social media for NGOs

Organizations need a variety of online supporters. They need customers who buy their products, evangelists who promote their brand, mavens who add intellectual value, their own employees who speak out and increase the goodwill towards the brand and a silent audience of undecided’s who fall in none of these categories. Large organizations are blessed with followers and fans instantly. Their timelines and fan pages are bombarded with complaints, compliments and a lot of spam. Small organizations need to work harder and smarter to achieve their social media objectives. But what about NGOs? How does one leverage social media for NGOs?

Traditionally, a commercial enterprise like, say, Starbucks would look at engaging with its customers and looking to improve their overall experience at their outlets. NGOs on the other hand have the unenviable task of converting their followers and fans into donators or volunteers. No value offered besides educating a girl in Zaire or feeding a family in Cambodia. Listed below are a few steps which we @iridiuminter think can help you meet your social media goals. But before you start, a word of advice. Do go through our previous posts about building your social media presence. You need a certain stand with your number of online connections and quality of tweets/posts/links before you attempt these. Running any of these ideas with a fan page of 6 and a twitter timeline of 50 isn’t going to get you anywhere close to your goals. If you are serious about using social media for your NGO, be patient and be prepared.

#1 Build your audience

Your potential supporters are scattered all over the internet. Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook all have a plethora of individuals who could be of extreme value to you. You could drill down and find networking sites catering to niche audiences and create strategies to engage them. Mind, the word “engage” in the social world means not to bombard but to politely involve followers and followees into conversations they are interested in. You are involving yourselves in a conversation so be nice and keep at it. Post interesting stuff on your blog, related to your mission, and see how you can keep this relevant to the world in general. Keep your tone positive if you can, gritty if you must and cynical never. Be consistent, be patient and your audience WILL grow.

#2 Connect with Influencers

Influencers are those people who figure on thousands maybe millions of lists and whose words and actions have the highest chance of being replicated by others. Now, connecting with them is a bit like getting to hang out with the cool gang in school. Your NGO thus needs to be at a certain social media standing (x no. of followers, fantastic blog, gazillion fans etc) before you approach them and involve them in your conversations. You should, obviously, be doing great work in your field. Engage them again and work towards building a relationship where you could count on them to help you socially. Approach them with a plan where they could tangibly help you, hope they agree and then hold on to your seat as you see your campaign take off. Continue engaging.

#3 Innovate

If you have that respectable presence on the social media sphere and are connected to several influencers, it is time to innovate. As part of your NGOs social media efforts you could : Create contests if you can offer something exciting, start a donation countdown with a real time view to donors as to where their money is being spent, start a donor marathon with your influencers pledging to support you with x amount of money or resource or commodity, anything in fact. You never know what may click. And continue engaging.

#4 Tell a Story

All great, big or small mission work starts and ends with a story. No matter how much we overdose on technology, humans remain humans. We feel connected with a story. Social networking sites offer you a perfect place to connect with humans who could be interested in stories such as yours.There is a 3 x higher probability to be accepted as part of the social community, engage and influence your audience, when you share authentic, real-time stories with them. You will be surprised when you see who begins to rally behind your NGO and how quickly you can expand your mission reach. So stay real and tell stories just as they happen.

This process and the ideas mentioned are definitely not exhaustive. What thoughts do you have for NGOs trying to use social media?

Image source: UNHCR on flickr
Follow us on @iridiuminter or my personal twitter @sbharatam.

Social Media Marketing is nothing but using Social Media as a platform for your marketing endeavours. It is the new way of marketing that has this unique ability to let consumers market for you, beautifully aligning your offline and online marketing. The industry gurus call it WOM (Word of Mouth) marketing. Social media in its real essence is interactive in nature, so when a company starts interacting directly with their customers, customers / stakeholders fundamentally tend to relate more with the brand and indirectly become brand ambassadors for such companies.

These customers then spread their marketing messages organically. Most successful social media compaigns include consumer engagement, corporate transparency and community building.

So many companies now have blogs, newsletters, accounts in various social networking sites like facebook, twitter, myspace, linkedin etc. this is solely for the purpose of giving their consumers a real time view of what is actually happening within the company. Building trust by engaging in conversations and creating transparent avatar is what these companies are successfully doing in their social media marketing activities.

Companies who restrain from using social media marketing are missing out on the huge coverage social media has to offer which no other traditional marketing tools have to offer. And guess what….it is extremely cost-effective low cost marketing platform with a reach you cannot comprehend, if you have something fresh to voice …it gets heard ! that will help you derive huge consumer following and build your brand credibility that traditional media alone can no-more promise.

Follow us on @iridiuminter or my personal twitter @sbharatam

People by their very nature are social. Companies, businesses thrive on people and their opinions. No surprises then, that Social media has it own reasons to evolve with more and more social networking sites mushrooming every single day. Whether you like it or not, accept it or not, there is so much being said about you- with or without you. If you choose not engage, you are simply giving up the ability to manage and influence what’s being said…

It has become an imperative need to listen to what your stakeholders are saying about you in this social space before planning any marketing strategy. In a recent global CMO survey, over 90% of companies confirm that they are allocating over 25% of their marketing mix budgets to social media / digital marketing initiatives. They are understanding this critical need to participate in continuous consumer interactions that engages users with opportunities to share their opinions.

There are so many online social networking sites from facebook, twitter, orkut, flickr, digg, technorati, myspace, linkedin, picasa and so many more. When you search for Social Media on Google you get 210,000,000 results. Whaoo!! This can be rather intimidating for someone who is just looking at implementing this very popular phenomena people just cant stop talking about in the business context.

@iridiuminter, having the depth and breath of social media for over a decade, @iridiuminter digital strategy team enjoys placing the social footprints for our clients everyday with a robust relevancy and reach that delivers tangible online growth engines for them.So, it is time to question your marketing plans and explore the new dimensions of online growth opportunities right now.

In my bid to share the knowledge and experience on Social Media Marketing and Monitoring, I will take you through these stories in my upcoming series and help you set your fortress of Social media.

Follow us on @iridiuminter or my personal twitter @sbharatam.

Read ahead the golden rules and most importantly the Do’s and Dont’s one should follow with twitter.

Do’s

• Plan your corporate twitter startegy before taking the plunge.
• Before giving access make a twitter policy clarifying what the employees can say and can’t say.
• Follow relevant people who you want to keep a track of.
• Make clear what and who are you representing. Corporate transparency is appreciated by every stakeholder.
• Engage in constant conversations with your community. The more you talk the better your community will reciprocate.
• Build trust within your community with constant presence. Frequent updates to keep your community up to date with your activities.
• Use tweetscoop or tweetdeck or echofon to follow trends in topics. There is so much activity happening on twitter, install these real time applications on your computer and stay informed all the time.
• Share information that is relevant to your followers/ community, share only what they want to and need to know.
• Follow the above suggestions and be a good twittizen.

Dont’s

• Dont automate this process. This should be real time and customised.
• Dont over promote your brand, product and company. It will backfire.
• Dont give politically negative comments. Try to assess what is the situation and what you can add to the conversations happening.
• Do not assume that people do not know how to use Social media, never form prejudices.

Now that these important pointers have been shared to all, stayed tuned as we explore some more important aspects of the social media world.

Follow us on @iridiuminter or my personal twitter @sbharatam

1. Plan your corporate twitter strategy before taking the plunge. Be clear on your business objectives.

2. Assess your organization’s willingness to twitter. Is your corporate culture open to honest conversations? Are your employees ready to use various social media tools such as blogs and wikis? Is the organizational culture open and honest enough?

3. Focus on the people and not the technology. It’s the people who connect and bring communities alive. So, don’t overlook their preferences. Have a business purpose and brainstorm it with your group. At iridium Interactive, my core marketing and creative team is on a high everyday about exploring new dynamic social media tools for different client needs. We had our share of run-around of getting buried under so many apps. But, we made early mistakes and learned not to get carried away before rolling out any tools. We questioned asked ourselves, “Who will use it?” How can it support or generate useful conversations in the business? How can it give employees better access to leadership and make them more engaged? How can we measure the ROI?”

4. Surrender control and allow access to the employees as equal partners in the communication process. It’s no longer about the push but the pull. This cannot be a standalone tool restricted to only a few people in the organization.

5. Create an Internal Sandbox for your company to allow your employees work around and play with this social media tool. This encourages their acceptance.

6. Create a Twitter Policy before giving access make to clarify and moderate what the employees can say and can’t say. Setting up ground rules while planning the strategy.

7. Do not obsess with numbers from the beginning. Work on the purpose first, have a case and then determine the results. Measurement is key to success, but enter the sandbox first and feel the sand…..play with your Twitter  followers!

So, time to get on-board into Twitter along with your company and get ready to take-off into the social space….or shall I say galaxy. Start with a crisp brainstorming to establish the purpose…fill the white-board, begin engaging your people.

Look out for the next wisdom series tomorrow about the business benefits of using Twitter….keep your 140 on!

Follow us on @iridiuminter or my personal twitter @sbharatam

Why Twitter?

Twitter has become a phenomenal success over the last year although it has been around since 3 years now.  Popular social networking sites like facebook and twitter were struggling to find a standing three years back with tough competition from gmail and yahoo. But now they have surpassed these internet giants.  Mainstream Media is now defined by Social Media. Dosent it make one wonder why such a sudden interest in social networking or social media among people?

Celebrities, political figures, companies, NGO’s all are tweeting about their current and even future incidents on a real time basis. News and events get posted first on twitter then on other networking forums. The key is to start online conversations instantly to influence your listeners.

Twitter has taken over several areas of the society already, here are some real life examples:

Election results first come out on twitter. Celebrities cover their every move on twitter so that their followers can keep a track of their movements. Plane crashes, stock prices are posted on Twitter seconds before they actually happen. This is the influence of twitter on our lives.

Twitter’s Unwritten Rules:

Want to make the most of twitter for all those who are contemplating to leave or have just got their new twitter ids, follow these ground rules and there will be no looking back in creating your own audience.

1. Engage in honest conversations- people wont be interested in fake identities and status updates for a long time.

2. Say only what you truly believe in.

3. For companies: never fudge your identity and industry.

4. You do not have to follow those who have followed you. This may be contradictory to the usual decorum in twitter but attaining the 1:10 ratio of following versus followers ratio cannot be achieved if you start following everyone who follows you. Analyze the people who you want to keep a track of and take your decision accordingly.

5. Actively listen to conversations happening around you then contribute in those discussions before leading your own conversations.

For companies who have chosen twitter, the foremost important thing is to LISTEN first. Proactively listen and understand what your stakeholders – customers, employees, and associates are talking about your company and brand on various social network forums, blogs. There is no limit to listening. The more you listen the more you understand the chatter around you, your company and brand.

After listening and understanding the context of the comments and discussions around your company and brand you are ready to join these discussions. Participate but do not push your marketing efforts. Listen while participating in sensible and transparent comments and discussions with your audience. This is pave way in creating a community around you from even the remote places in twitter.

Once your have listened and participated whilst creating a band of followers, you can now slowly push company news, updates, events, links and even company initiatives to create more faith in your already loyal audience. But be sure your are posting information and updates relevant to your audience. Now is the time to Lead your followers with your thoughts.

You can tweet anything as long as you engage your listeners with conversations that are of some relevance to them.

Twittering is all about influencing your audience. Stay tuned and Subscribe to this blog (so that they will come to your email directly) and keep reading this Wisdom Series on Social Media.

Follow us on @iridiuminter or my personal twitter account @sbharatam