Get these dates onto your busy calendars now! We’ve got exciting plans in store for Action Breakfasts this year so you won’t want to miss even a minute. Stay tuned for a post next week with details about our new location and the topic for our first breakfast on February 29.

2012 Action Breakfast dates:

Wednesday, February 29

Wednesday, May 9

Wednesday, August 8

Action Breakfasts bring nonprofits in San Antonio together to learn about social media and technology including best practices; examples of what other nonprofits are doing; and how nonprofits can integrate social media into their existing marketing and PR plans. Registration and breakfast begins at 8:30 a.m. and we kick off each workshop with a speaker at 9:00 a.m. Following the speaker’s brief presentation, we break into table discussions where attendees ask questions about the topic and share their experiences with each other. Questions? Leave a comment or email us at actioncampsa@gmail.com.

We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday, February 29th!

Photo credit: SXC

Due to personal and professional commitments, Debi is stepping away from her organizing duties as a founding member of Action San Antonio. Fran, Molly Cox, and I want to thank Debi for her dedication and devotion to helping us make Action San Antonio such a success. With her help, we’ve been able to serve many of San Antonio’s nonprofit organizations by providing top-notch social media education through free quarterly breakfast workshops and a low-cost annual unconference.

We hope Debi will join us, from time to time, as a returning Table Captain to help facilitate discussions and to share her wealth of communications experience.

Quarterly Action San Antonio Breakfasts for 2012 will resume in February (watch for a Save the Dates post later this week). We look forward to seeing you soon!

Guest post by Drew Danboise     

Julie Niehoff, regional development director for Constant Contact, spoke about social media and marketing at Action Camp on Oct. 28. The conference at the Courtyard Marriott, off Wiseman Boulevard, focused on social media to help non-profit organizations and small business in the San Antonio and surrounding areas.

“New tools have changed the game,” Niehoff said when explaining how social media and email have changed the face of marketing, which involves both small businesses and non-profits.

In her position at Constant Contact, Niehoff specializes in helping companies marketing their product or service with social media sites and especially email. With  advances in technology, there is a whole new playing field in the marketing world.

Niehoff stressed a key point, which was to remember to market your people more than your brand, that people respond to people. This will help the advertisement or the email have a more personal connection.

“Leverage your human-ness,” said Niehoff, in describing the human connection.

Niehoff offered a personal example of making her work email have a more personal connection by adding a picture of her newborn baby, when she was explaining her maternity leave to her coworkers.

Organizations using email for marketing have approximately two seconds with about two words to catch the reader’s attention, according to Niehoff. Will they continue to read it, read it later, or never read it? Great email campaigns will get read, others might not.

Niehoff offered a four step process for engaging more people with an email marketing campaign. Once you acquire someone, you will connect with them, engage them in your cause, and they will help you grow.

In marketing you need to use people you know, and people you know who care. When people care about something, they will do all they can do to help it grow, and get the word out about their cause. Having a whole team that cares, helps to spread the word, especially for nonprofits.

Action Camp was a great conference helping many people whether they were from a non-profit organization, a small business or a student. Marketing is a key component in any small business or non-profit organization, and when you have the skills, you can be successful and grow.

Drew Danboise is a Communications student at UTSA.

I had the pleasure of attending what the group Action San Antonio called “camp” on October 28 at the Courtyard Marriott by Sea World. Action San Antonio is a group of people either introducing methods, techniques and ideas of different types of ways to use social media for “good” whether it be for business, school, or pleasure.  This meeting was intended for all types of people young and old, experienced or not, there was something to involve yourself.  I had the pleasure of sitting in a presentation on Wikispaces presented by Mr. Coroneos, a wonderful and influential professor of Humanities at Northwest Vista Community College.

After grabbing my last cup of coffee, I walked in to a presentation about Wikispaces, a group learning and socializing website, used to present material via internet for many different types of reasons.  In this case, Mr. Coroneos was specifically talking about a way that he incorporated Wikispaces for his Humanities class at the college level.  This proved to be a very interesting website for numerous reasons and appealed to many of the “campers” that attended this particular presentation.

Mr. Coroneos uses Wikispaces as a tool for one of his group projects.  As we all know, group work can sometimes be frustrating because of individual accountability.  In most cases there is always that shy person who doesn’t talk, the lazy person, and the person who does all the work.  Wikispaces provides outlets for all these types of people.  For the shy person, Wikispaces allows them to participate via internet without having the pressures that go along with group projects.  For the lazy individual, Wikispaces allows the teacher to go in and see the active group members and their contributions to the project by recording who, what and when someone contributes to the project.  And finally for the person who is highly active in the group, work will be acknowledged by the teacher by these records.  But the most useful reason for Wikispaces that I found to be of a great advantage is the fact that, being a full time student as well as holding a full time job like most students, this website allows group members to contribute on their own time without having to meet outside of class because you can communicate, whether by messaging or leaving mail, all on this site.

Overall, this was a great experience and allowed people to gain knowledge of the ever-growing era of social media and the benefits it has for school, marketing, news and more.  But the beauty of this camp is that if you weren’t interested in what you were listening to, you could get up and step into a different session.  Action San Antonio is a great organization for all types of people and  I highly recommend it to anyone for all levels of the social networking community.

David Smith is a communications student at Northwest Vista College.

by Jennifer Cardwell

Susan Reeves, an elementary educator, presented “Engaging the Under 18 Crowd,” at this year’s Action Camp San Antonio at the Courtyard Marriott on Oct. 28.

Action Camp is an unconference held annually by the Action San Antonio for educators and nonprofit organizations. The purpose of Action Camp is to empower the audience to use social media and technology to improve their organization and general knowledge of technology.

Reeves is an experienced teacher and understands that engaging students is vital for student participation, motivation, and learning, therefore her presentation is information about teens in our current society. Reeves is an Instructional Technology Specialist (IT) for Northeast Independent School District.

“This is my seventh year as an Instructional Technology Specialist, prior to that I taught at a Title I school for four years and served as chair of their technology committee,” said Reeves, when asked about her technology experience.

Reeve’s presentation gave the audience insights on the use of social media by teens as well as the adult or parent perspective. In the last five years, social media usage on sites like Facebook and You Tube has increased by students between the ages of 13 and 18, while Twitter and MySpace are considered old people tools.

Due to the accessibility of iDevices, such as iPhones and iPads, microblogging on social networking sites are more available to teens. While teens check social media sites over 10 times a day, parents don’t believe teens look at social media sites that often. Facebook is a great site for social networking and engaging students. While using this technology, the need for teaching students to be responsible with their posting and personal information is required.

Out of the students who use social sites on a daily basis, 39 percent admit to posting information or comments they regretted. Also, 26 percent of students who used social media sites said they have pretended to be someone else online.

Teachers can integrate social media in the classroom by using Facebook, Moodle and Twitter. These social sites help to engage students while motivating them to participate and take responsibility for their own learning.

Facebook usage can also transition to the college level. Mark Goodspeed and Julie Cooper are Public Relations Officers at San Antonio College (SAC) who attended Action Camp. Goodspeed and Cooper use Facebook to inform students about activities and events as well as important reminder dates. Cooper stresses that Facebook allows them to communicate with students on a mass level.

Goodspeed and Cooper learned how to run contest through Facebook from presenter Debi Pfitzenmaier. Her number one rule on running a contest is to use a third party application for the actual contest. Pfitzenmaier also recommends writing full disclosure of the rules on the Facebook page to inform contest entrants exactly how the winner will be chosen along with the how prizes will be distributed. It is against Facebook’s policy to run a contest without a third party application.

Jennifer Cardwell is an Education major at Texas A&M University San Antonio.

In case you need a little refresher, our good friends at LCTV have documented some of the day’s presentations on video.  It’s no small task to do a live, unrehearsed, unedited show and that’s what this is!

So head on over to the Action SA page on LCTV and take advantage of six video segments, including the camp opening with the Action SA team and Brian Carter of SeaWorld; Jon Lebkowsky of weblogsky.com; Luis Sandoval, Jr., on mobile technologies; Fran Stephenson of Step In Communication and of course, our keynote speaker, Kelly Cheeseman of Walmart.

Click here to get to the live feed.

Watch for more resources from the team in the next few weeks as well as our 2012 schedule. We hope you will have all the tools you need for success in 2012.

Guest Post by Kara Falks

In today’s constantly changing media landscape, social media is a vital part of advertising for any business. This seems to be common knowledge, but the burning question for many businesses seems to be –“how can social media be used successfully as advertising?

In the “Building Elements of a Social Media Campaign” presentation, speaker Brian Carter, director of communications at Sea World, shed some light on how to successfully use social media as advertising.  Carter spoke about the importance of two way conversation with customers, and how social media is able to provide this interactive dialogue. By using this interactive dialogue he explained how businesses can better achieve a successful exchange of ideas to extend customer service.

However, don’t just charge full force into using social media, he warns.

“It really pays to do your homework in terms of investing in a (social media) channel. Put together a plan. Just come up with a plan and say, this is how we are going to start in social media,” said Carter.

Several different types of social media were discussed during the session, including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Foursquare. The importance of knowing why your business is on any of these particular social media was stressed. An understanding of business objectives and who the customers are play an important role in choosing a social media outlet.

Carter explained how a business has to look at “what it takes to be effective in those (social media) places.

As for all the different types of social media out there, Carter (after grinning and calling it a cliche) named Facebook as his favorite social media for marketing. “It is where people are having  conversation.”

Kara Falks is a Mass Communications student at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Texas.

We are combing through your evaluation forms and gathering all the great materials to share with you here and on our Facebook page.

Watch for these coming attractions:

•  A link to the presentations which will either be found here or somewhere in the social media universe

• Blog posts from student reporters from Northwest Vista College who attended many of the presentations
• Videos from presenters and participants
• 2012 Action Breakfast and Action Camp schedule – we’ve already got more surprises in store for you!

So while we are busy gathering all these materials, here is a link to the Twitter stream for the #actionsa hashtag.  You can get busy right now following all your new Action Camp friends.

http://search.tweetreports.com/q/topic/%23actionsa/id68033.html

Thanks again for your support.

Colleen, Debi, Fran, Luke, Molly and Scott

If you’ve ever visited Morgan’s Wonderland you know what a special place it is. Imagine a park where everyone can play, regardless of age, ability, or special needs.

Jennifer Hatton, with Morgan’s Wonderland, describes it as the world’s first ultra-accessible park: “It’s a place to play, a place where no one is made to feel differently. Our goal continues to be to create a safe, family friendly environment that offers rides and habitats structured and managed in a way that lets everyone play and interact with one another.”

Is your organization using social media?
Yes! Facebook and Twitter.

How does social media fit in to your existing marketing and PR plan?
It is one of the three components — TV advertisements, traditional media & social media — we use to let people know about the park. Social media is a great way for us to tell our story in an interactive format and receive feedback from our audience. We are beginning a revamp and roll out a new marketing and branding campaign leading into next season and social media will play a very large role in that process. We recognized early that (at that time emerging) social media would be an important part of our marketing but we didn’t realize just how crucial it would be. We’ve connected with a large population of families and individuals across the nation and around the world, many of whom are a part of the special needs community. These connections have resulted in brand advocates, participants in “crowd-sourcing” initiatives, and lots of new friends.

What challenges do you face as a nonprofit that you think can be solved in whole (or, in part) by developing a social media strategy?
Having our park be the first of its kind in the world is a wonderful thing, but it’s also challenging because people don’t quite understand what we are. We also have such a diverse target population. Social media allows us to reach out to diverse groups in an effective manner to let them know that the park is for them – it’s for everyone!

Connecting and communicating with our visitors, volunteers, and donors from around the world is very important to us. We want to update them on what we are doing and we want to interact with them and get feedback on their visits and experiences with us. Laying out those plans on our strategy helps us to focus and communicate effectively.

What do you hope to learn at ActionCampSA?
We want to learn new things about using social media in the non-profit world and make new connections with other local non-profits who are making a difference.

Register to attend ActionCamp San Antonio on Friday, October 28. This full-day unconference provides social media learning and sharing for nonprofits and educators but everyone is invited to attend!

The Action Camp 2011 organizers would like to thank the San Antonio Nonprofit Council, also known as the @SANCouncil, for partnering with us to make the Oct. 28 event happen. Our partnership with them  has broadened our community and our reach!

Thank you, Scott McAninch and team, for helping nonprofits move into technology .

And now, a word of thanks for our Action Camp 2011 Sponsors.  Go tell them how grateful you are for their support because Action Camp does NOT happen without them.  The only way we can keep our registration costs so low is because our sponsors are picking up the tab! So visit their FB page, web site, etc, and give them a little love.

Camp Cook Sponsors

Rackspace

SeaWorld San Antonio

Tent Sponsors

Constant Contact

Time Warner Cable

Backpack Sponsor

Security Service Federal Credit Union

S’More Sponsors

Think Causality

Step In Communication

Flashlight Sponsors

Beacon SEO

Augie Ray

So, have you registered yet? There’s no better community!