Social Media for Nonprofits. How To Gain, Maintain And Engage Advocates Online

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1 Social Media for Nonprofits How To Gain, Maintain And Engage Advocates Online

2 Content to Be Covered Who is your Audience? Where is your Audience engaging online? When is your Audience online? What type of content will resonate with your audience? Why will your target Audience want to follow you? How do you use the information above to accomplish your goals? Measuring your success

3 Outline your social media goals. As with any other marketing initiative, it is important to first identify the purpose and desired outcome of your efforts. Social media goals should relate closely to your overall business objectives. These goals should be measurable, allowing you to determine the effectiveness and success of your efforts. Common social media goals for non-profits include: Increasing Donations Increasing Membership Generating Volunteer Signups Newsletter/Mail Signups

4 Online Relationship

5 Engagement Pyramid

6 What is Engagement? What does engagement mean for your campaign? What does someone have to do to be engaged? Are there different levels of engagement? By answering these questions you ll be setting your campaign s end goal and ultimately setting yourself up for success.

7 Who is your Audience? Choose a group of three to six audience types and create buyer personas with a journey map. Think of the people who make up each type: who they are, what they like to do and what they may want from an organization. From there, define why they're the target: Why are they important to your social strategy? What actions do you want them to take? How does the target audience use social media? Research; Pew Research studies, blogs and SlideShares are all good places to start. Questions to keep in mind: What actions do your audiences take? What are they looking for online? What are they talking about? What social platforms do they use the most? What are they engaging with? What time of day are they most active? Find out more about your current fans and followers. You may be reaching an audience that you hadn't planned for and that can factor into your strategy. Start by determining who your influential followers (Klout) are and what they have in common with followers of your peers/competitors. From there you can figure out what content they are engaging with the most. Some great tools to get a better grasp of audience demographics are: Twiangulate FollowerWonk Facebook Insights Statigram

8 Where is your Audience? 4 Questions to ask before using a platform: Does this platform provide analytics? Do your needs coincide with what the platform offers? What is the platform s audience? Media Rich/Cost

9 Cross Platform Engagement Facebook Twitter YouTube Google + LinkedIn /low-cost-tools-for-nonprofits/

10 Facebook- Where you want to be! 58% of Americans over the age of 12 have a Facebook profile. Facebook drives 95% of web traffic. Ad targeting

11 Facebook- Donation Button Register to become eligible for Facebook Donate Button. Create Button Boost post using call to action button

12 Google + It s more important than ever to claim your nonprofit s space in Google+. create circles for certain organizations you interact with, prospective donors who you want to interact with you more and volunteers that help your nonprofit exist. Hangouts to chat with your different circles by way of text, video or even sharing your screen.

13 Twitter Tweet about things people care about Link to newsworthy events that people are already talking about and how they relate to your cause. Remember, no one outside of your organization cares who your executive director shook hands with today. Link to interesting items about your partners or sector. Tweet in the moment Are you at a gala event and your senator or governor just walked in? Don t be afraid to live tweet as it s happening. Follow the rule That s 60% retweets and pointers to promote items from other users or sites, 30% conversation and responses, 10% announcements and events. If all you ever talk about is you, no one is going to pay attention after a while. Be strategic Follow and schmooze with influencers in your sector. Use search.twitter.com s Advanced search link to find people in your sector or geographic region. Use tools like Klout, SocialMention, PeopleBrowsr (including its new Kred) and Twitter Lists to find them and make sure you engage before you ask for anything. Be supportive Follow like-minded users and engage with them. Retweet liberally. Link to interesting news stories about your partners or sector. Optimize your keywords Make sure that people can find you in a search. Your profile should contain the name of your organization, relevant keywords and a url to your site or blog. Personalize your page Upload your organization s logo as an icon, or you may want individual staffers to use their own thumbnail images. Don t use a standard Twitter background (click the Change background image link under the Design tab of your profile). Adjust background and text colors. And, for heaven s sake, don t make your account private. Use hashtags Join in relevant Twitter conversations and trending topics by using #hashtags. Use existing ones or create your own. Check out our list of 40 hashtags for social good. Use calls to action It s OK to say Please check out our latest photo essay or Please RT. Just don t abuse people s attention spans. Include links Tweets containing a url are three times more likely to be retweeted. Measure your links popularity Use free url shorteners like bit.ly whenever including a link. Tools like CoTweet, Hootsuite and TweetDeck include these. Bit.ly will track which urls in your tweets get the most click-throughs. Retweet

14 LinkedIn Establish a solid presence on LinkedIn by creating a Company page with up to date information on the organization. Encourage your current supporters, board of directors, staff, volunteers, donors and friends to connect Ask people who stop by your website, read your e-newsletter, or otherwise show that they are interested in you to connect with you on LinkedIn and follow your company page. Write short status updates that will appear on your profile and on the update pages of everyone who is connected with you or following your company. Create your own LinkedIn group specifically for the use of your supporters and friends. Post relevant information there, ask questions, and upload pictures and logos. Invite all of your followers to join you there and get involved in the discussion.

15 When is your Audience on? Timing is important both in the strategy and implementation stage. When choosing a social media plan, go over your NPO calendar and check what events are coming up. Consider what issues you want to focus on and how you can use special days to create social posts you can use to reach a broad audience.

16 YouTube Participate in YouTube's Nonprofit Program The YouTube Nonprofit Program provides for extra benefits like branding capabilities, increased uploading capacity, and call-to-action overlays. Non-profits can use the call-to-action feature to drive sign-ups, donations, website traffic, and any other response in which users take action. Annotations can be used to add interactive commentary to videos, and for partners in the Nonprofit Program, they can be used to link to external sites. Video communicators can select when and where annotations appear as embedded content. If your non-profit doesn't have the resources to create video, YouTube's Video Volunteersprogram will help you find a skilled video-maker. The effort highlights different specific issues, and the top three videos are featured on the YouTube homepage at the end of each month. It's often easy to forget that search drives the social web in so many ways. YouTube is no different, so savvy non-profits should leverage this. There are several easy things to do: Tag videos liberally, title well, and upload consistently to have a better chance of turning up in search results.

17 Infographic

18 Now that we know who, when and where, now what? Use the information you gather to implement your content strategy -- if researchers are looking for facts, incorporate more infographics and stats into your tweets. If donors are seeking a behind the scenes look at your organization or results from fundraisers, make sure to include photos of your next big event or stats about how much was raised on your Facebook page. If you get people to donate to your cause, think of great ways you can thank them with a personal message. It could be a quick video, or it could be a handwritten note. Don t be afraid to show them what their money did. Use these creative ways and social media to show your supporters where their funds went and how it had an impact on the community. When you post creative content on your social media, make sure to include a call-to-action

19 Ideas for Engagement Start a hashtag campaign on Twitter. This is probably the easiest one to implement and you could take a cue from the corporate examples I mentioned at the beginning of this post. For instance, if you re an animal shelter and you want to get people to share their stories of animal adoption perhaps you could use the hashtag #AdoptLove. Invite guest posts to your blog. If your organization has a blog, this is a great platform to encourage engagement. Get the word out that you want to hear people s stories that relate to the cause. Maybe ask for 250 to 500 word submissions so people don t feel overwhelmed. Then start a weekly series to feature them. Host of a video contest. Everyone has access to a video camera these days. In fact most of us have them in our phones. Give people a prompt, tell them where to upload their videos and give them a deadline. Create a participatory, visual petition. I m not sure how this campaign worked out in practical terms, but Matt Damon decided to go on strike until everyone has access to water by not going to the bathroom. Check out the campaign participation here and with the hashtag #strikewithme. (Also the video is super funny!) It s a neat concept that I m sure could be replicated in other ways. Do something seasonal that is tangentially related to your cause.spring is here and I think there s lots of opportunity to engage communities in conversations beyond the cause. Maybe asking them what their #SpringDreams are or if your organization is health related, asking people if they have any #SpringFitTips. Again, simple, easy ways to cultivate conversation. Host a virtual storytelling event using Google+. I personally haven t seen this done yet, but I would LOVE for organizations to take a cue for The Moth (live storytelling events) and do a digital version of that. You can easily create a broadcast online using Google+ and could invite people to watch and participate. #TBT - #TBT (Throw Back Thursday) is a popular hashtag on Twitter and Instagram. Why not capitalize on that and incorporate a storytelling aspect. Maybe your organization held an event last year. Encourage people to share their pictures and rekindle their fondness for the event. Selfie with a great caption - At the 2014 Nonprofit Technology Conference, there was one session that talked about getting people to take selfies as a part of a social media engagement campaign but doing so strategically. For instance, at one of your events or maybe at local landmarks related to your cause. Be sure to ask them to write a great caption to explain where they are! Add a story submission space on your website It is easy enough to put the call out for stories online, but sometimes you have to have a place to easily collect those stories. You could have the page live update with stories that are submitted or you can approve them first. Instagram picture prompts to get your community involved in visual storytelling through photos. Turn your community into photojournalists! Give them assignments and ask them to upload their pictures with a searchable hashtag. Create an Ad. You can quickly reach current and potential followers (who might convert to donors), and build a community of followers, advocates, and influencers who will engage with and share your nonprofit s message

20 Measuring your Success Review and analyze data such as virality of posts, events, campaigns, and contests. Make adjustments where necessary, and test different elements such as calls-to-action, images, color schemes, etc. Measurement can lead to maximum optimization

21 Thank you! Stevens Strategic Communications 1991 Crocker Rd. Westlake, OH (440) ext. 210