Step 1: Define Goals
Nonprofit human service organizations use social media to work toward a number of goals, including recruiting volunteers, carrying out advocacy initiatives, fundraising, building brand awareness, increasing website traffic, and engaging in media research.
Pick a few high-priority goals that are specific, measurable, and time-based.
Also, be realistic about what constitutes a short- versus long-term goal. For example, fundraising isn’t a short-term goal; organizations have to grow a base of social media supporters and build relationships by providing information about the organization before those relationships can translate into new donors.
Step 2: Define Audience
An organization’s target audience is more than current clients, donors, and board members; it’s the people the organization would like to see become clients, board members, donors, or word-of-mouth advocates. This could include community leaders, potential employees or volunteers, current or potential foster and adoptive families, or lay community members.
“It’s really important to understand who your audience is and the message you want to communicate so that you’re using these tools in an effective, thoughtful way,” says John Kenyon, a nonprofit technology educator and strategist who is a member of the Alliance’s Executive Consultant Select Group. “Define your top three target audiences and focus on what content works for them.”
Step 3: Listen
One reason for listening is to get a sense of the platform’s culture, Kenyon says. “It’s really important to lurk and listen for a while. Look for other causes and see how similar nonprofits are engaging their audiences. What types of links do you find to be really effective—that make you want to click on them? And then how can you follow and build upon that example?”
ALLIANCE PROVIDES SPECIALIZED 1. Collection of how-to resources and informational articles targeted to various needs: measuring social media efforts; being successful with Facebook, blogs, LinkedIn, and Twitter; creating online videos; and fundraising with social media. 2. For additional support with social media questions, contact the Severson Center using the online request form. 3. The Executive Consultant Select Group is hosting two webinars pertaining to social media in 2011. |
Another goal of listening is to understand who is talking about the organization and the issues it cares about, as well as what they are saying. This activity is akin to an ongoing public opinion poll.
Step 4: Prepare Infrastructure and Allocate Resources
Be sure the organization is prepared to be successful with social media by having a well-branded, user-friendly website and analytics tools.
“You’ve got to have a great website and a great e-mail program before you start with social media because a main point of social media is to drive traffic to your website,” Kenyon says. “If you’re not ready, you’re driving people to a place that’s not going to engage them.”
Connected to that is having an analytics tool in place, such as Google Analytics, which will allow the organization to understand how much of its website traffic is referred via social media.
Finally, organizations must be cognizant of the time and resource demands involved in building, monitoring, and updating social media platforms. Have a plan for which department this work should be assigned to, who will perform specific tasks, and a guide for how much time this person should dedicate to these activities.
Step 5: Create, Publicize, Remind
Simply creating a social media presence won’t automatically attract an audience. Organizations should promote their social media efforts by linking to any social media accounts from the organization’s website and e-newsletter; and, vice versa, they should be linking to the website and e-newsletter via social media.
Other ways to promote the organization’s social media accounts include listing the URLs in print newsletters and adding links in e-mail signatures.
Step 6: Evaluate (Collect, Analyze, Act)
“If you’re going to put effort into Facebook, Twitter, and these other places, you’ve got to be able to measure what the results are,” Kenyon says. “Otherwise you don’t know if your effort is worth anything.”
Good measurement points include link clicks, number of comments, and number of followers, to name a few. Organizations should decide which points to measure by asking, “How does this relate to our goals?” Then, decide a regular interval at which to collect the data, and keep a record. After collecting and analyzing the data, organizations should end with a course of action.
“You’ve got to have a complete circle,” Kenyon says. “You try something, you measure the results, you modify it based on the results, and then you keep trying different approaches or you keep improving what you’re doing.”
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