Social Media Pitfalls: How to avoid them

1. Social Media Pitfalls: How to avoid them Social Media Pitfalls: Simple tricks to avoid them Susan Tenby, Director Online Community/Social Media Team TechSoup Global [email_address] @suzboop Susantenby.com Marin Nonprofit Conference 2011 – Conspiring for the Common Good #2011NPC

2. We are working toward a time when every nonprofit and social benefit organization on the planet has the technology resources and knowledge they need to operate at their full potential We are working toward a time when every nonprofit and social benefit organization on the planet has the technology resources and knowledge they need to operate at their full potential

3. TechSoup Global has established an extensive partner network in 32 countries Australia Belgium Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile Croatia France Germany Hong Kong Hungary India Ireland Japan Kenya Luxembourg Macau Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Poland Romania Russia Slovakia Slovenia South Africa Spain Taiwan United Kingdom United States TechSoup Global has established an extensive partner network in 32 countries Australia Belgium Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile Croatia France Germany Hong Kong Hungary India Ireland Japan Kenya Luxembourg Macau Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Poland Romania Russia Slovakia Slovenia South Africa Spain Taiwan United Kingdom United States

4. 6. Double-click to enter title Double-click to enter text Communicating across social media channels for the TechSoup Global online networks Online Community and Social Media Team

5. 7. PITFALL NUMBER 1 <ul><li>Not knowing why you even want to do social media </li></ul><ul><li>SET YOUR GOALS </li></ul><ul><li>PICK YOUR CHANNELS </li></ul><ul><li>OWN YOUR AUTHORITY </li></ul><ul><li>STAY FOCUSED </li></ul>Marin Nonprofit Conference 2011 – Conspiring for the Common Good #2011NPC

6. 8. Cause, campaign or organizational plan & presence? Measurable Goals Connected to Specific outcomes Call to Action Request What do you want to accomplish?

7. 9. Effective Social Media Strategy and Powerful Tactics for Networked Nonprofits <ul><li>Campaign or organizational plan? </li></ul><ul><li>Mission & Purpose? </li></ul><ul><li>What do you want to accomplish? </li></ul><ul><li>Measurable Goals </li></ul><ul><li>Call to Action Request </li></ul><ul><li>Organizational voice and brand Authority Position? </li></ul><ul><li>Step One: </li></ul><ul><li>CHART THE COURSE: </li></ul><ul><li>Determine which </li></ul><ul><li>Channels are right for you – and right for your audiences to receive you </li></ul>

8. 10. What is your call to action? <ul><li>What do you want by having & monitoring your social media presence? </li></ul><ul><li>Drive traffic to your website? </li></ul><ul><li>Increase your org’s thought leadership? </li></ul><ul><li>Generate partnerships? </li></ul><ul><li>Donations? </li></ul><ul><li>Buzz? </li></ul><ul><li>Volunteers? </li></ul>Pick one or two goals: Stay Focused! Be Charming!

9. 11. PITFALL NUMBER 2 <ul><li>HAVING UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS OF OUTCOMES </li></ul><ul><li>Expectation of raising funds is wrong motivation </li></ul><ul><li>Set realistic goals for stats: http://nonprofitsocialnetworksurvey.com/ </li></ul>Marin Nonprofit Conference 2011 – Conspiring for the Common Good #2011NPC

10. 12. Being Nonprofit Twitter Rockstar Doesn’t = Fundraising $$

11. 13. INTEGRATION

12. 14. PITFALL NUMBER 3 <ul><li>NOT PRIORITIZING TIME </li></ul><ul><li>Blogs: 1-4 hours per post </li></ul><ul><li>Twitter: 5-30 minutes a day </li></ul><ul><li>Facebook: 5-30 minutes a day </li></ul><ul><li>LinkedIn: 15-30 minutes, weekly </li></ul><ul><li>Listservs: 30 minutes weekly </li></ul><ul><li>Other Groups: 30 minutes weekly </li></ul><ul><li>Photo Uploads: 15 minutes weekly </li></ul><ul><li>Videos: 2-4 hours a week </li></ul><ul><li>Curation: 1 hour a week </li></ul>Marin Nonprofit Conference 2011 – Conspiring for the Common Good #2011NPC Total Average Social Media Time: 90 minutes per day 11 hours per week

13. 15. 3 minutes : Check for Twitter chatter about yr organization and sub-sector. 2 minutes : Scan Google Alerts, Social Mention and Blogs Alerts for important articles and mentions. 3 minutes : Filter and flag relevant sector-related LinkedIn group and Quora questions. 2 minutes : Log in to Facebook to scan your wall and comments. If you have 5 extra minutes, chime into a listserv to keep yr presence there! MINIMUM Time it will take: 10 minutes a day

14. 16. PITFALL NUMBER 4 <ul><li>BEING A BROADCASTER </li></ul><ul><li>NOT LISTENING </li></ul><ul><li>NOT JOINING IN CONVERSATION </li></ul><ul><li>NOT BENEFITTING FROM SERENDIPITOUS TAG SURFING </li></ul><ul><li>NOT ENGINEERING SHARING </li></ul><ul><li>NOT BEING REDUNDANT AND AMPLIFYING </li></ul><ul><li>NOT SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE </li></ul>Marin Nonprofit Conference 2011 – Conspiring for the Common Good #2011NPC

15. 17. USE HASHTAGS! #2011NPC <ul><li>Research and find tags from many communities related to your field </li></ul><ul><li>LISTEN & Participate in conversations that help you engage new audiences and strengthen your authority positions </li></ul><ul><li>Use tags to organize campaigns Information and grow diverse conversations </li></ul><ul><li>#NPTECH </li></ul><ul><li>#TSDIGS http://tiny.cc/tsdigs </li></ul><ul><li>http://whatthetrend.com/ </li></ul><ul><li>http://www.hashtag.org/ </li></ul>

16. 18. Amplify, but speak the right local language <ul><li>Don’t use other people’s pages as a platform for your spam </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t Auto Feed your Status updates to Facebook </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t use Selective Tweets </li></ul><ul><li>Do take a little time, show you care </li></ul><ul><li>Do take advantage of features of the channel such as crosstagging to groups, people and places at once with links </li></ul><ul><li>Do find your niche community & stay focused on that topic </li></ul>

17. 19. Don’t Tweet Like CHER. <ul><li>Don’t tweet like Cher </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t make up #uselesshashtags </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t spam via DM </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t call yourself a rockstar or guru </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t put an emoticon or exclamation mark after every tweet </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t be self-referential in all your tweets </li></ul><ul><li>Track click-thru using Bit.ly & do what works </li></ul><ul><li>If yr going to RT something, READ IT first </li></ul>

18. 20. DO Tweet Like… 57% of Nonprofits are on twitter Avg follwer base up 2%, 1822 followers

19. 21. A few good Dashboards: Use for listening, NOT Broadcasting

20. 22. <ul><li>Hootsuite </li></ul><ul><li>Pros: </li></ul><ul><li>Good for listening, include tags, common misspellings, lists/groups </li></ul><ul><li>Allows us to follow multiple streams across many social media sites, creating specialized campaign and search tabs for various projects, events and organizations </li></ul><ul><li>Paid version gives downloadable reports for ROI information </li></ul><ul><li>Cons: </li></ul><ul><li>Free version won’t allow for multiple accounts or multiple users </li></ul>

21. 23. CoTweet <ul><li>Pros: FREE </li></ul><ul><li>Schedule & assign Tweets ahead of time PR releases & allows teams to manage accounts </li></ul><ul><li>CoTweet & Hootsuire allow us to see who responded, when & so we can figure out how to follow up to each request </li></ul><ul><li>Cons: Not as easy to use as a listening interface </li></ul>

22. 24. Who’s talking about you & what hashtags & FOLLOW!

23. 25. PITFALL NUMBER 5 <ul><li>THINKING YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY: </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t ever be afraid of having nothing to say: you can always Curate! </li></ul><ul><li>Use Delicious to save bookmarks and share them </li></ul><ul><li>Use Scoop.It to help you find topical, relevant, reusable content </li></ul><ul><li>Share it and content from others </li></ul><ul><li>When in doubt, ReTweet and be generous with @replies </li></ul>Marin Nonprofit Conference 2011 – Conspiring for the Common Good #2011NPC

24. 26. PITFALL NUMBER 6 <ul><li>OVERTHINKING THE STRATEGY AND WRITING DOCUMENTS </li></ul><ul><li>TRYING TO PROVE ROI TO YOUR E.D. </li></ul><ul><li>OVER-PLANNING SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT </li></ul><ul><li>FOLLOWING TOO MANY GUIDELINES FROM OTHERS </li></ul>

25. 27. REVIEW: Social Media What to do & what NOT to do <ul><li>DO find a third party listening dashboard tool that you like such as NetVibes or Google Reader for RSS/alerts </li></ul><ul><li>DO subscribe to Alerts about relevant topics </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t delete or Ignore negative feedback, address it </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t use your friends and followers for their networks </li></ul><ul><li>DO tag Strategically, redundantly across many channels </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t only broadcast about your org, share stories & respond </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t be a control freak: guide conversations </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t just expect someone will run your SM channels, designate someone! </li></ul><ul><li>DO track your progress using social analytics tools that help you track success </li></ul>

26. 28. Social Media Policy? Don’t bother writing your own. There are TONS out there! See: http://npsocialmedia101.wikispaces.com/Facebook http://www.scoop.it/t/social-media-policies-in-the-work-place

27. 29. Create your own special sauce <ul><li>Figure out what your needs are, use a combination of tools </li></ul><ul><li>Don’t forget about mobile tweeting (Tweetdeck for multiple accounts, channels mobile interface) </li></ul><ul><li>Many mobile clients have pic uploader installed in the app (Peep) </li></ul><ul><li>Figure out a workflow that isn’t confusing to avoid Freudian tweets </li></ul><ul><li>When you don’t have anything to say: Curate, ReTweet, reply to conversations using hashtags and Share widely </li></ul><ul><li>Think more about RETWEETS & amplification than followers </li></ul>

28. 31. Contact Me.. Really! http://susantenby.com/ @suzboop @techsoup @npsl www.techsoup.org [email_address] http://www.slideshare.net/suzboop http://www.delicious.com/suzboop http:// npsocialmedia101.wikispaces.com /