Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 173. How to Make Sense of Social Media + Find Your Unique Voice - Christina Edwards

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173. How to Make Sense of Social Media + Find Your Unique Voice - Christina Edwards · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey, I'm john. And I'm Becky. And this is the we are for good podcast.
• 0:06
  Becky Endicott: nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Jonathan McCoy: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community, where nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started.
• 0:36
  Becky Endicott: Hey, Becky, we got ATL in the house, Atlanta girl,
• 0:40
  Jonathan McCoy: so many good people in Atlanta.
• 0:42
  Becky Endicott: You know, we talk about social media a lot on the podcast. And I think it's a real overwhelming component for a lot of nonprofits. And we talk about how to implement it, why you need to be diversifying it. But I think sometimes we just need a guide to take our hand and go back to basics and talk about how do we set goals on social media? How do we track our metrics? How are we finding our voice? And so are the metrics that matter? Yeah, so just know that we have our pad of paper and our pens out because we have brought an expert to the podcast today. We are so delighted to introduce Christina Edwards, she is with splendid and just an incredible consultancy that's really walking you through social media strategy, how to build a nonprofit vision online and really just thread your communications in an intentional way. So she has a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector. She's worked with the super multimillion dollar organizations all the way down to the teeny, but mighty volunteer led team so she's really got a full bandwidth of expertise and she just loves teaching online marketing and fundraising courses because she wants bold storytelling, big impact and she wants to improve the social impact sector Christina Welcome to the where for good podcast we are
• 2:00
  Christina Edwards: here what a warm welcome. And yes, so you got me fired up and like stop handing your marketing off to an intern. Giving your social media number one, write that down. That's your first note.
• 2:12
  Becky Endicott: This is it. This is a team sport, social media strategy has got to be a team sport. So okay, we need to we need to know about Christina, what is your story? Tell us about growing up this heart that you grew for social impact. And yeah, tell us what led you to where you are today.
• 2:30
  Christina Edwards: So I think I have a pretty winding career path here because I did not go to school to work for nonprofits. I never thought I would end up kind of where I am. I started off working primarily in, let's say, retail. I worked at a concert venue for many, many years from taking tickets to working front of house to bartending. That is really where I started developing a love for gathering people together. That is where I started to learn about like, what is grassroots marketing. That's where I started to learn about the concepts that I actually teach my clients today. So I started my first business in 2007. And then from there, it just evolved, I launched an agency that really did social media, PR, we sort of said yes to everything. We did events, I did a wedding once, which was a disaster. quickly took it off the website, we no longer do weddings. And basically in that process, I realized, hey, we are picking up these nonprofit clients and I love them. Like I love them. I want more of them. I want to find more we talked about before. Atlanta especially is really rich and deep with so many nonprofits. It was just an I had this natural pull to it. So at some point I was like this is the work that I want to do. And I closed the agency and launched my consultancy, splendid consulting and that's really what happened and then with COVID it really shifted even more it shifted with taking what was a lot of in person teaching a lot of meeting my clients in person to doing what we're doing today. So being on zoom and now I teach a lot of my clients are all over the country and world which has been really really fun. And yeah, like just it's like this. People are like Oh, did you get your degree in marketing? Of course not. Did you know you would want to work for nonprofits? I'm like Of course not. But I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur I came from an entrepreneurial family that has been like a mainstay and in a lot of ways a lot of what I do is just communication and sales like fundraising as kind of sales and communication marketing go hand in hand with fundraising so it all like to me it's long and winding but it's all like the end result is the same
• 4:45
  Jonathan McCoy: so yeah, and hopefully there's not too many parallels from bright bright zil is the wedding plan
• 4:49
  Becky Endicott: it literally was gonna say always choose purpose rather than a bridezilla or an angry wedding mother so yes, loving.
• 4:57
  Christina Edwards: Yes, exactly. You know, when I worked With like restaurants and e commerce and we launched a really big development here called fun City Market, and that was such a fun program to and community to launch online, like how do you build community? When there's nothing there yet? Like how do you get a community excited when there really was just a vacant building that would be retail and shopping and cool things in about three years? And so that was really my first kind of glimpse into how do we create community online? How do we how do we actually give the neighbors the, you know, greater community a peek behind, like, what's coming, get them involved, and that's kind of where I got my start. also worked with arts organizations, you know, had some cool art events happen there. And it was just again, it was like that moment of like, you need more of this. So
• 5:45
  Jonathan McCoy: well, I want us to transition into social media specifically. But I mean, it's not lost on me that I think that is the right tone to set that this is not another tactic. And if it's just the tactic on the list, like we need to avoid or jump ship right now. But it's about community. Like I think community is a big threat. And it's not the only goal. But I think your point is really strong, that community could be the heart of our strategy, like we're trying to find people online, and get them excited and connected to our organization. So would you kind of share set the tone for us? How should we approach this? What kind of mindsets Do we need to come about as we start to think about setting goals for our social media?
• 6:23
  Christina Edwards: Yeah, I mean, when I think about social media, we're trying to do two things. We're trying to attract more supporters, right? We're trying to raise visibility, and in doing and hoping to do those two things which creating community. So at the initial shutdown, there was just there were these two types of nonprofits there were the ones that already had those engaged supporters online, and then the ones that had to play catch up, right? So hopefully today, we'll take some notes and figure out like, whether you're in either of those buckets, how do you start to cultivate a wider community online so that when you say, Hey, we're doing a fundraiser, we're hosting this annual event, they're like, all yours, they're already engaged and ready. So we'll talk about a little bit about like, when it comes to goal setting, and like, metrics in general, my clients used to ask for all of these reports, and I would record them to death. And no one What
• 7:16
  Jonathan McCoy: are you saying? Like there was 62 comments and for engaged My God?
• 7:22
  Christina Edwards: Yes, yeah. And especially like corporate clients, so like, the bigger the client, nonprofit or for profit, it doesn't matter, or
• 7:28
  Jonathan McCoy: TPO.
• 7:30
  Christina Edwards: And it's like, I'm not liking doing them, you're not reading them, no one's getting anything out of it. So when it comes to reporting, I would rather find what's practical and useful from the data. Because the data doesn't lie, there's really juicy stuff in there that will help you for future campaigns, right. But at the same time, if you're going so granular, that you're like, in this week, we had 42 likes, like that's not that helpful for anyone, particularly nonprofits who are usually stretched for bandwidth, right. So that's the first thing is practical over just what you think you should do, or what maybe what your boss thinks you should do, and being willing to say, you know, instead of looking at the weekly reporting, or sometimes even monthly, let's look at holistically over campaign, or let's look at quarterly. And let's compare last quarter this quarter. But we also have to take into account like was it summer, and we know that fall is our busiest season. So that's when I do what that's what I say the other piece of it is your gut, there's always a gut check with it. So there's the data. And then there's the gut check, particularly with a person who is in charge of marketing or communications, they have this innately, I had it over and over and over again, when I was managing my clients, you know, social media accounts, I would know ahead of time, if I post this, this is totally not gonna work with this community, but my client wants me to post this. And then I would say, if I, if I post this, they're gonna love it. Because you have that intuition of what you know, your audience wants. And so that is also in the data where you're like, Okay, the data is kind of telling you this, these are some top performing posts, or this got a lot of clicks. But I also know I have this, this and this that my community, always comments about, and maybe that's not showing up in the recording. So that's kind of where I think the the hybrid of like going with your gut, there really, really matters.
• 9:19
  Jonathan McCoy: It's also seems like letting go of some of the control, I mean, or a lot of the control, you have to let the data tell you of how people are responding and you see it and you feel it. And you just know, yeah,
• 9:30
  Christina Edwards: yeah. And I think also just being willing to like being future focused and being willing to try new things. Because if all you're doing is looking at like, Oh, well, these are our best posts from last year. So we need to recreate these again and again, you're not trying anything new. Meanwhile, everyone on Instagram is doing reels and you're not because you didn't have on last year or you maybe didn't have an ad that was willing to do some one to one video content that you showed totally should be doing and so you have to be willing to say I'm going to try this I'm going to stick with it for a little bit. And then I'm going to look at the data. So I also see people kind of bail halfway through or like, even sooner than that, where they try one thing. And they're like that was a, that was a no, we're not doing that again. So that's again, that's really good more than it is me using a really great software to pull in as
• 10:21
  Becky Endicott: well. And I love that you're that you're giving people permission to what we call, try stuff. And you cannot push the envelope on innovation and creativity and doing things differently, unless you're trying stuff. And the other kind of theme that I'm seeing threaded here is, you're telling us we need to listen. And I think social media, that's something that we don't do as well on social media, because we think we control the message. And we think we're trying to push somebody to a very specific call to action. But if we're not listening to how people are responding, we're not looking at the stats and seeing how that's going to inform the next thing. We truly are not listening. And we are fundraisers, we are hardwired to listen to the nuance of somebody who wants to give to our organization, we need to apply that same thinking digitally. So I kind of want to transition into one of my favorite topics of all time, which is like finding your voice on social media, I love that we're going to have this conversation because I'm here to tell you guys that the voice that you use in the office, the voice that you use across the table, from a donor or how you're writing your corporate emails is entirely different than the voice you need to have online. So talk to us a little bit about how do you build that digital soul and how do you define that voice and share it in a really unique way walk us through some steps.
• 11:43
  Christina Edwards: I love that you said digital soul like that, write that down. That's great. That's such a great example of what we're about to talk about. So I call it a brand voice really, really simple. But I would say 99% of nonprofits come to me and they don't have one in place sometimes they'll go gay I'll have it and then I'll sit they'll send it to me what it is is a brand identity. So it's the logo it's the fonts it's their brand colors, they totally need that but they also need the companion piece to this and this is your playbook I call it for what you sound like online I also think this includes what you look like online I have been really doing a lot of studying myself on the concept of ethical storytelling online. And so that comes into play of like what words do we say what words do we not say as a brand as an organization as a community? What visuals are we no longer willing to put out there? You know, there are terms like poverty porn or trauma porn things that really no longer align with our organization that goes in this you know that's how you get those moments of you know, figuring out what your what your own authentic voice is online so I always onboard my clients with a session like this. And I also do this in my program where you know, we're figuring out what are those buzzwords What are those phrases? What is our target audience so many people don't do this because they think their target audiences everyone? Yep. Which is nice, but not helpful especially online because we need to repel some people in order to attract a lot of people right? So it's really important to drill down who your target audience or audiences You know, I'm all right. If it's more than one is online, I put all of that together and a brand voice document so that you have that and that is something I love to onboard people with. You know, it's perfect for that person who is handling your social channels. I always say if you're getting ready to write a caption for a social post and the words don't come go to your brand voice because that's your library like that is your word content library. And the same thing with your writing an appeals letter. You're like, Oh my gosh, I said the word generosity for the 4,000th time. What else can I say? And you realize that there's this lack of depth to what you're saying. That's because you probably haven't really uncovered your persona online you're and I when I say you, I mean your nonprofit as a whole.
• 14:46
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, I love that you talked about rappelling because I think this is this needs to be talked about in the nonprofit space. It's okay to repel people that are not going to connect with your mission like it's gonna allow you to connect more deeply. Even at a simple level with email list. I've talked about this all the time. I love when people unsubscribes if you're listening and we annoy you like unsubscribe, if you love the content we create like it's a show to increase our open rates if more people that love us are subscribed as opposed to people that we no way so great point.
• 15:14
  Becky Endicott: I am so geeked out on a voice style guide and I don't think that enough people use them to your point 99% of nonprofits don't have them. Here's a couple things that this can do for you. We have one and it is so helpful. I mean even to me as the writer I am like trying to figure out we go into tone We go into formatting we go into word choice, I think that if you have a guide like that, then all of a sudden it becomes so much easier to democratize the process of everyone owning the social media channel. So it's almost like if you're going to bring on somebody it's like this is who we are, this is how we talk. These are the words we use here's the playbook and then someone can seamlessly jump in and create a post that sounds just like that person I'm using the air quotes that your company is representing online, brilliant suggestions, love all of it
• 16:08
  Christina Edwards: totally. And I totally agree with you about the email thing you know, an unsubscribe can feel like an ouch moment but I actually go the extra mile with my own list and I've learned this where I will put through people for a list cleaning sequence so if you haven't opened an email or read an email for a period of time, it's okay but I'm going to put you through a sequence where you can opt in or out it's the same thing of like, I want you I want my people on here who want to read the emails and I think I do this for my clients too. They think people will come to me and they say to me, oh, we have a database full of 5000 subscribers you do a little bit of digging. And you know it's 15% that have opened in the last six months you now you're talking about goals, your goals are completely out of whack when you look at that thinking I'm going to fundraise to this audience that really, really tiny portion of your audience is actually seeing your fundraising emails Yeah,
• 17:01
  Jonathan McCoy: yeah, there's so much there I'm loving this conversation and honestly this one we're taking notes because we're all trying to build community whether you know, we have a diverse listening base, but all of us are trying to lock arms with like minded people, and the world is so much bigger than just what's right in front of us. That's what I love about social media is like you can have a global audience you can have a country wide audience of somebody that cares about this real nuanced thing that you really care about in the way that you show up so really, really powerful apply applicable to all of us thank you so much. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see organizations making? just name it and let's claim them and it's gonna be hilarious Please tell me what these are.
• 17:40
  Christina Edwards: The biggest I would say a couple of big ones would be stock photos. Now I know that stock photos are I know I can hear the nonprofits in my world say Christina, we work with children, we can't you know, there are ways you can use stock photos that are okay. And there's that and then there's the stock photos that everybody's using and that's not good that I see really, really generic captions those are probably the worst ones where it's just saying you know, support our cause and you're like, I got a generic photo with a generic caption and I'm out like there's nothing there's nothing there there's nothing for me to connect with. And to your point of us talking about like you want to repel some people in order to attract some people you got to bring us in and tell us a little bit about your amazing program your amazing mission or something in order to you know, stop that scroll get us to read and then ultimately you're getting us to click off site and go somewhere right so there's a couple of obstacles in the way to get there. And it starts with a really juicy what I call a front loaded caption that stops me right away and gets me you know, think about a headline on a newspaper it gets me to keep reading
• 18:57
  Jonathan McCoy: front loaded caption okay yes, let's can we double click loaded caption?
• 19:01
  Becky Endicott: I need an example.
• 19:03
  Christina Edwards: Oh you so you've done this a million times you're going to log on to your Instagram immediately and somebody will have said something like I shouldn't tell you this but and that's all you can see. And then you're like I gotta click the More button I need to know and it doesn't always have to be like that like I can probably feel the I roles of a few people listening going you know, okay, that's not me. That's not me, right? But there is something there is a way to get people's ears to perk up that's what we need to do to go Okay, I'm in I'm listening. A stat does this beautifully. So whether you know, it's three out of four, blah, blah, blah, that's specific to your sector or niche or a stat about your program. You know, XYZ outcome Did you know I mean, that works really, really well just to get people to wake up right away. The other way you can do this, if not in your caption is with your visual. So when you have that like really boring visual of maybe that photo you've used for the 4,000th Time, time to change it out.
• 19:59
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• 20:31
  Becky Endicott: I love the idea of a caption that way. Somebody up. I mean, that in itself is a very interesting concept and it dovetails really well with we talked with Eric wrestler with cosmic design. And he talks about how do you create scroll stopping content? And to me it's the same concept there you want somebody to pause? How do you say something that creates pause. And to me the power in that you can't just say something shocking, you have to have something that is a call to action? How do they learn more? How does it make them feel you want their voice, you want to point them to your website, you've got
• 21:06
  Christina Edwards: to liken it to if you're writing emails, which hopefully your audience is writing emails regularly to their subscribers. So a lot of times, the last thing I do is write the subject line, because that's going to come out once I write the story, right? Oh, it's in there, or a version of it is in there. And your front loaded caption is the same way. It's like, give me the story, bring me in, let me know what you're about to tell me about, you know, or whatever's happening. Get me, you know, peek on a program, you're about to launch or, you know why this fundraiser is virtual now, but it's gonna be amazing. And, you know, blah, blah, blah, then Okay, so I do this with my own content, oh, the front loaded captions kind of in the middle, and I just
• 21:46
  Becky Endicott: put it up. Christina is very, very wise. I mean, these are seriously great hacks. And I love that we're talking about mistakes, because honestly, I think each one that you've said, we we've all done at some point in our careers, or even in our personal area. And I just think that this is a really good goal to set for yourself. So I kind of want to move into measuring social media success. I think it's hard to track a lot of metrics online. Some are incredibly basic when you look at Facebook, and you can see likes and shares and those kinds of things. But what are the right metrics? And what advice do you have around working smarter and not harder?
• 22:20
  Christina Edwards: Yeah. So I feel like most people know what they should do. We know we need a strategy. We know we have the actual campaign where we're promoting the thing, right? Then we have what I call the post campaign stretch, that's where we're really working on the retention piece. And then we have evaluating the data, right? So it's like, I think we approximately all kind of get that that campaign cycle. But what happens is, everyone is so time constrained or overwhelmed, or has like a fundraiser back to back with another fundraiser, that they cram that entire thing together. So they're not really doing any of it effectively, they're not giving themselves enough time on the front end for the planning. They're probably spending the most time in the actual campaign itself. So it's like, you know, the the posts, the appeals, whatever that looks like, they're probably I see retention being a huge opportunity, where we have a lot of that churn rate of the like one and done donors, because there isn't really a system in place to maximize that, right. And then lastly, they're not really evaluating their goals very well. And I think it is because it sounds complicated, but it's actually not complicated. For me, I think, a very spacious way to plan a digital campaign could be four weeks, it doesn't have to be recreating things from scratch over and over again, you can systematize you can template it, you know, so that you have a content calendar that that is working with everybody on your team. And then the same thing for the post campaign stretch where there is a system in place of like, what happens when we get a new donor? What does that look like? What does that you know, look like online, and then that evaluating piece, you know, that could just be a two hour time block that you have in your calendar after every campaign. It doesn't have to be I think when we think about it's a 45 page report, and I have to you know, it's like, oh, I don't want to do it. And you don't even want to you just run and you're like, I gotta go, I gotta do the next thing. So I think when you make it a little bit more bite sized, and you're like, Listen, I'm going to look at clickthroughs. I'm going to look at my landing page. What do I think of it? Did I get any feedback on it? Because likely, people are clicking off site going somewhere right? To make the donation? Where did they go? How did that you know, where can you do better write some notes, so that in the future, you're making those changes. But the opportunity is there if you don't go to get overwhelmed, and that's really a lot about what I teach because I think that our mind gets in the way of almost all of it where we're nonprofits I get it like they usually are doing the jobs of you know, three or four people. But if you don't let yourself spin out, it is possible to do this actually pretty like succinctly and quickly.
• 25:02
  Jonathan McCoy: Well, speaking of succinctly and quickly, perfect transition. I know you're all about leveraging tech hacks for nonprofits. Canva here's the deal. I am a formally trained graphic designer so I guess I'm a little bit of a snob I love Adobe products, but I realized if I give somebody an Adobe template, they have no idea what to do with my InDesign. So I love Canva I love what it brings it democratizes access to design tools. Will you talk a little bit about this and how nonprofits should be using it. I don't think we talked about Canva
• 25:30
  Becky Endicott: and Christina, if you go to her Instagram, which we'll talk about Let you give a shout out, she has an entire section on Canva counseling. So if you want to look at some of her classes and how to use Canva It's amazing. It's amazing. I have a
• 25:44
  Christina Edwards: Canva course I have another course that's all about social fundraising, and you get templates in there, too. When I, when I first found out about Canva, this was like, in my agency days, and it was almost like, is this allowed, like, do we don't have to use Photoshop anymore because I am very creative. I love art. I love all that. But I'm very analog like I'm, you know, I went to school for photography and on the film, you know, like so. So when I found camp, I was like, this is it. And it really has just gotten better and better and better. In my own practice, I will be this has happened to me three times from like, I have Christina like, come on. I'm about to go live. I'm bringing a guest on Instagram, I do these lives all the time. And I realized, Oh, I need a story cover for it. 30 seconds before I go live, I pop over to Canva I've already got my template, I've already got their headshot uploaded, I airdrop it to myself, I'm live. And it's like that is why it's magic. You know, and I'm not, you know, it takes 30 seconds in that moment, because I systematize because I created a template, because I had done it before. So it is such a powerhouse for nonprofits as a powerhouse for a lot of creatives. And we've seen Instagram really shift from a place that had these like National Geographic style photos to now where people are actually consuming content on Canva that we want to swipe through right where we're getting those like narratives that you can swipe through that have the stats. And those graphics work really well. And they're very, very simple to create the Canva. So I'm a big fan of that.
• 27:20
  Becky Endicott: I love that we're talking about Canva. And Julie is an evangelist of Canva and has huge dreams for it because
• 27:27
  Julie Confer: everyone my age, if you're a Gen Z are usually you're handed the keys to the nonprofit social media, because of our age, people are like they know what they're doing. You may not I don't have any graphic design experience. So I use Canva and college for presentations, tons of people my age use Canva. So I'm here for Canva
• 27:44
  Becky Endicott: there is a young professional pro tip right there. I mean, if you were going to link it up in the show notes Julie's already pulled it, you know, nonprofits can apply for free premier access with Canva. And it's amazing. And Christina has, you know, great resources, we'll link up some of those freebies too. But if you're feeling stuck, and the visual element is really bogging you down because not everybody has a john, we are very spoiled. Here we are for good that john is our graphic designer. But we want it to be simple. And we want people to be able to move through planning and implementation of these campaigns quickly. We don't want to wait for our graphic designer for two weeks to create, you know, a little thumbnail that we can use on social media, we got to turn something much more quickly than that. I love
• 28:30
  Christina Edwards: this oscillator. And we want it to look like your branding, right? So when it's just these arbitrary colors or fonts, you're losing your audience. And when you want that connection with your audience and Canva makes that so easy. I feel like they don't have an affiliate program. I am a for profit, I gladly pay for it. I just like to sing it to the rooftops, it's great. And a couple of other apps that I love for really quick like I'm trying to get off zoom, I'm trying to get off a conference call. But that quick communication, I think voxer or WhatsApp or Marco Polo all worked really well for that slack works really well for that, where we all kind of have some zoom fatigue these days. But if you just are in the middle of a project, or you just want to get a quick, you know, a quick kind of way in for your audience I love and an audio messaging app for that,
• 29:17
  Becky Endicott: learning so much on this podcast conversation today. So we've had really great conversation around all of these tactics, but I've got to kick it back to philanthropy. And to story we love to ask every single one of our guests about a moment of philanthropy that touched them and stayed with them. What's your story, Christina?
• 29:37
  Christina Edwards: It's hard because there's been so many and but what came to mind was one that happened really, really recently. So a few weeks ago, I woke up kind of late one Saturday morning, I have young children and my husband and I alternate on like who gets to sleep it and so it was my turn to sleep in, I got up and there was like a lot of mess calls voicemails and text messages from client. And in my world. I'm pretty Monday through Friday, that doesn't happen. So I was like, What is going on? And what had happened was the earthquake in Haiti. And so one of the nonprofits I work with is a smaller organization that's in rural Haiti, and that earthquake had happened, you know, an hour and a half prior. And we woke up to that and immediately it was just like that, that gut of the 40 plus employees that Haitian led team down there and it was like oh my gosh, is everything okay? thankfully they were all okay, which immediately goes What do we do? Right? What can they do? And what the executive director ended up doing, they're about an hour, hour and a half outside of MCI where the earthquake hit was okay, we're not or they're not a relief workers organization. But how do we help. So they do have, you know, medical care, they have a really great wash program, which provides clean drinking water and sanitation. So it was like, okay, wash, we need clean drinking water to this area. So within, I would say, eight hours, because we have our resources and our systems in place and use Canva, we were able to create a beautiful peer to peer fundraiser, have a great landing page for that create a very specific ask for that wash program. And like, I had an EDI that was willing to record videos, we had a really awesome team in Haiti who were like working through the night to deliver it just three days later. So it was just a moment where it was like I part being part of a community being part of a team, when you are here in the States, and there's nothing you can do, but you can write, but you can, because you can share the message, you can share it with your friends, they raised 20k like that. And it was it was like that goosebumps feeling because you're like we can order more water filters. We can do this now we can go to the next step. What is the next step, you know, that they need? So that was probably one of my more like, Ha moments of philanthropy because it's it's, it's hard. Now, you know, this is a community in Haiti, where, you know, a lot of the a lot of the American volunteers and American teams haven't been able to visit and so long, and so it was so amazing to say, okay, we can support you, we can help you from the States. And here's how
• 32:09
  Becky Endicott: this is the power of what can happen when you have a solid plan in place. And everyone is on board from a social media standpoint. I love that you just shared that story. It's very ironic because we interviewed john Pierre Louis with capper care two days before that earthquake hit and it was in, we had that same feeling of paralysis, like, Oh, my gosh, how can we help? And when you feel paralysis, where do people go, they go online, they look for community. And it's like the people we were seeing thrive and shine in this space, were the people that jumped immediately and said, here's a really simple way that you can help us it's very clear.
• 32:54
  Christina Edwards: And I will say, I noticed a difference this in this season, which was I saw a lot of people sharing, let's lift up and support the smaller nonprofits. So like the one you just mentioned, like Hope for Haiti, like thoughtco, the one that I work with, it was really interesting to see people say, let's lift up these organizations that are doing the work that are actually in rural Haiti that no, you know, and it was, it was really, really, yeah, it's like that moment of like, okay, I do feel paralyzed. But no, you know, we are sharing, we are donating, and we're coming together. I also think, too, this was a testimony to, you know, this was an unplanned fundraiser, you know, and they have another fundraiser planned. And I love the power of people who are outside of your network going, yes, I want to help, you know, and reaching outside of your network, your friends and friends and friends. And like, that is the entire point of social media. That's it is like, you know, how many times that's happened to me as an individual donor, where I'm like, Oh, my gosh, how did I not know about this organization, I have to get involved, I want to know more. And it's because a friend shared their Instagram, post to their stories. That was it. One, one click. And that's why I get so excited about social media.
• 34:11
  Becky Endicott: And because it's one click, and it's one moment, they took one, one moment in time, and the rebuttal go, it goes on and on. And that's just why we're so geeked out about the power and the untapped potential on social media. So if you get nothing from this, it's like, get your plan together, get your voice style guide, start thinking about it from a group perspective, no more intern work, we have got to ingrain this in the fabric of all of our nonprofits as a core part of how we're building community fundraising and engaging. I was
• 34:49
  Jonathan McCoy: going to piggyback on that to say you need to make an investment in this, you know, because they needed to be focused on Haiti relief at the moment, or whatever they're going to do to plug in, and they need somebody that can think strategically about how social media can apply, maybe that's somebody on your team or you need to make that higher so that you can mobilize and be focused on the right work in your organization to so I just I love that example. for lots of reasons.
• 35:12
  Christina Edwards: Absolutely. I think that you know, we have now our audiences are expecting it from us, okay, our audiences have now shifted to consuming a lot more content online than ever, you know, yes, they want to go to your in person event and they will again at some point, but they also now want to know what's up and they want to communicate with you over you know, Social media by email and so that's not going away. And so yes, investing and prioritizing, bringing on a full time person or part time person to do that, I think is is the difference between the nonprofit's that scale and grow and the ones that kind of just tread water.
• 35:48
  Jonathan McCoy: Totally. Okay, Christina, you listen to the podcast you know, we're headed to the the one good thing, what is this one thing you'd want to leave with our listeners and us today?
• 35:58
  Christina Edwards: very apropos for the topic today. I think that it was about a year ago, and it was on social media. It was on Instagram. There was this, I guess it was a meme. But there was just like a quote that went viral. And it was from a like, double triathlon runner in his 50s. And people were like, how did you do it? And he said, I talked to myself more than I listened to myself. And I loved the way that he said that because basically, if you've ever been in a coaching program, or ever done any mindset or thought work, there's a flavor version of this that you've heard before, but basically, to me, the only thing that's stopping us or a nonprofit from achieving whatever their goal is, is really just the chatter. It's the like, you can't it's too hard. I'm overwhelmed or loud enough time like whatever that soundtrack is, right? And the difference is I think everybody has it. I think you know, I'm a big fan of Sara Blakely. She's one of our we love Sara Blakely, philanthropist, billionaire, amazing human.
• 36:58
  Becky Endicott: Her Spanx have gotten me through many galas and
• 37:02
  Christina Edwards: listen, even Sara Blakely, I'm certain has that chatter. It's too much. It's too hard at end of the day, I can't I can't, I can't. But she it's like, do you stop? And do you listen to it? And do you indulge in it, or you just keep going. And my favorite clients, my favorite students are the ones that are like, Hey, this is a stretch for us. And let's go, this is different. And we haven't tried this. And let's go and I feel a little nervous recording this video. And I haven't done this before, but I'm going to try it and I'm going to commit to it. And then I'm going to look at the data. So talk to yourself more than you listen to
• 37:34
  Becky Endicott: yourself. And I will even piggyback on that and say if you're a nonprofit leader, you need to encourage that kind of a culture in your organization where people feel safe to come and bring these ideas to you where you can encourage silencing of the chatter and say, Hey, we have some money in the budget for that. Let's let's just try some stuff again. And let's just try it out. So awesome. One good thing. So Christina, how can people connect with you talk to us about getting getting connected to splinted Consulting, I highly recommend Christina's social media and Instagram page. It's got a ton of resources hook us up.
• 38:11
  Christina Edwards: Yeah. So best place to find me is when did consulting ask when did consulting on Instagram over there? So come say hi, DM me, tell me you listen to this. My main width website is splendid, ATL calm you can find all about my work and everything I do there. And then I have a masterclass for you that really is all about creating social movements online, ones that generate revenue, ones that attract to supporters, I go into this entire concept about a social street team, which is something that I really learned and created after working at that concert venue. So I teach you about how to create an ambassador program that people actually want to participate in and that doesn't feel like committee work. That's something I'm really passionate about. blended courses comm forward slash masterclass for that and it's free on demand watch at any time.
• 39:02
  Jonathan McCoy: Thank you for those freebies, we love.
• 39:04
  Becky Endicott: We do love freebies. So I just so enjoyed this conversation. I've taken two pages worth of notes for good here. So I hope you got a lot out of it. And I'm just so delighted to be connected to you. Thanks for your tips.
• 39:16
  Jonathan McCoy: It's been awesome. Thank
• 39:16
  Christina Edwards: you for having me. This was super fun.
• 39:19
  Julie Confer: Hey friends. Thanks so much for being here. Did you know we create a landing page for each podcast episode with helpful links, freebies and even shareable graphics. Be sure to check it out at the link in this episode's description. You probably hear it in our voices but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before. We'd love for you to join our good community it's free and you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode. You can sign up today at we are for goods comm backslash Hello. One more thing if you loved what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and Your support helps more people find our community. Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie Confer and our theme song is sunray by Remy Boris boom