Ever heard the slogan or tagline: “HALF THE PRESSURE, TWICE THE SPEED”? No fair Googling, just hang with me a minute. I hadn’t either. If I were guessing, I might have suspected an ad agency or sales group. Maybe a real estate sales office. Better yet, a car dealer. Would you believe it is the tag for a brand of pencils? Again, don’t jump away, hang on a bit longer.
I had the opportunity a few days ago to present some of our thinking at a seminar hosted by The Center for Nonprofit Success. The seminar was: “Social Media: Tips and Tools for Using Social Media to Build Support for Your Mission”. Well, if you follow our blog and know Oneicity well, you know I couldn’t do that without a bit of a curve ball in my presentation (OK, it may have been more of a brush-back pitch). I titled my presentation: Why You Should Ignore the Whole Social Media Fad. I really needed the group thinking with me and not thinking the same old thing.
You have to give The Center a lot of credit for not canceling me based on my title alone. They’re gutsy people!
My point was that Social Media isn’t a silver bullet and that it won’t fix many things wrong with organizations. Obviously, we’re huge fans of Social Media but only as a part of an over-arching strategy not as the “be all, end all.” Anyway, one of the points I made after I gave the crowd the 4 reasons to ignore Social Media, was that they should never “think big” but rather “think small.”
Which takes us back to where this began. Remember, “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed”? I know you Googled it, but I’ll pretend you didn’t. Those words are connected with Blackwing pencils. I think I’ve seen one. Apparently these are “THE” pencils. To some, Blackwing is to pencil as Ferrari is to car. Turns out that Blackwing has been out of production for a while. And now they’re back! Woohoo! Are you excited? I wasn’t. But there are people who are really, really excited. I stumbled across a blog about the pencils — complete with reviews, comparisons and even a discussion of that terrible eraser on the previous model (maybe that’s why I didn’t use Blackwings, I need great erasers!). Anyway, here’s my point: Blackwing rolled out this release by finding people who loved their pencils and had influence. Blackwing connected with these devoted fans and used that fan base to build from.
That’s thinking small first.
Which is my point for nonprofits and Social Media. Don’t think big, think small. You can think big all you want to once you have a small base of devoted supporters telling the world about your great work and cause.
Start with people who love you.
Maybe the tagline for this post should be: “Half the Audience, Twice the Impact”.
Focus first on who loves you most. Give them the tools and permission to cheer for and about you.
Then find a few more who are convinced you’re changing the world.
Then think Big. Really big. Because the ball will be rolling.
Oh and if you want to see the slides from my “Ignore Social Media” presentation you can find them on our slideshare (it won’t be like you were there but you might find them interesting).
What about you? Have you ever heard of Blackwings? What do you think about focusing on your core donors and equipping them to cheer for you? Let me know what you’re thinking, even if you want to drop me a note using your favorite pencil.
Steve Thomas
Partner, Oneicity
(photo credit: freakyman)
