You Had Better Start Swimming: Non Profits and Social Media 2

In my previous blog post I talked about how a horrible financial situation in 1998 for the BC Touring Council and the massive onset of email for communication, combined for the organization to make some dramatic changes in how it communicated with its members and how it marketed itself.

Given the current financial scenario of non-profit arts organizations, especially in British Columbia, I think that next year, there will be many who will be in the same situation the BCTC was in in 1998: No money but a big new opportunity.

Isn’t that fantastic?

Now it’s time to get clever and redirect where the focus goes. The problem is, it’s hard to make these moves to the new social media tools. We all get comfortable where we are. They make for an entirely different way of working and thinking. For me, an “ah ha” moment came at an Arts Summit held in June 2009 in Vancouver where I heard Kris Krug speak about using the current tools.

I was “cutting edge” back in 1998 and I’d followed the changes since then, but I was still using older tools in my own business. I had a Twitter account but didn’t really use it. I had a Facebook account but didn’t really use it. I still had a very dormant, static web site that was a pain to update (and websites were my business!). I really didn’t like what I’d seen of these new social media tools but the real crux of it was that I just didn’t “get it.”

The points Kris Krug brought up got my mind spinning. For the first time in ten years, I was completely stoked again about where all this could go and how it could be used. One of the key pieces I realized was, “just start.” I come from a time that when you wrote something, produced something, whatever… it was finished and done, never to be altered again. This approach is very limiting because it slows everything down and makes one very careful.

I’ve come to realize with the new publishing tools such as WordPress-run websites, Facebook, Twitter, videos on YouTube, etc., that so much of it is about the process. I realized it’s ok not to have everything finished at once or have content that is “perfect.” As marketing guy, Seth Godin said “Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.”

With my “ah ha” moment, I started to look more deeply into the various new tools. I switched my website to one using WordPress. This has been so liberating for me. I can now update it quickly and easily. Twitter is fun to use, Facebook is proving to be more effective than I thought it would be, I’ve been blogging, posting images of my work to Flickr, and I’ve just started using YouTube for video. Where it will lead, I’m not entirely sure, but it’s certainly invigorating.

Sometimes, you just have to step into the pool.

What’s the lesson for non-profits? Start swimming, even if it’s in the kid’s end of the pool. Take the plunge and just start moving your arms even if you feel like you’re flailing in the water. It’s ok, you won’t sink like a stone.

For he who gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
- Bob Dylan

Resources

Check out a good blog about this by Beth Kanter called Nonprofits That Adopt Social Media Share One Characteristic: Vertigo Tolerance

Also, this one by Seth Godin called The problem with non

ADDED: Another Seth Godin post about which “hammer” you use and learning when to switch them. It’s called Hammer Time.