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Breaking News about Your Nonprofit’s Social Media Strategy: It Doesn't Measure Up

XTRA! XTRA: NEWS YOU CAN’T USE

This just in: “Many nonprofits post on Twitter throughout the day to keep constituents up to date.”  Woo-hoo! I’m jumping for joy! Over the moon! Popping champagne corks! I’m….

Wait just a dog-gone minute…  Is this really a news story? What does this really tell me? How does this help me? Well, perhaps if I read the story I’ll…

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What story?  Oh… this is a real headline, sent to me by my friend Jimmy (a really smart marketing guy who works in the business sector), for an article that appeared in eMarketer which claims to provide “the world’s top brands, agencies and media companies with the most complete view of digital marketing available.”  Yet really all the article does is report on a study by Vertical Response showing that nonprofits were more likely to be present on social media channels than small businesses surveyed in a similar study.

So, great.  We’ve got some data on how nonprofits are behaving digitally.  They’re putting up Facebook pages and starting Twitter accounts. Whoop-de-do.

What we do not have is a fully fleshed out narrative that tells us why nonprofits are behaving this way, who they’re targeting with their social conversations or what they’re getting out of it. We have no knowledge of their engagement plan or their engagement metrics. As I told my friend Jimmy, the fact that nonprofits are doing incrementally more on social media doesn’t really tell much of a story.

April Fools Day is Coming: Is Your Nonprofit’s Social Media Ready?

If any of the following apply to you, your nonprofit is not ready for the 21^st century. The cure? Read Monday’s post to get serious and avoid being pranked — or spanked! — for failing to embrace the fact that we’re all social businesses now. Truly, it’s time to get serious (just not today; for now, have a little fun, a super good week-end and… get determined after April 1^st). Let’s get in the spirit!

Do you:

6 Ways Your Nonprofit Wins the Game of Social Media

First you get in the game. This should go without saying, but I still hear too many executive directors saying they don’t want to play. Folks: you gotta play to win. And it’s not the lottery.  Your chances of winning are really good.  It’s a game of skill, not luck.

Then you acknowledge that everyone is getting into the game.  So you won’t get noticed just because you’re on the field. An October survey of U.S. nonprofits by VerticalResponse found that more than three out of five nonprofits reported spending more time on social media than they did a year ago. Nearly two out of five reported devoting six or more hours per week to social media. Ninety-six percent of nonprofits said they were on Facebook; 80% of these organizations reported posting on the site multiple times per week. Twitter also gets significant attention from nonprofits. The site was used by nearly three-quarters of nonprofits, and the organizations were more likely to post several times a day on Twitter (19.5%) vs. Facebook (13.8%).

Just because you’re flitting and twitting around doesn’t mean you’re getting anywhere fast. It reminds me a bit of the big pile-up on the football field.  An amorphous mass.

5 STeps to Killer Social Media (Part 2): What Mom Knows Best

One thing Moms know is that children usually know when adults are only half-listening. Just as kids can feel frustrated, unheard, and at times even und when this happens, so can our constituents feel ignored and unsatisfied when we merely broadcast information without asking for or responding to feedback.. Listening to constituents with our full…

Is Your Marketing on Remote Control: What to Do With Too Many Channels

We’re a nation afflicted with remote controlitis.  With so many marketing channels from which to choose, we constantly switch from one to the next.  We don’t focus as much as we used to, and we’re certainly not loyal to one media over another. First, a moment to define this disease. You suffer from remote controlitis…

Occupy Philanthropy: How Social Media May Shift Hierarchical Giving Patterns and Empower the 99% to be part of the change they want to see

You say you want a revolution? A lot of us in the public sector have to confess we’ve long had a affair with our top tier major donors.  And this may be a problem. We’ve entered an era of power to the people –which dovetails nicely with the definition of philanthropy, from Greek phil…