Perhaps you’ve seen the controversy over Seth Godin’s “The problem with non” post. Nonprofit leaders like Beth Kanter and and Peter Panepento are rightly calling Godin’s position to task.
Beyond the whole purple cow argument about the name of the biz (zzzzz, PASS), the real issue is calling to task nonprofits for not engaging in social media, that the mainstream commercial market is surpassing the cause industry. He points out new brands are rising up to take their place, but that the traditional nonprofit industry has taken a pass. In general he laments, “When was the last time you had an interaction with a non-profit (there’s that word again) that blew you away?”
My response to this is when was the last time Seth Godin did actual work in the field? Because I work with both nonprofit and commercial entities, and I can tell you which sector is getting it faster: Nonprofits. Much faster. If Seth did actual field work — instead of promoting his personal brand and ideas — he might have practical experience to cite in his lament. Instead, we have an uninformed opinion.
Consider the Humane Society‘s efforts or LiveStrong‘s or Live Earth‘s and the National Wildlife Federation. These are all big brands that I’ve talked to in the past two weeks! Then there’s the CDC actively engaging to combat H1N1.
Further, in the 100 Twitter brands Seth cites as an example, almost all of them are personalities or media outlets. Only a handful are actual brands, mainstays like Dell and Whole Foods.
Seth’s defense in a comment on a critical post by CauseWire’s Tom Watson :
I was actually overwhelmed with mail (about ten times more than I usually get) and every single piece from a frustrated person inside of a non-profit.
Well, of course you were, Seth. When we complain, all of the complainers get on board; when we focus on the positive, we are joined by the positive. And everyone in social knows that negative comments — while often representing a minority — tend to greatly outweigh the positive.
But, in reality big nonprofit brands are engaging, and while they are struggling — just like the rest of American entities — successes are emerging. In reality, I see them making a lot more progress than Fortune 500s. They have much less for-profit baggage, like hard-selling, or a psychotic need to control the message for brand image purposes.
Why We Need to Practice
Seth’s erroneous post demonstrates an increasing weakness I’ve seen in his writing (in fact, I took him out of my reader for this reason), and other senior executives in the business. Without actual field experience people are just citing ideas. So what’s the difference between a thought leader and a so-called social media expert if neither of them have pragmatic field experience?
Parroting and/or reporting what you see on the Internet does not equate to actual savoir faire. Nor does it make someone fit to offer insights or counsel.
In his book Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy noted that he always maintained one account to keep his skills fresh. It’s for this very reason that I, too, stay engaged with actual field work. With such a rapidly moving media landscape, how can any of us claim to be of service to our organizations, clients and readers — much less “thought leaders” — unless we are doing actual work.
Great post Geoff – gonna go add a link to my roundup
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/09/seth-godins-non-post-about-nonprofits-deers-in-the-headlights.html
Geoff – amen. While I don’t really care about what Seth says (like you, I took him out of my reader a while ago), you touch on a bigger lesson here i.e. while you may think big thoughts, if you can’t back them up with practical experience, it’s hard to maintain credibility in a quickly evolving space. This applies not only to authors/consultants like Seth but CEOs, CMOs and principals of companies big and small.
Thanks for creating a place to “comment” on Godin’s post since he’s not willing to allow feedback himself.
Geoff, thank you so much for this thoughtful post and I especially appreciate that you tied in the government with nonprofits. I sincerely view our missions and our challenges as entertwined. The CDC has done a great job, and the Gov 2.0 movement is growing each day.
Godin must remember that non-profits and government alike are holding organizations in trust for the public. We know upfront that if we screw up, we directly impact the people we serve.
I hope Seth will consider commiting himself to helping organizations with his skills and not just his checkbook. The best thing that the “rock stars” of social media can do is engage in their own communities…help local non-profits. Talk to communications and marketing leaders in local government and local universities. You will find that we can have meaningful discussions and collaborations that may well lead to game-changing innovations.
I guess Seth Godin will see how many of us “aren’t using social media” as we swamp him with responses :)
Oddly enough, I work at a large global PR agency and our nonprofit clients tend to value social media exponentially more than the Fortune 500 brands we work with. Like you said, I think the disconnect is in the difference between a pundit and a practitioner.
Geoff, spot on with the post and your points here. Far too often now, we are seeing so-called “experts” giving us their new commandments or proclamations for what is right or wrong, or what we *ALL* should be doing in the social media landscape. But I have always maintained that there are really no right or wrong ways with a lot of work in ANY business, it all comes down to how you apply certain ideas, initiatives and strategies, and how well you carry those forward given your ultimate goals, and in the case of SM, the goals, needs, desires and wants of your audiences. If you’re doing that, and it involves a tremendous social media outreach, or just a very small one, then in my book, you are doing something right, and who gives a damn what the SM big-wigs say!
Godin just got KO’ed http://bit.ly/3cKQaB
Great post! Will keep me motivated to continue using Social Media for our not-for-profit Asperger’s social group: Asperger’s Support for Adolescents Plus (http://vcasap.org). We’re working on getting our official non-profit status. We’re on Twitter @ASAPAspergers and Facebook http://budurl.com/ASAPFB
Geoff, this was a very good response. My response is here — I repeat what I wrote about Godin in 2006, when he ranted about nonprofits not using Squidoo: http://bit.ly/19DFW
Thanks for reading, and for taking the time to respond.
It wasn’t a post about twitter, and it wasn’t about metrics. Instead, I was trying to make a point about standards. Do you believe that non-profits should be held to a different standard of innovation, initiation and energy than for-profits? It’s interesting that I criticize for-profits regularly, but rarely do they rise up and start posting about how clueless I am…
I guess I see it this way: If I was a shareholder of the American Cancer Society or Amnesty International, I’d be asking hard questions about the use of permission marketing, of leveraging volunteers, of doing the sort of amazing stuff that Livestrong and other new groups are doing. Isn’t okay to ask hard questions like that? Or do they get a pass because the work is so worthy?
Thanks for your response, Seth.
It doesn’t seem fair to hold big nonprofits to the same standard as the Global 500 for two primary reasons.
1) The two types of organizations are developed for two different purposes: One to make money, the other to affect societal change.
2) The largest nonprofits — $4 billion in size — may not even qualify for the Global 500, the largest in size of which reach $450+ billion. You are talking David vs. Goliath.
Regardless, based on my actual field experience working with both for and nonprofits over the past four years in social media, causes are getting it quicker. The issues you thust on nonrofits in your post are similar adoption problems as the for profits (which you don’t mention), so it’s a societal issue in my mind. That’s because social media problem surpasses nonprofits and exists in EVERY sector. Silos, regulation vary from industry so defense, finance, healthcare are extra ugly!
Causes have an easier time of it due to lack of regulation and not-for-profit motives. Though I will say that nonprofits have tons of dysfunction of their very own unique quality. In some ways the donor model can absolutely kill them, so can confederated architectures where local chapters go crazy and cowboy! Lesser talent due to compensation, lesser resources due to lower amounts of funding, etc., etc.
It’s apples and oranges. So I would say based on my experience actually working with both, you can’t over-generalize the situation.
P.S. LiveStrong qualifies as a pre-social media brand. I’d not use them as a “new example.”
Geoff, I love the example of David Ogilvy. As a product guy (i.e., a guy who actually has to write the specs for products and deal with development), I get really annoyed when marketing people try to tell me how to do my job. It’s not that I don’t appreciate advice, especially when it pertains to customer needs, but marketing people tend not to understand the complexity of building a product or how feedback is actually included. That’s kind of a rant, but meant to say: there are way too many people out there spouting off ideas without having actually done the field work. GREAT post!
-Mark Johnson, Bing Program Manager
Geoff, I think you hit on something pretty important in this post, when you say that non-profits and government agencies *get* social media better than corporations. Until corporations and brands have information that’s as important and, well, as “social” as the messages most non-profits share, they will never be using social media in the way in which it was meant to be used.
Isn’t this why social media exists, in the first place? To escape the constant inundation of marketing and advertising and to communicate, um, human/social messages?
In that light, Seth Godin’s post is rather ironic.
Here’s another take on it – and published it as a guest post
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/09/guest-post-by-celeste-wroblewski-seth-godin-want-nonprofits-to-embrace-squidoo-give-us-case-studies-.html
This is one incredibly powerful and important paragraph Geoff:
“Parroting and/or reporting what you see on the Internet does not equate to actual savoir faire. Nor does it make someone fit to offer insights or counsel.”
If only we could get every CMO on the planet to paste it on his/her computer and read it before hiring a self-annointed “social media guru.”