Six lessons in successful social media use
- Tue, January 31 2012
- Filed under: Social networking and web 2.0
I heard a great presentation yesterday from DonorsChoose at the Social Media for Nonprofits conference. Marketing Manager Anna Doherty shared six lessons her organization - which is fantastic at engagement - applies to its social media work.
1. Join the conversation around the cause: She listens first - always a good rule for social media - and chimes in on conversations others are having about her cause.
2. Share content and collateral that’s unique to the organization. One of the strengths of DonorsChoose is its stewardship. When you donate more than $50, you get wonderful thank you notes from students helped by your contribution. She posts some of the best (and cutest) notes on the DonorsChoose Facebook page.
3. Celebrating big news. Don’t be meek about posting good news - like crossing fundraising milestones. Give your community cause to celebrate.
4. Share staff culture. DonorsChoose staff tweet each other messages about birthdays and other events to reflect their fun, tight-knit culture.
5. Remember the medium. Think big picture – people on Facebook respond to different things than Twitter. Anna tried trivia questions on both, and they were popular on Facebook but flopped on Twitter.
6. Balance quality and frequency. Don’t just post for the sake of posting. Anna learned the hard way that if she posted because she felt she must and the content wasn’t meaningful, it lowered engagement levels.
Good advice.
And although this wasn’t on Anna’s list, she was doing it, so I’m adding it:
Set a goal and test and measure against it. DonorsChoose counts conversion to donations - with followers or likes secondary aims. That helps them know where to focus, what to do and how to measure.
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Comments
Great post Katya! The piece of advice that struck me the most was to not be meek and really celebrate achievements. If you aren’t proud of what you and your org has or is accomplishing, why should everyone else be?
also keep an eye on google for 2012 and their social media or google+. they are going to try and compete heavily with facebook. social meadia marketing is about to take over the search engines. google is aware of this to watch for googles responses this year.
Nice post you got there. I think the point here is you know how to listen, share, should think big, know how to balance and know how to celebrate or have fun.
Very good tips, I espcially like the one about tweeting staff members about birthdays etc I feel if you connect with everyone like you said and keep a good rapport up you’ll have no problems.