The LinkedBook?

“Always be creating content. Content is the currency of social media.” -David Wells, founder of www.SocializeYourCause.org

In the social media age, content is king. So we need to be creating content all the time.

This doesn’t mean we necessarily have to do much more than we’re currently doing. But it does require we think differently about what we’re already creating. Rather than a static homepage that never changes, we may want to have a home page that features the stories in our latest newsletter or view book. When our CEO or board chair speaks, we may want to record them for an audio offering on the site. Or take a quick video of them to upload to YouTube. We are already doing the newsletters and our CEO is already speaking. But now we get much more use out of things that used to be one-time hits.

This is called the long tail.

All too often, someone in our organization goes to a conference or reads an article about social media and drinks the social media Kool-Aid. They jump in with both feet, joining social networks and posting things all over the web. They drive people around them crazy trying to get them drink the Kool-Aid too. Some people ride this high for an amazing period of time. (At the time of this writing in 2010, I know people that are still advocating AOL and Yahoo!Groups., tools that were cutting edge 10 years ago but have been surpassed since then!)

When the excitement finally ebbs, they get frustrated. People in their organization aren’t “getting” it fast enough. Or donors and supporters aren’t jumping on the band wagon the way the guy at the conference said they would. So they give up, and stop creating content cold turkey. Years later that content is still up there, looking really dated. (I just came across a travel guide website that warned of a site not opening until the fall of 2007. That was three years ago. How in the world can I trust anything else written in that travel guide?)

It’s far more effective to channel that enthusiasm into creating a sustainable strategy that fits the style of the organization. To that end, let’s look at how to build a solid strategy.

Back in the “old days” of the 1990’s, websites were simply pages with a  logo, some text, and a bunch of blue links. When I do trainings, one of my slides is an Amazon site from this time. An Amazon logo on the top of a gray page with blue links to the books.

Since this type of web presence is more like a magazine or a brochure, it’s often referred to as brochure-ware.

Most of our nonprofit websites haven’t left the 1990’s. They’re not much more than digital brochures. We have great information on them, but we control all the content. There’s precious little opportunity for fans to add their comments or join an email list or sign a petition. And we often make it really hard for people to see how to make a donation. It’s almost as though we just want people to come to our site and read.

Amazon found out it could sell more books if it allowed customers rate books and write reviews. It turns out, we trusted other customers’ comments more than we trusted Amazon’s. After all, Amazon was trying to get us to buy the book. We expect them to say nice things about it. But the customers didn’t have anything to gain, so their comments were seen as more authentic.

Allowing customers to create reviews is a form of “user generated content.” And user generated content is a phenomena that took off! People like creating, like being noticed, like making their mark.  Successful online communities make it easy.

Out of control
Let’s be honest: this freaks us out. We live in the illusion that we control our nonprofit’s message. We like that illusion. Like a child snuggling a blanket, we find comfort in it. But it’s not true. We’ve never controlled the message. People have always been talking about us—saying both good things and bad.

Users have always been generating their own content. It’s just that today’s tools are more sophisticated than a can of spray paint or a picket line. And can have a much wider impact.

One common objection to “social media” is that it’s “just a fad; it’s not going to last.” But seen in this light, social media is birthed out of our innate desire to communicate and connect with others. We’ve been doing this stuff for millennia. Ancients used to gather around the campfire and cave walls are filled with drawings of killing the wooly mammoth.

Today our campfire is the Internet and the drawings can be viewed by anyone with a web browser.

User generated content
User generated content can be written. It can be as basic as a blog. Some of the nastier examples of written user generated content can be seen in the comments sections on any newspaper website. Written content is continuously created on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

User generated content can be audible—recordings of lectures or music or just a personal ranting. These are often called podcasts. NPR podcasts each of its show segments, but you can make one right from your laptop. My kids make them from their ipods! Audible user generated content is often shared on sites like iTunes, Blip.fm, Last.fm, MySpace, and Facebook.

User generated content can be video—Apple found that out when iPod fans started creating their own iPod ads. These ads were good. Another example is the completely volunteer made movie “The Search for Gollum,” a story birthed out of fans passion for Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The more passionately identified people are with a product or cause, the more inclined they are to tell their friends. And some of that telling can be amazingly creative. Video content can be shared on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and—yes—Facebook.

But let’s face it, social media seems like a wildly chaotic space filled with made up words and badly spelled names: Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, tweeple, tweetups, pinging, Razoo. The list goes on becoming more and more like alphabet soup.

It’s far too easy to let your head be turned by tools. “Did you see CNN is quoting from Twitter? Why aren’t we on Twitter?” “Hey, XYZ nonprofit has a Facebook page, we need one too!” “What do you mean we don’t have a Ning community. We’re going to miss out.”

Saying we need a Facebook page or a Twitter account is just as crazy as a contractor saying, “I need to build a house because I have a hammer.” Crazy, isn’t it? We’d want the contractor to have a plan first. Then, and only then, would she be able to choose the appropriate tool. A hammer might be right but in some places you’ll need a wrench. So too in social media: sometimes you need Facebook, other times you need a blog or a  Flickr account. It depends on your strategy.

So in this guide, we’ll help you define your strategy and then show you tricks to effectively use the tools.

So that’s where we’ll start. Using the process in the first half of this book, you’ll be able to craft a strategy for your organization. You can use this to convince board members, your boss, your staff, or even yourself, that social media might be of benefit for your organization.

Fortunately, there are ways to put parameters on social media, to master it so it doesn’t master us. Because it can feel like it is taking over your life. The learning curve on these tools can be quite steep. And even though they’re “free” —meaning there’s no charge to use them—they do cost you or your organization time.

To create a strategy, we’ll help you define:

• What you want to accomplish
• Why that is the right thing to accomplish
• Who you need to reach to accomplish it
• Where those people mostly likely hang out
• Which tools you need to reach them
• How to use those tools

The old saying is true “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll likely end up somewhere else.”

In the second half, you’ll be able to focus on the most common tools in the social media tool box. We’ll give you tips and tricks on using each one. We’ll also give you ideas about some up-and-coming tools. And I’ll be sure you have techniques for the now “old school” tools of websites, blogs, email newsletters, and search engine optimization.

The world is at your doorstep. Go ahead, welcome it in.