4 Surprising Lessons I Learned About Social Media Marketing for Nonprofits - And You Should, Too!

Hello Friends!

Time has come to wrap up my blog that I have written for MKTG 370 - Social Media Marketing course at Columbia College. I'd like to thank my classmates for their valuable insights and Dr. Rahim for his wisdom and encouragement.

Here are the 4 lessons I learned about social media marketing for nonprofits from this class:

First: Social media marketing is not about technology, it's about relationships. If you chase after the latest social media technology to prove to the board of directors that your organization is on the leading edge; you're chasing the wrong metric. The metric we all should be chasing is all about how many individuals from out target group are we engaging with?

Second: Take the time to analyze your target audience and segment it also. You may have multiple audiences; perhaps your foundation donors can be found on LinkedIn, but your volunteers are on Facebook and your employees are on Pinterest. You need to know who your audience is and then target your approach to a message that will engage them.

Third: It takes a lot of time, patience and consistency to do social media marketing. Why? Because you are building a community. You must actually engage with your audiences; when you get a comment or a question, you must answer. That contact from your audience was the point of opportunity to communicate your message to your audience. Don't squander it!

Fourth: You got to be you! Let your authentic self shine through your communications. Speak with a human voice; like speaking to a friend. Be transparent, be honest. Your audience will respond to you if you ask your audience for feedback. So finish every post, pic, video or podcast with an open ended question that will stimulate feedback.

Fifth: The trends for the future. Device convergence; people will be viewing social media on all kinds of different devices, we must make sure that whatever we post, it delivers a great user experience on all platforms.

In addition, visual forms of communicating are becoming more and more important. For example, Facebook launched a live streaming service and at the same time changed their algorithm to prioritize video posts over all other posts. Here is a link to my video blog on the subject:
The Nonprofit Helper on Social Media Marketing

Now that I have told you what I learned this semester at school, what do you think were the most surprising lessons about social media that you have learned lately?

Thanks for reading and bye for now!
Lea