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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Congratulations, You’re Our New Social Media Expert

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Congratulations, class of 2016. 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.  John Haydon’s Facebook Bootcamp and the Social Media Managers School founded by Andrea Vahl and Phyllis Khare are two of them.
  • You can also take webinars on the subject of your choice.  I will humbly mention my Blogging on a Mission webinar…and check out the entire series offered by NPO Connect.
  • 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!

 

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!

Social Media for Introverts

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“Introverts are like a rechargeable battery. They need to stop expending energy and rest in order to recharge.” ~Marti Olsen Laney

I’m a friendly introvert.  I enjoy public speaking.  At a party, I introduce people to one another and keep the conversation going.  I train other professionals, chair meetings, tutor teenagers, and go to two book clubs and a neighborhood Scrabble game a month. People who know me think I’m warm and caring

So what makes me an introvert?  At some point, I hit a wall.  Being around people stops being exciting and starts to  exhaust me.  Like the author of the Rebecca Review, “I’m often drained of all energy after being with people for extended periods of time, but being with a book can set me on fire with creativity and energy.”

Can introverts thrive on social media?  Absolutely.  But you have to do social your way.

  1. Listen first.  You don’t have the impulse the extroverts have to walk through the door and be the life of the party.  So, you don’t have to fight that impulse. Go with your strength. Listen first.  Find out who else is in the “room” and what they find interesting.
  2. Support others. Repost, retweet, forward, and in any manner share comments you agree with.  People will be used to hearing good things from you.  Eventually, they’ll listen to your thoughts too.
  3. Write.  In writing, you get to express your authentic self, the one that sometimes gets lost in crowds.  Be yourself.  Write in your own voice.  Write often.
  4. Reflect.  Take time to think. Add something to the conversation, even if it’s restating an idea in a  clearer, more memorable way.  Don’t doubt yourself–you have plenty to say–but make sure to post something others will want to read. Prize quality over quantity.
  5. Take time off.  Even though social media  do mediate–you’re not actually facing people or talking in real time–participation can be tiring.  Write and schedule your posts ahead if you can, but if you need to take some time off and just forget about it, that’s OK.

(If you don’t believe me that people will still want to read you after you take a break, check out what Michelle Rafter wrote about her social media sabbatical.  it works!)

Welcome to social media, introverts.  When you have a quiet moment, drop me a line.  I’d love to hear your comments.

Where Nonprofits Should Spend their Time

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A business woman who’s exploring our nonprofit sector asked me: “If a nonprofit has to choose between investing time in establishing and maintaining a Facebook presence versus crafting content for SEO, where should the nonprofit invest its time?”

My answer? It depends on the audience you want to reach.

Why Nonprofits Shouldn’t Worry about SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, was all the rage a few years ago. Businesses (and some nonprofits) were paying good money to SEO consultants who promised to get them on page 1 of Google searches.

But most nonprofits shouldn’t worry about SEO. Here are three reasons why.

  1. You might not need to be found.  If you’re a nonprofit, these days you may already be serving more clients than you can handle! The Great Recession is officially over, but many people are still worse off and depending on nonprofits for help.
  2. It’s easy for them to find you. Surveys show that the single most common term people type into the search box when they’re looking for your nonprofit organization is…the name of your organization. They have already heard of you through word of mouth. It’s the word of mouth you need to boost–not the SEO.
  3. What do they find when they get there?  Improving the content on your website may get you better results for less money than increasing the number of people who ever happen to take a look at it

You shouldn’t worry about SEO–but paying just a little bit of attention to it might be worth your while.  Here’s a piece I wrote about “How To Get Found: SEO and the Small Nonprofit.”  It includes ten tips on getting more eyeballs to your site.  (But most of them are not SEO.)

Should Your Nonprofit Invest in Social Media?

So if SEO is less important, should nonprofits put more time and money into social media? You can’t answer a question like “Should we invest in Facebook” without answering these strategic questions first:

  1. Who are the audiences we’re trying to reach?
  2. Toward what end? (Once we have built up a nice, preferably two-way, relationship with the audience, what will they start to do that they weren’t doing before?)
  3. What do we already know about these audiences? What do we need to find out to give them what they’re looking for?

There is no point in using a communications channel if your audience isn’t using it. For most nonprofits, Facebook is the social media common denominator—but you don’t need to know about most nonprofits. You need to know what your specific audience uses and enjoys.

Putting First Things First

Let me be blunt: using social media at all could be a waste of time if you don’t answer these three strategic questions.

And even if you do have a fully-developed strategy, social media may not be the first way to put it into practice. You could invest in:

  • writing better permanent content for your website
  • creating a blog
  • cleaning up your email list and sending out email your readers really want to read

These are the basic building blocks of communications.

Before thinking about social media, make sure you have those building blocks in place. (Think of SEO as how you build them, not as a separate set of blocks.)

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