Happy Monday! Today’s Maine Maven is well known around the state for her leadership and incredible work with young women. Megan Williams is the president of Hardy Girls Healthy Women, a national, research-based non-profit empowering girls with knowledge, critical thinking skills, and a platform to drive social change.

A graduate of Colby College, Megan was hired in 2005 as Hardy Girls Healthy Women’s first staff member.  During her time with Hardy Girls, Megan has created the Girls Advisory Board – an adult-youth partnership model designed to give girls leadership experience and an equal voice in programming decisions.

Megan launched the Training Institute – a national initiative for adults who want to integrate Hardy Girls’ strength-based approach to working with girls into their work, and she transformed HGHW from a volunteer-run, Maine-based organization into a national brand, widely respected for its girl-powered social change approach.

Megan was included on MaineToday Media’s 2011 40 Under 40 List – a list of Maine’s most accomplished young leaders, recognized for their commitment to leadership, professional excellence and their communities; Mainebiz’s 2009 Next List – a group of 10 emerging leaders recognized for shaping the future of Maine’s economy.

Also, in 2010, Megan was awarded the first ever Open Door Award from the Frances Perkins Center, an award given to a woman under 30 who has demonstrated exceptional leadership.

Additionally, under her leadership, Hardy Girls was awarded the 2010 Governor’s Award for Nonprofit Excellence for achieving significant results by combining ingenuity with sound management practices and principles.

Megan serves on the steering committee for KV Connect, a networking group for young professionals. She is a vice-chair of the MaineShare Board of Directors, an organization that provides support to nonprofits doing progressive social justice and root cause work, and a board member for the Maine Association of Nonprofits, a membership organization advancing and strengthening Maine’s nonprofit sector.

1.) Megan, your full-time job is at Hardy Girls Healthy Women, and you recently volunteered to handle social media on the successful campaign of Karen Heck for Mayor of Waterville. Could you tell us how you use social media for Hardy Girls, and what you used in the campaign that made it successful?

Using social media to promote a cause or candidate is something you have to go in to with a fun attitude.  At Hardy Girls and in my work on Karen’s campaign, we use social media to start conversations on topics relevant to our followers’ interests, to share something personal about the people involved, and to invite creative responses and foster discussion.

I’ve learned a lot about what our followers want and when the best time to post is, just by doing it and seeing what the response rates were.  On Hardy Girls’ Facebook page, we get the best responses from the inspirational posts – a quote from a girl in our program, a blog post or video such as Riley’s or Juliet’s, or big announcements about the organization (such as our co-founder being elected mayor of Waterville)!

We also use social media to build partnerships and cross-promote organizations and companies doing good work for girls.  We find that if we let our fans know about a new organization or a great post from a sister group, they’ll often do the same for us.

Social media is such an interesting marketing tool because it’s nearly impossible to sell a product outright (or get a donation, for that matter).  I’ve found that it’s best used to promote a brand or tell a story, and that in turn, builds customer loyalty and donor buy-in.

2.) Do you monitor all the social networks 24/7 to be sure you are responding to posts and comments, particularly to anything negative? 

I don’t.  That would take a lot more time than I have for social media.  I respond, and other administrators respond, when we can and/or if we need to correct misinformation.  Oftentimes though, our followers will beat us to it!

3.) PR is a rapidly changing field and tools like social media and websites have increased in importance. Do you use a combination of traditional PR tactics like press releases in conjunction with developments like social media to communicate with the media for your nonprofit and the campaign, or do find that focusing on one is more effective?

I find that a combination is best and helps you reach a number of audiences via the different outlets.

There are some people who only get their news and updates through Facebook (scary, I know) and there are some folks who still prefer to read the paper every morning.

We’ll tailor our PR efforts depending on who we want to reach and how much interaction we want from our audience but overall, a combination of traditional, web, and social media works best for reaching a broad audience.

Be Sociable, Share!

•