There is no lack of advice in the blog universe on where and how to spend your time on the many different social media platforms. Nevertheless, how organizations spend their time on the Internet is actually a different story. Recently, more than 9,000 small-to-medium nonprofit organizations in the US and Canada took part in a survey with reference to how they utilize social media and to what extent. Fundraisers and marketers will certainly find the outcome captivating and even alarming.
Survey Highlights
- Most nonprofit organizations do not have documented social media strategies
- Responsibility normally falls on one employee
- A majority of nonprofits use Facebook as their main social network
- Tracking the social media accounts of donors contained by a donor database is an atypical practice
- Goals are diverse and varied
Almost 50% of nonprofit organizations believe that social media is very helpful
Nonprofit organizations are no longer lagging behind when it comes to social media adoption, as a large number of them states that they find it very valuable when using social media for their outreach efforts. The primary issue is, in fact, how social media directly impacts the mission and how to better gauge its efficiency.
Top three goals of nonprofit organizations’ efforts – sharing news about the organization, its cause, and brand recognition
An assortment of objectives proposes that an assorted content type is distributed through social media. The fact that these organizations are not merely spamming for donations is actually a good sign.
Just over 97% of nonprofit organizations are on Facebook
Because of its broad reach and low barriers to admission, Facebook has extensive acceptance among nonprofit organizations.
Most nonprofit organizations claim that Facebook is their main focus for social media
2014 Nonprofit Communications Trends report by Kivi Leroux Miller found that nonprofits spend most of their time on Facebook, event marketing, and e-newsletters. Given that nonprofit organizations work under restricted marketing budgets coupled with a pay-to-play model by Facebook, it can prove to be problematic going forward if they are highly attached to the social network platform.
Nonprofit organizations plan to focus more on LinkedIn and Twitter
One of the results of the survey claims that nonprofit organizations have little desire, if at all, to explore Tumblr, Vine, SlideShare, or Quora. However, a number of them have interest in Instagram and YouTube. In view of its already low implementation, this group of organizations may want to use Google+ as their primary social media. Google+’s SEO advantages have been broadly reported, and it offers an affordable way of video production and conferencing via its Google Hangouts.
Close to 40% of nonprofit organizations spend at least 1 to 2 hours weekly on their social media
In comparison to reports by VerticalResponse in late 2012, 43% of small business owners spend about 6 hours a week on social media.
44% of nonprofit organizations allocate only one employee to monitor their social media
Despite the fact that it is acceptable to have only one employee dedicated to social media, you need to bear in mind that he can only do so much, particularly if you have more than five active social media platforms. It is advisable to keep your social media platforms to a minimum; perhaps one to three platforms is ideal. Ask your constituents which channels they are on and connect with them appropriately.
No measurements and track of records
It is also reported that 53% of these organizations do not measure their social media. In addition, over 80% of them do not track their social media accounts of volunteers and donors in their database.
