Last week I talked about how social media platforms could help us work together in new ways, but it will also have an impact on how and what we know about each other. Social media provides us a new way to get to know and understand our colleagues, collaborators, clients, and supporters.
It had been widely reported that social network users have surpassed email users. People are using social media to share information about their activities, interests, likes, and dislikes. Is the Social Sector listening? Are we sharing? What can we do with this information? Mark Benioff talked about a social divide beginning between businesses that are social and those that are not. He even predicts that the next Arab Spring will be a “Corporate Spring” where heads of companies will be taken down because they are not listening enough to their employees and their customers.
What should the social sector do differently now that we have a new way to get to know each other, listen, and learn? What does this mean for fundraising? Marketing and communication? Volunteer recruitment and management? Evaluation and data collection?
I don’t think any of us can foresee all of the answers to these questions yet, but I want to urge us to begin to Get Social about how we can move the social sector to the forefront of the social revolution. Where to begin? Start the conversation by adding your comments to this blog about ways you think social media and the cloud can help advance your mission.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
What does the social revolution mean for the social sector?
Last week I left readers with a question to ponder: What does the social revolution mean for the Social Sector?
I’m sure as we all pondered this question, immense possibilities emerged. Though much of the Salesforce conference I recently attended was aimed at the 97% of the audience that was from the corporate sector, the theme of the DreamForce 2011 conference, Let’s Get Social, crossed the boundaries of sectors.
Here is one key message I was able to translate.
Social media platforms and the cloud are creating new ways to collaborate and share information. For example, Salesforce’s application Chatter, released in June 2010 combines the best of Facebook and Twitter but is secure for an organization. It allows staff to collaborate/chat about projects, share documents, stream video, and perhaps most intriguing, invite non-Salesforce users into Chatter groups to collaborate while keeping all your organization’s data private. Platforms like this could enable us to easily:
Freya Bradford, Consultant, NorthSky Nonprofit Network
I’m sure as we all pondered this question, immense possibilities emerged. Though much of the Salesforce conference I recently attended was aimed at the 97% of the audience that was from the corporate sector, the theme of the DreamForce 2011 conference, Let’s Get Social, crossed the boundaries of sectors.
Here is one key message I was able to translate.
Social media platforms and the cloud are creating new ways to collaborate and share information. For example, Salesforce’s application Chatter, released in June 2010 combines the best of Facebook and Twitter but is secure for an organization. It allows staff to collaborate/chat about projects, share documents, stream video, and perhaps most intriguing, invite non-Salesforce users into Chatter groups to collaborate while keeping all your organization’s data private. Platforms like this could enable us to easily:
- Follow the activities that are happening at each organization related to a collaborative group or project we are a part of through real-time news feeds involving only those in our coalition or collaborative group.
- Get feedback from a group immediately about an idea or course of action.
- Have one place where collaborative documents, videos, etc. live that can be accessed by anyone in a group.
What could a secure social media platform for your organization mean for grassroots activism? Advocacy? Board governance? Case management and client referrals?
Stay tuned for next week’s posting as I continue to ponder these questions.
Freya Bradford, Consultant, NorthSky Nonprofit Network
Thursday, September 15, 2011
It's Time for the Social Sector to Get Social
Last week at Dreamforce 2011, Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, welcomed me and the 45,000 other attendees to “The Social Enterprise.” It is a term Salesforce.com has recently trademarked. While it is not the Social Enterprise that we nonprofits think of, it is a change I think we need to pay attention to.
But first, what was a nonprofit consultant from a small town in Michigan doing at the largest technology conference in the world? I have been helping NorthSky adapt the Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Nonprofit Edition to manage contact information and project data in one place and digitally streamline workflows and business processes. Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that is 100% open and cloud- based, meaning there is no software/hardware to install or maintain updates on, and it can easily integrate with other products to customize its functionality. The Salesforce.com foundation donates the first 10 user licenses to 501c(3) nonprofits as a part of their commitment to donate 1% of all products, equity and employee time to charity. Nearly 12,000 nonprofits currently use Salesforce including United Way, the Red Cross and Goodwill.
While I learned a lot at Dreamforce about the nuts and bolts of Salesforce, what hasn’t left me since I got back is a tremendous new enthusiasm for the potential of social media platforms, like Salesforce’s new Chatter, to change our work as the social sector.The Social Enterprise that Mark Benioff has started talking about are businesses that are beginning to harness social media to do business in a whole new way, to collaborate more effectively with colleagues and customers. This shift has been enabled by the creation of social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now Salesforce’s Chatter, and the move from the “PC Era” to mobile, cloud-based technology.
Why does the social sector need to pay attention to these changes and claim space in this movement? Social media and the cloud are helping us to connect with each other and with information more rapidly than ever before, changing the very way we build, maintain, understand and use relationships. And relationships are the key to our ability to achieve our social missions. Social media will change each and every one of our relationships – our relationships with each other, our supporters, and our clients – we need to get in the game to make this work to our advantage.
The video opening Dreamforce this year clearly set the tone that new social platforms are not just the standard decennial change in technology, but are actually creating a social revolution. Perhaps what made this most clear were the pictures from the Arab Spring of protestors with signs and graffiti that thanked Facebook for their ability to organize and take down regimes.
While the video went on to show how this new social platform could do things for business like push coupons to customers standing right outside a store, I found myself stuck on one question that seemed to have much more weight than good customer service,
What does this social revolution mean for the Social Sector?
Stay tuned to next week’s blog as Freya Bradford, NorthSky Consultant, continues to ponder this big question.
But first, what was a nonprofit consultant from a small town in Michigan doing at the largest technology conference in the world? I have been helping NorthSky adapt the Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Nonprofit Edition to manage contact information and project data in one place and digitally streamline workflows and business processes. Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that is 100% open and cloud- based, meaning there is no software/hardware to install or maintain updates on, and it can easily integrate with other products to customize its functionality. The Salesforce.com foundation donates the first 10 user licenses to 501c(3) nonprofits as a part of their commitment to donate 1% of all products, equity and employee time to charity. Nearly 12,000 nonprofits currently use Salesforce including United Way, the Red Cross and Goodwill.
While I learned a lot at Dreamforce about the nuts and bolts of Salesforce, what hasn’t left me since I got back is a tremendous new enthusiasm for the potential of social media platforms, like Salesforce’s new Chatter, to change our work as the social sector.The Social Enterprise that Mark Benioff has started talking about are businesses that are beginning to harness social media to do business in a whole new way, to collaborate more effectively with colleagues and customers. This shift has been enabled by the creation of social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now Salesforce’s Chatter, and the move from the “PC Era” to mobile, cloud-based technology.
Why does the social sector need to pay attention to these changes and claim space in this movement? Social media and the cloud are helping us to connect with each other and with information more rapidly than ever before, changing the very way we build, maintain, understand and use relationships. And relationships are the key to our ability to achieve our social missions. Social media will change each and every one of our relationships – our relationships with each other, our supporters, and our clients – we need to get in the game to make this work to our advantage.
The video opening Dreamforce this year clearly set the tone that new social platforms are not just the standard decennial change in technology, but are actually creating a social revolution. Perhaps what made this most clear were the pictures from the Arab Spring of protestors with signs and graffiti that thanked Facebook for their ability to organize and take down regimes.
While the video went on to show how this new social platform could do things for business like push coupons to customers standing right outside a store, I found myself stuck on one question that seemed to have much more weight than good customer service,
What does this social revolution mean for the Social Sector?
Stay tuned to next week’s blog as Freya Bradford, NorthSky Consultant, continues to ponder this big question.
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