DECEMBER, 2013
HAPPY HOLIDAYS! 3 Ways to Increase Your Nonprofit’s Social Media Engagement Only a Quarter of Nonprofits Have a Content Marketing Strategy to Guide Them
Articles and posts worth sharing.
Published by: Solutions Marketing & Consulting LLC 14001 N. 50th St. Scottsdale, AZ 85254 602-380-7230 866-658-9933 Elaine Fogel, Editor Copyright Š 2013 Solutions Marketing & Consulting LLC Some rights reserved. This newsletter may be shared in its entirety through its direct URL. No part of the content may be copied in any way without our permission... or else. We publish this newsletter for the benefit of our clients, colleagues, and others interested in nonprofit marketing, branding, and customer orientation. Heck, even uninterested people are welcome to read it!
Monster Marketing Mashup
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COVER STORY: 3 Ways to Increase Your Nonprofit’s Social Media Engagement
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On the BLOG
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Resources to Make Your Job Easier
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Nonprofit Marketing Definition of the Month
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Specials, Discounts, & Deals on Promotional Products and Custom Printing
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HAPPY HANUKKAH! MERRY CHRISTMAS! HAPPY KWANZAA! We want to wish our clients, readers, friends, colleagues, and followers, the best of the holiday season! May 2014 bring you good health and prosperity.
Opinions expressed here are our own, based on many years of slogging away at marketing and branding. The content is intended to inform and inspire those who work and volunteer for nonprofit organizations. And, of course, it also serves as a marketing vehicle for our company - to demonstrate our thought leadership, talents, available services, and passion for helping nonprofits succeed. Why else would we do it? If you have any beefs with the content, feel free to keep them to yourselves, or if you must, you can tell us by e-mailing: info@solutionsmc.net.
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SOLUTIONS SPOTLIGHT, NONPROFIT EDITION, DECEMBER 2013
Elaine and Allen Fogel Solutions Marketing & Consulting LLC
18 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros Would you like to improve your social media marketing? Are you wondering what social media marketing tactics the pros like to use? Read what top social media pros have shared about their hottest social media marketing tactics.
Articles and posts worth sharing.
Charities Try Provocative Ads to Attract Attention “You are not just competing against other charity brands or public service announcements. You are competing against advertising and marketing from everybody.�
Marketing Your Nonprofit Online - Where to Start No Longer Optional for Charities Online marketing is no longer optional for nonprofit organizations. Even the smallest and most local nonprofit must reach out to the public through an online presence.
Learning Who Gives: How Generations X, Y, Baby Boomers, and Matures Donate The generations are as similar as they are different in their giving behaviors. A fundraising strategy should be integrated across many channels, but with a slightly different emphasis by generation.
SOLUTIONS SPOTLIGHT, NONPROFIT EDITION, DECEMBER 2013
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3 WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR NONPROFIT’S
SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT By Elaine Fogel valuable dollars scattering its marketing money around hoping that something will work. And, since social media is so popular, many are doing it without defining their objectives. This doesn’t mean that you have to stop everything until you have a plan in place. Develop your plan and then tweak or revise the tactics you’re currently doing to meet your nonprofit’s strategic marketing goals.
2. Discover what’s in it for them
So, your nonprofit uses social media marketing to reach its various audiences, right? So, how’s it going? Wish it could acquire and engage more supporters?
1. Develop a social media marketing strategy
No matter how big or small, your nonprofit can improve its social media results by adopting these three things.
And, let’s take this one step further... Nonprofits that engage in SM marketing without an overarching organizational marketing strategy are at an even bigger disadvantage! That’s like the insurance commercial where the motorcyclist made of money loses bills everywhere he drives.
Nonprofits that engage in social media (SM) marketing without a strategy are at a major disadvantage. Without one in place, it’s very possible that your team is barking up the wrong SM trees.
Your organization may be wasting
Using social media to broadcast your organization’s news, events, and campaigns doesn’t take advantage of the social media channel. This is what organizations did before the advent of digital marketing. Social media is not a one-way communications street. It was created to encourage dialog, feedback, sharing, and much more. So, think about what your organization can bring to the table as a benefit to your followers and fans. If yours is a health-related charity, as an example, share the latest study findings with your social media friends. Become the “go-to” place for information that appeals to your audiences. Not everything you post has to be
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SOLUTIONS SPOTLIGHT, NONPROFIT EDITION, DECEMBER 2013
solicitation-centered. There’s room for many conversation starters. Let’s say your organization is hosting a golf tournament. Create a unique Twitter hashtag for the event and periodically post golf tips using it. Hashtags are picked up by other social media sites; it’s not just a Twitter thing. When your nonprofit has a customer -oriented mindset, it can serve its followers and friends better. Give them what they want! Then, engage them in conversation about the topics. Have your team use the organization’s brand personality to keep the messaging consistent.
3. Follow them back! It’s a bit challenging to engage your social media friends unless you can read what they’re contributing, too. By far, the most overlooked social media marketing tactic is to follow your followers back! This is especially the case in Twitter, where many nonprofits have 3+ times more followers than they follow. Unfortunately, this lack of interest in your followers speaks volumes about your brand, whether intentional or not. It can demonstrate a lack of interest, perhaps a smug attitude, and self-centeredness - not the type of brand experiences your nonprofit wants to impart. There are ways to remedy this. Firstly, if the reason you’re not following back is because your organization doesn’t have enough human resources to manage its accounts, it’s time to purge! Why keep stagnant social media accounts?
When you develop your social media marketing strategy, you’ll determine which SM sites can give your nonprofit the best bang for its buck. Stick with the one or two that you can manage and close the other accounts. If you grow later on, then you can always add new ones. For organizations that have dedicated employees who manage social media marketing, a purge may also be necessary, depending on how many accounts they oversee and how many they can truly manage. It’s better to be effective in fewer SM channels than to try and be everywhere with poor results. Start by going through your organization’s followers and fans in the sites you want to keep. Read their brief bios, and check to see which are legitimate, i.e. not porno babes, high-pressure salespeople, and others that follow your nonprofit for their own obvious self-promotion.
These are the people you want to avoid. Give the others the benefit of the doubt and follow them back. It won’t take long to see which ones are “real” and which ones to unfollow. Then, take the time to see what your “real” friends are posting and respond. For example, if one of your Facebook “likes” posts a death in his/her family, it’s appropriate to wish him/her condolences on behalf of the organization. Do it authentically and you’ll be surprised how your supporters will respond. They’ll appreciate the fact that you reached out. There are many other instances where your organization can engage with its SM friends. Be human in SM spaces, and your team will discover them organically.
“Social media is not a one-way communications street. It was created to encourage dialog, feedback, sharing, and much more.”
SOLUTIONS SPOTLIGHT, NONPROFIT EDITION, DECEMBER 2013
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Only a Quarter of Nonprofits Have a Content Marketing Strategy to Guide Them The good news is that 92% of surveyed nonprofit professionals are using content marketing. The not-so-good news is that 26% rate themselves as effective at content marketing and only 25% have a documented content strategy to guide their efforts.
The Psychology of Color in Marketing If your digital and traditional marketing communications uses red as the main color, watch out! Even though red represents passion, excitement, and power, it also spells danger. Check out this excellent infographic on the psychology of color.
Marketing Orchestration? They Stole My Line! Marketing orchestration – a new buzz phrase coined by Forrester research for Responsys. Learn what it is and how your organization can improve the “customer journey” for all its stakeholders.
RESOURCES TO MAKE YOUR JOB EASIER! Here’s a FREE way to get more traffic to your nonprofit’s Web site or blog. Create a free digital product you want to give away to your Web site visitors. It could be an eBook, an MP3 file, or something else your audiences will want. Then visit the Cloud: Flood site to make a button that links to the file you want to give away. You then place this button next to the freebie on your site. Site visitors see the freebie, and are asked to Tweet or Facebook Share your link. Once they do, they are automatically given the freebie. It doesn’t cost anything to test this method of gaining new followers and supporters! Don’t always have time to read our newsletters and other content the day you receive them? No problem! Get this free Pocket app - available for your desktop and mobile devices. Save your content and read it later!
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SOLUTIONS SPOTLIGHT, NONPROFIT EDITION, DECEMBER 2013
“Nonprofit Merger”
A nonprofit merger is when two or more nonprofit organizations join together as one. The combined organization either keeps one of their original brands or rebrands as one new entity.
SOLUTIONS SPOTLIGHT, NONPROFIT EDITION, DECEMBER 2013
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SOLUTIONS SPOTLIGHT, NONPROFIT EDITION, DECEMBER 2013
Expires: 12-27-13
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We also carry regularly-priced promotional products and can do almost any type of custom printing. Just ask us for a quote.
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We also offer graphic design and direct mailing services. SOLUTIONS SPOTLIGHT, NONPROFIT EDITION, DECEMBER 2013
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that may earn us a buck or two... It doesn’t add up to a meal a month, but we keep trying.
Integrated Marketing Solutions for Nonprofits and Businesses ABOUT | SERVICES NONPROFIT MARKETING SOLUTIONS solutionsmc.net info@solutionsmc.net In Phoenix: 602-380-7230 Toll-free: 866-658-9933 (Mountain Standard Time, GMT -7)