Friday, September 11, 2009

The First Time Is Always Hardest

I know social media in all its forms has been around for a while but it’s a relatively new world to me.

I have in the last few weeks been forced to facebook, tempted to twitter and badgered into blogging.

I am going to own up to initially not seeing the value in all this, either personally for personal connectedness, or for our work here at the LBF. But I will say that having now entered these brave new worlds I can see how they become, on the one hand strangely addictive, and on the other, very valuable tools to connect with friends and people of like thinking and to share our work and its importance meaning with many people.

But the interesting thing for me is that whole new audiences that have started to take an interest in our work and join up and follow and share with their friends and networks. It is clear to me that our traditional means of communication - website, newsletters, the good old telephone, and meetings - whilst very valuable are not reaching whole large groups of people. That doesn’t mean we are about to ditch any of those channels of connecting, we’re just adding some new ones into the mix.

There sure is a fear factor too when it comes to tweeting, blogging and the like, not just around putting yourself into cyberspace for all to see but also in wondering if indeed there is something interesting to say!

And hard too is the need to be succinct. It certainly distils the thinking when only 140 characters are permitted to tweet.

I’m not sure if this is a case of when you are looking to buy a house you suddenly see ‘For Sale’ signs everywhere but since starting this journey there suddenly seem to be heaps of articles in the national papers and lots in our own sector (not for profit) publications. Who knows maybe the charity space will lead the charge on this as we have always needed to be nimble and proactive to survive.

Hmmm so this is the first blog and it will be followed by … many others over the coming months.