GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!

A few weeks after I decided to dip my toe into the development pool, I met a guy who wanted to get his non-profit into the social media sphere.

"Everyone keeps telling me I have to get on Twitter," he said.  "What do you think?"

My gut reaction was to cry out, "YES! and I want to be your Twitter Guy!"  But, unfortunately, I felt obligated to reply with an honest, right answer.

"It depends."

Know Thy Goals
Big problems arise when any small or medium organization launches a new initiative by describing how they are going to accomplish tasks, and not what what needs to be accomplished.  Sure, I can get my new friend onto Twitter, but why does he want to start tweeting?  Is it to gain new clients?  Does he want to engage in conversations with existing clients?  Perhaps its because he thinks it can drum up support for the cause.  Or, perhaps (and I actually heard this) he just needs something for his college interns to do.  Without knowing his end goal, no one can decipher if this online initiative would be a saving grace or a colossal waste of time.

Think of it as if you were following a treasure map, but you didn't know what you were looking for, or how many landmarks you had to find before you reached the mystery treasure.  Start at the tree, now go to that bush, now find the third blue mailbox on the next street, now crawl under the porch, now go to a Jiffy Lube in Wichita, Kansas, and so on, and so on.  After a while, you get frustrated and board and you give up, leaving anyone who followed you without a leader.

That could very likely happened when our intrepid director attempted his organizational Twitter account without knowing why he wanted one.  After a month of tweeting and only getting 17 followers, he may find something to better spend his time doing.  Hopefully, it not Instagram.

After we talked for about a half hour, I found out that he really wanted to get more people to his events.  Since Twitter relates more like ease-dropping at a party, we decided to spend his efforts in Facebook.  Most of his donors and clients have accounts already and Facebook has the ability to invite people to events.  In addition, his organization will create a texting list, so his advocates could be personally invited to each event.

Making Goals that Stick
If anyone gives you a magic formula in how to create the perfect goal, kick them in the shins and run away.  There are thousands of methods for goal setting, some more businesslike than others.  My method when I served as a small non-profit director was to turn a problem into a statement.

For example, I hated that the majority of our funding were from grants and special events.  I wanted to increase our capacity to accept monthly donations from our many advocates.  By using this goal as a guide, we decided to tap into Network for Good to process donations, and Facebook, our website, and various email campaigns to promote the online donation portal.  We also trained all our intern staff on how to log people into the system from a mobile browser, just in case someone asks how they can donate on the spur of the moment.

Just remember that there are no right or wrong ways to create your goals.  Just write it down, make sure everyone is on board, and then work backwards until you get a task list.  And if you need any guidance, click on the Contact Me link and give me a call/email/tweet.

Welcome to the Internets

Oh no, not another social media marketing blog.  Haven't we see enough generic advertising advice on the internet?  What can you say that any advertising agency or SEO manager doesn't already know?

Short answer: Nothing.

Long answer: I created this website and blog not for the social media directors, agencies, or SEO experts, but for small organizations and non-profits who need to do this online thing alone. I dedicate this space to all those who hear, "You got to be on Twitter," five times a day without a clue where to start.  The time and money it takes to get a social media footprint can fill an entire company with dread and anxiety.  It's even worse when you have a digital strategy and its not working.

I'm a recovering Executive Director of a small non-profit that helped high school students and adult learners succeed in college.  My staff of me and a few interns worked in a spare, upstairs room of a church on a shoestring budget that made buying coffee look like a luxury item.  Nobody knew we existed, and we shouldn't have lasted one year.

However, with the help of some really bright college students, we started leveraging social media as our main source of marketing.  Using mostly Facebook, bloggers and some non-profit tools (Network for Good, Goodsearch, etc), we brought in new clients and new donors.  It seemed that we friended every single person in our county on Facebook, and that opened up avenues for dialogue relating to college access.  Not only could we help people face-to-face, but now we served clients virtually on their terms.

Our online activity also helped us sell our services in the real world.  Schools asked for partnerships, fundraisers became larger events, donors gave monthly donations, and clients started calling saying, "I heard from so-and-so that you can help."  In the five years I served, we grew from a utopian pipe-dream to a stable, growing organization.  That would never have happened without the power of a strong online presence.

Now I help other non-profits and small businesses expand their online outlets.  We use the philosophy that social media exists for conversations and not gaudy advertising space.  To spend time and energy blasting out one-liner ad slogans becomes tiresome and pointless, and quite frankly, we all have better ways to use your time.  By really taking the care to connect and listen to our followers, we get to spend our time doing something that's truly enjoyable.

And expand our customer base.

And break into undiscovered markets.

And greatly increase our word-of-mouth marketing.

Doing social media right could be the thing that takes your organization from merely successful to sensational!

NOTE: I don't intend this blog to be a teaching tool, but rather a conversation.  Please comment and tell us your story if you agree with my philosophies, and definitely if you disagree.