50 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits

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Highveld Horsecare Unit Used corporate colors Used logo as avatar and included it in the sidebar Chose an uplifting photo that summed up the organization's mission and a simple, serene background. Used a simple call to action directing supporters to the website where they could learn more. It worked! website hits are up by about 20% consistently since they launched on Twitter.

If multiple people are tweeting on your account - each will have their own personality - introduce them! Nobody wants to hear from a robot Twitter is all about relationships - and those are still personal!

Fellow tweeps from your organization - they may not be tweeting on the official org account, but may have valuable tweets from the field. Your organization’s chapters and campaigns - This will help you and your followers keep track of what is happening across all organisation accounts at a glance. Create a list for supporters - ask them to @reply with why they support you. (Amy Sample Ward's idea) http://twitter.com/AmericanCancer/lists

1. It is a good way to find some of the more influential (or at least popular) Twitter users in your area, and those are people you may want to follow. 2. The site highlights the top 1000 accounts on Twitter and crawls these on a daily basis to collect updated Twitter User Statistics. 3. When it comes to viewing Twitter Stats, Twitterholic is probably the best tool out there. Bonus: Use Twellow, the yellow pages of twitter to do a search by keyword. Here are the results for nonprofit: http://www.twellow.com/search?q=nonprofit&page_num=1 Google twitterholic top 100 and your city, state Twittercounter - helps you see your accounts growth trends and allows benchmarking with other organizations.

To pick up chatter. To find active, local tweeters. Real time view of what's going on in your town and who's involved so you can target the active social media tweeps. Tag your tweets with this

Twitter should not be thought of as a broadcast channel. The thing that makes Twitter unique is its ability to break-down barriers. You can reach out directly to individuals and vice versa, ask a questions of your followers, provide an opinion or resource, and share social capital. March of Dimes does a great job of this. Throught their account, Beverly Robertson, National Director, Pregnancy & Newborn Health Education Center at the March of Dimes offers daily pregnancy tips and also interacts with followers.

It is important to make it as easy as possible for your followers to RT you. By writing tweets at a friendly length, it is more likely that your message will not be changed or shortened.

This is a great place to find staffers and volunteers - who cares about your cause more than your supporters? Also, volunteer needs sometimes arise suddenly - Twitter is a great medium to reach out in real-time for a real-time need. A great example of this is in disaster communications.

Grab RSS from search results and put it in a reader or dashboard Another great way to find people who care about your cause Helps you monitor your brand, join conversation, etc. Create a saved search on your twitter homepage

To be relevant, especially if you are an advocacy-type group. To add your voice to a movement, conversation. Help support your brand. Getting higher visibility. This is a great way to get impressions – old school marketing wise.

This one can be as simple or interactive as you decide to make it! #BeatCancer was a social media experiment and movement created by a communications firm in Georgia. They worked to partner with companies, so that for every tweet, facebook post, or blogpost that was sent with the #beatcancer message, eBay and PayPal donated $.01 to one of the four cancer charities - cause marketing on twitter! The campaign set a Guinness Record for the most widespread social-network message in a 24-hour period, raising $70,000. 209,771 mentions #memorywalk - event participants tag their tweets and twitpics with the event hashtag. (Like #bbcon)

Hashtags make it easy to search and organize results around a specific topic. A good one to check out if you haven't yet is #nptech. It is a catch-all term for information related both to nonprofits and technology. You can either search directly in various platforms, or go to NPTech.Info to see aggregate results for Tweets, Blogs, Flickr photos, delicious tags, etc. One of the most unique and successful use of hashtags that I've seen is the #nwf tag. Other popular hashtags or &quot;memes&quot; as you may hear them called include #charitytuesday, #woofwednesday, and #followfriday. This is a shoutout in the Twitterverse - you recommend specific people or organizations to follow by simply putting their Twitter handles and tagging the tweet with a hashtag.

Track your tweets forever in Twapperkeeper (hashtags, search terms, etC)

On 12 February 2009, 200+ international cities hosted a Twestival (Twitter + festival) to bring Twitter communities together to raise money for charity: water. The Twestival raised $250,000+ and brought worldwide public awareness to the global water crisis. There are global and local events - the next global Twestival will be held on Thursday 25 March 2010.

The Environmental Defense Action Fund provided a Twitter Guide to the Climate Bill Discussion with factual sample tweets and information. Supporters could simply click the Tweet this button to share the information with their followers. By providing supporters of your cause key messages to share, and resources to point to, you are empowering them to help further your message.

Act.ly() is one of the slickest Twitter petition sites available. Once users have created a petition, it’s tweeted out to followers, and others can sign and tweet the petition (using OAuth to connect with Twitter). With Twitter petitions, every unique tweet about the petition (i.e., each new tweet from a new user) is considered a signature, and Act.ly displays the number of tweets and recent signers. Act.ly has a pair of unique features: 1. you can direct a petition at a specific Twitter account, and Act.ly will track how long it takes for that account to issue a response. So, for example, if you’re targeting your petition at US President Barack Obama, you can have Act.ly directly tweet the petition @BarackObama. And 2. Act.ly offers an embeddable “Tweet It” button, so petitions can easily be spread through blogs or other social networking profiles.

For the very same reason you would in &quot;real life.“ Great way to promote a campaign. Twibbons makes it easy to create a small icon that is overlayed onto a suppoter's profile image. Plus, the user’s Twitter account automatically tweets to let everyone know about their affiliation. Great old school marketing tactic to get impressions.

San Francisco Zoo - http://mashable.com/2009/11/08/twitter-san-fran-zoo/ In support of the Summer of Social Good campaing to benefit The Humane Society, LiveSTRONG, Oxfam America and WWF, Hyatt jumped on board and sponsored a Tweetup Tour called #HyattforGood. The tour stopped in 5 cities. Although there are usually not ticket fees for tweetups, in this case, Mashable staffed the events with some of its key social media gurus, and had a limited number of tickets available in exchange for a donation. In its first charitable initiative, Mashable raised $55,000 through social media, including the Tweetup tour. The point is here, that people love to rally around a cause. Whether your tweetup is a networking event, or as in this case, a fundraising event, providing a venue for your online supports to meet in real-life it a good thing.

Twitpic is trackable, and you can bring your supports up close and personal with your cause. It also integrates with clients, like Tweetdeck. It also enables users to make comments and tag photos so they can be aggregated. You can also use 12 seconds.

Social media is really about conversation and engagement, so purely looking at your &quot;followers&quot; doesn't really tell you a lot. To measure interactions and trends. To track activity to campaigns. Without any way of keeping score, we’d never know if we were improving. Because executive directors love numbers.

bit.ly centralizes all of your url tracking, so you can see what performs the best. If you use Tweetdeck as your client, you can actually sign in with your bit.ly account so it directly integrates. Bit.ly also shows click by geography, so you can see where your message is resonating. Conversations section keeps track of who's retweeting, if there are Friendfeed conversations.

It’s good to build real relationships with social media fans, but how are those relationships performing. You can find out by mashing up Twitazyzer with Google Analtyics This free services will show you which Twitter users are sending visitors this way. Includes new visit day, bounce rate, and Twitalyzer scores

Add a vanity url, use your logo, make sure the photo/logo you use sizes down well to an avatar, unless you do a fan only page

Specially tailored to non-fans as an acquisition tool. JOIN NOW! Add the Static FBML Application Change in page settings.

You can recruit members to your cause, collect donations, message the group, setup fundraising and recruitement goals, track top recruiters, top fundraisers, and top donors. Add a Cause box to your fan page.

Edit --> Wall settings. Increases engagement, provides content, enables a community. Everytime someone does something, it shows up as an activity to all their friends – impressions!

Keeps content fresh - it's dynamic, cross-promotes channels, increases your chance for interactions. (Customer example.) Great way to get your blog to a new set of people.

Add your Twitter feed, YouTube Channel, and Flickr account - Involver offers a free app and you can also search the application directory within facebook and browse all available apps

A way to promote your event - gets it on their calendar. An event page allows you to do RSVP - pre-network - upload photos/videos/links. Gives you ability to notify Fanbase and segement by demographics. The event has its own wall.

Again, it isn't a broadcast channel. You're trying to increase interactions, and engagement. Be active – start this conversation.

Great, easy way to get user-generated content. Great for events. Public engagement - you can use Facebook page to show that their engaged. Every time a fan uploads a photo - it shows up in their stream. A great tool for reach - and getting in front of fans personal networks.

Add discussions tab and it basically acts like a forum where you can start a discussion to engage your fans. Soliciting feedback, crowdsourcing, asking for stories that may be more in-depth than comments. If you do it on your wall, it shows up on everyone's feeds. It would be too noisy. Let's fans start discussions too.

Increase interactions and engagement. America's Giving Challenge is an example of one that nonprofits can join through Causes - most donations to a Cause wins. They can also easily create their own contest for Fans, like BB did.

Oxford Great Britain. Created an app that would advocate for Climate Change. Would send email to the Prime Minister. In the process, they collect your data for their CRM.

You collect metrics for everything else, so you should here too. In Facebook, it's called Insights. You need to extract them from the system, b/c they disappear over time. Key advantage is you get a great demographic profile, which you do not get with Google Analytics. Interactions is key - how many times people are commenting or liking things. Good way to measure engagement over time.

Premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity The option to drive fundraising through a Google Checkout &quot;Donate&quot; button Listing on the Nonprofit channels and the Nonprofit videos pages Ability to add a Call-to-action overlay on your videos to drive campaigns Posting a video opportunity on the YouTube Video Volunteers platform to find a skilled YouTube user to create a video for your cause.

connect people to your work. Do it in a way that creates buzz. Entertaining and informative videos will get you the farthest.

One Laptop Per Child created a thank you video from real children in the developing world using the laptops that the donors funded.

Peace One Day recently held a &quot;My take on Peace&quot; video contest. Supporters were asked to share what their commitment to peace is. They chose three finalists and turned to their supporters to vote for the winner. The winner, a school, was awarded with an HD video camera delivered by the founder of the organization.

HSUS partnered with Hulk Hogan to launch a video contest based around &quot;Knocking Out Animal Cruelty&quot; (bringing awareness to an important issue. Supporters uploaded video responses and tens of thousands of people voted for the videos they thought delivered a message against dogfighting. Two of the entries were even featured on the homepage of YouTube and had more than 90,000 views. The organization gained 2,000 new members to their email list.

Stats, unlimited sets, etc. Discounted pro accounts for Tech Soup members. Your account - privacy & permissions tab - what license will your content have.

The nonprofit group has images that support any official Nonprofit organization, local and/or international. Submit your photos subject-related groups. Has map and discussion functionality - can network with members. Great for getting more exposure for your organization. Be sure to tag them too!

Launched a contest to raise awareness of premature babies. The &quot;Be a Coin Star&quot; contest asked supporters to submit pictures of where they keep their change. Created a specific group for the contest, and provided clear guidelines to participants on how to tag, etc. Why it worked? Fits great with mission, plays on origin of organization, and involved supporters.

They have a giant grounds and they wanted a way to share all of the artwork on the grounds. Created Flickr project where people take photos of the sculptures and they geotag them in Flickr to create a collage of photos. Brought awareness of all of the art that is actually outside of the museum. Geocode it in the photo settings.

The Sierra Club launched a Flickr group to gather user-generated inspiring nature photos to include in their daily e-newsletter, the Daily Ray of Hope. Their are more than 13,800 photos in the group pool! That will keep them going for 37 years!

Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit. The National Wildlife Foundation was able to convert 243 “digs” into 43,703 page views for a webpage that would have only received 4,834 page views without the social bookmarking “assist” Stumbleupon is a huge steady ongoing traffic driver. Digg is a big bang. All are good for SEO.

Make content easily sharable on visitors existing social networks and directly with each other.

Make sure you have links to your channels on a prominent place on your homepage, your footers, contact page, community page. Include it in campaigns communications, emails, newsletters, cross-promote in Facebook, Twitter, email auto-sigs.

Put dynamic content on your website, promote your blog/twitter/other feed

We're going to show in the workshop how to build it. Search terms in twitter, google blog searches, google alerts, Digg, Backtype, anything with a feed.

50 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits

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