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Social Media Knight

Fighting our way into the social media realm

Organization

5 reasons to stop treating social as its own discipline

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Here are five solid reasons why its time to drink the “social business” Kool-Aid and stop thinking about social as a separate department or discipline within an organization.

1. Isolating social forces inane metrics.

Trying to calculate the discrete return on investment of organic social activity is a fool’s errand, since there are way too many factors influencing any given purchase decision. This forces us to seek proxies like engagement rates, cost per engagement and social footprint growth, none of which can be linked directly back to sales. Even Coca-Cola with its 80+ million likes on Facebook can’t isolate the business value of its enviably massive social footprint. If it can’t, are you sure you want to bother?

2. Social is not an “or” anymore.

Very few businesses can afford to ignore their customers, so on one level, listening and responding to customers via social channels is simply the cost of doing business in 2014. Under this scenario, social is a critical part of the customer-service function of any business and as such, can and should have a profound (though nonetheless hard to isolate) impact on overall brand health metrics including likelihood to recommend.

3. It’s part of overall earned media efforts.

When organic social posts get shared, they can generate a tremendous amount of “free” exposure for a brand very much like traditional public relations. Social and PR are natural partners in the earned media world and can feed upon each other quite effectively. For example, companies like IBM that empower their employees to share content via their personal channels, can dramatically increase readership of previously earned “ink.”

See Full Story on smartblogs.com

The “Three A’s” of Nonprofit Social Media Engagement

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Find out below how you can apply each of the three As in your organization’s social posts and updates.

1) Appreciation

A primary focus of your brand’s social media accounts should be donor appreciation.

Historically, donors could only be acknowledged through offline means: a phone call, a thank-you letter, or recognition at a live event. Social media allows for high-impact, low-cost public recognition that, when deployed strategically, can create stickiness between your organization and its supporters while generating new exposure. It’s also an excellent way to shift away from broadcasting and drive engagement.

By putting donors on display, you allow them to publicize their philanthropy. Donors feel good when they support a cause they believe in, and they feel even better when everyone knows it. Tagging users in posts, photos, and tweets taps into social media users’ natural inclinations toward exhibitionism. Not only are you showing your appreciation, but you’re increasing the chances that they will share and retweet information about your org.

2) Advocacy

Every nonprofit has a mission and cause for which they advocate. Social media is an excellent outlet for sharing information that raises awareness and educates, outside of the context of fundraising.

Follow other groups that advocate for or conduct research into the topics that are relevant to your nonprofit and share their content. Getting involved with their content — which can be done by engaging in discussions, asking questions, and sharing stories — can go a long way in boosting awareness of your cause and organization.

While there is likely a limitless supply of external content that you can share, the cause itself also represents an opportunity for internal content creation. Publish the knowledge that your staff holds in the form of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and webinars, and share it via social media.

3) Appeals

No one will deny that social media has been a game-changer for online fundraising. There’s no reason not to solicit donations directly from Twitter, Facebook, and the like, provided your appeals occur proportionately to other forms of content.

The more specific you can be in an appeal, the better. For example, a Tweet asking for donations of a specific item due to a shortage performs much better than a generic “please consider donating today.” Donors like to know where their money is going, so don’t forget to share stories of donation impact.

See Full Story on blog.hubspot.com

The Importance of Social Media

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Social media has become so integral to modern life .  Each company, organization, and corporation needs social media marketing to become more successful and the presence of facebook, twitter and other social media sites is very important for the prospects to take them seriously. Social media marketing requires genuine engagement, smart content curation and the sharing of your own original, highly shareable content. To achieve ultimate success on social media marketing,you need to capture large audience by taking advantage of many content media. Your content  must be highly relevant, well-written (style matters) and can be easily found. Here are a number of ways to increase your content’s reach and visibility to your prospects..
Social media marketing is undeniably powerful and influential. However, real social media success is the result of many factors that need to come first, including a solid marketing platform, excellent content creation, visually appealing website design, strategic CTAs and landing pages, and engaging email marketing. If you are still on the fence about the importance of social media, this infographic from Brafton should help convince you.

 

 

The Rising Influence of Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC] [via socialmediatoday.com]