Steve Wright's PantsAs I blogged earlier, I was lucky enough to spend last weekend in Nashville talking with the leadership from The Arc. I did a session on social media using the slide deck we created for our We Are Media trainings. All was going well. They were with me.

Then a very smart lady in the back of the room piped up: "We did all that, and our campaign still didn't work. What did we do wrong?"

That's when it hit me: What we don't have in that deck yet is a patience pants slide. 

Patience pants, by the way, are what I tell my four-year-old to wear when she's driving me nuts about something. When you're wearing patience pants, you're supposed to hang tight, participate in what's happening at this moment, and wait for the appropriate time to:

a) burst into song;
b) get a juice box; or
c) listen to Cinderella/Snow White/Ariel/Sleeping Beauty books on tape for six hundred and forty-second time today.

It occured to me last Saturday that this is the "secret sauce" we're all looking for when it comes to using social media well: patience. 

Anyone can use these tools well if they have the clarity of purpose and the patience it takes to build a community that will support the change you're trying to make. But we tend to forget about the patience part. Instead, we launch headlong into Facebook and wonder where our followers are. 

Chris Brogan put it really well in his newsletter today:

There's one response that people give me a lot when I talk about how something might work for them that really bugs me: yeah, but you're Chris Brogan.

And you're you. Lots of people have access to these tools. We can all start from somewhere, build into something, make relationships, and express ourselves in a way that suits our interests. The very same things I did are repeatable. There is no secret patented method. You can do the same. 

The reason Chris Brogan is, well, CHRIS BROGAN, is because he's been doing this for a long time. He sets goals, then builds the community he needs to reach them.  He does it honestly and transparently -- and he doesn't expect overnight success.

So, in that way, social media isn't different from any other channel you're using to reach stakeholders, engage volunteers, or raise money. You can't make something from nothing, and getting from nothing to something takes time.

P.S. The great pants featured here belong to NTEN member Steve Wright, from the Salesforce.com/Foundation. He has the finest pants collection of any NTEN member I know. I don't know if they give him extra patience, but they're always interesting.