Here's the presentation JD Lasica will deliver May 3, 2012, at the Women's Funding Network in Los Angeles, including tips on how to use social media on the cheap for organizations with small budgets.
Social media strategies for small nonprofits and budgets
1. Social media
for small budgets!
Women, Economics and Peace:
2012 Summit
Los Angeles, May 3, 2012
JD Lasica
Founder, Socialbrite.org
jd@socialbrite.org
2. What we’ll cover today
Big picture stuff
Monitoring
Twitter tactics
Facebook tactics
Mobile on the cheap
Storytelling
Use your community
Social fundraising
Q&A
Hugs, tearful goodbyes
3. Relax!
http://socialbrite.org/wfn
Flickr photo “relaxation,
the maldivian way” by
notsogoodphotography
4. Today’s Twitter hashtag
Creative Commons
photo on Flickr
by Prakhar
Tweet this preso! Hashtag: #wfn12
I’m @jdlasica
7. Glossary for new terms
http://socialbrite.org/glossary
“ Social media:
Any online technology or practice that lets us share
(content, opinions, insights, experiences, media)
and have a conversation about the ideas we care about.
”
8. THE ECOSYSTEM
Types of social media
Blogs
Social networks
Microblogs (Twitter)
Online video
Curation (Pinterest)
Widgets
Photo sharing
Podcasts
Virtual worlds
Wikis
Social bookmarking
Forums
Presentation sharing
9. Staggering growth
77% of online US adults are frequent social media users.
150 million active blogs; 1 million blog posts created per day
Social sites embedded atop traffic rankings: YouTube,
Facebook, Wikipedia, VEVO, Craigslist, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp
Twitter: 100+ million active users, 250 million tweets per day
Flickr: 35 million people, 4 billion-plus photos
YouTube: 3 billion videos watched per day
8 trillion text messages sent in 2011
10. L AY T H E G R O U N D W O R K
Big picture reality check
Before we talk tools, technology or campaigns, do a
self-assessment with your team.
Why are you doing this?
What core values drive your
organization?
What change would you like
to see in the world?
Is there clarity about what your
organization is trying to achieve?
Why should people care?
Do you have an idea worth spreading?
11. Before you plunge in ...
Understand that social media is a series of stages: crawl,
walk, run, fly
Do you have buy-in from top management? Cultural shift to
sharing & transparency?
Do you have a social media policy or guidelines?
Do you have a Strategic Social Media Plan in place?
Are you listening to your constituents & community?
Have you built a program before you turn to a campaign?
Have you identified and trained your team members?
12. Have you defined a clear theme?
Boil down your cause to a strong, single sentence
Vittana:
Help anyone go to college
Alter Eco:
Support fair trade
ActBlue:
Elect progressive candidates
DonorsChoose:
Support public classrooms in need
14. Strategic Plan elements
360 assessment of
social media capabilities
Spell out goals
Identify online
community
Proposed use of social
tools & platforms
Recommendations on
Action Plan & timeline
Lay out metrics program
Peer analysis
15. E S TA B L I S H B U S I N E S S G O A L S
How can you use social media?
1. Raise public awareness of your mission or cause
2. Raise funds for a cause or campaign
3. Reach new constituents or supporters
4. Build a community of champions
5. Recruit volunteers
6. Get people to take real-world actions
7. Enhance existing communications programs
8. Involve the community in decision-making
9. Advance your organization’s mission
16. Map metrics to goals
Business goals Things to measure
• Grow email list # newsletter subscribers
• Online visibility, branding increase in traffic or linkback #s
• Increase comments on blog avg. # comments/post
• Increase positive mentions of mentions or pick-ups in blogs
organization or program & social networks
• Have visitors stick around stick rate, bounce rate
• Make our content more viral # of shares
• Get people to take action # of petition signatures
• Get people to attend event # of registrants, year over year
17. Best practices for the social Web
Think of social media as a way to
talk with your constituents,
supporters and stakeholders.
Build relationships. Good
relationships take time.
It’s not all about you. Offer value.
Give more than you take.
Be a connector. Reciprocate.
Follow back.
Empower supporters, don’t market
to consumers.
18. Best practices for the social Web
Be authentic and transparent about who
you are. Disclose your relationship to the
nonprofit/products/services you promote.
Trust each other. Learn as you go. Make
mistakes. Dare to fail.
Don’t be defensive — be open to critical feedback.
Successful campaigns engender authentic enthusiasm.
Social media still comes down to the cause or product.
Conversations can’t be controlled or “managed.” But they
can be engaged, informed and elevated.
Remember: Audience is not the same as community.
19. Build community, not eyeballs
here’s an amazing
difference between building
an audience and building a
community. An audience
will watch you fall on a
sword. A community will fall
on a sword for you.
— Chris Brogan
Author, “Trust Agents”
20. Create a listening post
Set up a listening post
(monitoring dashboard)
to track what’s being
said about your
organization or cause.
Listen before engaging.
Deputize folks to do this.
Supplement with a social
media dashboard.
Engage before an Ask.
Monitoring resources: socialbrite.org/wfn
22. TWITTER
Make Twitter work for you
Staff should be trained on how to use Twitter.
Not a broadcasting medium to just distribute press releases or
your headlines.
Start by listening & observing.
Be yourself, be conversational, lose
the marketing jargon.
Use it for outreach, soliciting ideas,
customer support, to announce events,
to recommend articles, to identify experts.
#1 traffic driver: retweets. Use ‘Please RT’ strategically.
Tweets with a URL are 3x more likely to be retweeted.
Twitter drives 4%+ of traffic to NY Times, Facebook, etc.
23. JD’s 60-30-10 Twitter rule
60% retweets, pointing to
value, sharing other voices
30% responding, connecting
10% promoting, announcing
25. Use hashtags to join conversations
Find relevant hashtags through
Twitter Search or tagdef.com
Join (but don’t spam)
conversation threads
Start your own hashtag
Some hashtags to latch on to:
#women #health #latino
#education #democracy #politics
#Obama #news #media
At left, widget at:
http://journchat.info
33. FACEBOOK
Facebook: The social network
900 million members worldwide —
76% of US Internet users are on Facebook
900
600
300
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009 0
2010
2011
Today
Facebook’s global growth rate, 2004-2012, in millions
45. Find your internal storytellers
List staffers’ skills
Who’s good at photos?
Video?
Writing?
Facebook or Twitter?
Create a Blog Squad
Who’s good at campaigns?
Open your blog to guest posts
46. USE YOUR COMMUNITY
Don’t do all the heavy lifting!
Creative Commons
photo on Flickr by
Jason Means
Don’t be like this guy!
48. S T U D Y W H AT W O R K S
Involve your supporters
350.org livestrong.org
49. Find your champions!
Find the big kahunas in your sector by using your listening
post. Then, influence the influencers.
Establish a rapport and only then reach out to try to convert
them into evangelists & ambassadors for your cause.
Scope out Twitter Lists that intersect with your organization
or social cause.
Connect with other social media influencers through their
blogs and other networks.
50. Remove barriers to participation
Make sure your site is
conversation-enabled!
Lower the barriers to people talking about your
cause by using third-party authentication services.
Left: SpokenWord.org
Top: Facebook Comments on HowStuffWorks.com.
51. Use social love handles!
Generate an Attention Wave to socialize your campaign
52. The awesome power of free
Free content! Free resources!
Free photos Socialbrite.org/sharing-center
Free videos (eg, TED talks) Creativecommons.org
Free music & audio Techsoup
Free services! Free expertise!
Google Grants BarCamp
YouTube for Nonprofits PodCamp
Google Earth for Nonprofits WordCamp
Social Media
Free software & platforms! Club
WordPress & its plug-ins
Open Office, Google docs
Drupal, Joomla
53. flickr.com/creativecommons
Creativecommons.org
Rich source of free
commercial &
noncommercial images
Flickr: 220+ million
licenses
Use them for your blog,
website, email or print
newsletter, presentations,
etc.
Don’t just take. Share!
58. SOCIAL MEDIA DASHBOARDS
Pace yourself, don’t stress!
HootSuite ThinkUp
Tweetdeck Salsa
Crowdbooster Netvibes
roundup:
Spredfast http://bit.ly/smdash
59. Integrate social into the culture
Create teams of participants.
Knock down the silos.
Get people using the tools.
Use ‘reverse mentoring.’
Share monthly metrics reports.
Photo on Flickr by lanuiop
Provide evidence of how social
media moved the needle.
Shine a light on examples of
employees doing social media
well — reward best practices. Convert the skeptics
60. Key takeaways
Begin with an aligned strategy,
not with the tools.
Listen & measure! Evaluate,
iterate, relaunch.
Tell your wonderful stories
Use your community — your
biggest resource: your supporters!
61. Don’t settle for the status quo
If you do not change
direction, you may
end up where you
are heading.
— Lao Tse
62. Thank you!
JD Lasica, founder
Socialbrite: Social tools for social change
email: jd@socialbrite.org
Twitter: @jdlasica
@socialbrite
Tons of resources at
http://socialbrite.org/wfn