Online Social Media Strategies - Participation
by Ashley High

The last lesson from the We Are Media Project discussed listening. However, listening must eventually turn into participating in conversations about your organization or the issues it addresses. Conversations are not about “blasting out your message, creating content, or building an online community but more about engaging in a dialog with your current and potential supporters on blogs or social network sites.”

Participation is important because you can influence people’s perception of your organization and help them find ways to support your ministry. Start by dedicating five hours a week to online communication. Also, research Internet tools that allow you to start conversations without building an online community or requiring frequent content updates. These are good ideas for getting started and learning which Internet tools do or do not work for your organization.

Next, it is not always necessary to respond to every comment about your organization. Some organizations never respond to negative comments but instead, post tools that help the community defend your organization. Other organizations only respond to the factual errors in a negative post, but do not address the offended person’s feelings. Find a method of response that works for your organization and use it when dealing with negative comments.

Ways to Participate:

First, leave comments on blogs, photos, and videos. Whether your organization has its own blog, or is just responding to other blogs about your organization or the issues it addresses, leaving comments can help you better understand another person’s perspective. If you have a blog, website, Twitter, or Facebook (or another social networking site), set it as your signature when leaving comments so that other bloggers will be able to connect with you.

Set up a Twitter presence. It does not take long to post content that is only 140 words long, but it is time-consuming to find people who will regularly read your content and connect with you. Look for people or organizations of interest, and other people will follow them.

Set up an individual profile on Facebook or on another social networking site. This is a good strategy to follow before setting up an organizational profile. This will allow you to find other people interested in your field and will let you connect with influential people in your area.

Make it easy to give feedback. List your contact information very clearly so people do not have to scroll through many pages to find it.

Finally, use the appropriate creative commons licensing. Creative commons licensing will encourage feedback, although make sure you are very clear about how you want your work to be shared or used by others.

Information taken from: “Module 2: Participate in the Conversation.” We Are Media Project. www.wearemedia.org.

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