Social Media for non-profits

Photo credit: Juntos via Flickr

In many ways, social media marketing for non-profits is the same as social media marketing for business but the limited time, money and resources make it especially important for those who work in non-profits to focus their efforts and be very aware of what their social media goals are.

The most obvious goal is raise awareness in order to increase donations.  But what if you also want to change the lifestyle of your community; want your advocates to sign a petition; gain volunteers? You may have all of these goals, but your primary goal on social media should always be to educate and gain advocates.

Social media is a form of inbound marketing, which means if they are on your Facebook/Twitter page or blog, they chose to visit you and already have a spark of interest in your cause.  Your job then becomes two-fold: keep their interest and turn them into advocates – people who will help you spread your message on a regular basis, and potentially donate or volunteer.

The beauty of social media is that its purpose is to spread information and most sites have buttons readily available to broadcast your information throughout a number of different social networks. All you have to do is provide them with content interesting enough to share.

A word of caution, fundraising researcher David Berg notes that one of the biggest mistakes non-profits can make is overwhelming their online visitors with too much information.  Berg feels that charities are afraid the visitor will not find what they are looking for, so they shower visitors with anything and everything they can think of.  When this happens, your goals become fuzzy, your donation link may become lost, but most of all visitors don’t feel invited to participant.  You might imagine that if you don’t feel a part of something, you’re unlikely to get involved much less spread the word.

Though Berg was mainly referencing organizational websites, these lessons apply to social media sites.  One of main rules to social media, and hardest things to  adjust to, is that your aim is not to push out information, your aim should be to have conversations, spurred on by the information you are sharing.

Engaging your community

You’ll need to understand what your visitors want from you, and the great thing is since it’s conversation you can ask them and they’ll often tell you.  It may be as simple as posting a question and letting your community respond.  If you are trying to narrow down ideas, consider creating a poll and see what your community comes back.  Remember to respect your community and follow their wishes. For example if you ran the following poll:

What do you want to learn about in our organization?

1. Current legislation  (5% response)
2. Ways to get involved (38% response)
3. Hear from those affected (24% response)
4. Where does the money I donate go to? (33% response)

With only 5% response regarding the current legislation, that should not be your favorite topic to write about.  Occasional updates are fine, but lean more toward the other topics that received a higher response rate.

By paying attention to your community, you can also understand their interest by keeping track of what causes a reaction both in engagement and in donations.

• If you are advocating disease research, pay attention to the different response between patient/survivor stories and statistics.
• If you work with children or animals you may find that happy or sad photos have a different effect, and it may not be what you expect. You might think that devastating photos have a greater impact, but your community may not have the stomach for it on a regular basis.

Social media is also a great humanizer. You can spotlight volunteers or members of the organization, and ask your community to share their own stories – why are they are a part of your community and interested in your cause.  Encourage them to share pictures, or “tag” themselves on pictures you took at a fundraising event.  Every time someone performs an activity on your social site, such as tagging a photo or leaving a comment, sites such as Facebook announce that activity to all of their connections, spreading the word about you.

Getting Started

Hopefully at this point your creative juices are flowing and you’re thinking of things you can share, questions you can ask, and people you can call upon to give a testimonial. But you may not yet have your social media presence set up yet and be wondering how to get started. If you are not socially savvy, start out by asking around your organization, you may have a volunteer, intern or board member that has some practice in this area and can help get you started.  If you can’t find a volunteer or someone to help you on a pro bono basis you may want to take a look at some of Mashable’s “how to” guides on everything from setting up pages on social sites Facebook and Twitter to integrating them with your email.

Regardless of who gets you up and running, you should always start out small. It’s better to have one or two active social sites than lots of mediocre ones. The most obvious place to start is Facebook as that gives you access to 500 million people and has a plethora of apps to provide enhance your page and customize your presence.  Before you start typing away figure out what the most important thing you want to communicate with your visitors.  You may want to create a custom welcome page using the FBML app if you have access to someone who can develop HTML for you, then change your settings so that this becomes your default landing page for visitors.  Some examples:

http://www.facebook.com/TheBreastCancerSite

http://www.facebook.com/greenpeace.international

http://www.facebook.com/stjude

Next begin to develop a content strategy.  Aim to make one post every day, and remember everything doesn’t have to be about you. You may be part of a larger cause and be able to share information from sister organizations, or you may even wish to acknowledge that a holiday is upon you and ask what people have planned. Maybe a recipe contest for Thanksgiving? You want to be informative, but you also want to begin to develop a relationship with your community so don’t be afraid to venture off topic everyone once a while.

There’s so much more than can be covered on this topic, so until next time let me leave you with a reading list:
Best Practices for Social Networking Nonprofits

Ten Ways to Engage Your Supporters

Email + Social Media= the Perfect Combination for a Non-Profit’s Marketing Plan

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