On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Gautam John <gautam@prathambooks.org> wrote:

As always Theo, thank you for your incisive analytical insights.
Assuming one were to use social media for outreach, how would you do
it differently?

Thank you.

And you are Welcome. :) 

I won't do it actually. As memory serves, WMF has never used Social media, or hired one of those "social media experts". The community might have an opinion or two, if that approach was taken aggressively. Regardless, being located in SF, having an abundance of native-English speaking, social-media gadflies, puts the SF staff in a much better position to try these approaches, yet they never did it aggressively, in all the years I followed. The official twitter handles existed, but were rarely used to promote or do outreach in an aggressive manner, they have a moderate number of followers and links. I kind of appreciate that, it doesn't smell of desperation, makes certain things look reserved and official. I still wish they had slightly higher visibility and control over them, but that's jay's preference.

Then comes the Indian staff, at the count of 4-5, I fail to see how re-inventing the wheel and venturing into a territory, better men didn't would be a smart approach. Is there something unique for FB within India? or a different platform that didn't exist universally, that might justify it. Does Social Media have to be a priority? You barely have a communications person writing emails, following up on meetings with the least bit of consistency, to have a quarter of the staff resources wasted on FB and twitter. I don't know who handles administrative work on staff, who handles reporting; the bulk of the official work and communications still appear to come from Hisham after almost an year. For example, I still recall the community meetings which were intended to become consistent and regular at one point, they just disappear for a few months, re-start and stop. There are other vital tasks that need to be performed at this stage by such a small team, rather than go into excursions in the wide world of "social media".

Regards
Theo