A new survey finds that more and more nonprofits are embracing social media, although many admit they need help. The research comes from the just released Nonprofit Social Network survey, which can be downloaded here. Close to 1,000 nonprofits of different sizes, budgets, and missions were polled (from 2/20/09 – 4/15/09) about their use of online social networking tools.
Facebook is the most popular tool, with about 75% usage. Next came YouTube and Twitter.
80% of the organizations have a staff member spend a quarter of their time on social media work.
40% have allocated funds for the effort.
55% plan to increase social media staffing.
Another trend shows that nonprofit leaders want to make their time spent on social media more productive. But 44% say they are being held back by a lack of expertise. As a result, 27% say getting additional training would make better achieve their goals.
To immediately improve your social media skills, take advantage of the learning tools on my Resources page.
Sometimes blogging is about preparing for a situation. You can be pretty sure that at some point during an average year, there will be some sort of financial scandal in the news. It could be in the nonprofit world or the private sector. But it will be bad news that people will talk about a lot and it may make them think differently about how they spend their money. That could be bad news for those who rely on the support of the community for operation and program expenses.
When this news breaks, you need to be able to immediately use social media to tell your donors about your organization’s financial processes and health. You want to keep them from letting the big scandal have a trickle down effect on your bottom line. Share with your supporters how your organization spends it’s money. How much of what’s raised goes to administrative and fundraising costs and how much goes to help people in the community? What processes do you have to prevent fraud? While this may seem dull, people want to know that their gifts are being used well and there’s no financial hanky panky going on. Are you nervous about sharing this? Then that probably says a lot about the state of your organization.
Write this post today but don’t publish it yet on your blog. Wait until the bad financial news arrives. That way, when it does, all you’ll have to do is hit one button and your post will be published. You’ll be seen as treating a tough situation proactively and you’ll beat your competition to the punch. Too many organizations wait too long to respond to bad news. Time, for nonprofits, is money.
Whenit comes to social media, try to think about your own life. Have you ever been at a friend’s house and endured an unending series of family pictures? You kept looking at them because you wanted to be polite to your host and you realized the pics were very important to them. But on the inside you were dreaming of running for the door.
The same idea can apply to YouTube videos. It’s good that you have tremendous excitement about your organization but you need to think like an outsider. On YouTube, you’re limited to 10 minutes* for a video. I would suggest not going over five minutes. Probably your best bet would to keep it under three. As a point of comparison, most local news stories are no longer than a minute and a half in length. Let’s face it: People have short attention spans.
With YouTube, you want to give people a taste of your organization, not a full meal. It’s okay if you have more to share. You can use that material in other videos. But if you overwhelm the viewer, they’ll likely skip watching the video or plan on watching it when they have more time, which often never happens.
To find out more about producing your own YouTube video, read this article.Need help in brainstorming ideas? Click here.
* YouTube has updated the length of it’s clips. For more, click here.
Some nonprofit leaders have asked me why they need to have a Facebook page if they already have a website. To them, it seems to to be an unnecessary duplication. It’s not.
Think about how many visitors come to your website every day. Now think how many people go to Facebook in a day. By creating a page on Facebook you can quickly reach those who are fans of your organization when you have news to pass on. In the past, on Facebook, users would only see updates from their friends, and by that I mean actual people. Now, things have changed and if you’re a fan of a group, that group’s updates will appear with all the other news.
Facebook can also be quickly updated. Unlike most websites, you don’t need to know computer code or pay someone who does. So your website can remain a bit more static (with things like mission statements, contact info, and staffing info) and you can use Facebook to promote more timely news. This could include pictures from an event, updates to your latest fundraising campaign, and news about your organization’s area of expertise.
Think of Facebook as an extension of your web presence that can help strengthen the ties between you and your supporters. If you have good news to pass on, don’t wait to send it out to the world.
As a nonprofit, you want people to be in the habit of learning new and exciting things about you. With that in mind, I would suggest you blog at least once a week. More often would be good but for many, once a week is a habit that’s easy to develop.
The most important thing is that you stick to your schedule, whatever that may be. Don’t post a lot in week one and then go a month before saying anything else. TV networks build an audience by airing programs consistently. The same applies to your blog as well as other social media tools like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
You also want to make sure that your blog posts contain good information. Don’t blog if you have nothing to say. That wastes your reader’s time and makes them not want to follow you. In a future post I’ll talk more about using your entire organization to help you generate meaningful updates.
To send me your questions about social media, email me at tvguy@kenokel.com
Imagine if you had a friend and then the friend had some sort of life challenge. Would you completely cut all ties to the person?
That happens too often between donors and nonprofits. When the cash stops coming, the nonprofit assumes that the former donor wants nothing to do with them. But that can be a dangerous assumption. During these economic times, it’s more and more common for a donor to lose his or her job. As a result, a longtime donor may suddenly disappear. That person may be willing to resume their support of your organization once their financial situation improves. But if you loose contact with them, it’s much easier to move on to another charity that may give them more attention.
Social media allows you a cost efficient way to stay in touch with all of your donors. For instance, by using a Facebook page, you can keep the donor informed of everything that’s going in your organization. You have a way to stay connected that doesn’t rely on the person holding onto a job or working for a company that supports your cause. Use information to maintain an ongoing level of engagement with your fans.
How would you like to find out what is being said about your organization on the web? How would you like to have topic research sent directly to your email?
Google Alerts can make both of those things happen with hardly any effort on your part. To get started, go toGoogle Alerts.You’ll then enter a search term, decide how big of an area you want Google to search (I pick the comprehensive choice), how often you want to receive updates, and an email address where the messages will be sent.
Let’s say I work for XYX Charity. If I set up an alert for that search term, I’ll receive an email from Google that give me a link to wherever those words appear on the web. It’s a great way to find out right away if someone is saying something good or bad about you online.
You can also use Google Alerts for research. I like to find out the latest in studies about workplace stress. So I’ve set up an alert for, workplace + stress + study. Now when those terms come up on the web, I get an email that again points me toward the source. I can then share the study with my supporters through my blog or Twitter. It makes me appear to be the ultimate expert on workplace stress. Try this with subject that are tied to your nonprofit.
Sometimes, you’ll receive alerts that don’t quite fit what you’re looking for. But those take a second to delete and the usefulness of the Google Alerts far outweigh any imperfections. And Google Alerts can be changed or deleted as needed.
As part of your social media strategy, you’ll want to copy and post links. These links could lead people to pictures you’ve taken, articles, or videos. But most of these addresses are pretty long. They take up a lot of space on a page plus they make using tools like Twitter difficult because there you’re limited to 140 characters. So you can’t afford to have too many of those characters taken up by a web address.
Enter the world of tiny urls. A “url” is another way of saying the address of a specific page. On the web there are several sites where you can take a long web address and have it shortened. I use the site, www.tinyurl.com although there are many others to choose from.
I’ve cut a 63 character url down to 25. That’s much easier to use in my posts. The old and new addresses are both now linked so no matter which one you use, you’ll send people to the same place.
A lot of people ask me how they should be using Twitter. The micro blogging service has had an explosion of popularity recently and nonprofits want to get in on the action. But should they Twitter like a teenager, with messages like, “Should I eat pizza tonight?”
Use Twitter to boost interest in your organization.
Think of Twitter as a way to pass on headlines to your supporters. With the 140 character limit, there’s not a lot you can say. Really, it’s about teasing things, like you see anchors on the news do before a commercial. You want to capture people’s interest. There’s no room for longwinded sentences. Get to the point and let me know why I should care. Here are a few suggestions for your tweets:
If a new story appears about your area of expertise, post a link to it. In this case you are showing that you are the go-to group for your topic.
You can post requests for things like volunteers. Make sure you don’t just ask for help but give people the contact info they need to get involved.
If you take pictures of an event and post them on your website or blog, send out a tweet, telling people to see if they’re featured in one of the snapshots.
Always respect those who follow you on Twitter. Never post just to post. If you bore people, they won’t continue to follow you.
A key to making the most of Twitter is the use of tiny urls. We’ll talk about that next time.
Posted by Ken Okel 
