YNPNdc (Young Nonprofit Professionals Network) held their second annual social media conference August 6 at the ASAE & Center for Association Leadership. The theme, “Bringing Theory to Practice”, was emphasized by the advice shared by the presenters and speakers to the 140 attendees, detailing how they could put social media to work in their organization.
In a presentation on how to jumpstart your organization’s social media presence, Tammy Gordon, senior advisor for social communications at AARP, encouraged the audience to build a social media team, even if it is just one or two people, and utilize these people as allies as you start to build a social media presence in your organization. Brian Dresher, USAToday’s manager of social Mmedia & digital partnerships, shared that an effective way to reach out to users is to know your Twitter etiquette - “a retweet is the sincerest form of flattery”, replies and thank yous go a long way towards building relationships. Presenting on how to utilize social media to build hype for a nonprofit event, Rosetta Thurman, non-profit leader and consultant, suggested allowing attendees to help you promote your event by utilizing a social media friendly registration tool such as EventBrite that enables sharing event information across multiple social media platforms.
Panel discussions covered social media ROI and building the business case for social media, as well as communications and public relations 2.0, where panelists Debbie Friez, VP of major accounts from BurellesLuce, and Amanda Miller Littlejohn, founder of Mopwater PR, emphasized the continued importance of the “old media” practice of establishing relationships with journalists, but by using new tools to reach out like Twitter, Google Alerts, muckrack.com and HARO. Presentations and more information from the summit can be found at YNPNdc SlideShare Page