I blame President Obama and The Red Cross. Their large fundraising numbers via the Internet and social media for the Obama 2008 campaign and the tsunami disaster in Japan, respectively, created a false sense of hope for nonprofits everywhere.
You may have a CEO who's demanding that "we get on social media now so we can raise much needed funds." Or you know an organization that started a Facebook page, didn't have that many "Likes" after a few months and abandoned it. Without a strategy — and an investment of time and money — your social-media efforts may not bear fruits.
Consider the following from 2010:
- 0.4 percent of nonprofits raised $100,000+ via Twitter or Facebook; and
- 77.6 percent of nonprofits that used Facebook to fundraise ended up raising less than $1,000.
Those statistics aren't meant to frustrate you; they're intended to make you think about social media in a different light. The fact is that donors are online: 46 percent of U.S. millionaires are on Facebook, 75 percent of the world's millionaires are outside the U.S., and 70 percent of Twitter users are outside the U.S. Social media opens your organization to the world, but you'll need to invest money and time to see results.
Let's look at Obama 2008 and The Red Cross to understand how they succeeded.
Success!
The Obama marketing team had a clear strategy: Use the Internet and social media to promote its candidate's campaign, engage people across the U.S. (especially the 19-year-old to 29-year-old demographic) and eventually convert these "fans" into campaign donors. The campaign invested $26 million into Internet marketing and ended up raising more than half a billion dollars online. Staff worked 'round the clock to connect, discuss and post content that people liked, shared, retweeted and commented on.
Within five days of the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan last March, The American Red Cross (ARC) had raised $47 million. Although exact figures are unavailable, it's estimated that a large percentage of those donations were made online. ARC effectively used social media to quickly spread the word, its followers did likewise to their followers, and on and on.
ARC has 700,000-plus followers on Twitter and more than 400,000 fans on Facebook. That doesn't happen overnight. The organization invests heavily in social media so it can engage its followers 24/7 with content that's meant to elicit comments, start conversations and involve them in what the organization is doing.
In fact, a few weeks ago ARC launched a Digital Operations Center to better respond to disasters — with social media playing a large role.
The lesson from these two examples is simple: Create a strategy and engage your target audience first, then down the road you can consider running a fundraising campaign. Obama 2008 and The Red Cross couldn't have been successful without engaging their respective communities, posting content people wanted to read, being interested in what their followers had to say and constantly taking the pulse of their online fans.
In a nutshell: Community first, monetize later. If you're going into social media thinking dollars and cents, get out now. If you go in looking to engage, interact and build up a community of people who are interested in your mission/brand, then down the road you have a better chance of successfully running a fundraising campaign.
Yes you can!
For marketing, PR and fundraising, most nonprofits create a strategy with short- and long-term goals, milestones and objectives. So why do so many organizations neglect to do the same for their social-media presence?
Previously, nonprofits connected with donors, volunteers and
supporters via:
- direct mail;
- annual reports;
- invitations to small, local events or gala dinners;
- one-on-one solicitation or parlor meetings;
- thank-you letters; and
- phone calls.
All of these were forms of engagement — you kept in touch with donors, knew their likes and dislikes, understood their connections to the organization, and used whatever information you had available to appeal to them for donations. A fundraising, PR and marketing strategy was necessary in order to succeed.
Nonprofits need to be cognizant of the "pie factor." There are many more organizations today vying for the same piece of the fundraising-dollar pie. Social media allows you to reach people near and far, however — people who share your passion, will push out your content and may eventually become donors.
It doesn't matter that your nonprofit lacks the resources of ARC. With a well-thought strategy in place and a focus on engagement and content, you can begin to build a community of fans who will help you reach your ultimate goal — raising funds for various programs. Your organization may not be able to devote the resources to engage full time, but that's not necessary. Pick the platforms where your target audience is, figure out how many hours you can dedicate to getting your tasks done, and off you go!
Road map to success
The most important thing to know is that social media needs to be all-in. From the CEO down, every department has to be included. Social media touches on fundraising, marketing, PR, volunteer opportunities, outreach and more. The goal of a social-media strategy is for all departments to work in tandem toward a common goal. A large part of a social-media strategy is determining answers to "The W" questions.
Who?
The "who" is critical to your overall social-media strategy, and you'll need to answer two questions:
1. Who to engage?
2. Who will do the engaging?
Let's take a look at each one.
Who to Engage: There are hundreds of millions of people on social media. You or your organization needs to decide in advance who you wish to engage. The list could include:
- local foundations and businesses;
- current and/or potential donors on your fundraising list;
- volunteers;
- local and/or national nonprofit consultants;
- socia-media smarties; and
- people who will add flavor to your stream.
By identifying in advance your target audience members, you can follow them, watch how they engage with others, learn their likes and dislikes, see who they follow, etc. All of these data points will give you an idea how to interact with each individual follower.
When I started on Twitter, I made a list of the first 150 people I wanted to follow and then followed them in increments of 30. This helped ease me into joining the conversation. Once I felt comfortable, I began following more.
Who Does the Engaging: This is critical! I speak to too many nonprofits that have no clear answer to this question. "One of our staff members will," I was once told. To which I replied, "Does that person have any prior or relevant experience?" Managing a personal Facebook or Twitter account is a completely different beast than managing an organization's presence on social media.
There are many organizations where volunteers manage the social-media presence. I'm in favor of using volunteers and am well aware how cash-strapped everyone is. But a small note of caution: Volunteers aren't always available, which means you're only sporadically seen on social-media platforms. Sure, they can write content and autopost it, but what if they're not around to respond to inquiries? You've missed a chance to engage. In other words, free doesn't always mean free.
Hiring someone doesn't always guarantee success, but it means that person has specific hours and tasks for which he or she is responsible. No matter what you choose — volunteer or paid — make sure the person is experienced and has an engaging online personality.
What?
When thinking about the "what" of a social-media strategy, you need to look at three things:
- What are the short- and long-term goals of your program?
- What kind of content will you be pushing out?
- What are the guidelines for your community manager?
1. Goals
Any good strategy begins with identifying measurable short-
and long-term goals. In terms of social media, you can consider the following factors:
- "We will start now on X amount of platforms and within six months that will increase";
- how many blog posts you will write weekly;
- the number of Facebook status updates and tweets (this is obviously a function of how much content you push out, how many people you connect with); and
- how many foundations and businesses you attempt to connect with each month.
Ultimately, you want a social-media program to create the highest return on engagement possible. You engage new people who've never heard of you, you build brand awareness, you strengthen and expand prominent programs, you recruit volunteers, and down the road launch a campaign.
This, however, is NOT a goal: determining in advance how many followers/likes you will have each month. You don't control that. Much of that's a function of the content you're posting as well as being able to engage followers. It's more important to have a small number of followers who repost your content than to have thousands of followers who don't engage at all. Simply put: Quality trumps quantity.
2. Content
This is very important and needs to be thought about in advance. On social media, people prefer more Ann Landers than Walter Cronkite. Your goal is to build relationships, not to be a broadcaster.
When considering content, remember the 60-30-10 rule: 60 percent of your content should be posts and tweets others have posted, 30 percent should be conversations with others, and 10 percent should be about your organization. Not to worry: As you build a following, that 10 percent will get retweeted and reposted by others, allowing their followers to learn about your organization, read your blog posts and more.
An additional component is content you read and want to share with your followers. This could be articles related to your field of expertise or something funny people will enjoy. As your following grows, you'll be able to gauge what content elicits the most reactions.
3. Guidelines
Your organization needs to establish clear guidelines for your community manager.
- There may be topics you don't want discussed — e.g., religion or politics.
- How to handle negative comments: Don't delete; answer politely and respectfully.
- What to do in the event something inappropriate is posted.
- What types of contests and promotions you can run.
By creating clear guidelines at the outset, you let your community manager know what's expected.
Where?
There are a number of factors that will determine your social-media presence:
- Where's your target audience hanging out? You've outlined who you want to follow; now it's important to know where they are. There's no point in being on Google+ if everyone you want to engage is on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or elsewhere.
- Manpower. Your organization has to invest a lot of time in order to build a following and keep it engaged. At the outset it's advised that you spend, at a bare minimum, two hours per platform per week. For example, if you plan on joining Facebook, Twitter and blogging, you'll need six hours per week dedicated to social-media work. Can your community manager commit to that amount? Odds are you'll need more hours than that. This obviously brings up budgetary issues as well.
- Which platforms are best suited for your organization? Just because "everyone" is on Facebook and Twitter, does that mean you have to be there? For some organizations, certain platforms aren't worth investing time in. When crafting a strategy, look at each platform to assess whether the content you're considering pushing out will be suitable.
For example, if you'll be posting short blog posts with many pictures and video clips, Tumblr may be a better option than WordPress for your organization.
Keep in mind that storytelling is an excellent way to bring in followers and admirers. Look at each platform and decide where you can best tell your organizational story.
The "where" of a social-media strategy is tricky. It's best to start with two platforms or three platforms, get comfortable, engage, and as time goes on add new outlets that suit your organization's social-media needs.
When?
The "when" of a social media-strategy is a little tricky too. When should you post content? When's the best time to engage? When should you blog? When will someone respond to your tweets?
OK, you can't control that last one, but answers to these questions can depend on the following:
- your followers, such as when are they online and most likely to respond to your postings;
- your community manager and when he or she is available to engage your followers.
I'm a firm believer in not posting content unless someone will be around to answer any potential conversations arising from that content. If you post something and people are responding but you're not, you miss one of the most important factors in a social-media strategy: engagement.
You want to be around when your followers are. A great percentage of that is trial and error. As you build a following, you can begin to gauge what days and what time of day are most popular for responses. You might have many followers overseas who are just waking up when you're going to sleep. (Follow me on Twitter and you'll see.) You might find that your followers are mostly "around"
first thing in the morning, at lunchtime, toward the end of the workday or in the evening.
(This doesn't mean you're left to chance. For example, you can use whentotweet.com to reveal what time of day is the best for you to post. Those types of measuring tools can help determine when is the optimum time to engage and interact.)
As far as blogging, I strongly urge you to create a blogging calendar. Know in advance how many times per week you'll blog and on what days you'll post the blogs, then flesh out the topics you wish to write about. Once a post is ""live," the question of "when to post" comes down to when most of your readers and followers will see it. The goal is to create maximum traffic and reposts/retweets.
Truth be told, it took me awhile to figure out when my followers were around. Even today, I still fiddle with posting certain status updates or when to tell my followers about a new blog post. Sure, there's an optimum time, but I find that by tinkering I engage new followers who haven't responded before to my posts. So basically I'm on Twitter all the time engaging, which your community manager may not be able to do. My advice? Trial and error. When you find your optimal times, make sure to be online and engaging!
How?
The "how" has many components:
1. How will social media fit into your organization's overall PR and marketing strategy?
Maybe you're laughing because your nonprofit doesn't have a strategy! But for those who do …
Think about it: In order to fundraise, you need to market your "product" and create awareness via varied PR channels. Guess what? Social media is another avenue to market your organization's expertise and build awareness both locally and nationally.
If you're strongly considering entering the social-media arena, go back and review your current marketing strategy. You'll need to figure out how each social-media platform can help you reach your goals — you can't be everywhere. If you can integrate social media into your overall marketing strategy, then you've created another PR avenue for your activities.
Again, you don't want to be a broadcaster, constantly patting yourself on the back for the good work you're doing. If your social-media strategy is "look at me," no one will. It has to be about "you" — the reader. By focusing on followers and engaging them, they'll be more willing, when the time comes, to repost your blog posts, promotions, press releases and more.
2. How will you measure return on engagement?
Social media is all about return on engagement. You engage new people who never heard of you; you build brand awareness; you use it to strengthen and expand prominent programs; you recruit volunteers; and down the road, you potentially launch a campaign.
Here's how NOT to measure engagement: by number of followers. If you have many followers but they're not engaged, what good is that? My goal is to have 150 active followers who will retweet, share and post my content when needed. Quality trumps quantity every time.
There are many tools out there for measuring your reach, such as crowdbooster.com, twazzup.com, socialmention.com and more. When you create your strategy, you can look into various online tools and see which work for you.
3. How will you deal with negative comments?
Do NOT delete negative comments! People will screen capture them, and even if you delete them, someone knows what was originally there. Instead, 'fess up to the mistake. People on social media are very tolerant and forgiving — but not of cover-ups. I refer you to the case of Boner's BBQ. See what happened when a woman had an unpleasant experience at a restaurant and left a negative comment on the restaurant's Facebook page. It backfired big time
and created a PR disaster for the restaurant.
Additional reading: The personality behind the logo — how to deal with negative tweets.
4. How can you get people to read your blog?
Obviously, compelling content is the quickest way for your blog to make its way around the Internet. But it takes a little more than that. Here are two tips:
- Use storytelling as a way to bring people to your blog. People love a good, inspirational story, and I'm sure your organization has plenty of them — especially first-person stories, which always hit home. Whether they're told from the viewpoint of a constituent, donor, volunteer or staff member, a well-told story makes for an excellent read.
- Have different bloggers from within your organization. Take a look at the Mercy Corps blog and see how many different writers it has. Each blogger comes with a fresh perspective, viewpoint and a different tale. People do get attached to specific bloggers and writers, but diversity allows you to appeal to a much wider audience of readers and thus introduce them to your organization.
5. How will you help your community?
Once you build a following, the goal becomes to interact with your online community and maybe even help its members (and hopefully they will reciprocate). For example, if you run an alumni association, one idea might be to have an alumnus post job openings so that other alumni can apply, or even let alumni pass résumés up the chain for others. Another idea might be to help alumni get in touch with each other for business purposes — people looking for a lawyer, consultant, accountant or other professional can use the network you've created.
Whenever you can, look to help members of your community, share and retweet their content and, yes, engage the heck out of them!
Why?
To some of you out there, the "why" of a social-media strategy is simple:
Q: Why are we entering the social-media arena?
A: To fundraise!
NOOOO! Remember those sobering stats from 2010 at the beginning of the article? If not, check again.
If you're planning on using Twitter, Facebook or another social platform to generate much-needed revenue for your organization — don't. Stick to direct mail and e-mail campaigns. Social media isn't a fundraising tool; it's a means to an end, not the end itself.
But hey, didn't The Red Cross raise 32 gazillion dollars via text messages and social media after the Haiti disaster? The answer may be yes, with one very minor caveat: Your organization isn't The Red Cross. (Didn't we already establish that at the beginning of this article?) The Red Cross is large, has thousands of donors and works very hard at social media so that now it has hundreds of thousands of followers. If your CEO is using this as a gauge for what your organization can do with socia media, better tell him or her to take a seat, take it easy and take things one step at a time.
The reason you're using social media is to engage, to connect and to discuss the cause your organization champions. You can also take advantage of the vast amount of users to potentially find new volunteers, share information with like-minded nonprofits and create a community of followers who want to help your constituents.
Social-media success lies in understanding the "me vs. you" syndrome. Nonprofits intuitively want to promote their work constantly. On social media, however, patting yourself on the back too much is frowned upon. Be "you"-oriented and listen to your followers, engage them, make them part of your mission and goals. Build their trust, and eventually they'll become your biggest cheerleaders.
Social media is about building ROE — you engage new people who have never heard of you; you build brand awareness; you use it to expand existing programs, recruit volunteers and, down the road, launch campaigns. Be authentic, humorous and caring, and connect with people, both on a community and individual level. Invest in a strategy, plan ahead and utilize a well-thought out road map to social-media success. FS
Ephraim Gopin is a nonprofit social-media strategist. Check out his blog or connect with him on Twitter at @fundraisinisfun
Attention! Social Media Does Not Equal Fundraising!
I blame President Obama and The Red Cross. Their large fundraising numbers via the Internet and social media for the Obama 2008 campaign and the tsunami disaster in Japan, respectively, created a false sense of hope for nonprofits everywhere.
You may have a CEO who's demanding that "we get on social media now so we can raise much needed funds." Or you know an organization that started a Facebook page, didn't have that many "Likes" after a few months and abandoned it. Without a strategy — and an investment of time and money — your social-media efforts may not bear fruits.
Consider the following from 2010:
Those statistics aren't meant to frustrate you; they're intended to make you think about social media in a different light. The fact is that donors are online: 46 percent of U.S. millionaires are on Facebook, 75 percent of the world's millionaires are outside the U.S., and 70 percent of Twitter users are outside the U.S. Social media opens your organization to the world, but you'll need to invest money and time to see results.
Let's look at Obama 2008 and The Red Cross to understand how they succeeded.
Success!
The Obama marketing team had a clear strategy: Use the Internet and social media to promote its candidate's campaign, engage people across the U.S. (especially the 19-year-old to 29-year-old demographic) and eventually convert these "fans" into campaign donors. The campaign invested $26 million into Internet marketing and ended up raising more than half a billion dollars online. Staff worked 'round the clock to connect, discuss and post content that people liked, shared, retweeted and commented on.
Within five days of the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan last March, The American Red Cross (ARC) had raised $47 million. Although exact figures are unavailable, it's estimated that a large percentage of those donations were made online. ARC effectively used social media to quickly spread the word, its followers did likewise to their followers, and on and on.
ARC has 700,000-plus followers on Twitter and more than 400,000 fans on Facebook. That doesn't happen overnight. The organization invests heavily in social media so it can engage its followers 24/7 with content that's meant to elicit comments, start conversations and involve them in what the organization is doing.
In fact, a few weeks ago ARC launched a Digital Operations Center to better respond to disasters — with social media playing a large role.
The lesson from these two examples is simple: Create a strategy and engage your target audience first, then down the road you can consider running a fundraising campaign. Obama 2008 and The Red Cross couldn't have been successful without engaging their respective communities, posting content people wanted to read, being interested in what their followers had to say and constantly taking the pulse of their online fans.
In a nutshell: Community first, monetize later. If you're going into social media thinking dollars and cents, get out now. If you go in looking to engage, interact and build up a community of people who are interested in your mission/brand, then down the road you have a better chance of successfully running a fundraising campaign.
Yes you can!
For marketing, PR and fundraising, most nonprofits create a strategy with short- and long-term goals, milestones and objectives. So why do so many organizations neglect to do the same for their social-media presence?
Previously, nonprofits connected with donors, volunteers and supporters via:
All of these were forms of engagement — you kept in touch with donors, knew their likes and dislikes, understood their connections to the organization, and used whatever information you had available to appeal to them for donations. A fundraising, PR and marketing strategy was necessary in order to succeed.
Nonprofits need to be cognizant of the "pie factor." There are many more organizations today vying for the same piece of the fundraising-dollar pie. Social media allows you to reach people near and far, however — people who share your passion, will push out your content and may eventually become donors.
It doesn't matter that your nonprofit lacks the resources of ARC. With a well-thought strategy in place and a focus on engagement and content, you can begin to build a community of fans who will help you reach your ultimate goal — raising funds for various programs. Your organization may not be able to devote the resources to engage full time, but that's not necessary. Pick the platforms where your target audience is, figure out how many hours you can dedicate to getting your tasks done, and off you go!
Road map to success
The most important thing to know is that social media needs to be all-in. From the CEO down, every department has to be included. Social media touches on fundraising, marketing, PR, volunteer opportunities, outreach and more. The goal of a social-media strategy is for all departments to work in tandem toward a common goal. A large part of a social-media strategy is determining answers to "The W" questions.
Who?
The "who" is critical to your overall social-media strategy, and you'll need to answer two questions:
1. Who to engage?
2. Who will do the engaging?
Let's take a look at each one.
Who to Engage: There are hundreds of millions of people on social media. You or your organization needs to decide in advance who you wish to engage. The list could include:
By identifying in advance your target audience members, you can follow them, watch how they engage with others, learn their likes and dislikes, see who they follow, etc. All of these data points will give you an idea how to interact with each individual follower.
When I started on Twitter, I made a list of the first 150 people I wanted to follow and then followed them in increments of 30. This helped ease me into joining the conversation. Once I felt comfortable, I began following more.
Who Does the Engaging: This is critical! I speak to too many nonprofits that have no clear answer to this question. "One of our staff members will," I was once told. To which I replied, "Does that person have any prior or relevant experience?" Managing a personal Facebook or Twitter account is a completely different beast than managing an organization's presence on social media.
There are many organizations where volunteers manage the social-media presence. I'm in favor of using volunteers and am well aware how cash-strapped everyone is. But a small note of caution: Volunteers aren't always available, which means you're only sporadically seen on social-media platforms. Sure, they can write content and autopost it, but what if they're not around to respond to inquiries? You've missed a chance to engage. In other words, free doesn't always mean free.
Hiring someone doesn't always guarantee success, but it means that person has specific hours and tasks for which he or she is responsible. No matter what you choose — volunteer or paid — make sure the person is experienced and has an engaging online personality.
What?
When thinking about the "what" of a social-media strategy, you need to look at three things:
1. Goals
Any good strategy begins with identifying measurable short- and long-term goals. In terms of social media, you can consider the following factors:
Ultimately, you want a social-media program to create the highest return on engagement possible. You engage new people who've never heard of you, you build brand awareness, you strengthen and expand prominent programs, you recruit volunteers, and down the road launch a campaign.
This, however, is NOT a goal: determining in advance how many followers/likes you will have each month. You don't control that. Much of that's a function of the content you're posting as well as being able to engage followers. It's more important to have a small number of followers who repost your content than to have thousands of followers who don't engage at all. Simply put: Quality trumps quantity.
2. Content
This is very important and needs to be thought about in advance. On social media, people prefer more Ann Landers than Walter Cronkite. Your goal is to build relationships, not to be a broadcaster.
When considering content, remember the 60-30-10 rule: 60 percent of your content should be posts and tweets others have posted, 30 percent should be conversations with others, and 10 percent should be about your organization. Not to worry: As you build a following, that 10 percent will get retweeted and reposted by others, allowing their followers to learn about your organization, read your blog posts and more.
An additional component is content you read and want to share with your followers. This could be articles related to your field of expertise or something funny people will enjoy. As your following grows, you'll be able to gauge what content elicits the most reactions.
3. Guidelines
Your organization needs to establish clear guidelines for your community manager.
By creating clear guidelines at the outset, you let your community manager know what's expected.
Where?
There are a number of factors that will determine your social-media presence:
For example, if you'll be posting short blog posts with many pictures and video clips, Tumblr may be a better option than WordPress for your organization.
Keep in mind that storytelling is an excellent way to bring in followers and admirers. Look at each platform and decide where you can best tell your organizational story.
The "where" of a social-media strategy is tricky. It's best to start with two platforms or three platforms, get comfortable, engage, and as time goes on add new outlets that suit your organization's social-media needs.
When?
The "when" of a social media-strategy is a little tricky too. When should you post content? When's the best time to engage? When should you blog? When will someone respond to your tweets?
OK, you can't control that last one, but answers to these questions can depend on the following:
I'm a firm believer in not posting content unless someone will be around to answer any potential conversations arising from that content. If you post something and people are responding but you're not, you miss one of the most important factors in a social-media strategy: engagement.
You want to be around when your followers are. A great percentage of that is trial and error. As you build a following, you can begin to gauge what days and what time of day are most popular for responses. You might have many followers overseas who are just waking up when you're going to sleep. (Follow me on Twitter and you'll see.) You might find that your followers are mostly "around" first thing in the morning, at lunchtime, toward the end of the workday or in the evening.
(This doesn't mean you're left to chance. For example, you can use whentotweet.com to reveal what time of day is the best for you to post. Those types of measuring tools can help determine when is the optimum time to engage and interact.)
As far as blogging, I strongly urge you to create a blogging calendar. Know in advance how many times per week you'll blog and on what days you'll post the blogs, then flesh out the topics you wish to write about. Once a post is ""live," the question of "when to post" comes down to when most of your readers and followers will see it. The goal is to create maximum traffic and reposts/retweets.
Truth be told, it took me awhile to figure out when my followers were around. Even today, I still fiddle with posting certain status updates or when to tell my followers about a new blog post. Sure, there's an optimum time, but I find that by tinkering I engage new followers who haven't responded before to my posts. So basically I'm on Twitter all the time engaging, which your community manager may not be able to do. My advice? Trial and error. When you find your optimal times, make sure to be online and engaging!
How?
The "how" has many components:
1. How will social media fit into your organization's overall PR and marketing strategy?
Maybe you're laughing because your nonprofit doesn't have a strategy! But for those who do …
Think about it: In order to fundraise, you need to market your "product" and create awareness via varied PR channels. Guess what? Social media is another avenue to market your organization's expertise and build awareness both locally and nationally.
If you're strongly considering entering the social-media arena, go back and review your current marketing strategy. You'll need to figure out how each social-media platform can help you reach your goals — you can't be everywhere. If you can integrate social media into your overall marketing strategy, then you've created another PR avenue for your activities.
Again, you don't want to be a broadcaster, constantly patting yourself on the back for the good work you're doing. If your social-media strategy is "look at me," no one will. It has to be about "you" — the reader. By focusing on followers and engaging them, they'll be more willing, when the time comes, to repost your blog posts, promotions, press releases and more.
2. How will you measure return on engagement?
Social media is all about return on engagement. You engage new people who never heard of you; you build brand awareness; you use it to strengthen and expand prominent programs; you recruit volunteers; and down the road, you potentially launch a campaign.
Here's how NOT to measure engagement: by number of followers. If you have many followers but they're not engaged, what good is that? My goal is to have 150 active followers who will retweet, share and post my content when needed. Quality trumps quantity every time.
There are many tools out there for measuring your reach, such as crowdbooster.com, twazzup.com, socialmention.com and more. When you create your strategy, you can look into various online tools and see which work for you.
3. How will you deal with negative comments?
Do NOT delete negative comments! People will screen capture them, and even if you delete them, someone knows what was originally there. Instead, 'fess up to the mistake. People on social media are very tolerant and forgiving — but not of cover-ups. I refer you to the case of Boner's BBQ. See what happened when a woman had an unpleasant experience at a restaurant and left a negative comment on the restaurant's Facebook page. It backfired big time and created a PR disaster for the restaurant.
Additional reading: The personality behind the logo — how to deal with negative tweets.
4. How can you get people to read your blog?
Obviously, compelling content is the quickest way for your blog to make its way around the Internet. But it takes a little more than that. Here are two tips:
5. How will you help your community?
Once you build a following, the goal becomes to interact with your online community and maybe even help its members (and hopefully they will reciprocate). For example, if you run an alumni association, one idea might be to have an alumnus post job openings so that other alumni can apply, or even let alumni pass résumés up the chain for others. Another idea might be to help alumni get in touch with each other for business purposes — people looking for a lawyer, consultant, accountant or other professional can use the network you've created.
Whenever you can, look to help members of your community, share and retweet their content and, yes, engage the heck out of them!
Why?
To some of you out there, the "why" of a social-media strategy is simple:
Q: Why are we entering the social-media arena?
A: To fundraise!
NOOOO! Remember those sobering stats from 2010 at the beginning of the article? If not, check again.
If you're planning on using Twitter, Facebook or another social platform to generate much-needed revenue for your organization — don't. Stick to direct mail and e-mail campaigns. Social media isn't a fundraising tool; it's a means to an end, not the end itself.
But hey, didn't The Red Cross raise 32 gazillion dollars via text messages and social media after the Haiti disaster? The answer may be yes, with one very minor caveat: Your organization isn't The Red Cross. (Didn't we already establish that at the beginning of this article?) The Red Cross is large, has thousands of donors and works very hard at social media so that now it has hundreds of thousands of followers. If your CEO is using this as a gauge for what your organization can do with socia media, better tell him or her to take a seat, take it easy and take things one step at a time.
The reason you're using social media is to engage, to connect and to discuss the cause your organization champions. You can also take advantage of the vast amount of users to potentially find new volunteers, share information with like-minded nonprofits and create a community of followers who want to help your constituents.
Social-media success lies in understanding the "me vs. you" syndrome. Nonprofits intuitively want to promote their work constantly. On social media, however, patting yourself on the back too much is frowned upon. Be "you"-oriented and listen to your followers, engage them, make them part of your mission and goals. Build their trust, and eventually they'll become your biggest cheerleaders.
Social media is about building ROE — you engage new people who have never heard of you; you build brand awareness; you use it to expand existing programs, recruit volunteers and, down the road, launch campaigns. Be authentic, humorous and caring, and connect with people, both on a community and individual level. Invest in a strategy, plan ahead and utilize a well-thought out road map to social-media success. FS
Ephraim Gopin is a nonprofit social-media strategist. Check out his blog or connect with him on Twitter at @fundraisinisfun