Building a Social Media Strategy for Your Nonprofit

A new report by Charity Dynamics talks about some trends we can expect to see in 2012. According to those surveyed, the report tells us 73 percent of nonprofit organizations expect to address a social media strategy in the new year. This suggests that simply having a Twitter account and/or Facebook page is no longer considered to be enough for fundraising organizations.

It’s exciting to hear that nonprofit organizations are starting to think strategically about what they’re doing with new media. It is a tool that can have a substantial impact on their communications and overall fundraising success. So what is a social media strategy? At BWF_social, we work with organizations to develop their own strategies, which generally consist of the following five components…

Goals: What do you hope to accomplish through your use of social media? Is your goal to increase online giving? Or are you more focused on boosting awareness or improving perception?

Resources: Do you have the personnel to manage the daily conservations taking place online? Do you have resources (people and technological) to produce quality written and visual content?

Tactics: What are you going to post? What is the personality of your organization going to be? Social media – especially for nonprofits – is about forming relationships. What does your audience want and how do they want to connect?

Tools: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube? Beyond the “big 3” what else can your organization leverage to accomplish your goals? Pinterest? Instagram? Google+?

A system of Measurement: Last, but certainly not least, it’s important to know if what you’re doing is working. Whether you go about this via software that measures sentiment, awareness and perception or if you’re more concerned about dollars and cents (i.e. online giving), it’s important to know how to measure the effectiveness of your social media work.

Build it Together

A comprehensive social media strategy works when it’s integrated into every aspect of your communication efforts. If you have multiple staff, volunteers, and/or supporters, it’s important that they are as much a part of building this strategy as possible. After all, they will be the people implementing it on a daily basis.

An integrated approach to a social media strategy also serves as a way to break down silos that often exist in larger organizations. Bringing members from those silos together builds teamwork and helps create a strategy that has immediate buy-in from all corners of your organization. If everyone feels they have an ownership stake in the process, they’re more likely to adhere to the strategy they helped build.

For more information on social media in fundraising, visit BWF.com.

Advertisement