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What Your Nonprofit Can Learn about Your Facebook Fans

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Facebook has made it harder for your nonprofit organization to understand your clients, donors, and prospects in depth. I’m both grateful… and annoyed.

Knowing What They Like, Besides You

Facebook graph search

Oh, the things you could know about your Facebook fans!

You used to be able to use Facebook Graph Search to find out a lot about the people who followed your organization on Facebook. You would type in “Pages liked by people who like [your organization].”

Voila, up popped a list of all the pages that your followers had liked, and who liked which page. You could also easily discover:

  • How many people, total, like that page.
  • Other pages that people who like a specific page also like.
  • Which of your own friends liked that page (if you are using Facebook as an individual)

Knowing what your audience likes, besides you, helps you send them the messages that interest them most.

If you’re an agency that runs a pre-school, for example, wouldn’t it be great to know if your followers also like pages about books or about sports? That could help you decide whether to post more about the topic “How to read to your 4-year-old” or the topic “Soccer for preschoolers.”

But What About Privacy?

You might never have heard of Graph Search before, and now you might be excited at the chance to deliver the content that your donors want most. Or, you might be worried about looking like an online stalker.

We’ve all had that creepy sensation when we looked up snow boots on an online shopping site and then ads for snow boots kept popping up on Facebook for days or weeks.

Most nonprofits would have the emotional intelligence to make a donor feel complimented (“They really know me!”) rather than threatened. But not everyone has tact, or good intentions, either.

…bloggers showed how Facebook Graph Search could be used to uncover potentially embarrassing information (e.g., companies employing people who like racism) or illegal interests (e.g., Chinese residents who like the banned group Falun Gong).

So, in December 2014, Facebook did away with some of the features of Graph Search that nonprofit researchers and marketers found most useful. Now you can use Facebook Search to find photos, posts, videos, and links by searching for words in the post. But you can no longer find out what your page followers like with a simple search. Or can you?

Knowing Your Facebook Audience in 2015

You don’t need Facebook to do good audience research. As Marc A. Pitman points out, you have your own donor database. You have the record of which recipients opened your email (if you’re using an email service provider like MailChimp or Constant Contact). And you can even go on Facebook and other social media to see how your fans interact. But that’s a time-consuming process.

Using Facebook Ads Manager

International media consultant Stacey Kawakami tells me that if you have at least 1,000 people following you on Facebook, you can use Facebook Ads Manager as a research tool. Here’s what you do:

  1. Go to Ads Manager
  2. From the top bar, click Tools
  3. From the Tools dropdown, click Audience Insights
  4. Select “Only people connected to your page”
  5. Enter your page in the navigation on the left side
  6. You’ll land on the demographics page by default
  7. Click “Page Likes”

Using other tools

If you’re interested in finding out whether Facebook followers of your nonprofit like another page, specifically, you could use the 1ntelligence Facebook Search tool. It’s designed for employment recruiters, but it will do the job for you.

  1. From the drop-down menu, choose Like.
  2. Fill in the name of your Facebook page. (For example, mine is communicateconsulting.)
  3. Click the AND button.
  4. Again, choose Like, and this time put the name of another Facebook page that you’re wondering whether your followers also follow.
  5. You will get a list of all the people who like both pages, along with where they work and who you have as mutual friends.

You could also use this tool to find followers of your page who live or work in a specific area, or who speak a certain language. Again, knowing this information may help you send the right message to the right people at the right time–which is what effective communication is all about!

Using Search Strings

What if you don’t have 1,000 followers but you do have some technical savvy about search? Then you could try the queries that Balazs & the Magic Sourcing World recommends.

For instance, you want to find Google employees and run this one: /104958162837/employees/present/intersect where the long number is the Facebook ID of Google.

And thanks to Balasz, I can now tell you how to duplicate my old, extremely useful search, “Pages liked by people who like [your organization].” Here’s what you do:

  1. Find your organization’s numerical Facebook ID. You can go to http://www.findmyfbid.com/ and type in the name of your Facebook page, and it will tell you the number.
  2. Then, go to Facebook and search on https://www.facebook.com/search/your ID/likers/pages-liked. (Where it says “your ID,” put in the numerical ID before you search.)
  3. And voila! There’s the list again!

Remember, the point is to build a better relationship with your followers. Don’t shock them with how much you know about them. Just use your research to find the common ground where their interests meet your cause.

How Do You Say “Content Marketing” in Nonprofit?

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You’re working so hard for a cause you believe in.  You wonder: Why aren’t more people paying attention?

cute cat

Can your communications compete with this cat?

You’re not alone.  In the internet age, nonprofits and businesses are all in the same boat.  We’re not only competing with each other for people’s time and interest.  We’re also competing with online games, viral videos, and cute cat photos.

What did you do the last time a commercial appeared on your TV screen?  Chances are, you muted the volume or changed the channel…if you weren’t already using a tool to “zap” the commercials right out of what you were watching.

The people your nonprofit is trying to reach are just like you.  The ways that nonprofits usually try to reach people are even easier to ignore than commercials.  It’s so easy to delete your email, ignore your press release, toss that annual report or printed newsletter or appeal letter into the recycling bin.   Most people will do just that–IF they see your outreach as just another claim upon their time.

But what if they saw you as an answer to their prayers instead?

 

Giving People What They Want through Content Marketing

People don’t like to be interrupted.  They like to be helped.  If you want to be heard, you have to give people something they want, so that they are actually grateful to hear from you.  The term for this approach that puts the audience at the center is content marketing.

Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.

(Substitute “nonprofits” for “businesses” and “supporters” for “customers, prospects, buyers.”  The strategy is the same: give people information that matters to them and you will draw them closer to your cause.)

 

What Do People Want?

To attract people’s attention, interest, and ultimately support, you must know what they want.  Not just guess: know.  Not just a general idea: you must know them in depth and in detail, like you know a good friend.  If you don’t know that yet, stop reading this blog and go find out.

Let’s say you have done your homework and you do really know your audience.  Here are a few ways you can give them information that will make them keep coming back to you.

  • Online tools.  Give your supporters a way to do something they couldn’t do before.  A real estate company might give prospects free access to the Multiple Listing Service.  An organization for low-income families might give potential donors and partners a way to calculate the minimum a family needs to get by in a specific town.  [What will your supporters use?]
  • Blogging. In a personal voice, tell stories and give behind-the-scenes information about something you know they care about.  [Will your readers quote you in conversations with friends?]
  • Training.  Be a guest speaker.  Hold workshops.  Do webinars.  Teach other people what you know that they want to learn, and gain their loyalty and respect.  [What does your organization know better than anyone else that other people would line up to learn?]
  • Curation.  This is the current term for finding useful content that other people have produced and sharing it with your supporters–through mail, email, or social media (including Youtube for sharing video).  The key is that it has to be useful to them.  [What will they put into practice right away?  What will they find valuable enough that they will forward, post, retweet, pin, or otherwise share it with others?]

You don’t have to do all of these content marketing.  Certainly not at the start.  Perhaps not ever.  You are who you are, and your supporters are who they are, and maybe there’s another approach that makes them sit up and pay attention.

What you have to do is to find that approach.  Until you find it, the cat videos win.

 

 

Marketing that Loses Points with the Audience

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My dear wife Rona often receives bad marketing pitches, but this one takes the cake. Firebox.com advertises lights in the form of Scrabble tiles, and here’s how it describes them:

  • “Way less boring than the board game”
  • “Includes 60 reusable letter stickers. That’s roughly 5 swear words worth”
  • “Will fool people into thinking you’re a bonafide [sic] wordsmith”
Scrabble lights

Negative points for insulting Scrabble!

Rona and I take this personally! We met over a game of Scrabble. (She beat me by 120 points, but I’ve learned her secrets since then.)

We don’t find the board game boring. We host a neighborhood Scrabble game every month.

We don’t have to “fool people.” We are bona fide wordsmiths–the kind who know that “bona fide” is two words, and what it means!

Okay, I get it: this company wants to be edgy. They advertise themselves as “not for everyone.” They may not be for me. But what’s the point of insulting the  people who are most likely to buy your product?

You Can Do Better Than That!

You can learn from bad marketers. You can learn how to do better. Whether you are marketing a product or a service (and whether you’re commercial or nonprofit), take another look at the message you’re sending.

This time, forget what you like. Think about your audience.

If they find it insulting–or even just puzzling–it doesn’t matter how clever or creative you thought you were being. You’re losing points with the people whose opinions matter. Keep your audience in mind, and you can play to win.

 

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