#socialceos

This past month I've been going through a process of radically re-drafting the Child's i Foundation story and communications strategy with Lucy Buck and a team of dedicated Child's i enthusiasts. It's been an awakening - for an organisation that is only 4 years old we have already become fettered with jargon. Paralysed by too much information to the point we have confused our audience. How burdensome for supporters, why should people who want to find out about us have to sift through every piece of information we decide to broadcast to make sense of what we do and who we are?

So the buzzwords of the numerous Google Hangouts we've been on in the last couple of weeks have been "lean" and "mean". We're getting a bit radical. We're sifting everything we do through our "values health check" (more jargon but it's just between ourselves) - what does this say about the organisation, does it benefit our supporters, are we doing anything differently, will it be of value to our community, how does it enable contribution, are we staying true to our belief in transparency or are we polishing the edges to make it more marketing friendly? Most importantly are we speaking in plain English? After all what does "languishing" in an orphanage really mean? Do people know what we mean by "institutions" and why "alternative care" is the way forward? It's the stuff the staff and team at Child's i talk about everyday but I can safely say most other people don't. Somehow we have all been duped by the misconception that real communication comes with the sheer volume of information shared via social channels. Posts are lined up on Hootsuite scheduled to broadcast everyday. We get caught up in a whirlwind of sharing. Sharing is caring and all that. We then falsely believe that everyone knows everything about us, after all they are following our journey every single day … yawn. It's then for organisations and causes that the jargon slips in. But despite the timeline nature of many platforms, our absorption of information on social channels isn't linear. We dip in and out. We might have missed the video on why "Our social work centre of excellence" is the best thing since sliced bread so all future references to it will be lost. Having been fortunate enough to be on the panel of judges the Top 30 charity CEOs on social media launch - announced this afternoon at Brook (#socialceos) - it's been fascinating to me to understand what makes somebody successful in championing their cause while establishing a distinct social identity. Being fresh to most of the nominee's Twitter feeds, I wanted to be able to quickly scan their feed (or blog / Facebook page etc.) and know what they stand for and why I would be interested in hearing their news and views. It's all very well they may have an interest in photography or cricket and that is of course important in confirming people are human and not just activist robots. I love a sense that Twitter people are real and not just a communications team a work, of personality revealing itself in 140 characters. But in revealing everything it can all become virtual clutter. That doesn't devalue what they are doing, what we are all doing. After all all we are trying to do is help people get to know us, our cause and hope they want to be part of it.