Clairity Click-it Memorial Day Edition: Let’s Get Social

Click it!

Since Memorial Day in the U.S. is often a very social holiday (think picnics and barbecues and family get-togethers) I thought I’d offer you a click-it with helpful tips on social media. Heck, love it or hate it, it’s not going away. So we may as well celebrate what it makes possible! I lead off with two of my own posts shared on the Maximize Social Business blog. Then I share other articles —  sometimes practical and sometimes thought provoking — from around the web, all including best practices used by businesses and nonprofits alike. Have a great week-end, social or otherwise, wherever you are; whatever you do.

Click-it: 4 Killer Ways to Get Your Nonprofit Shared on Social Media

Click-it: Another 6 Killer Ways to Get Your Nonprofit Shared on Social Media

Click-it: 11 Tactics to Get More Click-Throughs from Social Media by Neil Patel on QuickSprout offers actionable tips to increase the interaction with your tweets. Here they are in a nutshell (there’s plenty more detail in the full article):

1. Include a picture with your tweet (he got a 108% increase in Twitter traffic!)
2. Space out your tweets
3. Only share great content
4. Follow the 80/20 rule
5. Place links near the beginning
6. Don’t post on FB without a photo (you’ll get 104% more comments, 54% more likes, and 84% more click-throughs; even more if you include a call to action within the image)
7. Use hashtags, especially on Twitter and Instagram (you’ll get twice the engagement); no more than two
8. Post when your peeps are online (Simply Measured has created a few tools to help determine best posting times for your posts)
9. Be succinct to get the most clicks (71 – 100 characters on Twitter; 40 on Facebook; 60 on G+)
10. Choose words with care (the article has 20 re-tweetable words plus most shareable FB words)
11. Test

Click-it: The Best Fonts & Colors in the Most Shareable Social Media Images. Speaking of including a picture with your tweet (see above), here’s an article from Buffer that shows you exactly how to maximize success. Make sure you send this along to whoever handles your social media.

Click-it: 12.5% Of Email Doesn’t Get To In-Box. If this article from the Nonprofit Times doesn’t persuade you that you need a multi-channel communications strategy, I don’t know what will. People are so inundated with “stuff” these days, and they get their information from so many places, that it’s often a total crap [pardon the language] shoot as to whether they’ll open what you send them on any given day. This can be a tragedy for you if you’ve put all your eggs in one basket. To make matters worse, check out Half of Your Email Subscribers Are Ignoring You from Network for Good’s Nonprofit Marketing blog. This article reveals that new research from the 2015 M+R Benchmarks Study tells us that, on average, almost half (45%) of small nonprofits’ email subscribers are inactive.

Social Media Tips Galore to Help Your Nonprofit Do More and More

Click-It: Top Nonprofit Tips for Social Media. Ritu Sharma, co-founder and E.D. of Social Media for Nonprofits, guest posts on Network 4 Good. Here’s one practical tip: How do you coordinate efforts? A content or editorial calendar is a simple tool that clarifies who is posting what, where, and when: a simple spreadsheet or a Google calendar suffices nicely.

Click-It: Say This 5 Times Fast: Your Twitter Marketing Cheat Sheet. Amazingly wonderful, useful tips from the folks at Steam Feed. Did you know that tweets with 1-2 hashtags get 21% higher average engagement, while tweets with 3 or more hashtags get 17% less engagement? Learn more in this article!

Click-It: Digital Campaign of the Month. Here’s an intriguing idea shared by Margaret McNulty of The Fundraising Collective about how social media might be used for finding new prospects and, ultimately, converting those folks to donors. Check it out. You may get a thunderclap!

Click-It: Measure the emotional marketing value of your headlines with this tool. From Social Media Slant and Cendrine Marrouat comes this cool tool to help you analyze the emotional value of your headlines.

Click-It: 16 Tools to Help You Manage an Impeccable Social Presence [Infographic] Mitt Ray shares this helpful infographic from Socially Stacked with the absolutely most useful tools to help you minimize the time you spend and maximize your impact.

Click-It: 3 Donor Acquisition Tips Everyone Learns on Their First Date. This is a great piece by Michael Beahm on npEngage outlining how three ‘first date’ principles can help you find new donors using social media: (1) put yourself out there; (2) keep the conversation going, and (3) ask for a second date.

I’ll leave you with a word of advice from author and social media expert, Jay Baer, who reminds us..

“Smart companies use social to turn customers into fans, and fans into volunteer marketers. They worry less about squeezing every nickel and click out of each tweet and status update. The more you sell, the less you sell.”

For More Social Media Tips…

Get my updated  ‘Hop on Board’ Nonprofit Social Media Guide. You’ll get 27  full pages with more than 100 tips, resources and tools to help you with your resolve to fully embrace social media for your nonprofit.  Get started today!

Photo: Flickr, Isaac Torronterra