The Social Media Tools that No Non-Profit Should be Without
Last week, we ran through the basics of social media at your nonprofit, this week, let’s dig deeper and explore some (free) tools that will help you launch your social media presence into the stratosphere:
1. Feedly – Tired of sifting through the countless blogs and news articles out there? Feedly lets you connect it all in just one place. It’s super handy when you’re looking for great content to share – just pop into feedly, grab some relevant content, and share it with your crew.
2. Hootsuite or Buffer – Hootsuite is basically a big organizer for all your social media accounts. You can see them all in one place and the best part is, you can download a widget for Google Chrome or Mozilla that will let you tweet an article directly for a website with one click. Buffer is another similar tool you may like better.
3. Tweetdeck – Tweetdeck is Twitter specific, and it allows you to create groups or Twitter users or hashtags that you want to keep track of. It’s a great way to organize Twitter and to make sure you don’t miss that Tweet from your favorite nonprofit hero. For me, Tweetdeck has transformed Twitter from a nightmarish experience into a joyful way to interact with authority figures.
4. Social Media for Nonprofits Blog – This place is a treasure trove of information for any nonprofit wanting to crush it with social. The site has a great blog and they also have some swell live conferences (those cost), webinars (mostly free), and tweetchats.
5. Canva – I have a tech-crush on this site. See, way back when, creating a graphic was something that I would try myself, fail at, and then hire someone for an obscene amount of money. Canva is photo editing for the rest of us. The best part is, they have some pre made templates for things like Twitter photos and Facebook posts that are just the right size and super easy to customize.
6. Social Media Examiner – This is the ultimate hub for all things social media. It’s not necessarily tailored directly to nonprofits, but it is tried and true advice from the world’s leading social media experts. Oh, and they also have a podcast that is a great listen during that ride into work. Every time I listen to it, I walk away with something I can start doing right away to up my social media game.
7. Mailchimp – Assuming you have an email list (and if you don’t, get one started – stat.) Mailchimp is going to be your best tool for creating custom emails. They have all kinds of great templates, allow people to opt in and opt out of your list (that’s a legal thing), and help you to keep in touch with your community. Considering that a good chunk of people donate via a link that is emailed to them, this is a can’t miss strategy. Mailchimp lets you have a list of up to 500 emails for free.
8. Anything that Guy Kawasaki writes – This guy’s absolutely brilliant when it comes to social media. He has like 7 million Twitter followers, so he definitely knows what he’s talking about. Oh, and did I mention he used to be the Product Evangelist at Apple? He takes this wealth of knowledge/experience and breaks it down into bite sizes pieces that we can all start implementing right away.
9. Your people. Never underestimate the power of your tribe to help create great stories for social media. Make sure that, whenever appropriate, you are taking pictures of your events and of volunteers in action. Recall that social is about P2P – having real life stories of the change you’re creating is a great way to get folks to start giving to your mission.
10. You. This only works if you have one main person managing your social media – if you do, don’t be afraid to add your thoughts and insights into your posts. This is how you’ll start forming your social media voice and create a personality that people want to interact with.
In addition to the list of social media tools mentioned above, you might also be interested to learn some interesting stats that outline the kind of marketing potential that different social media sites offer for business.
The Infographic below covers a range of critical metrics such as brand engagement, percentage of users that purchase a product, user base, and targeted marketing opportunities that can be explored across multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.We hope this will help you differentiate the essential from the optional and progress faster towards achieving your business goals using effective social media marketing. If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to use the comments.
What social media tools are you using at your organization?
