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Social media marketing for small nonprofits
- 1. Social Media Marketing for Nonprofits Dunia Fleihan
- 2. A few of my findings Of the 10% who use social media more than five hours a week, the majority of respondents stated they also saw significant to moderate increases in awareness and connections made within the community. However, one of the most interesting findings was that a majority of respondents stated they saw no increase in donations or event attendance. Within the variable of time, what was most interesting is that 19.5% stated their organizations had been using social media for less than a year. This is surprising only because so much research has been conducted since 2005 on the benefits of social media, especially to nonprofits. As a free resource, more nonprofits should be taking advantage of it. 67% stated they did not set any goals for their social media use.
- 3. The Social Media Strategy Map 1. Identify Objectives - Make your objectives "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound) Listening and Learning Build Relationships and Issues Awareness Improve Reputation Content Generation and Issues Awareness Increased Visitor Traffic and Page Rankings Taking Action or Fundraising
- 4. The Social Media Strategy Map 2. Identify the Audience Who must you reach with your social media efforts to meet your objective? What do they know or believe about your organization or issue? What key points do you want to make with your audience? What social media tools are they currently using?
- 5. The Social Media Strategy Map 3. Integrate- Your social media should be in perfect harmony with your Internet strategy and support your objectives established for your web site and outbound communications: Homebase – Social media sites are NOT the same as your website Outbound Communication – Continue the use of email marketing, integrating social media Social – Get connected through social media, but don’t get overwhelmed
- 6. The Social Media Strategy Map 4. Culture Change- As with the introduction of any new technology or anything new for that matter, there are bound to be fears and concerns expressed by others in your organization. Common concerns about social media from nonprofits may include: Loss of control over your organization's branding and marketing Dealing with negative comments Addressing personality versus organizational voice Not being successful, fear of failure Perception of wasted of time and resources Suffering from information overload already, this will cause more
- 7. The Social Media Strategy Map 5. Capacity Who will implement your organization’s social media strategy? Can you allocate a minimum of five hours per week to your strategy once you've passed the learning curve? Do you have the most efficient work flow and tasks in place? Do you need any outside expertise? Will your content updates depend on any other resource or person? Remember, it takes time to see results! You must be patient, it will pay off!
- 8. The Social Media Strategy Map 6. Tactics and Tools What tactics and tools best support your objectives and match your targeted audience? What tactics and tools do you have the capacity to implement? What can learn from the experience of other organizations? The main criteria in choosing a metrics tool? – It must be useful AND free!
- 9. The Social Media Strategy Map 7. Measurement What is your original, measurable objective (e.g., # of event attendees or petitions signed)? What hard data points or metrics will you use to track your objectives? How often will you track? Do you have the systems and tools set up to track efficiently? How will you harvest insights from hard data and qualitative data as the project unfolds? What questions will you ask to generate insights? Who will participate?
- 10. The Social Media Strategy Map 8. Experiment - What small piece can you implement first as a pilot? Pick a social media project that won’t take much time and relates to goals Write down your successes Write down your challenges Ask or listen to the people you connect with about what worked and what didn’t Watch other nonprofits and copy and remix for your next project. Rinse, repeat.
- 11. Social Media Analytics for Nonprofits: What Factors You Should Track? Goal Setting Network Size Content Engagement Content Sharing
- 12. A few examples of metric tools:
- 13. Metric tools – What’s out there? • There are several different tools available • Tracking your social media metrics is essential • Some examples: – HootSuite – Sprout Social – CrowdBooster • Does your organization use any of these?
- 14. Facebook -- Why use it? Facebook can be a critical tool for nonprofit organization It makes sense It builds and strengthens partnerships Get your message out quickly Integration with other social media outlets
- 15. "Ten Tips For Non-Profits on Facebook" -From Convio Inc. 1) Be helpful. 2) Provide value. 3) Tap into your influencers. 4) Leverage online events in Facebook. 5) Drive quality traffic to your website 6) Improve your SEO results. 7) Allow for email signups on your page to build your housefile 8 ) Don’t forget the donations, either 9) Use the discussions feature to learn more about your supporters 10) Use Free Resources, like Facebook insights- www.facebook.com/nonprofits
- 17. Fundraising on Facebook: Causes Get the name right. Find the exclamation point key and use it often Turn it into a campaign Consider an incentive Use the announcements feature and keep followers in close touch Post on the wall Activate your offline network Reach out to the hall of famers
- 20. "Ten Tips For Non-Profits on YouTube” -From Convio Inc. 1) Sign up for the YouTube Nonprofit Program 2) Customize your page 3) Tag appropriately 4) Allow fundraising on your page 5) Include links to advocacy and fundraising URLs 6) Think broadly and strategically for content 7) Encourage user submitted video 8 ) Use free services to find help with shooting and editing 9) Use page real estate to highlight programs and offers 10) Integrate YouTube video in your overall web presence
- 21. National Inclusion Project YouTube Channel
- 22. Twitter: A Brief Introduction At its most basic level, Twitter is called “microblogging.” You get 140 characters to answer the main question on the Twitter home page: “What are you doing now?” And the conversations get even better when you start answering a question like “What are you focusing on?” People use Twitter to ask questions, follow people that are interesting, promote links to various websites, share news stories, to coordinate events during conferences.
- 23. “The 1010 Project is a nonprofit organization that provides income-generating grants to indigenous development partners in Kenya and raises awareness in the United States on behalf of the global poor.”
- 24. "Ten Tips For Non-Profits on Twitter” 1) Be newsworthy and/or interesting 2) Drive website traffic 3) Link to fundraising appeals 4) Introduce petitions on timely issues to capture email addresses 5) Follow people with similar interests 6) Shorten and track links to measure ROI 7) Leave enough room for re-tweet 8 ) Tag advocates and influencers 9) Reciprocity is key 10) Integrate
- 25. Twitter’s Not Just for Broadcasting • Be warned: Twitter is not just a tool to push your message out. – Amy Worley, who manages [H&R] Block’s Twitter program, had to alter her approach. “I went in thinking Twitter was a free way to push our message out,” she says. “Big mistake. We learned to listen. We started winning once we let people decide on their own about our services.” • It’s got to be a two-way conversation • This can help you generate ideas and tell your story better.
- 26. Twitter for Fundraising • From a fundraising perspective, Twitter is an amazing way to engage donors and potential donors. One of the hardest things to do as a fundraiser is to maintain relationships. • You can use tools like TwitterFeed to automatically have blog posts broadcast over Twitter. Then your blog posts reach those that follow you. And if anyone of them like it, they may “retweet” it, broadcasting to the people that follow them.
- 27. Examples of Fundraising with Twitter “TweetsGiving” “Twestival” – Charity:Water NTEN reminds us that Twitter isn’t the point. Relationships are the point. Relationships are always the point. The most basic of fundraising secrets is that people give to people. Twitter is simply one more tool to help people connect with each other.
Editor's Notes
- Introduction Name, background, etc. A little about my study and findings Found that people already had a sense of how to use social media, now they need to know how they can utilize it more and integrate it into fundraising and marketing. So, keeping that in mind, I will be speaking above the basics (I won’t show you how to create a facebook page, more of what to do once you have), so that you can may integrate some of these strategies into your own social media use to make your time more effective. I will discuss a little bit more about my studies first and then start discussing steps to create a basic social media marketing strategy and then moving on to ways to utilize those strategies in specific arenas, focusing specifically on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Just go around the room, introduce yourself and your organization: How many people: Use social media personally? Facebook? Twitter, etc? Use social media at work?
- The primary focus of this directed field research study is to explore whether to recommend social media as an effective marketing tool for small, local nonprofits. There are four areas in which they are surveyed: social media literacy, goals and time management, raising awareness, and attracting new donors and making connections. A survey containing questions involving these four goals was sent out to nonprofits located in Guilford County, North Carolina. Also found that: Of the 10% who use social media more than five hours a week, the majority of respondents stated they also saw significant to moderate increases in awareness and connections made within the community. However, one of the most interesting findings was that a majority of respondents stated they saw no increase in donations or event attendance. Within the variable of time, what was most interesting is that 19.5% stated their organizations had been using social media for less than a year. This is surprising only because so much research has been conducted since 2005 on the benefits of social media, especially to nonprofits. As a free resource, more nonprofits should be taking advantage of it. 67% stated they did not set any goals for their social media use.
- Set objectives based on a clear understanding of how social media changes the feedback loop between your organization and stakeholders. The key thing that is different with setting a social media objective is that it is not about reaching a mass audience and blasting your message out, it is more about reaching the influencers, developing relationships, having a conversation, and getting insights. Make your objectives "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound) Listening and Learning: You're monitoring what stakeholders are saying about your organization, your issue, or programs and using the information to support your marketing goals. You're testing different social media tactics and learning what works. Build Relationships and Issues Awareness: You’re interacting with key audiences on the social media channel in order to build awareness for your organization's brand. You’re increasing your visibility in the right areas and trying to stick in the minds of others through active interaction on many different levels. Improve Reputation: You want to improve how others think about your organization or issue and are responding directly to feedback through social media channels. You may also want to improve your organization's reputation as an expert by being consistently involved in discussions on topics or aggregating information that are relevant to your organization. Content Generation and Issues Awareness: You encourage stakeholders to create content about your organization or it's issues and share it with others and encouraging fans to talk about your issues to others (word of mouth). Increased Relevant Visitor Traffic and Page Rankings: You're using social media tactics to drive traffic to your organization's web site or newsletter sign up or improving search engine results or using social media channels to spread your web site or blog content. Taking Action or Fundraising: You're using social media tactics to spur supporters to action or donate. Remember this objective will take considerable more time and effort to be successful.
- As with any marketing effort, the first step to success is identifying who your organization wants to reach and find out how they are using social media. There is more and more audience research for users of particular social media tools and a lot of it is free. It pays to spend a few hours reviewing the demographic or “technographic” details (what people are doing online). While secondary research may help inform what general direction you may want to go in, there is no substitute for primary research. And while surveys, focus groups and other services can give you an analysis of what your current audience is doing online, direct observation is works best. For instance, if you are considering a Facebook profile, before you set up an organizational presence - spend some time searching to see if and if anyone has set up a Fan Page or Group to talk about your organization or issue area. Or, if you are considering a blog, find out who the key bloggers are in your topic area. This will allow you to observe what your audience is saying in their natural environment. Some social media strategists call this step “listening” and it is essential first step in developing your social media strategy.
- Your social media should be in perfect harmony with your Internet strategy and support or objectives established for your web site and outbound communications. Homebase: Home base is your organization's website. But as adoption of social media becomes more "mainstreamed”, homebase could be your blog or both. Not everyone needs a web site and a blog - that age old question - to blog or not to blog? Some organizations consolidate. You need to think about how to link or integrate your social media strategy. We are moving towards having the organization's web presence be less static information and more interactive or social. Outbound Communication: This includes all your "one-way we're talking to you" tactics. This is mostly email marketing -- crafting and putting out solid email newsletters and communications which includes having an adequate CRM (constituent relationship management) software and email broadcasting software. It also includes search engine optimization strategy and, if appropriate, search engine advertising. Email will probably not become extinct - so it is important to continue to track its effectiveness. Social: This is your social media strategy and includes time spent listening, establishing a presence and building a relationship with your targeted audience on social media outposts like Twitter or Facebook, and tracking and adapting your efforts. To prioritize your time, it is better to go deep on a smaller number of outposts. Remember, social media can also be used to connect people to offline actions and events.
- Four ways to address these issues: To be successful, social media requires a mix of authenticity, openness, transparency and to a certain extent giving up control. This is a different way of working. Change does not happen in organizations unless there is education through discussion. Many nonprofits use different strategies, from adding social media demos to staff meeting agenda or including a strategy brainstorm as part of a staff retreat. Educate yourself – That’s why you’re here, right? One of the best ways to educate people about social media is find examples of similar nonprofits and present information on how they’ve used social media. Some boards and senior managers may only understand numbers. They want to know what the results are, so be sure to talk to other nonprofits who are using social media effectively to find out how it worked for them. When you can show examples, facts with numbers attached, and insights, it can spark a productive conversation. Sometimes being a social media evangelist and only touting the benefits can backfire. It is important to explore both positives and negatives perceptions and alternatives. The fear of wasted time and resources also needs to be addressed. In the early stages of social media strategy development and implementation, there will be mistakes because you need to find out what works and what doesn't for your organization. Learning is part of the process. Some key organizational decision-makers may still think of social media as something for teenagers, not understand it, or point to other organizational priorities. To pave the way to successful adoption, you need to have the conversation in your organization about these issues. Be sure to step back and explain social media in a way that others in your organization can understand if they are new to social media. What are the goals? - It also important to have an upfront understanding of what the organization's staff will and will not do on the social web before implementation begins. If your organization sets up a blog, you need to establish a blogging policy first. The process of creating a policy can also lead to a deeper understanding of the benefits and value of social media. If, for example, your organization will be using social networking sites, staff members need to figure out how they will professionally represent themselves with their individual profiles. You also need to determine how your organization might respond to negative comments on the blog or on an online forum or social networking sites.
- Depending on your strategy, implementation can take anywhere from a minimum of 5 hours per week to over 20 hours per week. Keep in mind these are rough estimates. As with any new skill, you need to factor in learning curve time. As soon as you have the workflow in memory and have it down to an efficient routine, it will take less time. Most importantly, it is how you manage your online time. Are you staying on task and getting the workflow done for each specific strategy? It is also important to keep in mind that it often takes a few months before you see begin to see results from your social media effort. It is important to consider who is going to implement your organization's social media strategy. Whether you hire someone new or entrust an existing employee with the role, the person in charge should be comfortable using the tools, passionate about your organization's programs, and should enjoy interacting with other people. It is after all, called “social media.” That said, social media should not exist in a silo and be implemented as a supplemental channel by "a young intern alone in the corner." It needs to be owned by the entire organization. There are definitely pros and cons to using volunteers and interns to implement your social media strategy. On the one hand, it is a great to begin testing social media without the investment of staff time, particularly when budgets are lean. On the other hand, it may not be an effective in the long run. What happens when your intern moves on? Does anyone staff know how to manage the Facebook Fan Page left behind? Consider whether your staff may need additional training or could benefit from outside expertise as part of the implementation. Sometimes it may be a matter of allocating work time to the efforts.
- With every online marketing channel and discipline, there must be tools to make the task of marketing more efficient and effective. Social Media Marketing is no different.
- Your social media plan should consist of goal-setting, implementation and measuring, among other things. That last part, metrics, is frequently overlooked, partly because the tools for measuring are still maturing and partly because there’s no clear agreement over what to measure. Not all tools measure the same kinds of things, so you may find several of these useful for your efforts. In addition, some are useful for measuring your blog’s or website’s reach, while others assess your mojo on a particular social network. Our criteria? The tool must be useful and free I will discuss metrics in more detail later in the presentation
- As many nonprofit early adopters have learned, the secret to social media strategy success is careful, low-risk experimentation. Put another way, "You need to have failures before you can have success." Your initial experiments will be designed around trying out the tools and techniques. What's important is to set up some discovery questions on the front end and keep a constant eye on what works and what doesn't. Understand that you will most likely fail in these early efforts, so don't be risk adverse. Learn from the mistakes and reiterate over time. The most point is that you set up a system for learning how to improve your social media efforts over time.
- Goal Setting The first step in analyzing your social media presence is establishing a goal. Do you want to know how a specific campaign is running? Which conversation topics or content pieces are shared the most? How many people visit a donation page from a link on Facebook or Twitter? Creating a social media goal means more than simply tracking numbers. You’ll want to analyze awareness, attitude and action changes among your supporters. Establish your intent, and then set clear, measurable goals. Set a baseline to which you can compare your new social media data, and track your success accordingly. Once you’ve established your goals, there are several different social media metrics you can track your progress. Network Size By measuring the your network size, you are simply tracking the number of followers and fans your nonprofit has gained over a set period of time. Try to profile your user demographics. Segment your supporters into various groups so you can target your messages more effectively. However, remember that quality is more valuable than quantity when it comes to your network. Simply acknowledging that your network is increasing is not enough. More importantly, are your new fans and followers engaged with your organization? Content Engagement You can also follow your content engagement. Track the impressions, views and click throughs to see how many people are seeing your content and wanting to learn more. Similarly, keep track of likes and comments on Facebook. They, too, can show you which topics are more intriguing to your supporters and which ones aren’t as appealing. You may also want to measure how long people are engaging with your content – are they staying and reading your blog entries, or do they “bounce” and leave immediately after entering? Tracking the time individuals spent engaging with your social media presence can also provide useful insights for your nonprofit as to what is compelling and engaging and what is not. Content Sharing Track any retweets, social media bookmarks, or inbound links you receive on your content. These metrics show how willing people are to share your content, spreading your message across multiple channels and reaching new audiences you might not have reached otherwise.
- The first is a general rubric used to track and measure social media productivity. It takes more of the quantitative data to help measure the process of starting a social media campaign. The second is a screen shot of Facebook Insights. As you can see, you can change the graph to show many different things from: How many posts you are posting How many people are sharing and talking about your page How many people you are reaching through each post and share It also breaks it down so that you can see which posts are getting the most feedback This is helpful when deciding what your audience wants to hear and what they are more likely to get engaged in
- There are several different tools that can help you manage your social media presence, but make sure you still aggregate all of your information. Export it to a spreadsheet, pdf or email so you can keep track of all your data and analyze it with ease. Tracking social media metrics is essential to evaluating your nonprofit’s marketing successes and ability to meet goals. As you begin to analyze your information, remember to keep your goals in mind. You may have a lot of new data, but more doesn’t necessarily mean better. Take these numbers and identify pertinent trends in awareness, attitude and action changes among your supporters, and establish next steps from there. HootSuite allows you to monitor several different networks at once. You can follow your organization’s Twitter and Facebook activities in real time, and you can post to your various social networks directly from your dashboard. Hootsuite also allows you to schedule messages ahead of time and track your mentions and retweets. The platform allows multiple collaborators to work at once, and you can create custom analytics for your organization’s reports. Nonprofits can also apply for a 20 percent discount on Hootsuite. Sprout Social also allows you to monitor social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and many more. This platform shows you how many followers you’ve gained since joining the platform, how strong your engagement with your audience is, and how influential your organization is across the social web. It also offers suggestions on who to follow, provides a social media influential “scorecard” and highlights several widgets that can show you your follower demographics, clicks, check-ins and more. Sprout Social allows you to create custom analytics reports as well. CrowdBooster, which is currently in beta, is also a multi-network dashboard that allows you to visualize your social media presence. Through interactive graphs and tables, this platform shows you how many times people have seen and clicked through your links, who has retweeted you and who has replied to your messages. It also tracks your most influential (your followers ranked by their reach) and loyal followers. CrowdBooster provides recommendations about what time you should tweet and what steps you should take based on your previous activity. CrowdBooster also allows you to create custom analytics reports. Organizations use several different platforms to analyze their social media activity. What social media tracking tools does your nonprofit use? We’d love to hear your recommendations in the comments.
- Facebook can be a critical tool for nonprofit organizing, because it is a great way to connect with other organizations and supporters which might not have known about your organization previously. It makes sense to create a presence on one of the top five Web sites on the Internet where people are already regularly visiting rather than expecting users to find you. If your nonprofit has video content, podcasts, interviews, or documents just languishing on your desktop, creating a presence on Facebook provides an easy way to upload these types of media, without spending the time or resources required for updating your own Web site. It can allow organizations to plug into an existing audience of organizations that have opted into similar interest groups. It can also help organizations collaborate, connect easily, and increase their network of volunteer and supporters. Facebook gives organizations a venue to quickly broadcast a message to a large list (their opt-in network) without getting blacklisted by an Internet service provider (ISP) or having their message get caught in a spam filter. In addition, the event-posting capabilities allow organizations to advertise upcoming events easily and efficiently. And best of all, it's free! Finally, the way that Facebook interacts with other social media tools, like Twitter, blogs, Flickr, and others can enhance and grow an organization's network and can provide a simple interface to consistently and easily update your community of supporters with news of your organization's activities.
- 1. Be helpful. If someone asks a question on your Facebook Page, respond. If someone shares feedback, thank them and ask for more insight. When people take the time to reach out and share, return the favor with a helpful response. 2. Provide value. From the links and content you share to the questions you ask of supporters, always ask if it would be something your constituents would find of value. 3. Tap into your influencers. Establish strong relationships with influential members who have extensive connections. Target people who have large networks, are active on your Page and those active on your Causes Leader board with ways to engage further. 4. Leverage online events in Facebook. Holding a run, walk, ride event or another type of fundraising event? Drive traffic and registration to offline events by inviting your Facebook members. Ask them to invite their friends. Empower them to upload personal multimedia. 5. Drive quality traffic to your website. Use content sharing features like posting links to drive targeted traffic to your website. Directing Facebook users to your website can significantly increase qualified traffic to fundraising and advocacy opportunities. 6. Improve your SEO results. Google, through its Social Search feature, as well as other search engines are now indexing content created on sites like Facebook. Your Fan Page content now has the potential to generate favorable search engine results for your organization. 7. Allow for email signups on your page to build your housefile. Post a petition or integrate an email newsletter registration within your Facebook Page. Rather than making supporters leave the network to sign-up, make it easy and intuitive to provide information on the spot. 8. Don’t forget the donations, either. Increase donations in Facebook by integrating a donation form connecting directly to your donation processing. Add a “Donate Now” tab on your page to make it an obvious option to visitors. 9. Use the discussions feature to learn more about your supporters. In a social setting like Facebook, supporters and prospects are more willing to share information. Listen. Use this for program ideas, ways to improve messaging or an opportunity to reach out directly to constituents. 10. Leverage Facebook Insights to gauge ROI. Facebook’s Page Insights tools and dashboard help provide the most pertinent data for analysis. Use this to uncover data about comments, wall posts, “Likes” and fan demographics to help identify and target specific demographics and gauge effectiveness of campaigns.
- Causes: With nearly three-quarters of nonprofits having a presence on Facebook, I was curious: so what’s the big deal? Causes, by the numbers Causes is the world’s largest platform for activism and philanthropy. We empower individuals to create grassroots communities called “causes” that take action on behalf of a specific issue or nonprofit organization. Since our founding in 2007, Causes has brought together: Every cause is a community for action, bringing people together and providing them with tools for fundraising, advocacy work, and awareness-raising. Cause members are incentivized to take action by recruiting their friends to join, donating or fundraising, educating themselves through videos and photos, discussing important issues, and more. By the way, Causes takes a fairly hefty cut (Facebook takes a small cut of donations, and there’s a transaction fee charged by Network for Good, which processes the money) — but you’re likely acquiring new donors that you wouldn’t have reached any other way. For small donations, it compares fairly well to the administrative cost of mailing appeals, sending thank you’s, etc. (postage and cost adds up for snail mail donor acquisition, too). best practice suggestions: Get the name right. The name should use an active verb and grab attention, like, “Educate girls in Africa,” or “Stand up for hungry children!” Find the exclamation point key and use it often. Susan says that part of the culture of Facebook is enthusiasm. Exclamation points sell! Turn it into a campaign. Set an achievable goal – like raising $10,000 — and find a creative way to engage people to invite their friends. The “Power of Ten” campaign asked 10 people to invite 10 other people to send $10 each. One of Susan’s co-speakers, Ryan, noted, “Always have a fundraiser up” (not just a generic cause/organization page). Consider an incentive, like a drawing to attend a conference, a free downloadable CD, etc. Use the announcements feature and keep followers in close touch. Susan says you can’t announce too often, but make the content different each time (and short) – oh, and with exclamation points! Post on the wall. Activate your offline network. Tell people what you’re doing by email and at events. Reach out to the hall of famers — those that recruited the most friends to the cause — and message them on the Care Wall. Facebook is VERY careful about not allowing you to message people you don’t know, but Causes found a way to allow nonprofits to communicate with followers through the Care Wall.
- Notice the icon The use of exlamation points The use of incentive campaigning Also, notice how they have linked their causes page right to their facebook page.
- This is an example of a great way to use Causes. Your staff or friends can create a birthday wish to raise money for your organization Notice the display of the personalized video, the “superstars” and “sidekicks” Below that, donors can leave a personal message, share the wish and help you in the fundraising process
- 1. Sign up for the YouTube Nonprofit Program. Nonprofit organizations receive special, and free, features such as increased branding, larger upload capacity and the ability to be featured by YouTube as a member of the program. Simply apply online at www.youtube.com/nonprofits. 2. Customize your page. Add a graphic banner to help with branding. Include an in-depth description indicating your mission. Add relevant keyword tags to make finding your organization easier. And don’t forget to add your URL to drive website traffic. 3. Tag appropriately. A main way videos are found organically on YouTube is by searching for videos with matching keywords. With video also appearing in search engine results in engines such as Google, tagging is the best way to ensure your videos are found, and helps with organic search engine optimization (SEO). 4. Allow fundraising on your page. Include a Google Checkout button to allow viewers to donate to your cause after being moved by your video. 5. Include links to advocacy and fundraising URLs. Help drive traffic and action by including links and action opportunities into the video by either producing a call to action directly into the video or by adding annotations with YouTube after production. 6. Think broadly and strategically for content. Don’t limit online video to only cover one or two areas of your organization. Make a creative public service announcement (PSA), create a video campaign or use video in a fundraising appeal. 7. Encourage user submitted video. No organization, big or small, has time to make all of the video they wish. To help, ask volunteers to submit video on how the organization has helped them or coverage of a local organizational event. 8. Use free services to find help with shooting and editing. Most nonprofits don’t have in-house video producers, so leverage Lights.Camera.Help. or Video Volunteers to find multimedia production aid at low to no cost. 9. Use page real estate to highlight programs and offers. With expanded branding capabilities, add graphic call outs on the actual YouTube profile to help raise awareness of programs, volunteer opportunities or that new application just made available for your constituents. This is essentially free advertising space. 10. Integrate YouTube video in your overall web presence. Websites, microsites, blog posts, Twitter URLS and Facebook posts can help you share your content with a wider audience and reinforce your brand in a more powerful way.
- At its most basic level, Twitter is called “microblogging.” You get 140 characters to get your message across. It’s sort of like text messaging but on the web. 140 characters to answer the main question on the Twitter home page: “What are you doing now?” When you first start to tweet, it feels really odd. Why would you share what you’re eating? And why would anyone care? It seems like it’s only useful for narcissistic people or those trying to waste time. But people do. And the conversations get even better when you start answering a question like “What are you focusing on?” People use Twitter to ask questions, follow people that are interesting, promote links to various websites, share news stories, to coordinate events during conferences.
- Denver is a long way from Kenya. The 1010 Project seeks to make that span seem a little bit shorter. On their Twitter account you’ll find info on the ins and outs of working for change in Kenya. They’re really hooked in to social media and some of their staff Twitters on their own. They use Twitter to engage followers on issues of global poverty in general by publicizing advocacy events as well as interesting facts about poverty.
- 1. Be newsworthy and/or interesting. Many people use Twitter as a primary news source or to find relevant information to their interests throughout the day. Know what your followers care about and share this with them. 2. Drive website traffic. 140 characters don’t provide much room for detail. Offer an appropriate hook, and then lead them to your website for more detail. 3. Link to fundraising appeals. Twitter doesn’t let you raise funds on the platform, but you can easily create tweets that raise interest and drive traffic to fundraising appeals online. 4. Introduce petitions on timely issues to capture email addresses. Twitter is ideal for micro-actions and nonprofits can leverage this for housefile growth. Lead supporters to simple petitions and pledges to capture email information. 5. Follow people with similar interests. Help increase your visibility and understanding of your audience simultaneously by following users with similar interests that apply to your organization and its mission. 6. Shorten and track links to measure ROI. This not only leaves more room for your message, but by using a dedicated link shortening service your organization can easily track what tweets receive the most clicks. 7. Leave enough room for the re-tweet. The popular action of “retweeting” a user’s original tweet is the prime way of peer-to-peer sharing on Twitter. When possible, leave enough room in your original message for someone else to retweet with your handle. Example: RT @username. 8. Tag advocates and influencers. By using the @username of influencers, advocates and relevant parties in your messages, you alert them of the information and make sharing on their part easier and more likely. 9. Reciprocity is key. Master the art of both retweeting and responding. Followers will be more likely to pay attention to what you tweet, as well as share it with others, if you’ve conversed with them or shared their content in the past. 10. Integrate. To maximize the success of your Twitter efforts, integrate into other online and offline tactics. Incorporate a Twitter feed on your website, add a link to follow Twitter into direct mail pieces and include a “Share” on Twitter link in email.
- Be warned: Twitter is not just a tool to push your message out. BusinessWeek had a great article on Twitter. In it they said: Amy Worley, who manages [H&R] Block’s Twitter program, had to alter her approach. “I went in thinking Twitter was a free way to push our message out,” she says. “Big mistake. We learned to listen. We started winning once we let people decide on their own about our services.” It’s got to be a two-way conversation. And that’s where the genius of Twitter is. You can form your very own “listening post” and hear what others are saying about the issues that affect your mission. This can help you generate ideas and tell your story better.
- Beth Kanter rightly writes that tweeting doesn’t mean people will give. Neither does creating a cause on Facebook or simply starting a blog. But at the same time, she points to “Tweetsgiving” which raised over $11,000 in just 48 hours! If you’re not familiar with TweetsGiving, it’s a global, volunteer-organized social media charity drive starting today and extending through Thanksgiving, similar in purpose and practice to Twestival but built around the notion of celebrating gratitude. TweetsGiving gives back to the Epic Change charity in an effort to raise money to build additional classrooms, a library, cafeteria, and dormitory for a school in Tanzania. Participating in TweetsGiving is as simple as sharing your gratitude on Twitter, or any other social media site, with the hashtag #tweetsgiving and a link to TweetsGiving.org. Even better, on February 12, 2009, an global event called Twestival raised $250,000 for charity. The best part? It was initiated and organized by one very well connected person who didn’t even have a connection with charity! Twestival® (or Twitter Festival) uses social media for social good by connecting communities offline on a single day to highlight a great cause and have a fun event. Twestival is the largest global grassroots social media fundraising initiative to date. Since 2009, volunteers have raised $1.75 million for over 275 nonprofits. All local events are organized 100% by volunteers and 100% of all ticket sales and donations go direct to projects. Twestival was born out of the idea that if cities were able to collaborate on an international scale, but work from a local level, it could have a spectacular impact. Over 200 international cities from Buenos Aires to Bangalore, Seattle to Seoul and Hong Kong to Honolulu have participated in Twestival. What started out as a single event in London in the fall of 2008 has now turned into a global movement, rallying volunteers in over 45 countries to bring their Twitter communities together in support of a good cause on a single day. For most organizations, both amounts of money would be welcome! But NTEN (the Nonprofit Technology Network) reminds us that Twitter isn’t the point. Relationships are the point. Relationships are always the point. The most basic of fundraising secrets is that people give to people. Twitter is simply one more tool to help people connect with each other.
- Twitter: Lingo and Terms Tweet: just as it sounds, a “tweet” is something a user has posted on Twitter @” a reply. Use this if you want to publicly reply to someone. For example, if someone tweets an article you find interesting and you want to reply, use @username. D: direct message. Use this if you want to reply privately to someone on Twitter. For example, use d username. The difference here is that with a reply (@username) there is no space between @ and the username. Tip: If someone is not following you, you will not be able to direct message them. RT: RT stands for “retweet.” If someone posts something you find interesting on Twitter, and you want your followers to see it as well , you will Retweet the original tweet. You would do this by posting “RT @username” and copying in the original tweet. Hash Tags: a hash tag is comparable to a tag you would use on a blog post, or a picture on Flickr. They are “a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets.” You create them by adding # inline in your tweets. There is no set list of hashtags, they are all user generated.