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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

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!

TY Thursday: What Your Nonprofit Can Learn from My Guest Bloggers

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How is your nonprofit like a guest blogger on Communicate?

Answer: You both have to put your audience before yourself.

How Guest Bloggers Succeed on Communicate

Amy Hufford

Amy Hufford

Laura Rhodes

Laura Rhodes

Tripp Braden

Tripp Braden

 

 

 

 

I don’t let just anybody post on the Communicate blog. It doesn’t matter how big a name they are or how long they’ve been in the field. What matters is that they serve readers like you: small- to medium-sized nonprofits that want loyal friends and donors.

Amy Hufford, Laura Rhodes, Tripp Braden, Brock Klinger, James Gilmer, Sybil Stershic, Tripp Braden, Rebecca Thompson, Lisa Dunn…all of these writers took the time and effort to do three things:

  1. Send tailored posts. Guest bloggers didn’t just grab something they’d written and chuck it my way. They came up with a topic and an approach that would interest my readers.
  2. Do the homework. They looked at other posts on the blog, figured out what you, the readers, like to see, and they wrote something like that.
  3. Be unselfish. Yes, of course we all know that the guest bloggers would like you to look at their websites too, and possibly to buy their products or services. But they thought about you first.

This Thank-You Thursday, I want to thank my guest bloggers. But more than that, I want to suggest you, the nonprofit organization, can follow their example.

Write For Your Donors, Not Just Yourself

This sounds obvious, but too often we forget: your donor has something valuable to give you.

I can only give space on this blog. Your donors give your nonprofit its lifeblood, the money it needs to keep running.

Or they don’t. Your donors can say no.

What do you need to do in order for them to say yes? The same things that bloggers do when they want me to say yes to their guest posts!

  1. Send tailored communications to your donors. Write first and most often about what they want to know–not what you want to tell them.
  2. Know your audience. Do research to find out who they are and what they care about. Segment your list so that you’re sending messages about housing to people who care about homelessness and messages about food banks to people who care about hunger.
  3. Make the donor the hero.
    • “We do great work” is selfish.
    • “We do great work with your help” is selfishness in a thin disguise.
    • “You do great work. Keep on doing it with your donation” is putting your audience before yourself–and paradoxically, that is what will benefit your nonprofit the most!

Learn from my guest bloggers: what they say, but more important, what they do. Put others first if you want them to help you.

Nonprofits, Who (and What) Are You Blogging For?

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Blog!

Our Executive Director wants us to start writing all our nonprofit’s blog posts in her voice, and address them all to our donors. Do you think this is a good idea?

That’s the question Sarah asked when she attended my webinar on Blogging for Change, part of the course “Your Donor Engagement System” that Pamela Grow and I taught together.

Here’s how I answered her:

Sarah, you’ve actually asked two questions.

One: Should you write in one person’s voice?

Probably, yes. Your readers will feel like they’re getting to know the Executive Director personally, and that will certainly make them feel closer to the organization.

But note: They’ll only feel that way if the writing is actually personal. Just signing the blog with your ED’s name and saying “I” instead of “we” won’t make any difference. You’ll need to put some of your ED’s personality into it: write in her style, tell stories from her point of view. That will take practice.

So, tell your ED you will need to spend more time together on each blog entry if you’re truly going to write in her voice. As you get more practiced at it, you will be able to do more of it on your own–but take the time right now to get it right.

All this is assuming your ED is a good spokesperson for your organization…and that she is not planning on leaving any time soon!

Two: Should you write your blogs to your donors?

It depends.

What’s the purpose of your blog? Have you made a strategic decision that you’re blogging to build stronger relationships with people who already support the organization? If so, I applaud you: nonprofits don’t spend enough time retaining the donors we already have!

But maybe your blog is supposed to serve a different purpose. Maybe you are trying to burnish your reputation with your funders (government agencies or foundations). Maybe your blog is a vehicle for sharing important information with your clients, or a megaphone for mobilizing advocates working on the same cause.

Have you decided what your blog is for? Do that, and then it will become clear who your audience should be. Click To Tweet

How would you answer Sarah’s questions? What would you add?

Yes, I’d like weekly email from Communicate!

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