Building Your Online Community for Social Change

About the Presenters

Susan Tenby(@suzboop) has worked in online community management for 14 years and has been active in social media since 2006.

As the original Online Community Manager TechSoup, Susan was responsible for launching the organization’s active community and social media presence. In her current position as Director of Community and Partnerships for Caravan Studios,she uses her community management skills and social media listening expertise to analyze social networks, build community and generate leads. Susan also assists many small to medium sized organizations with social media and online community-building strategy and implementation, as a private consultant. She is the founder of the largest Online Community Meetup in the Bay Area. Susan is also a frequent public speaker on social media best practices and online community strategy. In her spare time, she runs the social media channels for the iconic all-women rock band, The Go-Go's. 

Willie Kuo is the Assistant Director at the Los Angeles Art Association, where she works in development, marketing and communications. Prior to her current role, she served at EMERGENCY USA as part of an Americorps fellowship through New Sector's Residency in Social Enterprise (RISE), a program that develops future leaders in the social sector. Her capacity building projects at EMERGENCY USA improved the use of technology for outreach, which included database implementation and community building through social media. She has pursued her passion for creating social impact through internships at several social sector organizations, including the Clinton Global Initiative in NY, ThinkImpact in South Africa and AIDS Research Alliance in LA. Because of her interest in how social enterprises can use online community building to further their mission, organization and drive social change, Willie assists with online community and social media as a volunteer at Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup.

Part I: Building Your Online Community

Would you like to learn more about using social media to raise your profile and connect with your community? Do you wonder if you're talking to the right people or how you can best present yourself in social media channels?

Community psychologists partner with communities and organize for social change. Increasingly many of our community building efforts incorporate social media to accomplish collaborative aims. 

Learning Objectives:

• Using social network analysis tools to find leaders and identify communities online, 
• practical skills of using consistent language and effective hashtags to encourage action in line with your message will also be discussed,
• how to present yourself and what to post when working to promote community events or policy change actions

NOTE: We are working to get a recording from this session available on this webpage. Thanks for your patience.

Part II: Engaging Your Online Community via Social Media

Are you interested in learning how to build responsive, meaningful relationships among all members of your community via social media?

Our first session covered the basics of social media engagement. Susan Tenby described how to create a community of followers from the ground-up, including how to identify evangelists, and how to publish and engage on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin in just a few minutes each day or week.

Susan and Willie bring extensive tools that are useful for a variety of levels of experience with social media. The presentation provides an in depth look into publishing and listening on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin. The techniques introduced to SCRA members are a high-engagement approach to community-building across social media channels that will be excellent training for community psychologists.

Learning Objectives:

• the basics of Tweeting, Retweeting and Following,
• engagement on Facebook and Linkedin,
• effectively using one of these three channels in 15 minutes or less