Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 153. Back to Basics: Social Media - Jonathan McCoy, CFRE and Becky Endicott, CFRE

Transcript

153. Back to Basics: Social Media - Jonathan McCoy, CFRE and Becky Endicott, CFRE · 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. We're here
• 0:15
  Jonathan McCoy: 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. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:35
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started. Happy Friday.
• 0:38
  Becky Endicott: Happy Friday, everybody. So glad you're here.
• 0:40
  Jonathan McCoy: You're just gonna have so much fun talking social media today.
• 0:43
  Becky Endicott: Oh, my gosh, it is one of our favorite things. And if we are not going to convince you that you need to be on social media with your nonprofit, then we're just not good storytellers. And salesmen, I guess. So I don't want to be a salesman.
• 1:01
  Jonathan McCoy: Please don't. Yeah, because it's where you have presents today. And it's not like that. We love social media for social media sites. But it's like storytelling to the moment and how you connect with people today. So this conversation is all about that, we're going to talk about the platforms that you need to be on and how to show up. But just how this fits into what we're talking about. We've been taking Friday's to really go back to basics. And we've walked you through a lot of the core fundraising elements that help you build a high performance development team. But today, we wanted to really dig in on marketing on social media. And you need to listen to this in the context of fundraising, because that's what the lens of all this is about
• 1:37
  Becky Endicott: 100%. And the thing that I love the most about social media is it almost demands that you have to be authentic. Because if you are Norman Rockwell in a situation and trying to create a rosy picture of something, it's almost like seeing something with all five star Amazon reviews, it's like something as fishy here. Why is this so perfect, I need to see something that's a little bit messier. And when you show share that vulnerability, you show up as the human you are, and I say the human, the mission, that you are the voice and the soul that you have built online for your community. people connect with that, because they see themselves in the frailty of it, they see themselves in the messiness of it. So we're going to evangelize why you need to build the soul for your mission. And you need to give it a digital voice and a digital presence. And we want your mission to come alive online.
• 2:34
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, if you're not investing in this space, know that you are in the minority, we saw a study that came out that said more than 50% of nonprofits indicated they're going to be increasing their social media budget. So more resources are going into this more team members are being dedicated to this across the board. So if you haven't even started, like, it's time to get started, it was really already time to get started. But just really encourage you to get in the game, the only way to learn this stuff is to start playing in the sandbox, you hear us say it a lot. But we really feel like in the digital space is a great place to try stuff. It's a great place to dig in and try to figure out what works for your organization. And there's just no reason not to. So
• 3:13
  Becky Endicott: absolutely. And I'll kick it back to a conversation we had with Elizabeth Abel with CCS a couple weeks ago, when we were diving into the giving USA report findings. Digital is grown by 20%. Over the last year digital giving in one year, I mean, we're not shocked by that, because we thought it would be a big number. I don't know that I thought it would be that big. But people were home, they're remote. They're all on their mobile devices. We need to meet them where they are. And so having a social voice and a presence truly matters. These platforms are going to allow you to tell your story done really well. These messages can help you engage supporters, you can capture their attention, you can capture their heart. And it's not just about the dollars, because the dollars are important that's going to fuel our mission. But we need their hustle, we need their network, we need their endorsement. And this is a place that you can get it authentically and it's at the end of the day, it's just going to increase awareness of your organization's brand, which is ultimately going to lead to fundraising,
• 4:15
  Jonathan McCoy: totally agree with everything you've said, there's just so many benefits to get into this space. We talk a lot about the power of humanizing and telling a good story, it should be core to really the manifesto or ethos that's in your organization if you want to create a movement or raise more money. So this allows you to create that digital soul or the story for your organization. And it's not bound by a small region. You know, we're all thinking bigger. We've challenged you this season to dream bigger and to lean into the vision that you've got for your organization. Social media allows you to have a global audience and definitely outside of the local level. And it just allows you to cast a net in a different way than ever before. So I just love all of the kind of ground rules for social media because they are very disruptive compared to how things used to work.
• 5:00
  Becky Endicott: I agree with you. And I think just there's there's so many hallmarks to it. And we want to break down just a couple more benefits for you. Number one, it's free. Yeah, it's free. Gosh, it's free, usually free, usually free. I mean, yeah, I guess you could pay to get on some platforms or to have some premium subscriptions. But for the spaces where most people are, this is a free platform, it allows you to share impact, you can do it immediately. Think about your impact report, think about putting together an annual report or a video or something, all of that is going to take significant amount of time to produce, to write to gather, you could actually just put up your phone, have a testimonial, do a little Instagram, go live, and boom, all of a sudden, you took the friction and the cost out of sharing that impacts. That's another thing that I love about social media.
• 5:49
  Jonathan McCoy: We've talked already about allowing you to test different messages. But in the past, you know, we would spend all these months and weeks building a case for support and trying to hopefully select the right messages. Social media on its own allows you to try things all the time. How does this infographic resonate? How does this photo or this quote or a story or a video, you can try all these different mediums and watch what happens organically? We're not even talking about paid ads. Yet at this point, we're talking about what gets organic traction, what do people like to see? Where do they click like on what do they send the most watching that is fascinating, in essence, helps you understand so much about what resonates about your case, for all the places that you're sharing it in the fundraising spectrum.
• 6:30
  Becky Endicott: And one of the last ones I'll bring up is it allows you to be nimble, and respond to what's happening in your organization around the world. I mean, we all saw Bernie Sanders, at the inauguration in his mittens Hold up. It's like the or the nonprofits, I saw that put a donor, their executive director in the mittens or mocked it in some way. It's not even a mock. It's like you're putting in something so whimsical and fun that people just want to click on because you can keep it light. It doesn't always have to be so heavy down in the mission. We want to engage, make people smile, make them feel joyful when they're around us and made them feel empowered. So be nimble, look around what's going on. Talk about it, because you get to be a positioned as an expert, and an industry expert, when you are that quick, and that responsive to what's actually happening in the world. So I'm
• 7:26
  Jonathan McCoy: hearing some walls that need to get broken down. So if you're a real slow moving organization, you've got to figure out ways to be nimble, like you're talking about because how many people would miss that opportunity to create a hilarious moment that's engaging right after Bernie's mittens that I still love. And whenever we create this winter, honestly, it's part of my plan. Okay, did
• 7:44
  Becky Endicott: you see that this is this is a squirrel moment. But did you see how much money he was able to raise through that meme? He fund him on the podcast, Oh, my gosh, Bernie Come on the podcast. But it was like I don't remember it was like $250,000 in a week, or something that was directed to a Vermont charity, you know, and it's like good for Bernie, you know, he just made some lemonade out of those lemons. So you know that we can't go into any of our back to basic conversations without putting the we're for good arc, or flavor into this topic. And so we want to break down some of the basics that we want you to understand that are sort of those disruptive mindset hacks and pro tips that we want you to be thinking about as you're starting to embark on what should really be a social media strategy that dovetails with your marketing strategy, with your engagement strategy, with your strategic plan. If I'm getting you seriously overwhelmed right now, because you're like, we don't have any of those things. It's okay, we are going to take your hand right now and walk you through this because we have some great starting points. So the first basic that I want to talk about is value. And goal alignment has got to be your starting place. As we said, You need to know who you are, you need to understand your why john, and I talk about this all the time, john always hangs his hat on, you've got to start with a goal first. And I'm telling you, that is one of the smartest things that any leader should tell you is you've got to start with your goal. So look at your values first, align accordingly, and live those out loud on your social media presence.
• 9:19
  Jonathan McCoy: And we'll talk about this later. But I love when values become content. I mean, it's just that's gonna attract the type of people that value your values. And that allows you to show case these different aspects of your organization. So that's a huge hack. Okay, number two basic, build a dang plan.
• 9:35
  Becky Endicott: I'm pretty sure we've had this as exact verbatim in several of these factories.
• 9:40
  Jonathan McCoy: But your social media post, if it's not attached to the goals to the values, and it's not part of the plan, you're probably just wasting your time posting into thin air. But by building a plan, it's going to be a lot less stressful. It's going to clarify those roles. It's going to put you on a consistent schedule that's going to garner a lot more engagement. too. So build a plan and then just execute the plan. It also sounds a lot less overwhelming, right?
• 10:04
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, it just sounds so simple building plan. So, okay, the next one is align the right platform with the right audience. Okay, we know that it's super tempting to try to get your message out on as many platforms as possible. But that is really not the model that thrives in social media. saturation is not the name of the game, targeting, understanding your audience, understanding how they ingest all of your messages is key. And I'll give you an example. I mean, Facebook for nonprofits is the most widely used platform. But if you're working on, you know, in a homeless youth shelter, you should not be building your platform on Facebook, because if you're trying to target, how do we understand and get the voices of homeless youth in here, you've got to be looking at Tick Tock or Snapchat or even I don't know if Instagrams Julie can tell me if that's like going out. And it's not cool anymore. But it's really about finding Who is your audience? Who are your donors? Who are your volunteers, who is your mission serving, align accordingly in the right place,
• 11:10
  Jonathan McCoy: and Becky just gave you permission to not be everywhere, which is really awesome.
• 11:13
  Becky Endicott: I needed to hear that for myself, too. So
• 11:17
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, the next one, and I know we've talked about this often is that social media like development and fundraising, it's a team sport, it's not a job just for one, ensure you need to assign someone that's in charge of actually getting your post up. But let me give you a hack, we see this work on LinkedIn a ton, and LinkedIn is a hot place to be if it's not there, I would encourage you to spend some time diving in. But by having individuals that are connected to your company, you're going to help amplify the messages you put on social media so much further than just what's your own business page or organizational page is going to get so lean into that, you know, the people that make up your organization, your volunteers, your board, they can all be tagged to things they can all comment and engage. And in fact, their engagement is going to help boost you whatever platform you're talking about. So if you're looking at it in a silo, it's not my job, it's not my job as executive director, no, like, find a place, find a time that's meaningful. Obviously, you're not gonna sit and listen to notifications all day, but find a time to engage. And it's a team sport, lead by example.
• 12:16
  Becky Endicott: And it's going to be such a richer conversation. If we can tag people and bring them in, it looks like it's a community wide effort, which I also love, too. So don't just give that job tear in turn. This is kind of an all hands on deck approach. Okay, our next one is work to be an active listener. What this means is, don't just post don't just work all day, putting together a beautiful graphic, posting it and walk away. You know, make sure you're responding. emoting thanking uplifting, sharing whatever it takes when someone does something other than just hit the like button. If they comment, you should 100% reply to them. Even if they have commented with nothing more than some hand clapping emojis. It's like, you need to come back and say, I know, right? Didn't that feel so great. When X, Y and Z happened, or I couldn't agree more, you know, whatever it is, engage with people, because frequent posts and interaction interactions are gonna promote visibility and community engagement. And that's just going to foster more people coming into our spaces and getting to know us more authentically, what's the
• 13:24
  Jonathan McCoy: perfect team, because the people that are coming into your spaces on social, you want to make your content shareable for them. And so thinking about that, and you know, we've talked about the power of calls to action. If you're not telling people, hey, please share this, they're probably not going to always think about that as their own or think about that they're plugging in and that way would be meaningful. But by giving people direct specific instruction, your rabid fans that we talked about, they want to know how to be activated. So you can totally lean into this and make your content go a lot further as a result.
• 13:55
  Becky Endicott: Okay, our final one is sharing your impact with the world is the ultimate humble brag. So what we mean by that is when you talk about impact when you talk about what your organization is doing to make the world around you better. It builds transparency and trust as you detail how funds are spent. It uplifts the good work your nonprofit is doing and allows other people to come in and celebrate it. And it allows donors and champions to be a part of your wins, they feel great about it. So allow your impact to create that awareness about your mission. And let people see that we're an organization focused on impact. And if you come here, you're gonna get these feel good stories of what we're able to do to move the needle.
• 14:41
  Jonathan McCoy: Such a good one.
• 14:43
  Becky Endicott: Hey, friends, we wanted to take a moment to thank our amazing sponsor give butter, the world's fastest growing online giving platform powering more than 35,000 causes. One of these is family reach a national nonprofit dedicated to eradicating the financial barriers that accompany a cancer diagnosis like many of us They were unsure how they were going to replace their critical in person fundraising events during COVID. Family reach put give butters virtual fundraising tools to use by hosting a super fun and engaging celebrity chef cooking challenge where they raised more than $350,000. And if you think this was a one off success, think again, they just did it again and raised more than $600,000 family reach raves about give butters ability to livestream video alongside their real time supporter feed, and saw how the threaded comments engage their audience beyond what was possible on other platforms. It's buttery goodness at its finest. Don't miss the full success story in our show notes, ready to explore how gift butter can help your organization, take your online fundraising to the next level, check them out at gift butter.com.
• 15:46
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, that kind of rounds out some of our recommendations. But let's go back to goals because we always start there. And we want to give you some places to get started, if you are just mapping this out for the first time or maybe if you're just trying to dust it off a plan that's already existing. Okay, number one is that you want to begin with the end in mind. And you've heard us talk about marketing before on the podcast, we always talk about how are you driving traffic to your website, your website is your hub online, it's where you can control you can outlive the algorithm, you can control or at least speak into the traffic that's coming there. That should be the aim is getting people to click through to come to your site, that's where they can make a donation or sign up or whatever your call to action or most strategic objective is. And once they're there, you're really going to make sure that you're trying to secure that email address, we believe in the power of email, we've seen it, it's still very, very important and the most critical way to get in touch with people digitally. So you want to work to secure that email address, whether that's through some kind of lead, magnet, maybe a freebie on your website, some type of opt in. And that should also if that's at the top of your page, that's going to inform your strategy completely differently.
• 16:51
  Becky Endicott: I mean, that is the perfect first goal that anybody should have. And so I will give you just a couple others that I would say you need to think about as you're determining how you're going to quantify and qualify goals, you need to be thinking about goals that foster deeper community engagement. What kind of a goal Do you need about how you're sharing news? How you're cultivating your brand awareness? Because we need to be educating others about our cause and our mission? How are we going to do that? How are we going to quantify the impressions, the responses, the amount of people that are signing up how we're getting people from sign up to an actual event, if that is the goal. And I understand that there are people listening to this right now that are saying, Oh my gosh, my executive director is not on board with this. They are super old school, they want to control every part of our social media, I think that's probably something we should have said at the very beginning. If you're trying to control any part of your social media, you're trying to control responses, you're trying to manage things in a way that you think would be best, you're doing it wrong. And that is something that we have to impart to our leaders that this is something that we're going to have to let go. And I think the beauty of letting go is allowing this truth to come in, and this raw emotion and these deep feelings to come in. And people get connected to mission based on that. So I really think it's a great opportunity to go there. And the goal should align with taking that big dreamy vision that john was talking about and aligning it accordingly.
• 18:25
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, so then you definitely want to spend time defining your audience. And this is where I want to camp out for a minute. But you know, Becky made this great illusion earlier of you've got to go to where people are. So you have to understand the people that you're trying to connect with. What's the medium that they're hanging out on? Are they on LinkedIn? Are they on tik tok? Gosh, I hope not because I know nothing about Tick tock, guys. But what we would recommend is really thinking through Who are your donor avatars. And that word is hilarious to me. Honestly, it sounds like some kind of anger gamer or something. But the whole idea is you're trying to build this profile of a prospective donor, who is your dream donor? What do they look like? What does the average donor look like to you? It's easy, it's easy to describe somebody that already gravitates to you and try to figure out what's common among them. They really love volunteering in their spare time, they typically live in this part of town, or they typically spend their free time doing x, the more you can understand about the person, the more you can target your content to reach them. And we do this here we are for good
• 19:27
  Becky Endicott: to know, I was gonna say, Tell them one of our customer avatar.
• 19:30
  Jonathan McCoy: So we really have two core customer avatars and love to hear definitely reach out to us if you feel like we've missed the mark. But one of them is the nonprofit leader. And to us, it's not a person that necessarily is the leader of the organization. They're just at a position of influence at the organization. So either through time tenure or just general respect, they can actually get things done within their organization. So we know that we know that they're hungry. We know that their growth mindset who else sits around listening to nonprofit podcasts like this right your 10 minutes into this conversation. If you're still here, you're probably the person that leaned in and trying to do better and invest more in their mission. So we try to build content that directly serves that customer, who is the person that wants to grow wants to be on the leading edge wants to make an impact. They're just looking for a guide. And we try to be that guide or connect you to guides Can
• 20:18
  Becky Endicott: I tell our audience something really interesting about our customer avatars, we've named them we have named him and we've named him after people that are literally in our community. And so this one avatar that John's talking about, that's Matt and Paige, Paige, and it's like, so when we think as a company about how do we want to best target our audience, or how what kind of messages will resonate, we talked about page, and it's like, what would pay age say, how would page react and present this to her team, if you can think about your audience through that lens, it's going to be game changing in the way that you actually see a human being and how you can connect with them. And so I think one really quick tip about as you're growing your audience, to finding your audience, you talked about email and the power of email and building that email list, we want to give you guys a reference. And a resource, just Campbell, who's without in the boons is an amazing development professional and on episode 20. So you can go back and we'll link this in the show notes. She walks you through how to grow an email list to power your nonprofit. So if you do not have a plan right now, to actively secure email addresses, go back to that episode, and just as a rock star, and can walk you through that very quickly.
• 21:33
  Jonathan McCoy: So gather your team together and talk about avatars. I promise it'll really help you out as you build your social content. Absolutely.
• 21:39
  Becky Endicott: So the next step is how do you define your messages. And the most wordy long winded individual of all time me is telling you that it needs to be short and sweet. It needs to be incredibly human. I am pumping my fists in the air because I am so excited because corporate robot voice will not work here. So pull out your adjectives pull out your stories, pull out those feeling words, because we want to create an emotional connection to our mission to our missions. So if you're looking for a way to develop a clear and sort of repeatable message for your social media voice, one more resource, Chris Fox, who has an amazing consultancy, also on branding and digital voice, Episode Five, he talks about transforming your nonprofit social media. And that would be an incredible place to start. If you're feeling overwhelmed right now we'll link that up in the show notes.
• 22:35
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, so you've got your audience, you've got your message, you really want to look at platforms next. And you know, this there is so many platforms these days, really spend time figuring out where is your key avatars? Where do they hang out? Where do you see community that can be built and go there. From that standpoint, audit, you know, if you already have a page, see what's working, see what's not, if you've been around for several years on the platform, you really need to spend time digging in and understanding the type of content. Now when anytime we say pause an audit, that does not mean put on the brakes for like eight months and just audit Thank you, we want you to spend a few days maybe digging into this, but then just get in the habit of posting and trying new things, it's much easier to learn along the way, because the things change all the time to so look at that. Don't try to add a bunch of platforms really own the ones that you're in, that you think are really transacting the goals that you have set out. And don't feel the pressure to be everywhere.
• 23:29
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, I love that. And before you feel so overwhelmed by all we're saying, we have built a guide for you. And it's we're going to put it in the show notes. And it's a complete social media guide. So if you're worried about how to define messages and build content, we put together 27 ideas of where you can pull content and types of content that you can leverage into social media. We've got things in there, like how to add, donate buttons, how to get, you know, logged in and get your site set up on different platforms. So if you need any of those tools, please come in, look at this guide. We're going to post it in the show notes. And it's going to get you started in addition to it has a bunch of free training links if you're trying to just get shored up and educated about how to do this.
• 24:14
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, we found a really great resource by Katie seal who wrote for Hootsuite blog. She's a Quebec based writer. She has some really great tips that we'd love to just talk through real quickly. If you're just getting started setting up your nonprofit page on whatever social media platform. The first is set up your account. So if you don't have an account, set it up, and make sure that you enroll as a nonprofit. I know this sounds really tedious, but doing so is going to unlock different options. Specifically, Facebook's going to allow you to put a Donate button. Tick Tock Instagram, YouTube all have functionality geared toward nonprofit so make sure that that is checked and that you're not just classified as a business.
• 24:51
  Becky Endicott: The second one would be add a donation button to every single platform that you can specifically Facebook and Instagram who have those functions. Both platform's have these incredible fundraising tools. And it's just nice for someone if they feel compelled by something that you may have just posted that's very light and fun. Or maybe it's a stewardship something or informational. They may feel inspired and want to make a donation make it completely frictionless. And again, we have a guide that will walk you through how to add those donate buttons on different platforms.
• 25:21
  Jonathan McCoy: Here's another benefit in the show notes. Number three is taking advantage of free trainings and resources, you really want to dive in to platform specific to understand the nuance. So what you do on YouTube is completely different than what you would do on Facebook. So spending the time to get to know the platforms you are going to invest in is gonna result in so much better alignment with your goals and values across the board. So dig in, we're gonna put links to where you can find training around each of the core platforms. Go there and become a student. You know, we love growth mindset. You can learn this, I don't know tik tok, maybe I should go learn about Tick tock,
• 25:53
  Becky Endicott: and we're moving from tic toc to social media policies that was a seamless transition. not okay. You need social media guidelines, you need a policy around what your workflow looks like. Why? Because nonprofits are run by really lean team ported by a network of volunteers that have all kinds of different schedules, skill sets, and backgrounds. And so we need to set some structure down with who's posting what we need to get our content calendar, we've already talked about that lined up. And it's really about defining roles of the team. It's about putting contact information together security protocols, guidance on how to handle you know, a troll, on your media account. And, and maybe even just a privacy policy. The other thing it's going to do is if you have a policy, it's going to give you a guideline that will be inclusive of your brand style, and your brand voice. And this is to help everybody who's pouring into the social media process to be speaking with one voice, and it and that's going to help because we don't want every single time someone in our organization posts, you know that it feels schizophrenic, like you have one personality coming on and you have another personality, it needs to feel like one human being grab those policies and guidelines, there's a ton of free resources online, check them out. Love it.
• 27:49
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, I love that I get to talk about content. So we've already teased having a content calendar. This is something that we firmly believe in and something that we've actually taught. So if you've heard us talk about our workshop that is live on our website, we are for good calm, slash workshops, you can take our content syndication workshop, that's probably 30 or 45 minutes long, but it's gonna walk you through how do you take some existing body of content that you already have an impact report, an annual report, maybe a magazine, something that you've put together and turn it into a lot of different touch points, maybe 10s 20s 30, mother touch points. And that's what this is about is understanding when you have a calendar, you can start to spread things out, you can make sure that you're not always soliciting, you're not always stewarding, although that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. But you're mixing this, this storytelling with balancing with events and announcements and creating that cadence. So many of the people we talked to feel overwhelmed by this. And it's overwhelmed because you don't have a plan, you don't know what you're doing. So you can't really, you know, prepare in advance or create a content calendar. I mean, look at your values. If you are an organization that values and champions, women, you definitely want to go through and highlight International Women's Day, Mother's Day, gender equality week have plans around those so you're not scrambling and you can do them really well. You can have built out incredible resources and make it a really meaningful touch point. And of course, you don't want to miss the you know, overarching holidays or important events for your organization either. But having a content calendar makes all that run smoothly, even if you're going on vacation.
• 29:20
  Becky Endicott: Okay, john, you said the money phrase that I think could be applied to every single back to basics episode that we've created. If you're feeling overwhelmed, it's probably because you don't have a plan. So if you are feeling overwhelmed in any of these conversations, my friends, go back to your plan, start with your goals, start with your values start to build out that plan, I assure you that it will take some of the pearl clutching fear out of some of this situation. Okay, so we're heading into the homestretch with pro tips. And these are the things that we want you to take away if you are emboldened and feel like you're ready to take on your social media to the next level. So the first one is, and a broken record here. I'm sorry, setting social media goals is going to ensure that you're going to balance all the demands of donor engagement while still adding all of this incredible value to your followers. So set quantitative and qualitative goals, make them happen.
• 30:20
  Jonathan McCoy: I love it. Number two is be consistent. And you know, it's kind of hard being at this side of the table coaching you through all these steps because we don't do all this perfectly. Yeah, but I'll tell you early on when we started we're for good. The one thing we knew we Control is we can be consistent. And I think this is something that can really help you. If you're trying to grow a follower base on any medium, you just have to show up again and again and again. And you need the systems to help you do that. So do consistency, if you're gonna do one thing.
• 30:48
  Becky Endicott: And you're right, I'm glad you said we don't do all of this, because I don't want anybody to think that we have it all together, because we're working through it with you to the third one is whatever you do, push your followers to activate through your website. Remember, your website is the front porch of your organization. It's the digital storefront of your mission. And everything needs to run through there not just donations, but information signups we want the website to be the hub. So whatever you're doing on your social media posts, push it back to the website.
• 31:21
  Jonathan McCoy: And just like with any good call to action, if you want people to follow you on LinkedIn, add that to your email signature, or put it on your latest campaign. Push people encourage people you can add your you know, icon links, or maybe just truly a call to action of comm Follow us on LinkedIn, if you want more tips on this or more advice or out this, but being specific people actually go do it.
• 31:42
  Becky Endicott: The next one is create relevant hashtags. And this is going to help you aggregate your content more easily. If you start a hashtag, we have a hashtag impact uprising, you know, this is what we believe is the movement of how we're going to change the world and change in the nonprofit sector. That's only on ours that is that is proprietary to us. Now we don't own it. But But when we talk about that, and when people come into our community, they use that hashtag, they understand that that is our bent. Do that with your own organization, figure out what are the things, the key hashtags that will allow people to come find you. And it allows you to come and see other people that are talking about this one particular issue on their social media page uses hashtags.
• 32:25
  Jonathan McCoy: And when you do get engagement, don't miss out. You know, I think the pedal co on Instagram does such a good job of reminding you that every follower is a person it's a heartbeat. It is an human being that decided to comment or like so if you get those comments, don't leave them hanging. Even if it was just an emoji. It's an easy way to be a human and respond. You've already said this, but I think it's worth saying again. respond.
• 32:49
  Becky Endicott: Mine. My next one is my favorite, share stories about people. People want to hear other people's stories of hope, stories of heartbreak, stories of triumph. We need heroes, we need people that we are rooting for. And then we get emotionally invested in them. We get emotionally invested in how to solve their problem, start with people share their stories share it well. And the
• 33:14
  Jonathan McCoy: final one that we would say is integrate this with your online giving campaigns. You know, we've talked a lot about calendar, we talked a lot about strategy and goals. Your goal is raising money to accomplish your mission, right. So incorporate this social media should help lift that it should help point to it, it should compliment it. And when you get strategic, that becomes really easy. It helps us map out your year and gives you content to kind of build an ebb and flow. If you're using story it's going to be so much more powerful to so smart. Those are some pro tips.
• 33:43
  Becky Endicott: I want to give a final thought here to everyone as we're winding down this episode. None of us own these social media platforms. We don't own the content that we're pushing into these platforms, though it feels like we do. All of this could disappear in an instant. Which means that building your own digital footprint that pushes back to your website that pushes back to your homepage is absolutely critical to long term connectivity and gross. Can you imagine if Instagram went away today, john, and we would lose, you know, our 1500 friends that are on there? How do you find them again, we need some asset which is simply their email address to be able to be in connection with them.
• 34:30
  Jonathan McCoy: I think that's a perfect place to end and you know, we've had a ton of amazing conversations on the podcast, we're going to curate a list. We've mentioned a few here. I'd also list even this season, Jeremy Hazelwood just came on to give a digital blueprint for threading your fundraising with your online outreach. And there's just so much to dive in here too. So whichever aspect interests you find a hook, put on your growth mindset and dig in because I really think you can move the needle by just being strategic in this area.
• 34:58
  Becky Endicott: And if you're feeling overwhelmed, check out this guide that we've put together for this episode. It's got specific links to sign up for like Facebook's charitable giving tools or to sign up for Tick Tock for good we have taken all the friction out of you having to go track this down it should be in one place. We want to make it easy for you because we want your mission to thrive and the social space on top and the like button. Thank you I feel very boosted.
• 35:25
  Julie Confer: Thanks for listening to our back to the basics conversation around how you can take your social media to the next level today. 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. It's our own social network and you can sign up today at weird for good, calm 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 sunreef by Remy Boris boom thanks for being here, everyone.