Ten Tips for Nonprofit Social Media Success

8/12/2019 Ten Tips for Nonprofit Social Media Success

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White Paper: Top Ten Tips for Nonprofit Social Media Success

Steven A. Shapiro, PMP, CSSGB

VP Communications for PMI Atlanta

February 13, 2014


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Steven A. Shapiro, PMP, CSSGB, [email protected], @sshapiroATT 2

INTRODUCTION

Increasingly more and more non-profits are turning to Social Media to drive interest,

philanthropy, fundraising and simply connecting with their members, communities and other

interested parties. This makes sense, given that nonprofit organizations would seek any way

possible to move their philanthropy forward and drive engagement. This direction was

highlighted in a 2012 academic paper by Kristen Lovejoy and Gregory D. Saxton at SUNY

Buffalo entitled, Information, Community, and Action: How Nonprofit Organizations Use

Social Media. In the paper they write in reference to nonprofit social media use, stating, The

advent of social media has opened up even greater possibilities for interpersonal and

organizational communication (p. 4).

However, much like riding a bike, learning to swim, or driving a car, you cant justjump

in and expect to know what you are doing. Using social media effectively is a skill and using it to

drive nonprofit success, a more in-depth understanding yet. The drive towards effective

engagement through social media use is an iterative process and a tricky one. Even experienced

organizations have had missteps. In late 2013, Home Depot tweeted what they thought would be

a humorous picture, it was not. The incident was captured in a SocialMediaToday.com case

study which recounted the incident, The corporations main account tweeted, Which drummer

is not like the other? and accompanied a photo of two African-American men flanking a man

wearing a gorilla mask (socialmediatoday.com, 2013, 3). The agency and the staffer were both

fired.

What follows are ten tips to begin your social media journey. These are the starting point

and should serve as discussion points within any organization to begin a dialogue that leads to a

defined Social Media Plan and/or Social Media Policy that is unique to each of them.


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TOP TEN TIPS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA

1. Social Media is a dialogue, not a broadcastSocial media is a two way conversation between you AND those that follow you as well

as you AND those you follow. Engaging thought leaders and influencers in your area of

focus will help increase your reach and validates your social credibility.

2. Build networks one at a timeAs mentioned in the introduction, the move into social media for nonprofit organizations

is not a dive into the deep end, but begins by sticking your toes in the water and slowing

entering the pool. Build a following on one platform before moving into others it is

critical to your success. It is also wise to start with entrenched platforms (Twitter,

LinkedIn, Facebook) before attempting newer platforms (Instagram, Path, Google+).

3. Engage with a constant drip, not a fire-hoseA common misconception is that you need to be sharing as much content as you can in

bursts so people see you are active; however, this leads to fatigue and can cause people to

stop following your brand or worse, ignore it. Slow and steady wins the race. Share your

own content on a somewhat regular interval, then share information you come across

from other thought leaders in your space as you come across it.

4. Gratitude and responsivenessRemember that every person that follows you is making an active choice to do so, much

like in real life networking it is important to validate that choice by showing gratitude.

This can take different shapes on different platforms. Also, dont wait to send responses

to inquiries or in thanking people.


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5. Stay humorousNo one will follow you if you are robotic or serious all the time. Add humor and a human

side to what you share.

6. Define success before you beginIf you dont know where you are going, how do you know when you have arrived? It is

important to define success for your social media foray from the beginning, preferably before

you even setup an account. Are you seeking to gain followers to evangelize your message?

Are you looking to spread the word about a plight that drives fundraising?

7.

Measure, adjust, repeat

Once you have defined what success looks like in by creating a social media plan, measuring

your progress towards those goals is critical. There are numerous tools online to measure

successGoogle Analytics, Klout, Kred, among others. The platform you are using will help

to define the tool you use.

8. Stay within and protect your brandIf you are a local entity of a larger global organization (as with PMI Atlanta) it is important

that you are vigilant about ensuring you follow any guidelines set forth by that organization

for logo representation and naming convention. You also want to ensure you are consistent

across all platforms to ensure those followers engaging your organization recognize a valid

account from something else.

9. Automate, automate, automateNonprofit organizations have a unique challenge that businesses dont face. Volunteers have

very limited time to spend. They have lives, families, careers, other responsibilities pulling at

their time. They should focus that time creating the best content possible, not posting that


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content in a variety of places. Tools such as IFTTT and Hootsuite help to automate content

distribution. IFTTT performs a defined action when another action occurs. An example of

this is PMI Atlanta, where we set it up that anything that publishes to our website is

automatically tweeted out, saving time for our volunteers. Hootsuite enables scheduling of

posts in advance. You build out a spreadsheet through a provided template and then upload

it, posts will automatically be made at the time you define.

10.Have funLastly, have fun. The entire concept of social media is to be social. When you enjoy the

process of engaging those following you on social media that comes across as genuine and

helps to increase your exposure, which can lead to increased sharing of your content and

even increased fundraising.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Shapiro is an eMBA candidate at the Jack Welch Management Institute, was

named in 2013 to participate as a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) Social

Media Advisory Committee, and has served since 2012 as the Vice President of Communications

for the Atlanta Chapter of PMI, the third largest chapter in the World. Steven began his service

for nonprofits in 2008 when he served as a Volunteer Coordinator for the Georgia Sierra Club. In

2009 he joined the Board of a nonprofit called Architecture for Humanity Atlanta where he

started as Volunteer Director, but immediately recognized a gap and established the position of

Technical Director during which he established the use of social media as a tool. He was named

the 2010 Co-Volunteer of the Year for AFHA. He is also employed by AT&T, where he works

as a Senior Data Analyst.


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REFERENCES

Dietrich, G. (2013, November 13). Home Depot Crisis: Social Media Requires Being Human.

RSS. Retrieved February 6, 2014, from

http://socialmediatoday.com/ginidietrich/1914716/home-depot-crisis-social-media-

requires-being-human

Lovejoy, K., & Saxton, G. D. (2012). Information, Community, and Action: How Nonprofit

Organizations Use Social Media. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01576.x

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Ten Tips for Nonprofit Social Media Success