Cause-Driven Social Media Management

In Social Media Management we’ve talked a lot about leveraging new media to pitch and push products, an angle of marketing I’ve never before had the opportunity to contemplate - there just aren’t all that many professional forest ecologists selling Snuggies, in my field…

I enrolled in the course because I am interested in working in the ENGO (environmental NGO) sphere, and wanted to learn to use the tools and strategy associated with social media and traditional marketing to disseminate ideas, rather than products, and to enroll supporters in causes and institutional missions, rather than purchasing sodas and Snuggie fan clubs. I’ve relished the opportunity to study the product side, however, because it’s so …different from anything I’ve been exposed to before, and has provided me with a diversity of food for thought to mull over as I think about how conservation practitioners can improve upon selling the product that is environmental conservation.

I’ve been having a lot of fun familiarizing myself with the social innovation/entrepreneurship enthusiast communities online this semester, and have built up a robust list of nonprofit and social entrepreneurship twitter feeds to follow, in addition to an already substantial blogroll. This post, “How Nonprofits can Leverage Geolocation Services,’ is a great example of the approach I’m trying to take in thinking about the role of new media in the ENGO sphere. I was particularly interested in the fact that Kanter is thinking about how FourSquare can be put to work for nonprofits, since it’s a question that I expect any nonprofits I begin working for this summer will be seeking to answer, as well.

Meredith