A summer ritual here on the development team is planning for the next fiscal year, which begins October 1st. Part of that planning process involves a half-day retreat for directors at my boss’ house where we discuss our goals for the upcoming year.
Before my boss left for vacation last week he said to me: “At the retreat I want you to talk about how we can use social media for prospect research, fundraising and advocacy.”
I wasn’t surprised that he asked me to talk about social media. My boss is a pretty progressive guy first all all. Also, we’ve been talking about it off and on for the past year and my boss knows I personally use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn (see the links on the right sidebar) and having been blogging for four and a half years. I was excited about the prospect of finally talking about how we could use it for branding and fundraising. But then I realized that while I was an avid user of social media I had more questions than answers about social media. Questions like…
If we did plunge into social media, on what should we focus? (e.g. Twitter and Facebook but not Youtube and MySpace?)
Should we develop a broad social media strategy for the development office, or should we only try to implement social media programmatically with key events and programs (e.g. Halloween Town, Boston Marathon/Team BMC)
If we do choose the broad social media strategy, who would execute it? This is a real issue. With the marketing team focused on patient outreach and overhauling 1400 web pages on the hospital’s web site, there’s no time left for social media. And this is not the year we can hire an employee or a consultant.
How would a social media strategy work with other things we’re already doing, like email and direct mail?
These are just a few of the initial questions I had.
My first step was to go back to the nonprofits I admired (I’m not original, but I am an excellent copier!) for their social media prowess, especially smaller organizations that were just getting started.
I’ve always looked to Share Our Strength for examples of great cause marketing, but of late I’ve also seen great examples of social media from their go-to guy Jeff Weidner. The Jimmy Fund here in Boston is great example of an organization just getting started, trying new things, experimenting and finding their footing in a brave, new electronic world.
From these two, I’ve narrowed the platforms on which I think we need to be. I’ve also my noted the challenges of each.
Blogging. I know the power of blogging firsthand because I’ve been doing it for five years. But I also know how demanding it is and how it needs to go way beyond some CEO posting his or her quarterly letters. Paul Levy’s blog is a great example of what’s possible for a hospital blog. Here at BMC, I’d love to start a blog written by one of our emergency room docs chronicling Boston’s busiest trauma center. I also think a blog centered on the uninsured and educating people about getting the care they need when they find themselves without health insurance is fitting for a public hospital.
Youtube. Setting up our own Youtube channel is a priority for me. I love the one Share Our Strength has. We have patient stories we could post there, but there are opportunities every day to collect meaningful footage here at the hospital. I read not long ago that video will replace the direct appeal letter someday. I agree, and consider a strong visual component crucial to any social media effort.
Flickr. For pictures from events and other places. A couple years ago we had a famous photographer do photos of our patients that were really powerful. They could be posted here for everyone to see, instead of tucked away as they are now.
Facebook. I’d create a page for the hospital, but I don’t think I’d do either a fan or cause page just yet. Interestingly, I just saw today that the most popular cause on Facebook has 5,516,134 members, and raised $56,661, or just over $.01 per member.
Twitter. You know I’m bias about Twitter–because I love it!–but we would definitely have our own handle. Personally, I find that being very active on Twitter helps everything else you do online, especially blogging. I would love to see if that holds true when I’m tweeting and blogging for the hospital.
So these are my questions for you:
Do I have all/right forms of social media?
How do implement social media across the department? With the reality of resources and people power, can it be done piecemeal (by event or program) and still work?
Who else out there is doing a good job putting all these pieces together? I’m looking for normal, regular nonprofits like mine that are trying, trying again and succeeding.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Comments
I guess I have to ask why you are posting it, as it sounds like you have it all figured out already!
At a minimum, you should create accounts for all of these social media services for BMC, then at least you’re covered.
As you know from what you do now, it takes time, and this aspect some managers do not always understand.
mp/m
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This was a really interesting post Joe, and while I don’t have any insight for you in the world of Social Media, I wish you the best of luck!!!
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Thanks to Beth & Mike for their quick responses and encouragement. I think the biggest challenge I’m having is weighing how much time I should spend on social media. Our shop is sensitive to ROI and I don’t want to get knee-deep into something that I enjoy but doesn’t produce the type of return we’re looking for. I guess I need to make sure to set realistic expectations and keep my focus on bringing in the money.
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These are all the same questions we asked as a board not even a month ago.
We are venturing into Twitter (and seeing some great success), Blogging, Facebook (this is still a new tool and feels unstable) and YouTube with some cool self-produced videos by our own teens. I concur about video being the next window into annual appeals/giving and look forward to eliminating those staid DM letters and envelopes at some point. But for now, much of our donor base is still not using SM, so we need to carry multiple platforms and campaigns in order to reach them all.
I look forward to reading responses here and sharing what’s working and what isn’t. We are very interested in ways to better incorporate SM into our more traditional giving and volunteering channels – a way to bring them into the world of SM if you will.
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I think you have the most efficient tools listed for the job. For what it’s worth, Facebook and Flickr are great to have but we don’t see a great return for the time investment. So if ROI is important, I would suggest focusing on Blogging, YouTube and Twitter. I could imagine you telling amazing stories through short video/soundbites and blog about them. Three channels will be considerable to manage especially if you’re solo-ing it.
My 2 pesos.
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As much as I hate to say this (because I’m a huge fan of Jeff Wiedner and his team) but I think Flickr is an important social media tool. Pictures are worth a thousand words. How do you think Charity Water won the Hugh Jackman $100,000 donation? They posted pictures of kids holding signs “Dear Hugh. Without clean water there is NO LIFE.” Brilliant.
However, Facebook I’m yet to be convinced that it is beneficial for nonprofits. You’ve mentioned the cause page and the lack of ROI. The only benefit I see with Facebook is that there are over 200 million users. That’s kind of hard to ignore.
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Joe:
You’ve asked some good questions and I’m going to echo them: Why do you want to enter the social media space? What’s your goal there?
Once you’ve identifed those, you can proceed. And remember, you don’t need a detailed social media strategy. It can be as simple as we are going to set up posts in these locations, engage with other, monitor and collect data. You’re on target with the rest of you questioning.
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Totally agree w/ you, Noland, that pix are important [great example, too]. From what I know about Joe’s biz, and also having to show value on what I do each day, I just think if you’re a one-person shop then something has to give. For me, that’s Flickr. Getting a volunteer to provide a soundbite at a conference has been more powerful for us than pix. But if you can find that right picture, then you’ve got something wonderful.
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Something struck me about your comment, Jeff H.:
“Why do you want to enter the social media space? What’s your goal there?”
Those are two damn good questions, Jeff, that are worth answering here. We want to enter the social media space for several important reasons.
First, I believe that social media is where email was just a few years ago and I want to get on the bandwagon now. I felt like we were late-comers to email marketing and I don’t want that to be the case with social media. I also think the trend is toward greater electronic communication and while the final form of that may not be SM, it’s a good training ground.
Second, I believe that SM allows us to effectively and economically communicate with donors and potential donors. If not an important medium, which I believe it will be anyway, it will be another medium with which to communicate.
Third, as a nonprofit I think we to do a much better job targeting what I call the “bottom of the pyramid.” My NPO is actually quite good at working with the “grasstops” but we need to do a better job cultivating the masses and building an annual giving program that will be a feeder for larger gifts down the road. I think SM can help us achieve this. Correct me if I’m wrong — PLEASE!
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Joe:
You’ve defined it very well and in defining why you want to use social media, you’ve outlined a high-level strategy. Props to you!
I have a couple other suggestions to consider – bottom line, social media is about listening, learning, responding and adapting. I believe people that enter the social space should be prepared to engage in conversations with others. Just like you’re doing here. It’s not about saying to your constituents, “We’re listening.” That’s not enough.
1) I recommend that you and your organization consider taking some of @Kanter ’s listening bootcamps for nonprofits. It’s about retraining a team so that everyone learns Web 2.0 communication skills for an online social world.
2) I think when an organization enters the social space, they may need to rethink some roles. The most successful nonprofits that I’ve witnessed have someone who is the community manager and facilitates online conversations.
3) I like David Armano’s @armano’s writings about how organizations can re-design themselves as social systems. http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2009/06/sbd-1.html
I think that’s where we are moving from Social “Me”dia to Social “we”b to Social Systems.
4) Decide up front how you will handle negative and constructive criticism. You can count on it happening. If you’re going to embrace the underlying principles of the social space, how will you handle the negative posts and comments?
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Sounds like you’ve got a pretty comprehensive social media strategy here. Plus, you’re a bottom-line type of guy.
Show your boss the money!
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Joe,
Finally have time to “weigh in.”
Jeff H is right about seeing SM for the listening and community building functions.
Like you, we’re just really getting our nonprofit clients engaged in determining how to work with SM and what it means to their nonprofit business model. So, I’m no expert.
Not withstanding the community building and listening aspects, it seems to me that Social Media is the delivery vehicle as advertising, direct mail and other tools of the past.
If that is correct assumption, it seems there are several key questions to address before determine which SM tool(s) to employ:
1) Who are we trying to reach and why?
2) What do we want them to do once we connect with them?
3) What “content” do we want to share and/or what “dialogs” do we want to create?
Personally, I see two phases:
1) Push — which is the “delivering information” about BMC and its programs and needs to our multiple audiences
2) Community building — to engage various constituents in a dialog about BMC and its issues.
Hope this helps.
Would love to have you post the “results” of the planning with your boss.
Steve
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Joe,
We’re about to go on a staff retreat in August, and one of the topics of conversation is going to be our online marketing plan. My biggest problem is that every time one of our fundraisers sees something “cool” that would even make a couple of dollars – they want the communications team to implement it. Trying to explain to them that we need to prioritize what we do and how we are spending our time is proving to be an interesting experience. Thanks for your blog and the comments are also very interesting.
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We’re faced with the same thing, Sue anne. It’s tough to know where to put your time, money and effort!
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Hi,
Great post with great questions that a lot of organisation are asking I am sure. I dont think I have the answers for you but wanted to guide you to (and you may know of her) Beth Kanter…she knows everything there is to know and then some about social media.
Will be keen to hear how you progress
Conor
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This was a great post – I think it’s great that you acknowledge that using social media as a marketing tool is complex and needs a great deal of attention. I’ve really been working at having a strategy for incorporating online technology, across the board – to assist in our marketing efforts as well as communications. I’ve been looking into incorporating Web Conferences, which involve desktop sharing, powered by http://www.vestanetworks.com/index.php – but once again, it’s an issue of deciding whether it fits into our overall vision for online media.
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I think going for social media marketing with online video is the way to go. Not only do you get feedback from your customer base, your videos will definitely get exposure. Also, another thing to remember in doing this is that it’s easy to take a video you’ve made and put it on multiple sites besides YouTube such as Veoh, AdWido, and Vimeo. This can only increase your potential exposure by even more!
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Before my boss left for vacation last week he said to me: “At the retreat I want you to talk about how we can use social media for prospect research, fundraising and advocacy.”…
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