Twenty-Something, Social Change Bloghers: Meet Qui Diaz - EvangeList for Social Change

Beth Kanter — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 10:30:05 -0500

Qui Diaz

Last month I attended the "Twenty-Something Meet Up" at the BlogHer Conference, facilitated by the fabulous Zandria and got curious about the twenty something/millennial bloggers
writing about social change, activism, and nonprofits. So I created a list and now I'm starrting to get to know some of these bloggers by doing interviews.

Meet Qui Diaz. She's writes the Evange.List blog which focuses on social media, social change, and nonprofits. By day, she's the director of strategy at Livingston Communications.

1. Tell me about you

The
first thing people ask me is the story behind my name. It's short for
Quitrina (pronounced kee-tree-nuh & roll the 'r'). My parents (one
Spanish/Cuban) made it up, tapping the spelling for Quixote. One day
I'd like to say that was a providential move - "quixotic" describes
someone who "takes on an idealistic quest against great odds." I want to take more risks in life.

In
the safety of my day-to-day in DC, there is a lot of laughter, love and
champagne. Things aren't so bad when you take time to celebrate the
small blessings in life! Still, I feel strongly that we are here on
this earth to see each other through. There's a quote that I very much
identify with, by E.B. White: "I arise each morning torn between a
desire to save the world and a desire to savor it. That makes it hard
to plan the day." So, paralysis is my Achilles heel.

2. Tell me about your blog

Evange.List
kicked off as a personal 'social media experiment' to see if anyone
gave a flip about my voice. A few people did! So after 50 days of
writing about 50 things I love, it was time to "Madonna" the blog and
keep it going. For about a year now it's been dedicated to 'social
media for social causes,' and I usually write about nonprofits and
people I adore. I also get a lot of pleasure from incorporating
religious lingo, too. Evangelism is a critical aspect of word of mouth
and cause-related marketing, I am personally an evangelist for many
causes, and we are all in the Church of the Internet.

I also blog on The Buzz Bin, the company blog, which is well known in the marketing, PR and social media space. My 'beat' is social good.

3. I understand you work with nonprofits and social media strategy --
Can share a story about one of your clients and how you worked with
them to incorporate a social media strategy?

My
agency, Livingston Communications, is currently helping Network
Solutions with reputation management across blogs, Twitter, and forums
to significantly decrease the company's 58 percent negative commentary
ratio (as of June 30) by more than 20 points. It's not a nonprofit
example, but it serves as an interesting case study fornonprofits.

Any
organization is susceptible to critique, and overtime that can be
detrimental to end goals. What nonprofit wasn't impacted by post 9/11
scrutiny? Plus, let's face it, the more controversial or provocative
the issue, the more potential there is for outlash. Listening and
responding are vital, but so is resolution. And those efforts have to
be sustained over time. What we're seeing with Network Solutions is
that, even if we can't always provide the desired answer, engaging in
the right way at the right time is having an immediate impact.

4. What is your advice to nonprofits about integrating social media?
What should they do first to ensure success?

After (and only after) defining a clear objective, honing in on a specific targeted
audience
(i.e., not "the general public" or "women"), and setting measurable
goals for meeting your objective - do your homework. Don't rush your
research either - give yourself a few weeks to initiate what is
basically a SWOT analysis of social media related to your mission. Find
out what is (or isn't) already being said, by who, and where. Get a
handle of the space, then develop your strategy. More than likely,
you'll need to engage your audience in said strategy, and social media
will play a role in that. All engagements should be meaningful and
contribute to the measurable outcomes you set upfront. Otherwise, as
is often said on Twitter, "fail."

5. What do you think is
the biggest challenge to nonprofits in embracing social media? Are
there certain types of nonprofits or situations where you'd advise a
nonprofit to use social media?

Challenges: Justifying the
means through ROI. Integration with other name lists. Also a general
lack of comfort with navigating the rapidly-evolving digital ecosystem.
(Weren't we all just breaking through into email marketing 4 years
ago?) Nobody is doing any of this perfectly though, no one is an
expert. There is a lot of commiseration. I really like the foundational
and exploratory spirit of WeAreMedia, too.

Certain
causes warrant full-on exploitation of social media if resources allow.
For me, the deal breaker is death. Genocide, poverty, slavery, clean
water, AIDS. I just saw the screening of Call+Response,
which is the newest in a series of initiatives to end today's rampant
slave trades, from child soldiering to sex trafficking. It's been set
up as an "open source activism" movement - anything goes.

6. As a Gen Y, who uses social media and social networks, what advice
would you give to nonprofits about interacting successfully with
people of your generation on socnets?

Don't
expect much for another couple years. We're Gen Y, remember? Joking
aside, our generation at large (in the U.S.) was not groomed with an
empowered activist mindset the way kids today are. However, the
youth-driven, social media-supported campaigns we see right now are
paving the way for more action in coming years. By setting up camp in
social media and testing word of mouth campaigns, your organization can
prepare for the fight for mind-share in our increasingly fragmented
media culture. Keep an open mind, love your evangelists, and expect
great things.

Beth Kanter, BlogHer CE for Social Change and Nonprofits, writes Beth's Blog

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Twenty-Something, Social Change Bloghers: Meet Qui Diaz - EvangeList for Social Change