You know that we're always trying something new here at NTEN, especially if it means that it will bring our members closer together. We recently launched a couple of roundtable discussions - phone calls with an online chat component - for IT Staff and communications/marketing folks. Today we met up with the marketing folks and had a great discussion about social media policies, facebook, communicating within your organization, and lots more.

Transcript of the chat portion is below. Feel free to join us in September for our next Communications Roundtable or IT Staff Roundtable!

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:

Flicker photo: mattedgarLately, I've noticed an uptick in the number of tweets on this theme:

I found an AWESOME way to get tons of followers on Twitter in days! (Insert spammy link here.)

This got me to thinking: Do we really want thousands of followers?

There's no shortage of folks out there telling you how. Then there are those mocking the tellers; just search for "twitter eleventy-billion" in any search engine for a great example, but be warned that it's pretty NSFW. There are even services out there that will auto-gather followers -- or let you buy them.

Yes, even in the age of social media, old school rules are being trotted out: bigger is still, apparently, better. The more followers you have, the more people may see your message, click on it, and take action. I get that. But like Aliza Sherman at Web Worker Daily, I'll take quality over quantity.

Here's my Twitter philosophy:

Flickr Photo: varnentYour job isn't going to exist in a few years, and it ain't the economy's fault. Blame it on social media.

If you're implementing social media smartly at your organization, you already know it raises more issues for nonprofits than it solves. Chief among them: who does it? If social media is about individuals conversing authentically with a community, who's in charge of the conversation?

You'll find most people responsible for social media in marketing departments. But shouldn't program staff be involved, as well? How about leadership?

I'm fascinated by the ways social media is changing how organizations structure themselves -- and in particular, how social media is redefining job titles in our sector. To whit: the second coming of the online community manager.

ReadWriteWeb has a new report out, "The Read Write Web Guide to Community Management", that marks the ascension of the online community manager (2.0). They do a great job summarizing exactly why the role is so challenging:

We're bringing We Are Media to San Francisco, live and in-person on February 12 and 13!

That's right! The sector's first and only social media curriculum created by YOU is coming to San Francisco. This workshop is designed for small planning teams from nonprofit organizations ready to roll up their sleeves for two days and dive deeply into understanding how to craft a social media strategy and to experiment with tactical approaches.

Throughout the workshop, we'll walk through important topics like:

Berkeley BreathedIf you know me, you know I love to talk. I find silence uncomfortable. Nonetheless, I often write on this blog about the power of social media for listening.

When I hear folks talk about pushing their message out through social media channels, I cringe. To me, social media isn't a channel, it's a cocktail party, where different kinds of conversations require that you LISTEN.

Of course, as any party host knows, when the party gets big enough, you have a problem: you simply can't listen to everyone. 2009 NTC keynoter Clay Shirky talks about this in Here Comes Everybody:

Flickr Photo: b_d_solisImagine you're at a cocktail party. Your friend introduces you to her colleague before heading off in search of drinks. You exchange names and occupations. What should you say next?

A) "Wow, that's an intersting line of work! How did you get into that field?"

B) "Yeesh! That line for drinks sure must be long. I'll go help my friend."

C) "Yeah, so the nonprofit I was telling you I work for? We're in the middle of our annual campaign. How about donating $25?"

Flickr Photo: Duane StoreyJames Carville helped keep the Clinton campaign on message in 1992 by hanging a sign on Bill Clinton's door that read, in part, "The economy, stupid." That now-famous catchphrase is widely credited with giving the Clinton campaign its win. Although we don't know if it was ever taped up on any doors, I think the winning strategy for the Obama campaign was "Transparency, stupid!"

In this election, Obama rode a tidal wave of youth vote to the presidency, with 66% of voters under 30 casting their ballot for the Democrat. What the campaign realized, early and often, is that the under-thirty crowd communicates differently from the rest of us. As Allison Fine writes in Momentum, this group is "... likely to engage in two-way conversation with staff, volunteers, and clients, rather than in one-way broadcasts, the style of communication most often used by organizations now."

This meant two things for the campaign.

Let's close out this week of We Are Media goodness with a really fun one: video sharing!

I have to confess I have no idea how I lived my life before this:

Flickr Photo: paurianMuseums get a bad rap as purveyors of the past. I'd guess most of us, when we think about museums at all, think about dusty old things. But the very best museums tie all that old stuff to the world we live in today, and the future we're creating.

It's a lot like our roles as non-museum nonprofits: we sift through all the information and data out there to find what matters for our communities -- and make it relevant.

Part of that is the selection process, choosing what we'll showcase. The other part is how we design our display, or communicate what we're showcasing.

Another way of saying this: How people get your message is as important as what you're saying.