Does your Social Media have a purpose?

The web is all about story telling. From Facebook to Wikipedia, and even through to sites like Amazon with its endless warehouse of described products - everyone's got a story to tell you about
something.
Why is it then that I hear so often from charities that they feel they struggle to access the vast benefits the web has to offer? The tumbling price of smart phones are putting the opportunity to find something in a moment in to millions of new hands every day.
Charities, with their missions to improve the lives of others are brimming with more inspirational stories than the features of a new electric toothbrush. The web also offers the world access to the valuable support charities can offer people 24 hours a day at no extra cost. So what is happening?

I read an interesting article the other day which seemed to suggest that charities investing in social media is often a waste of resource for attracting donors. The article instead advises charities to invest in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Google Adwords (Google's advertising mechanism). For me, Social Media and SEO are part of the same bigger picture of attracting and engaging people with your cause - from recruiting to your mission and everything in between. This blog is just as relevant for anyone wanting to improve their confidence and results from social media.

From my own experience of being Interim CEO of a charity who was well known for its innovative use of social media to engage with its membership, the donor argument is a little narrow for me. There are three things which are often overlooked before you even get to the kinds of results a charity might expect from investing in social media. In this article we will explore Purpose. In the next posts I'll share about how to upskill your fabulous people and how to fix the leaks in process / funnel that can haemorrhage visitors to your online.

Purpose:

1. Define your purpose. What is your story? What do you want people to come away from your organisation believing? How is the information you can give them useful? These are good starting points to help you decide what your social media is for
2. Think outside fundraising. As recent as 2005 social media just wasn't a thing. Today people use social media to find answers, as a trusted source for recommendations from others and a place to define your identity and express yourself. People aren't there to be sold to, so don't bother. As some trends with the next generation of donors suggest, charities need to start moving away from a dependence on individual donations and instead look at the following they attract in order to gain philanthropic funding in future
3. Set measurable goals. Articulate a purpose for your online presence and define some clear goals of what you want your online presence to do for your organisation and the rest will follow. This will help you in understanding the process too (we will cover this in more detail in a later post.) Use tools such as Hoot Suite and Google Analytics to set goals and measure how successful your content is at turning visitors and browsers in to something meaningful to your organisation. (newsletter sign ups, service user contacts etc)
4. Create content your potential audience wants to learn about. The one mistake I have made working in a charity is believing that our message is so important that if we should loud enough people will
   listen. Take that philosophy to a party and you are unpopular pretty quick, people need to go on a journey to get to know you. It's the same with an important cause. A person may need multiple routes into engage with your story. All those routes start with a 'moment' where they are looking for something you could be delivering to them, whether it's a service, a funny story or something inspirational. That moment is your opportunity to make a connection.

Less broadcast, more conversation

Once you have a clear purpose and great content you are ready to start a conversation with your intended audience. Simply broadcasting what you are doing is a bit like walking in to a party with a megaphone and being surprised why nobody responds. 

Some examples & starting points:

Enhance your Service

If your online presence is about offering a service, my first port of call is find out from a group of those customers or beneficiaries what service they expect or would like to see from you online. You will need to listen carefully to the words they use and how they describe their needs to you and what is important to them - it will be different to how you describe your services (we all fall in to the jargon trap eventually). They may tell you they want a newsletter with information or be able to access help, so all your goals and activity can be about taking them on that journey to those steps as quickly as possible. When we cover process we will look at how to tune up that process from learning how people use your site from data you can easily collect . 

Build a movement

​Another goal might be to gain an engaged following who can influence others to re-share your stories. We are able to infinitely monitor the web and this access to data gives charities great accountability to make better decisions. This information is increasingly becoming of interest to philanthropists they want to see what kind social reach and impact your work has. It's not about how many but what that following can do - surveys and research to help gather evidence of need for the next project for example. This fits with the transformation that the charity sector has led with a focus on shifting to outcomes not just counting outputs. Attitude to social media is heading the same way - and getting donations, for me, is another output. Think wider.

Let's have a chat

In the meantime if you would like to have a chat about making the most of online and what it can offer your organisation, including strategy workshops, an impartial view of your current strategy, staff training and hands on help to get you tuned up, just start a project with an enquiry today 

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