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I’ve told you before: the first thing your organization does online should not be social media. And I’ve told you that the best answer to “Which social media should we use?” is “It depends”: where are the people you’re trying to reach?

But you have already done the work. You’ve made your website attractive and useful, cleaned up your database, and started sending regular email to the people on your list. You’ve found your supporters online. You’ve created a strategy and started small, with one platform. Now what?

You’re sure there’s a secret to social media for a small organization with limited time and money. You twist my arm and ask, “What’s the magic formula?”

Listen closely: Facebook plus one.

Why You Need to Be on Facebook

For now, Facebook is still an essential part of your social media. Yes, I know: it’s frustrating that people can “like” you on Facebook and still not see your posts in their news feed.

But there is nowhere online that you will find more people, and a broader range of people.

Grandparents are joining Facebook every day to see photos of their grandchildren.
Adults keep up with their friends on Facebook, even after they’ve moved to a different city or country.
Teenagers are still joining Facebook.

It may not be cool, but it’s a “have to have.” My best guess is that it will continue to be the common denominator of social media for years.

Why You Need Something Else

Even if a lot of supporters are there, you should make sure not to put all your eggs in the Facebook basket. It’s not free media any more. You need a budget to pay for ads AND an expert to help you advertise effectively. And it’s only going to get more expensive.

Plus, there may come a tipping point. When enough people drift away from Facebook, a lot of people may decide to do so all at once. You should be collecting their email addresses, so you don’t lose them altogether–but many people prefer to hear about you through social media. When they go looking for an alternative to Facebook, you want them to find you there.

Which “Something Else” is for You?

Think of three lines on a graph. One: the social media platforms your audience uses. Two: the one you find most comfortable. Three: the platform that lets you use what you have–whether that’s writing, photography, or video. Ideally, when you use Facebook plus one, that one is where those lines come together.

Twitter is growing fast. It forces you to be brief, but that’s good: you will catch people’s attention better that way. It’s ideal for sharing links to useful information, including your blog posts, and it’s recently become better for sharing pictures.

YouTube is the world’s biggest search engine, after Google. If you have great video and would like to be found, YouTube is the place to go.

Google+ has also been growing. Unlike Facebook, everything you post shows up for everyone who likes you there (or “adds you to their circles,” in Google+ lingo). Two big cautions, however: a lot of people are still not on Google+, and there are rumors that Google plans to make big changes to it soon.

Pinterest is clearly the best way to reach a female audience with photos. Instagram reaches a more mixed audience, and people say it’s easier to use, especially from your mobile phone.

LinkedIn is the only social media platform that reaches more men than women. LinkedIn Groups are a great vehicle for establishing your expertise in the field.

There are many other options, and feel free to choose the one that suits you best. You may also want to create accounts on social media you’re not planning to use for a while, just to reserve the name you want (and not let some other group create confusion by claiming it).

You’re best off concentrating on Facebook and just one other form of social media, if you really want to work your magic.

You care passionately about something. You want other people to get involved. You want their time, money, ideas, commitment. How do you reach them? Do you send out mail? Work on your website? Go deep on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram? Sometimes it seems as if there’s a new way to reach out to people every day. How do you figure out what will really work for you?

Stop. Take a deep breath. Now, read Katya Andresen’s Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes.Andresen, until recently the chief operating officer and chief strategy officer of Network for Good, has been a journalist, a marketer, and a nonprofit executive. She doesn’t let the latest fad distract her. She gets right to the point. And the point is that good causes will not sell themselves–we have to use the most effective approaches to market them.Read the book for the “Robin Hood rules” she has robbed from the rich for-profit world and adapted for use by nonprofits. Chief among those rules are “focus on getting people to do something specific” and “appeal to your audience’s values, not your own.”

Raising awareness is not enough: what action do you want people to take? And making converts to the cause is too much, at least all in one step. Get people to do something good for their own reasons (because of how the good action makes them feel about themselves, for instance). They’ll be more likely to listen to your reasons later. But even if they don’t, she asks, do you want to change minds or do you want to change the world?Read the book for a guide on how to plan your communications. Step by step, Andresen shows you how to get to know your audience, your competition for support, and your potential partners, and how to shape your message to make a case that will connect with people and lead them to act.Read the book for excellent tips drawn from case studies and interviews. Read it in order to ask yourself the right questions. For example:

What can we ask people to do that will be “fun, easy, popular, and rewarding”? (for supporters)
“Who wins when we win?” (for partners)
How can we supply information that is expert, fast, first, accurate, and tells a good story? (for journalists–they are a target audience too!)

I cannot give you a good enough sense of how rich this book is in a review. It is so chock-full of detailed suggestions and examples that the best summary of the book is reading the book itself. And it is very well organized, with bullet points up front, highlights marked throughout, and interviews at the end of each chapter. I read the first edition of the book, originally published in 2006, and it still feels timely and up to date. That’s what comes of focusing on the relationship between the organization and the audience and not on the constantly changing media.

My one reservation about this book is the same one that’s been coming up in my mind as I read a lot of books about communications, marketing, or psychology lately–even books I really like, such as the Heath brothers’ Switch and Made to Stick, and Beth Kanter and Allison Fine’s The Networked Nonprofit. These books offer great ideas on how to change an individual’s behavior, or even a lot of individuals’ behavior. But that is not the same thing as social change.

Social change generally means going up against entrenched structures of power. Reading these books, you would never imagine that capitalism, racism, sexism, and tightly defined norms around gender affected anybody’s lives. You would think that getting people to smoke less, use condoms, eat healthier diets, and donate to good organizations would revolutionize the way we live.

Perhaps it’s just that social change is outside the scope of these books. But the authors market the books as if social change would come from better communications strategies alone. That’s selling their books too hard. They are worthwhile to read on their own merits. People working for just causes need and should take advantage of the savvy that Katya Andresen supplies.

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