In this series, we’re interviewing several people who do social media on behalf of their associations. In this interview, we talked to Nick Barron at the National Association of Home Builders. Check it out!

1) First things first: Tell us a bit about where your social media management role “lives” within your association. 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?

My title, Online Content Administrator, lives within the Online Services department at NAHB. This department has traditionally been responsible for nahb.org, and part of my job is to build new roads into social media. My position is full-time, while the social media-focused portion accounts for about 40 percent of my job. NAHB employs approximately 420 people, with thousands of local home builders’ associations and members across the U.S. and internationally.

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 association as a whole about your social media role?

At NAHB, there are several departments, as well as members who have taken the initiative to establish a presence in online communities and use social media. With those efforts in place, I decided to first meet with each person in the organization currently using social media on behalf of NAHB. After I had a chance to speak with everyone and understood their objectives, pain points and processes, I organized a meeting of everyone, where we discussed some ideas for incorporating our various strategies into a more cohesive approach. I’m not these individuals’ bosses, so I have to work with them to do what I know is best for the organization, but that still provides them with the control and access they need.

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?

I monitor mentions on Twitter of “NAHB” and “National Association of Home Builders,” and respond when I see an opportunity, such as when someone asks a question related to housing that I know we can answer. I have set up two streams based on these keywords within HootSuite. The first tab I open in my browser each day is Gmail, the second is HootSuite, and I check HootSuite probably about five to 10 times an hour. I forward tweets that our public affairs folks might be interested in knowing about. There are also some influencers NAHB has identified as being important voices in our industry, and I’ll soon be monitoring their conversations as well. At this time, we don’t use a paid monitoring service. I also monitor all LinkedIn groups using the NAHB name. Of the 15 or so LinkedIn groups using NAHB in their name, I control one. So it’s important for me to monitor the discussions taking place in all the other groups. Rarely do I join the conversations, but I do if a discussion focuses directly on a topic of which I know we can and want to respond.

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?

Twitter has been amazing for NAHB. The networking capability has allowed us to connect with some of our members in new ways, we’ve been able to answer every day people’s questions about housing, and, of course, we’re promoting NAHB content that I think the public can find useful and informative. LinkedIn poses both great challenges and numerous areas of concern for us. On one hand, especially when considering the group/subgroup relationship, we can establish an extensive community within LinkedIn for everyone from homeowners to NAHB members. On the other hand, there are many groups we do not manage and we are concerned there is the potential for LinkedIn members to be confused by which group is actually managed by NAHB, not to mention a devaluing or misuse of the NAHB brand.

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?

Right now, I’m still establishing these metrics. I’ve been on the job for four months, but as social is currently the more minor part of my job, evaluating what measurements make the most sense for us is taking time. Just today I completed the first audit of NAHB’s social media reach, focusing of course on numbers like fans and followers, but also the number of retweets, clicks, comments on discussion items, etc.

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?

Not a day goes by that I’m not educating someone, from staff to management to members. I try and focus on helping both members and those staff currently using social media for NAHB, and I may eventually offer webinars or other training or educational resources to assist them. I would say it’s not officially a part of my role, but I think it took me no time at all to see there is a need for this kind of education, to which I’m sure my peers in other organizations can relate.

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.

I’m really excited about what we can do with LinkedIn. The immense reach and breadth of our organization makes it perfect for building a group with full and focused subgroups, allowing our members, as well as homeowners, the opportunity to network, discuss and connect in ways NAHB has never provided. We also are building out the social capabilities of our Web site, nahb.org, and I’m excited to see what we can do for those who log into the site.

[NOTE: Nick will soon be joining the word of mouth marketing team at IMRE, a marketing, advertising and public relations agency.  We thought it was important to include his interview here to show how this size/type of association handles the social media manager role, which will continue going forward.  The NAHB will be advertising for Nick's replacement soon (at this link), and interested parties can email cgreeves [at] nahb.org for more information.]

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