You’ve established your nonprofit in social media with accounts on the major platforms – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Things are going pretty well, but are you getting the most bang for your social media buck? Here are some simple tips to optimize your social media presence.
Audit Your Following-to-Follower Ratio: It’s pretty intuitive that it’s preferable to have a larger number of followers than the number of accounts you follow. But, your number of followers is just a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to establishing your organization as an influencer. When was the last time you looked closely at your “following” list? Consider taking just 10 minutes a week to go through the accounts that you are following to ensure they are the target audience you’d like to engage with.
Make the First Move to Grow Your Audience: Avoid resting on your laurels by expecting people to find you. Spend 5 minutes a day searching for relevant accounts to connect with on social networks. Search for relevant hashtags to identify key people contributing to the conversation. Then, simply initiate the connection by following them first.
Don’t Neglect the Bio: Once your organization’s presence is established in a social network, your bio doesn’t necessarily need to be relegated to the company line. Consider taking advantage of this space to promote an upcoming event or project.
Mind Your Manners: It’s important to acknowledge and/or express gratitude when someone extends your reach by reposting your social media content. Doing so shows you’re paying attention to the community and that you appreciate their support and input. Consider letting your new followers know that you’re glad to connect and that you appreciate their support with a quick @reply once in a while. Pay attention to comments on your Facebook and LinkedIn posts, and be sure to acknowledge it when someone posts a nice comment or shares your content.
Extend Your Reach: Take advantage of your website’s traffic to extend the reach of your social media posts. Consider adding a widget that displays your posts on Twitter and/or Facebook on relevant pages of your website. Twitter makes it easy to create code to customize a widget to embed a collection of your tweets on your website. For example, you could place a widget on the education page of your website that only pulls tweets from your feed that include words relevant to your organization’s educational offerings.
Let’s Collaborate: We all know there are more than five ways to extend the reach of your social media presence. How else do you make the most of social media?
By Cause Collaborator Christina Stallings
