This document discusses the importance of social media for non-profits. It provides background on the evolution of communication technologies over time. It then discusses key benefits of social media for non-profits, including reaching and engaging more people, driving traffic to websites, increasing exposure through shareable content, building community, and extending marketing and PR reach. Specific statistics on user bases and time spent on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are presented to highlight the large reach that social media provides non-profits. Examples are also given of how some non-profits have successfully used social media.

1. SOCIAL MEDIA FOR NON-
PROFITS
Created by Kerri, Alana
and Sheny for COS staff

2. WARM – UP TIME
Evolution of
Communication over the
decades….

3. WHO REMEMBERS WHEN….?
Telephones - Party lines?
 Rotary phones? Long cords to walk
around the kitchen? Then cordless land
lines? Who still has a land line phone?
Who only has cell phones?
Written Communication
 Old school Typewriters? Typing class?
 Carbon copy? (not photocopier)
 Newspaper?
 Canada Post letters, postcards?

4. WHO REMEMBERS WHEN….?
Written Communication cont’d…
Fax Machines first came in?
Electronic typewriters? (with
autocorrect, no more typing
correction tape on your final
papers?) Halleluyah!
Communication
Televisions? Colour vs B&W?
Having to get up to change the
channel?
Original big brick cell phones
with antenna?

5. ENTER THE INTERNET …. WWW.
WORLDWIDEWEB
Still had to go to the
library and use the
dewy decimal system
to find books
2000’s Businesses
adopt eLearning for a
way to train
employees.
2010’s Social Online
Learning, Youtube,
Skype, massive online
learning opportunities.
Anytime. Anywhere.
• 1980’s first PC’s
and MAC’s.
• www created in
1989
• 1990’s dawn of
email and internet
used for e-
learning.
• 1990’s became a
staple in
university,
colleges to use for
emailing
professors, some

6. HISTORY OF E-LEARNING
Who shopped on AMAZON?
Or traded on EBAY? (1995)
How long have you been on
Linkedin? (2003)
Who had or has a yahoo account?
(1994)
Who has a SKYPE account? (2003)

7. TECH TALK -
Tweet – 140 character limit, visible to
everyone who follows you and to
everyone following the hashtags(#) you
include
Follow – Following someone on Twitter
means you are subscribing to their
Tweets
Retweet – Reposting something that
someone else has posted.
Feed – A stream of updates from users
we follow.
Handle – Username @CowichanYouth
Hashtag (#) - A hashtag is a discovery
tool that allows others to find your
tweets, based on topics
Mention – A way to reference another
user by their username. The @ symbol
in front of a user name makes the
connection… @shenyker, @mollytov
Direct Message (DM) – A private 140
character message between 2 people
Tweet!!
Do I look familiar?
I’m Twitter’s OLD
logo!!

8. TECH TALK -
Friend Page
Hire Cowichan
Like our Business page, this
page is visible to the public
without a Facebook
account.
When a user “Likes” the
page, things that we post
show up in their “NewsFeed”
We have 95 likes so far
including 5 employers
Business
Page
COS Cowichan
This page is only visible to
those who have “Friended” us.
Updates/statuses will show in
the “NewsFeed” of our Friends
We needed this page in order
to create a Business Page
We have 141 “friends”
including community
members, clients, business
owners, etc.
YEMP Page
Community Options Society
This page is visible to the
public and you don’t need a
Facebook account to view
the information
When a user “Likes” the
page, things that we post
show up in their “NewsFeed”
We have 55 likes so far
Facebook uses slightly different terms, but is very similar to Twitter. Instead of
“Followers” you have “Friends” and “Likes”. Posts from your “Friends” show in a
“Newsfeed”. You can tag your friends in posts much like the “mention” feature works in
Twitter. You can “Share” posts that you see on Facebook much like Tweets are
Retweeted. Hashtags(#) work much the same way as well.

9. Why should COS want to
increase our online
presence?
• Bottom line, to help youth and
families connect with us who
may not otherwise know where
to get help
• Increase awareness of what we
do
• Increase attendance in groups
• Let funders know how awesome
we are!
• Free advertising!!

10. WHY IS SOCIAL MEDIA IMPORTANT FOR
NON-PROFITS?
1. Reach, Engage & Connect
2. Drive Traffic
3. Increased exposure through
shareable content
4. Create momentum & build
community
5. Marketing tools
6. Extending PR reach

11. REACH OF SOCIAL MEDIA
• 1.393 billion active monthly users on Facebook
• Users spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
• Each Facebook user spends on average 15 hours and 33 minutes a
month on the site
• 60% of social media time is spent on mobile devices
• 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month
• YouTube has 490 million unique users who visit every month
• YouTube generates 92 billion page views per month (These YouTube
stats don’t include videos viewed on phones and embedded in
websites)
• Users on YouTube spend a total of 2.9 billion hours per month
(326,294 years)
• 500 million average Tweets per day occur on Twitter
• 288 million monthly active Twitter users

12. Successful use of social media by non-
profits around the world
“Lupus Foundation of America uses a Facebook Cause Page to engage
members constantly by sharing news and asking for their help. In six
months, they have increased cause membership 584% and increased
online donations in Facebook by 790%.”
“Mom’s Rising developed this clever online video campaign that
increased online membership instantly from 140,000 supporters to
1.1 million. The video can be personalized so that characters in the
video are all touting the user’s mother’s name. The user then sends
their mom a link to the video for Mother’s Day.”
“The National Wildlife Federation used digg.com to increase internet
traffic to their website. They posted interesting stories which were
voted up based on their popularity. Really good ones like “10
Extraordinary Animal Tactics for Surviving the Cold” made it onto the
digg.com homepage and drove 29,000 views to the NWF blog in one
day.”

13. FIND COS ONLINE
http://facebook.com/youthcos
http://facebook.com/hirecowicha
http://twitter.com/search/cowich