One Year After Obama, Most Big DC Organizations Aren't Embracing Social

Media Tools

Micah L. Sifry | October 15, 2009 - 12:03pm

Marc Ross, Christine Stineman, and Chris Lisi of 2ndSix, Tribe Effect and Chris Lisi Communications have just

published a very interesting report looking at how 102 big Washington-based trade associations and

advocacy groups are--or aren't--making use of an array of 14 core social media tools and platforms. The

results shouldn't surprise anyone; it's still pretty obvious that a year after Barack Obama's electoral victory,

most inside-the-Beltway still have a very cautious and traditional attitude towards social media.

But the individual breakdown by organization and the thoroughness of the research (which covers a ten week

span ending October 2, 2009) ought to serve as a wake-up call for many groups. Because the results are

pathetic: "75 of the organizations reviewed [are using] four or fewer online new media tools. The average

score of the organizations reviewed was 24%, meaning 76% of the most commonly used social media tools

are not being utilized to communicate with members, voters and other constituencies."

Groups were scored on whether they were using the following as part of their web presence: an advocacy

center (meaning some kind of grassroots action platform on the website), Facebook, MySpace, blogging,

Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, widgets, email signup form, blog badges, SlideShare and

Flickr. Groups weren't rated on how well they were using these tools, just their "presence and employment."

The top ten organizations, by the # of tools used and their overall score were:

Sierra Club: 10/71%

Service Employees International Union: 9/64%

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers: 8/57%

American Wind Energy Institute: 8/57%

Human Rights Campaign: 8/57%

National Electrical Contractors Association: 8/57%

Business Roundtable: 7/50%

League of Conservation Voters: 7/50%

National Beer Wholesalers Association: 7/50%

U.S. Telecom Association: 7/50%

These were the only groups to score 50% or higher, by the way.

The most popular tools were, not surprisingly, email and advocacy centers. The least popular: blog badges

and StumbleUpon. (It looks like the Sierra Club edged past the SEIU because it's the only group using

StumbleUpon; something tells me the SEIU's web team, led by Tim Tagaris, will rectify that quickly.) And can

someone explain what's up with the National Electrical Contractors Association, and why it's more web savvy

than the National Rifle Association, the Consumer Electronics Association, the National Association of

Manufacturers, and the Communications Workers (to pick randomly from the rest of the list)?

About the report's authors: Marc Ross is the Principal of 2ndSix, "a firm dedicated to advanced grassroots,

communications and marketing which shapes public opinion and engages voters." Christine Stineman is the

Founder of Tribe Effect™, "a firm which utilizes applied social media and social action networks to build

advocacy and cultural movements that are designed to take action and deliver results." Chris Lisi is the

Principal of Chris Lisi Communications, "a firm which creates high-impact, award-winning communications

campaigns for corporate and nonprofit clients." Nice work, all. It will be interesting to come back to this data

set in a year's time.