Preview of this week (July 13): Engagement + Conversation

Last week we broke some trail on exploring the “how” of social media: what good social media looks like in Alaska, how to get started on Twitter, and why shady deals in a transparent forum shouldn’t happen. I also gave you a summary of Jim Collins’ thoughts on social sector leadership; ideas that we should keep in mind as we strive to build movements, and sustainable organizations online or off. In between “articles” or posts, I asked for your advice on decisions and projects that I’m working on.

Whew. What a week! Where do we go next?

This week I’m hoping that we can explore a topic that I briefly touched when I rebooted this blog: engagement. After I wrote that post, a friend asked me what “engagement” really was. More often than not, social sector organizations are told to engage their base/audience/constituency for greater participation. What does this look like?

Mike Pawlowski, in response to that first post, said to engage we need to:

“Step 1. Show up to things.
Step 2. Invite someone who wouldn’t normally think of going.
Step 3. Repeat.”

Is this enough?

So let’s look at Engagement + Conversation. How can we use conversation to engage our community? I’ve invited Mindy O’Neall (co-host of The Mindy O’Nils Show on KUDO 1080 AM) to share her thoughts as to how conversation can be used as a means to engage. Also, we’ll talk about getting conversations started online, when good intentions make for bad decisions, podcasts that matter, and how to use video to have a dialogue.

Stay tuned, and please let me know if you like what you see, or if there’s something we’re not discussing.