ASAE Associations Now - SOCIAL MEDIA SUPPLEMENT: Net Gains

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As something of a frontier town on the information highway, Web 2.0 comes with plenty of inherent risk, and you’ll need to address it during your meeting. Members of social networks can post anything they want, including criticism or even wildly unfounded accusations. In that kind of context, it’s virtually impossible to control the message. Those kinds of realities make many an association skittish, to say the least. “It’s hard to open yourself up to what may be potentially criticism,” says Jonathon D. Colman, senior manager of digital marketing at The Nature Conservancy. “Not everyone is going to love that great story that you just posted, and some of them may say bad things about it or about you—in a public space. And that’s really scary.” Many nonprofits, Colman observes, fall prey to an urge to say, “Oh, but what about the review? Or what about running this by the board first?” The antidote to that thinking is one that association CEOs may not want to hear—that to some extent you have to relinquish absolute control of the message and risk the occasional slam, because the benefits of social networking make that tradeoff one worth making. Rather than cave to potential naysayers, Colman suggests, the way to think about Web 2.0 is like this: “Instead of empowering the three percent of people out there who don’t like you and want to say something bad about you, you’re empowering the 97 percent who do love you, love your mission, love what you’re doing, and want to say great things about you. You’re empowering them to have that voice, which I think at the end of the day is much more of a win.”

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• Tags: asae, association, associations, associations now, nonprofit, nonprofits, nptech, nonprofit technology, marketing, npmarketing, nonprofit marketing, jonathon d. colman, jonathon colman, jon colman, the nature conservancy, nature consservancy, tnc, social media, web 2.0, social marketing, web, internet, web marketing, internet marketing, digg
• Saved to Helping Hand by Jonathon D. Colman on November 03, 2007.