Social Media as Strategy: Tools for Community Engagement and Development (2014)

Strategy, strategy, strategy. That's what you'll hear when you read any good social media or technology in human service article. It's an essential piece of getting started, doing it well, learning from your forays into technology use, and refining your approach.

This a great, practical read about how your human service organization can approach technology as a community engagement and community development tool. The research highlights that social media is a tool, not a universal solution. Its effectiveness requires strategic planning, organizational capacity, and understanding the diverse ways communities interact online. The report provides a framework and recommendations for nonprofits to consider when using social media to connect with vulnerable groups.

It gets nicely beyond the hype and gives you a solid grounding in the strategic approach you and your organization need to take to move forward successfully with technology in your service delivery toolkit.

“Social media has become a new buzzword in nonprofits and other organizations – heralded by many as a new way to reach and engage marginalized populations and to support significant progress in community development, mobilization and social change.

This report explores the role and function of social media as a tool for community engagement, in order to uncover enabling social media strategies and interventions that can be used to engage low-income and marginalized populations. Drawing on an extensive literature review and community interviews, this report highlights the usefulness and challenges of social media as a potential strategy and tool for engagement. It highlights key considerations and approaches for utilizing social media for community development and for engaging with low-income populations.

This research finds that utilizing social media – or any other communication and engagement strategy – requires careful planning and consideration related to mission, strategy and capacity. In particular, this research finds that social media is no silver bullet, highlighting the importance both of nonprofit capacity in developing and running any social media strategy and of understanding how diverse communities access, use and engage on social media.”

Key recommendations:

• Use existing tools and outlets
• Use strategic planning tools
• Start with mission and strategy, then tools and activities
• Develop service and support policies and expectations
• Build into funding, where possible
• Support internal capacity building
• Build content and technical skills expertise
• Make sure ethics and privacy are at the forefront
• Take the time to develop plans for gathering data and evaluating services, and online engagement strategies
• Coordinate information and support channels
• Learn from mistakes