15 Ideas for Low-Cost Social Media

Social Media Brainstorm

KDPaine & Partners advises MADD on starting conversations without breaking the bank.

by Erica Steller, KDPaine & Partners Non-Profit Team Leader

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is a longtime KDPaine & Partners client, and maintains conscientious measurement of its PR. Misty Moyse, MADD's Director of Media Relations, has been named our Measurement Maven of the Month.

The Problem: MADD wants to make greater use of social media, and, as an organization with active and involved stakeholders, MADD is ideally suited to do so. However, as a non-profit in parlous economic times, MADD also faces some very tight budgets.

The Solution: KDPaine & Partners' Non-Profit Team, lead by Erica Steller, sat down to generate some ideas that would allow MADD to get started in social media at minimal cost. Here they are:

1. Listen, learn and engage. Monitor blogs, understand their influence, and react when necessary.

2. Work with local police to set up a "drunk spotting" Twitter account to identify drunk, dangerous drivers.

3. Work with local police to set up a "checkpoint spotting" Twitter system to spread the word about driver checkpoints. (The police like to have more people know about checkpoints, because it makes them drive more carefully.)

4. Create an online event on Facebook to promote the next fundraising or victim-support program.

5. Create victim podcasts to spread the word about your mission and the need for your services.

6. Let your audience be your voice: Blog, Tweet, and Facebook your messages, and let your audience re-post and link to them in their own social media conversations.

7. Follow the numbers with Google Analytics to see what works. Create unique URLs and share them in your posts, tweets, etc. to track the direct impact of posts and topics.

8. Piss people off and then show them why you are right. (Carefully!) The highest levels of engagement stem from things that people are very passionate about. Carefully monitored debates can really drive engagement and showcase your point of view on a topic.

9. Connect with donors through sites like Facebook. Someone made a donation on your Facebook page, now what? Make them feel good and give them a reason to do it again.

10. Don't wait to start the conversation until the next big campaign. Say "Hello!" now and keep in touch periodically to keep communication open and to build trust and relationships.

11. Only utilize social media avenues that you can honestly commit too. An inactive Facebook page will lose fans, a quiet Twitter account will get buried, and people will stop reading a blog that never gets updated.

12. Tailor your social media efforts to a platform's demographic. MySpace is a great place for underage drinking stuff, LinkedIn might work for volunteers, and Facebook might be better for donors.

13. Avoid overloading your audience by focusing on one goal and sticking to it. If you want to raise funds, make that point. If you want to get volunteers, make that point.

14. Tailor your social media efforts to your audiences' pocket books. The younger demographic who are more "in-tune" with social media are more likely to give smaller donations than the wealthy benefactors traditional media hits up.

14. Educate yourself. Read John Haydon's 22 Ways A Blog Can Rock Your Non-Profit’s Social Media Campaign and follow Beth Kanter's blog. Follow a few non-profit and PR people on Twitter.

15. Don't get confused by all the options. Take a deep breath, realize you can't do it all, and pick one or two things on the list to get started.

Erica Steller is a Senior Account Executive and Non-Profit Team Leader at KDPaine & Partners, LLC.

 

Comments

[John Haydon]

Erica,

Thanks so much for including my article!

John