Showing posts with label Blog Potomac. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog Potomac. Show all posts

Friday, June 12, 2009

A Worldwide Community

By Cynthia Price,
Director of Communications


Liz Strauss, who I met earlier in the morning at Blog Potomac, noted that social media isn’t new. It’s the platform that is new. In the “old days” we engaged by phone or email. The new ways to engage, such as Twitter, are still about connecting.

At CCF we connect using both traditional (ChildWorld and Annual Report publications) and new (Facebook, Twitter) so we don’t leave anyone out of the conversation. The new ways simply make it easy to connect in real time and globally.

Telling Our Story

By Cynthia Price,
Director of Communications


Mid-morning at Blog Potomac we heard from Scott Monty, who is responsible for social media with Ford Motor Co. He shared some of their ideas around the social media platform. They are similar to ours – “I will tell the truth.” “I will write deliberately and accurately.”

His goal is to humanize Ford. At Christian Children’s Fund one of our goals is to connect with our supporters and more directly tell them how they help deprived, excluded and vulnerable children around the world. We want them to know how we believe that when you change a childhood, you change the world.

Technology Woes Aside, We're at Blog Potomac

By David Hylton,
Public Relations Specialist

In this age of social networking where everybody is constantly in touch through blogs, Facebook and Twitter, it’s easy to take technology for granted. And with the best laid plans in place our Director of Communications Cynthia Price was going to e-mail me a couple of blog entries from Blog Potomac today. (Click here for the details on Blog Potomac.)

However, she hit a snafu with her Blackberry in which she couldn’t send or receive e-mails and we were forced to take a step back in time – she dictated blog entries to me over the phone. It’s like we were in 1999 instead of 2009. Joking aside, here are her initial thoughts on Blog Potomac:

Walking into the State Theatre in Falls Church I found the room of small tables set up like a café. A sea of computer screens were already aglow as participants linked up, tweeted and blogged.

I was here to learn how to better engage with Christian Children’s Fund supporters. We’ve got our Fans on Facebook and Followers on Twitter, but we would like a stronger dialog. How do we get there? What conversations should we have on this blog?

Almost immediately I ran into Geoff Livingston, with CRT/tanaka, who is working with CCF on a social media strategy. He introduces me to Liz Strauss, of successful-blog.com, and we discuss how to better share the connection donors make with the children they sponsor.

Like everyone here, I’m clicking away taking notes and sharing ideas (including through this blog).

We are looking for better ways to connect and this conference will help with ideas, but it’s ultimately about what you want.