The Social Media Goldmine for Nonprofits

Listening to the experts
Nonprofit agencies have spent years perfecting how to leverage these channels for their clients. When I asked them what was on their minds related to nonprofits and social media, here is what they shared:

"One thing we know as marketers is that technology, channels and mediums of communication will change, but people’s motivations stay constant. We can’t assume that our social media advocates—who are in great part online for human connection and not altruism—are already or will be easily converted to donors, any more so than traditional advocates or event participants for a cause are easily converted to donors. We feel that the first crucial step is to be able to harness the valuable data available from social media interactions to build more complete profiles of your social media advocates and donors, noting where they overlap and where they don’t, so as to allow the crafting of specific messages to each group in ways that best allow you to join their discussions."
—Fred Feldman, vice president of creative services at NNE Marketing

"Until we effectively educate our fundraisers to speak like public relations professionals, or our public relations professionals to speak like fundraisers, we will continue to experience slow revenue gains through traditional social media. Just like our email messaging moved away from being driven by communications and marketing departments, so too must portions of our social media communications, if organizations are expecting significant revenue growth through these channels. Additionally, social media has become the main facilitator of the cross-channel/device, people-based advertising movement. And with today’s fragmented digital landscape, there really isn’t a choice for marketers but to adopt a more audience-segmented approach to communication. With Facebook Custom Audiences (as well as Atlas) and Twitter Tailored Audiences, we can now extend relevant and reliable reach outside the inbox. That is true digital marketing innovation and the reason why social media is now pay-to-play. What’s more is that these targeting capabilities are forcing organizations to more closely integrate advertising into their marketing efforts. Basically, targeting by identities (people) versus cookies is finally enabling marketers to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time."
—Jason Wood, senior director digital strategy, and Erin Payer, senior digital marketing specialist, TrueSense Marketing

"The social media ship has sailed out into the ocean of mobile. Users are discovering and consuming content on their mobile devices in increasing numbers, and more importantly from our vantage point as fundraisers, they’re beginning to make donations via social-mobile in numbers that mean something. Every nonprofit should ask themselves this question: Am I providing a mobile experience that is friendly or unfriendly? If a nonprofit invests in social media, it needs to make a corresponding investment in mobile-readiness to ensure that the investment pays out through ease of engagement and donation.

"What’s new and now in social?

• "Paid social is gaining in size and stature—the lines between organic and paid will blur, as the social newsfeed increasingly becomes a mash-up of paid, earned and owned tactics.
• "Video and digital storytelling—a multi-billion-dollar industry, new social networks and platforms fueled by video and images (think Pinterest, Instagram, Vine)—are creating new standards in website design and user experience.
• "Crowdfunding/P2P—a good way to give younger donors their first taste of making a difference through donating, as well as engaging current audiences in fundraising for special events, campaigns or emergencies.

• "Social e-commerce—predicted to exceed $15 billion in revenue this year, so fundraisers need to build understanding right now of how social e-commerce will influence social giving and the tactics that should be incorporated to capture social donations."

—Lisa Scott Benson, executive vice president, strategy, insights and integration, Russ Reid