5 Ideas to Build, Sustain and Utilize Your Social Networking Communities for Nonprofits
By Lon S. Cohen Technorati Profile
I work for a nonprofit full time as the Director of Communications. I’ve spent almost a year now building the Social Media presence at The ALS Association Greater New York Chapter and I even won an award from our national organization for my efforts. I believe that nonprofits are a shoe in for Social Media because of the opportunity to build a community around a cause. Here I offer five ideas for nonprofits to consider when managing their plan to embrace Social Networking. I hope to build out a special section with advice just for non prof
its but this is a good place to start.
Invite your community to contribute.
Give your community a way to express themselves by opening up your Social Media for them. Web 2.0 is about conversation, sharing and user created content so use your established Social Media outlets to give people a voice especially if your mission is to help others. Sometimes it’s important to give the people you are helping a voice because that may be the only lifeline they have. Let recipients of your charity talk about the impact your organization has made on their lives. Do you donate technology to schools in third world countries? Then let them use that technology to update people on their progress. Remember those photos and letters that the charities on television used to promise you’d get if you donated to help feed the hungry children? That was a perfect interactive model. You can do that with a blog and a Flickr account. It connects your followers and fans directly to a human face. Or let donors speak about why they donate. Many times a donor has a specific reason or connection to your charity. Let them share that with the would through their own words. No matter if you’re in healthcare, technology, or conservation the specialists in the field you are working in can usually tell great stories about the good things they do. Remind people to send, add and tag photos to you and on your Facebook fan page or Flickr account. You’ll also find plenty of people already advancing your mission online in their own way. Ask them to blog or tweet about your cause. What nonprofits do best is create goodwill and inspire others. Social Media offers people a way to share that inspiration. The best thing that can happen is to get goodwill to go viral.
Don’t make Social Media an island unto its own.
Make a direct connection between online networking to offline events and gatherings. Offer substantial volunteer opportunities at your events, attendance to support groups, and invitations to informational presentations to your community. Your Social Media presence should always support the work you do in real life. Volunteering is the crux of the success of many nonprofits. Use those connections you’ve spent so much time fostering to bring people together. And not just to attend another fundraiser. Ask for people to help you do the real things that need to get done for your organization, you may be surprised at the results. On the flip side, at your events and meetings, let people know about your Social Networking. This will help keep people connected to you in between events. Tell them about all the ways they can see or hear about everything going on with your organization through any number of Social Networking websites. If your constituents aren’t very web savvy, offer a real life how-to-connect session and invite people to learn about all the ways your organization reaches out on the internet to have conversations and alert them to important happenings.
Highlight contributions by people on your website/social media spaces.
If you do your building correctly, use best practices and have patience, soon you’ll have a sizable community gathered around many different channels. You might ask yourself, what you can do with this community of people. One thing is to highlight the accomplishments of members. Your supporters go out of their way to help, whether it’s a hard day of work volunteering, throwing a community fundraiser on their own or advancing your mission in one a number of other ways. For the most part they don’t expect to be lavished with attention for their efforts because they do it for a higher purpose. But everyone likes to see their name in lights. When you find those special people use your network to highlight what they are doing. Not only that, use it as an opportunity to teach others how to do the same thing and learn from the trials and tribulations as well as success.
Take a lesson from Zappos.com.
Use your Social Media program for “customer service.” That means listen to your community, which in turn means you have to be attentive to their needs. Your community is filled with complex individuals with unique motivations for being there, opinions they want to share and suggestions to give. You do not have to take every one and use them especially is you have limited fund and resources but explain that and then let them know how they could make things happen on their own if they feel passionately. Your nonprofit will make mistakes or need to attend to bumps in the road. Watch the comments on your blog, the wall posts on your Facebook page and the @ replies on your Twitter account. Once in a while, ask for feedback directly from the community. Sometimes people have an idea brewing in the back of their mind but are afraid to offer it up unless the opportunity is opened to them. One good way to get feedback is to put up an anonymous survey. Encourage people to take the survey and then really listen to the feedback. It will help you tweak your message and the delivery system for your information. And it does feel good when someone tells you you’re doing a good job. But just as you can learn from constructive criticism, you can also learn from kudos. If people tell you a certain aspect of your programs are fantastic and unique then maybe you can capitalize on it even more.
Forget the so-called “Obama effect” of micro payments.
Heresy! I know but this doesn’t work for anything less than a broadly appealing campaign within a finite time period and a sense of urgency. Unless you can fit into that criteria then forgo the idea of micro payments adding up to millions of dollars and try the “soft sell” instead. Take a lesson from the street corner performers. People in your community are inundated with requests from your organization already with direct mail appeals, fund raising events, etc. Learn from the street performers you might see downtown in any city. They don’t make a big sign asking for donations. They “ask” without asking. Putting a hat on the floor next to them speaks for itself. Do the same thing with a donate button or a link to your “how to help” page when you tweet or put up a Facebook status update. Use your Social Media to empower and inform. Tell a story. Make an emotional connection. Make them care so much they can’t help but give. Then have your donate button or a link in discreet yet obvious places. But be sure it’s everywhere so when they’re ready to give they can easily find out how. Make the message and imagery of your donate button as consistent throughout your websites as much as you can. Social Media is not an optimal place to raise money as a long-term plan but it’s phenomenal at raising awareness, which facilittes giving. Once you’ve capture the attention, the generating donations should come next, not because it’s hip or trendy to make a micro payment to your cause but because you have engaged them, tugged on their heart strings and made your cause personally important to them.