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Dial M for Marketing: The Best of 2020

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On this blog, Tuesday is for fundraising (and just wait until you see what I have for you tomorrow!). Thursday is for thank-yous. And Monday–well, it’s Messaging, Media, Marketing, and Miscellaneous. Dial M for Monday!

Here are the best “M” blog posts of 2020, according to the readers of this blog.

  1. What You REALLY Do to See More Friends on Facebook (and what your nonprofit tells its followers to do if they want to see your posts more often!)
  2. When You’re Planning Meetings, Include Other Religions. To start, look up Jewish holidays on Hebcal.
  3. Why You Should NOT Run a Nonprofit Like a Business no matter who tells you to!
  4. How to Talk about Your Nonprofit with a Complete Stranger
  5. Putting On the Shoes: What Ray Bradbury Taught Me about Marketing

Happy 2021!

What You REALLY Do to See More Friends on Facebook

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facebook hoax
Perhaps you’ve seen this message circulating around Facebook before. Your friends might have posted it. Maybe you fell for it yourself?
Been wondering why I have a dwindled down to a small circle seeing my posts! Thanks for the tip to circumvent Facebook … it works!! I have a whole new profile. I see posts from people I didn’t see anymore. Facebook’s new algorithm picks the same people -m around 25-who will see your posts. Hold your finger anywhere in this post and click ” copy “. Go to your page where it says “What’s on your mind?” Tap your finger anywhere in the empty field. Click paste. This is going to circumvent the system
Hello new and old friends!
No, it doesn’t. This is a well-known hoax that has been circulating for years. Please do not spread it any further.
 

What to do instead on Facebook

If you want to see more from your friends, the simplest thing to do is to search for their names, go to their pages, and like, comment, and share their posts. That will signal to Facebook, “Show me more like this.”
 
A slightly more complicated but much more powerful method is to make some of your Facebook Friends as Close Friends and others as Acquaintances. You will see more from the first group and less (but still some) from the second. How do you do that?
  • To mark one person, go to their page and, at the bottom right of their profile picture, find the place where they are currently marked Friends. Click on the pull-down arrow next to that word. Choose Close Friends (to see more of what they post) or Acquaintances (to see less).
  •  To categorize your whole list of Facebook friends, go to your own home page and click on Friends. You’ll see everybody you’re Friends with on Faceboook–and each one will have a pull-down menu you can use to mark them Close Friends or Acquaintances.
  • If you leave them alone, you will see them just about as often as you do now.

Tell your organization’s Facebook followers about this nifty trick. They will thank you for it!

Are All Young People Social Media Experts?

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graduate on cell phoneCongratulations, class of 2021. You survived. You graduated. You even landed a job.

Now, watch out.

Your employer thinks you’re a social media expert.

Just because you’re a “digital native” who played with an iPhone before you could ride a bike, your new employer thinks you can be the company’s social media manager.

Without training.

In addition to all your regular duties.

 

What are you supposed to do with that?

It all depends.  Do you want to be a social media expert?  Then, here are three things you need to do right away.

One: Explain to your boss what you have to learn.

  1. How to create a strategy for your organization, so that you reach the people you want to reach, where they hang out, with a purpose in mind.
  2. Who in your organization has great stories to tell.
  3. Who in your organization can take great photos.
  4. Who in your organization can produce great graphics.
  5. How to motivate the people in 2, 3, and 4 to send that content to you to use.
  6. What a publication calendar is, and how to stay on schedule.
  7. How to write killer subject lines for email, headlines for blogs, and text for tweets.
  8. How to write content that will make people look past the headline.
  9. The best ways to make sure your Facebook posts get seen.
  10. The best times of day and days of the week to post on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn….
  11. How to integrate your print communications, website, blog, email, and social media.
  12. What will make your followers like, share, and comment on your posts.
  13. How you can find and curate content your followers will be glad to read.
  14. How to tell whether any of it is making a difference.

Two: Tell your boss you’ll need a budget for training.

(Call it “professional development”: it sounds classier.)

  • There are great online courses.  The Social Media Managers School founded by Andrea Vahl and Phyllis Khare is one of them.
  • You can also take webinars on the subject of your choice.
  • In-person classes and conferences will bring your skills up to date and keep you there.

Three,  politely explain that being a social media manager could be a full-time job.

Heather Mansfield, author of Social Media for Social Good, estimates that doing a good job with just Facebook could take you seven hours a week.  Get a very clear set of instructions about your boss’s priorities: in writing, if possible!

eating snakes

Is this how you think of social media?

But perhaps you’d rather eat live snakes than manage your organization’s social media.  Then, show your boss this blog entry to make the case that it’s just too big a responsibility to do on the fly.

Suggest that he or she hire a communications consultant to do it right. (I might just be available.)

You just helped make your organization better.  Congratulations, graduate!

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