8 Steps of Your Effective Nonprofit Social Media Routine

A routine is a sequence of actions regularly followed; a fixed program. Too often, I find that nonprofits engage in social media along more of a catch-as-catch-can program. Nothing fixed about it.

To maximize social media productivity your practices must become habitual. And, of course, your habits must be good ones if you’re to be successful.

I’ve found that successful nonprofit marketers have 8 common social media and content marketing routines that get them valuable actions.

Take a moment to consider whether or not you do you these things systematically.

After all, you don’t spend time on marketing communications just for your own amusement, do you?

• Hopefully, you know precisely what you want folks to think, feel and do once you’ve messaged them. Check?
• Then you put consistent strategies in place to achieve your objectives. Check?

If you’re not quite sure you’ve got good social media habits in place, take a few minutes to introspect.

Read this post — and maybe the two posts I contributed to Maximize Social Business on which this is based: 8 Routine Social Media Practices of Successful Nonprofits and 4 Nonprofit Social Media Habits that Unlock Valuable Actions.

Your 8-Step Routine:

1. Build meaningful relationships
2. Be constituent-centered
3. Use psychology of persuasion and neuroscience
4. Tell a story
5. Get visual
6. Connect with influencers
7. Create a balance of desired action responses
8. Measure your effectiveness; adjust

Build Relationships with Potential Donors

The first four routines are geared to assure you stop talking at folks and begin building relationships with folks.

What selling and fundraising have in common is relationship-building. Fundraising has always been about building relationships with people who are, or will be, ready, willing and able to give.

Increasingly, nonprofits are leveraging technology to build relationships with potential supporters.

Get the Actions You Seek

The next four routines are about assuring that once you connect you get desired, specific results.

Generally, your goals will fall into one or more of these three categories: (1) create awareness about your mission, (2) drive purchases from those who benefit from your mission, and (3) raise funds to sustain your mission. Each category demands different calls to action.

Stop winging your social media strategy. Decide where you’re headed; plan ahead to assure you’re not wasting your time and energy to get someplace you don’t really want to go. To paraphrase Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll very likely get there.”

Ultimately, you’ll achieve success when you align your values with your constituents’ values. When the content you offer is content they can use. When you make your story their story.

That’s the stuff of which successful nonprofit marketing is made.

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