Non-profit organizations require a strong collaboration among their followers and volunteers. Communication is the cornerstone of how successful the organizational networks will reach their members all over the world. When traveling with your global teams what social media networking tools would provide a far-reaching platform to express your organizational content? Many of the newer strategies utilize mobile technology that is convenient as you can tweet from your smartphone or tablet devices. What are the best practices for developing an informative online community forum? I want to explore three main areas that offer great success : Blogging, Tweeting and RSS feeds.
Authoring a community blog for your non-profit organization is a way to build brand awareness. The blogging strategy empowers the organization to reach out to readers by opening a person to person P2P dialogue. A real life story about the cause and the communities impacted is a great segway to the organizational goals. The blog content will include:
- A formidable cover sheet showing the authority of the issue or cause.
- Fresh content added to the blog to retain the readers.
- Add visual photos and avatars for generating advocacy to the cause.
- For fundraising, add a Donate Now button.
- Add Tags to to the blog to drive more traffic to the site.
To provide an example let us take a look at Operation Blessing International. This non-profit organization is a humanitarian organization that impacts more than 261 million people in more than 105 countries. Their mission is to provide clean water, medical aid, hunger and disaster relief. Here is their organizational trailer for review:
In looking at their blog, a reader can see what and where they are working and a reply for comment is offered. It does not indicate an active blog with many comments is in place as they are handling many projects. The content has empathy by sharing the real life stories but they need to work their channels. A way to get this done is utilizing more Twitter hashtags. There are rumors floating around that Twitter hashtags may be considering a video clip attachment. This would be a great opportunity for this non-profit organization to capitalize on that new enhancement when available.
Twitter is a powerful social networking tool that opens a gateway to many followers for feedback, events and special attention. What makes it so appealing is the tweet is short but very succinct in its message. The social media platform is intriguing as the asset of seeing what other followers are viewing is compelling. Hashtags are a great way to categorize tweets. This tagging system is much easier to navigate your content to followers that would be passionate to a mission of a particular organization. If your non-profit is planning an event you can set up a Twitter party to bring more followers to the event.
Twitter is vital to a #nonprofit organization as many more followers connect to the blog and then may retweet the content. This function enables messages to be heard virtually and offers a quicker access to the platform. The best way to reach an audience is through the option to add a web link as followers share the story or event to a larger membership. Now the connection to your blog post is embedded in your tweet providing a powerful synergy. There is also the practical list feature that can create a group of people who you follow and then you can now share this group with other followers. There are many apps and tools as twitter is an open feed to use with Klout and Flipboard (Li & Bernoff, 2011 p. 199). In my first blog article called Social Media for Non-Profit Organizations, I reference the number of Twitter followers is over 234 million people. This is a great audience to reach out to for quality content about the meaning of the non-profit organization.
Let us navigate back to Operation Blessing International. As soon as a tornado touches down or a country is dealing with a conflict a twitter feed is sent and this serves as an early warning system for their organization. It will provide them the time to deploy volunteers and get mobilized to meet the financial as well as personal resources. To recap here are some twitter tips to get your organization on a path to twitter power:
- Connect your content with your organization’s Facebook and Google+ accounts.
- Upload diverse images of what the organization represents.
- Build the brand adding in keywords that describe the activity of the non-profit.
- “You cannot fake authenticity. The social web is built on trust” (Schaefer, 2012 p. 63).
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and has the power to socialize your web content as a reader would subscribe to your organization and receive all your web content without having to manually go to your blog to retrieve the latest information. Your blog is somewhat static without the RSS feed. The browser can download new articles of interest in an index format that you release for upcoming events where the volunteers are working. The RSS feed will enable your quality content making this a great strategy to engage readers to any announcements or a call to action campaign (RSS Tutorial, 2014).
To master social media in a groundswell strategy is to concentrate on the relationships, not the technology. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff authors of groundswell.
Related Articles and Links:
Images Credit for photos and Hashtag Vector: Fotalia
31 Twitter Tips: how to use twitter tools and twitter best practices for business. Authored by Ken Krogue.
Getting attention! helping nonprofits succeed through effective marketing. Authored by Nancy E. Schwartz.
Scholarly books References:
Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2011). groundswell. Boston, MA. Harvard Business Review.
Schaefer, M.W. (2012). The tao of twitter. New York, NY. McGraw-Hill.