Dorian is in Ft. Myers, FL to speak “Social Media” at the 18th Annual CASE Conference for Institutionally Related Foundations. CASE, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, is a professional association s the professional association that helps educational foundations do their work: raising money, reaching out to their communities, and the like. About 60 percent of the attendees expressed at least some skepticism about what social media can do for a foundation in a survey we had them take before the conference. We’ll try to demonstrate that social media can be a powerful tool for a community organized around an educational institution — in fact, for those doing it, we bet that almost seems obvious.

Here’s the program description, and links to some material we’ll draw on.

“Harnessing the Power of Social Media.”

Twitter, Facebook and blogs are just some of the powerful tools you can use to build and solidify your foundation community. But how do you launch and then, and once they’re built, how do you get the community you want and keep it engaged and contributing — time, energy and money? What are the pros and cons, and when do you NOT want to use them? How do you establish goals, then measure your effectiveness in reaching them? In an engaging 75-minute session, digital media strategist, trainer and entrepreneur Dorian Benkoil will use real-world case studies and his own experience and knowledge to demonstrate in a hands-on yet strategic way what social media tools can do for you and your foundation, and how to use them.
Speaker: Dorian Benkoil, Founder, SVP, Senior Consultant, Teeming Media

How Charities Harness Social Media to Raise Awareness, Money (PBS MediaShift) (Client of Teeming Media)
Earthquake confirms value of social media (Miami Herald)
Social-Media Contests Bring In Donations and Enthusiastic Supporters (The Chronicle of Philanthropy)
The WhatGives!? PayPal Donation Widget For Nonprofits

That’s the truncated version of the title of a seminar Dorian is giving Saturday morning for the Professional Women Photographers group in New York Saturday Morning, March 13. Come on by if you can.

Here’s the description:

You’ve got a blog, a Twitter feed, maybe a Facebook or LinkedIn page. You know how to look at others’, but how do you use them all for maximum effect to achieve your business goals? This seminar will help you define the business objectives you can achieve by using digital media, use the tools to position yourself, get the word out, and, crucially, measure your progress, which usually means: making money. Whether you are a fine art or commercial photographer, this seminar will help you do it better.

Through our partnership with BGV Media, focussed on helping educational and not-for-profit institutions, we are proud to provide this example of a success:

When folks at the oldest journalism school in the country needed to know more about the world of Web publishing, they called us.

In October, 2008, the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute brought us to Columbia, Mo., for an intensive day-long seminar on the topic of content management systems, or CMS. They had learned of our expertise through our white paper on the topic (available in the right sidebar on our homepage).

Principals Dorian Benkoil and Adam Glenn, along with Amy Webb, our CMS expert and lead author of our CMS white paper, briefed some 30 journalism faculty, staff, fellows and students, as well as representatives from the Missouri Press Association and National Newspaper Association.

Among the topics we guided the group on were the current state of the CMS industry, media trends affecting CMS choices, and how individual organizations can find a direction and make initial decisions on their choice of CMS. We also helped them delve into workflows and business issues in a digital media environment.

Meeting organizer Jane Stevens described how we jumped in to help with this informative overview of the gathering. “If you’re trying to figure out what CMS to choose for your news organization, and you’re confused by the plethora of choices, [their paper] is worth every penny,” she writes. “Even better than reading the white paper is to talk with them in person.”

RJI and Stevens later brought Adam and Dorian on board to help with a related project called the RJI Collaboratory, a social network of entrepreneurial journalists looking to find support and advice for starting up niche news projects. Adam helped launch the Collaboratory in early 2009 and continues to jointly manage it, while Dorian shared his insights on the business of news in a series of detailed blog posts and other resources in the summer of 2009.