I do work with businesses to develop social media strategies, just as I work with nonprofit corporations. Yesterday, I gave a presentation at Nefesh B’Nefesh on the topic of Integrating Social Media Into Essential Business Functions. It was a lot of fun to think about using social media to support other business functions besides marketing.

Guess what? Social media is not just a platform for marketing and sales.

In fact, the idea for this presentation was formed when I began to investigate collaborative internal communication technologies for working on team projects. Then I started to wonder: what other business functions are supported by social media? Do social technologies actually increase efficiency in business functions? What would be the ROI of using them?

In a previous life, I was a small business consultant – thus, this presentation was created to answer these questions.

I looked at human resources, training, internal communication, product development, customer service, and sales/marketing. I purposely omitted a few areas (accounting, IT), but please chime in with your ideas for integrating social media platforms and technologies into all areas of business. At the end of the presentation, I offer the examples of Best Buy and The American Red Cross, two companies that have embraced social media.

I’m now beginning to to think about a similar presentation for nonprofit organizations. What are the essential organizational function areas that would benefit from social media integration? I’m thinking (out loud here) about member/client/organizational recruitment, program development, membership engagement, internal communication, human resources, and of course…fundraising. Do you already integrate social media into certain function areas at your nonprofit? Are you exploring this now? What are the ROI metrics? I’d love to hear your thoughts, and experiences.

Update: For some reason, I cannot embed this presentation into my blog, I’m linking to it instead. If you see a “tv” icon next to the link, hover over it and the presentation will pop up. (Some days, technology doesn’t work like you want it to.)

The 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference (10NTC) will be held April 8 – 10 in Atlanta, Georgia. It is the conference to meet colleagues, technology providers, nonprofits and nonprofit consultants. It’s run by the Nonprofit Technology Network, an incredible organization dedicated to sharing information about technology with the nonprofit community. I’m so excited about going the 2010 NTC to learn, meet, and discover. If you haven’t already attended an NTC, you are missing out on an amazing resource and opportunity.

The 10NTC proposed sessions are now open for public voting. The NTEN community was invited to submit workshop, panel and other session ideas for the conference. All of the session ideas are now available for public voting until October 16th. I am part of four different session proposals, and I’d love to be able to share them with you, in person, at 10NTC!

Voting for a session means scrolling over the stars at the bottom of the session description and rating the session by the number of stars to give it the rating you desire. If you are so moved, feel free to leave a comment in the session description about why you voted for this session. More information about the NTC voting process is available on their website here. Below are the session descriptions and links to voting for the sessions.

Integrating Social Media Into Organizational Culture

Amy Sample Ward and I both wrote this year about objections to social media that we’ve encountered. We developed this session to continue the conversation:

In this session we will discuss common objections to adopting social media, hear from experienced panelists, identify tools for collaboration, listening, and information sharing, and consider different organizational approaches to integrating social media successfully. We have invited nonprofit staff to share their stories and insights. This session is designed to leave plenty of time for questions and answers! Read more about this session and vote here.

Bringing Community Organizing Into Online Campaigns

Ivan Boothe and I are both former community organizers who now work with technology. We began talking about how the principles of traditional community organizing can really inform and strengthen online campaigns. We developed this workshop together, with a fun competitive twist:

What is the basis of community organizing and why is it important to online campaigns? Traditional community organizing informs a successful online campaign — and lays the groundwork for a sustainable, effective movement for social change. In this session, participants will get their hands dirty planning a social media campaign that integrates traditional organizing theory and practice.

During the workshop, we will present traditional community organizing principles and methods of campaign mapping. A nonprofit organization will follow by presenting its upcoming campaign and goals.  Attendees will divide into break-out sessions of 5-7 people to design the online campaign. The groups will use both community organizing principles and social media tools to create a multi-faceted online social media campaign. Each group will present its campaign strategy and tactics to the entire workshop. Workshop leaders will offer feedback, and the nonprofit will select a winning strategy.

One important point: YOU decide which campaign you want to plan! Session designers  will invite nonprofit organizations attending NTC to nominate their upcoming campaign for a social media campaign jumpstart during this workshop. Online voting within the nonprofit-tech community will determine with nonprofit will present its campaign.

Read more about the session and vote here.

How to Create an Action Ready Facebook Page

A while ago, I wrote a blog post about How Facebook Pages Grow. Brenna Holmes followed it up with a guest post describing how the California State Parks Foundation’s Facebook Fan Page grew from 517 to 45,000 fans. We took these ideas and developed them further to offer this session:

This panel is all about making your nonprofit’s Facebook page action-ready! An action-ready page has the right pieces and strategies in place to attract passionate fans, engage them on Facebook so they want to spread the word, and motivate fans to take action OFF of Facebook to further your nonprofit’s mission. This intermediate-level workshop will explore the theory of how Facebook pages attract fans, and analyze specific cases of nonprofits that are successfully attracting, engaging, and motivating fans to take action off of Facebook. We will share practical and theoretical best practices that are applicable to any nonprofit organization. The workshop includes case studies and insights from at least three nonprofit campaigns. If you’re already on Facebook and managing a Facebook Page and want to optimize your results, or if you are about to launch a campaign that includes Facebook (and they ALL should) this is the session for you!

Read more about the session and vote here.

Technology and Social Change: A Dialogue About Grassroots Activism and the New Tools

Steve Backman developed this session and spoke with me about being a panelist for the session. It’s a great session, and slightly different than the one I developed with Ivan Boothe. Here’s the description:

Social media  activism is transforming grass roots activism…or is it? While new style and traditional organizers are learning a lot from each other today, gaps persist in language, culture, and understanding. A diverse, representative panel will begin the discussion with an exchange of perspectives, and then the discussion will open up as  a roundtable among those in the room. Questions to explore include:

• how do I assess the right mix of communications will best reach the change agents in my community.
• what works and what doesn’t in introducing new media into a traditional staff and volunteer environment.
• what can successful community organizers teach new media activists to make us all more effective?

Read more about the session and vote here.

There are a lot of other amazing sessions at 10NTC. You can read and review the whole lineup here, and vote for as many as you want.

I hope to see you there!