Had some excellent feedback from a very enjoyable seminar at the RSA yesterday, despite the tube strike that resulted in a number of people having to drop out.
Matthew Taylor gave some fascinating reflections on the journey the RSA have gone through since he became their Chief Executive in 2006, with regards to the RSA fellowship and their use of social media. Matthew also had some interesting thoughts on the future of membership, questioning its role in modern society. He was candid in acknowledging that past attempts at social media by the RSA had not been successful.
They are now working hard to reap the potential through delivering a content proposition, engaging with and supporting their membership, and providing appropriate tools.
The AAT in contrast, has a very different membership community than the RSA, and consequently, very different needs from their social media, which are in a sense easier to understand and “sell” to their membership. Their Chief Executive, Jane Scott Paul, gave an insightful historical view of how they achieved their success, starting with a clear business strategy and then developing incrementally.
I came across some interesting examples in putting the IndigoBlue presentation together:
- Looking behind the obvious success of LinkedIn in contrast to ContactDetails (no currently available website) who had a similar website offering. The key difference was that LinkedIn had a clear business strategy and used an incremental approach, whereas ContactDetails took much more of a technology-led, waterfall approach.
- netmums is an excellent online community with over 500,000 signed up members, which provides immediate access to advice including nutrition, recipes, local events and local groups. It’s interesting to contrast this with the NCT site, which is very attractively laid out and does have a different audience, but has more of a corporate feel to it.
- And finally, when looking for an example Facebook page, came across Vladimir Putin’s info page and thought would share as an example of effective use of social media (compare with Gordon Brown’s!)
Tags: business strategy, NFP, social media