Today I took part in a a conversation with a client who is mounting a broad-based initiative that will be based on holding a number of events around the country. The organization has a proposal from someone to help them use “social media” and, while a couple of key people are convinced of the worthiness of these new tools, they need help convincing the rest of their board.

I was asked to draft a quick one-pager that makes the case, briefly and succinctly. I thought I would share what I come up with as a first draft, since it might be useful to others in the same boat.

So here it is.

The Case For Social Media In Promoting Organizational Goals

In the last five years, a revolution in online tools has taken place. The question facing new efforts used to be, “should we get a web site?” Now it is, “should we get a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and start a blog?” As it was in the past, the answer to this new question is – for most initiatives – yes.

These and similar tools, collectively called “social media,” have one key element in common. They are online tools and platforms that facilitate social interactions and user generated content, so the contributions, comments and other responses of users are seen as intrinsically important. What this adds up to, is that social media is intrinsically about sharing.

This fundamental aspect of social media is at the root of why it is important, especially for small and low-budget initiatives, to work with it. Social media is nothing more than a means of generating, amplifying, and continuing what a decade ago was called “word of mouth.”

As an organization, I want to influence people’s decisions so that they decide to do what I want them to (for example: attend my event, take my course, pay attention to my issue).

The case for using social media, then, relies on three simple propositions:

• People make decisions based in large part on recommendations from peers or trusted figures. Increasingly, these recommendations are passed along through social media tools.
• The key characteristic of social media that makes it different from other media is that the contributions, comments and other responses of users are seen as intrinsically important.
• To influence people’s decisions, we need to monitor and play a role in these user responses.

For these purposes, important social media tools include: blog posts, comments on blog posts, user forums, email lists, reviews by consumers on shopping sites, and online communities like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. Each of these is a channel in which user responses and activities are key. They are all areas where an organization can seek to gain a presence.

While this may sound daunting for a small organization, it can actually be very simple and does not need a lot of apparatus. The three key elements are a blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account. The mechanics of doing this are outside of the scope of this note, but the approach is simple and, for the most part, free or inexpensive.

(Please feel free to adapt this if it is useful to you. Please do give me credit if you do, and letting me know you used it might be nice too as it would make my day. Note, too, that a portion of this appeared in another blog post on a similar subject.)