What if they don't know social media?

Over the holidays I spent a few hours driving into and out of the mountains with my siblings, who are both older than I am and haven't really been caught up in the technology industry. During the drive, I found myself doing a lot of explaining about what I do, particularly the parts of my job that involve social media. My brother and sister are not the kind of people who complain constantly that their "email doesn't work" or that their computer "is out to get them." That is my mom. No, my brother and sister are probably typical 40+ year old Americans who use technology that has entered the Late Majority phase, by Geoffrey Moore's definition. They use email, home computers, ipods and the like. But these folks don't know what is going on out there in the Internet world, and my guess is that most of the constituents of non-profit organizations are just like my siblings.

I knew this already, but I didn't have the real world frame to drive it home for me. Emily Riley from Forrester Research told me this a month ago when she shared the tidbit that even online influencers use email as their primary distribution vehicle. I remember being surprised by that, because I had a mental image of the "influential" as being the guy who uses all of the latest stuff. In that image, email as the primary communication vehicle seemed so old school. Talking with my siblings, I realized this makes sense. Even if we as individuals are nose deep in social media, and we are the kind of person who is influential, we have to recognize that a lot of our network is only neck deep, or waist deep, or knee deep or (gasp) pinkie toe deep. So, if we want to reach the most people, we have to use methods that reach the most people.

So, what is a progressive, hot-for-social-media non-profit supposed to do? Just use email (said with teenage sarcasm)?

The answer is - yes and no. If you only want to reach a small portion of people in the world (at this point), then yes, just use your Facebook Page to communicate with people. If you want to reach their brothers and sisters, then use email too. If you want to reach their mothers and fathers, then use direct mail too. It's called multi-channel.

But still, what if I really just want to use social media (said in 5 year old tantrum voice)?

Well, this is tougher. I thought about this a bit while eating incredibly greasy food from Sonic in Canyon City, CO. How would I convince my brother and sister to use a blog when they don't even know what it is? The answer, I think, is providing a personal frame and some education.

The frame has to be personal because saying, "Blogging is hot, and kind of cool" does not work for most 40+ year old men and women. They aren't motivated by what is cool any longer. At least not to the degree that we all once were. No, I needed to provide a personal reason to make a blog useful. "We could tell the funny stories about what our kids make us do each day, and we could share pictures." Now, that was a reason they could get behind.

The next step is education, because although they thought a family blog could be good, they were a little worried about their ability to do it. I explained that I could set it up and all they had to do was login and type. I think I even used the phrase, "Its a lot like email."

There are parallels here with your constituents. If you want to drive your constituents to use social media tools because they are cheap, useful, and viral, then you need to make it personally fulfilling for constituents to do so and then you need to show them how to do it.

We'll see how the blog goes. Even if I get everyone in there, I still haver the challenge of keeping them there, contributing consistently. But that is another post.