Learn best practices from other nonprofits successfully using Facebook

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, social enterprises, social media managers, marketing professionals, businesses, brands, Web publishers, individuals.

This is the second part of a two-part series on Facebook apps and resources available to nonprofits. Also see:

• 5 essential Facebook applications for nonprofits

By Lindsay Oberst
Socialbrite staff

With more than 100,000 nonprofit Facebook pages out there, it’s clear that many nonprofits already know that the social networking site can be a game changer. Since we often spend more hours on Facebook than with our best friends, we might as well also be using this time for good, right?

If you look around Facebook, many of the existing nonprofit pages don’t come close to reaching their full potential. They were created and then left alone, or are used in ways that don’t work on Facebook. Of course, if you’ve had to create or manage a page, you know how confusing it can be.

What page owners need is a resource to help them figure out what works and to give them new ideas when they feel as if they don’t have endless amounts of time or money to dedicate to social media. One such resource is the Non-profits on Facebook page, a community that shares information and best practices for social good organizations.

Whether you’re new to Facebook, would like to know how to use the site better or are already a Facebook success story, the Facebook nonprofits page is certainly worth “liking” and using if you work to bring positive change to the world.

But once you like it, how else should you use this tool?

First steps for Facebook newbies

(People already using Facebook for their nonprofit might want to skip to the next section.)

The nonprofit page has a tab for nonprofits that are new to Facebook marketing; it’s called “Get Started” and contains several downloadable PDF documents:

• A quick-start guide, along with a pages manual, to help you understand the basics of a Facebook page and how to create one.
• A guide for nonprofits with tips for promoting your page and quick pointers about what types of content you should be posting.

Once you create your page and get the word out to your network about it, you should begin thinking about how you can make your nonprofit Facebook page a success story.

Resources and best practices for nonprofits

A mouse click over to the resources tab on the Non-Profits on Facebook page will show a list of products and tools used to grow and promote a page. Check each of these out and consider their usefulness for upcoming campaigns.

• Groups, which can be used to organize niche communities within an organization. To learn more about ways to use this tool including examples, see Socialbrite’s guide to making the most of Facebook groups.
• Targeted ads to increase awareness and grow subscribers;
• Applications for additional content, which are created to be social and encourage participation. The most-used application by nonprofits is Causes, a platform that mobilizes a user’s network of friends to grow movements;

• Claimed places so that people can check-in and spread awareness to their own networks;
• Social plug-ins to use on your organization’s website;
• and the ability for users to login on your website through Facebook, which enables people to interact with their friends.

Use the Wall for more resources

If you’re looking for more information about these tools or working on a new campaign, one place to look for examples is the wall of the Non-profits on Facebook page. These are solid examples of how Facebook can work for nonprofits.

This is the kind of information you’ll see on the wall:

• Facebook pages can be updated from your mobile. Updating your page on your phone could come in handy for events and if you need to monitor comments and aren’t in front of your computer.

• Facebook’s Digital Citizenship Research Grant. These grants are not currently open but might reopen in the future.

• Nonprofits are successfully partnering with brands. For example, the page admins posted about how Valspar Paint partnered with Habitat for Humanity to launch a celebrity fundraiser on their page.

• The Facebook Questions feature is good for learning more about your supporters. You can use these feature to set up multiple choice questions to crowdsource answers from your community. These questions are easy for people to respond to, so pages using them generally see good engagement.

The “Success Stories” tab on the Facebook page is also a good place to find examples.  It contains featured stories about ways social good organizations are having success using Facebook. And it has a way to submit your organization’s stories to further promote your goals. Your submitted stories might end up on the wall where each post on the page gets at least a hundred likes and comments as well. You do not, however, have to submit something for your nonprofit to show up on the wall. Several people at nonprofits I spoke to said they didn’t tell anyone at the site about their success.

The people I spoke to from The Monarch School and Charm City Animal Rescue both pointed out that if you’re finding success using Facebook, it’s a good idea to share your story with them if you want more exposure. Of course, what nonprofit doesn’t want more exposure?

3 reasons to use the Non-profits on Facebook page

• It’s updated weekly with good examples and resources.
• Facebook adds new features regularly.
• You’re probably already on Facebook during the day, so it’s easy to click over to the page.

However, as with any new tool or resource, there are some drawbacks. You should be aware that the Non-profits on Facebook page is not heavily moderated and many comments are irrelevant or merely self-promotional. Also, you don’t have the ability to search on the page, so finding the information you need can be difficult.

Overall, it’s all about how you use the tool and make it work for you. If you like the page, have you learned anything from it, or had success using it?

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Video tutorial on the new way to create custom tabs

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, social media managers, Web publishers, individuals.

Your Facebook Page is up and running, but you want to entice newcomers to become fans. The best way to do that to direct visitors to your custom Welcome page rather than to your Wall as the default landing page for people who are not yet fans.

If you’re with a small nonprofit and have a little HTML knowledge, you can create custom tabs using an application called Static HTML:iframe tabs. (Facebook replaced FBML with support for iFrames earlier this year.)

The video above shows you how to create a simple tab with fan-only content using Static HTML.

Design is key

Remember that just because you know HTML doesn’t mean that you’ll create an effective custom tab.
Design wins over code any day. For example, the Dog Bless You Facebook Page has created an extremely effective welcome tab with just one line of code (an image).

Do you have a custom Welcome Page for your Facebook Page? How’s it working out?

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Image by Michael Darcy Brown for Big Stock

A look at nonprofits’ use of Twitter, blogs, YouTube, Flickr & Facebook

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, social media managers, bloggers, individuals.

Idealware just published the second edition of their Social Media Decision Guide, which you first heard about on Socialbrite last year. The guide includes information about how nonprofits are benefiting from Twitter, blogs, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook.

Facebook drives website traffic and gets people to take action

As you’ll see from the graph above, most nonprofits report using Facebook to increase website traffic and get people to act.

They also found that a growing segment of Facebook users turn to the platform as a reference site. Not being on Facebook today is almost as bad as not having a website.

Download the Social Media Decision Guide

What you’ll really love about the Social Media Decision Guide is that it’s extremely easy to understand and digest. You’ll be led through a five-step process (that includes a bunch of amazing worksheets):

• Understanding Social Media
• Defining Your Goals and Audience
• Evaluating Specific Tools
• Choosing Tools to Meet Your Goals
• Creating Your Social Media Strategy

Download the Social Media Decision Guide here.

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Video tutorial will step you through new changes to Facebook pages

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, social media managers, individuals.

Facebook has just introduced a completely new process for creating a Facebook Page. It includes:

• An idiot-proof three-step process
• The ability to import images from a website
• Scaled-down requirements for the info section

The video above shows you exactly how the new process works.

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Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, social media managers, individuals

Up until last week, the only people who could comment on or like content on a Facebook Page were fans of that Page. Now, Facebook has eliminated that requirement, allowing anyone (fans and non-fans) the ability to engage with a Facebook Page.

The result of this change is that the importance of “liking” Pages has essentially been nuked – for both brands and for Facebook users.

Remain calm, here’s what it means

Understandably, you are freaking out. But you’re also excited about this change!

You’re freaking out …

Because you’re worried about how to control conversations about your nonprofit. It’s like moderating Twitter without the ability to search. So you’re freaking out.

You’re also freaking out because maybe you were over-focused on accumulating fans in the first place. And were shocked to learn that getting a new fan doesn’t mean you’ve earned a spot in their news feed. So you’re freaking out.

But you’re excited …

Because this means that your Page updates could receive exponential attention. With the hurdle of “liking” a page removed, more people will engage with your Page stories!

You’re excited because for you it was always about engagement. It was never just a numbers game.

So what does this mean for Page administrators?

• Be interesting. Because Pages are now more open, it’s even more important that you have a content strategy that keeps people interested.
• Listen. Because conversations about your nonprofit are harder to monitor, it means taking another look at using tools like Social Mentionto keep track of what people are saying.
• Evolve. Stop posting updates just to boost your Edgerank, and start creating deeper and broader discussions with Facebook users.

The good news

The good news is that the majority of communication and marketing professionals are too lazy and uninterested in having real discussions with their fans. So if you have a sincere commitment to do this, the competition will be few.

What do you think?

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And what it means for your nonprofit

Target audience:Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, social media managers, individuals

With all of the amazing features that Facebook Pages have, the one thing that they’ve always lacked is the ability to create that personal connection that Facebook users like.

This all changed last week when Facebook released a new feature on Facebook profiles called the Subscribe button. This feature allows people in your organization to publish content on their personal Profiles that anyone can subscribe to without compromising any privacy.

What this ultimately means for your organization is creating a deeper, more personal experience around your nonprofit on Facebook. (Ted shares a few examples on the frogloop blog.)

In the image at top, you can see that I have subscribed to Jesse’s public updates, but I am not his friend.

How will this affect my current friends on Facebook?

This won’t change how you and your friends connect on Facebook. They’ve always been able to see your updates (and vice versa), so you won’t have to “subscribe” to each other (see image below).

You can choose to filter what types of updates you see from both friends and non-friends you’ve subscribed to (important events, photos, comments and likes, status updates). The filtering options include life events, status updates, photos and more (see below).

How to configure the subscribe feature on your Facebook Profile

To enable the Subscribe button on your Profile, click on the “Subscriptions” tab on your Profile and click “Allow Subscriptions”:

Then you want to turn commenting on. This allows Facebook users who aren’t your friend to comment on your public updates.

Finally, you want to choose who you want to get notifications about.

Once you’ve activated the Subscribe button, Facebook users will be able to see the number of people who subscribe to your public updates. Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, has over 223,000 subscribers already!

How to publish content to users who subscribe to your Profile

As soon as you’ve allowed people to subscribe to your public updates, users who subscribe to your Profile will be able to see updates that you’ve published as public. Keep in mind that you’ll have this choice every time you publish an update on your Profile.

Remember: The Subscribe button won’t create great content for you.

Activating the Subscribe Button implies you are sharing information that’s interesting and valuable. Your content strategy should now include ways that your organization’s leaders can optimize content for Facebook.

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Participation is the key for getting value out of your Facebook Pages

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, businesses, Web publishers, individuals.

I‘ve been digging deep into research about Facebook fan activity lately, in preparation for a few upcoming presentations about social media return on engagement and Facebook engagement. I was delighted to find recent research about Facebook fan engagement from Michael Wu at Lithium and from comScore. Placed together, this research offers three very practical takeaways for nonprofits and brands managing Facebook fan Pages: relevant benchmarks of how deeply fans engage with Pages, the effect of fans on website visits, and how likely fans are to engage with your organization’s services or purchase items.

Basic benchmarks for measuring fan activity

1Michael Wu posits that “fan count is only the most superficial characterization of engagement, because it says nothing about the fans’ subsequent action and their interactions.” To measure the real engagement of a fan Page, Michael looked at different levels of fan engagement: active fans (who comment or post a message on a page), what fraction of posts have comments, amount of interaction among fans on a Page, and number of unique fans per conversation. From his research, he found these Page engagement benchmarks:

• The number of active fans per day (i.e. actively engaging) is about 3.45% of total page fans.
• About two-thirds of all posts do receive some activity, but it is normal to expect that around one-third will never receive comments and disappear quickly from a person’s newsfeed.
• Most Facebook fans are not very loyal to the fan Pages. Only about 30% of the active fans re-engage with the fan Page more than once (i.e. through posting).
• The probability of a fan returning to the same conversation on the fan Page is low, only about 9.6%.

If a fan never interacts with your Page’s content, then the reach of the Page will never grow, either. The more interactions, the more friends of fans will see your content. This correlates to the comScore research, next.

The role of the newsfeed

2Facebook users primarily interact with a fan Page in the newsfeed. What this means is that most fans don’t ever visit the actual fan Page. How often a fan or a friend of a fan will see your Page content within the newsfeed is determined by how often the actual post is shared, interacted with, and Liked. (See J.D. Lasica’s article for an in-depth look at how EdgeRank works.)

The new comScore report “The Power of Like” offers solid data on why fan activity with a Page is so important: reach. This report is focused on how people interact with the top 100 brands, with deeper analysis of a few large brands.

• Facebook users spend 25% of their time on Facebook interacting with their newsfeed. In May, 27 percent of engagement on Facebook.com occurred on the homepage and newsfeed, followed by profile viewing (21 percent), photo viewing (17 percent) and usage of apps and tools (10 percent).
• Facebook users are 40 to 150 times more likely to see branded content in the newsfeed than to visit the fan Page itself.
• Friends of fans is an important potential segment for organizations to reach. Friends of fans typically represent a much larger set of consumers (34 times larger, on average, for the top 100 brand pages) and may receive social media brand impressions through their Facebook friends. In the graph below, you can see that for every fan that visits Starbucks’ Facebook fan Page, 156 others see the brand Page’s updates through the newsfeed.

To reach more friends of fans, post to Facebook more frequently. Each incremental day of publishing branded content from the Facebook Page increases the reach among fans by about 2.5 percent.

Facebook fans equal website visitors

3Big implications here for nonprofits! Fans and friends of fans are much more likely to visit an organization’s website than the average Internet user. In the comScore report, for example, Bing fans are 55% more likely to visit the website and friends of Bing fans are 33% more likely to visit the website than the average Internet user. Other research shows that consumers use a combination of search and social media to research before making a purchase, and the effect of exposure of a brand to likelihood to purchase.

Interestingly, the comScore report shows that fans and friends of fans are more likely to spend more per transaction at the store and to have more frequent transactions. I believe you can reasonably assume from the data that those who Like your page are more likely to take these actions.

While Facebook engagement data from Lithium tells us a lot about how fans engage with your Page’s content, the comScore data illustrates how engaging data can potentially affect website visits, purchasing, and engagement with your organization’s services. The key, of course, is creating engaging, relevant, shareable content.

How does this data compare with your experience managing and/or interacting with a fan Page?

Resources

• Quantifying Facebook Engagement: More than Just Counting Fans and Like (Michael Wu, Lithium)

• 

Are Your Facebook Fans Real Fans? (Michael Wu, Lithium)

• The Power of Like: How Brands Reach and Influence Fans Through Social Media Marketing (comScore)

• Four-part series on how to use Facebook strategically (Socialmedia.biz)

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Benchmarks study: How does your nonprofit stack up?

At the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington D.C. the other day, I was one of 50 attendees who got a sneak preview of the fascinating 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, the big annual study that shows how nonprofits are using social media, email and much more.

You can download the free 36-page report from M+R Strategic Services and NTEN. The study — the fifth Benchmarks report — collected data about email messaging, email list size, fundraising, online advocacy, Facebook, Twitter and text messaging from 40 U.S.-based national nonprofit organizations for the calendar year of 2010. The study’s authors analyzed the results of 672 million email messages sent to over 17 million list subscribers; more than $114 million in online donations and 2.9 million advocacy actions.

Key fIndIngs of the report

• Online fundraising showed steady growth for participating groups in 2010 despite the current economic climate. Most groups saw a 10% increase in dollars raised online from 2009 to 2010.
• The 2010 advocacy response rate was 3.3%. From 2009 to 2010, advocacy response rates declined 7% on average.
• Not surprisingly, advocacy emails had the highest open, click-through and response rates while fundraising emails had the lowest click-through rate.
• Annual email list churn was 18%.
• Online fundraising revenue grew overall by 14% between 2009 and 2010. This rebound was led by an enormous 163% increase in the International sector due to emergencies like the earthquake in Haiti and flooding in Pakistan. However, all sectors saw an increase of some size in overall revenue from 2009, driven by an increase in the number of online gifts.
• On average, nonprofit Facebook Pages had 15,053 users, defined as people who “Like” a Page (but this includes large nonprofits).
• Facebook users were much more engaged with nonprofits in the Wildlife / Animal Welfare sector than in any other sector.
• On average, an organization’s text messaging list size was 1.9% of its email list size.
• Annual mobile list churn was 14% in 2010.

The graphic at the top of this article conveys, at a glance, why no one is suggesting that nonprofits abandon email marketing in favor of social media or mobile. For every 1,000 email subscribers for your nonprofit, you’ll have, on average, 110 Facebook fans, 19 Twitter followers and 19 mobile text subscribers. What those numbers don’t show, however, is that engaged fans on social networks, and connected fans on mobile devices, tend to be more loyal, to respond at higher rates to advocacy campaigns and to donate at higher rates than the average user.

And, let’s be frank, while most established nonprofits use email effectively, they still have yet to master social media.

You’ll want to also download the accompanying 42-page PDF presentation. I sat in on the webinar Tuesday and it was well worth hearing details of what moved the needle for the League of Conservation Voters and Defenders of Wildlife — and what didn’t.

Convio has also released its Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study, which is worth a read.

So what do you think? How does your nonprofit measure up to these numbers?

The post New report: Nonprofit numbers for social media, advocacy, fundraising appeared first on Socialbrite.

I’ve been chatting with Will Coley lately about nonprofits that violate Facebook’s Terms of Service, sometimes knowingly, by using a Profile to market their cause rather than a Page.

Using a Facebook Profile to market your nonprofit on Facebook is not smart, for at least three reasons:

You have no way of knowing what people want

1Facebook gives marketers a powerful tool called Insights that allows you to see – on a post level – how your fans engage with your content. Profiles don’t have this tool, only Pages do.

Facebook users don’t analyze how their friends react to their status updates. But marketers care very much about this – and so should you.

People don’t want to be your friend

2A friend request is very different from asking someone to like your Page. If you’re sending friend requests as a Profile, you’re asking the user to allow you to see their photos, their friends list, their address, their phone number and perhaps their relationship status.

Gross.

Facebook users don’t want to share this info with your organization. Asking a user to like your Page, on the other hand, doesn’t cross any personal boundary.

Facebook could delete your profile

3Using a Facebook profile to market your organization is a violation of Facebook’s rules.

What this means is that after spending a lot of resources of building up a large amount of friends – say, up to 5,000 – Facebook can simply delete the profile.

A visual map of your Facebook options

It’s likely that most nonprofits that go this route do so simply out of ignorance. The difference between a Profile and a Page is a topic covered in the Facebook Foundations webinar I conduct with CharityHowTo. Above is a map of all properties available on Facebook — Pages, Profiles, Places and Groups — on one slide. You can also download the PDF.

Why else is using a Profile bad business for nonprofits?

Cross-posted to JohnHaydon.com.

Related articles

• Facebook tutorials on Socialbrite
• Five Essential Apps for Your Nonprofit’s Facebook Page (nonprofitorgs.wordpress.com)

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