Your burning social media questions answered
- Sat, October 29 2011
- Filed under: Social networking and web 2.0
Have you ever wondered–
Is it worth it for my organization to be using social media?
How do I decide whether to Tweet/Facebook/blog?
What amount of time should I spend on it?
What will I get out of it?
There’s a great new eGuide available free from Idealware that covers these topics. Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide is an accessible guide to assessing what to do and planning how to do it (complete with workbook). I read the whole thing today, and I think it’s worth your time. In the meantime, I’ll be posting today and tomorrow about its contents.
Today, I’ll cover the answers to those questions I asked at the start of this post.
Is it worth it for my organization to be using social media?
According to the guide (and I agree), the answer is a resounding, “It depends.”
Social media has two values – it can enable you to hear what people are saying about you online, and it can help you host and participate in conversations. It’s not a way to broadcast a message or a huge fundraising tool. It’s a social channel that you need to see as having intrinsic value. As the guide notes, social media is a journey, not a destination.
The key questions are, does your audience use social media and is that journey of use to you? That’s what you need to ask – and weigh that against the investment required.
How do I decide whether to Tweet/Facebook/blog?
You first decide who you want to reach, which tools they use and what you want to accomplish. Then the right tool for the job will be much clearer.
“Different tools have different audiences. Facebook tends to be better at reaching those in and right out of college using it for personal reasons, while Twitter is likely to be more useful to reach older professionals. But more than the demographics of a particular channel, you need to know what channels your supporters and potential supporters are using. How do you find this out? Try asking them. Talk to your staff, board and supporters about the sites they use, or survey your community to find out,” the guide says.
In terms of deciding what you want to accomplish, the guide notes that many organizations enter the world of social media with goals that are too nebulous to measure, like “building awareness” or “spreading the word.” Make your goals specific, measureable, realistic, relevant to your mission and time-specific.
What amount of time should I spend on it?
The guide surveyed organizations that use a lot of social media and broke down their return on investment to arrive at a recommended amount of time per medium. The most successful 75 organizations were spending two hours per week, per channel. (An example of a channel is Flickr or Twitter or Facebook). I think that sounds about right – except for blogging, which is a bigger time commitment! (I can attest personally.)
What will I get out of it?
If you’ve done a good job setting goals, then you’ll know what you’re getting out of it! The guide does give you some good reality checks, though. It’s reasonable to expect a positive impact in terms of website traffic and advocacy actions. Don’t expect much with fundraising. Getting volunteers or attendees for events, like raising money, requires concerted cultivation efforts. One-off announcements on Facebook or LinkedIn aren’t enough by themselves.