Everybody’s Doing It...Social Media, That Is: But is it Right for Your NFP?

When we conduced our inaugural Not-for-Profit Pulse back in December, there was little doubt that Canadian NFP’s were starting to see the vast potential social media has to help their organizations achieve their goals and forward their mission.  Most were already using or were planning to use different social media tools to help forward the agenda of their associations and charities.

One of the big challenges, however, was that many participant organizations were using social media without the benefit of an actual social media strategy.  

It seems to me that a lot of NFP's today are leaping onto the social media bandwagon simply because everybody else seems to be doing it...and they are surprised when they are not seeing any results.

I don't mean to sound like your Mother but, if everyone was jumping off of a cliff would you do it too? 

Despite all the hype suggesting otherwise, social media isn’t for everyone.  Just like you would for any new strategic initiative, you should carefully think through whether it is a ‘fit’ with your organization.

There are many excellent resources out there on developing and implementing social media.  We Are Media, in particular, has some great resources for social media strategy development for NFP's.  But first you need to evaluate whether or not you should be using it at all. 

I see the decision framed around three central questions: 

1. What is Your Objective?

As a first step, you need to nail down exactly what it is you want to accomplish by using social media and how you expect it to forward your organization’s mission, vision and broad strategic goals.  Further to this, you should ask yourself whether social media is a ‘fit’ with your organizational focus and culture at this time. 

1. Do You Know Where Your Stakeholders Are?

There are many different stakeholder groups that have an impact in the success of your organization. Who are they? Social media throws the doors wide open in enabling you to reach out beyond traditional members and donors to engage fringe stakeholders as well.

Once you’ve identified your stakeholders, you need to find out whether or not they use social media.  If they do, what types of social media to they respond to? What tools do they use?  If your stakeholders aren’t currently online in large numbers, consider whether this is going to change at some point in the near future.

1.  What are Your Resource Capabilities?

Social media has been lauded as the people's media because most of the tools and applications out there are free or inexpensive to use.  As many of you are already aware, however, social media takes a heck of a lot of time and effort to do properly.  If your organization doesn’t have the human resources to implement and maintain your social media strategy, now is probably not the right time to pursue it.

Further to this, social media isn’t intuitive for everyone. The people responsible for implementing and maintaining your social media presence have to have the time to develop an understanding of the medium and how it works.

For those NFP's who have taken the leap into social media, how did your organization make the decision? Gut feeling? Careful planning? A coin toss? We'd love to hear about how your organization jumped onto (or didn't jump onto) the social media bandwagon.

(Header image courtesey of Matt Hamm)

Comments

[James the Marketing Consultant]

I believe that social media will have a greater impact in organizing, advertising and marketing. But you need to have a better understanding about how social media works, in this way you can take full advantage of its tools and features. You blog presented a valuable information.