You’ve no doubt heard the advice that posting photos will help you get more reach on Facebook. That advice has been tried and true for years, until now.

According to a study by SocialBakers, photos now get less organic reach than videos, links, and even text updates. In fact, videos are now the king of the News Feed!

Socialbakers analyzed 4,445 Facebook Pages and 670,000 posts between October 2014 and February 2015. They discovered that videos now get more than twice as much reach as photos (shown below).

There’s no clear reason for this recent Facebook algorithm change, but Socialbakers offers two explanations:

1. Facebook is responding to Pages looking to game the newsfeed with photos.
2. Facebook is taking on YouTube as the king of video content.

Jan Rezab, Socialbakers CEO, told Business Insider: “Video is proving to be a very engaging format and gaining in popularity, consumers really like them. Therefore we’d advise marketers to include video as part of their content strategies.”

How should your nonprofit respond?

• First of all, check your reach report in your Facebook Page Insights. Specifically, analyze post reach by type between October 2014 and February 2015, the period of time Socialbakers analyzed.
• Second, consider stepping up video content.
• Third, consider publishing blog posts on your website. This way, you’ll be armed with a Facebook Page AND your website, in your Facebook marketing action plan.

What do you think?

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As a consultant and trainer in the nonprofit community, I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the Nonprofit Communications Trends Report. And it’s here! Kivi published the first Nonprofit Communications Trends Report back in 2011, surveying 780 nonprofits.

For the most recent report, Kivi surveyed 1,535 nonprofits – mostly in the US.

Highlights from the 2015 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report are presented in an infographic (below), which includes the following eye-openers:

• Nonprofits no longer have new donor acquisition as a primary goal. Instead, retaining current donors and engaging their communities is becoming more important.
• Communications Directors and Development Directors have conflicting goals. Development, of course, wants to retain and acquire donors. Communications wants to focus less on fundraising and more on brand awareness and engagement.
• Nonprofits are planning on sending more email and direct mail appeals in 2015. 45% of the participants said they will send monthly appeals, and 36% said they will send quarterly direct mail appeals.
• Facebook is still the king of social media channels. 96% of participants have a Facebook page.
• Nonprofits still say their website is the most important communications channel, followed by email and social media. This is as it should be.
• Communications Directors are challenged with lack of time to produce quality content.
• Facebook takes up more time than blogging or email marketing.

Check out the full infograph below, and download your copy of the report here.

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How to maximize and follow through on your communications goals

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses.

If you’re like most nonprofit communicators, you have a list of specific quarterly or yearly goals. No doubt they include growing your e-mail list, acquiring new donors and increasing engagement on your Facebook updates.

But whatever your goals are, make sure they cover these seven tips below:

Write it down

1A plan is very difficult to follow and measure if it’s not written down. Most nonprofits don’t have content strategy. And based on the limited work I’ve done, they also lack an online marketing strategy that’s written down.

Make a resolution to create written plans for each campaign throughout the year. Your plan should include stated goals, stated messaging, a strategy outline, and finally, tools and tactics. How much detail you include in this document is up to you, but at least include these elements.

Also, check out these three articles on develop a solid online marketing strategy:

Practice split-testing

2If you’re like most nonprofits, your donor retention rates are less than satisfactory. Improving this starts with fixing the places where you’re converting poorly.

• Begin by split testing your fundraising pages, if you haven’t already. Split-testing helps increase conversions by testing out variations in the content. Some typical areas to start with include headlines, images, button location, button text, button colors, and copy. Check out how the Marine Mammal Center split-tested variations of a call-to-action.
• You should also split-test email subject lines and email content. This will eventually point the way to increased open rates, click-through rates, and eventually conversion rates.

Check out this article on how split-testing raised over $100,000 for WWF.

Maximize secondary actions

3Make the most of every interaction people take with your nonprofit. For example, when people sign a petition, immediately email them to ask for a donation (says thanks first). This approach uses recency to create momentum towards a secondary call-to-action – essentially killing two birds with one stone.

In fact, maximize any webpage people see after completing a transaction (signing a petition, joining your email list, making a donation, registering for an event). Carefully consider what secondary actions make sense for each transaction. For example, if someone makes a donation, make sure they can easily share that with their friends.

See beyond the dollars

4All too often, the scope of the supporter relationship is limited to money. But donating money is only one way that they interact with you.

Supporters also share your Facebook updates, sign your petitions and pledges, and re-tweet your blog posts.

Develop a specific plan to encourage these types of actions, remembering that growing a community is like growing a garden. It takes time, care and consideration. Focus on growing your community, both in terms of numbers AND engagement.

Be useful

5It seems like all the social media experts claim that the key to success to being awesome. But what your community really needs is for you to be useful.

Being useful is much easier than trying to be awesome. Being useful is about putting the needs of your community first, like in this Facebook update from the Museum of Fine Arts:

Take risks

6New tactics and strategies for using social media sprout up every week, making “best practices” somewhat limited. In fact, I think we should change the term “best practice” to “most commonly used practice that gets average results.”

The fact is, the web and mobile are changing very fast. Those who play is safe get average results at best, while risk-takers adopt more quickly (test, fail / win, learn, repeat). Fail forward, they say.

Test and measure

7Most nonprofits are not strategically testing or measuring digital media. Yes, data is collected and stored in excel spreadsheets. But the hard questions aren’t being asked: Why are we measuring click-through rates? Why are we measuring our Facebook page fan growth?

Let your strategy dictate what should be measured. This will make your data much more useful. For example, if your goal is to convert more donors via email, then you want to test and measure conversion rates via clicks in those messages. Go back to what I said about split-testing.

Remember to breathe

If you’re like me, you need a fair amount of down time.

You need time to step back, take a breath, and take in the panoramic view of what you’re doing – in work and in life. Pace yourself and be smart about daily habits.

And try to have fun.

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3 reasons I’ve decided to embrace this campaign — and why you should, too

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

As you all likely know by now, the ALS #IceBucketChallenge is taking your Facebook news feed by storm. Your friends, colleagues, heck, even your grandmother might have been nominated to dump a bucket of cold water and ice on her head in the name of charity. And in this case, it’s a very good cause. ALS is Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease,a neurodegenerative disease characterized by muscle spasticity, rapidly progressive weakness due to muscle atrophy, and difficulty in speaking, swallowing, and breathing.

As a social media consultant working with social causes and nonprofits, I have taken great delight in the virality of this meme all in the name of a disease that gets very little attention and fundraising dollars.

Along with most social media memes or “viral schemes” comes the cynicism and the naysayer backlash — and I get it. I do. But the proof is in the numbers. Last year, the ALSA.org raised $1.9 million in contrast to this year’s $31.5 million, and that number is growing by the millions every day.

Here are three reasons I’ve decided not to be a cynic and embrace this challenge, and why you should too:

1Peer pressure and egoism have always been central themes in philanthropy and successful fundraising. If you’ve ever attended a nonprofit board meeting, you’ll see these two elements in play quite often and to great effect. Altruism isn’t selfless. It never has been and probably never will be. The ALS #IceBucketChallenge is no different. It’s just in your face more.

2The rise in social media has contributed to what many call, “armchair activism,” “slacktivism” or “clicktivism.” These words are pejorative terms that describe minimal effort, “feel-good” measures, in support of an issue or cause, that have little effect other than to make the person doing it feel like they have contributed. The bottom line is that “clicktivism” does build greater awareness and can be the potential first rung in the donor engagement ladder. It’s also cultivating a generation of future philanthropists and do-gooders.

There’s a reason why so many of the millennial generation are going into philanthropic careers or finding ways of incorporating good works into their daily lives. I think the rise in these types of online social good campaigns that flood our news feeds have a huge part to play in this phenomenon. The ALS #IceBucketChallenge is a perfect example of this.

3Building awareness is critically important. Yes, donation dollars trump all but there’s a reason nonprofits have communications and marketing departments. These teams are charged with not only raising money online but also building awareness and community for their cause. It’s the first step in creating a consistent and renewable supporter and donor base that’s loyal and motivated.

What’s your take on the ALS #IceBucketChallenge?

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Tell stories of impact, use humor & cultivate relationships for more powerful email marketing

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

Are you looking to breathe new life into your nonprofit’s e-mail marketing?

If so, you will love these tips three from my peers:

Tell stories about your impact

Rachel Hope Allison, Senior Strategist at Big Duck:

The most exciting opportunities for smaller nonprofits are around the stories they tell with their campaign. Being small, they are in more direct, personal contact with their community, and they can tell stories about how the organization is responding to needs within its community.

Supporter stories and signers for these campaigns generated not only gifts but enthusiastic anecdotal responses from their communities.

2. Use humor to humanize your message

Annie Lynsen, Director of Awesomeness at SmallAct:

The campaigns I find most intriguing are the ones that make good use of humor!

Yes, humor must be handled carefully in your nonprofit communications: you don’t want the humor to be at the expense of the organization or the cause. But when handled well, humor can both humanize your cause and your organization AND get people’s attention, compelling them to donate.

3. Cultivate relationships first

Pamela Grow of Simple Development Systems:

I don’t think “campaigns” so much as building relationships via email.

An organization will think they’re going to raise big money with email through some magic campaign, when the reality is that haven’t taken that first step of growing their list and cultivating those relationships through warm, consistent messaging.

Growing your list takes commitment. Commit to one or two list-building activities a year. Commit to consistent (and frequent), real email communications. For campaigns, repetition, focus and integration is key.

What now?

If you are ready have a strategy for how you use e-mail, congratulations! If not, developing a plan that might be a good start. Here’s some recommended reading:

• Five Places to Capture Emails on Your Website
• Four Human Factors That Increase Email Open Rates
• Nine Powerfully Simple Ways to Build Your Email List

The post 3 powerful email marketing examples from the pros appeared first on Socialbrite.

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

Post by Nancy Schwartz
Nonprofit Marketing Problem Solver & Coach at Getting Attention.org

Pressure. You feel it. I feel it. Every nonprofit communicator and fundraiser out there feels it. Social media pressure, that is.

Whether the source of this anxiety (Am I keeping up? Do I have a billion Facebook likes or Twitter followers? Is my Instagram strategy driving action?) is your immediate boss, board chair, or colleague in programs, it’s there. The pressure to generate a social media miracle.

Breathe—There Is a Solution

You can boost marketing and fundraising impact, and you can deflate that pressure. Here’s how:

1.  Get to know your people. Research, via online survey or calls, where your current supporters are when it comes to social media.

2.  Use your marketing/fundraising plan to remind yourself exactly who your prospects are (the people who are most likely to take the actions that will drive your marketing or fundraising goals forward). Then, use your supporter research to project where similar prospect groups are on social media.

3.  Assess if and where to invest in social media, even if your organization has been there for years. Probe whether the most-used social media channels are useful in helping you achieve your broader goals. Ask yourself two questions: Does the interaction in that channel mesh with your calls to action and goals? Is your investment in each of the most-used channels likely to be profitable?

4.  Focus your energy and time on the single most-used channel, but only if the return on investment (ROI) seems to be there. Note: It will be far more effective to use one platform well, rather than use multiple platforms in a half-baked way. That’s been proven time and time again.

5.  Invest the time. Block out at least 30 minutes, twice daily, for social media if you are using just one platform. I urge you to get that one channel to work—or realize it’s the wrong one—before you take on another platform.

6.  Create some incremental benchmarks so you get a sense of how your investment is or is not paying off. That might be retweets and followers for Twitter or likes and shares for Facebook. Request that your colleagues ask those who do take action—to give, register, or spread the word—what influences sparked them along the way.

7.  Like or follow five to 10 colleague or competitive organizations on that channel, be it Facebook or Instagram. It’s important to see what folks who are competing for your supporters’ and prospects’ attention and dollars are doing. You can also find some relevant models by watching what organizations similar to yours in approach or issue—but not competing with you—are doing.

8.  Adapt your approach as needed on an ongoing basis. Build into your work plan an ongoing analysis of what is and isn’t working, a review of other organizations’ successes and failures, and a revision of your own approach. Social media, including websites and blogs, is a communications channel that requires ongoing evolution. Otherwise, don’t use it.

Take these steps to make your social media efforts meaningful and measurable for your nonprofit. How are you making social media matter for your cause? Chime in with your ideas below! Also, don’t miss Social Media for Nonprofits when this conference comes to Washington, DC on July 14. Register now with code “N4G” to save up to $30.

Nonprofit marketing consultant, speaker and coach Nancy Schwartz  rolls up her sleeves with contagious passion and refreshing practicality to help organizations like yours get attention and motivate giving, volunteering and more.

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Thought leadership can be one of the most effective communications strategies for nonprofits

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, social strategists.

Every so often, change makers and nonprofit leaders are unsure about how to activate the most powerful resource they have — their intellectual capital.

Organizations can be treasure troves of big ideas just waiting to be unleashed and shared with the world, but these same organizations can have limited resources and small or non-existent communications and marketing teams more focused on sharing information and trying to drum up support in an overcrowded charity marketplace.

Thought leadership communications is arguably the most effective and least expensive way a smaller organization can build awareness, support for ideas, and influence the communities they need to reach, including decision makers, policy makers and donors. Nonprofits have their missions but they are often unsure about how to wrap that same mission around a bigger idea — an idea that is woven into the every day world their donors and supporters live in, and that helps those same donors and supporters, better understand the nonprofits work. It’s not easy to all of the sudden turn your nonprofit leaders and your organization into a thought leader – it takes time and commitment but it can be done.

Here’s the thing: So many nonprofit leaders want to become thought leaders but that means so much more than asking your communications staff to share content on topics that are within the organizations subject area expertise. It means more than attending conferences. Thought leadership means you’re leading with your thinking. You’re leading with ideas. You’re leading because you are choosing to empower others with information and analysis that is difficult to find elsewhere. You’re adding real value to an existing conversation. And you’re doing it all consistently. It’s that simple … and that challenging.

Below are five ways your nonprofit can begin having the ‘thought leadership’ conversation:

Start with the big idea

1Every big idea starts with a vision. It has a strong viewpoint and brings new insight and problem solving to an existing issue. Ask yourself and your team, what original, innovative and valuable perspective your organization and the communities you work with bring to the table. What do you want to achieve from it?

Overcome fear

2Effective thought leadership programs are an organizational development function not just a public relations function. Powerful thought leadership campaigns need to be embedded into the culture of an organization in order to be truly successful. Sharing and taking a position can be a frightening act for a nonprofit that doesn’t necessarily engage in advocacy work. Teams need to be on board with sharing ideas and insights with the world. Does your culture support that? If not, what steps can be taken to inch toward that goal?

Tell a great story

3Concentrate on telling one focused, compelling and clear story that supports your big idea and communicate it using channels you know your audience engages with. Social media is a no brainer but there’s also traditional media, speaking events, panels and conferences, that can position your organization as an expert in your field.

Become a resource

4People don’t like to be sold things, for the most part. Even when what you’re selling is a noble and brilliant cause. That said, they do buy into solutions, expertise and problem-solving. Share your insights in an accessible and digestible way. Spread your idea. Be consistent. Offer guidance and people will follow.

Inspire action

5Powerful communications and thought leadership can inspire people to act. Whatever your idea is, make sure that it is actionable. What do you want people to do? Be brave. Ask for what you want.

What does thought leadership look like for your organization? We’d love to know. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, marketers, managers, general public.

There seem to be countless tools available for social media marketers. Tools for managing social media, measuring it, and even for creating content that looks amazing!
Yes, technology can seem like a godsend.

But if you don’t have a solid strategy, you’re going to waste a lot of money on a lot of tools that promise a lot of results.

What does a social media strategy look like?

The POST method (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology) was originally coined by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book Groundswell (Harvard Business Review Press) is a proven framework for developing a social media strategy.

People

You can’t achieve even a basic level of success on social media if you don’t understand your people. No one will like, retweet, or repin your blog post if you haven’t answered the only question that really matters: What’s in it for them?

Objectives

If you don’t have a destination any tool will do. Any best practice will do too.

Clear objectives helps you determine if you were successful or not. Long-term success on social media requires a lot of trial and error. But you have to know what’s a trial and what’s in error. Plus, they help you discover what you’re doing right!

Strategy

Your strategy is more than just a plan. It’s a plan that will meet your objectives based on what you know about your people.

In other words, strategy is about a value exchange. What are you going to give in exchange for their email, money, time, influence and attention?

Whether it’s a meaningful pledge, or a sweepstakes, write down exactly how you will offer enough value to encourage them to help you achieve your objective.

Technology

Once you understand your people, objective, and strategy, you can confidently select the tools and tactics you’ll use for your campaign. For example, if your strategy is to engage millennials on Instagram, crowdsourcing content around a hashtag would be a tactic.

Here’s the infographic!

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Sharing with your audience on multiple levels is key

Post by Teddy Hunt

Target audience:  Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, marketers, managers, general public.

Nonprofit organizations have to reach their audiences effectively in order to find supporters and donors for the cause at hand. Social media offers nonprofits the very platform they need to get their voices heard, but going the social media route doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. In order for your nonprofit to extend their social reach, here are a few pointers that’ll help turn your nonprofit into a social media darling.

Get your story out there

As a nonprofit organization, you’re always working on telling your nonprofit’s story to your social media audience in the best way you can. You need to let your followers know what you’re trying to accomplish in a straightforward way while also giving your mission a personal touch.

There are many ways to go about telling your nonprofit’s story, but no matter how detailed you get with your mission, always remember the three w’s: who, what, and why. Who is it your nonprofit is helping, what is your nonprofit doing to accomplish its goals, and why has your nonprofit chosen its charitable field on a personal level?

Say, for instance, your nonprofit is trying to end world hunger. When campaigning on sites like Facebook and Twitter, your nonprofit should introduce itself socially by:

• Describe who it’s helping — Is your non-profit trying to end hunger in a specific region, country, or on a local level? The sooner your nonprofit describes who it’s trying to help, the faster followers will respond to your efforts.
• Explain what it’s doing — Is your nonprofit involved in local food drives or money-raising events? How will those funds reach those in need? By describing your nonprofit’s process, your organization will look more professional and responsible, which helps build trust and makes followers more likely to respond.
• Explain why your nonprofit  is doing what it’s doing — Is your organization trying to end hunger because it’s affecting a specific community, or is it trying to help the hunger cause in general? Do you have beneficiary stories you can share with your audience? Giving your nonprofit’s story a personal touch will help others relate to your cause.

Keep your followers in the loop

Whether it’s a social media follower or a longtime donor, the secret that every socially successful brand will tell you is to keep your audience in the loop. This means not only keeping followers updated on your nonprofit’s charitable efforts, it also means sharing everything from your donation goals, to volunteer opportunities, to upcoming fundraising events.

Above all else, staying social with your followers means answering any and all questions that come your way through the social pipeline. Answering your followers’ questions helps keep your audience informed, involved, and feeling like part of the cause. So, reply to all questions and all comments thoughtfully, respectfully, and in a timely manner.

Don’t be afraid to ask

Your nonprofit’s social presence is there to help you reach out to your followers and part of reaching out is asking people to donate. That’s ultimately why you use social media and your followers are well aware of it, so never be afraid to ask for donations via social media come fundraising time.

If you follow all the pointers above and make your cause as engaging as possible, your followers will be more than happy to donate to your NPO. So, the next time you’re need of online donations, call-in donations, or volunteers, ask your social media audience for help and support — you’ll be surprised with the positive response you receive.

Link to your victories

Whether your organization reached a personal goal of signing on a handful of new volunteers or it reached its quarterly fundraising goal early, it’s important to link to all your nonprofit’s victories. Linking to large and small successes could inspire others to get involved, by highlighting how no win is ever too small.

By keeping in mind some of these social media tips , an organization can help build a greater sense of community on their social channels and ultimately grow their following.

The post How nonprofits can extend their reach & build community appeared first on Socialbrite.

Find inducements & show them the payoff

This is the second part of a two-part series on making the case for your social media plan and initiatives. Also see:
• Getting your board on board with social media

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

Getting your board engaged and on board with social media can prove to be a challenging task at many nonprofits. But your board members want to make a difference and have a real-world impact, right? Otherwise, why are they there.

So we’ve assembled this short list of ways board members can help support your organizational goals via social media.

• It is important to start small with your social media requests and to frame their initial engagement with social media around organizational programs that they understand are important to support. For example, you might want to ask them to do three LinkedIn updates around your upcoming gala or benefit. It’s important to be very specific about the asks and have them understand what the end goals and deadlines are.

• Because their engagement will likely start off involving only specific programs or initiatives, it’s important to write messaging for them that they can easily share with their networks. Providing them with sample posts and engagement language is always a good idea and will increase the likelihood that it gets shared.

• You will want to encourage them to personalize the posts (you can write it out for them) by adding how excited they are about a particular program or event, and their personal thoughts about the content. This type of sharing is most effective because it goes beyond the reposting of organizational information but also includes the most important part: sharing their passion and enthusiasm with their influential network, which can be the hook their colleagues and friends need to learn more, donate, attend an event, or get involved somehow.

Opening the conversation about social media to your board

1Start with your social media plan and ensure that your CEO is clear on what you want and what you’ll be asking board members to do. Your CEO is the board’s default sounding board, so it’s important that s/he be clear and know what initiatives you’re proposing to them and how they can help.

2Before a board meeting, have a conversation with the board member you feel will be your greatest ambassador to the rest of the board. This person could be either the head of your board’s communications committee or, if there is none, just a person who you know is already a good messenger or advocate. Talk to this board member about your plans for board participation and ask them for feedback. This way you can anticipate concerns and questions early, and then you already have a de facto board advisor, which boards like since they generally appreciate being consulted with.

3At the board meeting, ask the board ambassador to sit with you and support you during the presentation, perhaps leading a part of the discussion that centers on how board members can take initiative. These types of conversations can have greater sticking power and impact when coming from a board peer instead of a staff person. Also, board members can apply peer pressure in a way that communications staff cannot.

4Discuss a first set of initiatives (perhaps for the upcoming quarter) and explain to them how and when you will be reaching out to them for support. Explain to them the benefits of their outreach and how you all plan to learn and benefit from these experiences.

5Follow up and send a thank you email. Then promptly follow up with something they can add support to. Use your board ambassador to send out a message and showcase their “share” with the other board members. Gentle peer pressure can be a useful tool.

6Let them know that you’ll be following up periodically to see how the outreach has been working. Explore ways they can evolve their outreach that matches their comfort level and advances your communications and social media goals.

Social media outlets for board members to focus on

• LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the most promising social media outlets for use by board members. You’ll find that most board members have a LinkedIn account, with some board members using it with more frequency than others. Either way, it’s an outlet that most are familiar with and it has a great ability to immediately reach their network.

• Facebook. Facebook can be a great personal tool since you’ll find many board members using Facebook to connect with colleagues, friends and family. Many nonprofit leaders also use Facebook in their professional capacity. So encourage them to post via Facebook as a way to connect their networks of friends and colleagues to your organization. It’s important to be selective on which items you ask them to post, but encourage them to personalize, personalize, personalize. They’ll get a higher degree of engagement and responsiveness.

• Twitter. Twitter is a great tool to connect with other organizations, potential partners, journalists, thought leaders, and influencers. It will be helpful to find out which of your board members can retweet for you and tag other thought leaders or influencers in their networks who would benefit from the post.

•Blogging. A great goal around blogging is to encourage board members to write at least one blog post per year. The post could be tied to initiatives you are trying to support or could be a way to generate new supporters. The title of the post could simply be along
the lines of, “Why I got involved in XYZ organization and why you should, too.” It’s a powerful way for you and them to recruit new supporters and even take that first step in helping them outline ways they can start a conversation with potential new board members or donors.

• Email marketing. Do your board members already do outreach to their networks via your fundraising team? If they do, they should be including your organization’s social networks at the bottom of their emails.

Engaging board members in social media can be a bit of a hot topic. Have you asked your board members to engage in your organization’s social media efforts? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments!

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