While connecting is easier today than it ever has been before, there’s more to connection than mastering tools. Effective connectors have networks that are both wide and deep; not only connected to a goal or purpose but interconnected among their members who are not just program participants, but active gears in the machinery of your school, program, organization or initiative. Each person represents access to an expanded network, and an expanded future audience to receive, absorb and redistribute your messages. In a future where reach seems infinite, how does your use of social media tools and communication strategies amplify your ability to share things that are important with the eagerly listening members of your current and future network? Learn how to engage people from a point of meaning and value, deepen relationships and effectively mobilize your networks to share information as well as invite feedback.

1. Esther D. Kustanowitz – RAVSAK
“Moving the Needle,” January 2014

2. The Plan
 Find out a bit about you
 Engage framework – social media revolution & Jewish
context
 Consider relationships and networks differently
 Think about social media as tool/strategy for connection,
communication & engagement
 Tips & resources, from Esther & from each other
 Jewish & pop culture references along the way

3. Videos That May Stress You Out,
But Aren’t Meant To
 Social Media Revolution
 What Happens on the Internet in 60 Seconds
 Where Do Good Ideas Come From

4. What’s Jewish About
Social Media?
Communal values – Nation of Priests (everyone’s a writer, rabbi or activist)

V’ahavtal’re’akhakamokha

Kolyisraelareyvimzehla’zeh

Al tifrosh min hatzibbur
Educational values - At p’takh lo

Asehlekharav

“Much have I learned from my masters, & more from my colleagues than from my masters, & from my disciples the most.” –R.
Hanina (Ta’anit 7a)
Social/family values
•
Jewish geography
•
See what your children are doing when they don’t call
•
TMI/ no boundaries, but it’s all in our own best interests

5. Sharing is Caring (but also a
chance for engagement)

6. Connection & Communication

7. From “Top-Down” to “Up and
Out!”
 Used to be just top-down:
 hierarchy
 undemocratic
 user impact: low
 Now also bottom-up:
 peer reviews
 consumer feedback
 invested “prosumer” class
 Next phase: Wonkavator
http://content9.flixster.com/question/46
/64/76/4664763_std.jpg

8. Ideas That Come From the People
 Yitro – justice system
 Tzelophehad’s daughters
shifting inheritance laws
 2.5 tribes stay on
the other side of the Jordan
 Golden Calf
 Aaron’s sons bringing a strange fire
 Korach’s rebellion

9. “The Future Cannot Be Crowdsourced”:
Crowdsourcing a Response

10. Encounter
•Healthy skepticism
•First impressions – good or bad
•Immersion can be “too soon” –
you learn too much
•Right organization/person at the
wrong time is the wrong
person/org
•Sense that the person/project
adds a unique value

11. Engagement
•
Connection
•
Interest
•
Dynamism
•
Sense of Humor
•
Relationship building through
experiences

12. Deepening Relationship
•Deeper investment – time &
emotion
•Working together
•Partnership
•Shared experience  creating
history

13. Challenge
•Period of instability
•Moment of dissent or distress
•“I am not your consolation prize”
•Acknowledging when you’re
wrong
•Intense work to repair
relationship
•Showing value

14. Resolution
•Trespasses forgiven
•Equilibrium restored
•Understanding
•Compromises (sauce on the side)
•Happy relationship

15. Network 1.0 - Local

16. Network 2.0, 3.0 & Beyond:
Everywhere

17. Ideal: High Level of Visibility,
Growing Engagement

18. Stalking Your Intended:
Do the Social Media Research
 Develop “ambient awareness”
 Learn the language
 Schedule “surveillance time”
 Follow links, explore tools, read about social media use
(Mashable, Inside Facebook, Tweetdeck, mobile apps)
 Who’s doing it right? What can you “borrow” from them?
 How are your “alpha users” using social media? (be where
they are…)

19. Personal Training
 Social media regimen/cultural immersion
 Find time (coffee breaks, lunchtime, etc)
 Check Twitter/Facebook page at least
once a day
 Read Tweetstreams or Status Feeds of
people and orgs you’re following –begin
to participate in conversations
 Share a FB group or event with friends
who are “hubs”
 Ask questions (professionals/civilians) – asehlekharav

20. Tools: Facebook vs. Twitter
 Facebook – distribution, sharing & discussion (deeper
reach)




a newsroom
the water cooler/break room
Jewish geography: school/camp/uni reunion
evite.com
 Twitter - consumption & distribution (wider reach)




a cocktail party in a large room
a convention
a sports arena
CNN news ticker

21. Tools: Google + &Pinterest
 Google+:




video meeting center
space to share articles of interest
space for discussion?
better way to organize friends?
 Pinterest:
 An online portfolio
 A scrapbook
 A design journal or interior decorating plan
 Both: Basically a mystery to me

22. Tool: Storify
http://storify.com/CLSPN_Networks/collaboratory-convenes-jewish-innovation-sector

23. Tool: Tagboard

24. 5 Things You Can Do Now
1. Asehlekharav – both rav and rabim
2. Ulpan – learn the language
3. Think about social media as an outreach strategy and a
conversation to build engagement
4. Create a content plan (w/flexibility to discard it)
5. Be open to input & inspiration from other places (share
the spotlight, highlight strengths or distinctions)

25. Actions for Your School
 Determine your institutional voice/s& value
 How does your group serve the community?
 Create your own FAQ
 Define “compelling content” for your organization
 Identify newsy angles for programs, use as hook to promote
org in online conversations
 Consider starting a blog, so you can host conversations
 Asset Mapping
 Who/what are your strongest resources? (include board
members, parents, teachers & students)
 Find “mavens”/hubs in your community, invite their
feedback & partnership (donor cultivation, but not for $)
 Consider inviting organizational assessment by a
social media trainer

26. Content: Engaging Your Audience
 Know what’s out there & how people are using it
 Develop an invested audience




create riveting content
be consistent and reliable with your messaging
be willing to listen to feedback, and adapt accordingly
provide a unique value
 emotional /intellectual connection
 speak to a shared passion – justice, equality, sports
 personality, humor (snark)
 Try new things to see what works

27. Content Strategy Checkpoint
 If your organization had a blog, what would its
purpose/mission statement be?
 How often would you post?
 What would your first five posts be about? (look to your
history and also to what’s happening now)
 Who would write them? (hint: consider a mix of voices,
professional and lay, parent, teacher & student)
 How would you promote them/get new readers?

28. How Do I Find Things to Post
About?
 Google Alerts / Google News Search (archives)
 Stay tuned to Twitter, CNN, BBC, Facebook – what are
people talking about, and how does it relate to your work?
 Authentic lenses on passionate subjects
 Connect with educators’ networks (PARDES, RAVSAK,
JEDLAB)

29. Today’s networks
 Not just the people we see every day
 Geography is incidental
 Extension of Jewish geography –
shtetl goes global
Thesituationist.wordpress.com

30. How is social media like Jewish
summer camp?
 Summer camp:




Immersive
limited duration
“bonds that last a lifetime” – most impactful J experience
Freedom, adolescence, experimentation
 Social media:




immersive
Can be continuous if developing relationships well
Different kinds of relationship experiences
Freedom - sometimes frightening, but can be a blessing

31. Telling the Story
 What is your organization’s story?
 Current characters
 Origins story – feed the hunger
for history
 Who are your consumers/
audiences/fanboys?
 What do “your people” value?
 Give them what they want, and they’ll give you what you
want

32. Tools & Resources
•
NLE Resources?
•
Free webinars from DarimOnline.org and Wild Apricot
•
Inside Facebook and Mashable newsletters (for social trends/literacy in social
media tools and shifts)
•
eJewishPhilanthropy, Google Alerts, Wired, Fast Company, Harvard Business
Review, Pew Internet Study - articles of interest
•
Manifesto: Social Media for Jewish Organizations (My Urban Kvetch)
•
Wanted: Jewish Leaders for the Digital Age (Ha’aretz)
•
Here Comes Everybody – Clay Shirky
•
Empowered Judaism – ElieKaunfer
•
Linchpin – Seth Godin

33. @EstherK




esther.kustanowitz@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/estherk
http://facebook.com/estherkustanowitz
http://youtube.com/EstherK (including YouTube list of social
media related videos)
 MyUrbanKvetch.com