Community Mobilization

Creating Compelling Content on Tumblr

Mashable just had a great article on creating compelling Nonprofit content on Tumblr. Funny thing is that once I began to read it I realized that this is not just for Nonprofits, and certainly not just for Tumblr. These are guidelines for great content creation no matter the industry or the channel.

1. Draw in Outsiders
2. Have Some Personality
3. Use Cool Visuals
4. Show Off Success
5. Tell Video Stories

I could go into a long winded expose on each item but at this point in the game there should be no need for additional justification on following these basic rules. The basic premise is that you have to have great and compelling content that catches the eye of the outsider and gives both a written and visual story for them to quickly digest and align with. I would say that any message put out by anyone on social media has to aspire to be:

1. Personal with mass appeal
2. Engaging but not overbearing
3. Entertaining without offense
4. Informing but not pandering

 

Organizational Management and Honeybees

There are some schools of thought that say we can learn a lot about the nature of cooperation and organization from the animal kingdom. Schools of fish, flocks of geese, and even honeybees provide a rich and telling tale about the value of cooperative intelligence. Of prime importance is not that they cooperate but how they communicate cooperation.

The idea of collective consciousness is idealistic, to think that we would put the community interests above our own, but in nature that is exactly what happens. Animals in group communicate in subtle ways, knowing that even simple indicators such as abdomen waves will we seen, acknowledged and acted on without question or hesitation. What does it take in business to command that type of immediate action and preserve the channel so it can happen again and again?

Yelling 'Fire' repeatedly desensitizes respondents to the call for action, as does aggressive blustery  shows of force. Animals collectively respect and acknowledge because there is a tacit understanding that acting in the good of the community is acting in the good of self. This understanding transposed has become the mantra of the modern work place - what is good for me is good for the community. It seems we have a cultural shift to undertake to get back to a place where we can cooperate like a school of fish.