This is another in our “She Said, He Said” blog post series. Unfortunately, there will be no #shehechat tonight at 8 p.m. CST this week because we are speaking at an event this evening. However, we will return to our normal time slot next week.
It’s been a wild ride so far with “She Said, He Said,” the side venture I’ve been working on with Jim Raffel this year.
What started out as blog posts offering differing opinions has grown into a weekly Twitter chat at 8 p.m. CST Thursdays, which you can follow along by using the hashtag #shehechat. Now it has blossomed even further into a few speaking engagements now and then.
This week, Jim and I are speaking at two events and both of them are to benefit different nonprofit organizations. Our first one is tonight and will be held at Ivy in downtown Milwaukee and benefit the local affiliate of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.
Jim and I already have a few speaking gigs under our belt, but this will be the first we’ve done to benefit a nonprofit. Before we accepted the engagement, we talked extensively about what it means and how we would handle it. One of the concerns of course is that the goal is to raise money for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. Another is how we promote the event. Jim and I have never openly asked for contributions before and all of our promotion has been through our own personal accounts.
Should we use separate social media accounts for “She Said, He Said”?
The simple answer that Jim and I have come up with is just no. The “She Said, He Said” brand is connected to Jim’s Twitter handle (@raffel) and mine (@ShelMKE). We have always promoted our blog posts, our weekly Twitter chat and our other speaking engagements through these handles. We have never wanted to create separate social media accounts for “She Said, He Said” because we are “She Said, He Said.” We see no reason to change that just because we are now doing some events to benefit nonprofits.
Should we use social media to raise money?
The other question we had to ask ourselves was this: Were we comfortable asking for money to benefit the charity we were supporting?
That’s a hard thing. Jim and I both have our own personal brands to maintain besides “She Said, He Said.” If you follow either or both of us, you know we do more in our social media spaces than just promote our blogs, our chat and our gigs. We are real people and not just a joint venture. We want to keep it that way.
Still, we realized that if we kept to our personal brands for the promotion of “She Said, He Said” happenings, it meant that we would sometimes have to focus on that in our tweets and Facebook and Google+ status posts. We decided we were comfortable with that.
After much deliberation, we concluded that our brand was all about social media so why wouldn’t we promote our undertakings in the networks? We are sure that some people may not agree with our approach, but this is just who we are.
Where do we go from here?
Our “She Said, He Said” brand is evolving and neither Jim nor I know where it’s going to end up. We will continue to do what we have always done. We will evaluate each new prospect, opportunity and step in our journey and make the most intelligent decisions we can based on our experiences.
We know that somewhere down the line that some people may not agree with our decisions (and maybe haven’t already). However, at least be assured that we don’t take any of our decisions with “She Said, He Said” lightly. We believe in our project and are striving to make it successful; not necessarily for us but for every venue, conference and organization to which we are attached.