The age of social media represents a fundamental change in where power is clustered.
A better way to say it is that social media has “unclustered” power. No longer do large corporations and brands hold all the cards. We’re entering an age when individuals, especially individuals working together, can do what only big brands and corporations used to be able to do, like influence.
Your members, supporters, fans have more power than you. That’s not something to be feared. Rather, it’s a tremendous opportunity—if you use it effectively.
Let’s talk quickly about how NOT to use social media. First, it’s not a dumping ground for existing content. It’s also not a place to make endless sales pitches. And it’s definitely not a rinse-and-repeat, one-size-fits-all operation.
The advice we used to give (that we were passing on from the social media experts) was to pick one platform and do it well. That’s not really enough anymore. It’s not that you have to tackle every single platform out there.
But you do need to develop a consistent social media voice across your platforms, and then share your best stuff, tailored to fit what that platform is truly about.
We love the advice from Gary Vaynerchuk in his book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: “Stop thinking about your content as content. Think about it, rather, as micro-content—tiny, unique nuggets of information, humor, commentary, or inspiration that you reimagine every day, even every hour, as you respond to today’s culture, conversations, and current events in real time in a platform’s native language and format.”
In other words, if you are only using social media for an endless series of updates and calls to action, pushing your Facebook feed through to Twitter, or pinning images of your own brand to Pinterest, you’re missing the opportunity.
We don’t have the time or space to tackle the nuances of every platform. But we’d like to share a few tips about the social media platforms we know that associations are using most.
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