Organizations atwitter about social media

When Rotary Club of Fort Worth leaders decided it was time to begin actively recruiting young professionals at a director level to serve in the long-standing organization, they found a tough, new competitor called social media.

Between Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Tagged, a new generation of young professionals is getting plenty of networking opportunities without having to stand up from their computers. But for organizations like the Rotary Club, this presents a problem.

“We’re working with some of our younger members to try to come up with a strategy to reach out to members under 40,” said Tim Plocica, chairman of classification and membership at the Rotary Club. “… And [social media is] definitely a competitor. It’s such an accessible tool and a lot of young professionals are so savvy at using social media. They can instantaneously communicate. The only downside is they’re not communicating with their peers on a one-on-one basis. But social media certainly has its role.”

And that role seems to be evolving at lightning speed – with many technology journals predicting it will be the No. 1 networking tool used in business within the next few years. Social networking already is the No. 1 online activity.

The growing importance of social media prompted Brent Somers, with Phillips & Reiter PLLC, to sign up for a social media course at the Fort Worth Business Assistance Center in hopes of catching up with the trend.

“What I’m seeing is Facebook has gone from this social, kind of a school kids’ realm to a legitimate business realm in very short order,” he said. “More up-to-date companies are investing in it and looking into it and developing their profiles even though most don’t fully understand what it’s going to do.”

Somers said since his course, he has dutifully been accepting and sending invites on LinkedIn and Facebook, but he has yet to figure out what his next step will be.

“It could be a generational thing,” he said. “It seems to be the younger people already know what to do. For me, it’s harder to figure out now what?”

Somers said there is certainly potential for a higher degree of networking online, including video conferencing and multiple chatting, but he worries “with a bit of lament at the further reduction of interpersonal interaction,” he said.

“And besides, I have not seen anything to indicate a marketing power source yet, but everybody’s circling around it, thinking maybe it will be there soon,” he said.

Laura Fitton, founder of oneforty inc. and a recent speaker on social networking at the TCU Speaker Series, said it is important for local networking groups to see the social networking shift to online as an opportunity for them too.

“I've ‘met’ tens of thousands of people on Twitter, but what makes it truly great is meeting people in every city that I go to,” Fitton said. “The face-to-face is a huge aspect of what people do even within Facebook and Twitter. So, local groups need to seize that opportunity for free marketing and coordination of their in-person events. Together, it’s a big win.”

 The local chapter of the Young Presidents Organization is facing a similar problem as Rotary – its once young members are aging quickly. In YPO, 49 years old is the cap for age and when a member reaches that age, their exodus is termed ‘49ing out,’ said Randy Eisenman, managing partner of Satori Capital and long-time YPO member.

“Over the next several years we will turn over roughly half of our members; they will 49 out as we call it, so there’s a real drive and commitment to reload right now,” Eisenman said.

So, the 65-member organization is trying to ramp up its efforts to bring in new, young talent. For Eisenman, YPO has given him countless opportunities during the past decade – including introducing him to his wife.

The organization, he said, has been an important part of his life – and the face-to-face networking is a big part of that.

For SafeHaven of Tarrant County, a local nonprofit group, launching a new young professionals group paired with plenty of Twitter and Facebook interaction has been a success.

SafeHaven began its Young Professionals Group earlier this year to garner another generation of people involved with the organization as volunteers and donors, said SafeHaven Community Relations Coordinator Sarah McClellan-Brandt.

Leading up to the group’s first networking event, McClellan-Brandt sent out an e-vite, made numerous Twitter and Facebook posts and appealed to the organization’s network and board members to ‘re-Tweet’ the event.

“We got several attendees from those,” McClellan-Brandt said. “… People on our board got involved with us and the younger people at our company love it. So it was really digging within our own network to get word out. The trick is friending the right people.”

Eisenman said there are many benefits to YPO, such as events and trips, that are not likely to be duplicated online anytime soon.

“Once you’re able to have a dialogue with the younger generation about YPO, they quickly see how different it is,” Eisenman said. “There is a depth to the relationships that are created through YPO that are very hard to replicate online.”