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Click on the image to join our Ning network and learn about how to leverage social media for water conservation

I’ve been on the water conservation circuit lately expounding on the benefits of using social media to help save water. I just returned from working with the gracious folks at the North Texas Regional Water Symposium, sponsored by Dallas Water, North Texas Municipal Water District. and Tarrant Regional Water District.

It was an engaged crowd of nearly 200 water professionals, and they were a pleasure to work with. My social media presentation, “Giving Your Consumers a Voice: Conservation and Social Media,” raised many great questions. It’s always difficult to continue a meaningful conversation in a conference setting. So I’ve decided to launch a Ning network that maybe one of the narrowest niches going: Water Conservation & Social Media. You can join the conversation at h2osocialmedia.ning.com.

The idea here is to use social media to share best practices in using social media to help water conservationists help consumers save water.

The network features blogs, video, photos, a chat room and relevant Twitter streams focused on promoting wise water use. We’ll talk about ways you can sell social media upstream to management. We’ll explore best practices in creating a doable social media strategy given tight financial and personnel resources. We’ll share ideas on how to activate your network. And we’ll all commiserate about our trials and tribulations of working in this new and powerful communications environment.

So if you have an interest learning how social media can help promote water conservation, and you’re open to sharing your efforts, please join us at h2osocialmedia.ning.com.

It’s FREE. And just imagine what it might cost you if you don’t join the conversation.

What’s Happening in Vegas Isn’t Staying in Vegas

If you’re anywhere near Las Vegas Friday morning, and your interested in how to use online social media for water conservation, stop by the Southpoint Hotel and Conference Center for the WaterSmart Innovation Conference. I’m presenting my fishing analogy for deploying social media at 9 am.

The Water - Use It Wisely conservation campaign was one of the first in the water-saving business to have a focused, comprehensive strategy for online social media to share its 100+ ways to save water.

Here’s how we go fishing using social media:

1. We consider the Water - Use It Wisely website as our wharf where we process the fish we catch. In this case, the process is to offer a wealth of conservation information to consumers thirsty for content, including 100+ water-saving tips.
2. To get them to the wharf, we go trolling in the sea of prospects with our blog. We lure in folks with timely information on how they can start saving water and money now.
3. To reach as many people with our blog as possible, we cast the content through a number of social media fishing lines, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. And we make our content easy to share by including links to Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, MySpace and more.

You can review my entire fishing analogy social media presentation on SlideShare.

I am also looking forward to tailoring this presentation for the Texas Regional Water Conference in Fort Worth on Tuesday, November 11. For those of you attending that workshop, feel free to review my landing page, Sustainable Social Media 101, and send me any questions you have prior to the event. That way I can focus my presentation to your needs.

And whether you’re in Vegas or Fort Worth, be sure to stop by a say hello.