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Should Your Nonprofit Invest in Social Media?

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Nonprofits invest social media

Source: Vertical Response

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.)

What Nonprofits Can Learn from Librarians

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My friend Sam Musher is a librarian in a public school, but she knows marketing. Librarians can do it

Sam recently posted on Facebook:

Dear everyone trying to advertise events to teenagers: Make. A. Poster. I would love to post your event on my bulletin board! But I will not be creating a sign for you. Give me a PDF, or I’m out.

Look at the valuable marketing lessons Sam the librarian has packed into these few lines!

  1. Know your audience. Teenagers in Sam’s school will pay attention to a poster on a bulletin board. They will not give a sheet full of text a second glance. You have to know the people you’re addressing and what will attract their interest.
  2. Know your influencers. Sam is the person who can potentially show your event to thousands of teens. It would pay you to please her. You have to know the people like Sam who are in a position to spread word about your agency far and wide.
  3. Make it easy for people to do what you want them to do. Everybody is busy. Don’t ask for free labor.
    • If you want an announcement to go on a bulletin board, send a poster.
    • If you want news to go in a newspaper, send an article that’s ready to print–with a photo!
    • If you want people to forward your email, give them a one-click forwarding option.

And a final word from Sam: “Bonus points if the poster looks really good in black and white. A surprising number of us don’t have regular access to a color printer.”

Take it from a librarian: many people use the library because they don’t have access to a landline phone, or a desktop computer: only a mobile device. Use the format that your audience will like.

 

Fundraising Tuesday: The Case of the Unknown Donors

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“You’ve got to help us,” the Executive Director said. “We have all these donors, and we don’t know them.  We’re communicating in the dark.”

Do the detective work to know your audiences

Do the detective work and know your donors

“A hundred dollars an hour plus expenses,” I said.  As a private detective, I’m used to searching in the dark.  Besides, it would be a break from snooping on cheating husbands and wives.

Here’s how I tracked down the unknown donors.

Searched the case files.  I looked through the database for tips about donors and prospects.  I combed the Board bios and meeting minutes to get the skinny on the directors.  For donors who were clients, the agency balked: confidentiality, they said.  I’d heard that one before.  “Give me a sample of client folders with the names removed.  I’ll take it from there.”

Talked to informants.  Who knows each audience the best?  The nice lady at the front desk told me stories about the people who come in looking for help that would curl your hair.  The program directors dished the dirt on the organizations they collaborate with: thick as thieves, but not as well funded. The Executive Director herself knew all the politicians in town.  I made notes.

Beat the pavement.  Take a tip from an old gumshoe: don’t wait by the phone.  Get out and talk to people.  Interview people.  Find out their motives.  How else will you know how to motivate them?

Tail the suspects.  These days, people leave trails a mile wide all over the Internet.  Track them.  What footprints can you find through a web search?  Who do they visit on Facebook?  See what business they’re conducting in LinkedIn groups.  Read the notes they scrawl and toss onto Twitter.  You don’t have to snap photos: they’re doing it for you, on Instagram and Pinterest and other juke joints all around.  Make yourself known there and see who talks.

Follow the money.  Are your unknown donors making payments to other organizations?  Look at donor lists to see what relationships they have on the side.

Get the suspects in a room.  Call it a focus group.  Call it an advisory board.  Call it Ishmael, if you like–just ask them the questions.  Put them at ease and they’ll sing like a room full of canaries.

I made my report.  The Executive Director was grateful. “Now we know who they are, what they want, where to find them, and how to talk to them.  I can just see the donation renewals coming in!”

“Good,” I said.  “Don’t spend it all in one place.”  They would need to do more investigation as their audiences changed.  Good investigators don’t come cheap.

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