Strategic Online Communication for Nonprofits

The Upleaf Blog

Sure, having a celebrity founder and spokesman helps, but many celebrities have foundations that don’t enjoy anywhere near the same popularity as the Livestrong Foundation.

Why has the foundation been so successful?  In part because they’re doing everything right with regard to their online presence:

• A dynamic, interactive, attention-grabbing website, with a “We Believe” declaration so inspiring it reaches to the depths of your soul.
  • A “donate now” message that grabs your attention.  You can’t miss it—marked with the trademark yellow bracelet.
  • Once you click on “donate now” the first message you see reassures you that your money will be spent wisely (78% of all donations go directly to grants and programs).
  • The site offers multiple ways to make a donation, with something that appeals to everyone: “in memory”, “wedding donations”, “workplace giving”, “events support”, “download a song from iTunes” and more.  They’ve thought of every way you might want to give and made it easy for you.
  • For those who prefer to make a purchase and receive something in return, there’s a link with products to choose from that make both a fashion statement and a values statement.
  • The site is easy to navigate and tells you everything you need to know, in simple language.
  • In plain view you can access their services and see testimonies and photos of people they’ve helped—which again reassures you that your donations really make a difference.

• A strategic partnership with Nike through sale of their products, which brings visibility to their cause and drives new traffic
• A strong social media presence, with over half a million fans of their Facebook page, 200,000+ members of their Facebook cause, and even 60,000+ fans of their Spanish-language Facebook page.  Livestrong also has 30,000+ followers on Twitter.  That’s a lot of daily exposure.
• Innovative media coverage, most recently through the Tour de France “chalkbot” that enabled people around the world to have their text messages chalked on the pavement during the competition.

Their web presence is a bit fragmented, with several different sites drawing in different traffic (just under 80,000 unique monthly visitors to Livestrong.org and 650,000+ monthly visitors to Livestrong.com, 60+ different Facebook pages or causes) but the bottom line is that they are using every major online tool to get their message out.

And it’s working.  Livestrong raises over $30 million a year, with a large portion of their revenue coming from small donations from individual donors.  That’s strategic online communication with undisputable results.

Many organizations dedicated to social change have been using social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) to get the word out about their work and encourage donations.  These strategies can be very effective and best of all—they are low-cost and often offer quick results.

But social media can be more than just a PR tool to raise your profile among donors and stakeholders.

As different demographic groups become active via the plethora of mobile and Internet-based applications, social media is emerging as another powerful tool for behavior change.

Reaching Beneficiaries

Internet-based social networks are generally already well-segmented, so if you can get a few of the key opinion leaders within the network to take on your message as their own, your message can travel quickly and directly to your target population.  As those influencers begin to blog, tweet, text, or share the desired behavior change message with friends, it assumes a life of its own.  Other members of the network are inspired to comment, revise, or pass on the message, and suddenly it has taken on an authentic, powerful, viral form.

With this type of viral messaging strategy you lose control over the message itself, but you gain authenticity and multiplicity which can be quite powerful in shaping the social norms that influence our behavior.

If your outreach campaigns don’t include a social media component, you are likely missing a segment of your target audience.  Many people—particularly youth—have moved away from television, radio and print media, and now spend much of their free time on the Internet.  The early adapters have even begun to move away from the personal computer to their mobile phone, where they rely on messaging to communicate with peers and the broader world around them.  So if you’re not integrating these strategies into your outreach campaigns, you might be missing the boat.

Perhaps the best thing about a social media strategy is that you can monitor impact on a daily basis and receive immediate feedback from your target population, something that is virtually impossible when working with traditional unidirectional media.

If something isn’t working, you can quickly correct it and tweak your message or steer your strategy in a new direction.  And you can learn a lot about how your target population thinks, feels, and expresses themselves—without spending thousands of dollars on elaborate research studies.

By Elizabeth Beachy, Upleaf Co-Founder and specialist in Strategic Behavioral Communications

I came across an article today with 10 excellent tips and tools for marketing your nonprofit on the web.  The best part is that most tools are free and should take you little time to implement.

The article was written by Allyson Kapin and originally appeared on Beth’s Blog on July 24.  The 10 tools mentioned by Kapin are (in her words):

1. RSS Feeds: Add an RSS feed to your blog and news sections so people visiting your site can subscribe to your feed and stay updated on your nonprofits latest news. I like Google Feedburner because it gives visitors a choice to subscribe via RSS or email.

2. Add This: A widget that allows website visitors to share your content via 50 social networks and bookmark communities.

3. Pick Two Social Networks: My two favorite social networks are Twitter and Facebook (Fanpages). Spend 15 minutes a day talking to the community and cross promoting your campaigns, news, etc. 

4. URL Shorteners: Bit.ly, Tinyurl, and Pagetweet make links more manageable by turning them into short 20 character links. This is a great tool for sharing links and decreases the risk of links breaking after it’s been shared. Also bit.ly tracks data such as click-through rates, geographic locations, etc. Bonus points!

5. Care2’s Petition Site: Start a free petition on the Petition Site to rally support around one of your latest campaigns. You can even list a signature goal and download signatures.

6. Google Grants: Google gives nonprofits $10K in-kind grants for their AdWords program. Check out Robin Reed’s great tips for managing an AdWords grant.

7. YouTube Nonprofit Program: YouTube offers nonprofits some pretty cool benefits like branding, promotion on YouTube’s nonprofits channel and call to action overlays in your videos.

8. Listservs: Participate in listservs that align with your nonprofit’s mission and where your organizations’ issues are being discussed. Listservs provide great opportunities to not only promote your organizations initiatives but to listen to what other people are saying about your issues.

9. Widgets: Create widgets to share content or actions. One of my favorites is the Rock the Vote/Credo widget that helps to register people to vote.

10. FreeCause Toolbar: A nifty toolbar that is customized with your nonprofits branding. Link to your social networks, post current news, stream video and audio clips, etc. Bonus – for every click generated, FreeCause will donate money to your nonprofit.

Click here to view the original article.

Posted by Elizabeth Beachy, Upleaf Co-Founder