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Charities are no longer asking if they should be using social media, instead they want to know how to make it work for them.
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Have you found yourself checking frantically how many likes or retweets your latest social media post received?
If so, you are obsessing about the wrong thing: the real measure of your success is not how many people you reach – it’s how many people share your content or take an action based on it.
“You’re going to be better off with 1,000 people signing on to take an action in a campaign than if you have millions of views but only 100 people that actually participated,” said Jessica Mason, one of five social media experts interviewed for “Something to Tweet About”, a new guide that aims to help non-profits and social enterprises to create great content.
It needn’t be a headache to create the right kind of stories, blogs or videos to reap the benefits of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like, the experts agree. Often, the content is already available but just needs to be tweaked to be used on social media.
Content can be a punchy blog post about a new piece of legislation, a photo album of your beneficiaries, an infographic, a video, a podcast, a mobile app or a guide.
“Good content is anything that encourages people to interact and share,” said Karla Geci, head of strategic partner development at Facebook. “Large photos (600x600 pixels or larger) tend to get high engagement, but also pages with great banter, insightful analysis, and interesting questions drive a lot of interaction with fans."
The guide features examples of non-profits Movember, AfriKids, American Red Cross and Bell Bajao, which have applied simple content strategies successfully.
Carlos Miranda, chief executive of Social Misfits Media, the guide's publishers, stresses that social media has changed the way organisations cultivate donors: "The question is no longer 'should we be on social media' but what should we do now that we are on Facebook, Twitter etc," he said at the guide's launch on Tuesday.
And getting the social media message right is crucial: the average online donation to U.K. charities has increased by 21 percent over the past three years, according to the Institute of Fundraising. In the U.S. 47 percent of Americans are finding out about a cause via social media or an online channel, the Global Philanthrophy Group found.
A common misperception about social media content is that it requires a big budget and is too time-consuming.
It doesn’t matter whether your content is professionally produced or a bit amateurish, according to Mason, former head of YouTube for Good. “Professional videos are wonderful and it’s great if you have the budget to make them.”
But lack of budget shouldn’t keep you from making videos, she added. “Authenticity and storytelling tend to be more important than the quality of the videos….People on YouTube crave authenticity.”
Invisible People, which tells stories of homeless people in a low-budget way by filming them with a smartphone, is a good example of authentic content that is compelling and has had several hundred thousand views, Mason said.
Here are some key tips from the guide:
- Update your blog on a regular basis; getting more than one person involved with blogging makes that easier
- Promote all blog posts across the social media accounts of your organisation and staff
- Use relevant hashtags, not just on Twitter but also on Facebook and other social media platforms that use them as filters
- Constantly track and refine what and when you post through analytical tools
- Be social: treat your blog like a social gathering. Have plenty of media and links, ask questions, talk to people directly, take a stand on certain issues
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