Social Media Committee 2015 Report

The Social Media Committee has prepared the following contribution to NASPA's 2015 collection of reports on committee activity.

NASPA Social Media Committee Annual Report 2014-15

Kate Fukawa-Connelly, Chair; Judy Cole, Assistant Chair; Conrad Bassett-Bouchard; Roger Cullman; Iliana Filby; Terry Kang Rau; Marsh Richards

Overview The NASPA Social Media Committee was established in March 2015 in response to needs expressed by NASPA members for more attention to be paid to communication between NASPA leadership and membership. We seek to be transparent and participatory in the work that we do. Members can view our current tasks in a google doc linked from our Committee website: http://scrabbleplayers.org/w/Social_Media_Committee and we are always happy to hear from current players with ideas to further our goals, especially those who may want to volunteer to help out!

Accomplishments Our ongoing tasks include:

• Maintaining the NASPA Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/NASPAScrabble - our public window into the organization – content includes word lists, news items, tournament results. The page currently has 601 “likes.” We welcome submission of content!
• Sharing NASPA news via the webpage, listservs and Facebook.
• Staying abreast of online communication on NASPA Facebook Group and NASPA Member Concerns Facebook Group.

Other tasks we’ve completed since March:

• Created social media campaign for NASC 2016
• Wrote and distributed NASPA-PRO guidelines
• Drafted Communications “Road Map” to be refined
• Facilitated [bracket]ology pick ‘em contest for NASC 2015
• Wrote first NASPA Member Bio (Jason Keller), posted to website

SMC Member Participation Our Committee members each bring different strengths to the group. Conrad has brought energy and creativity to the [bracket]ology contest. Roger shares excellent images via our Facebook page and has a strong understanding of growing a social media presence. Marsh brought the NASC 2016 campaign to life. Terry wrote a great piece on Jason Keller that will serve as a model for future player profiles. Iliana headed up the first draft of our ‘road map’ so that we could better understand as many means of online communication among Scrabble players as possible. Judy is our most valuable player for her consistent and informative Facebook Page content management.

Moving Forward We have a number of “wish list” items of interest, but the project that seems to be generating the most interest right now is a NASPA publication through which we can share regular articles and engage with members in a longer narrative format than is appropriate on our Facebook page. In an ideal world, many of us would love to see a paper newsletter, but recognizing that that is not feasible (nor within our purview as the SMC), we will devote much of our meeting at NASC to discussing how to create a sustainable blog. We would likely need additional volunteers to generate content and it would require a regular, timely commitment from current SMC members, so we need to decide whether or not we truly have the interest level and willingness to commit to the project that would be needed to create a viable product.

All of the SMC members have a lot of enthusiasm for communication, with the goal of growing our organization and creating community among existing players. Of course, all of us are volunteers, with limited time and ability to carry out our vision. If another paid position were to be created within NASPA, we would strongly encourage the Exec Committee to devote resources to a Communications/PR Specialist who could provide consistent, well-informed guidance in the area of social media and general NASPA communications.