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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Social Media for Nonprofits: How Do I Keep Up?

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You’re an organization that promotes the social good.  You’re on social media.  Why doesn’t it feel social?

drinking out of a fire hose

This is not what you want to do on social media!

Probably because you’re trying so hard to keep up.  Following other people on social media is proverbially like “drinking out of a fire hose.”  Feeding your followers’ hunger for content is like running a short-order kitchen.

When do you sit down and actually talk?

Automate Tasks, So You Can Be More Personal

You want to use social media to a) get to know your supporters and b) have them get to know and love you better.  That takes a personal touch.

Paradoxically, the way to get personal is to automate more tasks.  Think of it this way: you have only so much time, right?  How would you rather spend that time: scheduling posts (which is something a machine can do), or having a real conversation with someone who’s interested in your group?

Social Media Tasks to Automate

There are certain social media tasks that lend themselves easily to automation.  Adam Stetzer, President & Co-Founder of HubShout, lists a few do’s and don’ts.  DO:

  • Automatically share every blog post to multiple social media platforms.
  • Use software to schedule posts so your feeds look alive when you are asleep.
  • Find strong sources of specific content about your mission that your audience will enjoy, that you won’t have to create.

Don’t Automate These Social Media Tasks

  • Highly-customized content that complements the news about your issues mentioned above, but shows the personality and human-side of the organization.
  • “Thank you’s”: When a human reaches out to you, find a way to build the contact into a relationship with a highly customized (i.e., human) response.
  • Refollows: Don’t follow every follower. Many are machines and bring no value.
  • Retweets: Automation will reduce the quality of social media presence.

Will you put these tips to use in 2015?

How Small Nonprofits Light Up Social Media

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Are you a small nonprofit organization, based in a single community?  Congratulations: you have natural advantages when it comes to social media.

What are your advantages?  The same strengths that social media maven Mark Schaefer sees for small businesses–only more so.

Local angle.  “I could care less about a tweet from a mega-brand,” Schaefer writes, “but I would certainly be interested to get to know a local shop owner in a personal way.” The people you serve, their families, your staff and Board, their families and friends, your city council, your school committee, and all your donors and volunteers are interested in you in real life.  They might be interested in you on Facebook or Twitter, too…but only if you show you’re interested in them.

Personal touch.  As a small nonprofit, you can know more of your supporters personally.  This one is always talking about raising a biracial child.  That one prides herself on her mouthwatering vegetarian recipes.  When you can provide useful information on a subject they care about , your supporters will notice.  (And they will always appreciate a compliment!)

Relationships. Businesses, and large nonprofits, are tempted to look at everything in terms of ROI, Return On Investment.  They miss the intangible results that small nonprofits perceive. If your supporters are telling you, “I loved that picture you posted,” or if they’re sharing information that you put out, or if municipal officials are treating you with more respect, you know you are building loyalty that will help you sooner or later.

Don’t Hide Your Light

“But I don’t know how to use social media,” you say.  “And I don’t have the time.”  You do know how to be social in real life, right?  A good consultant can train you on how to do social online.  A consultant can also help you use your time to best effect, or you can pay him or her to be your online voice.

Is it worth it?  Using social media well means getting closer to the people who matter most to your organization.  Yes, that’s worth doing.  You are ideally positioned to do it.  Go ahead: let your light shine!

The Nonprofit Marketing Guide, by Kivi Leroux Miller: a review

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Kivi Leroux Miller feels your pain.  And she wants to help.

Kivi Leroux Miller

Kivi Leroux Miller

You work at a nonprofit organization.  Either it’s too small to have a communications department or nobody has recognized the need to market what you do until now.  You’ve recognized the need, but you feel daunted.  There are so many things you could do…and the so-called experts want you to do all of them yesterday!

Where do you get started?  How much can you do?  What will work best for your group and its cause? You don’t need theory or grandiose notions.  You need a friend who’s been there and can guide you through the process. Kivi wants to be that friend.

Throughout this book, you will hear great advice that you can put to use right away.  If you love the idea of a “quick and dirty marketing plan,” this is the book for you.

Be warned, though: “quick” is a relative term.  There are no magic wands to wave and no lamps to rub to get a genie to do the work for you.  This book will give you a good sense of what you need to do to be ready to plan and of all the resources–mostly time–that you’ll need to turn that plan into reality.  Knowing all that ahead of time will reassure you.  You’ll be able to see the road ahead.

As you go on reading the book, I predict that you’ll stop feeling daunted and start feeling excited.  You’ll see that (in Miller’s words), you can do it yourself without doing yourself in.  The later chapters of the book offer excellent advice on how to organize your efforts, how to take advantage of outside help when you need it, and “where to spend your limited dollars and where to scrimp.”

In other words, all the things you’d ask a trusted, wise advisor if you could sit down with her over lunch?  They are either in this book or on her blog.  Spend some time with each.  Then get started.

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