Five Ways to Convince Your Non Profit to Focus on Social Media

Are you struggling to convince naysayers in your non profit to take social media seriously?
Use these five tips to convince them to pay attention:

Step One: Show them this video: social media is NOT a FAD!

 

Step Two: Find case studies of social media use by organizations like you

 

When I tried to convince my daughter’s school that they should have a presence on Facebook, I did a quick study to find other schools like ours that were effectively using Facebook to stay in touch with alumni of the school. Seeing hundreds of alums share heart warming stories and stay connected to the school quickly convinced the principal to get involved with social media as well.

Step Three: Set small goals and iterate your way to success

Sticking with our school example. A first goal for my daughter’s school is to create the Facebook page, assign somebody inside the organization to coordinate regular updates and to add a link to the Facebook page on all school staff’s e-mails so people know about the page and start liking it. Gathering Facebook fans is a great first goals. Next the school assigned somebody from each outgoing class to be in charge of posting updates on Facebook and, more importantly, to make sure that all classmates “like” the school alumni page. What worked for this school could work for your non-profit as well. Add your page link to all your communications with existing and prospective supporters. Instead of student and alumni, perhaps you can find a small group of volunteers to be in charge of posting updates about a local chapter and to encourage neighbors to follow the news.

Step Four: Show results (compare before and after)

Tell them what you are going to do. Tell them what you did. Then tell them again. Clear communications of goals and results is a proven management technique to keep people in the boat with your project.  It’s probably best to stick with existing performance indicators. If you have defined success within your non profit as the number of new supporters you sign up each months, or perhaps the number of individual donors, then measure this same number both before and after social media implementation to show progress. Also collect some anecdotes to illustrate the success: quotes from people spreading your word on Facebook for example.

Step Five: When all else fails …

When all else fails, remind them of the discussions happening around Non Profit land in 1999: Do we really need a web site? Today’s version of this is “Do we really need a Facebook page?”.  There are already organizations who forego a website all together and decide to live on Facebook only: when I organized a cross-country trip for my family this past summer, I found many small dude ranches and B&B’s who exclusively promote their business on Facebook (where most of their customers live). Easier than staging and maintaining a website. Your supporters may not yet shun you for not having a Facebook page, but think how strange it would be if you didn’t have a website today …

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Good luck!