Meet the Member: Molly McPherson, Social Shift Media

Molly McPherson created Social Shift Media to train executives in the proper and effective uses of social media particularly among Baby Boomers.

“Baby Boomers are at the top of their game, career wise,” said Molly, founder and principal of the company she created three years ago. “But a lot of them realize they need to understand how to use the internet properly, especially the digital language spoken by Millennials on the various social media platforms.”

Social media and its many forms — from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to Snapchat to YouTube and other channels of digital communication– make up a sometimes confusing online landscape. It’s easy to make a wrong turn that might affect a business’s or executive’s reputation and brand.

“Digital media, specifically social media, can make or break a career, ignite an organization or send it up in flames. Whether we are talking about social media, crisis communications, news, or public relations, it’s critical to learn how to take command of this powerful tool and use it to your benefit,” said Molly.

Molly has a background in journalism. “I always wanted to be a reporter,” she said. After graduating in 1991 from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, she worked her craft in the Twin Cities area of St. Paul/Minneapolis. She received a master of communication degree from Boston University in 1996 in the nascent days of online. “It was the first time I started to think about the convergence of news and the internet,” she said.

With her husband in the U.S. Coast Guard, she said she “ping-ponged” from place to place, her career following her husband’s assignments. It was his last tours, in Boston and here in Portsmouth, N.H., that settled Molly in the area for good.

Her professional background includes director of communications for the Cruise Lines International Association, external affairs officer for the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA), and freelance reporter for the the Seacoast Media Group publications that includes the Portsmouth Herald. See her LinkedIn curriculum vitae here.

She started Social Shift Media in August 2014 with a national footprint to educate and train on the best practices of social media, online reputation management, and crisis management.

In that capacity, she currently is teaching online undergraduate courses in social media and multimedia journalism for New England College in Henniker, N.H. She is also creating social media training guides and crisis management toolkits for a variety of clients.

She’s seen the benefits of cooperative enterprise firsthand with one of those clients – the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) – for which she does a lot of traveling and executive training. So she was immediately attracted to the Cooperative Venture Workspace the first time she took a tour.

“When I first walked in the doors and met with Scott (Blidberg, the Workspace managing director), I loved the environment and the feel of the place right away,” said Molly. “I could see the cooperative nature of the work space as we moved from room to room. I knew the footprint was perfect for my type of work.”

The Workspace combines the ability to focus on a person’s work at hand, such as the presentation Molly was recently developing, or networking with others at the Workspace to feed off their professional abilities.

The Class A office space at 36 Maplewood Avenue in downtown Portsmouth, N.H., combines with richly-appointed amenities to create an atmosphere of professionalism unique to the Seacoast. For Molly, the availability of the conference rooms — with their top of the line conference calling equipment and internet-enabled whiteboards — is key to the type of multimedia training she was about to offer to a group of real estate professionals as well as to a group of executive assistants.

“I wanted a workspace that could also double as a presentation space, and the Cooperative Venture Workspace is ideal for me to grow my business,” said Molly.