10 Steps to a Successful Nonprofit Social Media Strategy

What is “Social Media”?
“Social media refers to the means of interactions among
people in which they create, share, and exchange
information and ideas in virtual communities and
networks.” ~Wikipedia.org
BUT it’s not where nonprofits should start!
@JuliaCSocial @FFMW #sm4np

Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse
 http://seminars.idealware.org/eLearning/techpyramid/technology-
pyramid.html
http://seminars.idealware.org/eLearning/techpyramid/technology-pyramid.html

We Must Change the Culture
The key is to get a group of
people thinking through
a social media lens.
We are all publishers.
We are all storytellers.
We need to embrace being
more transparent and
accessible.

We Must Address Challenges
 Lack of internal resources
 Lack of expertise
 Fear of “the new”
 Not convinced about the
real value/ROI
 Lack of clear guidelines
and policies
 Fear of negative reactions
on social media accounts
 Fear of loss of control

Step 1. Get People On Board!
Create a Social Media
Committee.
 Who in your organization
(staff, volunteers, clients)
likes social media?
 Who is creative?
 Who has their pulse on
the latest news?
 Who is well-connected?
 Who is passionate?

What Will They Do?
 Brainstorm content.
 Research blog posts.
 Take and post photos.
 Keep an eye out for good
stories and news.
 Be champions online!
 Sharing, liking, tweeting.
 Train and motivate others.
 Create social media policies
and procedures for the
organization.

The POST Social Strategy
http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/2007/12/the-post-method.html

Step 2. Define Your Audience.
 What is the desired action?
 Who is most likely to take this action?
 What motivates them?
 Where do you come in? What do they already know
about you?

 What may drive them to
take the action that you
want?
 Where do they get their
information?
 What else is important to
them?
 Where do they spend their
time online?

Case Study: Road Scholar
 They used to post only about their travel catalog and
promote their trips, with no clear idea of who they
were speaking to or what resonated.
 Their page wasn’t growing, their likes were not
growing, and they regularly reached less than 5% of
their fan base.

Case Study: Road Scholar
 Once identifying their target audience and key
message, they have now enjoyed huge success and
regular reach upwards of 30% of their fans – without
paid ads!
 Their audience is predominantly 60+, female, and
loves to travel and learn. They call her the “spunky
grandma”.
 Posts that work best are inspirational stories and
articles of older people surpassing expectations and
defying stereotypes.
 Female-centered posts also do very well.

Conduct An Audience Survey
Are you familiar with social media? Social media
includes but is not limited to Facebook, LinkedIn,
Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc.
If yes, which social media sites do you interact with?
(List to top 10 - 12 social media sites and platforms)
How much time to you spend engaging in social
media per week? a. For personal use b. For
professional use

Conduct An Audience Survey
What would motivate you to interact with our brand
in social media? (entertaining videos, helpful content,
impact stories, etc.)
What other brands or organizations do you
participate with in social media? This could take the
form of blogs that you read, Facebook fan pages, or
Twitter feeds that you follow.

Step 3. Define Your Goal.
Why are you using social media in the first place?
How will you know success at the end of your social media
campaign?
Common nonprofit social media goals:
 Raising awareness
 Thought leadership
 Reaching new supporters
 Engaging/deepening connections with donors

Raising Awareness
You want as many people as possible to know about you,
your brand and your products and services.

Thought Leadership
You want to be recognized as a leader in the field and a go-
to resource for the community, stakeholders, and the
media.

Reaching New Supporters
You want to build up your email list and your social media
channels to reach new people who may give you money,
or volunteer, or attend an event.

Deepening Relationships
You want to deepen relationships with your current
donors as part of the donor cultivation process.

http://www.johnhaydon.com/2012/11/facebook-ladder-of-engagement/

Social Media’s Strengths
 As a foot in the door
 As a way to organically grow your in-house mailing list
 To get supporter and stakeholder feedback
 Increase SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
 To interact with donors/community members
 To build trust and loyalty
 Share helpful information
 Help people solve problems

Social Media’s Weaknesses
 People use it to “drive website traffic” – but if you do not
have anything valuable or interesting on your website,
they will leave in droves.
 People do not like to be “sold” to on social media.
 It’s not a “sales first” tool – it’s about networking,
information sharing, and relationship building.

Step 4. SMART Objectives.

Step 4. SMART Objectives.
Choose SMART objectives to match your goals.
What can you measure?
 Increased email sign ups
 Increased ticket sales
 New volunteer sign-ups
 Increased website traffic
 Increased online donations

Put Them Together
Goal What is the
purpose?
How is it
measured?
What defines
success?
What is the purpose?
Why is this goal
important? What will be
the benefit for your
organization?
How is it measurable?
What are you able to
measure that will give
you knowledge about
your progress?
Identify a benchmark
for each measurement
that will help you figure
out how well you did in
accomplishing your
goal.
Raising awareness To get more corporate
sponsors for our events,
to recruit more
individual donors, to
acquire more volunteers
and Board members
Website traffic, email
sign ups, increase in
social media
fans/followers
20% increase in 6
months

Step 5. Tools & Tactics.
When you define what you want to do and who you want
to reach, you can then decide what you will do:
 Start a video marketing program
 Sign up for Twitter
 Start a blog
 Revamp the website
 Start email marketing
 Get an online donation page

Each Channel Is Different
Each channel has it’s own etiquette, language, and set of
rules.

5. Choose Channels.

Choosing Channels
1) Is your audience there?
2) Can you add value? What can you provide that will be
interesting and unique?
3) Do you have the capacity to manage another channel?

Managing A Channel Means:
 Daily creation of unique content that serves a purpose
 Finding good content to share
 Monitoring topics and hashtags to stay tuned to what
is trending and on people’s minds
 Commenting on others’ content

Managing A Channel Means:
 Answering questions and messages
 Acknowledging people that share your content and
comment
 Keeping track of what has been shared
 Measuring what works and doing more of it.

How Many Channels?
Goal #1 Goal #2 Goal #3 Content: Expertise: Total Rank
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn
Blog
Email
marketing
Video
creation
Content: How easy will it be for you to produce the necessary content?
Expertise: How comfortable are you with this channel?
Rate on a scale of 1-5 – 1=Not Very and 5=Extremely

Step 6. Integration.
Look at other departments and come up with ways that
you can integrate social media with each department.
Department Social Media Use Ideas
Programs Start a private Facebook group for clients; take
photos from the field and post on Instagram
Administration Answer questions on Facebook page; create and
post a list of the most needed in-kind items
Development Use LinkedIn for donor prospecting; post about
the annual appeal; share stories about
organization’s impact
Membership Share stories of members and what membership
means to them; post about annual membership
drive; show benefits of membership

Step 7. Create Policies.
Social Media Committee & HR should be in charge of policies.
 External Policy – No spam, obscenity, etc.
 What will get people blocked from the page or the group?
 Can they post jobs or business opportunities?
 Can they share their own personal stories/experiences?
 What is encouraged?
Sample language: “We are a family-friendly page and do not
tolerate obscenity or hate speech of any kind. We reserve
the right to delete a comment that we find hateful or that
runs afoul of our policies.”

Step 7. Create Policies.
 Internal Social Media Policy & Training
 Be smart about training employees on what they
should and should not share online.
 Empower and educate before punish.
 Who are the administrators of the page?
 Who will take charge when this person is on
vacation/out?
 What is the procedure for answering
questions/comments – what is the timeframe? 24
hours? Less?

Crisis Management!
An actual tweet accidentally sent via @RedCross:

Red Cross response:
#gettngslizzerd was a Trending Topic (meaning it was
popular on Twitter)

Dogfish Head Brewery response:
The Red Cross set up a designated page in connection with
Dogfish encouraging people to donate a pint and use the
hashtag to spread the word.

Step 8. Create & Curate Content.
Start a simple Content Calendar for planning,
scheduling, and publishing content across channels.
 Blog posts
 Twitter
 Facebook
 YouTube
 Email Newsletters
 Direct mail
 Donor communications
 Press releases
 Events

So… What Do I Post About?!
 Industry blogs,
newsletters, websites
 Google Alerts & New
York Times alerts
 Competitors
 Success Stories
 Inspirational quotes
 Reached a goal
 Want input on an issue

So… What Do I Post About?!
 Events, anniversaries,
celebrations, birthdays
 Email newsletter
 Tie current events to
your cause/issue
 Twitter search
 Figure out what’s
working for other
nonprofits and adapt it!

Stop and Listen
 Spend some time on each channel.
 Each network has it’s own culture, etiquette, and
language.
 Listen to what people are saying – what moves them?
What are they sharing and retweeting?
 Listen to what other organizations are posting – Is it
falling flat? Getting engagement?
 Listen and get ideas.

Step 9. Add Visuals & Video.

Free & Low-Cost Tools
Reality: You need a constant
stream of compelling
visuals, photos, videos,
infographics.
 Canva.com
 PicMonkey.com
 WordSwag, Prisma,
Boomerang, Ripl –
mobile apps

Free & Low-Cost Tools

Video Rules On Social
Create a short-form video strategy.
 Videos under 1 minute work best on social media, up to
30 seconds is good. (YouTube is the exception – longer
videos work well on that channel.)
 Focus on one story/one angle per video.
 Authenticity is incredibly important.
 Sound needs to be good.
 Can look amateurish (made with your phone).

Step 10: Create A Work Plan.
What is manageable?
 15 minutes in the morning.
 15 minutes at lunch.
 15 minutes in the
evening/afternoon.
Estimate 2 hours per week per
channel.
There is no absolute right answer
to the “how much time will it
take” question.

Step 10. Create A Work Plan.
Check out Social Media Dashboards & Scheduling Tools
 HootSuite, TweetDeck, Buffer, PostPlanner

Step 10a. Measure & Improve.
 Avoid only vanity metrics.
 Vanity metrics are things like
how many people saw your
Facebook post (reach) and
how many views you received
on your video.
 While important, did the
attention/views help advance
the bottom line?

Step 10a. Measure & Improve.
Make measurement a habit.
 Facebook – Instant Post Insights
 Twitter – ReTweets, mentions
 Instagram Analytics
 Website analytics and traffic
 Blog traffic and comments
 Email newsletter signups
 Go back to the Facebook Ladder.
See what works.
Do more of that.

Social Media Isn’t Easy – or “Free”
Social media is free like getting a puppy is free!

Success Means:
 Consistent content creation that gets likes, shares, or
comments.
 Matching each post or tweet with a visual.
 Creating video, the type of content that works best
across all channels.
 Social media advertising is now required (but must be
used strategically).

Questions?
Twitter: @JuliaCSocial
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/
jcsocialmarketing
Email: julia@
jcsocialmarketing.com

10 Steps to a Successful Nonprofit Social Media Strategy

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