Earlier this spring, I gave a talk on nonprofit social media to the DC chapter of the American Marketing Association.
Now, I’m a tech guy, so it was a little intimidating – and fun – to speak to a houseful of marketing folks. (I’m still not sure I was their first choice… :))
But it was a great crowd, and Em Hall provided counterpoint from the messaging perspective. We were even asked to present again at at #DCWeek a month later, which we happily did.
The slides from that talk are worth sharing because they start from a point that is too often overlooked as nonprofits scramble onto Facebook or Twitter or what-have-you
There are lots of examples here of high-impact campaigns. Some, like Pepsi Refresh, take lots of money. Some, like, invisiblepeople.tv, run mostly on passion. </p>
In approaching social media, the most important question to ask about your organization is “What are we trying to accomplish?
Here are some perfectly good answers –
- More donors
- Press coverage in local outlets
- Press coverage in national outlets
- Better search engine positioning
- More traffic to our website
- Collaborators
- Ideas for how we can work better
- More email list subscribers
- Evangelists for your cause
It’s so important to ask, though, because different social media tactics can accomplish different things. A dynamite Facebook following, for example, won’t improve your website’s search engine positioning.