Using Social Media to Promote Non-Profits

Social media is everywhere nowadays - things like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Blogs - It seems every major company out there is trying their hand at creating a social media site. So, when it comes to promoting yourself, your business, or non-profit organization (what I’ll be focusing on here), how can you get these free social media sites to work for you? How do you know you’re reaching your intended audience? Does it really make a difference?

Which to Choose
Well for choosing which sites to use… go with the crowds! When phrases like “I just wrote on your wall”, and “Make sure you tweet about it” are now part of everyday language it’s time to find out what everyone is talking about! You all are a savvy bunch of readers, I can tell, so you know I’m talking about Facebook (www.facebook.com) and Twitter (www.twitter.com). These two sites in particular have been exploding with users for the last two years (well, perhaps a year for Twitter, it’s newer).

Getting Started
So the first step is to join up on one or both by creating a fan page on Facebook or a username with your non-profits name on Twitter and commit to updating it regularly. Regular updates are key, because that’s what keeps people coming back to your account. Getting these sites to work for you is pretty easy once you’ve got some Fans and Followers. If your non-profit has a blog or other website every time you update, put that link in there. Entice people to click that link.

Reaching Your Audience
Being able to reach your intended audience is a tougher one, there are always some people who will just click on any old thing and then you’ll never hear from them again for support. Start by word of mouth with your own friends, people you know already on Facebook or Twitter, ask them to update their statuses with a link to your non-profit’s name. This will help spread the word, because chances are you have friends that have friends that are also in your desired audience, be it geographically, age, or lifestyle. This will all help get the word out, and you never know… a friend of a friend could be at lunch talking with their mom about wanting to find someplace to donate their time, suddenly your friend of a friend remembers something, and tells their mom all about your organization that they saw on a Facebook friend’s wall…and you have a new fan. It can snowball from there. The only way to really KNOW that you’re reaching your target audience on a grand scale is by the feedback they provide for you. If they don’t provide any kind of feedback, be it wall posts, tweets “@” you, or though activity on any of your linked blogs or websites, then it’s time to start thinking up more ways to entice the clicking. Views are good, clicking is better, it means there is interest.

Making it Work for You
Will the fact that you’ve put all this work into your social networking media accounts actually be worth it in the end? Well that all depends on you and how you promote your non-profit’s goals. Facebook in particular makes it pretty easy to get that fan base you’ve created to respond. The site has quite a few Applications “Apps” that allow for fan participation. If your organization has a goal of raising a certain dollar amount by the end of the first quarter then you can set up a graphic that will tally that, and Facebook will allow your fans to donate through them. Also, Facebook has this application that will allow for your fans to request donations in lieu of gifts for their birthday, and your fan can set up your non-profit as the benefactor. Let’s not forget the invites you can send through Facebook either! If volunteering something you need people to do for a particular event, then invite your entire fan base to that event and let them know about it! Your Facebook fans can’t help you, if they don’t know about it.

Some Final Thoughts 
Doing all of this really doesn’t eat a whole lot of time out of your day and, your non-profit will benefit from it. Simply keeping your program in the forefront of people’s mind with active updating and fresh information will help you get the word out faster, than traditional word of mouth, or depending only on search engine’s to pop your website up based on a user’s search.