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When you think of social media, what do you think of? Why?

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what is social media?

Reach – social media tools allow for a global reach

Accessibility – social media tools are generally available to anyone, anywhere, at little

or no cost

Usability – social media tools do not require specialist training or understanding to

use

Recency – social media tools are capable of nearly instantaneous responses

Permanence – social media can be altered or edited (whereas traditional media, such

as print, cannot)

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Social platforms – pulls it all together into one place – allows for interaction across the different subject areas

Networking – linking with other like-minded individuals or brands

Expressing – putting our thoughts and ideas out to the world

Sharing – using online tools to allow others to access our ‘stuff’

Gaming – an online twist to the traditional board game!

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In the context of branding and selling

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To date, SI’s web presence tends to fall into these categoriesSI’s websiteFederation websitesRegion/Union websitesA handful of club websitesFacebook pages specifically for SI groups (total ~ 150)Twitter accounts specifically for SI groups (25 groups and 1860 followers)News articles (primarily local news bites about Club activities)Forums (also local forums, usually to announce a Club meeting or activity)

SI’s website, in the past month, had over 10,000 visits, a 25% increase since we started monitoring in May 2010. Visits tend to increase 1,000 per month, of which 63% are new. The most recent month’s visits came from a total of 120 countries. Overall, SI has a ‘healthy’ local presence on the web (i.e. at Club level in local websites and online publications). There is, however, a distinct focus at Club level (though Federations do publish, this tends to take the form of internal comms, not external social media interaction). Our regional coverage in social media tends to focus in North America and Europe, however, SI does have a global presence.Those individuals who are spreading the SI message via social media tools tend to be very positive, very ‘passionate’ (i.e. they repeatedly post about SI)SI has a website, a blog, TIS (directly sent to a specific mailing list), and a Programme newsletter (currently under review). The SI Blog can be set up as an RSS feed. SI is about to launch a new website.Federations (very broad snapshot audit)

SIA has a website, an email list, social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, and Flickr), a President’s Blog, a paper subscription based magazine, and a trafficking-specific newsletter. SIE has a website, a Programme newsletter, RSS feeds, social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, and myspace), and a paper subscription based magazine.SIGBI has a website, RSS feeds, a youtube presence, and an online digital magazine. SISWP has a website and paper magazine, though regional areas are very engaged in social media.

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For SI, we have five primary goals we will try to achieve through our social media campaign:Member – member connections across Federations: as we see with Friendship links and the newly launched SIA-SIE project matching initiative, there is extreme member appetite for connecting with members in other Federations. This ties into the ‘international’ to which members sign up and expect. As SI is the link between Federations, there is clear scope to utilise social media to facilitate and encourage cross-Federation connections. Members connecting to SI’s global work: Social media is a powerful tool to illustrate and publicise SI’s global impact and successes, the core driver of the new long term project model as approved by the SI Board. Social media allows for real time reporting, updating, and sharing.Profile raising: Externally, we can use social media tools as vehicles for raising SI’s profile within the international community and increase our ‘brand’ awareness, beginning with like-minded individuals and organisations. The more ‘hype’ we can generate, the more SI will become known for achieving our goals. We can use social media to ‘connect’ to like-minded organisations and their followers to pro-actively showcase our work. We will also use social media to launch our new long term project, in a coordinated international information sharing campaign. Fundraising: social media can, eventually, translate into a tool which can be used for fundraising as well. This will not be part of our initial social media strategy and plan, but can be implemented in time. FUN! Finally, social media can be fun and exciting! The right social media strategy can create an engaging, energizing, and inspiring environment for members, by using pictures, videos, blogs, and other ways that individuals can feel a ‘part’ of something global.

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Our next step in developing our social media strategy will be to determine who we are trying to have a conversation with. This kind of target audience segmentation will take place over the coming months as we develop our launch campaign and identify potential audiences. External audiences for profile raising

Primarily, we aim to connect with other like-minded organisations, including service organisations, women’s organisations, and international human rights organisations. As a secondary effect, we hope to raise our profile with the individuals who are ‘members’ of the communities with which/whom we aim to connect. Our goal is get the Soroptimist name out there as a group working to improve the lives of women and girls, primarily through increasing access to education and leadership skills and opportunities.

Current social media ambassadors of SI – easy way to begin profile raising straight awayCurrent membership profiles – segmented

Location: global, equally weighting heavy SI presence and new SI presence. Generally, Facebook is the most widely used and recognised social media platform, across cultures and contexts. Age: 40+. Facebook also attracts users evenly across age bands. Stumble Upon, Twitter, Delicious, and LinkedIn are also widely used by an older demographic. Level of social media engagement (based on general profiles): SI has a variety of profiles. Many users are extremely active in the ChatLine, and this should be considered in the launch of the new website and social media platforms. We have a few avid tweeters and many who use social media to share photos of Soroptimist events. SI also has a strong presence on FB and YouTube.

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Our strategy is threefold: Introduce, Connect, and Share.

SI aims to keep our social media simple, streamlined, and straightforward.

TOOLBOX:FBTwitterTumblrLinkedInSharing via StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Tweeting, ‘like’ in FBFlickrYouTubeSoroptiVoice Blog

Introduce: SI to like-minded organisations and communities members to members in other Federations

members to SI’s global workTOOLS:1. LinkedIn: using a business and professional networking tool to introduce SI to other like-minded organisations and communities2. FB/Tumblr: using a social media platform to ‘introduce’ SI to appropriate communities and to ‘introduce’ our global work to members. SI is creating a FB ‘page’, not a group or a profile, as this is more conducive to our goals and more appropriately reflects the structure of SI. At international level, we want to promote our branding and provide an appropriate means for members to become ‘fans’, but not to join as a ‘group’. 3. Introducing our website to StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Tweeting, and ‘like’ in FB via a bespoke sharing toolbar to cover all three introduction goals

Connect: SI to global partners members across different Federations

Federations to Federations

TOOLS:1. LinkedIn: As we grow and develop our professional network, LinkedIn can be a powerful tool to create and maintain connections across Federations and with our global partners2. FB/Tumblr: by creating a virtual ‘space’, SI is enabling, encouraging, and nurturing international connections, capitalising on technology to further the principles behind initiatives such as Grants of Friendship and Friendship Links, but increasing the scope, stretch, and ease of connecting. FB can also be used as a virtual meeting space for cultivating appropriate global partnerships, both formal and informal. 3. Flickr: connecting via photos is an extremely effective tool for helping members to connect to each other, to feel ‘connected’ to the internationality of SI, and to, literally, show our global partners what we do and what we are about. It is one thing to know about an SI club on the other side of the globe, it is entirely another to see photos of their work. The same is true for our international projects. Our Flickrstreams cover everything from club projects to international projects to meetings and conferences and are built into the structure of our new website for ease of navigation and connecting. 4. YouTube: videos on YouTube serve many of the same purposes of Flickr under the goal of ‘connecting’.

Share: global impact reporting stories and case studies best practices and overcoming challenges gaps and needs awareness raising

Sharing is the primary goal of our social media strategy. It is under this aspect that SI can truly promote our global brand and publicise our global impact. While we do not want to pigeon hole our audience and miss opportunities, we are cognisant that there is both an ‘internal’ audience and an ‘external’ audience, and SI must be aware that different communications may be better suited to one or the other (i.e. best practices are more suited to an ‘internal’ audience whereas some forms of impact reporting are more suited to an external audience to raise our profile or, in the future, for fundraising). As a global organisation in the 21st century, SI must utilise electronic communications to share information. To ensure effectiveness, SI will commit to keeping content fresh, exciting, and new. TOOLS:1. FB/Tumblr: With SI’s FB page, we can share photos, videos, reports, news, updates, and other media to celebrate our work and publicise our global impact. With a FB page, SI will have the ability to link the SorotiVoice blog to the FB page, stream those updates through RSS feeds, link to Twitter for up to the minute news and updates, post images, embed videos, and other methods of sharing. 2. Twitter/Tumblr: Twitter will primarily be a means to quickly sending alerts about new stories, news items, images, photos, and other types of content. Twitter will also be utilised as a means to share up to the minute information from events, meetings, and conferences, such as CSW, Montréal, DPI, etc. Strategies will be rolled out to ensure that Soroptimists attending such meetings and events will be able to tweet and that appropriate hashtags are created and used.3. Sharing via StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Tweeting, ‘like’ in FB, Tumblr: when posting content of particular interest, we hope that our audience will choose to ‘share’ the information via the sharing toolbar on our website and via apps in FB and Twitter. This will serve to share information both internally and externally. 4. Flickr and YouTube: both excellent tools for sharing media content, linked to website, FB, and tweeted. 5. SoroptiVoice Blog: a new addition to our website will be the SoroptiVoice blog. Currently, our blog is used for both news and updates and some traditional blogging. With the new website, news items will be posted under a special news section while traditional blogging will be done on the SoroptiVoice blog. Each week, a different Soroptimist involved in programme work will be invited to write a piece –no one Soroptimist will be asked to write more than once a year, and we will aim to present as much geographic coverage and content spread as possible (i.e. information about international projects, about UN work, about local work linking to international work, from Programme Directors, etc.)

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What have we said? Examples of how SI has used social media since launching our strategy in March, under the goals of introducing, connecting, and sharing:

1. Kick off with CSW – live tweeting and status updates from inside the closed sessions, blogs from attendees, connecting with other organisations

2. International Women’s Day – 100 things Soroptimists had recently done to improve the lives of women and girls, connected to news articles and the blog series for the commonwealth agents of change competition, plus live updates from alice’s speech at the UN in Vienna

3. DPI – SI became one of the strong social media voices at DPI and gathered many new followers and was able to advocate for the inclusion of a youth representative in the closing panels

Oxfam green scarves campaign (Lucy or notes from Kate)

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