Every so often, I am fortunate enough to teach social media marketing at AcademyX in San Francisco. I just completed the intense two-day course, yesterday. It was a small course, with two wonderful students – one, working for a San Francisco-based for-profit business and another working for a San Francisco non-profit.
I teach social media marketing in many venues – online, in San Francisco, and at Stanford. In San Francisco, I get a mix of for profit, entrepreneurial types as well as non-profits. It is the non-profits that are unusual; as I get many for profits in the other venues.
The unique issue for non-profit organizations is that they need to raise awareness for their charity without spending too much money or seeming insincere about their message. Too little advertising can mean they don’t find enough donors for their cause whereas too much can put a negative light on the organization. But there are lots of ways non-profits can grow — from word-of-mouth to getting help developing an app to advertising on social media. And it’s the latter part of this list that I can help with as I have lots of training when it comes to social media.
Unique Opportunities for Non-Profits and Social Media Marketing
For non-profits, social media marketing has some unique aspects and opportunities –
- The “mission” of a non-profit is much broader than that of a for-profit (which simply wants to make money). Usually a non-profit is seeking to “change the world” or “make the world a better place” in some way, shape, or form… but this impacts its keyword choices for SEO and the keyword choices that determine which social media conversations it wants to influence.
- Non-profits often tug on the heart strings, and thereby have more opportunities for social sharing and even viral videos. We watched the emotional ‘Dear Future Mom,” video and discussed how a non-profit can use video to spread its message.
- Non-profits have many stakeholders: donors, employees / contractors, and the people it is seeking to help. Each stakeholder has its own interests and agenda.
- Non-profits do not have a firm measurable goal (aka “Make money”) as do for-profits.
In sum, social media marketing for a non-profit is both more challenging and more open to opportunities than that of a for-profit. Even more interesting, for-profit companies can learn some interesting strategies from non-profits, such as the use of emotion to spread images and videos across social media. Non-profits do need all the help they can get in many ways to make sure that people are aware of what they are doing for public benefit. This is where usda business loans can come in useful, the business side needs to be able to flourish so awareness can be made through social media, it all links in to create a good, solid base.
Social Media Marketing – Classes and Consulting (Not Just in San Francisco)
For profit or non profit, either way – social media marketing offers you many, many opportunities. If you are either, reach out to me, for a consult on how I can help.
