Boosting Your Outreach

Some Yearend Thoughts on Social Media Marketing – ‘EEE’

It is axiomatic that social media are the most efficient, effective and economical vehicles to quickly reach a mass or targeted audience. As a result, it behooves small businesses, non-governmental organizations and their chief executive officers regardless of their formal titles to begin making plans to enter cyberspace.

With an average of 236 million active monthly users, Twitter by itself can help with your outreach. If you add other social media, then you will increase your chances of promoting your mission, projects, goods or services to all corners of the Internet.

As I have written in the past, social media is too powerful of an outreach tool to allow teenagers use to for their youthful exploits. Actually, 22% of Twitter users are over the age of 50. That’s almost 52 million people. Do you see a potential audience in that space?

If you haven’t yet begun tweeting, here are a few ideas about what you should do.

Sheena White, a copywriter and social media consultant, suggests that you should update your Twitter profile with the proper keywords. What is your claim to fame? What is your mojo? What is your expertise? What will your legacy be? Tell your audience what your tweeting mission will be. What will you be promoting?

“It’s perfectly fine (even recommended) to share personal details about your life or interests, but it’s essential to tell Twitter users exactly what you do (assuming you want them to find you for your products and services, that is),” White wrote.

While some experts advise that you create categories for your potential tweets, the serious work of NGOs and small businesses does not require such a procedure. You already know your mission and business plan so focus on promoting them. However, what you should do is track the hashtags that are favored and monitored by your audience, marketplace and shareholders, as well as those who have liked or retweeted your content. Both steps will help you build and nurture your cyber community.

White also offered ideas on how to build a community:

“Start by following the people who follow your competitors or other industry leaders (or similar nonprofits). You can also do advanced keyword searches to find people according to the kinds of things they’re tweeting or find people who have certain keywords in their bios.

“It’s going to be necessary at some point to unfollow people or else you’re going to hit a cap at 2k Twitter accounts. (To go beyond that, you can only be following 10% more people than are following you in return.) Just make sure that when you unfollow, you don’t do so quickly that they don’t have the opportunity to follow you back.”

Engage your audience, marketplace or community with your tweets and ideas. Ask them to join your conversation and don’t forget to join their conversation. When they retweet what you’ve tweeted, their followers have the opportunity to read what’s top of mind for you and thus you boost your outreach even farther.

While you shouldn’t be afraid to promote your business or civic work, also remember to address issues that are of importance to your followers. Offer ideas and advice, and retweet what others have written on the subject. In this way, as I have suggested in earlier posts, CEOs can become thought leaders – the person who will be sought for his or her sage observations. However, don’t polemicize. That is liable to turn off more people than attract new followers. Stay above the fray by showing your expertise rather than your bickering skills.

You should also reply to inquiries and observations about your small businesses or NGOs. Twitter is especially suited to this application because of its real-time character.

Joe Wadlington, another social media adviser, noted: “Twitter is a natural fit for customer service. It moves in real time, making it simple for customers to ask you questions, celebrate your business, or reach out if they need support. This season, a lot of people will be shopping on a deadline — making swift, easy customer service more important than ever. In fact, after receiving a positive response from a retailer, 77% of people on Twitter feel more positively towards that business.”

Send your examples

Join the conversation in cyberspace in the New Year and let us know your impressions. If you have examples of creative usage of social media to boost outreach, let me know about it and I’ll help you spread the word about your success.

I’d also like to invite you to visit my Thought Leadership website:

http://thoughtleadership.yolasite.com/

Fundraising

Fundraising is an important facet of the work of NGOs especially during the Holidays. Here is an earlier post about this important topic: http://boostingyouroutreach.blogspot.com/2015/01/fundraising-tips-forngos-fundraising-is.html

In case you missed this resource bonus

Here’s a bonus resource for NGOs and small businesses that has been popular. It is undoubtedly beneficial to use illustrations or photos to get your point across. You can take your own photo or draw your own picture. Hiring professionals to do so would be expensive as would be subscribing to a stock photo agency. But these websites of photos for your promotional or marketing campaigns offer free photos. Yes, free. Enjoy browsing these sites. Some offer paid premium alternatives.

Negative Space

http://negativespace.co/

Death to the Stock Photo

http://deathtothestockphoto.com/

Picjumbo

http://picjumbo.com/

Stokpic

http://stokpic.com/

Kaboompics

http://kaboompics.com/

Startup Stock Photos

http://startupstockphotos.com/