In this series, we’re interviewing several people who do social media on behalf of their associations (including two who work for Association Management Companies). In this interview we talk to Brian Riggs of Association Headquarters about how this AMC team does their social media work.

1. First things first: Tell us a bit about where your social media
management role “lives” within your company. How is it integrated
within the structure of the organization? Is it a full time position, or
part of another role? What department are you in, if any? How large is your organization?

As a company we are just beginning to explore the benefits of social media and how its use can impact our company. At Association Headquarters, we take a shared approach and rely on many “managers,” including executive directors, members of our Web team, our Communications team, and senior leadership. In my role as Director of Business Development I am responsible for working with our social media team to identify how social media can benefit our company and help our in-house partners. This team is also responsible for the development of strategies for Association Headquarters and our client partners who request it.

Our implementation strategy is constantly evolving, and at varying times combines the “jump right in” approach and a strategic approach. We are definitely not afraid to experiment and have been given the liberty to do so.

2) The work of social media often cuts across lots of different traditional silos. Describe the process of how you communicate and work with other departments. How supportive is the company as a whole about your social media role?

The company understands the importance of social media and is extremely supportive of our efforts to engage in this medium. Leadership at AH has provided every resource necessary for our team to explore social media, including time to dedicate to the creation of biweekly meetings we call T2, or Technology Tuesdays or Thursdays (because they fall on either one of these days). The entire staff is invited to participate in these meetings, which include an interactive session led by two members of our Web team, David Comdico and John Hutchinson, myself, and Elizabeth Cies.

(left to right – back to front – Brian Riggs, Frank Scussa, John Hutchinson, Dave Comdico, Linda Woody, and Elizabeth Cies)

3) Everyone is dying to know how you manage the listening and monitoring process. Do you use a dashboard? Do you use any paid services? Any tips to share?

Listening is probably the most important part of social media and probably the easiest way for newcomers to ease their way into the social space. There are so many tools out there it can often be an overwhelming task to figure out which works best, but that shouldn’t deter anyone from experimenting. At the center of our approach is Google Reader. Other tools and processes our team uses include keyword searches in Seesmic or Tweetdeck, and Google Alerts. Google Alerts are fed into Google Reader, along with RSS feeds of key industry blogs. For mobile devices some of us use Übertwitter, and we also search Facebook, web forums, Flickr and YouTube to better understand of our environment.

I just stumbled across this list of free and paid services and I am looking forward to reviewing it in more detail over the next several days. (This list was pulled from Twitter):

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/155299 – (Top Tools for Social Media Monitoring)

While we have used free tools up to this point, we are exploring paid monitoring services for some of our larger client partners to simplify the data analysis and reporting process.

4) Let’s talk about the “big three” – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Of course, it largely depends on where your members are – but have any of these proved especially useful for achieving particular goals?

Each has proved to be useful in its own way, particularly for exploration and education. From a company perspective, I think we’ve seen the most positive results with Twitter. Through Twitter we post announcements on behalf of the company and our client partners, increasing visibility for AH and each of our associations. We also use it to follow trends, participate in association-specific discussions, for example #assnchat, and to drive interest to some of our own content like our company blog and company news.

While Twitter allows us to communicate out, Facebook has become more employee-centric and allows staff to remain up to date on company and client partner news. Facebook has also helped in strengthening our personal relationships within the company and individual teams and in some cases has brought staff and boards closer.

5) How do you measure the success of any particular projects? I don’t mean specific numbers, but do you have a “system” for how to decide what to keep track of, and how to report progress?

Good question. We are continually working on our strategy and so we are continually working on our measurables. As an industry, I think there is still a lot to be learned when it comes to measuring the success of social media efforts.

That being said, as of now we track specifics such as fans, followers, visits, or even retweets. We also keep an eye on our web analytics, especially right after we make a web or blog post, and we monitor responses accordingly. Until we completely define our social media strategy we have maintained a very basic system that is focused on measuring our ability to listen, locate, and educate. Our goal is to listen to our audience, locate information relevant to their needs, and educate our staff and external audiences.

6) How do you bring stakeholders up to speed on what social media activities are going on (whether it’s members, other staff, the board…) – is it part of your role to teach people about social media? What kinds of things do you do (if anything) to help bridge the digital divide?

Our approach has always been to educate our staff and encourage them to educate their boards and key stakeholders. Fortunately, our leadership is all ears when it comes to implementing and incorporating social media into our communications so they have encouraged us to educate them and the rest of our company.

Our approach varies by the individual and the need, but we make every effort to reach everyone at the company. I’ve worked with several colleagues and I know many within our social media team are doing the same. A group of us have been identified as “go to” people and we’re always happy to help.

Our most successful initiative has been our T2 meetings, which can draw anywhere from 50 to 60 staff members at a time. Our team also makes every effort to set up webinars, distribute relevant information to staff, and we make ourselves available whenever necessary.

For 2010 we’ve committed to bring in a series of educators to help our staff hear from other leaders in this space and to provide our teams with a different perspective.

Our team all contributed to the recent development of the Social Media Flower, an illustration that we use to help volunteer leaders understand the importance of social media and their role in the development of content for distribution.

7) Finally, tell us about a specific social media project you are
particularly excited about, whether it’s in the planning stages or something you’ve had success with.

While we’ve gotten off to a great start we recognize there is plenty of work to be done. Probably the most ambitious project we are pursuing, and the one we’re most excited about, is a company-wide communication portal/Intranet that our Web team is developing. It will give our staff the ability to increase internal communication and knowledge sharing. It includes some feeds, a Wiki, employee blogs and some other nice features that will allow our employees to participate in, and get comfortable with, social media. Many of our staff are eagerly awaiting a test drive. We hope it ultimately serves as a model of the type of communication our client partners can adopt in the future.