The document provides an overview of how nonprofits can utilize social media. It discusses that social media is a tactic that should be integrated into an organization's overall marketing strategy and objectives. It also recommends starting on key platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs in order to engage supporters and spread awareness of the nonprofit's mission. Additionally, the document emphasizes the importance of listening to supporters and adding value through social media in order to build relationships and promote the organization's work.

1. Social Media For
Nonprofits:
Don’t Get Left Behind
April 19, 2012
Eileen O’Brien
@eileenobrien

2. What is Social Media?
• “A social trend in which people
use technologies to get the
things they need from each
other, rather than from
traditional institutions like
corporations”
Groundswell by Charlene Li &
Josh Bernoff

3. Social Media is a Tactic
• Social media is not a strategy but a tactic
• Start with an objective, create a strategy and
determine the best tactics
• Integrate into your overall marketing objectives
• Key to marketing is telling a compelling story
 Social media can enable this

4. Is Your Target Audience Using SM?
Source: PewInternet.org

5. How Is Your Target Using SM?
Source: PewInternet.org

6. How Do You Start?
• Recruit the people
within your organization
who are passionate
about social media
• Use it in your own life
and become comfortable
with the technology
• Be selective: start small
and build

7. Monitor Social Media
• Pay attention to what is being said about your
organization
 Free Google alerts
 Take it private
• Don’t delegate to intern
• Have a crisis communications plan
 Be prepared to act quickly using same media
 Be nimble

8. Learn from Planned Parenthood
• Komen used SM as another
platform for corporate
announcements
• PP used SM to engage in
continued dialogue with
stakeholders starting well
before the crisis
• Komen’s messaging was
inconsistent, changed course
and tone
Source: Lessons from the Komen Controversy,
SocialMediaToday.com

9. Listen
• Listening may give you insights which will lead the
strategy
• Learn what’s important to your audience
 Can you fill a need? How can you add value?
• Check out what the competition is doing
• Pay attention
• Social media has been compared to a cocktail
party

10. Add Value

11. Be Thoughtful
• Many social media tools are
free, but they require
resources to create content
and keep them updated
• You can damage your
reputation by starting and
then abandoning social
media projects
• Squat on your name
 http://namechk.com
Image courtesy of Striatic on Flickr

12. How Do You Find The Time?
• Integrate into what you
are currently doing
 Bring a video to an
interview and post a
teaser on YouTube
• Make a conscious
decision: the time spent
on social media may
mean giving something
else up
Image courtesy of D. Sharon Pruitt on Flickr

13. Use Your Time Wisely
• Measurement is essential
 Determine up front how you will measure success
• Did you meet your objective?
 More volunteers
 Heightened awareness
 Donations
 Increased event participation
 Generated PR
 Education on issues
Image courtesy of Jonny Goldstein on Flickr

14. Make It Shareworthy
• Most effective online organizing programs
whether fundraising or advocacy is to
make each of your appeals part of a
campaign
• People give to funds that generate an
emotional response, tell your story
• Articulate in simple terms what you are
trying to do
• Make it urgent, have a deadline
• Make it EASY

15. 100 Uniforms in 100 Hours

16. Twitter

17. What’s Twitter?
• A free social networking &
micro-blogging service
that allows users to send
updates or tweets (text-
based posts up to 140
characters long) to anyone
who opts to receive them
• Asks: What’s
happening?
• Per Pew, 13% of American
adults who use the
internet are Twitter users Image courtesy of Robert Scoble on Flickr

18. What’s Twitter?
Use free tools: Tweetdeck or HootSuite

19. Types of Accounts
• Organization
 100% branded content, don’t follow people or interact
 Can be managed by a team, low risk of going off
message
 Using interactive tool to push out information, not
establishing relationships
Source: Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

20. Types of Accounts
• Organization With Personality
 Employee(s) who tweet are identified & interact with
followers
 Makes it personal, builds relationships
 May be difficult to scale, succession can be an issue if
person becomes so associated with brand leaves, also
risk of going off message
Source: Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

21. Who To Follow
• Thought leaders and cause enthusiasts
 For social media & nonprofits: @kanter, @ntenhross,
@beautifulthangs, @SocialBttrfly, @peterdeitz
• Search on your topics of interest
 Look at who others follow
• Take your time

22. How To Get Followers
• Quality over quantity
• When you follow someone send them a tweet
explaining why you are following them
• Search on your area of interest and then answer
questions or respond
 “Seek out people you can help and do it!” Wil
Reynolds
• Add yourself to “yellow pages”
 http://twellow.com
 http://wefollow.com

23. How To Get Followers
• Engage with your
followers, thank them for
support, give them ways
to get involved
• Utilize hashtages
(#word)
• Weekly Chats
 Take part in existing ones
or host a Tweetchat
Image courtesy of Christopher Carfi
on Flickr

24. Check Out TwitCause

25. YouTube

26. YouTube
• Second largest volume
of searches
• In December 2011
 85% of the total U.S.
Internet audience views
online video
 182 million U.S. Internet
users viewed 43.5 billion
videos
Source: comScore Image courtesy of Karl Jonsson on Flickr

27. YouTube
• A keyword-tagged video is 50 times more likely
to appear on the 1st page of a Google search
result compared with a traditional web page
according to Forrester Research
• YouTube program for nonprofits
• YouTube Video Volunteers
 Can find someone who is willing to use their
equipment and skills to help a nonprofit make a video

28. YouTube Channels
• Free to set up a
YouTube channel
• Centralized place for all
videos, can be branded
& users can subscribe
• Can turn off comments
or use it as another way
to connect

29. How Do You Get Views?
• People have short attention spans, so capture
attention in first 30 second
 Keep the whole video short
 Have a call to action at the end
 Shoot for a computer screen
• Ask for user-generated content
• Tell serial stories which engage viewers & keep
them coming back
• React to current events
• Use endorsements
• Tag & title your videos with relevant keywords

30. How Do You Get Subscribers?
• Subscribe to the YouTube
channels of other
nonprofits, they may do
the same
• Ask people to subscribe
• Share links for your videos
with supporters so they
can help get the word out
 Make the embed code
available so people can post
the video on their sites Image courtesy of Todd Huffman on Flickr

31. Facebook

32. Facebook
• Nonprofits can create customized pages
• Claim vanity URL
 http://www.twitter.com/yournonprofit
• Engage with fans
 Comment on their wall posts & help people connect
with others
• Show people how to connect beyond Facebook
 Email sign up or drive to website

33. Facebook Page
• Non-Profits on Facebook

34. Facebook Stats
• Use the data to understand
what your fans like, don’t
like, what type of content
they interact with the most
and what they share with
their friends
 Facebook gives you locale
breakdown and demographic
information
Image courtesy of Sasha Wolff on Flickr

35. How to Get Fans
• Promote via other marketing channels
• Encourage fans to suggest to their friends become
fans
• Run promotion or contest
• Give fans what they want
 Be active and add content
 70% of all actions on social networks are related to
viewing pictures or viewing other people's profiles
Source: Understanding Users of Social Networks

36. Blogs

37. It’s All About Content
• Excellent for search
• Enables thought leadership
• Syndicate content
• Recommend WordPress
• If too time intensive, consider:
 Guest blogging
 Combining forces
 Comment on other blogs

38. Google+

39. Google’s New Social Network
• 100M adopters versus Facebook 1 Billion
• Needs content, engagement with fans
• Being used for search results

40. SlideShare.net

41. Share Presentations
• Free account, post and tag presentations
• Access this presentation on
http://slideshare.net/eileenobrien

42. Summary

43. Market Social Media
• Integrate the social tactics into the entire
marketing strategy
• Promote social media tactics via all marketing
such as: direct mail, email signature,
newsletters, announce at events
• Leverage your content across various places
 Put video on YouTube
 Embed it into a blog post
 Promote blog post via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
 Link to the blog post in an enewsletter

44. Golden Rules
• Social media is all about being human, so have
personality
• Never say anything you wouldn’t say in front of
your mother
• It’s all about building relationships
• Treat others with respect
• Be generous
• Add value
Image courtesy of Jason on Flickr

45. Resources
• ComcastNewMediaExchange.com
• Groundswell
 Examples of award winning non-profits
• Beth Kantar
 Beth’s Blog: How nonprofits can use social media
• Pew Internet & American Life Project
• Netsquared
• Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the
Connected Age by AllisonFine

46. Questions?
Thanks!
eiobri@yahoo.com
@EileenOBrien