Today’s Tips for NGOs & Small Businesses 030415

Successful outreach, marketing and fundraising require knowledge of who you are approaching, your stakeholders, supporters, politicians, audience and customers. In previous blogs I’ve pointed out that even female and male donors must be approached differently for them to reply positively to your information or campaign. And it is incumbent upon you to know the differences.

If you ask, as many of you have asked me, where do I start, where do I look, what should I write, then you haven’t begun researching your stakeholders. Nothing wrong there. But you should remember that your first step can’t be fundraising. The first step is research, rock-solid research so that you know who you intend to reach and you are ready to outreach and spread the word about your organization.

Kyle Chowning, marketing strategist, wrote that to create a successful, comprehensive marketing strategy NGOs and small businesses must consider what he calls the “5 ‘Ps’ in your marketing mix: People

Product (project, goal, mission)

Price (reaction)

Place (location of project’s implementation)

Promotion (who to reach your stakeholders, audience, customers)

“Building a strong marketing strategy for your proposal or plan is important to winning new business regardless of what your product or service is. Taking the time to answer these questions will likely lead you to success,” Chowning wrote.

However, he cautioned, “Don’t do this: one of the biggest mistakes people make is guessing the answers to the marketing mix questions. As I mentioned, marketers pursue and use data to build rock-solid marketing strategies.”

Social Media 101—Conclusion

Conclusion of my discussion of the basics of launching your social media strategy. If you have already done so, don’t worry, treat this as a helpful review.

·         The first step to planning any addition to an organization should be setting goals. Before joining the social media world, your organization should have an understanding of its goals for:

The social media team at large,

Each social platform, and

Individual team members.

·         “The first thing we did was to define a purpose. What is the purpose of starting a community? Over the past two years, we’ve heard, ‘You’ve got to be in social! You’ve got to be in social!’ A lot of companies are doing that, but they don’t know why,” said Kailei Richardson, manager of strategy and social media expert at Point Roll.

·         Planning a strategy for each social platform was key for planning the role of the social media team. Study the mechanics of the platform before deciding all are good for you or one.

·         After an organization has defined what the social media team should be and who it should include, the next step is to survey available internal resources and allocate them appropriately. This includes employees, funds and equipment.

·         Create a social media policy. A social media policy is a great way to set your company’s expectations for social media use in writing for all to see — either internally or externally (or both). In most cases, it’s a legal and organizationally necessary to have a social media policy to set the tone for employees and the community.

·         The policy must also address your mission, projects, products, image, brand, stakeholders, audience and customers.

·         Communicate effectively across your organization. Just because a team is labeled the “social media team” doesn’t mean they have to exclusively use social media tools to communicate with each other and the rest of the community. Senior management must be included in the process.

·         Whatever you do, once you launch it, don’t belittle it as a passing adolescent fad. If you do, you will have wasted time and money. More ominously, you may fail and bring tarnish your organization’s image. If you treat it seriously as you would any phase of your organization’s work, you will be primed for success.

Social media can be helpful but we have to know why we want it and have a plan. Wanting it because everyone else has it is not enough and can be detrimental. With a plan, social media won't turn into a plaything. I also think that senior management should be prepared for it and familiar with the concepts and lexicon so you can hold your own during the discussion, launch and implementation. One tweet is not enough, you should join the conversation and invite others to join your conversation.

Hope this has been helpful.

Statistics

NGOs & nonprofits contributed to the US economy $887.3 billion or 5.4% of the GDP.

Small businesses share of GDP constitutes 46-48%.

Not bad for local entrepreneurship and grassroots initiatives.

Contact me for more ideas and guidance.

For a global view of what NGOs are doing, please visit my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BoostingNGOOutreach