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| From the Chairman | |
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To Tweet or Not To Tweet | |
What choruses—and Chorus America—are doing with online media and social networking Clearly, if one’s mission statement includes words such as “dynamic” and “community,” online media should be an important consideration for interacting with more people and deepening relationships. As a reminder, Chorus America’s mission is to: Build a dynamic and inclusive choral community so that more people are transformed by the beauty and power of choral singing. At the most recent Chorus America board meeting, your board had several discussions about the internet and how we currently use it in pursuit of our organizational objectives. Recent initiatives include building an online resource for singers through our content-rich Singer Network (http://www.singernetwork.org); current news is communicated to members through eVoice, our email newsletter; and, our 2009 Chorus Leadership Guide contains downloadable and adaptable tools housed on our website. As we took an objective look, we noted that while our website (http://www.chorusamerica.org) has lots of content and a members-only area, it is more web 1.0 than web 2.0 in appearance, information architecture, and functionality. We then had a discussion about cost and scarce resources that will feel all too familiar to many of you. Even though we did not solve our web funding gap, we did not simply table the issue either. Instead, we tasked ourselves to develop a business case for building the site we want to have and will review the cost/benefit analysis at our next meeting in January. In the meantime, staff evaluated online social networking tools to determine which had the best fit for our communications needs. For now, one step we’ve taken is to set up a Facebook Fan Page to foster greater community interaction. Find us at http://www.facebook.com/chorusamerica and join our growing number of fans! Since choral singing is a social art form, we wondered to what extent choruses were embracing the social networking aspects of online media. So we conducted an online survey to see how the Chorus America membership was using these tools—literally hundreds of you responded to our query within hours! (Online surveys have proven to be an invaluable method for us to get a pulse on what our constituents are doing and thinking. You may want to consider taking advantage of online surveys for your chorus as well. ) Here’s what you told us about your use of social networking:
While more than two-thirds of responding choruses are using these tools, they are not viewed as a cure-all. One member wisely offered that with social networking, the “main thing to remember is that you’re not advertising, you are building community.” Respondents also shared best practices for maximizing the benefits of social networking applications, and the comments were remarkably consistent. Three main themes emerged advising choruses to: 1) Ensure that content is interesting to the intended audience, current, and updated frequently; 2) Ensure that the content has a purpose and consistently enhances the mission of the organization; and 3) Use social networking tools with caution, being very mindful of privacy concerns and the broadcast nature of the medium. Several choruses have developed a process to continuously monitor and regularly update the content and postings on their sites. Others have set up “causes” pages on Facebook in an effort to make it easy for people to make contributions. I share these ideas with you as background information for the discussions about leveraging online media that your chorus is having, or will soon have. Just as Chorus America’s work informs you, your work also informs Chorus America. It’s exciting to have so many communication and community-building tools at our fingertips! Todd Estabrook |
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