Social Media For Nonprofits:

Don’t Get Left BehindApril 19, 2012

Eileen O’Brien

@eileenobrien

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• “A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations”

Groundswell by Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff

What is Social Media?

• Social media is not a strategy but a tactic

• Start with an objective, create a strategy and determine the best tactics

• Integrate into your overall marketing objectives

• Key to marketing is telling a compelling story Social media can enable this

Social Media is a Tactic

Is Your Target Audience Using SM?

Source: PewInternet.org

How Is Your Target Using SM?

Source: PewInternet.org

• Recruit the people within your organization who are passionate about social media

• Use it in your own life and become comfortable with the technology

• Be selective: start small and build

How Do You Start?

• Pay attention to what is being said about your organization Free Google alerts

Take it private

• Don’t delegate to intern

• Have a crisis communications plan Be prepared to act quickly using same media

Be nimble

Monitor Social Media

• Komen used SM as another platform for corporate announcements

• PP used SM to engage in continued dialogue with stakeholders starting well before the crisis

• Komen’s messaging was inconsistent, changed course and tone

Learn from Planned Parenthood

Source: Lessons from the Komen Controversy, SocialMediaToday.com

• Listening may give you insights which will lead the strategy

• Learn what’s important to your audience Can you fill a need? How can you add value?

• Check out what the competition is doing

• Pay attention

• Social media has been compared to a cocktail party

Listen

Add Value

• Many social media tools are free, but they require resources to create content and keep them updated

• You can damage your reputation by starting and then abandoning social media projects

• Squat on your name

http://namechk.com

Be Thoughtful

Image courtesy of Striatic on Flickr

• Integrate into what you are currently doing Bring a video to an

interview and post a teaser on YouTube

• Make a conscious decision: the time spent on social media may mean giving something else up

How Do You Find The Time?

Image courtesy of D. Sharon Pruitt on Flickr

• Measurement is essential Determine up front how you will measure success

• Did you meet your objective? More volunteers

Heightened awareness

Donations

Increased event participation

Generated PR

Education on issues

Use Your Time Wisely

Image courtesy of Jonny Goldstein on Flickr

• Most effective online organizing programs whether fundraising or advocacy is to make each of your appeals part of a campaign

• People give to funds that generate an emotional response, tell your story

• Articulate in simple terms what you are trying to do

• Make it urgent, have a deadline

• Make it EASY

Make It Shareworthy

100 Uniforms in 100 Hours

Twitter

• A free social networking & micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates or tweets (text-based posts up to 140 characters long) to anyone who opts to receive them

• Asks: What’s happening?

• Per Pew, 13% of American adults who use the internet are Twitter users

What’s Twitter?

Image courtesy of Robert Scoble on Flickr

What’s Twitter?

Use free tools: Tweetdeck or HootSuite

• Organization 100% branded content, don’t follow people or interact

Can be managed by a team, low risk of going off message

Using interactive tool to push out information, not establishing relationships

Types of Accounts

Source: Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

• Organization With Personality Employee(s) who tweet are identified & interact with

followers

Makes it personal, builds relationships

May be difficult to scale, succession can be an issue if person becomes so associated with brand leaves, also risk of going off message

Types of Accounts

Source: Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

• Thought leaders and cause enthusiasts For social media & nonprofits: @kanter, @ntenhross,

@beautifulthangs, @SocialBttrfly, @peterdeitz

• Search on your topics of interest Look at who others follow

• Take your time

Who To Follow

• Quality over quantity

• When you follow someone send them a tweet explaining why you are following them

• Search on your area of interest and then answer questions or respond “Seek out people you can help and do it!” Wil

Reynolds

• Add yourself to “yellow pages” http://twellow.com

http://wefollow.com

How To Get Followers

• Engage with your followers, thank them for support, give them ways to get involved

• Utilize hashtages (#word)

• Weekly Chats Take part in existing ones

or host a Tweetchat

How To Get Followers

Image courtesy of Christopher Carfi on Flickr

Check Out TwitCause

YouTube

YouTube

Image courtesy of Karl Jonsson on Flickr

• Second largest volume of searches

• In December 2011 85% of the total U.S.

Internet audience views online video

182 million U.S. Internet users viewed 43.5 billion videos

Source: comScore

• A keyword-tagged video is 50 times more likely to appear on the 1st page of a Google search result compared with a traditional web page according to Forrester Research

• YouTube program for nonprofits

• YouTube Video Volunteers Can find someone who is willing to use their

equipment and skills to help a nonprofit make a video

YouTube

• Free to set up a YouTube channel

• Centralized place for all videos, can be branded & users can subscribe

• Can turn off comments or use it as another way to connect

YouTube Channels

• People have short attention spans, so capture attention in first 30 second Keep the whole video short

Have a call to action at the end

Shoot for a computer screen

• Ask for user-generated content

• Tell serial stories which engage viewers & keep them coming back

• React to current events

• Use endorsements

• Tag & title your videos with relevant keywords

How Do You Get Views?

• Subscribe to the YouTube channels of other nonprofits, they may do the same

• Ask people to subscribe

• Share links for your videos with supporters so they can help get the word out Make the embed code

available so people can post the video on their sites

How Do You Get Subscribers?

Image courtesy of Todd Huffman on Flickr

Facebook

• Nonprofits can create customized pages

• Claim vanity URL http://www.twitter.com/yournonprofit

• Engage with fans Comment on their wall posts & help people connect

with others

• Show people how to connect beyond Facebook Email sign up or drive to website

Facebook

• Non-Profits on Facebook

Facebook Page

• Use the data to understand what your fans like, don’t like, what type of content they interact with the most and what they share with their friends Facebook gives you locale

breakdown and demographic information

Facebook Stats

Image courtesy of Sasha Wolff on Flickr

• Promote via other marketing channels

• Encourage fans to suggest to their friends become fans

• Run promotion or contest

• Give fans what they want Be active and add content

70% of all actions on social networks are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people's profiles

Source: Understanding Users of Social Networks

How to Get Fans

Blogs

• Excellent for search

• Enables thought leadership

• Syndicate content

• Recommend WordPress

• If too time intensive, consider: Guest blogging

Combining forces

Comment on other blogs

It’s All About Content

Google+

• 100M adopters versus Facebook 1 Billion

• Needs content, engagement with fans

• Being used for search results

Google’s New Social Network

SlideShare.net

• Free account, post and tag presentations

• Access this presentation on

http://slideshare.net/eileenobrien

Share Presentations

Summary

• Integrate the social tactics into the entire marketing strategy

• Promote social media tactics via all marketing such as: direct mail, email signature, newsletters, announce at events

• Leverage your content across various places Put video on YouTube

Embed it into a blog post

Promote blog post via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

Link to the blog post in an enewsletter

Market Social Media

• Social media is all about being human, so have personality

• Never say anything you wouldn’t say in front of your mother

• It’s all about building relationships

• Treat others with respect

• Be generous

• Add value

Golden Rules

Image courtesy of Jason on Flickr

• ComcastNewMediaExchange.com

• Groundswell Examples of award winning non-profits

• Beth Kantar Beth’s Blog: How nonprofits can use social media

• Pew Internet & American Life Project

• Netsquared

• Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age by AllisonFine

Resources

Thanks!

eiobri@yahoo.com

@EileenOBrien

Questions?