During the month of December 2011 and through the support of Microsoft, E-mediat Morocco organized a workshop on “Microsoft Live Essentials tools” in  Azrou (December 7, 8) and Meknes (December 9,10) and in Oujda (17,18)

Miscrosoft Live Essentials is a collection of different tools that help perform different activities like photo editing and organisation, video editing, blogging, instant messaging, etc.

During this workshop, E-Mediat Morocco NGOs were thrilled to discover the different tools offered by Windows Live Essentials like SkyDrive, Writer, PhotoGallery, WindowsMovieMaker, etc. and other Microsoft tools like publisher and  use these tools for their NGOs and Social Media Strategies.

After this workshop, E-Mediat Morocco NGOs strated using Microsoft Live Essentials tools & Publisher to reinforce their Social Media strategies. Below are some examples:

Blogging via Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer allows to share and post stories like a professional blogger.You can create blogposts or articles and insert photos and videos from Youtube. You can also preview your article online before publishing on your blog. In addition, you can post your articles on any of your service providers blog favorites like blogger.com, wordpress, or others.

Video editing via Windows Live Movie Maker

Windows Live Movie Maker  allows to edit your videos and add special effects, transitions, sounds and captions to tell your NGO’s story. After that it’s easy to upload your video on your NGO Youtube channel and then share it with your network  through your NGO’s facebook page, blog and even send a tweet about it. Creating this synergy between these different tools is plus to your NGO’s Social Media Strategy and the steps are very simple:

Prepare an ad/invitation via Microsoft Publisher & share it on our NGO Facebook Page

During the month of June, E-mediat Morocco organized workshop 1 on “Social Media Overview and Strategic planning” in Oujda (June 17, 18, 19), Meknes (June 24, 25, 26) and Azrou (June 27,28,29).

The learning objectives of Day 1 are:

• To provide an overview of the Networked NGO concept and network building techniques to understand how they can use social media for civil society goals
• To have participants self-assess their current level of social media practice and understand the basic principles for success (Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly)

1- Participants started their training with a brief presentation session to introduce themselves and their NGOs and then were divided into 4/5 groups to discuss/brainstorm about their expectations. Participants needed to outline their expectations. The purpose of this exercise was to provide participants’ with a reflection time to think about their presence during the training, to draw their objectives and put these right in front of them. At the end of this exercise, each group outlined their expectations on a flip chart and brief presented these to the whole group.

Observations: Some Participants’ expectations included creating a website, a facebook page, etc. At this stage, participants were still considering a website, blog or facebook as their objectives. The trainer is not supposed to intervene or comment on expectation but let participants undersand by themselves throughout the training that all these are tools that should be linked to their social media strategy to reach their objectives to build or weave their network, promote their activities, etc.

2- Brainstorming session on Social Media in the Arab world (link)

3- Exercise: 3 things about me
From Me To We: Creating A Social Network Based On Our Individual Knowledge
Concept: We are going to be talking about Networked NGOs. Networked NGOs understand how to use social networks to reach their goals using social media. Social networks are collections of people and organizations who are connected to each other in different ways through common interests or affiliations. Social networks have different patterns and structures to them and the glue that holds networks together and makes them effective is relationships. If NGOs understand and apply the basic building blocks of social networks, their social media plans will get more impactful results.

Three Things About Me: It allows individuals to introduce themselves and share something about their experience, expertise, or knowledge related to the project. The exercise will help them learn what knowledge we can share with other. We will have created a social network on the wall that allows us to visualize our shared points of connection and reciprocity.

Break

4- Networked NGOS vs NON Networked NGOS: working process for each

5- The story of Stuff : link

6- Examples of networked non-profit

7- Brainstorming/feedback session

8- Balloon game: Each participant has a ball on the foot. S/He must defend and explode the other, until one ballon remains.

9- 4 levels of social media:
- Crawl: The NGO is not using social media or is not using it consistently
- Walk: The NGO is using one or more social media tools consistently, but it is not strategic
- Run: Uses one or more social media tools, is strategic but techniques could be improved or networked nonprofit concepts integrated. Organizations in this category also need to focus on using measurement techniques
- Fly: NGO uses two or more social media tools strategically, applies network concepts, and regularly uses best practices, measurement, and improvement strategies.

Effective social media strategy isn’t about using as many tools as possible. What does it take to succeed is the ability to improve practice in small steps. Crawl, Walk, Run, and Fly is a maturity of practice model that can help NGOs get to the next level and improve how they’re using social media to reach civil society goals.

10- Exercise: group discussion
- What level are you?
- What do you need to do to move to the next level?

Link Day 1 PPT