This past Wednesday, I was lucky enough to attend the 140 character conference in Boston. There were some killer speakers there including Chris Brogan, Julien Smith, Christopher S Penn, and John Haydon (amongst others!). I managed to grab most of the sessions on my flip cam and will be posting them out over the next couple of weeks!
In this session John Haydon, of inbound zombie, talks briefly about how nonprofits can leverage social media in a sustainable way that will help spread their cause far and wide. With most nonprofits, resources are a scarce thing, which means thinking about sustainability is a critical piece for success.
How nonprofits can develop sustainable social media marketing campaigns w/ John Haydon from Socialize Your Cause on Vimeo.
Reduce
A lot of organizations get freaked out when it comes to getting involved with social media. John recommends reducing it down into one or two critical points of interest. He suggests that every NPO be on Facebook. The critical mass is there, Facebook has more than 500 million users at last count.
Don’t get bogged down by lofty far fetched plans. Your community will tell you what your brand is and will help mold it. Spending months and month on your “branding” can be a tremendous waste of time. Get out there and start engaging as soon as possible.
Reuse
John stresses that content creation is a key component to any social media strategy and that content can be easily created on a daily basis.
If you are going to an event shoot some video or take some pictures, turn the video or a picture into a short blog post, spread these throughout your social media outlets.
Your organization might already have a ton of content to pull from already, that can be re-purposed in many fashions.
If not, start creating. Don’t be afraid to post (and often). Share your story.
Recycle/refine
Social media has to be internalized by the organization for long term sustainability. You can’t outsource your blogging/tweets forever. Your organization has to become a networked nonprofit!