Social Media Conference Series Off to Successful Start in San Francisco

By Celeste Alleyne, Citizenship Director for the West Region, Microsoft Corporation

Yesterday, Social Media for Nonprofits, with support from Microsoft, kicked off its first in a series of Social Media Conferences for nonprofits in the historical War Memorial "green room" in San Francisco, California.

As Citizenship Director for the West Region of Microsoft, I was proud to see some 200 nonprofit attendees from around the Bay area, many who attended our first “mini–session” on social media a year ago at the Microsoft NGO Connection Day in Silicon Valley.

Highlights included: Dr. Kellie McElhaney talking about building trust through your social media communications, and listening to author Guy Kawasaki share many great tips from his book, Enchanted. Guy encouraged attendees to “be trustworthy and likeable”, to tweet repeatedly, and to "always be snapping" – photos, that is – which he emphasized are a great tool to help nonprofits get their points across! Charles Porch from Facebook offered ten basic tips to help nonprofits grow their business using the power of Facebook.  After lunch, attendees heard from nonprofit celeb and author Beth Kanter who always wows the room with inclusive presentations and amazing insights to help nonprofits soar with social media! You can check out Beth’s blog here.

I was thrilled to be a part of this kick-off event and am so glad that Microsoft is sponsoring this nationwide series. If yesterday’s event was any indication, these events are going to help nonprofits take their use of social media for social good to the next level!

If you missed yesterday’s event, you can still sign up for one of the upcoming events. Use promotion code “MSFT” at check out to get a $20 discount off of the registration rate.

See what the crowd was saying in San Francisco’s #sm4np.