How Do You Measure the Value of Passion?

Let's talk about passion—specifically, what it means for nonprofits and their online relationships. When you consider your organization’s online community, you may think of your social-media groups. For a long time, there has been a push to develop as many relationships as possible. Get more “likes.” Get more followers. Get more subscribers!

A recent NPR story offered a different perspective.

“Most brands, they’ve been building these massive audiences over the past five to 10 years, but they’re not doing anything with these people,” Alex Taub, co-founder of SocialRank, one of a new breed of tech companies trying to help measure the value of social media audiences, told NPR.

The story goes on to quote media analyst Alan Wolk.

“Within the industry now, there’s a strong belief that what you really want is a passionate audience, even if it’s slightly smaller, versus a larger, ‘meh’ audience,” he noted.

Where do you fall on the passion scale within your online community? Do you have a large, ‘meh’ audience, or a smaller, more engaged group?

Let’s focus on the undisputed king of all social media: Facebook. In an economy that has uncertainty written all over it, Facebook seems to be a bright light. In its most recent quarterly report, Facebook outperformed even the most optimistic Wall Street expectations, and the share price shot up—again.

Why is Facebook doing so well as a business—and why should this matter to nonprofits?

One of the most important measurements in Facebook’s business is the number of monthly active users (MAUs). In this most recent quarter, this number not only continued to climb (to 1.59 billion!), but also showed how well Facebook is handing the shift to mobile. For the first time, more than 90 percent of both monthly and daily active users were on mobile devices.

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, said she sees consumers making the shift to mobile, and that the company is no longer having conversations with businesses about if they should advertise on mobile, but how to best advertise on mobile.

This brings us back to your organization. Though you may not have the team and budget of a larger for-profit business, you will be able to leverage Facebook as an advertising platform for your increasingly mobile audience. Many nonprofits haven’t yet ventured into the world of paid Facebook ads, but will do so in the near future. Most of the Facebook effort that goes on in a nonprofit could be considered “organic Facebook” activity. This organic activity is great, but it’s not all you can do on Facebook.

What I’ve found working on both Google and Facebook as a marketer is that Facebook is much easier to use for a non-technical audience. It’s also much easier to spend a lot of money fast on Facebook—so be careful with your daily budget limits and check you account frequently.

A nice feature of Facebook advertising is that you can show ads just to the people who have “liked” your page. This is one way to turn a “meh” audience into a more engaged group. Why not create a short thank-you video and run it as an ad shown only to people who “like” your page? Just keep in mind that most of your Facebook audience will view your content from their mobile devices, so keep the video short.

As with any relationships, these are as unique as the people involved in them. So, in the future, take a moment to consider your social media relationships. Is there something you can do to rekindle the flame?