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TY Thursday: Your Nonprofit Organization’s Best Friend

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loyalty

Who is your organization’s best friend?

Every nonprofit organization has one: the most loyal supporter.  The person who gives as often as she can, or as often as you ask.  The one who volunteers for all your events and brings her friends.

You’d like a thousand like that.  You’d like to clone her.  What if you could?

Businesses have time-tested strategies that create loyal customers.  Some of these strategies work especially well on social media. Nonprofits can adapt and adopt these strategies to thank our donors, volunteers, and supporters.

Danny Maloney, CEO of the social media firm Tailwind, lists “4 Ways to Turn Social-Media Fans Into Raving, Loyal Customers”:

  1. Use a targeted approach.  Find the people who are already talking about you on Facebook, Twitter, and the web at large.
  2. Let your fans know you’re listening.  “If they took the time to share a blog post you wrote or to give you a positive review, be listening for it and thank them.”
  3. Target your special offers.  Businesses give loyalty discounts.  What can you give your most loyal supporters that they would enjoy: a chance to write for your blog? lunch with a celebrity who also supports you? an award?
  4. Curate compelling content.  That’s jargon for finding and sharing information that interests your supporters.  It could be an insider analysis of where their favorite legislation stands in Congress. It could be a video that explains the issue you and they both care about.

Sharing this content with your most loyal supporters makes them feel smarter and happier because they’re associated with you.  It shows them your gratitude. It keeps them coming back to your social media.

And it keeps them advocating for your organization, increasing awareness of you among their friends…who may become your next most loyal supporters.

 

For Nonprofits, It’s Better to be Heard than to be Seen

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Touch your right eye.  Now, your left.eyeball

You have just put your finger on the most valuable commodity online.

Eyeballs are what you have.  Eyeballs are what the social media companies are selling.  Facebook is famous for selling you to brands, and now Twitter is getting into the act.  They will stick ads anywhere they can to offer more viewers to their advertisers.

That’s how they make money.

Nonprofit organizations have a different reason for being.  If you work at a nonprofit, you are trying to accomplish a mission.  Money may be a means to the end, but it is not an end in itself.

Nonprofits shouldn’t be in the eyeball business. We should aim to be heard.

We should be telling stories so well that people continue to hear them all day, inside their heads.  We should be getting our readers to talk about us with their friends.

One person who “gets it” because they read your blog, post, or tweet is worth a hundred who just saw it.

 

 

Write a Social Media Policy that Works

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social media policy cartoon

Your organization should have a social media policy, not so much to tell employees what not to do as to tell them what they can and should do.

Why?  Because your employees are a source of all the good stuff you can share on social media.  Success stories.  Fascinating facts.  Good advice for people looking to use your products or services, and fast responses to people who have questions or complaints.  Inside looks at  how the organization works.  In short, everything that would make people follow you on social media.

Neither the head of your organization nor your marketing department (if you are fortunate enough to have one) can do it all.  Empower your staff with a clear set of guidelines and you will multiply the ways you interact with the people you want to reach: your potential clients, customers, donors, and other supporters.

Yes, a good social media policy will set limits.  But those limits should give a lot of leeway, to make room for creativity and initiative.

Don’t be the pointy-haired boss who makes it impossible for employees to do their work.  Be the one who shows trust, and earns it in return.

Here are some templates you could use to create a social media policy that’s right for your company:

Society for Human Resource Management template

5 Examples of Corporate Social Media Policies (from Hubspot)

Online Database of Government & Non-Profit Social Media Policies (socialmediagovernance.com)

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