social media, where the power is dispersed.”  That may be true, I don’t know.  In my experience association execs are actually pretty savvy about what the core value proposition of their association is.  Many (most!) association people I’ve met at ASAE events have introduced themselves to me by saying “I’m [X], I work at [x association] and we do [x].”  Just like I would have said, “I’m Maddie from SocialFish, we help associations build community on the social web”.  I think we DO know what our organizations are for – we just maybe haven’t written it down.

Maybe all it will take is a little exercise like this to spark that middle-level clarity and leadership.  And yes, I agree that this will be harder for some than for others.  But you gotta start somewhere! 

What do you think?  Would love to see some of your examples, if you do this at home.