Power of Pictures: Lessons from the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy

We knew before joining the Academy that Facebook could be a great way to reach our parent body, but we just weren’t getting the response we knew was possible! Our first step after joining the Academy was to switch our Facebook profile to a page so that we could garner more likes from our parents and the broader community. Then we started thinking about what content would create the most buzz…

It was obvious after a few weeks that posting pictures was a primary way to go – everyone loves to look at pictures of their kids! But in addition to drawing more traffic to our page from parents who want to see pictures of kids, pictures that capture kids also gave us the opportunity to showcase the program and events going on in school. We were able to choose the pictures that showed our beautiful campus in the background, or a Zionistic program, or an academic achievement or some other message we wanted to be projecting to our current and prospective parents. With catchy titles and questions to go along with the pictures, we were able to illicit responses from our Facebook friends. And by including current students in the pictures, we gave parents a reason to visit our Facebook page, and even more beneficial for us, we gave them a reason to share our posts on their personal pages. Allowing us to be seen by their Facebook friends as well meant that the messages we were transmitting about our school were able to reach a wider audience, and could entice prospective parents that we didn’t know were even out there.

Pictures also helped us reconnect to our alumni (we switched our alumni profile to a page as well shortly after joining the Academy). Once a week, on “Way Back Wednesday,” we posted archival pictures that alumni got excited about – and they not only reconnected with Westchester Day School, but also with classmates with whom they may have lost touch over the years. The feelings of nostalgia – “Can you believe how young we were?!” – put positive thoughts about Westchester Day School in the front of their minds. We also were able to re-post Westchester Day School pictures on our Alumni page. We learned that alumni were excited to see pictures of current-year performances and events that have been going on annually for years, and could comment on how well they remember their own “insert performance here.” It also allowed them a chance to see how much things in the school have changed and evolved since their time as a student.  

 

Allison Lyons is the Director of Admissions at Westchester Day School. Allison enjoys working on a beautiful 26 acre campus on the Long Island Sound.

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy

The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.

 

Carefully Curating Content

 

As a parent volunteer who is not at Shulamith School for Girls of Brooklyn every day, being admin of the school’s Facebook page is a fun challenge. Initially I shared interesting online articles, and links from Facebook Pages that I already followed, on topics I thought would interest other parents like me. After we were accepted to the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy, our Facebook Likes and interactions increased tremendously as I learned to curate, not just find, the content to share. We created a POST Plan that helped us figure out our target audience, and then used Facebook Insights to figure out which posts were most popular. We then created a schedule to post about those topics. 

Shulamith School for Girls of Brooklyn originally created a Facebook Page in 2012 to share photos of the recent school dinner. Posts were few and far between before we joined the Academy. As we learned from the Academy coach, webinars, and Sharefests, I began posting more regularly and began paying attention to Facebook Insights. (For more on using Insights to figure out which posts work best, see the fantastic article by another Academy participant, here: http://bit.ly/10GzUyu.)

Now I search for and save the images and articles that appeal to our parent body, our alumni and donors, and potential Shulamith families who want to see what our school is all about. So, in addition to posting photos of school events that our principal emails or shares via DropBox, I schedule carefully curated content 3 days a week. On Monday, our followers know to expect a Middot Monday post about encouraging positive character traits in our children. Tuesday Tips and Teachable Thursday posts are about parenting and education tips that families can use at home. Additionally, on Wednesday I welcome everyone who Liked the Page since the previous Wednesday.

I search for interesting articles all over the web. Three times a week I spend about half an hour visiting websites and Facebook Pages to look for new material for our Page. I started following educational tweets on Twitter, even though our school is not on Twitter yet. I curate stories from sites like Edutopia, HuffPost Parents, The New York Times, Aish.com, OU.org, and even the IDF Facebook Page (because our school is uniquely Zionist in Brooklyn). When I find something that will interest our parents and other followers, I save the links to bit.ly so I can track which links were actually clicked after I share them on Facebook. Keeping track of Insights and bit.ly clicks helps me look for more of what our followers want to see. For instance, articles on teaching children about finances were viewed more than articles about the impact of the lack of sleep.

Like the other Academy participants, I also found that posts with photos or videos of our students were viewed, commented on, and shared more often. A Welcome Wednesday post can reach 75 to 100 of our followers. Adding a photo of six girls in the hallway boosts that to over 200 views. Vintage class photos from the 1960s-80s each received hundreds of views, and alumni reconnected on our Page.

Thanks to the JDS Social Media Academy, our Likes increased from 49 to almost 200. We’ve reconnected with alumni and watched new friendships form in Facebook Comments. When I go to school for parent-teacher night and other events, parents come up to me to thank me for sharing such interesting articles. They say they look forward to checking Shulamith’s Facebook posts every day. Carefully curating content pays off!

Tova Ovits is a freelance editor with a daughter graduating from Shulamith School for Girls of Brooklyn. She volunteered to be Shulamith’s Team Leader for the JDS Social Media Academy for the 2012-13 school year.

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy

The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.

 

 

Using Social Media Measurement to Get Up and Running

As a participant in the 2012-2013 Jewish Day School Social Media Academy, Solomon Schechter School of Queens (SSSQ) was able to jump onto the social media train with a tremendous amount of support and guidance. Being a beginner in the social media arena (we did not have any social media presence), we found the importance of creating a content calendar to be paramount in establishing, maintaining and expanding our momentum on Facebook, and a valuable quantitative way of measuring our success.

Using an Excel template from Beth Kanter’s article “Getting Insight from Facebook Insight Requires Sense Making Skills”, we track each item posted and analyze its success.  With this method we found that:

  • Posting 2-3 times per week on school activities/events keeps our audience engaged.
  • There was no significant difference in posting in the morning or the afternoon with respect to activity on the post.
  • Postings that feature videos or photographs are most popular. By measuring the reach and engagement of different types of postings we were able to determine those that are well received.  In fact, our 8th grade students narrated their trip to Israel using video clips we posted on our Facebook page.  These were among the most popular postings and also showed engagement amongst our community. 
  • Planning and keeping track of each posting allows SSSQ to incorporate holidays, school events, or other initiatives from the school calendar into the postings calendar to create a consistent message across all communications venues (Website, Facebook, E-mail).
  • We gather statistics (likes, reach, shares) on each posting from Insights on the last day of each month and analyze the results – tracking what worked / didn’t work so that we can improve on subsequent posts.
  • To ensure that SSSQ conveys a consistent message, all proposed postings and a review of the previous months postings are discussed with the headmaster, executive director and technology coordinator on a monthly basis. 

SSSQ is new to the social media arena, but has gained a loyal following in a few short months by being organized, intentional and reflective.  In the near future, we will expand to other media avenues (Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest) and employ the same methodology to track posting and ensure that our message is being “received”. 

 

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy

The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.

 

 

A Meta Learning Curve: Social Media to Promote a Blending Learning Day School

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. 

I figured between having a Facebook account and teenage daughters, I would be ahead of the game in this process.  Yet even with my familiarity with social media tools, participating in the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy really put me into the shoes of our students. 

Our school was at a unique disadvantage in the marketing process – we have little administration, a small parent body and no alumni.  While being described as a technology-driven school put us into a broad category of educational institutions, our goals differed from other establishments under the “technology” umbrella.  Our primary objective was to educate the community on our mission and philosophy; to avoid being considered “a school with computers”.  Blended learning means different things to different people, and our work with the JDS Social Media Academy gave us the necessary tools and strategies to spread our message and correct the misconceptions about our school.

Our Facebook Page has developed into a dynamic instrument; a living, breathing creature that communicates our vision.  The Jewish community at large has been fascinated with our school from its inception; pre-conceived notions flew around Shabbat tables, and opinions followed suit.  Truth be told, there was no way to distribute the real information because there was not yet any evidence.  September 2012 came and went, and Yeshivat He’Atid is thriving as a Jewish Day School operating with a blended learning model.  Through the mentorship of the JDS Social Media Academy, we have learned to target our social media audiences and showcase our evidence.

On September 16, 2012 – a few weeks into our inaugural school year – we posted a “Happy New Year” message on our Facebook page.  For a brand new school of 116 students, the viewing statistic was encouraging.

 

Following training in strategic social media use, here is a screenshot of our Yom Ha’atzmaut Facebook post:  

Close to 2000 people saw this post, the overwhelming majority being viral!  Using Facebook and other social media tools systematically and strategically has unveiled what we are all about.  Perhaps most notably, it has allowed us access to a broad, very curious audience, and let us mitigate the pre-conceived notions through a forthcoming and non-threatening avenue.

Having the tools, using the tools, and using the tools properly are three very different things.  It is easy to put a computer in a classroom.  It is even easy to turn it on.  The challenge is to effectively and efficiently provide a targeted, personalized experience.  While our teachers and students have immersed themselves in our brand of blended learning and met this challenge head on, I have incorporated this same philosophy on the business end.  I had the tools.  I used the tools.  With the unwavering support of the JDS Social Media Academy, I now use the tools effectively and efficiently, providing a targeted, personalized experience.  And we have the data to prove it, both in the classroom and out.

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy

The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton. 

This Shul Will School You on Facebook

Originally published on Clips and Phrases

Chevra Ahavas Yisroel, a Lubavitch synagogue in Crown Heights, “does Facebook” better than any congregation I’ve ever seen.* The numbers aren’t the real success story here, but for the record, they have nearly 2,000 likes, with a few hundred folks “talking about this” at any one time. Their posts get consistent engagement. And, to the best of my knowledge, their efforts online are paying off; it helps strengthen the community, raise dollars, and keep CAY at the top of their congregants’ minds as often as humanly possible.

Check out their Facebook Page here.

Ok, see what I mean?

Here are my thoughts on what they are doing really, really well – all of them replicable! So read, enjoy, and learn…

It’s About the Community

This is their fabulous header image – done by an artist in the community, OF the community. It literally and figuratively represents what (or rather who) they’re all about.

 

 

 

 

CAY says thank you. A lot. And genuinely. A good habit for anyone to develop.

Also, CAY members are regularly sharing life-cycle events, and each one of them is diligently posted to the Page. But, more than that, the Chevra Page adds a little something special to each one, pointing out the special qualities of the people involved.

CAY makes a special effort to regularly highlight members of the community and show how unique and valuable they are.

Personality, Baby!

Check back on the header image and look at the description of the shul. Read the posts I’ve included as screenshots here. Getting an idea of the personality of the shul? What the leadership might be like? What it might feel like to pray there? Yup. That’s the point. Go for that.

The posts regularly include a lot of goofy, fun, gentle humor. The shot below is so, so much better than the multitude of posts I see from congregations everywhere saying, “Come to this event! It’s going to be great.” Oy. Find your style and let it shine!

CAY’s posts are also super honest. They ask for help. They admit when they’re struggling with something. It’s a great example of authenticity breeding engagement and building community.

The Nitty-Gritty

  • CAY uses lots of images and video, both of which are great windows into the community, but are also very friendly to the Facebook Newsfeed algorithm, Edgerank. It helps keep them and everything they stand for at the top of their congregants’ minds as often as possible.
  • They post regularly, but not overwhelmingly so. There’s always meaningful activity happening on the Page.
  • They excel at responsiveness. The Page manager jumps in on conversations and offers genuine answers in a timely way. In addition, rebbetzin especially makes a point of chiming in on posts as herself, and sharing info from the Page to her personal profile. The Page is part of a broader communication ecosystem; it doesn’t stand alone.
  • CAY uses Facebook’s Promoted Posts and other ad services to remind folks about events and other important happenings in the community. Notably, they always is use paid promotion to accelerate good content, not to prop up content that’s flailing.

And most importantly…

They keep it real. Everything they are online is exactly who they are on-land. The Facebook Page gives you a small taste of what it’s like to be there in the “real world.”

Which of these points resonates most with you? Which does your Page do well, and which can you work on?

*Point of clarification – CAY is NOT a Chabad House. It is a shul by and for (almost entirely) Lubavitcher Hasidim, though it’s run much like a Chabad House.

Social Media Policy Workbook for Jewish Organizations

Some organizations jump into social media with great excitement. Others with great trepidation. What we know is that the rules of engagement in social media are in many ways fundamentally different than those of other communication tools we’ve used in the past.  A good social media policy provides clear guidelines as to how staff should represent themselves and the organization when posting and interacting with the community, freeing them up to think more strategically. A social media policy is also likely to help leadership feel more comfortable with the less formal nature of social media by letting them establish boundaries for its use. Often to gain comfort and confidence, we need to reduce the fear, get clear on expectations, and be on the same page with our staff, supervisors, board members, and the community.

This Workbook is designed to help you, as an organization, ask important questions about social media, and how you will manage it and use it to your advantage, thoughtfully.  The Workbook is offered as a PDF download free of charge, thanks to our sponsors, The AVI CHAI Foundation, The Union for Reform Judaism, and See3 Communications.

So, are you ready? Download the PDF below, then gather your team together, start the Social Media Policy Workbook, and enjoy the journey!  Make sure to report back and share your progress! Interested in learning from others who are working on their social media policy too? Join the discussion in the
Social Media Policy Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/socialmediapolicy

How Seattle Childrens Hospital Went Outside The Box With Its Facebook Page

Darim is hosting a blog carnival (a series of posts from various guest bloggers on a topic) on "Connected Congregations".  The following post from Shel Holtz (originally published on his blog and shared here with persmission) as such profound implications for how synagogues can be supporting and connecting and empowering their community and individual members. 

The bold human and emotional statement made clear in this story should inspire congregational leaders to reenvision not only how to use their Facebook pages, but how to be a positive organizing force in their communities.  I invite you to share reactions, ideas or your own examples in the comments.  What could this look like in a congregational setting?

For some time, hospitals have had Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and a host of other social channels. Like most other organizations, the hard-coded institutional mindset limits the uses to which hospitals put these networks. Upcoming events, health tips, medical news reports, staff spotlights and recognition characterize the usual hospital feeds.

As with other institutions, hospitals need to make outside-the-box thinking with their pages the new inside-the-box. You now have a channel to engage with people who find you interesting, important, relevant or useful. How can you take advantage of that?

Years ago, when I interviewed him for a newsletter article, User Interface Engineering founder and CEO Jared Spool told me that any technology could accomplish only three things. It can solve a problem, improve a process or let you do something that simply wasn’t possible before.

Where are the opportunities to problem solving, process improvement or innovation in a hospital Facebook page?

It took an artist-in-residence to come up with one answer at Seattle Children’s Hospital. John Blalock was making routine visits to the room of 16-year-old patient Maga Barzallo Sockemtickem, who had been stuck in the hospital for weeks for treatment of graft-versus-host disease, which appeared after her November 2011 bone marrow transplant for acute myeloid leukemia.

Along with all the other things Barzallo Sockemtickem missed about being at home, heer cat Merry topped the list. Merry was the subject of most of her conversations with Blalock, who has worked with other patients on photo and music video projects. He first asked other Children’s Hospital staffers for pictures of their cats, but it was the patient herself who pointed out that he could score a lot more photos with a request on the hospital’s Facebook page. The request asked for photos to be posted to the wall by July 25.

The post drew more than 1,000 comments, the vast majority of them accompanied by photos. Ultimately, more than 3,000 photos arrived, with snail-mail adding to those shared on Facebook. 

On the day of the deadline, Blalock erected a tent of sheets over Barzallo Sockemtickem’s bed onto which he projected the images of the slideshow. A video of the virtual cat immersion chamber posted to YouTube has been viewed nearly 190,000 times.

The story is heartwarming. An NPR report quoted Barzallo Sockemtickem saying, “In the hospital, you feel cut off. You lose contact with regular people. So the photos made me feel like I was part of the world again.”

It’s a demonstration of the healing power of felines. Hospitals also should be scheming about how to use the palliative properties of art. “All hospitals are such a blank slate for doing art because you can take a medical experience and transform it,” Blalock said.

For communicators tasked with fueling a hospital’s social media efforts, the tale should also spark some thinking beyond the usual grist for the newsfeed mill. Artist-in-residence Blalock is already on to his next brainstorm for how to tap the power of the Net; he’s thinking about how to fuse Skype to a robot that will move among patients in the cancer ward, opening the outside world to them.

The simple Facebook request for photos no doubt did wonders for Seattle Children’s Hospital, since commenting and adding photos boosts a page’s Edgerank score like little else, getting the hospital’s updates onto the newsfeeds of people who have liked the page. The awareness of the story resulted in considerable news coverage; many of the web reports included the YouTube video, further expanding coverage. The YouTube video invites you to visit the Facebook page to see all the photos.

The thinking behind Blalock’s innovation did not begin with, “How can I use the hospital’s Facebook page,” or even, “Is this something I can use the Facebook page for?” It was rather Barzallo Sockemtickem’s recognition that expanding the search for photos to Facebook improved the process of soliciting hospital staff for their pictures.

That’s a mindset that has been outside the box for most hospitals. The more we can change the way we look at the social tools at our disposal, the more we’ll be able to apply them to problems, processes and innovations that can genuinely help people while shining a light on the compassionate care the hospital delivers.

 

This post is part of a blog series on Connected Congregations being curated by Darim Online in partnership with UJA Federation of New York.  Through this series, we are exploring what it means for synagogues to function as truly networked nonprofits. Connected Congregations focus on strengthening relationships, building community, and supporting self-organizing and organic leadership.  They are flatter and more nimble, measure their effectiveness in new and more nuanced ways, allocate their resources differently, and use technology in a seamless and integrated way to support their mission and goals.  We hope these posts will be the launching pad for important conversations in our community. Please comment on this post, and read and comment on others in the series to share your perspective, ideas, work and questions. Thanks to UJA Federation of New York for supporting this work.

10 Tachlis Ideas for Getting Your FB Page High Holiday Ready

It’s Elul and the High Holidays are just around the corner.  Now is the perfect time to get your Facebook Page ‘Likeable!’ How will you use it as an entry point for prospective members seeking to engage in the holiday season, and as a point of connection for current members?

 We’ve compiled 10 ideas to get the conversation going.  Feel free to add your ideas and your social media "New Year’s Resolution" for deepening your community’s engagement.

1. Create a series of 5 questions to ask on your page related to Slichot and Elul. It’s always a good idea to ask at least two people in advance to comment on each one to get the converstion going.

2. Recruit 10 community members to hold up a sign that indicates something they are thankful for.  Post 2 photos a week over the next five weeks on your Page.

3. Ask fans what is a new beginning for them – you can create an open ended prompt in your post, like "My new beginning for this year is…."  Follow up with weekly "new beginnings" updates.

4. Be transparent – show how you are getting ready for the high holidays, including "behind the scenes": photos of staff stuffing envelopes with tickets, setting up chairs, cleaning the kitchen, etc.

5. Share content from Jewels of Elul daily to the page. Hit "share" and ask your own question on top of it. Create a video "playlist" of videos that address High Holiday themes and post them once a week during Elul.

6. Post seasonal recipes and ask people to talk about their own versions of those dishes.  Solicit favorite holiday recipes and memories and encourage people to include photos.

7. Welcome new members by name as they join your community and upload their family photo (with their permission).  Encourage folks to find these new community members and introduce themselves over the holidays.

8. Play "Jewish Trivia" – develop a list of little known facts and customs about the High Holidays and ask questions in a post…revealing the answer later in the comments. Example: Why do some people wear tennis shoes on Yom Kippur?

9. Create Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah Timeline cover photos and rotate them out accordingly.

10. Crowdsource part of your High Holiday drash by posing questions to your community and soliciting their responses.

What is your community doing to get your Facebook Page ready for the High Holidays, and to capitalize on the increased attention during this time of year?

 

People Have a Lot to Say About Where to Buy Challah!

Guest post by Pam Barkley, Director of Education at Temple Beth Abraham in Tarrytown, NY

Did you know that people have a lot to say about where to buy challah?

When we began the year as Social Media Bootcamp participants, we had big ideas about building community online, creating an open forum for questions, and having meaningful conversations outside of the classroom.

As it turns out, parents weren’t particularly interested in our big ideas. As others have described here, people read our posts but did not often comment. They would look to see the student work I had posted, but not feel the need to continue that conversation on facebook. This left us feeling enormously frustrated and wondering what we were doing wrong. Were we not asking the right questions? Did parents just not care? Was this whole thing just a bad idea?

And then, following a post I read someplace about keeping things really simple, I posted the following: “Anyone know where to get a really good challah?” 

Mind you, my children, through their school, bring home challah every Friday afternoon.  I didn’t actually need a challah. But I wanted to see what would happen. And wouldn’t you know it? Turns out people have a lot of advice about challah buying! I got lots of comments and even an offer to pick one up for me and deliver it to my office.

After discussing this with the team, what we have discovered is that grown ups want to feel competent. They like to tell me where to buy a challah because it is something that they feel they really know about. They have tasted the challah and think it is good. But when we asked, “What is one Jewish thing you did this week?” They are silent because all of a sudden it’s like they are in 5th grade and Mrs. Shaw just called on them when they didn’t know the right answer. It goes something like this: “If I write that I visited a sick neighbor, is that enough? No that’s too stupid for me to write. Is that even a Jewish thing? It’s probably not Jewish enough. But I didn’t light candles on Friday or anything like that which is what they are looking for…oh forget it I won’t say anything.”  And so, not only is the comment field blank, but we have actually made someone feel like what they are doing is somehow not enough. 

Not exactly our goal.

This is not to say that people can’t be moved into deeper conversations eventually. But for the moment, when trying out the use of social media, it seems best to keep things reasonably light and simple. There can be no perceived judgment about what is the “right” or “wrong” kind of response. I think it is hard for those of us steeped in Jewish education to see that sometimes even the most innocent questions are in fact laden with judgment to the average reader.  As we move forward with a brand new website, weekly blogs and the rest, it is important for us to remember that we have to build our online conversations around topics everyone feels comfortable discussing. We have to make people feel like they have something to add to the discussion and that their contributions online are valuable. This is not an easy task, but it is the first step towards those bigger goals we started with.

In the meantime, since it is summer now and my children are no longer in school, I have plenty of new places to get challah from!

 

Pam Barkley is the Director of Education at Temple Beth Abraham in Tarrytown, NY.  This congregation participated in Darim’s Social Media Boot Camp for Educators over the past year, generously funded by the Covenant Foundation.  You can find them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tbatarrytown

The Networked Nonprofit Book Club: Anytime, Anywhere Learning

(cross-posted on Beth’s Blog)

When The Networked Nonprofit first was published I grabbed a copy for myself, my staff, and my major funders, and further recommended it to the leaders of the Jewish organizations with whom I work. As I read the book, I instantly knew that this was meaty stuff that we’d all need to chew on. Facebook had recently revamped its Groups, and it seemed like the perfect place to take the conversation for a spin.

Thus began “Darim’s Networked Nonprofit Book Club”.

My staff and I invited many people in our networks and our professional communities who we felt were “ripe” for the conversation. Those people added folks from their own networks, and the group quickly swelled to more than 50. We began the Book Club by carefully crafting a couple questions per chapter, and focusing on about one chapter per week. We quoted the book, took inspiration from the questions listed at the end of each chapter, and attempted to lead a traditional book club on Facebook.

It was working pretty well as planned. Then members started posting their own questions, and some people just found the book and joined when we were already discussing chapter 5. Actually none of this mattered. In fact, it was great. What began as ‘hub and spokes’ naturally evolved into a network discussion: the Book Club became a rich self-serve space where like-minded people came to learn with and from each other, explore ideas, share knowledge and experience, and challenge one another. We dropped the formal book club structure (Week 2: Question 3 ….”) and started to steward the conversation around Network Nonprofit themes.

We found the Book Club really thrived around 3 areas:

  1. We developed vocabulary and conceptual understandings together: Core and periphery, social media as a ‘contact sport’, and awareness of what “losing control” really means in a social media landscape, for example. By developing a shared language our Book Club bonded in a way – we could talk with each other about these ideas and visions even if our bosses and colleagues didn’t always get it. Having this peer group was validating and supportive.
  2. We rose to the challenge when members of the Book Club posted things they were wrestling with. One person’s “fear of failure” post elicited a robust conversation and sharing of case studies to help us reframe “failure” in this time of experimentation and change. Participants’ willingness to put these kinds of issues on the table furthered everyone’s learning much more than if I had formulated the questions. These posts really helped us focus not only our actions, but also how we are leading culture shift within our organizations.
  3. We embraced the fluid, emergent and evolving nature of the conversation. While we are still actively discussing the themes in The Networked Nonprofit, we are also using our Book Club to explore related works and ideas. I recently wrote a book review on our blog and a member of the Book Club commented, “we should do a Book Club for this one too!” So we introduced the book and have begun a lively (and fairly focused) discussion. Many new people joined the Facebook Group as they learned about the opportunity, and thus the size, scope, topics and energy have evolved over time, and I suspect will continue to do so.

The Facebook Group functionality has been fantastic for the Book Club. Its flat structure has enabled me to steward while not quite leading the group through our discussions. I sometimes stir the pot, drop in links to relevant articles, and ask follow up questions to deepen the discussion where I think there’s room to grow. The ability to tag anyone in the group (whether you’re Facebook friends or not) has supported a very warm and social culture, and has surely deepened the conversation by weaving participants back into threads over time. Unfortunately Facebook doesn’t (yet?) allow groups to have super succinct usernames, but you can set the group email address that does create a customized URJ (https://www.facebook.com/groups/netnonbookclub), and I also created a customized link through Bit.ly which provides an even shorter and still intuitive link as well: http://on.fb.me/netnonbookclub

I am constantly inviting people to the Book Club to continue their learning after a webinar or live workshop, to ask questions of the group to support their own professional development and practice, and to find their peers in this work.

We’ve all found that this “anytime, anywhere” professional development is incredibly valuable, accessible and fun for the 200 members of the Book Club. It’s amazing simple (and cheap) for us to run, and a great way to build a professional network.  How do you take advantage of “anytime, anywhere” professional development?